Adventure Magazine Cover — page 171: what you’re looking at

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

‘an hour since. ~ The Fox’s Earth toward them. Old Jacobs’ touch on his arm directed his attention to him, and to- gether, breathless and horror-stricken, they watched him, Brett knowing what was about to happen, the servant realizing noth- ing till the last moment when it was too late. The gliding man approached them nearer and nearer, creeping along the floor like an animal to the bending body of Alsopp Oster- mann and the stout, clumsy figure of the stranger stooping over the revolving, whir- ring motor. Then a sudden leap into the air—a black, sinewy body crouching on Os- termann’s back; an arm raised high in the air and striking downward with terrible force; raised again and again and again, and still descending with the same unnatural force! A long, smothered, coughing sob from Ostermann, and he turned round with a last final effort of desperate, dying strength to look his enemy in the face. His own face, always the color of gray chalk, now took on a death whiteness, and his green coyote’s eyes fixed themselves on Hafner with a strange, menacing glitter. His thin, blood- less lips drew in over his teeth in a venomous snarl. Even as he looked he tried to spring at Hafner, but the work had been done too well, and he fell back against the engine he had the minute before been extolling. The glitter went out of his eyes with the rapidity of an extinguished light, yet leaving them green and menacing still and still wide open, bulging from their sockets as they habitually did, and staring, continuously staring, till the end. Silas Hafner had waited a long while, had suffered many defeats, but he had revenged himself at last. \ The stout man stood looking on like one in a trance till Brett ran up to him. ‘““Go—go at once!”’ Aley commanded un- ‘ceremoniously, and pushed him toward the ladder up which he had climbed barely half ‘“*Go at once, and remember —I know everything! Everything! Remem- ber that the secret of this cave is England’s and she will use her new-gotten power with- out mercy if there is need of it! There will be no quarter given. If you so much as ad- vance one step with ill-intent, we act! Remember! And also remember that I know you, your Majesty!” Algy bowed mockingly as the man stepped backward down the steep ladder and 927 disappeared slowly from his view into the deep abysmal darkness in which the only sound was the beating of the waves and the rushes of gusty wind. He remained watch- ing until he heard the stout man whistle a short, shrill signal, heard the puff-puff of a launch ride up to the ladder’s foot, and, after a moment’s wait, puff away again out to sea. Seizing the enormous lever which was close to the little landing on to which Oster- mann and his visitor had emerged from the depths below, Algy Brett worked it down- ward with all the strength he possessed, and uttered a gratified whoop of joy as the great plates of steel unrolled, the sections glided back into place piece by piece, and within three minutes the armor-wall was once again in place and not a crevice left. Before the space had quite filled up, Brett had re- moved the handle from the outside lever, and, after the last plate had locked into position, he unfastened the one from the inside. “Just to make sure that our friend wouldn’t gain anything if he changed his mind and brought back an army with him to seize what I suppose he thinks rightfully belongs to him. Then he raced back‘to Jacobs and Hafner and caught them both by the arms, trying to rush them into the passage through which they had come from the castle. ‘““We ought to get back as fast as we can!” he panted, exhausted by his energy. “They may come back again, and I don’t guarantee that the trick I’ve played them will work, and if it doesn’t, we’d be done for! Come on, Hainer!” : But Hafner hung back, clinging to Gray Ghost. “Gray Ghost?’’ he asked wildly. ‘Gray Ghost—I want ’er! She’s mine now! I’ve won ’er; I’ve wrung ’er back from ’im— she’s mine! I won’t leave ’er! I killed ’im for ’er, and I’m the only man of you what understands ’er! I know why yer want me to follow yer; you’re going to give me in charge for a murderer, you are! I know the law as well as you do, and yer don’t catch me that way. No, yer don’t! I stay ’ere with Gray Ghost, and if yer try and take me, I'll destroy ’er, so ’elp me God, I mean it!” Algy stepped back to him and laid a hand on his arm. He realized instantly that the man’s brain was hovering in the balance of utter and complete lunacy, that the excite- COMIGHOO UN () CO