Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

CHINOOK WINDS. py several Chinamen. The orchestra had “departed, and some of the lights had been extinguished. The place was one of the “all-night” vari- ety, however, so Masters had no difficulty in being served. He ordered a bowl of chow main, a bowl of tea, and some cigarettes. As he sat there smoking cigarettes and permitting the tea and the Chinese dish to cool, he had not the faintest notion of what to do next. He must wait for inspiration. In a moment it came. One by one the “chinks” rose, pattered across the floor and disappeared behind the ugly screen of gnarled and twisted bamboo, that presum- ably concealed a door through which the lovely Chinook Winds made her nightly appearance. Old Wun Sing, who usually sat beside the screen, was not there; in fact, no one was now left but the waiter and Masters. Alec placed some money on the table; the waiter was taking a nap standing up, his hands folded in his sleeves, his head nodding . ’ gon into the street. grotesquely. Masters rose, walked behind the screen” and opened the door he found there. It led into a broad, dimly lighted hall- way. Upon the floor was thick silken rugs; in the air was the smoke of burning in- cense, sending up wavering spirals before a great Buddha that squatted at the farther end of the corridor. Alec heard the musical clinking of coins, smelled the enervating odor of opium. If there was a slight hint of the Occident in the room without, in conformity with the tastes of a diversified patronage, here was the very essence of the Orient with its subtle suggestions to an imaginative mind. Silken-hung openings upon either side of the hall led into the gambling rooms and the pipe divans. = Masters peeped through the openings of the curtains. Where, in all these various rooms, should he find the girl whom he was seeking; and, after having found her, what then? Very possibly she was not in the build- ing at all. It might be that when she left the restaurant she went to some other part of the city. Thus he speculated as he walked the length of the hall, peering with 403 much curiosity through the apertures be; tween the silken hangings. At last he reached the squatting Buddha, Behind the idol was a door without curtains —rather it was more an ornamental archway which led into another hallway that seemed to be the entrance to a luxurious suite of living rooms. A bejeweled lamp shed wavering lances of light over another doorway through which Masters stepped into a splendidly propor- tioned apartment hung with a profusion of richly embroidered curtains, furnished with massively carved teakwood divans and tab- ourets, holding gorgeous vases, all dimly lighted with fantastic lamps. Masters glanced around. Perhaps he had penetrated to the holy of holies. He felt suddenly apologetic; a man’s home was his castle, which_should be sacred from in- vasion. If a stranger had made so bold as to enter his father’s dwelling without invi- tation, Alec was sure that he would have been tempted to kick so impertinent a per- But he had the handkerchief with the word “help” printed upon it in English. There had been fear and appeai in the beautiful eyes of the girl who had taken this way of making it known that she needed assistance of some sort. These ex- cuses he thought justified him in an other- wise unwarranted intrusion. And now from the silken cushions of ene of the great divans materialized a woman, clothed in full Chinese costume, her hair dressed in the Oriental fashion. Her veil had been discarded. For an instant Masters failed to recognize: her, but he could hardly mistake her eyes, red and swollen though they were with weeping; the eyes that he had first seen peeping at him over a yashmak. But what caused his brain to seethe and whirl with all sorts of conjectures and tor- turing suspicions was the fact that the love- ly, blossomy face upturned fo his was not the face of a half-breed, but of a girl with- out a taint of Chinese blood! _She ran toward him, her hands out- stretched, and addressed him in his own language, in a voice which might have been musical, but was now husky with weeping. COMMICGOOOKS (C@)