Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

34 ter grab both and freeze me out. That’s what made me so sore that I bumped him off. Didn’t mean ter. “Only hit him once,’’ he added plaintive- ly and gave a gargling sigh. “‘Allus been a boob one way and another. Now he’s through, and I guess I am.’ There was silence for the falling of an autumn leaf. Then Vansittart said in a conventional tone— “And you were saying, Westlake?” “Eh? Oh, yes.” And, recalling the story, Tony continued. “Thanks!” said Vansittart when he had finished. “Oh, no,” said Tony. ‘We couldn’t very well do anything else to save our hides, and——”’ “That’s all right,” put in Boulters. “But—er—I don’t think you realize—yet— what you’ve done. Er—you tell him, Van.” “Well,” began Vansittart, “we—Plexy and I—bumped into the first sign of this outfit in Chinde. We had been up on a mining proposition in Portuguese East which had fizzled out; nothing doing under the dagoes; too much graft and all that. One night while we were waiting for a boat we were guzzling warm beer in a dago dive when we met up with a fellow who called himself Flaxman, but was as boche as they make ’em. Spoke English—or American, for he’d been years in the States. “‘He was pretty soused and talked a lot about having struck it rich up country, but was mighty mysterious about the direction. When he got tanked up a bit more he let out that he was trying to fix an American passport; said he’d lost his, and began cussing out our consul because he wouldn’t believe his yarn. “When we told him to lay off that stuff, he sobered up a bit, but insisted that he meant it; would give a thousand dollars for one; and when he appealed to the dago proprietor he backed him up. I advised him—wasn’t my business anyway—to get down to the Transvaal and fix things there, but he said he couldn’t make it. Looked in pretty bad shape, too. At last he shambled off, saying he was going to bed and would see us in the morning. “Nobody else in the joint except a couple of drunken stokers from a British boat, and out of curiosity we started pumping the proprietor. He said the fellow was all Adventure right, and after a bit of stalling showed us a raw diamond he’d bought from the man for about a hundred dollars. Peach of a little stone worth a couple of thousand at least. Kind of made our mouths water. Funny,” he broke off the narrative. “I’m pretty well fixed, yet I got all worked up over that. ‘It isn’t the cash; it’s the fun going after it, I guess. ‘Well, while we were pawing this stone about a couple of shots sent us out into the street to see what was on, and we found the same bird lying on the sidewalk not a hun- dred yards away—one through his lungs and another through the guts. We carried him back to the beer joint and sent for a doctor, but he was:all: in. He lasted about half an hour, raving about a second Kim- berley, Lake Kivu, valley and volcanoes, spiders and knows what. Noticed when we opened up his shirt that his body was covered with half-healed sores; had a few on his face and neck too. Then he had a bit of a lucid interval just before he passed out, mumbled something about that we were white and.he hoped ‘the Americans would take it away from ’em and finally died, cursing the Kaiser and every boche under heaven. “Hadn’t got a thing on him—not even papers. We reckoned at the time that he’d been talking too much and some dago yeggs had laid for him. But it wasn’t. Anyway we took up the invitation, and a month later we recognized the valley and the volcanoes. Hit ’em from the south and blundered down through the spiders.” “Through the spiders!’ echoed Tony. “But didn’t they get you?” ‘Sure they did!: Of course, making a run for it and half falling down the steep escarpment, we didn’t get bitten up as bad as a fellow would climbing up. But they made a pretty mess of us.’ “T came barging through them, too,” put in Boulters. “But how is it “Wait. Ill give you that dope in a minute,” resumed Vansittart. ‘Well, the first thing we knew—you see the darned camp was hidden by that spur back there— we bumped right into this outfit and came ambling up as meekly as lambs, and they just said, ‘Put ’em up!” “Me too, » concurred the British doctor. ‘‘The bally war being over, I never dreamed of finding a concentration camp of heinies!”” CoOMmicbool ) (© =