Argosy, Vol. 85, No. 3 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

364 THE rather cluttered just now with hunting paraphernalia. This was the season when, of late years, Fernandez had been taking to the mountains for a week in quest of some of the reasonably big game to be found there. A high-powered rifle-barrel lay across his desk, and he smiled at them over it. “Ah, Edward? said. ‘Not yet, I believe. He hadn’t come to kiss me good night when I left,’”’ Hem- mett said rather lazily. ‘‘ That’s the thirty gun, isn’t it?” “That is the thirty, Edward—the one Pedro almost ruined last year. Look through her now.” He offered the rifle-barrel, and Hem- mett held it to the light and squinted through. ‘““Rebored, eh? Nice, clean job, too,” he said. ‘I didn’t know you’d sent it.” ‘This afternoon,” smiled Fernandez. ‘“That’s when it came back, eh? It takes a good while—a job like that. _It can’t be done outside the good old State of Connecticut.” “TI sent it this afternoon, and it came back this afternoon,”’ Fernandez corrected amazingly. | “That wasn’t rebored in Guanama?”’ ‘“ But of a certainty, Edward! Is that so astonishing? We have a gunsmith in town now, Pedro tells me. A nice job— a very nice job!” He patted the barrel, which was well, for he could not see the color flowing from Hemmett’s cheeks during that minute which followed. Girton was doing some staring of his own, too—and now, with a jerk, Hemmett was himself again, and, however brief the call, he was moving toward the door! The boy in bed?” he “Well, I just dropped in to see if- Carmen had left that second volume of ‘ Jean Christophe’ over here,’ he said in a slightly strained voice, ‘and I remember now that it’s on my desk. You're not starting to-morrow?” “The day after, Edward. Will you not sit and smoke?” ARGOSY. “Not now, thanks. There’s—er— something in that book I want to show Steve. Good night.” Not to the entrance of the house, but straight down the corridor to the rear, he led Steve Girton; and there he clutched his arm and all but hissed: “ Did you get it?” “You think the job was done in a regulation gun factory?” “Tt couldn’t have been done anywhere else in the world, Steve! We've got a secret gun factory in Puerto Carlo, and a dandy! And yet, ostensibly, you can hardly have a hammer repaired in this town—and this is no crazy secret fac- tory of the Guanaman_ government, either, because we don’t need one. We have nineteen thousand more rifles than we have men, and— Here, you! Is Pedro in the house?” The dark-skinned native maid bobbed her head and hurried off. Mr. Hem- mett, with another of this evening’s efforts, straightened up and shed some of his outward excitement; he had all but accomplished his lazy smile when the dapper little native servant appeared. “That gun of Senor Fernandez, Pedro!”” Hemmett said. ‘ Where did you have it fixed? I’ve got one that I want rebored.”’ “The gun, senor? But yes!” came in liquid Spanish. ‘I took it to my cousin, Agustin Zaro, senor, who labors in the National Engine Works. He it was who did the work.” . “In the—National Engine Works?” Hemmett demanded. - ‘Yes, senor, but—as to the other, the gun of yourself, senor, I do not know. There was trouble of a sort about this one, I think. I gave no heed to the mouthings of Agustin, for he has ever been a silly fellow, senor, but there was trouble about his having done the work. Still—I will inquire, sefor. For a dollar or two, perhaps, it can be accomplished.” “Well, don’t—don’t bother if it is likely to make trouble for your cousin,” Hemmett answered in a husky voice that comicloool C©