Argosy (UK), January 1955 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

E , S % x ae oe we» ee . Tess — He went back to his bedroom, even more agitated than before. _ “What are they thinking of? What do they think they are? ‘shes *) ‘ = 3 i <5 ye . for you...!’ Damnation! I'll soon see about that! ” he’d just like to see who’d dare to try, if he didn’t want. . .! _From the dressing-table, his wife looked out of a silver frame at him, with the slightly superior smile which the photographer photograph for the first time since she had put it there, with her own hands, in naive self-admiration; with a start, he stopped short in front of it. me? Why do you look at me like that, then?” His irritation at the tyranny her friends exercised over him now turned against directed him all her life, with tactfully silent criticism of his social and human imperfections. A burst of ungovernable rage flared up in him. He hammered his chest with his fist. | “It’s me—your husband! ‘Take a good look, if you don’t believe it! You’ve never seen me like this, have you? But do you know me, anyway? Do you know me?” Startled by his own loud voice, he cast a hasty look behind him, putting the photograph face downwards on the dressing- table, as if Thérese had caught him red-handed. “Do I know myself?” he muttered. He went outside, to take a deep breath of the evening air. Gradually the evil enchantment ebbed . . . the spell . . . it could have been nothing else. Recollecting that the Janssens were waiting for him at the club, he went back into the room. Resuming the interrupted wrestling-match with his mother- of-pearl shirt-studs, he looked, appalled, at the pallid face, covered with beads of sweat, which gazed back at him from the mirror with strangely haggard eyes. “Is that you... Mr. Van Houten?” the other seemed to ask, with lips that moved sound- lessly. abruptly away from the accusing image. He fixed his black bow-tie with fingers that still trembled. But now he knew what he had to do. Once dressed to his satisfaction, he felt for a rix-dollar in the - = . “i. ta « ~s had coaxed from her. It was as if Mr. Van Houten saw the ~ BLACK MAGIC 27 because J choose to go, and not because you order me to!” mex len ’ ‘ 2 7 . @ “If you’re not there by half past nine, we’ll send a search-party _ Nervously, feverishly, he pondered what to do. The lights ‘ out straight away. The front verandah in darkness. And then — ‘“What’s the matter, Thérése? Do you see anything odd about = his wife herself—he suddenly realized that she had bossed and Of a sudden, he could no longer bear to look at it, and turned : 2 ~ —s * comicbooks.com)