Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

VINGO’S LADY SERPENT her forehead lying against his cheek and, as luck would have it, that day was Wednesday and he invariably shaved on Wednesdays and Sundays! Belinda was a quick-thinking girl, and I don’t think it took her Jong to realize where she was or how she got there. She told me, with a little twinkle in her eyes, that when she found she was in Jim’s arms she sort of swooned all over again, but that has always been a good looking girl’s privilege and if Jim objected to the pro- cedure, he never did much complaining about it. Well, the poor child was so scared by her ducking and being snatched back from the jaws of death without warning, that Jim had to tote her most of the way to the Clayburn house, almost a mile. And Belinda, in spite of being slim, was one of these hundred and twenty pounders, too! And by night, Jim was a full fledged hero—a cross between that Hawaiian Duke who swims like a muskrat, and Jack the Giant Killer. From then on, fim and Belinda saw more and more of each other, and one moonlight night, when they were going to go fishing, Belinda put on a fluffy white dress and anointed herself with some pretty dangerous perfume—and when they came back, without wetting a line, the fluffy white dress was all rumpled and they were calling each other “ dear ” and “hon.” Three days later, Belinda ap- peared in public with a genuine chip diamond set in a real white-gold ring, and that was that. I suppose some folks would call it a pretty ordinary, every day sort of romance, but to Belinda it put her in a class with Guinevere and Juliet. And who can deny that it didn’t? Whatsis Romance but another one of these states of mind we were speaking about? Christine’s little romance ran along some- what similar lines. A young fellow from Daytona was courting her, in a way. At least he used to drive out in a Ford that he had put a special body on and painted red. It was supposed to look like one of these geared-up gasoline devils that smash world’s records on Daytona Beach, but it didn’t fool anybody. Bud Larson, its =. of these innocent, unworldly backwoods girls. He had to move pretty hastily out — of several sections in Florida before he came to Daytona Beach, so we found out later. Anyhow, Bud Larson used to come out and call on Christine and drive her over to dances at the Beach casino. I don’t know whether Christine was crazy about the fellow or not; she claims she knew right along that he was Old Ned himself in disguise and that she was just playing along with him for the excitement of it. No woman likes to be thought a ninny, no matter how high a premium the world places on innocence, but I claim she was playing with more luck than excitement. The garage mechanic was a smooth and a careful worker. Maybe he put his arm around her waist and kissed her a few times prior to the eventful evening that we are getting around to; in any event, on — this particular night he suggested that they take a ride down to Mosquito Inlet and look at the moon. And unless some rum runner is unloading a cargo down there, Mosquito Inlet is as lonely and deserted a spot as the topmost peak in the Rocky Mountains. Nothing but sand and scrub palmetto and the Atlantic Ocean. A mile or so away is the lighthouse, but it might as well be a thousand miles off. Well, Bud Larson thought it would be a bright idea to drive down to the inlet in his whittled-down flivver and take a look at the moon. They had supper in a Dayton Beach chop-suey joint, and our gay young Lothario had a bottle of gin on his hip. Christine had never tasted the stuff, and it © took a good deal of urging on his part be- fore she would swallow the orange blossom cocktail he mixed. And the next thing Christine remembered was going along the beach toward the inlet with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist and being kissed at fre- quent intervals. Her first large swallow of gin had accomplished the usual results: she was so weak she was limp and the beach was whirling round and round and the moon was all over the sky. Sometimes, O —cGomichooks proud owner, was a mechanic in a garage = = over on the beach, and he made a specialty __ com