Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

250 ~ sustained its unemotional and unvaried rag- time. Each half hour guests reeled off into the fragrant night of the bayou, taking the waterfront road and disappearing in by- paths among the cane-brakes and swamp mire, their forms fading away in the mias- ma. Others were left. Basque sailors made love to large-eyed and golden-skinned quadroons; Thomas Glamours, waiting for what none knew, continued laying out his pattern of cards. Still in the patio the white giant form of the barkeeper, the woman merely a vision of a whitely powdered face and a vivid smear of red, which was her mouth, the sack of bones among the ferns,—this was the cast of characters in the scene. ‘Enough of this soft stuff,” that large fleshy thing in the sky-blue robe said. “What are you going to do with Herzog? He’s dead!” “ Dead, nothing!” “What if someone finds him here and it turns out he is dead?” “Hide him then, I tell you.” “Hide him where? Not in this inn. They would search everywhere for him,” “Tf he is dead,” the other whispered, “then the bayou.” “Too many people going home.” “ For the time being,” Al Boscoe went on, his low voice gathering in intensity, “stow him away anywhere.” “ You ain’t afraid of the law?” “T never mixed with the law yet. What I do is to get a woman on my side—a woman who is in love with me. No man need be afraid then.” “Tl help you, Al. You are a great man. No woman can spurn a man like you. You’re a man they’re all afraid of. That’s what we women wants! And I want you! I’ve got you! But I won’t have them catch you in a murder.” The other sobered. ‘“ Well and good. What shall we do with this here—” He pointed his thumb at the sack of bones. “ With this here sleepin’ stiff.” ‘‘ Sleeping?” the woman gasped. “ You still think then—” ‘No, he ain’t dead yet. Give him time. But stow him away.” “‘ There is a place—somewhere that no ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, one can get into without they use dyna- mite.” She leaned toward him. The two figures, standing close together in the corner of the patio, still gave the one undubitable impression that they were lovers speaking softly, earnestly to each other. No one could have guessed what they were talk- ing of. “Tf we hide ’im in that place it’s ab-+ solutely safe—for the time being, anyway. Then if he dies, we wait until the last guest is gone and then—the swamp. We'll take him in a pirogue past the mud flats into the tulies where boats can’t go. Where there ain’t nothin’ but pelicans—and once in a while a buzzard.” “Sounds all right. But where’s this place we’re to hide him?” “In the old tomb back there in the canebrakes.”’ “ How do you get there? The moon’s shinin’. I’m liable to be seen?” “They would see you if you crossed the road to the bayou, but this here tomb is back of the café. You don’t have to cross a road to get there. It’s a furlong or two directly behind us over them palmettoes.”’ Boscoe thought a moment, studying the prostrate form of Herzog. It would be a simple matter to carry him a mile—there was no doubt about that. But there might be other objections. “ You said something about dynamite. If it takes dynamite to get into the tomb—” “T’ve got the only key,” Cora said con- clusively. : “ That’s different. Give it to me.” Cora reached to her bosom, but the very sound of those words seemed to startle her. She had heard those words just a few mo- ments before uttered by her husband. ‘““Come through with that key or I'll kill you.” Those were his words. Here was Al Boscoe asking the same thing. “ Ain’t you afraid of a tomb?” she asked. ‘“?Fraid of a tomb! What for?” “Might you will find a bedy there.” “ That would not be so stupefyin’, bein’ it’s atomb. ‘That’s where a body belongs.” “This here key is worth something. If I give it to you, it means I am trusting you only as a woman trusts a man she loves— CORNICLOOkKS (C@