Adventure Magazine Cover — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

726 in dread, he rose, lighted a candle and went into his brother’s chamber. But Henry was sleeping soundly. IT THE four men were grouped before the guest-chamber door in the dim gray of the lower hall, Peter and Henry Hemming, Abijah and the chauffeur. The night’s snow-storm had been succeeded by a steady, pelting rainfall. The morn- ing was chill and dismal. Through the panes of the hall transom a pale, murky half-light filtered. ‘Suppose you knock again,” Peter sug- gested; and the chauffeur with some im- patience rapped hard and resoundingly, a fusillade of blows. There was no response. “That’s the fifth or sixth time,” the young man declared. ‘‘She can’t be there.”’ “No,” Peter agreed. “She can’t be there. And yet she would scarcely attempt, I sup- pose, to face this storm afoot; especially since she was expecting you.” Abijah was silent. He seemed only half awake. The truth was he had been aroused from profound slumber by the chauffeur’s noisy ringing of the door-bell. Henry, standing a little back, wagged his parch- ment-like poll and grinned vacantly. ‘“Suppose you try the door,” Peter ven- tured. The chauffeur promptly seized the knob and turned it, but the door held. “It’s locked,” he said, but even as he said it he turned sharply with an expression that seemed half alarm, half anger, and added: “And locked on the outside! The key’s here in the lock!” Old Peter Hemming caught his breath. He felt his heart falter and then sink. What was that sound he had heard down here, in the night? Why had he thought he heard Henry moving about his room just a little while before? “Then unlock it!” he ordered, boldly enough; and felt his brother’s leering eyes upon his back. The door swung inward and Peter, for- getful of his customary reserve and dignity, bent eagerly forward for searching sweep of the revealed interior. The bed, tossed and in disarray, was empty. The room was as tenantless as the bed. “You see!” cried the chauffeur, turning Adventure “Vou see!” ‘‘Where is about, a demand in his tone. It was as though he said: she?”’ “It is very odd,” Peter returned; and Abijah, looking too and seeing, though he said nothing, appeared immeasurably per- plexed. Henry did not look. Indeed he retreated a step and leaned against the newel-post at the stair-foot, chuckling low, but malignly. ‘She couldn’t have left the house,” the chauffeur pursued. ‘‘She wouldn’t in this storm. I know she wouldn’t. Why should she?” He stood with his cap on, his hands plunged deeply in the pockets of his fur coat. His manner had lost its last vestige of defer- ence; his attitude was dictatorial. Perturbed, tremulous with apprehension though he was, old Peter Hemming resented the fellow’s demeanor; and all at once his wrinkled lips hardened to a line over his set teeth, and his old eyes kindled. ‘““Why should she, indeed?” he snapped. ‘““Why should she without so much as a word of thanks for the shelter my house afforded her? That is the question I my- self want answered.” His miser thought had turned suddenly to his possessions. He was recalling how he had admitted a total stranger under his roof. Presumably the stranger was a woman. Certainly all the indications had pointed to this presumption. And yet, had they all so pointed? Most women—indeed who not but the most exceptionally strong-nerved? —would have quailed before that hideously satanic stare of Henry’s. But this woman had seen it, unmoved. Might it not have been, therefore, that this fur-wrapped, hooded, veiled creature was, after all, a man —a man of lawless vocation, a thief, a safe- breaker? At the moment the one convincing argu- ment against such a theory—the fact that her chauffeur had returned and was even now demanding information concerning his mis- tress’s whereabouts—was submerged in Peter’s panic of mistrust concerning his hoarded treasures. ‘“Come!’”? he demanded, clutching the fellow’s fur sleeve. ‘“‘Come with me! And perhaps we shall see why she, or he, or what- ever it was you brought here, sneaked away before the house was astir!”’ The young man made no demur. He al- lowed himself to be led across the hall and COMICMOOCkKKS. GO