Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

PAWNED. -: .place as a sort of, say, secret inspector of branches, and furnish me with the inside information from the lack of which my business at present, I am afraid, is suffer- ing severely.” “ And that business?” The young man had raised- himself to his elbow on the sand. “ The one that is nearest to your heart,” said the tall man calmly. ‘“ Gambling.” The young man leaned slowly forward, staring at the other. ““T wonder if I quite get you?” he said. “T am sure you do.” The tall man smiled. “‘ My business is a chain of select and exclusive gambling houses where only high play is indulged in, and whose clien- tele is the richest in the land.” _ The young man rose to his feet, walked a few steps away along the beach, and came back again. “You're devilishly complimentary!”’ he flung out, with a short laugh. ‘“ As I un- derstand it, then, the price I am to pay for getting away from here is the pawning of my soul?” ‘Have you anything else to pawn?”’ in- quired the other—and the quill toothpick punctuated the remark: “ Tck!” “No,” said the young man, with a twisted smile. ‘And I’m not sure I’ve got that left! I am beginning to have a Suspicion that it was in your ‘ branch’ at San Francisco that I lost my money.”’’ ‘“ You did,” said the other coolly. “ That is how I came to know you. Though not personally in evidence in the ‘ house ’ itself, San Francisco is my home, and my infor- mation as to what goes on there at least is fairly accurate.” The young man resumed his pacing up and down the sand. ‘And I might add,” said the tall man - after a moment, “that from a point of ethics I see little difference in the moral status between one who comes to gamble and one who furnishes the other with the opportunity to do so. You are perhaps hesitating to take the hurdle on that ac- count?”’ ‘Moral status!” man sharply. He halted abruptly before the other. “‘ No—at least I am not a hypo- exclaimed the young — 299 crite! What right have I to quarrel with moral status?” “Very well, then,” said the other; “I will go further. I will give you everything in life that you desire. You will live as a gentleman of wealth surrounded by every luxury that money can procure, for that is your role. You may gamble to your heart’s content, ten, twenty, fifty thousand a night —in my houses. You will travel the length and breadth of America. I will pay every expense. There is nothing that you may not have, nothing that you may not do.”’ The young man was silent for a full min- ute; then, with his hands dug in his pock- ets, he fell to whistling under his breath very softly—but very deliberately. An almost sinister smile spread over the tall man’s lips as he listened. “Tf I am not mistaken,” he observed dryly, “ that is the aria from ‘ Faust.’ ”’ “Yes,” said the young man—and stared the other in the eye. “It is the aria from ‘ Faust.’ ” The tall man nodded—but now his lips were straight. “I accept the role of Mephistopheles, then,” he said softly. ‘“‘ Doctor Faustus, you know, signed the bond.”’ The young man squatted on the sand again. His face was curiously white; only the ugly welt, dull red, across his cheeks, like the mark of some strange branding- iron, held color. ‘Then draw it!” he said shortly. be damned to you!” The tall man took a notebook and a fountain pen from his pocket. He wrote rapidly, tore out the leaf, and on a second ‘ And leaf made a copy of the first. This, too, he tore out. ‘“T will read it,” he said. ‘‘ You will ob- serve that no names are mentioned; that I have still reserved the privilege of keeping my identity in abeyance until the document is signed. This is what I have written: For good and valid consideration the sec- ond signatory to this contract hereby en- ters unreservedly into the employ of the first signatory for a period which shall in- clude the lifetime of one or other of the undersigned, or until encshatimeoasithites nn