Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 137: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE DEVIL’S FLOWER. By breakfast I was nursing a good ap- petite. Peter did not come down, so Robinson and I ate together, Sam preparing hot cakes, sausages, and steaming coffee. I started in the morning repast leisurely, but the scientist hurriedly ate a few bites, swallowed a little coffee, and then pushed back his chair and left for his greenhouse workshop. “* He’s always that way when on the trail of an important discovery,’ said Sam rue- fully, as he regarded his master’s plate. “ That is what I call a waste of good food.” I told the cook what Robinson had said about our keeping guard. “Oh, well, we will do it to please him,” he said, ‘‘ and it is easy enough, of course, in the daytime, but we are helpless as can be at night. Anything you want, sir, this morning, when I go for the mail.” I told him I had a letter that I wanted to get off. “Push those plates back and I'll bring you writing material and pen and ink,” he suggested obligingly. So I sat right where 1 was and wrote a letter to Julia. Her graduation as a li- censed nurse was only a few weeks off now and by then, I wrote, we might get mar- ried. Why put off the happy day? I’m repeating this boldly—without the loverlike embellishments that do not appeal to any one save the person for whom they are in- tended. I sketched briefly the situation on the island and asked her to think of me long and often. Then I signed my name, and the customary line of crosses, and left the letter sealed and addressed on the table. The prospect of the dreary day before me made me sigh involuntarily. “Tt is going to be lonely for you here, sir, but I am sure that this trouble will soon blow over. I can tell the signs when my master is within reach of triumph, for I read his moods like a book,” said his faith- ful man, and I told him that I hoped he was right. Then I wandered outdoors again for a spell. Shortly Sam took off in a rowboat for the mainland, towing behind him the | craft in which I had arrived. The canoe 607 Peter had borrowed still lay on the shore where he had pulled it in. Finding an old bench in the shade near the landing place, I went indoors for a book and decided that I’d look through Robin- son’s before going upstairs to get one of my own. But the scientific volumes that I scanned looked somewhat too heavy reading for me. I looked up to see the scientist bending over me. “My son, Peter?” he said. “ Still in bed, far as I know,” I replied. He looked about him mysteriously, as if for eavesdroppers. * Congratulate me, Dr. Warner,” he said in a deep voice. “ I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I will not try to ex- plain it to you scientifically, for you wouldn’t understand me, but here is the correct formula for a union of certain fun- gous growths that will utterly destroy the poppy. I am going to hide the formula for the present here in my copy of Dar- win’s ‘ Origin of Species.’ ” He took the volume out of the bookcase, inserted a few pages of closely written notes, and then carefully replaced the book in its place. Then Robinson seated himself at the desk and started writing in a fury. “‘T have a note here I want you to give to your boss when you see him, Some in- formation I promised to give his depart- ment, of no real importance—but a prom- ise is a promise,” he said. He wrote rapidly for a few minutes, and finished by stuffing several sheets in an en- velope, which he sealed and handed to me. This will keep until you get back to town,” he drawled. On top of this he winked mysteriously and indicated several lines scribbled on a scratch pad: Guard that communication with your life and get it to Merritt. Treachery! After I scanned this message, with puz- zled brow, he tore up the little slip on which it was written into bits. Shaking my head, I thrust the envelope he handed me into my inside pocket. Really, the. old man was acting a bit woozy, openly hiding his formula between Gomichooks (E@)