Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

WHISPERING ROCK, The father’s head was bent to that pil- lowed on his shoulder. His eyes mirroring a soul bruised and envenomed, he did not see his wife. He scarcely heard her-scream. While the boy knelt beside her, he went on back to his place by the fire—to remain motionless with her body in his arms as he visioned her again amid the flames, and a hate that cried for vengeance rose Searing within him. CHAPTER IV. VIRUS OF VENGEANCE, W ITH gloating eyes Serviss traced his- finger over the letters newly carved on the Rock—T-W-O! He smiled at his son, who stood beside him. That little clucking noise sounded again in his throat as it had sounded often in the three years since he and the boy had kept stunned vigil beside the bodies of wife and daughter, mother and sister—for the death of Jacqueline had killed her mother that night! “Two, Rex—two!” he cried; “ and there ~ will be eight more! One for every finger on her hands!” His countenance blazed with a godless passion; his hands shut till the knuckles -almost burst the skin, and swung above his head. “ For every finger on our Jack’s hands!”’ The boy, now sixteen years old, had heard that many times, but still he did not understand.. What was the meaning of this tally on the Rock that had been converted by his father into an everlasting monument to their nearest and dearest? He could comprehend that part of it—the inscription of Jacqueline’s and his. mother’s names. But not the numbers which his father caused at long intervals to be written down. Again he asked his father that— ‘What, dad, do these numbers repre- sent?”? His somber eyes shifted in puzzle- ment from the Rock to his father. He, too, had changed in these years of sorrow, during which his father had kept him close by his side, implanting the code of venge- ance, dinning constantly into him that toll must be taken for the death of his mother and sister. Jealously he had kept the boy away from others, that none might counter- 519 act the instillation of hate—of hatred to- ward tramps and criminals, and especially robbers and attackers of women. Yet he riever had confided to his son just how the vengeance was to be executed, al- though the evidence that it was being taken, somehow, was growing there in that graven panel on the Rock. Serviss squinted, considering. The boy had proved ready clay. At the formative stage, when the pouring of poison into his heart had begun, his brain had been recep- tive and absorbent of the cry for vengeance. But—and this made Serviss pause—the time had rot yet arrived when he could be told how payment was being taken for these lives. A year or two more, when the boy had been aroused to a proper fanaticism, when the ceaseless prompting had stamped upon his mind beyond all chance of eradi- cation that his sister and his mother must be avenged to the full, he would be told— and allowed to help! “T’ll tell you, son, when the fifth num- ber is there,” he said. Himself, Serviss was a caricature of his old self. Inches of his height were lost in the rounded shoulders. His face was gaunt and aged, and often, as now before the Rock, it mirrored the hate that saturated his being like a cankered pool. ‘“When there’s five, I’ll tell you,” he repeated. The boy put a natural question. ‘When will that be?” His father’s features convulsed. That cunning glint was in his eyes. Hé looked at his hands, folding and unfolding, the fingers sliming over the palms suggestively, then crooking, talonlike. ‘‘ Soon, son, soon,’’ he Tratreteres pray it will be soon.” If all went well he knew that the third would quickly be recorded, and he clucked again at the prospect, and rubbed his hands. “Tm going away again next week for a spell,” he said. He had just come back the week before from an absence of a month, and the boy might have associated the graving of the second number with that absence had he recalled that number one had been chiseled following an earlier and likewise unexplained journey by his father. ‘* Let’s nn (S| Q) NOOK