Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

i: al i RAFAEL SABATINI man, this Rhynsault, of perhaps some thirty years of age. His thick hair was of a reddish brown, and his beardless face was cast in bold lines and tanned by exposure to the colour of mahogany, save where the pale line of a scar crossed his left cheek. “Yet, I tell you, the letter bears your signature,” he grumbled sourly. “My name, perhaps,” smiled the amiable Danvelt, “but assuredly not my signature.” “Herrgott!” swore the German captain. “Is this a riddle? What is the difference?” Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be mildly insolent. “It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for . you,” said he. The Governor’s blue eyes gleamed like steel as they fastened upon ‘Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull flush crept into his cheeks. Then he swore. | “Beim blute Gottes!” quoth he, “do you whet your trader’s wit upon me, scum?” And to the waiting men-at-arms: “Take him back to his dungeon,” he commanded, “that in its quiet he may study a proper carriage before he is next brought be- fore us.” Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pert- ness and to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault, it was not only the guilty who had need to go warily. The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on his immediate right, leaned towards him. “It were easy to test the truth of the man’s assertion,” said he. ‘ Let his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when he was in Flushing and when married.” “Aye,” growled von Rhynsault. “Let it be done. I don’t doubt we shall discover that the dog was lying.” But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt’s household and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his questions. Their replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had told, and appeared in other ways to place it beyond all doubt that Gomichbooks (ECO)