Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

THE MARK OF wind masked whatever sound there was of footsteps on that gallery. But I was con- vinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that there were steps tapping toward me. I was not going to wait there until I was pounced upon by this being. I was not going to wait immobile and defenseless to be brained and then perhaps hurled over those banisters. As the steps came closer I had sufficient light from the clear sky to see a low- crouched form move across my doorway. Was I the one elected to die that night? Or was that murderous thing tiptoeing past my door toward the door of the mozo’s room—or toward Maizie’s? I did not wait to find out. I leaped for the blot of pitch darkness into which he had just merged. The thing eluded me. I grasped vicious- ly at his clothes—only to clutch him some- where near the lapel, which was jerked out of my fingers. In my hand [ still retained a silk bandanna which had been in the coat pocket under the lapel. A blow on the side of my face sent me hurtling to the floor, though I doubt if it was forceful enough to have knocked me out. I lay there, as I thought, with my senses completely awake; but, who knows? I might have lain there for several moments in a daze. At any rate, I was in a sufficient daze from the blow to be oblivious of just when Maizie came out of her room. She had lit a lamp, evidently; for her door, being opened, admitted a flood of lamplight onto the gallery. Cronk had likewise run up the stairs, and was kneeling beside me, holding up my head. When I was sufficiently recovered from the blow, I sat up. In my hand I still clutched that ban- danna. Cronk was looking at it, his eyes bulg- ing. And-Maizie was looking at it, her splendid dark eyes showing the whites all around the pupils, her heavily jeweled hands to her breast. I recognized the bandanna myself. It was one of those fancy handkerchiefs which men wear with the corners erasing from had worn a * Wendkerchict of this very pat- tern. It had been in his breast pocket, the purple embroidered corners protruding. CHAPTER XVII. THE CAMERA’S REPORT. HE two last victims to die with the moceasin marks are the only two against whom we have been able to build any case. They are Pythagoras Awls and the mozo Pasqual. We found the mozo in his room a few moments after my experience on the third- story gallery. He had been felled with a single blow, which evidently had instantly finished him. We found Pythagoras Awls much later. He had been tucked away in a closet of the judge’s room—a closet that had been locked on the night that we made our hurried search. We had not looked in there —a very stupid oversight; but considering our horror of the room, it is not hard to understand why we made this unfortunate blunder. Both Pythagoras Awls and the little Mexican died with that mark of the devil, or the serpent, or whatever it was, upon their necks at the base of the skull. Had they died by some deadly and in- stantaneous poison injected into them by a hypodermic needle—as the doctor sus- pected? That was the question that came to my mind. It could not have been a moccasin bite, for the simple reason that that reptile’s poison does not work instantly. The mozo was dead when we entered the room, a few moments after my set-to with that Thing on the gallery outside the mozo’s door. But, you will say, perhaps the poison had been injected into him at Some pre- vious time—and that he had been in there slowly dying? Quite plausible. And yet, here is another point: there was the mark of a blow upon the mozo’s head; and the octoroon woman swears she heard a blow. “Tf reckon zou aid, A | said, $s end, be- = —— dee-me be felt i dard = See ‘ soe S—— — es 2 a = = comichackocae: