Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

166 waited till the acrid smoke had cleared, then painfully picked himself up from the clutter of brick on which he’d come down. The old Frenchman, he saw, was beyond help. Cut clean through at the waist, he had never known what hit him. Tub Tobin moved the scarecrow’s body to the roadside where some cart would take care of it eventually. Down the road he saw move a man who looked suspiciously likean M.P. He had to steer clear of that sort of fry. Let’s see. How long A. W. L. was he? Not very long—but long enough to get a trimming for it. He’d better be shufflin’ along. But something held him rooted to the spot. The one hundred thousand francs? That was it—and noth- ing to be sneered at either. Great Peter! What he couldn’t do with that money. Wouldn’t the gang sit up and gasp? Wouldn’t they? Back to Le Petit Casino Tub Tobin skinned. With a flat stick for a spade he commenced to dig. He dug till the sweat oured down his cheeks in rivulets. He dug in a kind of frenzy, moving slabs of stone that ordinarily would have resisted the combined efforts of two men. Now and again the balloon babies played round overhead but he wasted little concern on them. At that moment the massed German ar- tillery could not have swerved him from his purpose. He recollected having once read a book about having and holding. To have and to hold was his aim, too. He’d have that French treasure box, he swore, and once he had it, he’d hold it, all right, all right. A sweep of his boot suddenly exposed a black surface which, poked with the stick, gave off a metallic ring. “By , gasped Tobin, ‘‘the scare- crow was right.” Elated, he stooped down. It was then that a grating voice from the road smote his elation on the point of the chin. “Come out ’ere,” insisted the voice. ‘“‘Come out ’ere.”’ Tobin worked quickly. A second sweep of his boot and the box was recovered. He straightened up, decided to hold his ground, thought better and climbed into view. Advancing toward him was a bow-legged ‘“‘chirper” M. P. who fired the first shot of his catechism the instant his cold eye fastened on Tub. Adventure “Wot’s yer name? “What rigimint? ‘Where from? ‘Wot’ yer’ doin’ ’ere? ‘Wheres yer pypers? “Canijune “Bli-me, Mag! “Long way from ’ome, I ’opes?” “Get it off your chest if it pains you,” snarled Tobin, and lapsed into a state of stubborn silence from which the magical production by the “‘chirper” of glistening bracelets failed to arouse him. An hour later he was slogging down the | sloping road from Neuville Vitasse. Look- ing back he saw the Casino dump from a different angle. A square-faced, tumble- down shack he saw, squatting on the very edge of the battered village, standing out conspicuously, it seemed to him, as a fla- grant insult to his injured feelings. “Oh, Ill know you, all right, if I ever lay eyes on you again,” he muttered, trying to take his medicine gamely. But one hun- dred thousand francs weren’t to be picked up every day, and he found his pill of dis- appointment bitter to swallow. ‘‘—__”? he mumbled. “The same to you and many hof ’em,” promptly returned the M. P., who was riding close on his prisoner’s heels. Tobin pounded on in silence. The M.P., -amerry soul when he felt like it, hummed a ditty he had learned, probably, from some wheezy gramaphone. ‘“‘When yer a long, long w’y from ’ome.” “‘Aw go ’n’ choke yourself,” snapped Tub, fresh fuel added to his fires of discontent. “‘Cawn’t hoblige you, sir. At least not till I tells me story to yer rag-time Canijun harmy. An’ strike me pink, Chawlie, if that ’appens to be yer nime, I ’opes yer git it in the neck. ’Bout fourteen days, I ’opes.”’ gees) TO THE country below Arras they pee came on the twenty-first of March. Spring and heinie. The first came, by calendar calculation, in a flood of sunshine and high visibility which rendered conditions ideal for gunnery and aeronautics—the second, by surprize, in an irresistible flood of green-gray that overran stubborn defenses and drowned out valiant opposition like so much spring wheat. For five days, days of agonizing uncer- tainty, the freshet rolled back the banks of micloool C© in