Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

he The cages in Omar Sun Loo’s kampong were small and badly kept. The luekless prisoners drooped in merciless sun heat. Omar Sung Loo was a mongrel of bad ancestry despised by Malays and Chinese alike, and as Dineen stole his business by honest dealings, Omar Sung Loo went in for side-show freaks. There was a two-headed carabac ealf, an elephant with twenty instead of eighteen toes held for a high price frora nabebs who cousidercd thein lucky, and in a case two cobras joined tor three-quarlors of their length. Lourke spat with disgust as he looked at them. “Freaks should be killed,” he mentioned. “But Dineen, damned if them cobras look as if they was born that v ray! Look at the puckered sear between them.” Omar Sung Loo led them to a shallow pond where a small monkey lay aloug the sloping bank, its lower extremity in the water. Dineen cursed as he gazed. Instead of legs the tail of a fish was joined to its hips! Agony burned in its eyes. It snatched at a banana Omar offered and a Chinese attendant forced a tablet down its throat, whien seemed to relieve its pain. It would not live long, but Omar Sung Loo tried hard to make Dineen buy it while it lived. Oriental curio shops are full of imummied monkey bodies joined to dried fishtaits, the “mermaid” of commerce, but Dincen realized some - hellishly ingenious master sturgeon had attempted this revolting living experiment, Rourke’s curses were livid. Wis hand went to his pocket and the scaring sunlight shone on a small black revolver in his hand. “Pm of two minds whether to shoot you or the monkey,” he said to Omar Sung Loo, who backed away from the belligerent Irishman and snarled out an order. The Chinese darted to a cage and howled a warning. From the open cage door swung the head of a tiger. Omar was running lo the house and the two white men followed. Dineen knew that trick of Omar’s to frighten visitors by the peril of a tiger on the loose and gouge cumshaw from them. But this time the Chinese was having trouble jamming the cage door on the tiger’s neck to force him back into the cage. The beast had a foreleg outside the bars. They heard the wooden rods splinter and the tiger leaped down, letting out roars of defiance. The Chinese fled for cover and Omar cursed as the tiger cleared the kampong fence at one bound. Shricks of frightened villagers sbrilled through the heated silence, but Omar snarled commands and the coolies opened the kampong gates aud wheeled the tiger cage across the opening. Then Omar took a small sack from his turban folds and loosed the puckering string. In the sun-baked emptiness of the village road statked the royal beast, rearing at intervals. A native coming down the road unaware of peril saw it and ran up the kampong fence in an incredible burst of agility and dived over. Rourke chuckled. But Omar went into the road and tossed a little powder from the pouch in his hand. The tiger 85 comicbooks.com