The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

would be content to divide such profits evenly. Naturally I wanted to see what was behind his proposal, and a week must necessarily elapse before I could sail on my own business; so I came in with him.
    I came the more readily since I knew I really needed some amusement to take my mind off the absorbing problem into which I would presently plunge. It can hardly be hinted at in the present connection, but, if you remember that throne-shattering society, the Ko Lao Hui, the part it played in the Chinese revolution and the part it would have played had its monstrous leader, Koshinga, lived, then you’ll know what it meant when the word was passed to a few of us that Koshinga had not died. Or, rather, that a certain man had arisen in China who claimed to be Koshinga. China has been my hobby for years—and in face of this rumor I was chained to San Francisco for a week.
    But, to return, within twenty-four hours after meeting Osborne I took up my solitary residence in Cragcastle, which was the peculiar punishment, test or merely eccentric requirement imposed by the senior Maxon’s will upon his only son and heir. At ten o’clock of my first evening there Osborne’s warning of immediate danger had been substantiated. In answer to a knock, I had opened the door, and Hardridge had thrust his revolver against my chest.
    To his desire to punish before killing, to view my writhing soul as well as my writhing body, I probably owed my life. But I’d disappointed him in the first respect, and I felt he would soon seek the ultimate satisfaction.
    “You’re far from complimentary,” I said. “Crook, coward, traitor—well, maybe I’m all three. But you haven’t yet accused me of being a fool, and a fool I’d certainly be if I came and played with death in this house without seeing to my cards. And would a coward sit in such a game quite as calmly as I’m sitting unless he was sure he held the winning hand?”
    I could tell by the violence of his rejoinder that these two questions had been troubling him all along.
    “A cur like you—” he began.
    I didn’t feel like enduring any more; so I raised my right hand, that had never shifted from its first position on the table, a short three inches. The movement caught his attention, and his eyes shifted to the taut string that extended downward from my closed hand, and disappeared through a hole in the top of the table.
    AND the sentence he had begun died on his lips. It was interesting to note how, like a weakening shadow, uncertainty flitted over his face. There’s no threat so unnerving as a mystery.
    I smiled.
    “Puzzling, isn’t it? If I were to lower the top—so—and curve it—so—it forms a question-mark. Well, I’ll answer the question.” I pulled the string taut again and caught his eyes and held them. “The other end of the string—” I measured my words—“is tied to the trigger of an automatic. The muzzle is about two inches from your vest. You may feel of it if you like.
    “Oh,” I added swiftly as almost brainless rage flashed into his eyes, “you’d be willing to die killing me, of course. But you can’t; I’ve made sure of that. I can riddle you with bullets before you can get your revolver up, and the shock of the first one will destroy your aim. That’s right; sit still— There—” as his left hand stole under the edge of the table—“touch it lightly, for your health’s sake. You see. Now put your hand on the table again and shove your revolver across the table with your finger-tips, butt forward.
    “Don’t be foolish,” I said reasonably as he hesitated. “Don’t you understand I’m going to let you go and give you another chance for murder and myself another chance for entertainment?”
    “Don’t tell me that,” rasped Hardridge roughly but obeying me nevertheless. “What’s your game? Why don’t you end it?”
    Of course, I was playing the part of John Maxon, Jr., badly—that is, judging from Hardridge’s conception of