Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

248 “T’ll tell nobody. Tl get it myself.” “Tf I had it how would you get it?” “ That I'll show you.” “Main force, maybe? much?” “It’s worth nothing. But the key should ought to be in my possession. We'll leave Grimpen’s carcass rest there. Who will care? But I’m going to get the key and watch it myself. No old hellcat like you can be trusted.” “T don’t see that you’re coming after it,” she said tauntingly. Herzog had the hallucination that his head was swelling. The cuevo, with which he had reénforced his nerves several times that day, had started his temples to throb- bing. His eyes were blood shot, he saw red. “ All right, if you are looking for violence you'll get it,” he threatened. “If you’re taunting me I ain’t the one to stand still without kicking. You come through with that key!” * He took her flabby wrists and gripped so hard as to frighten the woman at first. She writhed to relieve the twisting move- ment of his hold. Staring into his face with a pale blaze of hatred she seemed uncertain whether to scream, to spit at him or to start in kicking his shins. “You give me that key you filched from me or Ill kill you here and now!” the baffled and frantic little man cried. ‘“ Think you can get something on me holding that back, do you? If you can keep Grimpen’s body there so /’ll be ha’nted, so I'll be damned— But I won’t let you have it on me. Ill kill you first!” Cora decided that to scream was the safest policy, but she was so frightened by the apparent mania her husband had de- veloped that she was unable to voice her cry. The inebriated Herzog released his grip upon the flabby wrists and transformed it to Cora’s flabbier throat. His fingers sank into a disconcerting layer of cool, dry flesh. Whether this method of attack would have succeeded Herzog never ascertained, for he felt something sink into his collar just be- hind his neck, twist him backward, and whirl him spinning like a top across the flagstone walk. Is it worth so ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. He got his balance, turned about, his head swimming, the stars and fireflies whirl- ing in an orgy of glorious and rhythmic movement. In the center of that gyrating universe of luminous bodies he saw the face of Al Boscoe, scowling, crowned with that massive patch of pomaded black hair. Herzog did not look long. From some- where in the direction of that hated visage there came a sledgehammer fist flashing in the light and seeming to dilate to a tremen- dous sudden size in that one instant. Her- zog had the feeling of his jaw being smashed up into his brain. The lights spun, twin- kled, scattered. The little body of the innkeeper sank like a shapeless bag of cotton into the comfortable resting place of flagstone and fern. CHAPTER XIV. “STOW HIM AWAY!” AS it possible that anything other than hatred and murder could sprout in the garden of that patio? Could anything but crime thrill the hearts of those degenerate human beings, Herzog, his wife, her lover? It was a place where weeds belonged, not rubber plant nor pal, metto. But down there in the Sundown Café the magnolia bloomed among horse- weed and crab grass. Love blossomed inh the rankness of Cora’s life and of Al Bos- coe’s. As for Herzog, that little unfortu- nate wisp of humanity was in no condition then to thrill to any passion whatsoever. He lay there among the ferns like a rank “overturned barrel cactus choking the more delicate plants and flowers of the garden. Cora bent down to examine him while Boscoe still stood like a champion in a prize fight waiting for the count to be tolled off. ‘Al, you’ve come aboard of the old man if I know anything.” This rather serious comment did not seem to have its needed effect upon the slower mental processes of Al Boscoe. The latter was engrossed then in the.pride of victory, of the rescuer gloating in the presence of the rescued. COmmicloool< (C@