Adventure, November 1915 — page 201: what you’re looking at

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

~. = *) bags? a Pa) ~ wy 2 s .* «= oe ~~ _ . One Sort of Man She whipped two large handkerchiefs from her.coat pocket, and soaked them with a color- less liquid dribbled out of a vial. Now he was out of his chair; but as he whisked around she sprang upon him, twisted the handkerchiefs about his beak of a nose and prim mouth, huddled his bony weakness up against the file-cases and held him with tigerish young strength. He fought for a moment, then fell, scrab- bling with uncertain hands against the polished oak of his desk-lid. Then she produced what she fetched from the nurse— morphin and hypodermic. Diluting the morphin and filling the needle, she made ready with nice precision, though she panted with her efforts. She was trying to save the house of Norton, and intended to do her job straight. Sliding up the man’s sleeve she pushed the needle home, while he moaned and quivered. She yanked him swiftly to the couch and, stepping catlike into the hall, twisted the key behind her. Under the arch of that big front door her brother dodged in from the dark—a ciever-faced youngster, with her loveliness minus her _ Jaw. She commanded her voice to calmness. “Mr. MacKinnon is unwell, Chester,” she stated. ‘You must help fill his place.” The roar of the water hurtling past the mill, the throb of the building, muffled her speech. Errand boys flitted feverishly across the hall, a grimy fellow rattled im- patiently at the knob of the assistant’s office. f “Where’s Mac?” the mechanic asked of er. “Mr. MacKinnon is sick and asleep.” She never quivered. “What is the mat- ter?” “Plenty the matter in the basement, mum. ‘The furnace is drownding out.” He ducked back into the depths; she followed. Hell was loose down there. Here the roar of the torrent, filling every nook of the ill-lighted, low-ceilinged room, was intolerable. Its waves, streaked by the reflection of a street light, flung past the three dingy windows, and under the door thin sprays shot out. The men had choked off the deluge with cotton-waste, but the flood was squeezing a path back again. Two inches of water puddled the floor along which the coal- heavers swashed back and forth, tossing coal into the greedy mouths of the furnace. 199 The increeping water steamed and bubbled at the base of those fiery yawns. From the next room the incessant purr of an enor- mous wheel cooed its protest against the tumult within and without. At her~coming the men threw their shovels, handle up against the wall. “We're quit, mum,” snarled the older of the two. ‘‘That’s what we were after sending word to Mr. MacKinnon, mum. We ) “MacKinnon isn’t here to give orders tonight. You'll have to take orders now from me.” The man stepped closer to her, folding his arms pugnaciously. “Sure, mum, you’re not goin’ to fly in the face o’ the shop, and th’ shop-———”’ Emma Norton marched steadily down the stairs. 3 “T am Mr. Norton’s wife,” she declared. “You know what Mr. Norton would say.” “Indeed an’ I do,” he sniggered. ‘“He’s the feller as flies in the face o’ Providence every trip, he is. But where’s MacKinnon, mum?” ‘ “That is none of your business.” She gulped at meeting him on his accustomed colloquial level but went firmly on: “You'll do as I say! You'll stick here until the water puts the fire out, until the walls cave in, until the whole building bursts like a slashed egg; you’ll stay hefe and you'll fight—with me.” She was breathing deep- ly. “I’m here to make you do it, and I will make you do it.” The two men before her merely grinned sheepishly. She make them do anything! ie DOWN from the foot of the stairs men the girl sprang into the bilge along “= the floor, grabbed a shovel from the wall, stooped to the coal, filled in a heavy load and ‘flung the lumps on the sputtering blue flames. Her skirts swashed through _the water as she passed to and fro. The men watched her—the older with rebellious eyes, the younger burning into blushes as her elbow jolted him contemptu- ously in passing. Once—twice—three times—four—five—six times she shunted the coal in, and neither moved. Her lips narrowed, her eyes brightened, but her muscles worked steadily beneath her gauzy sleeves and she looked at neither as she passed. On the sixth fling she turned to facethem. EOPMIC OOOKS a? y . ate ‘ LV | Ce Ae (EO) a