Adventure Tales, Volume 4

by Seabury Quinn

  But the shouts from the court gave the lords no choice.

  Then they saw who preceded Timur: a bearded man in the ragged robe of a darvish; a man who protested, a man who, though handled with re­spect, was being hustled into the hall, and toward the vacant high place.

  At the foot of the dais, Timur halt­ed with his bare­footed companion. He raised his hand and the shout­ing ceased.

  “O Men! In the days of your grandfathers, Kaza­gan Khan the Turk could have taken the throne of Samarkand but this he did not do; instead, he set up one of the blood of Genghis Khan, the Master of All Mankind, and used all his force to maintain one whom no one would deny or envy!

  “Here is the darvish, here is the Guest of Allah, here is Kaboul Shah Aglen, directly descended from Gen­ghis Khan’s son Jagatai! Here is one who cares so little for power that he turns his back on thrones, and con­templates the splendor of Allah! Here is one with wisdom, not pride.

  “Where we have each been kings, there has been no strength, and from too much freedom, we had an invader on our necks! So let this man be Grand Khan, for there is not one of us too proud to serve him!”

  The shouting drowned the protests of the darvish. He could not deny his duty. They put an embroidered khalat over his ragged gown; they made him ascend the dais, and each prince in turn bowed nine times before him, as the ancient custom prescribed.

  And when the banquet ended, the following noon, Timur Bek went to his own house, where Olajai waited.

  “So you gave away a throne? After the Presence that came to you on the hill at Kivak?”

  Timur was a little drunk, and he was tired, and he was hoarse from song and shouting. “He is the ninth generation, and all things go in nines with the race of Genghis Khan. Your brother and the others would soon turn against me—yet I can hold them together, serving him. And we won’t have too many kings.”

  She looked up, smiling; her disap­pointment was gone. “The Presence will return to you, Timur.” Then, just in the interests of discipline: “Allah, but you’ve slopped wine all over your­self, you’re an aw­ful looking mess for a King-Maker, you’re as bad as my grandfather. You’re ready to fall on your face!”

  BLIND MAN’S BLUFF, by Edwin Baird

  There be many kinds of critics—as many kinds, or nearly, as there are things to criticize.

  To cite but a few, there is the sappy critic, the snappy critic, the youthful or cynical critic, the near or would-be critic, the critic who thinks witticism is criticism, the critic who thinks irascibility is original­ity, the critic who thinks a dysthetic body is an esthetic mind, and the intuitive critic. And the best of these, I sometimes hold, is the intuitive critic.

  By intuitive critic, I mean the critic who bases judgment not upon dry and hackneyed laws and tenets, nor upon friendship, nor upon enmity, but upon instinct, and in­stinct only. Such a critic—

  But this is to be no dissertation on critics.

  This is to be the story of the Kentucky Chicken Farm, the Girl with the Beautiful Brown Eyes, and the Desperate Young Artist.

  I am—or was—the Desperate Young Artist.

  Ask me not wherefore. I don’t know, I’m sure. It wasn’t my enemies; it may have been my friends; and I’ve often had a sneaking suspicion that my family was to blame. But I’m not sure.

  At the sapient age of five or thereabouts I had an overwhelming ambition to be a brakeman on a freight-train; this quickly passed, and was followed by an intense long­ing to wear a bearskin cap and a red coat and twirl a baton thirty feet in the air at the head of a brass band.

  At the age of fifteen I began to consider the advantages of being President. After exhaustive cogitation, I decided the pay did not merit the worry, and gave up thinking about it.

  Then came the Great Passion.

  I began to dabble in, with, and around art.

  I believe I immortalized everything in the town, from the bantam rooster in our back yard to the pickle barrel in front of Jimson’s Racket Store.

  I decorated the front sitting room with my paintings, and friends of the family came and admired, and predicted great things for me, and I began to let my hair grow long and my trousers grow baggy—no true artist ever creases his trousers, of course—and affected flowing neckties, a vel­veteen jacket, and a hungry expression.

  When I had begged, borrowed, earned, saved, and otherwise accumulated money enough, I took an art course in a corre­spondence school; and when I received my diploma, all nice and new in a pasteboard tube, I blacked my boots, donned my flowingest tie, packed an amplitudinous tele­scope, and with many tearful farewells and golden plaudits, accompanied by the whi­ning of the family dog and the purring of the household cat, I left my dear old home in sunny Tennessee (a little quivering mu­sic, if you please, professor) and started out alone and unafraid to battle and conquer the cold, heartless world.

  Let me say to you that when I boarded the train that morning for Chicago, Illinois, I was just as positive that some day the name of Jefferson Davis Mayfair would be as famous as the latest brand of chewing gum as I was that Jefferson Davis Mayfair was my name. There was never even a shadow of a mite of a scrap of a scintilla of a doubt about that.

  Some persons have an idea that Chicago is a bad town for poets and painters and such. All a mistake.

  Why, I could take you around Chicago tomorrow and point out to you any num­ber of wielders of the brush who earn good wages embellishing West Madison Street with puffy jowled gents smoking five-cent cigars, or riders of Pegasus who fare equal­ly well inditing triolets and roundelays to the meaty merits of Packingtown products. But, unfortunately, my ideals emphatically forbade this. I could not thus com­mercialize my art. In consequence, I would certainly have starved to death or gone to work had it not been for sundry letters from home containing words of good cheer and postal money-orders. I must ad­mit that art flourished not well with me.

  Shortly after my arrival in Chicago I rented a studio in the Parthenon Apartments on the North Side. There were many things I liked about the Parthenon, chief among them being its Bohemian atmosphere—whatever that is. There was no mis­taking the atmosphere, however; it fairly reeked of garlic and turpentine and cheap, plug-cut tobacco.

  Next to winning fame with my brush, palette, and tubes, I most desired a Bohemian atmosphere. I had often read of it in magazines, and heard of it from certain Tennesseans who had journeyed afar and seen strange things, and to at last be actu­ally in it and of it was like having a dream come true.

  On the other hand, there were annoying features about the Parthenon.

  One was a hatefully ambitious pianist who lived and practiced directly opposite my studio window; nothing separated us but a ten-foot air-shaft, and into my ears was hammered at all hours sounds weird and harsh.

  Another was the landlord’s agent, who had an extremely unpleasant habit of demanding rent promptly when it was due. Both were bad.

  Sometimes I would be soaring aloft on the wings of an inspiration, when—tap, tap, tap—and the agent’s collector would be waiting without.

  Anon, I would be moiling and sweating over my masterpiece, when—crash, bang! —and that terrible pianist would let fly his wildest.

  I remember one dark, drizzling day in May.

  I was in my studio, gazing ruefully at a painting I had expected to sell and hadn’t, and fingering a lonesome piece of silver I thought was a quarter and wasn’t, when came a tapping at my door, I knew it. It was the rent man’s. I could always dis­tinguish his odiously gentle tapping from other people’s knocking.

  Simultaneously with this dread tap, the frenzied pianist broke forth in all his fury.

  Now, truly, this was piling Ossa on Pelion, and Lookout Mountain on top of both.

  I got rid of the collector by jerking my hand from my pocket, showing him my— merciful Heavens! It was a nickel!—­swearing it was all I had, making many earnest promises, shoving him out, and closing the door upon him. But the bombilation across the way abat
ed not a semi­quaver.

  I could stand no more. Seizing my hat, and sheltering the iniquitous nickel in a forgiving palm, I went for walk and some bananas. I had long since discovered the wonderful nutritive value of bananas, and that a small quantity was amazingly satis­fying I knew full well.

  I paced off two miles of lake front, bought the bananas on the return trip, and headed for a public square near the Par­thenon to make a meal of them.

  Now, in this particular square there were just two benches, one at either end. Enter­ing, I noticed that one was amply occupied by three nonworking-men, the other being vacant.

  As I approached the vacant one I descried a girl, well-dressed, apparently good-look­ing, and also carrying a paper bag, an equal distance the other side of it and walking toward me. We reached our goal simultaneously. She stopped. I stopped. The bench was very short. She sat down. I sat down. The bench was very short.

  I stood up foolishly and unnecessarily begged her pardon. And then she looked up, and I saw her eyes. They were truly the most beautiful eyes I had, or have, ever beheld.

  Brown, they were, and tender; as tender and brown as—as—being hungry at the moment, I could think of no comparison save a piece of old Aunt Mehitiba’s deli­cious fried chicken, than which nothing was ever a more gloriously golden-brown.

  A minute she appraised me; then, evidently satisfied I was not one of those city pests known as male flirts, she turned im­personally away, and with queenly dignity granted me a place beside her. Instantly I thanked her and sat down. A minute passed. I wondered would it offend her should I speak to her again. I considered offering her a banana. I always prefer conviviality to solitude when dining. At length I uncovered my dinner and spread it before her.

  “Won’t you take one?” I begged, appre­ciating the while how exquisitely her tawny mass of hair set off the milky whiteness of her skin, “The Greeks particularly recommended them.”

  She turned slowly round, glanced at the proffered fruit, then at me. Then she smiled.

  “Why, yes, thank you,” she replied pleasantly, “if you will have one of my cakes.” I thought I detected in her voice the soft, lazy drawl of the Southern bred.

  She opened the paper bag she had been holding tightly and held it toward me. It contained a half dozen or so tiny coconut-frosted cakes. I took one. Conversation languished—collapsed, in fact. Of course, the next logical subject should have been a comment on the state of the weather; but I would molest no topic so universally abused and outraged. Wherefore I munched my meal in silence until inspiration came.

  “Nice cakes,” said I.

  “Yes,” said she, holding out the bag.

  “Thank you, I will,” said I, suiting action to acceptance. “They go well with bananas,” I pursued. “Like ham with eggs, or butter with biscuits, or—take an­other one, please—a banana, I mean.”

  “They do affiliate nicely,” she agreed, ac­cepting the invitation. “Still,” she amended whimsically, “the amalgamation is not quite so satisfying as certain others I might mention.”

  “’Tis not,” I smiled with a valiant charge at jocosity, “so wide as a porter­house steak, nor yet so deep as a bowl of vegetable soup, but ‘twill serve,” said I, “in a pinch.”

  Her hand paused on its way to the cake bag. She looked at me steadily, her eyes winking rapidly; and when I saw her lip tremble also, I had the absurd notion that she was about to cry. Plainly my waggishness had fallen flat.

  “Oh!” she gasped, closing the bag quickly and gripping it tightly, “oh, how can you jest about such things!”

  I looked at her sharply. A sudden and awful suspicion dawned upon me. I knew several girls who labored for art’s sake, and little else, in the Parthenon. I knew what life meant to young girls in a big city.

  “Tell me,” I demanded imperatively, “have you eaten any dinner today?”

  Her face crimsoned. Then daintily tucking a wisp of hair back into place, she turned upon me with a bravely assumed bravado and laughed, I fancied the laugh rang counterfeit. There seemed no mirth be­hind it.

  “Dinner!” she echoed derisively and laughed again. “Why, I’ve had no lunch yet—no, nor breakfast, either!”

  Then, with a sudden blaze of defiance: “Now is your curiosity satisfied? You’ve made me tell you something I wouldn’t have had my dearest friend know. I’m hungry, actually hungry! I suppose it’s because you’re a stranger,” she went on in a musing tone, “and as I never expect to see you again it doesn’t matter much. Will you leave me now, please? I would rather be alone. If you attempt to lend me money I shall scream for a policeman. Here, take your bananas and go.”

  Before she finished speaking I had stood up and placed the last of the bananas in her lap.

  “Don’t you dare move an inch,” I com­manded, “until I come back. I won’t be fifteen minutes, and when I return you and I’ll go have a big meal some place. I’ll get references and a chaperone, if you insist upon ’em,” I called back as I turned and hurried off,

  I dashed into my studio, took in the semi-bare room with distracted look and sinking heart. It was nearly a month since I had heard from home, and almost everything pawnable was gone. My eye fell upon a suit of armor standing majestically in a corner. There was no time for second thoughts. I hastily took it to pieces and, without bothering to wrap it up, staggered down the stairs with it, and around the cor­ner to a neighborly pawnbroker.

  “How much?” I demanded of the sleek Hebrew.

  “Three dollar.”

  “Well, hurry it along.”

  The armor had cost me thirty a month before.

  With the three dollars in my pocket, I made a Chicagoese sprint for the square. Half a block away I saw the girl was gone. The bench was empty. Was I keenly disappointed and chagrined? Yes.

  Drawing nearer, I perceived something pinned to the back of the bench. It was the paper bag the cakes had come in, and on it was written these words:

  .

  I have gone to dinner with a friend, who came by shortly after you left. Thank you very much just the same for your kindness.

  .

  Such good news should have pleased me, you say? Well, it didn’t. Quite the contrary. I could think only of my precious armor pawned for this—a few scribbled words on a scrap of paper.

  Then to my disgust I found myself won­dering if her friend were a man, wondering if she cared for him, wondering—

  “Pish!” I exclaimed, and tore up the paper and started for Giacomo’s thirty-five-cent table d’hôte, an unpretentious place much frequented by Bohemians of strong digestions and weak pocketbooks.

  But when almost there a reckless im­pulse laid violent hands on me. It was not often I was attacked by reckless impulses, and when one did grab me I generally succumbed without a struggle.

  Therefore, I walked straight past Giacomo’s with­out so much as a side glance, and marched on up the avenue to where thrived a big, glittering, gold-and-white cafe in which one might purchase a rather decent meal, with salted almonds and inky coffee, for a couple of dollars or three.

  I entered boldly, handed the not neces­sarily obsequious waiter my hat as though I intended to give him a three-dollar tip later on, sat down, and perused the menu with just the proper suggestion of a slight scowl.

  When the servitor came with napkin and iced water I sat back in my chair and glanced around the dining room, and in doing so I looked straight into the soft, dark eyes of the—yes, it was none other. She sat facing me, a few tables away.

  Opposite her sat a man in evening clothes, who, judging from a rear view of him, must have been between twenty and sixty and inclined to shortness and rotund­ity of figure. His clean red neck over-puckered his low white collar in little fat folds, he had no ears to speak of, and I was reminded of a superb and well-scrubbed prize pig.

  I bowed to her as pleasantly as I knew how, again admired her eyes, and ordered some fried chicken.

  Now, according to all erotic tradition from t
he time of Adam and Eve to the Gould family, I should have had dreams that night.

  I broke no traditions. I had the dreams.

  As I remember them, they formed a sort of weird, medieval melodrama, the princi­pal characters being a beautiful girl with startled brown eyes, whose role was to flee in terror; a monstrous ogre with fat creases on his neck, whose part was to pursue the girl; and myself, clad in a suit of mail and armed with a pawnbroker’s ticket and a bag of bananas, whose role was to defy the ogre. Like all dreams, it had a peculiar ending.

  The girl turned into a paintbrush, the ogre into an envelope, and I was rubbing my eyes and yawning at the paintbrush, which lay on the floor, and at the envelope, which lay just beyond it where the postman had pushed it under the door.

  It was an expected remittance from home. After breakfast I redeemed the armor and divers other articles, worked on my master­piece till afternoon, then went to the square.

  An hour or more I sat there, quite alone, until a fat, blear-eyed person in tattered habiliments, whose breath awoke memories of a slumming trip I once made to Hinky Dink’s barroom, settled himself be­side me, begged a match, and after a few general remarks, begged a dime.

  I gave it to him and left in disgust. He reminded me of last night’s ogre.

  I felt vaguely dissatisfied as I walked back to my studio, though I hardly know why. Surely I shouldn’t have been so net­tled because a tramp chose to sit beside me.

  Everything seemed to get out of joint that day. Outside the door I found the rent collector, and inside three overdue bills. Later I discovered my best velveteen jacket had been gnawed by rats. I cast it aside and sat down at my easel to snatch the dying moments of light. I had scarcely put brush to canvas when the frenzied pianist broke loose.

  Came a familiar knock at the door.

  I put aside my palette, heaved a sigh of resignation, and said, “Come in, Bliffins,” in a voice Patient Griselda would have thrilled to hear. Bliffins entered.

  Bliffins had a very small room on the top floor, and wrote plays and novels and maga­zine poetry, and lived mostly on cheese and beans, and had his walls papered with the most interesting collection of rejection-slips I have ever encountered.