Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

ELECTRO-EPISODED IN A.D. 2025 that you have been fifteen whole minutes in answer- ing my ‘call’.” And then Nature claimed its own, and, woman- like, Esmeralda fell fainting into her lover’s arms, murmuring as she lost consciousness: “Algy! My darling! My savior!” For a brief moment Algernon pressed the inani- mate form of his sweetheart to his manly breast, and showered a storm of passionate kisses upon a wisp of her hair as it floated in the breeze against his nose—and then he bethought him of that poised tiger on the ledge above! Quickly he pulled his “Electric Automatic,” aimed carefully at the beast’s heart, and pressed the button. A black spot showed on the spot he had aimed at, and the air became filled with the pungent odor of burned hair—but the brute above remained in an apparently statuesque unconscious- ness of the assault! Nonplussed and dumfounded, Algernon pulled out his collapsible opera glasses, adjusted them, and studied the perplexing phenomenon closely. Then at last q ray of light penetrated his brain as the memory of a forgotten incident recurred to him, and he mentally connected this incident with the enigma above. Realizing the simple truth at last, he burst into uproarious laughter and yelled at the top of his voice in unrestrained glee—until the dor- mant echoes of the “Great Silent North” awakened from their age-old slumbers, and an avalanche of snow was loosened from its mooring on the opposite mountain-side, Algernon had remembered that, some six months before, a Royal Bengal tiger had escaped from “Barnum and Bailey’s” circus, while it was show- ing at Des Moines, Iowa; and that the efforts to re- capture it, had only resulted in driving it into the. northern wilderness. This, then, was that tiger! Happening in the neighborhood and naturally in a famished condition, a scent of Esmeralda had reached it and had aroused its savage instincts. But, as it stole out onto the ledge for the final, fatal spring, being unused to northern temperatures, the 60° below zero gale had frozen it dead in its tracks! And then, just as all his troubles and worries seemed to have vanished, the “whir” of an airplane engine turned his eyes upwards; and, directly over- head, he saw a “Purity League” biplane circling for a landing. With frantic energy he shook the unconscious form that reposed in his arms, and shouted into her ear at the top of his voice: “Esmeralda! Darling! Wake up! That ‘Purity League’ sleuth has found us! He is sure to be one THE END, 475 of those ‘ex-convict’ crooks working on a percentage for what he can get, and, if he catches you out here in public in that costume, he will rush you into one of his ‘kangaroo’ courts, and ‘railroad’ you into jail! Wake up! Es——” HE sharp angle of Mary Jane’s bony knee-cap, adeptly from practice and forcibly by instinct, projected into my left-hand lower short-ribs, finally aroused me; and, as if it were an echo of my dream, I distinctly heard the dulcet tones of her gentle voice in my ear, shouting: “Wake up you, John Henry! You’re snoring like a horse! Haven’t I told you times enough never to sleep on your back? Turn over on your right side! And you've been talking something awful in your sleep, too! Who's this ‘darling Esmeralda,’ any- way? If I catch her monkeying with you, I'll scratch her eyes out! None of your lies, now! There wasn’t any ‘Esmeralda’ in that pictureplay we saw tonight, so you better not try to spring anything of that sort on me! Why don’t you——’” But, peeved by my rude awakening, and not feel- ing well anyway, I stopped the verbal torrent by breaking in. “Tf you can’t be satisfied with nagging at me about nothing all day, but you must go waking me up in the middle of the night to keep it up, [ll Move into the spare room, and let you sleep by yourself,” I threatened. “Besides,” I added, “you’ve got me crowded clear off onto the bedrail, and no- body could sleep like that, anyway.” Mary Jane, my wife, was contrite and very hum- ble at once, which shows that I know how to man- age her properly when I really want to. “T didn’t wake you up to nag at you, John,” she said penitently, as she snuggled up to me and reached out her hand to caress me. “But that stuff of yours down in the cellar has been popping-off to beat the band for an hour, and I just know that you'll lose the whole batch if you don’t tend to it right away. I told you that you were bottling it too soon, but it never does any good for me to say anything, You'll just——’ “Well, if it?s going to ‘pop,’ it’s going to and that’s all there is to it,” I broke in petulantly. “If you think you know so much more about it than I do, you can just make the next batch yourself and see if you can do any better. Now move over and give me enough of the bed to lie comfortably in, and give me a chance to get a little sleep.” And, as my “better-half” squirmed back to her own side of the bed, I turned over upon my right side and slept fairly well for the rest of the night. commiclooolks.conn