Adventure Magazine Cover — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

“4 ee eas : — # ~ $e Pe a ; c oa aac 3 <i, Aiea os xe = eity ; 4. 2 s The only thing about the letter that gave me a second’s pause—and it was a rather long letter, full of abuse and some illumina- tion as to how he had discovered who I was —was the accusation that I had done Daniel Cornwall’s dirty work. I supposed that Joseph had added that lie to draw Ellis’ lightning more inevitably upon my head. I was more irritated by the newspapers than by anything else. Jack, in a moment of idiocy, had let the reporters get the best of him. True enough, those fellows are _ likely to get the best of anybody, and it is no trick at all for a pack of them, sharp- eyed, wily-tongued, lightning-witted, to turn a young, emotional lover inside out. They had got him to talk about Cora. I won’t say that he had sense enough not to tell them what she had heard when the ~Cornwalls had quarreled. He probably for- got that completely at the time. He told them pretty much everything else. He said that.Cora’s room had evidently been robbed in an effort to secure the little box of im- portant papers which she had previously turned over to him and he had returned to the Cornwalls. No, he did not know what the box contained. He—the idiot—told of Cora’s father and her semi-adoption by the millionaire Joseph Cornwall. The newspapers flared. Joseph Corn- wall denied having received the box. The papers clamored to know what was in it and speculated in headlines. The recent murder, or suicide, of Daniel was rehashed. By a system of elimination and deduction they concluded that I had the box. They were encouraged to this conviction by Joseph Cornwall, who seemed to have lost his own head too. I was always good copy. All in all, it was a whale of a story. I was pestered for a statement but I said nothing. Long dispatches from Salt Lake added sensational information to the local stories. It was a muddle and a mess, and those hounds of the press left no stones unturned. I put oft my best poker-face and let them guess what ever they would. I did succeed in impressing upon Jack that he had made a fool of himself. I also told him that if he so much as breathed a word of what Cora had told him and me of why she fled the Cornwalls, I would see to it that she never did marry him in case, as was unlikely, she ever forgave him her- self. The papers were frantic to discover that ~ Rich Crooks » “ ” ‘ : — ean ities —2 = ) tk ~<a > \ J | | point but they did not succeed. It wasone . matter upon which Joseph was equally de- sirous of silence. I gave out nothing to papers or to the police, and though the latter rather looked askance at me they did not make any formal inquiries. Joseph evidently did not want to take legal steps to recover the © box and its contents, though he was now sure I was a liar since, for fear I might give -the documents publicity, I had told him I had no papers of his, his brother’s or of Walsh’s. That would hit Walsh hardest, it is true, but it would also cause Walsh, Samson-like, to pull down the Cornwall reputation, if not even to do violence to | Joseph himself. I did not say anything to the newspapers or to. the police even when Yang Li, the mute Chinaman who attended to the rather large apartment Jack and I shared, was knocked unconscious while answering a call at the door. Again that blow over the head —the same that had killed Mrs. Ellis, nearly killed Cora and, glancing a bit, narrowly spared Yang from more than a severe bump. True, three different men could have struck as many different blows, but it looked much as if some one was putting his trust in a club. My rooms were searched. Had the party who invaded the apartment looked into the dictionary, which I had carefull hollowed out, he might have been satisfied, though I doubt it. Anyway he would have found the little black steel box just as I had received it. On the same day I received a telegram from the secretary to the Governor of Utah. The governor had evidently been reading the papers and New York dispatches. The telegram requested me to meet the governor at such-and-such a hotel thirty minutes after his train arrived on the following Thursday. Even I, who have had some experience in the ways of the world and its troubles, was beginning to feel a little bewildered at the rapidity with which complications were developing. I WANTED to meet Steve Ellis. It had been made plain that he wanted to meet me, so nothing would have been more simple than the making of an appointment, if I had had known where he was or how toreach him. I doubted whether Ellis paid attention to the personals in the newspapers. He probably did not search them out as many city men do over oe es = a , \ ~ wal ‘ | PIJ5\S :