Adventure Magazine Cover — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

Red and respond to his need. He opened the door softly, thrust himself through it and closed it quickly. V THE girl sat with her head bowed upon her knees, her slender body rocking forward and backward. Holbrooke leaned against the door and stared at her. He wondered whether she heard him, for she did not look up. The door at the foot of the stairway was closed. The Spahi lay, as before, staring upward with unseeing eyes. “T killed him,” said Holbrooke in a low voice. The girl’s body stopped rocking and straightened as though it were being forced upright by the violent grasp of invisible hands. “T killed him,” he repeated in the same tone. She began to rise, grasping at the wall to steady herself. Then she turned toward him, her lips striving to utter words that would not sound. Their eyes met. Hol- brooke sprang toward her, for she had swayed suddenly. He caught her in his arms and drew her up until her face lay against his breast. When he bent his head to see whether she had fainted he met the pray eyes again, staring at him with some- thing of terror and something else which baffled and rejoiced him at once. She was smiling, tremulously, as women and children smile just before they cry. “You—you—you!”’ She clung to him, whispering the words. Then she hid her face against his coat and Holbrooke felt her body shake with silent, violent sobbing. His arms tightened about her. The brass stairway, the swinging lamps swam before him in a golden swirl. Pure gold, thank heaven, without a tinge of red! “T thought they—had—killed—you!” she sobbed. “Me?” asked Holbrooke. “They promised—he promised that you should be safe. You were to be held for ransom. I had their word. Then, when it was too late, Hosayn told me "she broke off, clutching him with her little fingers. “The beasts, the beasts!” “Then you’re not crying for—that?” He nodded in the direction of the inert figure below them. Mist 797 She raised her head, pushed Holbrooke backward until her hands lay on his arms, her eyes on a level with his. In them he read the truth—truth of many things: her loathing of the Spahi, her horror at the trick he and his creatures had played upon her, and something else—the unas- suageable out-going of her spirit to his. “We are going away from here at once— together! You must lead!” Holbrooke told her. “There is only one way now,” she an- swered. He pointed toward the window, but she shook her head. “The roofs,” she replied. ‘‘From the second house there is a stairway leading directly to the street.” Turning to the right she pressed her fingers against the hammered brass wall. It separated at her touch, slid the width of a door and revealed a short, steep flight of steps leading upward. The girl stepped in, Holbrooke following her, and the brass wall - closed between them and the golden cage where the Spahi lay with his twisted neck. The little space in which they stood was in absolute darkness and cool as a cellar. The girl mounted the steps. Soon Holbrooke felt a cold wind upon his face and smelled the unmistakable scent of fresh air which passes over the earth just before dawn. He looked up, past the mount- ing figure of the girl and into a dome of sapphire jeweled with faint stars. A mo- ment later and they stood together upon the roof of the Little House in the silence of the African dawn. The girl kneeled and with deft, swift fingers barred and bolted the trap-door between them and the enemy. Then she rose and stood beside Holbrooke with a sort of formality as though, with him, she were witnessing a ceremony. In the east hung a crescent moon in a film of silver mist. Just above it burned the morning star. Below, the Street of the Little House lay in deep shadow. No sound broke that profound stillness. The music from the café had long since ceased to invite the pleasure-seekers. The bells on the dancing-girls’ ankles were silent, the bazaars empty. For a few brief hours the traffic of merchandise, of human souls, of jaded appetites seeking new pleasures, had ceased. Even in the heart of that sin-begotten, sin-nourished corner of the COmiclbook (©