George Warburton Lewis

“ So once again the wily adventuress had tricked poor Henry Fayne. It had been a close thing, but her lightning wits had saved her to look forward enchantedly to the prospect of other adventures. Though she had, in fact, tired of life, she had weakened before death; yet the fortitude of skillful artifice underlying that physical fear bespoke such a resourcefulness as I had never before seen in any woman.
She had spoken more truth than she knew when she said that Henry Fayne was dead, for, mentally, he no longer existed.
But Leanor had one more card to play. ”

“ And then, too, there was the celebrated Devil's Channel, which, according to widely circulated and much-believed stories, sucked small craft down into its omnivorous maw like some insatiable demon lying in wait.
Leanor devoted but little time to the prodigious engineering feat. After all, it was man-made, and what was man if not a purveyor to feminine caprices? Mere men were cheap. The adventuress knew, because she had bought and sold many of them. ”

“ He recalled that the last victim of Olga's brother, mutilated, headless and repellant, had been found in this same neighborhood, if not in this same house.
"Please—please forgive me," the strange girl was pleading. "You see, I forgot that you are not like—like Brandon. For him there is no forgiveness. He must perish. But we—you and I—why must we be enemies?"
"There's but one reason, Olga," replied Seagraves seriously, "and that is a strong one. It is simply the nature of our respective callings." ”

“ Sisson snatched up the trailing oars and put his giant's strength against the invisible something that seemed dragging us by the keel, but all he did was to plough two futile furrows in the strange whirlpool. Our capuco glided on.
The blasé adventuress was never more beautiful. For the time, at least, life, warm and pulsating, had come back and clasped her in a joyous embrace. ”

“ Olga like her brother, was a staunch exponent of the Terrorist doctrine.
What Brandon expected soon came to pass. The strange girl, whom men called beautiful and women envied, was promptly elected to her brother's place in what was known in the underworld of unlawful secret orders as the "League." In this way she immediately crossed swords with the man who had ended the career of her brother Paul, and ere long she became aware, through members of the League detailed as spies, that still another noted criminologist, Joe Seagraves, was unpleasantly hot on her trail. ”

“ The mask of allurement had fallen from the forbidding face of the artificial and empty. Life itself had become for Leanor a vacant and meaningless thing. She had seen too much of it in too brief a space. ”

“ Like most of his ilk, the Terrorist in physical combat was a hard man, and he really fought a great fight, but he fought it with a master craftsman in the conquering of such as he, and inevitably he lost, with many of Larry Brandon's bullets in his great body and only life enough left in him to greet—and almost at once to take final leave of—his favorite sister, Olga, who had arrived in Europe, a little late as it transpired, to join her brother in his sinister calling. ”

“ Leanor's pretty face was radiant with expectation. Though bored of the world, there was at least one more thrill for her ahead.
Five minutes slipped by. Sisson rowed on steadily.
"There she is!" the boatman said suddenly, for the first time evincing something like a normal human interest in life. One of his huge, hairy hands was indicating an alkali spot on the face of the right-hand wall a stone's throw ahead. "Just opposite that white spot is where it always happens." ”

“ Seagraves noted casually that, besides themselves, their car boasted but two other passengers, and though they might have been snugly asleep in their respective berths, they had apparently elected to sit out the short run, evidently preferring reclining to rising and dressing at 1:30 or 2 o'clock A. M.
"Do you see the man sitting all alone in the last seat with the handkerchief over his face, to keep the light out of his eyes?" Olga's ruminant voice finally broke in upon the monotonous clackety-clack of wheels upon rail-joints. ”

“ Leanor also wanted to know.
"True enough," said Sisson, "but that's not unnatural. Drowning men lay hold of whatever they can and never, never turn loose. Why, I've seen the clawlike fingers of skeletons locked around sticks that wouldn't beat up a cockroach!"
"Did you say it was a relatively calm day?" I questioned the boatman idly.
"Sure. Calm as it is right now," he answered.
I observed casually that the oarsman was gazing fixedly at Leanor. Even on him, perhaps, beauty was not entirely lost. Doubtless, too, he hid heard the gossip her arrival had set going along the wharves at Batoga. ”

“ That the spurious boatman was a victim of some hopeless form of insanity I was certain when I saw him drop to his knees and extend both his great hands in evident entreaty to the woman who had stripped him of his honor and, driven him, a driveling idio-maniac, into exile. Leanor sat impassive, but the madman continued to supplicate. ”

“ I said evenly.
"By whom are you employed?" she questioned tentatively.
"By Henry Fayne," I casually replied.
"That is the lie of an impostor," quickly asserted the woman; "Henry Fayne is dead."
She rose from the stone shelf and prepared to desert me. Anyhow, I had won my point. I had succeeded in annoying her.
But I concluded I could hardly let the matter so end, even as affecting a woman like Leanor. Nobody can afford to be openly rude.
"Wait," I said; "let's be good sportsmen. You tilted at me and I retaliated. Honors are even. Why not forget it?" ”

“ Brandon warned Seagraves, when they were ready to start back with their prisoner. "I'll never consent to any Pullman for her, even though we ignore the law and handcuff her to the seat. One of us is going to have to keep his eyes on her constantly." ”

“ AT THE narrow gateway of Devil's Channel the water is so shallow, and there so frequently occur tiny submerged sand-bars, that only the minutest of sea craft can skim over the gleaming rifts and gain entrance. This was confirmed for the nth time when I felt the specially made keel of our tiny cayuco scrape the shiny sand in warning that we were at last entering the canyon-like waterway.
Leanor and I were both plying our splendid oarsman with well-nigh every imaginable question about the gloomy, spooky-looking channel before us.
"Aren't we nearing the place yet?" Leanor presently asked. ”

“ The boat had circled swiftly in to the center of the vortex and now spun crazily for a moment as though on a fixed pivot, like a weather-vane. Then it capriciously resumed its first tactics, only it now raced inversely in a rapidly widening circle, running well down in the water, as though from some powerful submarine attraction. ”

“ Among the many treasures which they found in the tomb were royal robes, embroidered with precious stones, the state throne of King Tutankhamen, portraits of the king and queen, incrusted with turquoises, lapsis lazulli and other gems, two life-sized golden statues of the king, with gold scepter and mace, and four gem-studded chariots. ”

“ Back at Batoga that same night, in an obscure corner of the wide cool porch of the palm-environed sanitarium, Henry Fayne and Leanor, after a long heart-to-heart talk alone, agreed to forgive and forget. Later in the evening Fayne went down to the contiguous village to assemble his meager belongings. They would be interesting souvenirs with which to decorate the walls of the rehabilitated home. I found Leanor sitting where he had left her on the porch, smiling enigmatically.
"Can I act, or not?" ”

“ Having thus counseled the prisoner, Seagraves was thoughtful for a long space; then he looked over at Olga, saw an odd, uneasy expression on her pretty face and quickly said:
"Here—have another cigarette, Olga. Burn 'em up!"
At midnight the conductor passed through the car.
"We'll make the city a little before two o’clock," he said in answer to a sleepy-voiced interrogation from Brandon, who seemed to have banished sleep and was blinking about the car.
"What—we all alone?" he asked Seagraves. Then he caught sight of the two lonely passengers at the far end of the car. "No ”

“ A Gripping, Powerful Story by a Man Who
Always Tells a Good Tale
The Blade of Vengeance
By George Warburton Lewis
THE OUTCOME was all the more regrettable because Henry Fayne had staked so much on the success of his great venture. He had renounced innumerable bachelor friendships for Leanor, only to discover within a year of the celebrated social event, which had been their wedding, that he was linked for life to a captivating adventuress. ”