Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 9, 1924 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

CHANNING COMES THROUGH. Both men slowly rose. They stood, pallid with fear, staring at Channing. ‘* Now!” he said. CHAPTER XXI. IRREVOCABLY COMMITTED. HERE was a period between Chan- ning’s brief command and the first Stirring of the muscles of the two men. It was an infinitesimal space in which it seemed that an eternity of time was press- ing into the room; a moment of strange un- reality, of terrifying, breathless indecision. And then, as though by prearrangement, Nelly and Douglas moved, backward and a little to one side. At the same instant the right hand of each sought a gun butt. Nelly’s hand was the more rapid. His fingers were wrapped around the holster of his pistol when Channing’s bullet struck him. He shuddered, staggered, his mouth opened and his lips grew bestially loose. Unspeakable rage and amazement lighted his eyes. He coughed, leaned both hands upon the table where sat the bottle and the glasses, and for an instant stood there sway- ing. Douglas, despite his boasting, seemed slow and awkward. His fingers grasped at his gun butt, missed it, grasped again. The second effort was made with Channing’s second bullet in his chest, for when his fingers did finally grip the gun they were powerless to draw it from the holster. His hand dropped to his side; he slumped for- ward, within a step of Channing and seemed, with sagging knees, to be on the point of sardonically bowing to his master. The light of a great incredulity was in his eyes. Then, without uttering one of the many words that seemed to be struggling for ex- pression, he pitched forward at Channing’s feet, face down. Nelly had gone down in a sitting posture. He was swaying back and forth. He seemed not to know that Channing was near him, peering intently at him in an effort to de- termine how badly he had been wounded. Channing was satisfied, for he stepped around Nelly, drew a small piece of paper 267 from a pocket, and with a pencil he fished from his vest, bent over the table and wrote: Vallon’s friend. One more glance he threw at Nelly. Then he crossed the threshold of the doorway he had entered, stepped outside into the dark- ness and reloaded his guns. : At midnight, a dozen miles from Nelly’s house, Channing was rolled in his blankets in a grass plot far down the river. He was wide awake, and was gravely contemplating the stars. The mystery of the satanic im- pulses of men engaged his thoughts. | ‘They can’t be straight,” he mused; “some of them. The devil gets a grip on them mighty soon. An’ there’s others just the other way.” His thoughts now dwelt on Vallon. “You was there, watchin’ me,” was his conclusion. “ Would you have wanted me to be merciful? They didn’t show you any.” It seemed he was troubled, for he squirmed and twisted, and he could not bring sleep to close his eyes ‘““They wasn’t like men,” he thought, and he almost spoke the thought aloud. “They were afraid.” He would have been afraid too, he decided, but he thought he’d manage not to show his fear to his enemy. ‘“‘ That was what made me feel like that —Douglas lookin’ so—so unprepared. Seems he thought it wasn’t his time yet, an’ he didn’t want to go. But did they give Vallon any time?” he argued. Was Vallon any more prepared than they? But he thought Vallon was. And he would have wagered his life that Vallon hadn’t been afraid. “‘Vallon couldn’t be like that. Why, there was times when it seemed he was goin’ to laugh. What bothered him most, I reckon, was him thinkin’ that they’d trapped him like that. “ But sie didn’t laugh!” His thoughts were now on Eve, and as a pleasant warmth stole over him he could faintly visualize her as she stood in the moonlit rectangle of the doorway watching him as he stood in the center of the room. In the actual scene, her face hadn’t been visible to him, but he had no trouble seeing it now. Conn LOOOLK CO