Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

SUNDOWN CAFE. ‘We're done for, Herzog. You've spilt the beans! Like as not old Davy Jones himself will be dropping in here as a boarder—or else old Horny in the shape of of a sailor, maybe. That’s the way these things happen. Then you'll find yourself in the bottom of the bayou grabbing the ooze with sea-girdles twistin’ all about you.” The picture was vivid in old Herzog’s mind. Yes, it was all bunk, he knew that —hbut the sea: he was ignorant of the sea and hence its superstitions seemed all the more dreadful and uncanny to him. ‘What can I do?” he mumbled to him- self. “What can you do?” the woman took him up on the syllable. ‘‘ Give me the key.” ‘““ That I won’t do. I’m a body-snatcher. I've got to know what’s happening in that tomb. If you went there you’d get me into trouble with the authorities. Like as not I'd be sent to state’s prison. I keep the key. As for the damned corpse—I’ll get rid of it right now. No, not now—they would see me. I must wait until dark. Three hours. Yes, three hours more and I'll take the old mule out there and heave Mate Grimpen into the tidewater where he be- longs. That will settle everything. I ain’t goin’ to mix in with these supernatural laws, not me! I'll rid myself of him— to-night.” He paced up and down the patio—an excited, unrhythmical personality, like a frog hopping in an old garden. He chewed at the same stub of a dead cigar which looked like a huge wart on the left side of his mouth, that was a good half inch lower than the right side. Cora left him, intent on finding how to get that key. She got it two hours later when the innkeeper had fallen asleep from too much cuevo out of that Mexican olla behind Al Boscoe’s bar. In her hour of victory old Cora talked with Al Boscoe about guitars and fountains in the patio in midsummer, of how their guests would dance the contra dansa, malaguena and the Texas Tommy. She talked of starlight and the wine and Havana tobacco. But she spoke not of the body of Mate Grimpen Iving in state in the tomb of the old Mexi- can General Papaquillo. 815 Out there in the patio, her husband, hav- ing awakened from his drunken sleep, was eagerly watching the sunset as a cat at play watches a ball roll just around the corner before giving it chase. ‘“Why do you wait for the dark, Her- zog?”’ she cried out mockingly, Al Boscoe, wiping the bar with great semi-circles of his powerful arms, laughed jovially. “Are you planning to murder me to- night?” Boscoe taunted. ‘Tt'll be dark in a half an hour!” Cora shouted in a high-pitched, raucous voice. ‘“* Between now and then there's lots that can happen. The devil can turn the world upside down in half an hour.” The luckless, miserable little innkeeper did not return their gibes. Instead he turned abruptly to the stables where he set about harnessing his mule to the dump cart. “T’ve got something to tell you Al,” Cora said to the barkeep. “ Part of it’s a secret, but part of it I can tell you and you’re sure going to enjoy it. I’m making Herzog crazy and it’s like putting your foot on a frog and watching him squirm.” ‘‘ Squash him!”’ was Al Boscoe’s immedi- ate and earnest advice. CHAPTER IV. THE ASCENDANCY OF GRIMPEN. HE Sundown Café at evening took on its characteristic aspect of a hell-hole at once forbidding and picturesque. A shrimp seine Cajan wandering far from his native mud flat—probably for reasons that only the authorities of Calcasieu parish could tell—sneaked into the café and or- dered a table d’hote—Mme. Herzog’s fam- ous Creole fable d’héte in which there was a strong flavor of Mexican condiments. Two Portuguese flatboat men thumped in and started a game of cards with a venomous looking Cajan. The long sala— the main room of the Sundown Café—was a dank place with sweating walls and air that was fetid because of the windows being closely shuttered and permanently barred with iron grille work. The four guests add- ed to the general clamminess of the atmos- phere by their steaming bodies. It was a comniiclsoo! (©