Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

JEREMIAH PARSONS—HE-MAN, onto the ground. The chain he sent sail- ing into the air in a wide arc over the electric wires. The rope lay across the wires, the chain dangling loosely at the other end. Holding the rope in his hand, Jem crept again to the window. The men within were still disputing, the leather bag resting, un- disturbed, on the table. Jem fixed clear’ in his mind a picture of the room’s arrang>e- ment; then, scarcely breathing, he stole round to the wall by the entrance. Now, if only luck were with him—if those wires were bare, and not weatherproof insu- lated— He drew in on his rope. He felt the tug as the knot of the junction of the rope and chain caught and passed across the first wire. .Another arm’s length pull, and the knot caught the second wire. It stuck; he jerked, the knot crossed—and the room went suddenly dark! A jubilant thrill shot through Jem. His guess had been correct. lying now across the two wires, had caused a short circuit. No other lights in the camp being lit, no undesired attention would be attracted; and as the fuses on the camp transformer would blow, the high tension line serving the dredges would not. be af- fected. | Within the room sharp exclamations had broken forth at the sudden darkness. “Damn!” Kurtz’s voice sounded. “I suppose it’s that fuse on that damn trans- former again!” There were calls for matches and the scraping of chairs as the men shuffled to their feet and fumbled in their pockets. Jem, at the first moment of darkness, had dropped his rope. He drew a deep breath, then stepped softly, swiftly into the black- ness of the room amidst the blurred, shuf- fling figures. He stumbled over a chair or two, but his mental sketch of the distance was good. He touched the table; his fin- gers groped, found the bag; and in an instant he was outside the shack again, his prize clutched in his fingers. The beating of his heart and the tight- ness of his breath were nearly stifling him; but a glorious sense of daredevil achieve- ment danced in his soul. 3A The iron chain, - 678 He dropped the satchel hastily into the thick bushes behind him, then stiffened up to regain his breath and control. <A boyish, mischievous curiosity to see the finish of his prank drew him to the window. It had been a mdtter of but seconds. Matches were now being struck, and with the first glow a sharp cry came from Kurtz’s lips. ‘The bag!” he exclaimed. ‘‘ Who’s got the bag?” All eyes leaped to the spot on the table where the bag had rested at the light’s ex- tinguishing. ‘Which one of you has stolen that bag?” There was a vicious menace in Kurtz’s voice. Matches were now striking feverishly, and in the feeble, fitful flickerings faces were showing grim and passionate. “You can’t pull that sort of stuff, Kurtz.” There was a deadly coldness in Harry Goss’s voice. ‘“ That’s too crude. You staged this to give you a chance to grab that bag. Come on, now— produce it, and produce it quick!” ‘““No man can accuse me of being a double-crosser!” snarled Kurtz, and started for Goss. In an instant the room was alive with black, struggling figures, as the bandits sprang to immediate choice of sides in the dispute. Enraged at the disappearance of the loot, they flung themselves upon each other in a frenzy of passionate disappoint- ment, scarcely knowing whom they were fighting for, or whom opposite. None dared use a gun. The matches had fallen and gone out, and in the blackness indiscrimi- nate shooting would have struck down friend as well as foe. Besides, shooting would have awakened the rest of the camp; so silently they milled and struggled. The wine of his day’s adventures was singing in Jem’s veins. A new, daring impulse flashed into his brain. He grasped his crowbar, shook loose his wrist, and stepped across the door sill. A vaguely defined knob of a head bobbed along that sea of blackness, close before Jem’s eyes. Swiftly his arm rose and fell —and the knob submerged into the black depths. Comichdookssco