Adventure Magazine Cover — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

84 not muscular, and he was half-naked. No wonder he thought so highly of tailors. I told him so. It was the first time I had seen Lord Bob in a rage, and I found it a little amusing. I intimated as much. It was perhaps cruel of me, for-he had a plugged shoulder and was a friend that could be trusted as much as a man can ever be—though none can if there is a pretty woman in the case. He said at last, and with good poise, that there was a gun in the drawer of a table— pointing at it. “T’m going over there’ and open that drawer and get that gun. Then you are goin’ to get out of this room an’ never come back. And don’t you ever speak to me if we meet.” I thought rather well of his courage to say a thing like that, for he knew that likely enough I had two guns somewhere on me, and he was fully aware that I could, and probably would, use them. He looked at me for some seconds, trying to read from my face what I intended to do; then he walked to the drawer and picked up the revolver, and whirled quickly with the gun leveled. I had made no move, not changed the position of a finger. It took no bravery on my part to remain quiet and motionless, for I knew that he would not shoot—then. He advanced a step or two, the gun out- thrust; then petulantly threw it at the wall, exclaiming: “Oh, —— —— you! Get out anyway.” I slipped a hand into a side coat-pocket and brought out a little note-book. I turned a few pages until I found what I wanted, and held it out for him to read; and after glancing at it, mystified, he took it, and I talked while his eye ran down the page, followed the writing on to the next page, and several pages after. I told him that in the course of the previ- ous evening I had seen fit to go througha certain stranger’s pockets; and among other things I had, without being in the least aware of what it contained, appropriated the note-book, wherein, to my complete sur- prize, I had found a detailed and astonishing account of Lord Bob’s surreptitious move- ments; and though there was no mention of Sin Chang, he—Lord Bob—must remember that I knew Chinatown and some things of its ways, subterranean and otherwise; and Adventure though I was no mathematical expert, and might possibly make a mistake in put- ting two and two together, yet I was fairly lucky at guessing; and that when a man who did not use opium went into Sam Wong’s tea-shop repeatedly, nothing remained but the guess that he went to see the opium king who was reported to live down under the ground, and was quite generally known as Sin Chang, and was said to deal also in slave girls. LORD BOB asked a hundred ques- tions, interspersed with as many LPP>E apologies. I told him that the man’s name was evidently Remy Cantello, though a total stranger to me; that my busi- ness with him had been unexpected and inadvertent, though I had reason to believe that he was thrusting his rather long and well-formed nose into my affairs. “Old man, how ’d you know I wouldn’t shoot?” “‘T am one of the number that you say are few, who know you are not a fool.” “Thanks. But I intended to. I knew you wouldn’t shoot. We're a pair of idiots. Now this Remy person—who in the —— is hep” I was likely to get into a muddle. I might confide fully in Lord Bob except that the witch-woman would get him into her enchanted apartment and probably knock to flinders all his promises of secrecy. If I did not explain to him he would probably babble in some way, give her a cue, and she would soon have everything out of him. I had no intention of trusting her at all. | “T don’t know your business,” I said. “Probably Miss Symondi does; but——” “She doesn’t!” he snapped, his jaws clicking. ‘‘You’ve bullied me enough over her. I love her ’cause I’m an idiot. You’d be one too if you ever met her—then we’d fight a duel an’ I’d get buried. “T’m going ’o put Sin Chang’s knife to my throat an’ tell you. No great secret, ’cept Sin Chang doesn’t like tongues that wag. Usually detaches ’em from the throat.” He sat down and I finished dressing the shoulder, first putting some hot cloths on it to take out any chill from being exposed so ‘long while we had quarreled; and as I busied about, he talked. He minimized, I knew, his importance to Sin Chang, but admitted that he was in the Chinaman’s pay. Very good pay, too. He EOMmiGbdoo <SiiGO