Adventure, November 1915 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

The Gold Lust Addams shook his head. The movement wrenched him till his features twitched. “I shall slacken the rope a trifle,’ said his torturer. “If you keep very still you can think better. There are other ways of finding what we want. I may need you presently for comparison. Aw revoir.” He went out, barring the door after him and closing the shutter of the grille. Addams, alone in the darkness, half sus- pended, half standing, gave vent to his bit- terness of spirit and the agony he had fought back in a groan. The grille showed once more in the orange square of light. A chuckle sounded. “I was waitin’ for that,”’ said Henley, as his face showed darkly at the grille. “If I had my way I’d get it out of you if I had to cut it out!” he exploded savagely. “‘Com- in’,”’ he answered in response to some signal, and Addams heard the halt of his foot upon the stairs. “Other ways.” The threat held posses- sion of Addams’s brain. What did that mean—Jim, or Peggy? CHAPTER XIV THE STRATEGY OF THE QUONG SHING TONG EGGY WINTON looked at her wrist- watch and smothered a tiny yawn. It was close to eleven o’clock, but she had de- termined not to go to bed until her brother and Archer Addams returned from their attempt to secure sailors for the trip. She sat on the long veranda of their cot- tage, vine-curtained from the street. From the hotel, across the dark lawns, set about with high hedges of hibiscus, spattered with the moonlight that fought its way through the tree canopies, came the lilt of the native orchestra, flute and guitar and violin, the voices of the musicians blending now and then in little snatches of song. All about the girl, as she sat reading casu- ally by the shaded electrics, it was very quiet. The whole life of the place seemed centered at the main building, a block away across the gardens in which the cottage colony was set. At the other end of the veranda, squatting on his haunches was Selim, silent, motionless, save for the occa- sional shifting of his hands as he smoked in- cessant cigarettes, little sparks that died and were born again in the gloom. The glamour of the semi-tropics, the fra- 37 grance of the flowers, the velvet feel of the air, invested Peggy Winton with a feeling of elation, an exultant sense of living in a romance of which she was a delightful part. She laid down her magazine and let her thoughts run down the back trail to a week ago, then back again over the swift, vivid incidents of the transition from the firelit studio in Washington Square, the snowy cityscape outside and the old adventurer spinning his yarn, to this land of sunshine and flowers, perfume and moonlight. The outcome seemed rosy as she pro- jected her thoughts ahead, strengthened by hopes and wishes that she but vaguely al- lowed her heart and mind to dwell upon. Essentially vital, the girl reveled in the action in which she found herself suddenly projected from the rut where she had seemed doomed to travel. Her spirit rose in mutiny at the thought of being left be- hind with the Belmonts while the two men rounded out the quest, and she resolved to put up a stirring argument to be taken along. Her brother, to whom she had al- ways acted as a balance-wheel, she knew she could persuade, but she realized, with a lit- tle thrill of half resentment, half acknowl- edgment, the quieter mastery of Archer Addams. She drifted into a reverie from which she roused herself as some one mounted the steps of the veranda and tapped at the screen-door. Selim rose lithely and opened it. A native, neatly clad in blue serge, came within the brighter radius of the lights. He bowed respectfully, with a flash of white teeth, and presented a card to the girl It was her brother’s. “The gentleman give me this,” he said. “He say he like this man,” he indicated Selim, ‘‘to come wikiwiki—quick,”’ he trans- lated, with another smile. “Where to?” asked Peggy casually. | “T show him,” said the man. ‘Mr. Win- ton say he want him to carry some pack- age.” Selim looked jnquiringly at his mis- tress. “All right,”’ she said. “Wait a moment.” She entered her room and brought out a coin for the messenger. He looked at her curiously as he took it. Then the two went away together. Before she had settled herself again the telephone bell sounded. “This is the office, Miss Winton,” came Gomicbooks (E@)