Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

\ ae ae 7 at +. + or” *, Fos as 3 ‘ = - —_ oo ae _ _ = y "4 1 R y ~ TRUST LITTLE AL mei. ** Ah yes,” she said. “ Herr Baker. You will find him, I think, at the bathing-beach. There is an attraction, you understand, ee and she positively winked. = _ My heart sank. “ Who is it?” I said. “Tell me the worst.” _ “Frau Hodinger. She is not, perhaps, everyone’s choice. You saw her at dinner last night. ‘The brunette.” - I had, indeed, seen her; her appearance was not designed to escape notice. A woman of thirty-five, dressed to ape twenty- five, with a face—what we could see of it under its coat of make- _ up—as hard as the crags of the Karawanken mountains, which _ filled the sky to the south of the hotel. ; I made my way down to the private bathing-beach. There was a good deal of human flesh about, anonymous in its nudity; but a bright pink nose and pair of gleaming steel spectacles were nowhere to be seen. Nor the brunette. I cursed under my breath. If the opposition had got hold of him they had moved with extraordinary speed. It was not impossible but— : “Your friend would seem to be enjoying himself,” said a voice in my ear. I followed the pointing finger, and my blood froze. There were a number of cockleshell boats with outboard motors — belonging to the hotel. One of them lay about four hundred yards out, rocking dangerously. A fight, or a sham fight was being waged on that shaky platform, between England’s top _ scientist and a hard-faced brunette. ; Even as I watched, they went over the side, the brunette ontop. Mercifully, at the jetty there was an empty boat, which started __ at the first tug. By the time the fighters surfaced I was almost _ halfway there. My concern proved to be absolutely unnecessary. Alex swam like a fish. It was the brunette who needed rescuing. _ His idea of fun was to swim below her, catch her ankle, and pull her under. She had had enough of this when I came up, and she climbed thankfully into my boat. Baker made a rude gesture at me. “‘ Since you’ve butted in,” he said, “ you can bloody well make yourself useful and bring my boat back.”’ And he started on a slovenly crawl to the beach, __ leaving me speechless. I didn’t see him again until dinner that night. I was resigned to an uncomfortable meal; either a blat about my behaviour that afternoon or an interminable lecture on some obscure branch of physics. What I was not prepared for was silence. I don’t mean that he was sulky. He just ate his food and drank » his wine in a normal, companionable way. We were drinking = our coffee when he said, ‘Don’t you think she’ s marvellous? o- Perhaps she’s a film star. I think she must be a star.’ ~ ComicbHooks.COm) os Ye