Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 192: what you’re looking at

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

178 to myself, that may be only an artifice. Women like to appear confidential. It is one of their favorite attitudes. She said that she had met Blackstone when she was young and foolish. She had married him. He left her. She heard that he was dead. She believed it. She went on the stage. She took another name. She thought Blackstone was clear out of her life. A few months before, she had met a young man, a wealthy young man, who loved her, whom she loved. He had gone to China on business. He was re- turning and she had come to San Fran- cisco to meet him. His ship was. due tomorrow. i She had been in San Francisco about three weeks. She had taken an apart- ment and was living very quietly, wait- ing for the mam she loved. Then one night Blackstone walked into her rooms. Her husband! He had seen her on the street, recognized her, followed her. He had gone through everything she had, taken some jewelry, sneered at the casket and its contents, made her give him money; then one day she missed the casket itself. He denied knowing any- thing about it—and at last she told him it was worth money and that she had to have it. Then he told her he had sold it to me—that I was a fellow he didn’t like and he had enjoyed selling me paste. She had told him that they were not all paste, that it was worth thirty thou- sand dellars-—that she must have it. She wanted it, she said to me, to re- turn to the man she loved, who had given her the casket and its contents as an en- gagement present, but of course Black- stone was only agitated by the eager desire te get his hands on so much wealth. “I can never explain to him—but I must return his gifts!” she cried. Of course she told me all that much more expressively and even more rapidly than I have related it. She spoke fast, with disconnected phrases that were as enlightening as sentences would have been, and as she talked she leaned nearer and nearer to me and her voice rose until at last, as if careless of who heard her, she cried out that she would return those jewels—she must return them. I did not believe -her. . Thirty thou- all Adventure sand dollars was too much money. Neither Blackstone nor my pickpocket could have overlooked gems of that ex- treme value. But I did not have much time to think. close to me and one of her hands was laid on my arm and the fingers pressed tightly as if to hold my attention by physical force; the fingers of her other hand ran up along my arm with a kind of beseeching tenderness. ‘Please, please, please!” she begged, but I flung her backward and shot and She was leaning very - the man died just as he stood tiptoe - facing me through eight inches of open. - door. . A revolver was in his hand and it ex- ploded from the spasmodic twitch of his fingers as he went “down on his face sprawlingly, shot through his forehead. His bullet hit the floor by fy chair. It was all over in three ticks of a clock, for he had made the fatal mistake of hiss- ing— “You and my wife!” - And I killed him. ? “You lose,” I said frigidly to her, add- ing that as a trap she and her man had made a pretty flimsy thing of it. “So help me God, I have told you the truth!” she said tensely, breathless, star- ing down at_the body. She stood with hand to throat, half- shrinking, as from»a thing of horror, yet fascinated. I told her that she had better not say a word more until she had heard me lie; that then she could tell her story any way that she pleased. : I did not know what kind of a mess I might be in for, with police investigation and a strange woman for witness: but I thought that I had her at a disadvantage. ' Anyway, I would give her a fighting chance to get out. As for Blackstone: I snatched up the mask she had dropped, rammed a pencil through it to serve for a bullet-hole and quickly placed it on his forehead ; then, tossing the little toy gun out of sight, I went to the door, where soon were gathered people in bathrobes and without them, men and women, some of whom chattered in nervous ex- ~ citement though they tried to hold their teeth set. I treated the curious mob in a fashion friendly enough. I seemed to do my 000) SS (COLAMING +4 a : 7 * “4 4 és os © * See: wd “Deal = Aa ee = ye wt 7 yD hy ME Ri ee i co