Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

PAWNED. That diagnosis no longer held. It would be much more apposite to lay it to the door of—Mephistopheles! From the moment he had boarded the mail steamer he had lived as a man possessed of unlimited wealth, as a man with unlimited funds always in his possession or at his instant command. He whistled softly. It was, though, if not moon-madness, perhaps the moon, se- rene and full up there as it had been that other night, which he had been watching from the divan a few moments before, that had sent his mind scurrying backward over those intervening months. And yet, per- haps not; for there would come often enough, as now, moments of mind groping, yes, even the sense of hallucination, when he was not quite sure but that a certain bubble, floating at one moment in daz- zlingly iridescent beauty before his eyes, would dissolve the next into blank nothing- ness, and— Well, what would it be then? Another beach at some Apia, until another Mephistopheles, in some other guise, came to play up against his role of Doctor Faus- tus again? He looked sharply behind him around the darkened room, whose darkness did not hide its luxury. His shoulder brushed the heavy silken portiére at his side; his fin- gers touched a roll of banknotes in his pocket, a generous roll, whose individual units were of denominations more generous still. These were realities! Mephistopheles--at play! He had left Larmon at Suva, Fiji. Thereafter, their ways and their lives lay apart—outwardly. Actually, even here in New York with the continent between them, for Larmon had resumed his life in which he played the role of a benevolent and retired man of wealth in San Francisco, they were in constant and extremely intimate touch with each other. A modern Mephistopheles! Two men only in the world knew Gilbert Larmon for what he was! One other besides himself! And that other man was named Maldeck, Peter Maldeck. But only one man knew him, John Bruce, in his new role, and that was Gilbert Larmon. Maldeck was the manager of the entire ring of gambling houses, and likewise the clearing house through which the profits flowed into Lar- 301 mon’s coffers; but to Maldeck, he, John Bruce, was exactly what he appeared to be to the world at large, and to the local man- agers of the gambling houses in particular —a millionaire plunger to whom gambling was as the breath of life. The “ inspector of branches ”’ dealt with Gilbert Larmon alone, and dealt confiden- tially and secretively over Maldeck’s head —even that invisible writing fluid supplied by the old Samoan Islander playing its part when found necessary, for it had been agreed between Larmon and himself that even the most innocent appearing document received from him, John Bruce, should be subjected to the salt water test; and he had, indeed, already used it in several of the especially confidential reports that he had sent Larmon on some of the branches. He shrugged his shoulders. The whole scheme of his changed existence had all been artfully simple—and superbly effi- cient. He was under no necessity to ex- plain the source of his wealth except in his native city, San Francisco, where he was known-—and San Francisco was outside his jurisdiction. With both Larmon and Mal- deck making that their headquarters, other supervision of the local “ branch ” was su- perfluous; elsewhere, his wealth was in- herited—that was all. So, skipping San Francisco, he had come leisurely eastward, gambling for a week or two weeks, as the case might be, in the various cities, follow- ing as guidance apparently but the whim of his supposedly roué inclinations, and he had lost a Jot of money—-which would evi- dently find its way back to its original source in the pockets of Gilbert Larmon, via the clearing house conducted by Peter Maldeck. It was extremely simple—but, equally, extremely systematic. The habitués of every branch were carefully catalogued. He had only--and casually—to make the acquaintance of one of these in each city, and, in turn, quite inevitably, would follow an introduction to the local “‘ house ’’; and, once introduced, the entrée, then or on any subsequent visit to that city, was an estab- lished fact. John Bruce laughed suddenly, softly. out into the night. It had heen ai geo hereaino