Adventure Magazine Cover — page 168: what you’re looking at

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

924 come also, you can be present at the inter- view. Come?” ‘““Come? I’d come if I was dead! An’ mark my words, it will be the last interview ’e’ll ever ’old this side of ee V Et DOWN! Down! Down! =a It seemed ages since they had found the secret spring in the bogus- ly-repaired fireplace in the half-ruined chapel wing and had commenced to descend the long, long, seemingly unending flights of rough-hewn steps which had been cut out of solid rock foundation and which had yawned beneath them when the little hidden door in the chimney had opened silently as their fingers touched the spring. After an eternity of time they stopped to rest on a slab of stone wider than the others. ‘“‘Shall we ever stop, think you, Master Algy?” whispered Jacobs, gasping for breath and thankful for the brief rest. ““Yes, yes, we're nearly at the end now. Do your poor old bones ache? Here, take a pull at this—and you, too, Hafner. You both need it. And when we reach the bot- tom see to it that your revolvers are where you can easily lay a hand on them! What? You have not got one, Hafner? Good gracious, man, why didn’t you say that up there, and I could have given you one? What have you got?”’ Hafner grinned in reply—a grin which made the blood freeze in Algy’s veins and made old Jacobs shudder. “T’ve got this, thank yer! It will do my business all right, I’ll take my oath on that!”’ He turned back the flap of his ragged coat and showed the hilt of a heavy knife bulging up out of his leather belt—a great curved knife sheathed in a stitched case shaped to the blade like an Indian Ghurka knife. Algy turned away, a feeling of horror and realization making him suddenly sick. It came to him in that swift moment when he turned his eyes and looked at Hafner’s weapon that he was actually lead- ing a murderer to his victim. And yet—and yet Ostermann was doubly, trebly a mur- derer, and he himself would have been an unrecognizable victim now but for a fortu- nate escape. It was impossible that such men should be allowed to live, and to save thousands, to save a nation, it was necessary for some one to lead the van. Adventure So he turned away his eyes from the knife of menace and spoke in a whisper to Jacobs. ““How many miles do you think it is from here to the sea, Jacobs—to Berwick, say?”’ “To Berwick about three miles as the crow flies,’ replied the old man, commenc- ing the descent again as he spoke. “Yes, just about three miles. But to Watershole it’s barely one. Nay, indeed, it can only be three-quarters or so. I can sometimes hear of a night the sound of the sea and some- times—by heavens, sir, the caves, the smug- gler’s caves! Why didn’t I think of them before! They say as how there’s a clear passage right from Watershole into the old part of the castle. Is that the secret, sir? Smuggling? The old master?” ‘“No, no Jacobs; you’ve guessed only half the secret, I’m afraid, old man. At least, I think so. That plan I showed you traces a direct passage from the blocked-up cellars. under the old keep and the chapel wing to the smuggler’s caves at Watershole. For reasons of his own Uncle Stephen has had a new entrance made to the tunnel through the fireplace in the monks’ room—probably because the old one is some distance away and inconvenient for all hours of the day and night. ‘The story is too long a one to tell you now, but if you’re game to come with us to the cove at Watershole you'll be in at the finish. And I don’t think the finish is going to be half so tame a game as smuggling—not by a long chalk! We’re going to fathom a secret to-night that to-morrow might betray England into the hands of her enemies! Are you game to come onP”’ ‘As long as you don’t think the finish will be my finish, too, Master Algy, I'd like well to come,” said the old fellow with grim humor. “But you and—you and yon chap anticipate danger, eh?”’ ‘To speak the plain, blunt truth, Jacobs, we do! We are tracking down a murderer, a man who has sworn he won’t be satisfied until he has murdered me, a man who has it in his power this moment to sell England for two million pounds! Think of that and realize what danger there’s likely to be.”’ ‘Danger for Alsopp Ostermann—not for us!”? growled Hafner deeply, his fingers feeling for his knife, his lips twitching at the vision the words conjured up before his darkly burning eyes. ‘‘ Danger for ’im and more—death for ’im—death! ’E’s mine at last; I feel it ’ere!”’ He smote his breast with his free hand, COmiclbook (©