Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 25, 1924 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

100. overpowering, upon finding himself dragged by Wing into this ghost-haunted, musty tomb of a house, that he had staggered, shuddering and spineless, groping frantical- ly for support. His shaking hands found the comforting folds of a great hanging arras. When the pirate figure appeared on the staircase beyond the banquet hall, Dorset, terrified at again meeting that swamp-devil who had disarmed him, drew the folds of the arras about him. He remained there, innocuous and hysterical. But, for all that, he was a force with which Cameron had soon to reckon. CHAPTER XX. A FATAL MISCHANCE, cCORKLE was troubled. He was aghast. He was helpless. In many past brawls he had always found that the situation of one man holding up a gang was an almost impossible feat. It was rarely successful, and then only when most of those held up were unarmed. In this case Wing and Parson and McCorkle himself were armed. Under ordinary cir- cumstances McCorkle would probably have laughed at his assailant and thrown a bottle at his head. But these were not ordinary circum- stances in any sense of the word. McCorkle himself was nonplused—thor- oughly paralyzed. His vision had been slightly affected by the strong potion with which he had been drinking the chatelaine’s health. His wits had been numbed. He had been brooding upon the weird influence ex- ercised upon the imagination of all in the household by those inanimate but strangely realistic personages on the walls. They had been emerging out of the depths of their black canvas more and more lifelike with each quaff from his goblet. One, in fact, had irritated him to such an extent with that uncannily natural grim- ace, that he had flung his bowie knife into its cheekbone! And now behold, while this illusion momentarily increased its grip upon him, he looked up to the staircase— ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the shadows of which were as black as the background of those portraits. There, framed in the ant-eaten mahogany of the doorway, he saw a pirate figure—clothed in the garb of those ancient times, appar- ently ready to walk out of his frame—mov- ing—speaking! And he heard the abrupt command to lift his hands. Taken by surprise and in this state of mind, McCorkle was resigned for the first time in his career, to the ignominious situa- tion of one man holding up his gang. The others—Wing and Parson-—cast a glance immediately towards their master, expecting as usual some gesture or com- mand from their chief which would solve the problem. Ordinarily their chief was resourceful in the extreme, even when in- toxicated. Their raids in the past had in- variably culminated in an orgy of drunken- ness and bloodshed, but the one man who could always be relied upon—so Wing and Parson recalled—was their leader, Mc- Corkle. Now, for the first time, they ob- served at a glance, he was thoroughly frightened. Naturally enough they fol- lowed his lead and went to pieces. The slight dash of negro blood in Parson re- sponded to the dreadful suggestiveness of shadows, of strange figures, of a house famed as an abode of the devil, of a tall woman with a ghastly yellow face, of a sev- enteenth century buccaneer incarnated, and of an aged black man who was a voodoo doctor. : These were Cameron’s adversaries—and a pitiable spectacle they made as he looked down upon them from the landing of that staircase. He would have found it hard to fire upon them in any event; they were so utterly broken down in body and spirit. You can’t in cold blood shoot down a man who is whimpering before you—any more than it is possible to strike a man who is drunk. The task before Cameron was absurdly easy. But yet there was that ticklish little matter of getting their guns. His eye fell upon Quintilian, kneeling, swaying back and forth, rolling his head, mumbling prayers. Cameron whistled to him. ‘“ Get up on your feet and disarm these men.” COnmicloool< (C@