Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

“ My God!” Reynolds muttered. “ You! A sermon!” He stared at Javalie a mo- ment longer, then burst into laughter. “You are good. If I had your brains I’d be a millionaire. A sermon. Well, I’ll say Il am an amateur! A piker’s fifth is more than I deserve. Sure. I’m on. Will you shake on it?” “No,” Javalie said coldly. ‘“ But you have my word. You'll go as quietly as pos- sible, of course.” ‘“Why won’t you shake my hand?” ‘Because I dislike you. Kindly unlock my door.” Reynolds snorted. ‘Go to hell, then. When are you going to—pull it?” “Within twenty-four hours. night.” Reynolds unlocked the door and went. When the door was closed again Javalie went to the window, knelt down and propped his elbows on the sill. The pres- ence of a competitor he had, as he had told Reynolds, anticipated. He had, how- ever, expected to find him among the ser- vants. Such a tempting cache would nat- urally draw crooks as a chunk of bad meat draws flies. but he hoped there were no more. He gazed with sleepless eyes at the east- ern horizon. The sun had not yet risen, but it threatened to do so at any moment. Now, good It was a lovely morning, fragrant with flowers, cool, colored with a gold brush. Below him the garden gleamed through the mist like green water through foam. The wind had fallen, and the Atlantic was hazy and palely blue—more like a streak of flat color on a canvas than a limitless expanse of water. The night sky was the color of Nanette Banning’s eyes, a deeper blue than the sea, and in the east, piled with turrets and bat- tlements of clouds, were billowing opaque masses of honey and old rose. Javalie, sighing luxuriously, wondered why the soft night sky had reminded him of Nanette Banning’s bold blue eyes. Being analytical, he pursued the inquiry back to its lair. She had a way of strolling unin- vited into his thoughts, and sitting there, smiling sweetly, demanding attention, ad- Reynolds did not worry him, . ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. miration—what she would call “ service.” She deserved all this, to be sure. And of course she knew she deserved it. She knew, without being told, that her soft silk hair was endeared to any man with a discerning eye by the riffles of gold in it; that her patrician nose, her beautiful mouth and chin, her fashionable slimness, were, indi- vidually and collectively, worthy of any man’s honest adoration. Her lawlessness made-her rather singular. She was a deli- cious capture—with claws—for some lucky fool of a millionaire.. For a moment Javalie permitted himself to be sad. The futility of his own particu- lar form of self-expression sometimes both- ered him. This occasional awareness of a sense of his social unfitness, his moral delinquency, took the place of what, in upright people, is called conscience. It did not bother him very often. It did not bother him long now. His life force sprang from other princi- ples entirely; he was concerned primarily with artistry. Life and nature were ex- pressed to him in terms of art. He saw all life as pictures, drab or gay, alive or still, complete or incomplete, well done or botched. ... Why had she spoiled an otherwise won- derful kiss by laughing? He could, how- ever, have repeated the climax in the gar- den—seriously. She wouldn’t have laughed then. No; things had progressed beautiful- ly in the garden, And she unquestionably, if perhaps unconsciously, wanted to be loved seriously. Was she not, in this house of antipathy, starving for love? Well, then, why hadn’t he— It had been, he realized, a psychological moment. She was planning to run off with Pete Reynolds—that insufferable ass! Did she realize what an ass he was? No doubt she was blinded by her need. Poor girl! Why was it, he wondered, that beautiful, clever women——not that she was conspicu- ously clever—were so often deluded into acquiring the most obvious misfits? Here was a plausible reason. Poor girl! He came together with a jerk. This would never do. What had become of his enviable calculating detachment? He was permitting 4A COMMIE OOOKS COM