Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 26: what you’re looking at

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16 to shun the tropics. It was streaked with perspiration, His rotund stomach struggled with an enormous belt, and his collar had long since wilted, ‘ Billy, for the love of mud, let’s get out of this! I’m slowly frying in my own grease. Whoa! Wait a minute. This is sis.” Florence FitzGerald held out a slim hand. In spite of the heat, Dunn found it pleasing- ly cool and holdable. She smiled her wel- come from clear hazel eyes. Dunn suddenly felt his shabby Palm Beach suit which had heretofore been good enough, shrink to his knees, and split up the back. He stammered his welcome and pleasure. Jerry interrupted Dunn’s mental torture with an invitation to join them in a drink at the hotel, which lay three blocks distant. Florence seconded the invitation. ‘ Yes, do come, we’ve been looking for excitement. We are here for pleasure alone. I am be- ginning to doubt the tropics, and their capa- bilities for adventure. So far, we’ve only had the ship’s cook to furnish us with thrills, We've just bailed him out of jail.” “J wish I could come wtih you; fact is, IT have an appointment down the street,” Dunn said. ‘“ Maybe some time later.” FitzGerald accented the refusal good naturedly, and gave Bill Dunn his hotel ad- dress, and literally swamped him with in- vitations, all of which Dunn refused, not without genuine regret. The sore spot in his scheme of things was indeed sore. [It was lack of finances and a wherewithal to silence the inner man. Dunn had said nothing of his recent run of hard luck. It was like him to keep his troubles to himself. He shared them with Ah Jung, however; Ah Jung saw to that. He watched the two forms of his friends disappear down the street, then turned and walked away, followed by the faithful Jung. When he reached the sea wall, he stopped and sat down. Curiously enough, his thoughts were mixed with hazel-eyed girls, and the vast necessity of procuring a roof for himself and Ah Jung. Some weeks before he had been making the run from Para on the Amazon River to Colon in his own schooner, the Defender, and had struck an uncharted reef. They ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. had been picked up and deposited in Colon. After paying off the crew, Dunn found him- self on the ragged edge. Now, his money belt and the vessel’s log were the sole ar- ticles remaining from the wreck. His crew had drifted away to ship under other flags, all but Ah Jung. Ah Jung was Chinese to the core, which accounted for his loyalty to his captain. His wide, yellow face was gravely turned toward Dunn. He sat a few feet away, calmly watching Cap’n Bill trying to arrive at a decision. He had, an hour previous, warned Bill that the hotel proprietor had been hinting at payment in advance for their single room. Their rent would expire at noon. In spite of the tremendous necessity of concentrated thought, the white man found his mental machinery all out of gear. A moment’s struggle, and he discovered a pair of hazel eyes, and an invitation to tea. With a sudden effort he shook off the thought and: tried to blackjack his mind into an effort toward the solution of his problem. Jung had a moment before spoken of the dire necessity of Cap’n Bill snapping out of it. He had hinted that an under- current of gossip had reached his ears. It persisted in Bill Dunn’s mind. Ah Jung’s statements were not to be dis- regarded. Many times the yellow man’s hunches had been instrumental in saving his neck. | Ah Jung looked deeper than the surface; his Oriental mind turned things over and over before dropping them. Evidently the sinking of the Defender had puzzled him. Dunn had attached the blame to a sunken reef, and let it go at that. Not so Jung. There was a Chinaman in the wood pile to him. He had puzzled and torn the thing to shreds. That, coupled as it was with frequent and complex mutterings, had awak- ened a germ in Ah Jung’s mind. He heard the currents of gossip on the water front that missed Bill Dunn. The wreck of the Defender, and the consequent stir of news had not died as it should have, in a region where wrecks are accepted at their mini- mum value; rather, it had persisted. This, then, was the germ that Ah Jung’s receptive mind had assimilated, LA GCOmMmiGcbooks (C@