The Argosy, Volume XLIV — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

DEALT IN THE DARK. 153 to get out and do that kind of a turn once in a while. I can see you doing it —nit. Well, what’s the result? A cop comes along—he was made up all mght for a cop, and I ain’t supposed to know every flattie in Oakland on no fourteen a week—and wants to know what I’m snooping around there for. Naturally, I tells him. He said I looked played out and on the bum. I told him why. Then he asked what the parties was wanted for, and I told him I didn’t know, but thought it was a divorce case. And so I did. Then he says: “ Well, you better take a drink. No knowin’ when your pardner ’11 be back.” And he fishes out half a pint. “Slip over back of that shed,” he says, “ an’ turn a good jolt into your- self. You need it. I’ll keep my eye on the house while you're gone.”’ I done it. Anybody would. Dough- erty would. How was I to know it was drops, and that he was one of the gang with a uniform on? No sooner I got the jolt than [ dropped. When I came to, I was in the Emergency Hospital. They done me slick enough, but what I say is, that you wise guys would have got it the same way. There’s just as wise people as the - Reddington people, and I was up against them. Didn’t they do Dougherty, too? And what do vou expect for fourteen per? Herewith find my resignation. You needn’t apply to me for no references, because I don’t lke your work. GEORGE WEEKS. CHAPTER XXIV. ISLAND DIABLO RISES. THE islands of the Gulf of California are the abode of mystery. Voleaniec piles thrust upward by some forgotten convulsion of nature, they rise, abrupt and forbidding, from the lonely waste of waters. Some are inaccessible. Buttressed throughout their circumference by per- pendieular walls, the great seas thun- dering forever at the base make match- wood of any foolhardy boat that may seek the landing place which does not exist. Hundreds of feet above the weltering surf-line innumerable sea-fowl fix upon the parapet of the cliff a solid coping of white, and, wheeling and whirling on high with incessant cries, fill the air as with a snow-squall. Within the impassable barrier may be deep valleys, clothed in tropic vege- tation; fragments of unknown tribes; remnants of a civilization that was hoary with antiquity when Joseph was sold into Egypt. Who can say? May not nature have drawn about such isolated septs a magic circle as inviolable as those drawn by malevolent wizards in eastern tales? Again, there are isles protected from intrusion less by natural bulwarks than by the implacable ferocity of those who dwell thereon. ; It sometimes happens that a whaler, venturing into these waters and igno- rent or skeptical of the sinister repute which they have borne since the days of the Spanish conquistadors, sends a boat ashore to replenish the water - butts. The island seems uninhabited. Lux- uriant verdure riots in the valleys and climbs half-way to the rugged summits. From every gentler eminence the palm lifts its graceful fronds to a sky of turquoise. The long and narrow cataract divides solid banks of leaf and flower, which cling like ivy to the face of the declivity, with a fall of silvery lace. It is an Eden undefiled. The boat’s crew land with shouts. The eternal unrest of the sea no longer heaves beneath them. At every step crushed blossoms exhale strange and in- toxicating perfumes, subtle as the poi- son of the fabled Lotos. From beneath their feet the red-eyed peceary scuttles with angry grunts; every covert is alive and scintillant with birds whose plumage glows with the metallic luster of inimitable dyes. Perchance, half-hidden by the sinu- osities and involutions of vines and creepers that strangle each other as they climb upward for light and life, GORMIGOOO (COL