Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. did indeed proceed to forget it with prompt- ness and dispatch. He fumbled nervously with the edge of the lining of his coat and finally produced a small packet of paper which he examined shakily by the aid of his flashlight. It contained some crystals of fine white powder. Sprinkling them on the back of his hand he inhaled them avidly through his nostrils. Had he not been so deeply engaged he might have been aware of a slight creaking as the door in the wall opened once more and a slim shape slipped through, closing it carefully again and standing with his back against it, scarcely breathing in the darkness. But Joe was oblivious. With a sigh of satisfaction he dropped back on the roll of rugs and his heavy lids drooped over bloodshot eyes. Not in many a night had he slept except in fitful moments and for thirty-six hours he had not dared snatch a moment’s rest. That sudden alarm of the previous evening, the nightmare of endless miles of travel over a rough road where he constantly lost his way in the darkness and there seemed ever the consciousness of someone just behind; the the ferry at last and then a long stretch of deserted streets in the graying dawn, the getting turned down by one after another of the pals on whom he’d depended and finally meeting Charlie just outside Al’s, where he hadn’t dared to enter—it was all like a hideous, distorted dream now! Good old Charlie had persuaded Al to take him in for the day and arranged with old Lazarus, the fence, for this brief shelter. In the morning he’d float downstream, sit- ting pretty on a freighter bound for New Orleans and he’d never hit this cursed town again! What was that? It seemed to Joe that something moved—something bigger than a rat and more cautious! He half raised himself and his fingers crooked instinctively about the gun sticking out of the waistband of his trousers. Then they relaxed and he sank back once more. Nothing was there of course! It wasn’t worth while to flash his light, for if anyone had followed it would only give them the drop on him. But it was only his wretched nerves gone to pieces, because in Al’s pres- 317 ence or the woman’s he couldn’t get at his precious packet of “ snow.” He was better now, soothed and able to think shrewdly of the morrow. He’d been clever, mighty clever; there couldn’t be any hitch now and once in New Orleans he could open up that money belt that even Al, even the woman, didn’t know he had on, and spend, and forget, and learn to sleep again. By God; there was somebody there! This time he sprang up with his gun drawn, lighting like a cat on his toes with his knees slightly bent and head thrust down between his shoulders. Why didn’t they come on, damn them! Why did they wait, skulking there in the darkness to drive a guy out of his mind with the suspense of it! He shook with the temptation to switch on his light, to scream out defiance at the menace waiting there to seize him, but he knew the madness of such an impulse. His ears seemed unusually keen and in the stillness rasped by his own raucous breath- ing he heard steps, slow, measured and in- credibly light, creeping toward him! Now they were verging off to the right, there was a soft thud as they came in con- tact with a barrel or crate—they were cir- cling, but coming ever nearer and insensibly he circled with them in an opposite direc- tion, striving to work away from the wall. By a miracle Joe escaped the litter all about, by a miracle he held on grimly to the remnants of his self-control while his flaming fancy pictured the pursuer he could not see! Minutes, hours seemed to pass while that grotesque dance went on in the pitch darkness, with only the slither of feet and his own hoarse breath to pierce that uncanny silence, and then something snapped in Joe’s brain. With a scream more animal than human he leaped suddenly forward, firing a fusillade from his pistol that seemed to blast the solid masonry about him, his face in the flashes of spitting flame distorted beyond sem- blance of living mortal by the rage and despair that ravaged his sick soul. Clifford Nichols, the opponent in that protracted duel of endurance, felt almost a sense of relief when the end came at last, and his own pistol spoke when the first reverberation of Joe’s opening fire was comnicloaoo! S (©