Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

SOMETHING SMALLER THAN I would refuse five thousand. starve!” He was smiling sardonically. Farley stifled a desire to laugh in his face. The man’s salesmanship was crude. “It must be charmed!”’ “Tt is cursed,” the magician solemnly corrected him. ‘“ It is the one worth while thing I took out of India. It is the one thing I found in India that baffled me. Jt is the only magical thing I have seen in my life that defies a natural explanation.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. He slapped the table indignantly. ‘“ It is not for sale.” He rose wearily. ‘‘ Well, we will see each other again, under more favorable circum- stances, let us hope.” The deep lines on either side of his nose and mouth were filled with black shadow. Farley beheld him, in a fugitive glimpse as the magician stood up, as a man composed largely of black shadows—black shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, black shad- ows in his cavernous eyes, and_ black shadows in his unhappy heart. I would I. Tue tobacco buyer was sipping his black coffee that evening in the dining room of the Grand Hotel Amerikansky when a waiter brought him a note penciled hastily on the hotel stationery. “JT would be,” it informed him, “so grateful for a moment of your time.” A brief consideration of the initials M. R, sent him hastily into the lobby. Marcene Rhoda was waiting for him un- der the great smooth stone archway at the balcony entrance, a dark romantic figure with a scarf of white voile resting lightly on hair and shoulders, He was alarmed and nervous. The tragedy of the Rhodas seemed to reach out and infold him. Since the magician had left him at the Café of the Prune and Pep- per he had been unable to drive the ugly ring and its owner from his thoughts. His uneasiness abated, however, when the girl lifted her face and the light from a pulsing lamp bulb flooded it. She had been cry- ing. Her nose was pink and her eyes were still wet. He was surprisingly relieved. She GOD 231 had left an impression stirring and myste- rious with him; tears had softened her, and he could think again. She moved back into the shadow once she saw that he had recognized her, and from there her voice came out to him, full and musical, not tearful but tired. He had been waiting to hear this voice for hours. And it reminded him of ivory, fine and mellow and tinted with contacts in many climes. It was as sweet as an old bell. “ T had to talk with some one. I hoped you wouldn’t mind.” She hesitated and added thrillingly from the darkness: “I have been so lonely.” Her face emerged into the light again, bearing a faint smile. She was charming. And Michael Farley was still young enough to have hoped that some day a beautiful woman might use those very words. “Let’s go onto the balcony and talk about it,” he said. She confided her hand to his arm, and they proceeded slowly between the pillars and out upon the balcony beneath which the lights of Nish mysteriously dotted the night to the edge of the Nishava. ‘They stopped at a low stone rail of diminutive arches, and Farley blissfully contemplated the stars and the thin slice of new moon. It was there, in lavender moonlight, that Mar- cene Rhoda’s eyes reminded him of bot- tomless moonlit pools. She withdrew her hand from his sleeve and seated herself on the stone rail, appealingly wistful. “He is iil again,” she said. -“ His old fever brought on by the shock of disap- pointment. He had such hopes that you were going to help him—become his im- presario,” The young man was bitterly disappoint- ed. To be sure, he might have known that this was not to be the delightful adventure it had fleetingly promised to be, Daughters of traveling magicians were not innocent and naive. The Rhodas were desperate, and they were permitting no opportunities to pass by. “My business is tobacco buying,” he said roughly. ‘‘ I know absolutely nothing about the—theater.” “Of course!” she agreed with childlike eagerness. ‘‘ And I told him that in al- COMmMicloooks (C@