Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 9, 1924 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

WHITE EYE, “Gentlemen, the worst has came! He whom we know as the gayest of the gay has reached that point where he has to be coaxed!” Hoots of derision filled the room as they clapped his hat on his head and dragged him out to the waiting hack. The thought of spending another hour alone in his room had filled Larry with despair. He told him- self now he wouldn’t drink very much with the fellows—just watch his chance and slip away when they weren’t looking. But after they had visited the first few dance halls—“ The Daylighters,”’ “Vouth’s Paradise,” “The Garden of Love,” suggestive names—all his prudent intentions vanished. By the time they ar- rived at Panama Joe’s he could barely dis- tinguish “ Artie,” the little Englishman, standing on a table singing “ I’m the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo,” and scattering one peso bills about the room. He was vaguely conscious of hearing one of the draftsmen from the office telling Panama Joe that “young Simms got the sack to-day,” using such phrases as “ white eye,” “done for now,” “they never come back,” which seemed to be mixed up with the words of the song and the hilarious shouts of those around him. He seemed to be drifting away from all this noise. There were moments when the sounds penetrated more clearly into his dazed mind, like the music of a passing band growing fainter in the distance, and then swelling in volume as a favorable air current wafts it backward. At last came stillness. He awoke the next morning in a strange room. Where the devil was he? Must have got into the wrong bed last night. But who the devil undressed him?—as he no- ticed his clothes neatly folded on a chair. “Oh, Lord, what a head!” he exclaimed as he tried to rise. Shaking and stumbling, he made his way to the door. Opening it slightly, he recognized the patio of Panama Joe’s place. He seated himself on the edge of the bed, and tried to collect his scattered thoughts. Some night, wasn’t it? What was it all about, anyway? Better get down to the office pretty soon; it’s late now. But wait a minute! ‘ Haven’t any use for a weak- 183 ling,” the chief had said yesterday. Well, he was right. Here he was, unable to stay oft “ white eye ” twelve hours without pull- ing a stunt like this. And a few months ago he hadn’t known what liquor tasted like. Had been afraid even to drink a champagne punch at the Fourth of July ball with Mrs. de Bran, until she pointed out that it was a breach of etiquette to refuse. As a traveler looks back over the road he has traversed, so Larry gazed back on his life of the last few months. What a soft, unsophisticated kid he had been when he first came! What a fool that woman must have thought him! Especially that afternoon in her garden when, responding to the deliberately seductive power of her beauty, he had strained her to him in a mad embrace. How she must have de- spised him when the vision of Lucille, as he had seen her last, suddenly turned his hot blood to ice. He could still feel the loath- ing for himself and for her which filled his soul as he released her. If Lucille—well, that was before he knew she had thrown him over. Couldn’t he ever keep her out of his thoughts? A good bracer was what he needed now. To h—l with trying to cut it out! Could that be his face staring at him from the mirror? Eyes like two burned holes in a blanket—cruel lines of dissipa- tion making him look as old as Methuselah. He walked into the cantina and dropped into a chair. There were no customers in the room. Joe was busy arranging glasses back of the bar while a mozo was sweeping out. “Good morning, Joe,” he said listlessly. “Hello, Larry,” gruffly responded the proprietor of the place without pausing to look up. “Bring me a white eye, muchacho!” Larry ordered. “ Un doble.” But when the drink was placed before him he found the odor nauseating. His physical being, saturated with liquor, re- belled, although his overwrought nerves de- manded a stimulus. He sat staring at the drink, when one of those derelicts of the white race which litter the tropics entered. Emaciated, of a sickly, purple color, shaking like one with GOMIGIOO S CO nn