Adventure, February 1917 — page 134: what you’re looking at

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

kom brave thing you did at Sidon yesterday.” And then, as he looked into McNeal’s steady eyes, like a flash he saw what McNeal meant. _ “And—and,’ he added, but rather lamely, - “because of your faithful service at Sidon.” McNeal shook his head slowly, several times. “No,” he said. “You didn’t say it _ quickly enough.” And again he questioned the superintendent: “How many years, Mr. Kane, have I been at Sidon?” ; Kane could feel his face getting red. ““Well—quite a number. Really I can’t say exactly.” He was going badly and he had an uneasy conviction that McNeal held the whip hand. “You don’t know, Mr. Kane,” McNeal said. “You don’t know if it is five, or fifteen. And it would make no difference if it was only one, for you would have made me the offer anyway. But I'll tell you— it’s nine years.” McNeal-laid his hat on the top of the desk and started to turn it around and around, absently. “Nine years. Mr. Kane,” he went on, “have you ever been an agent?” “No,” admitted the superintendent. “Never.” “Then, although you probably know of the endless, monotonous routine of it, you very probably can not understand it—not as some of us can. Nine years of it, Mr. Kane. When a man has put in that length - of time his life begins to get colorless, he begins to lose hope and ambition. The day-after-day grind of it——” McNeal stopped as if to cogitate. ~ “And so you offer me advancement be- cause of that—that affair at Sidon yester- day, and not because of any long, hard years of service at Sidon.” McNeal was speaking in spurts and Kane did not try to interrupt. “And my advancement from now on would perhaps be rapid, regardless of any real ability I might show. You know there is a good deal of talk about favoritism, Mr. Kane. Some people might call it that— and that you had taken me under your wing.” “But,” Kane broke in on- him impa- Adventure tiently, “‘you deserve it! This would be your reward!” “Reward!” McNeal echoed, and for the first time there was the slightest touch of bitterness in his voice. “Reward! For what? For helping Tom Brady to die? Tom Brady was my friend!” McNeal sat sorrowfully, regaining con- trol of himself. “You know the ugly whispers that have _been traveling around, about Tom Brady,” he resumed presently, his voice back to its normal pitch of quietness. ‘That he was discharged without a fair trial—that he had merely offended some one in authority— and that the injustice of it was so preying upon him that it was driving him mad. I don’t know if any of these stories are true, Mr. Kane. But I do know that something drove him—that way.” Around and around he kept turning his hat, slowly. “And when I used to dream, a good while - ago, of the time when promotion would come to me I never dreamed of it coming like this; and now that it has I can not ~ accept it—not this way. _ “For nearly all men are brave, Mr. Kane, and almost any man would have tried to do what I did—yesterday. And I had dreamed of promotion coming as the reward of some faithful effort or special fitness. So when you proffer it to me as the reward for doing what any ordinary man would have done, or would have tried to do, you hurt my pride a little, Mr. Kane, for you make me feel that I have, in some way, failed to reach the end for which I had aimed.” McNeal arose suddenly, hat in hand, and pushing back his chair, stood looking down at the superintendent. . “For,” he said, “when I went back to Tom Brady yesterday and stared down at him lying so quietly there in the thicket, dazed as I was I knew that I could never accept promotion over his poor body.” He waited as if for either Kane or Bonner to speak. But as they said nothing and he met only their rather puzzled, question- ing eyes, he turned to go. “That’s all,”” McNeal concluded. “And now I must go and surrender myself to the police. For they do not know, as yet, how Tom Brady died.” And he went out. (e@) DOOK (F@