Adventure Magazine Cover — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

82 place in the scheme of things was the place of toys. They belonged to the lower side of life. Yet a Sikh or a high-caste Hindu often adores his mother! They were neither to be trusted nor treated as responsible beings. But to hurt the woman a man loves is like taking cubs from a tigress. And Sesson sahib was a man. “Come in, spawn of Satan,” he announced blandly, opening the gate a trifle. As the girl slipped through, he gripped her, hurtfully. Then he closed and barred the gate. “About thee? Is it a knife, a gun, or maybe a trained sister of thine—another snake?” he asked. For a moment she twisted in his grip, then she gave up, and bore it. “A knife!’ She produced a curved, deadly blade. “Hum! Keep it! Because of the honor I bear my Sesson sahib, neither will I search thee. Think not that this is due to any honor of thee! But, try to be the traitor thou art, and thy head falls—very swiftly!’ He drew his sword significantly. “And while thou swellest thy chest, mouthing the brave things thou wilt do toa child, thou art preventing me from saving my sahib.” The Sikh laughed softly. “Thinkest thou this is a hive of fools?” Nevertheless, with his hand on her arm, he went with her towards the door of the house—sufficiently believing to leave his gate without authority. They entered quietly. All seemed quiet. The small elevator was not running. A tiny light in a red globe showed the stairs. Against his wish,!the urging of the girl caused the Sikh to hasten. Making no more sound than two drifting feathers, they began swiftly to climb the wide staircase. ‘They reached the first landing. Into the quiet—startling even the Sikh—the noise of a shot broke. Although he grabbed at her with‘the rapidity of a wrestler, and even cut at her flying legs with his sword, the girl squirmed out of his grip and-fled like a streak of white up the last stairs soundless, for Laulee had left all her many bangles at home. So swiftly had she moved that it seemed to the Sikh that the noise of breaking glass came to him after she had gone! Flashes of half-light, shadows, trick of cir- cumstance, the unexpected, the unguessable Adventure tide of human emotion, the touch of self- denial, the craving for the thing loved, the carefully planning mind of a great man— and chance. mii WHAT Laulee glimpsed through 3p tit her haze of feeling, at the open door == of that curiously light-dark room, was, first, Sesson standing alone, staring vacantly at what seemed to be the shat- tered remainder of a large mirror, his empty hands hanging at his side—an attitude that was half terror, half not understanding. In the unbreakable grasp of the two ex-dacoits, whom Sinclair employed for rough work, stood the “‘voice,”’ the “friend.” But Laulee, also, saw something else and to her distraught soul the hideous danger to Sesson was magnified a thousandfold. If she made any sound at all, it was a hiss. Then she sprang, as the panther springs, at the back of the “friend,” plunging the knife deeply into vital parts. The unexpected shock of her spring loosened the dacoits’ grip. Clinging, even with her teeth, to the writhing body of the “voice,” her added weight dragged him from the astonished Burmans, and as she fell to the floor with her enemy she did her utmost to make the stab of the knife more deeply piercing and mortally wounding. All this in moments. Then, as the astonished and maddened dacoits plunged again to hold the struggling but dying ‘friend,’ that person managed to scratch lightly the girl’s throat with a large ring on his first finger. In a dialect under- stood by Sinclair alone he shrieked out some words. When the Burmans gripped him, there was no longer need of their gripping. Sesson—feeling like a man emerging -from a partial anesthetic, during which he has been helpless but always on the verge of complete consciousness—sank weakly on a couch. Laulee, gropingly but surely, crawled to his knees—upward, until he grasped her in his arms, and careless of on- lookers held her head to his breast. She sighed like a tired child, content. In the doorway stood the Sikh, observ- ing all things with complete understanding. Sinclair’s voice spoke from the gloom. The’ Burmans removed the dead “friend.” The Sikh and others of Sinclair’s men left the room, shutting the door. lLaulee and Sesson were alone with Sinclair. She was afraid of only one thing—that she might Gomichbooks (C@)