Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

THE GOLD-DUST RAJAH. Wray came up behind them, taking Mar- cia affectionately by the hand. ‘ Where are our Malays, do you suppose?” he asked. ‘Don’t they like this show?—Marcia, my dear, do you notice the two women with the shaven heads? ‘They’re in mouming, Barker tells me.” ‘T was just showing them to Miss Old- ham.” declared Lansdell, ‘‘ and explaining that those girls who aren't tattooed are single.” Marcia was smiling, composed as ever, and intensely interested. ‘‘ The Malays are resting, Uncle Chichester,” she said. ‘“ You'd be resting, too, if you'd paddled half the day.” ‘‘ Dead to the world, I suppose,” agreed Wrav, ‘‘ even after lounging all afternoon. Lansdale, this is an amazingly barbarous scene! What a sight this would be for the neichbors if a man could transplant it back home! Do you take up this ladder of yours at night?” Lansdell shook his head. ‘Not as a rule, I don’t. But vou may both sleep without a thought of danger. I can doze in the boat to-morrow. I'll stay up to-night.” Some one moved close at his back. He turned. The Chinese, Kwong Wing, had come out upon the veranda, fetching tall pitchers filled with a brownish liquid. ‘“ Ginger beer!” announced Marcia. “ It’s xood even when it isn’t iced.” She turned to hll the four glasses. Kwong Wing bowed, that smooth, yellow face as expressionless as a mask. But for a moment he lifted those black, bird-like eves of his to Lansdell. The look that he gave the white man was a strange and searching one. Then, with a patter of soft- soled slippers, and a flash of his white coat, he disappeared into the shadows of the big room. CHAPTER III. WARNING! ANSDELL had hours of time during [° which to turn over the matter of the expedition, and consider the pros and cons of a possible attempt to make trouble and rob in the kampong higher up. He did 819 not leave his own veranda during the re- mainder of the night. When the fires had died down, and the natives had dispersed, shrilling a last wild song, Hetdoon came to him to say that the Malays were on their mats, wrapped in their calico sarongs against the night air. ‘All save the holy woman,” Hetdoon reported. ‘She sits apart, communing with—who knows!” Wray and Barker were occupying cots in the large room, the latter lying close to a side opening. Lansdell could hear both men snoring, and now and again Barker murmured something, and tossed on his narrow bed. ‘““Under a strain,” Lansdell told him- self. ‘Of course, Wray isn’t in on any scheme to take loot. He and Marcia are just a cover—Just a pretext for getting into Mabong’s village with a small army. But if he tries the business, what then?” He had a swift vision of what the busi- ness would be like—a treacherous, unex- pected attack upon a town that would wel- come in the friendliest fashion any line of praus that came bringing himself—the doer of magical things concerning good medicine. “Of course, Barker wouldn’t go by and pass me up,” he thought. ‘“ Even if he could pull the wool over Mabong’s eyes by fetching visitors, and one of them a woman, he’d have to take me along, be- cause if I got wind of the whole thing be- fore he and his Malays came back down, I might make it hot for ’em as they passed.’’ Then came another idea: “ But if this Barker has such a villainous plan, and car- ries it out, what about Wray and Marcia and me? He can’t make us a part of the theft, and if he leaves us behind him—” He got up, troubled and uneasy, and walked his own veranda. “ No telling what those Malays would do,” he went on. “ Thev’d do anything for a little money. Well, I’ve heard talk about that buried golddust, and I believe this is the time that something’s going to happen. If it wasn’t for Marcia, I’d like to see the business start. but I’d tip off Mabong first. As it is, I must stop Barker here. Yes, that’s what must be done—stop him right here.” He remembered Wray’s speaking of the CO GIOok