Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 7, 1928 — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

50 posed Gefondo with an impudent leer toward the baron. Basil ignored the speech, but looked long at Gefondo. The hunchback wore fine garments, unspotted and unwrin- kled, fine wrist laces, and amethysts on his fingers. His face, in spite of the evil company he kept, had a strange and wistful nobility. Basil wondered as he took a chair at the table end if, like Ranselaar, Gefondo had also fall- en foul of Henri Christophe, and was forced to a pirate life. “This matter of payment,” he said to De Banana, “I promised my father that you would pay the gold. I have come aboard to get it. In place of Ranselaar, who is left behind, you have two men, Jack Butts and my- self.” ‘“ Hum-m. We might sign you on as an ensign and Butts as quartermaster, and you’d share with the others what- ever loot is taken,” offered the baron as he carefully fitted his finger tips to- gether and looked down his flat nose. “You'd scarcely dare go back to Eng- land now. They’d swing you on a gib- bet.”’ “T’d risk that, and take it if it came. But I-sign no papers, M. le Baron. And for protecting your men while they boarded ship, I ask only an extra hundred guineas. [ll even risk the unlucky number thirteen.” “Tt ’ll be a lucky day when you col- lect that debt,’’ chortled the baron. “For the gold is still in the coffers of Henri Christophe. But I'll be gener- ous. I'll guarantee you an audience with the black emperor, and you may then present to him in person the bill.”’ “ And have him pay me by dubbing me ‘ Baron Sugarcane’ or * Lord Po- tato,’ or even ‘ Marquis Yam.’ ”’ “You'll sign the articles,” said the baron as he turned to scowl at the hunchback, who displayed his strong white teeth in a wide and silent grin as he poured the wine and offered it first to Basil. ‘‘ For we do not carry ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. passengers, if you had troubled to find out, on Le Diable Noir.” “I had little time to ask what you carry. Besides, [ knew you would not, could not, well refuse. And as a pas- senger I desire that cabin of Ranse- laar’s which I shared on the voyage home, and I should consider it a favor if Gefondo here would serve me.”’ The hunchback nodded. His smile held less of diabolic mirth as he turned his face toward Basil. “Trelawney, you command as if you, not I, were master.”’ “Monsieur, your lack of manners compel me.. But in exchange I’m will- ing to polish up that lack in you. If you watch me closely you'll learn that quickly. [ am nothing if not generous in that way. “For instance, ‘tis unseemly to choke on a draft of wine and spew it down one’s linen. And it spoils a man’s smile to widen his mouth by wiping it on a wrist. “We'd be so much more endurable one to the other if only you would watch and profit by my example. Gefondo, a cloth if you please, to wipe his chin. Make haste!’ The baron glowered at Basil, but seemed unable to detect in the boy’s face a sign of that ridicule he suspect- ed. The eyes of Gefondo sparkled, but he kept a grave countenance. “ Have the lad teach you those dance steps he performed on the plank end that night we sank the Albatross,” he suggested. | “Most certainly,” said Basil quick- ly. “’Tis the same step used when one is upheld in thin air ‘by a necklet of hempen rope at a yardarm. It may serve you in time of need, monsieur, and the practice will keep me from for- getting how ‘tis done.”’ His voice was so pleasant and his smile so winning that the Baron de Banana could only grin in turn. His thick wit, bequeathed by that wander- ing sailor who sired him, was not — (E@) MAI DOOKS (E@)