Adventure Magazine Cover — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

The Strangler place in the right quarter, for the stranger came directly toward him, after dodging into the unlighted alley which Blondie had chosen as his probable path of exit. In a moment he passed, walking swiftly and very quietly, and went on up the gap cut between rows of warehouses. Of course the others had been too late to see him disap- pear into this gloomy crevice—Blondie had foreseen that, too. He waited till the soft-footed pedestrian had advanced almost into the edge of the muffling blanket of darkness, then slid out of the friendly doorway that had sheltered him. Blondie was working with the ease and adroitness of one who knows his trade by “feel” as well as by sight. He need not keep behind sheltering projections, for the man ahead neither paused nor turned. Blondie gained upon him till he was within a dozen paces, and held this distance. For half a block ahead the alley was flat and bare; there would be something to hide, presently, and the strangier waited for an arcaway. A little farther along there appeared the sunken entrance to a deserted basement. Blondie knew the place as well as he knew his own strong fingers, and in an instant he had lessened the gap between himself and the man with the Gladstone bag, running easily and without a sound. Although he had left the saloon too early to see the pistol which the other carried, he knew perfectly well that the man with the grip was armed; every one who came below the dead-line was armed. For a moment he paused, studying at close hand the details of the figure before him. He noted that the bag had grown no lighter; the man who carried it was breath- ing hard, and even as Blondie threw himself forward he saw the other swing his burden heavily from his right hand to his left. Men had been garroted recently, in dark side streets of the town—gaily dressed theater-goers, whose diamonds twinkled red and green in the rays of distant street lights; business men carrying wallets or steel cash-boxes. Blondie remembered some of them as he leaped upon the man with the Gladstone bag—none of them had come into his hands so easily as had this present victim. His left forearm crossed the other’s throat and a hand was locked behind his head. 703 There was a strangling sob—which, being a familiar sound in the garroter’s business, produced no effect upon Blondie. He merely drew the struggling figure nearer, striking upward, as he did so, with his knee. He had frequently found this blow over the kidneys a decidedly sedative application in such cases. And then, as he grunted a little and drew himself closer to his prisoner, something happened. It came very quickly, and one event melted into another with such per- plexing rapidity that the garroter lost all knowledge of sequence. A hand gripped his wrist and twisted it forcibly around till the whole arm was strained and tense as a fiddle-string. Blondie felt the stab of mil- lions of needles along the tortured nerve- fibers, and then, after an evanescent impres- sion of lightness and flight, he fell with a great jar and was lying pinned by his still imprisoned arm. Something—probably a knee—was pressed mercilessly into the hol- low of his neck and against the bone of his aw. Almost before Blondie knew that he was on the ground, he was twisted over, face down, and both arms were being pried up toward his shoulder-blades. He grunted with pain, but the man who was kneeling upon him merely gave his wrists an extra shove and proceeded to bind them tightly together. Next, the garroter’s ankles were roped, and presently Blondie, transformed into a long and uncouth bundle, was rolled with his face toward the distant, silver-white strip that represented the sky. In the shadow of the narrow, unlighted way, he could just make out the calmly scrutinizing face of his captor, the young man of the satchel. Next moment the latter spoke. “You came nearer making it than I intended to let you, my man,” he com- mented grimly. “You certainly know how to administer a very efficient choking— although your hold lacks science. Now I could teach you—but we'll talk of that another time. You aren’t hurt anywhere, are you?”’ This question seemed to Blondie Doyle so utterly ridiculous, so absolutely and gra- tuitously silly, that he merely continued to stare into the hard, smiling eyes that looked into his own. It was as if he should ask a victim from whom he had just taken, by his Co@nnicloookxs (C@