The Argosy, October 1906 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

How were they looking a With =a what unspeakable terror must they not the far more hideous faces: of the three =: ruffians who had captured us?: __ And again I cursed myself for a fool wae ne not refusing to enter the grotto un- E ee til the rest of our party shculd have Be. _ joined us. I could picture them now, ___— waiting impatiently for us, up there in ___ the sunlit, wind- kissed outer world; and = I wondered, in maudlin fashion, if I should ever again see that same elorious ~ world or my friend’s faces. = Just then I would almost have wel- - - comed the sight of Amos Todd himself. See = Fo distract my mind from all this [ rose and peered about me in the dark- = ness. What was it the guide. had said, before we entered, about. the frescos of _- Marcus Agrippa on the walls alongside the water-steps? Here were the steps _ and here the walls. How about the fres- ss cos? | 2 | in frescos, but anything is better than sitting in utter darkness. I had my match-safé in a vest pocket. ~~ Luckily it was half-full; and still more — fortunately it had been quite above the water's level. I struck a match. It was the sort nes sell in Italy—wax, with red heads; = ‘little sliding paper boxes w ith a said =—s _ picture and a pointless joke on the top— Ee matches that burn twice as long and smell four times as badly as our Ameri- — -__ €an -variety. ‘The feeble glare cleared away a ee ‘little radius of darkness, and fell on the the steps. = BY that tiny point of fire I could see again, as before, that the steps led up to a stone or concrete blank wall. they had gone farther in the days of Marcus Agrippa—whoever he may have ‘walled up. I thumped and rapped at She solid rock; but it nowhere gave back an echo - Then, as my match burned down, I struck another and turned to the frescos. = There they were—such as they were— = in the discolored plaster of the left-hand — — side-wall. ~ Dingy, —— _ be-gazing into the hideous gloom or into — 2 COS, Not that I have the slightest interest damp, stained walls on either side of If ever. _been—the passage had long since been to indicate a thinner section of partition. half-eftaced tendrils | and leaves of vine and clusters: of stiffly. = a ty hanging purplish grapes. as I was not vastly ‘ipieteck Twas Sot Soe in the mood to be impressed by anything = except by wracking anxiety for Deris Todd’s safety. I was about to turn away when my eye ‘idly lighted on a lower de- sign of frescoing, from which time and : dampness had es nearly all the pig: ment. In the exact center of the eran of | _ grayish-green trefoil leaves, I discerned what looked like a small pomegranate. or a big cherry. It, unlike the surround- ing leaves, had lost none of its pristine color, but flamed forth oe: red—vivid, | garish. = Ss Now, I know next to nothing sf oe but I do know that flamboyant, glaring scarlet was not a color in use among the ancients for mural decoration. — : ‘The red, or Tyrian purple, which they Sess used for such purposes was of a rich, dull hue, not in the least vivid or a harmonious. Moreover, no color could areal SS: tained its original brilliancy for twenty 25 centuries here in this atmosphere os dark and. damp. eee So, as my second match Heacd out, oe I lighted a third, kneeling down on the moist stone of the stair to look closer at this oddity. “Then I saw what the thing was. Tt ‘was no pomegranate or cherry frescoed there; nor, for that matter, was the ob-_ ject frescoed at all. It was crudely painted, in latter-day fashion and by a latter-day hand. Who had done such~a_ senseless thing? And why? For the pseudfresco, painted in aS center of a wreath of genuine antiquity, - represented no fruit, but a big, sprawk ing beetle! An odd-looking - beetle, at that. Rec Sas he was a squat oval in outline, and the bars and markings on head, back, ae se: wings were unusual. - ? —< Moreover, whoever heard of a Te ss beetle? Yet, in some vague way, the = ereature seemed to me to have a familiar | aes a aspect. : ists ‘The thought puzzled me. | Then Tr re- 2 SS -membered. = —= The markings" andl ereak tint we -In a rougher, less artistic way, the sar as those “of my scarlet ‘scarab scar =p: