The Chinese Parrot (Charlie Chan Detective Series) — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

a, that was unlikely. And it wouldn't do to show alarm and change his plans now. "Surely," he remarked carelessly. "If he isn't satisfied without a word from me, tell him to call again about S1x." When he stepped into the yard, the girl was skillfully turning her car about. He officiated at the gate, and joined her in the sandy road. The car moved off and Eden got his first unimpeded look at this queer world Holley had called the devil's garden. "Plenty acres of unlimitable sand," Chan had said, and that about summed it up. Far in the distance was a touch of beauty—a cobalt sky above snow-capped mountains. But elsewhere he saw only desert, a great gray interminable blanket spattered with creosote brush. All the trees, all the bushes, were barbed and cruel and menacing—a biznaga, pointing like a finger of scorn toward the sky, an unkempt palo verde, the eternal Joshua trees, like charred stumps that had stood in the path of a fire. Over this vast waste played odd tricks of light and shade, and up above hung the sun, a living flame, merciless, ineffably pure, and somehow terrible. "Well, what do you think of it?” asked the girl. Eden shrugged. "Hell's burnt out and left the embers," he remarked. 120 comiicboeoe S CO