Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

POOR LITTLE PIGEON. “The mills of the gods grind slowly their human grist, but they cease not, nei- ther do they pause,” he said. ‘ Sit down, my friends—our labors draw to a close. What remains yet to be accomplished re- quires but small participation upon our part. The harvest is ready. Other hands may garner it as well as ours.” “The harvest is ready.” It was so he announced that in all essential details our work was done. I sat down. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I felt tired. Bryce mumbled his cigar, puffed out his stubby brown mustache. The thing seemed almost an anticlimax to a situation in which for a time so many vital issues had seemed involved. There was a sense of let-down about it, a feeling of incompleteness, no matter what the quiet voice of the man in the great chair had said. Jim cleared his throat, and sat down heavily in a chair. “ Then, Stanley was Neptune,” he said. “Judson said he thought it was.” ‘“ Neptune? Stanley?” Once more Dual turned his eyes. “ Nay, Mr. Bryce—the negro was not Neptune; say Saturn rather, Saturn who tears down, yet who builds up that which deserves to be built up again; erects phcenixlike new and fresher struc- tures from those he has destroyed.” “Then, who was?” Bryce asked the question direct. “The man Pulfer,” Semi told him as directly. “ Pul-fer!” Jim faltered, and paused and added more slowly: “ My God!” Pulfer! It was as though a cold hand eripped my heart, as though a cold breath blew upon my skin. I could actually feel it contract. Pulfer—the man we had worked with, talked with, the man who had sat in this very room and sought to purchase Dual’s aid—or had he sought to purchase his aid? I asked myself. Had he not sought rather to bind Semi to him and his interests with a payment—a sort of retaining fee—the check Dual had torn into fragments before his eyes? Pulfer was Neptune—the significator of evil omen to Bernice Rand, her father, her lover. “ Pulfer, yes, Mr. Bryce,” I heard his 931 quiet tones. “ Pulfer, who perverted all good things to evil ends; Pulfer, who be- trayed good to evil, friendship and trust and even love; Pulfer, who in his self- seeking dug for his friend a pit and in the end fell into it himself; Pulfer, who when he had reason to fear me sought to tie my hands with his evil-gotten gold, and so placed an authentic specimen of his hand- writing in my hands instead, which speci- men now lies in Sheriff Quagley’s safe. Not that I needed the sample, as it happens, save as an evidence of his intent, since I had already purchased the car from him and obtained what I sought in his written receipt of its price. Having obtained it, L knew from the first who had sent the anonymous note regarding Lieutenant Newton to Captain Cleland at the camp.” ‘“ Then—then,” Bryce stammered, “ all his roar about getting Bernice out of jail was just a blind.” “Not altogether,” Dual returned. “Have I not said he was betraying love itself? And have I not said that he threatened Miss Rand’s Venus—since be- fore we came here to prevent that threat from gaining concrete expression? And how may a man of his type threaten a woman more than through herself—her sex —the material expression of Venus, who rules so largely the material feminine plane? Nay, Pulfer was as sincere in seeking her release as he could be in any- thing. It was for himself he sought it, because he desired her, and were she re- leased and her father held he could well contrive to bring her within his unclean grasp.” “ Poor little pigeon,’ I said on impulse, recalling his own words. And once more he smiled. ‘‘ Poor little pigeon,” he repeated. ‘“‘ Poor little maid— yet, I think, fortunate little pigeon now, my friends, inasmuch as the hawk no longer flies.” ‘“ Pulfer,” Bryce said again in a tone of wonder—“ Pulfer is dead?” Again that sensation as of a cold air upon my flesh assailed me as Semi inclined his head. ‘Aye, Mr. Bryce. Unless I have read my figures sadly awry, in so far as the flesh Comuicbooks ©