Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 4, 1922 — page 116: what you’re looking at

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

426 ‘‘ When he is quite ready,” said Li Yuen with his ideal courtesy, ‘‘ I shall be pleased to see him, if he feels equal to it.” While O’Rourke—for he had told me his name by this time—was dressing, I shud- dered to see the marks of great scars all over his wasted limbs and body. “Not pretty, are they?” he asked, cutting away at his beard. ‘ Yet I used to strip pretty nicely not so long ago. Will you help me trim this hair of mine? The effect is somewhat Santa Clausy, isn’t it, for a man of thirty-three? I got these white hairs. and these scars in the last two years. At least, I think it’s two years. You can tell me the date presently. I want to come back to humanity slowly. “By the way, I came off for two things. For myself and also to warn you. No great hurry, after seeing that armament of yours, if your beggars can shoot?” “They can,” I said. ‘‘ What’s the warn- ‘There are somewhere in the neighbor- hood of a thousand murderin’ pirates lay- ing for you back of the island,’ he said. ‘““ More due before morning from Sulu way. They’ve been gathering for ‘twenty-four hours. Going to attack at dawn. It ‘Il be some scrap. You'll lend me a gun or two?” He had hacked off most of his beard and mustache and started in on the long hair of his head. I took the scissors to help him out and, as I carefully applied my comb to its tangle, I found it parted easily, being more long than thick. And, just where the skull rounded off at the back, I discovered a livid, puckered scar, bald and angry- leoking, though it seemed to have healed up some time since. O’Rourke was looking at himself in my shaving-mirror and caught the reflection. of my face. “Nasty crack, that,” he said. “ Nearly put me out of the way. I’m a doctor, Ken--. nedy, or I was, and that ought to have finished me. At the least, it should have been trepaned. I hardly think it was treated at all. I was unconscious for many a long day after that, lying in coma, living off my reserves. When I came through I was a living skeleton, my hair was white and so ARGOSY¥-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, was my sprouting beard. That is one of the reasons I want a gun for to-morrow morning. The other reasons are scored all over me—lest I forget. I won’t. I sin- cerely trust to have a chance to settle up a lot of scores. If I can have a few drinks to get my hands steady I’ll even up a few of them.” He fell silent while I played barber. He could never have shaved himself in the shape his nerves were in, and, as it was, J had a nasty job, finally having to com- promise on a close-clipped mustache and Vandyke. He was a remarkable-looking figure by the time he was fully dressed and ready to go in to see Li Yuen and En Sue, after I had briefly outlined to him the facts of the trip, omitting its object. I wanted to see how much he knew about that. With his dark eyes, deep-socketed—eyes that somehow reminded me of a monkey’s, eager, quick, but lacking something; his tall, lean frame in my linens and the white of his hair against the skin, burned as dark as if it had been stained by walnut, O’Rourke, looking very different from the specter that had clambered up the companion-ladder, stood bowing to Li Yuen with an air of dis- tinction, both natural and acquired, that formed a fine foil to Li Yuen’s quieter cour- tesy. O’Rourke’s hands were shaking like aspen leaves in a wind, I remember. En Sue saw this and brought him some rice brandy, which he swallowed with gusto and which actually brought a dull crimson flush under the brown of his cheeks. ‘You'll want to know who I am,” he said. ‘“ That’s soon told and there isn’t too much time to waste. My name is O’Rourke—Joseph Francis O’Rourke, of the University of Dublin. O’Rourke, M. D., once called ‘ Handsome Joseph’ and sup- posed to be a devil among the ladies! Ha! M. D. standing for Doctor of Medicine, but in my case, really standing for Mad Dog. That’s what I am and always have been. Mad Dog! Only I don’t bite my friends, I have had one symptom of hydro- phobia, conspicuously, from the time my whiskers were stiff enough to shave. Hatred of water as a beverage. I’m a drunkard. Born, perhaps, but personally developed. “T have foozled a good many times, and COmicCclbooks.CGom