Argosy All-Story Weekly — 'The Metal Monster' — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

TINY, THE TERRIBLE TURK. he began to look more cheerful than I’d seen him for some time. A couple of weeks later Abdul laid a: large detaining hand on my shoulder as I was leaving the theater. talking with Aleck about a raise in salary, and Aleck had referred him to me. “How much do you want?” I inquired coldly. : ‘““ Two-fifty per,” said he. “ Well,” said I, “‘ you don’t get it!” “ What!” exclaimed Abdul. “ T said you get it,” said [. Without going into further details, the upshot of it was, in four weeks time Tiny, the Terrible Turk, was spearing Aleck and me to the tune of three hundred simoleons weekly, in addition to which he was, to all intents and purposes, the sole owner and proprietor of the ‘‘,Moulin Rouge Revue.” He came and went as it pleased him, and did every thing else according to his own personal taste in such matters, whatever they or it might be, and there didn’t ever ‘appear to be anybody around who partic- ularly cared to say him nay. That was just about the situation; in general terms, and if you’d ever seen Abdul you’d know the just and sufficient reason. “ Andy,” said Aleck one day, “‘ we’ve got to get rid of that bird.” “ All right,” said I. “ Fire him!” “You fire him,” said Aleck. . “No,” I said. “ You hired him, and you fire him. It wouldn’t be fair if I fired him. He’d expect you to fire him if anybody did, and maybe he wouldn’t lke it if I fired him. You better do it your- self.”’ “Tl tell you what I’m going to do,” said Aleck. ‘‘ Whenever we hit a town I’m going to see that it’s passed out quietly to the local athletes that the man that flops Tiny receives three instead of one hundred dollars from the management—if he crashes him to earth, you understand, and crashes him good. If we can get somebody to do that, I'll do the rest. It'll shake Tiny’s nerve, and I’ll see that he gets going before he gets reorganized. But just the way things are now, I'll tell you frankly I don’t feel like firing him. Andy, there’s some- thing’ uncanny about that guy; he’s got He said he’d been ~ 155 some sort of,an influence over me. And what’s more, if he was ever crossed—well, I don’t know. He’s got a mighty bad eve and a large muscular frame. I’d look for him to do most anything.”’ ‘So would I,” I agreed. But Aleck did finally summon up a little gumption—not that he wasn’t sorry for it right away afterward. And it happened this way. We were playing a town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants up in northeastern Connecticut. We'd already given one performance before a small and not particularly select audience. Aleck and I were having a conference in Aleck’s room at the hotel: This was some little time after Aleck and I had considered the little matter of requesting Abdul to leave us—and concluded to wait until the moon changed, or something. But Aleck had been doing as he threatened to do on that occasion: He’d been quietly handing out propaganda to the effect that the con- queror of Tiny, the Terrible Turk, could collect three hundred good dollars from the management of the ‘ Moulin Rouge Re- vue,” and no questions asked. Aleck and I, as I’ve said, were talking matters over-in Aleck’s room, when Abdul casually dropped in. - “Well, Tiny,” said Aleck, ‘“‘ what’s the good word?” ‘* Listen,” said Abdul. “I’ve been let- ting you fellows off too easy. I gotta have more money. Three hundred and—’’ “Not on your life!” roared Aleck, jump- ing up and wavihg his arms around. ‘“ Not another darned cent! I’ve stood for these raises of yours as long as I’m going to. And now—” All this time Abdul had been walking toward Aleck, and now he was pretty close, and Aleck’s voice sort of trickled off into silence. “ Nothing doing, eh?” sneered Abdul. ‘“That’s what I said!” said Aleck, though it seemed to me that he was sort of losing his enthusiasm. ‘ All right,” grated Abdul. “ We'll see!” And with that he turned and walked out, looking sinister from any and every angle. ‘“ Well,” I said, “‘ you’ve certainly done it now.” And I started to leave the room. econrniclacclks co ww