Petersburg High School - Missile Yearbook (Petersburg, VA)

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dier. It was owned by Juan Cortez, a Mexican half-breed who had .been a profiteer during the War Between the States- and had opened a small speakeasy on the waterfront. Now he was reputed to be the ringleader of several dope smuggling rings, ownereof various breweries and the great- est fence for stolen jewelry of anyone outside of Paris. It was to the Dead Soldier that Tony Sparta ordered a carriage. It was also to see Juan Cortez, as Tony knew that soon he would be a wealth- ier man than he was at the present. The carriage stopped before an apparently deserted alley, but never- theless the occupant of the carriage got out, paid the driver, turned, and walked into the gloomy darkness that enveloped the alley. After having walked about thirty paces he halted in front of a closed door and rapped several times. A small panel in the door snapped open, and, upon giving his name, Tony was instantly admitted. Striding through the vestibule he utterly ignored the hat check girl, and going into the ball-room he elbowed his way among the dancing couples to the farther side of the building. He again knocked on another door and was admitted as quickly as upon his entrance into the building. He entered the smoke-permeated room. Gathered around a desk perfectly bare but for a pair of iron book- ends were four big followers of Juan's laughing and talking. Juan was seated in the center of them, his features as set as if the skin on his face were made of marble. They say Juan had never smiled or registered any emotion on his face. As the gunmen became aware of Tony's presence they ceased to grin and hawhaw. Juan, said Tony, how about seeing you for awhile? O. K., answered Juan. Run along boysg I got business. The four henchmen filed out of the room into the dance hall. Following them out with his eyes, Tony waited until the door closed behind them before he addressed Juan. Juan, said Tony, I got something to sell you. O. K., drawled Juan. Flash it. Drawing from his hip pocket a cigar case, Tony opened it before Juan and removed a pack of ten cigars, held together by one band. Tony re- moved the band and holding the cigars in his hand over Juan's desk, he broke all ten cigars in half. From the middle of them there fell on the table an emerald that was nearly the size of a hen egg. Juan's eyes, in spite of years of beholding millions of dollars' worth of diamonds and other precious stones, blinked in response to the stabs of green light that the emerald reflected in them. Page eighteen THE MISSILE

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gleam of the green gem. He cast them about the room and for the first time was aware that only the guard and he were in the room. Ostensibly pleased, he approached the guard as if to speak to him. The guard halted, ready to answer any question that the man might hap- pen to ask him. Ah, sighed the visitor, beautiful-just like a gargantuan ca.t's eye,-oh, I say, I should like to take a few notes. He reached into his pocket and extracted a small black notebook. As he did so the guard tightened his hold on his riiie, but seeing only a writ- ing pad, he momentarily relaxed his vigilance. . And my pen, said the man in white, taking one slowly from his coat pocket. Holding it in his hand so that the end of the pen pointed toward the guard, he made a deft movement with his fingers on the lip of the pen. From the end of the pen shot a spray of nitric acid, hitting the guard full in the face. The surprised guard, dropping his gun from his grasp, stiifled his own cries by attempting to relieve the agonizing pain by in- stinctively throwing his hands over his face and mouth. The stranger, drawing back his fist, swung forward with all his weight, knocking the already half-insensible guard to the fioor, letting him lie there, the nitric acid slowly disfiguring his features. Now en- tirely unconscious from the last assault of his assailant, the guard was forgotten as the invader sprang nimbly toward the idol. Experienced hands, whose controlling body stood on the folded arms of the idol, dex- terously removed the verdant gem from its setting. Putting the stolen treasure into his pocket he leaped from the arms to the crossed legs and then to the fioor, and from there he sped to the door and stopped. Immediately resuming his pace, he walked out into the front yard of the temple, going even more slowly than before he had entered it. The stranger retraced his steps down the labyrinthian street, disap- pearing somewhere into the maze of squalid houses. Behind him- thousands of miles behind him-he left an idol, a bleak, bare, sombre idol whose only attraction was a forehead in which was a hole, that, the natives say, once held an oriental emerald, whose value was worth a king's ransom. II. NEW Yom: - isss Among the numerous gambling-dens and saloons in the Bowery, one particularly was noted for being a little better class than the average. Possibly it was because it was a well-concealed concern, possibly because smaller odds were required on the roulette wheels. This place was known throughout the underworld as the Dead Sol- THE MISSILE Page seventeen

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How much? inquired Juan as he quickly resumed his sphinx-like appearance. Eight hundred thousand, Tony replied immediately. Five hundred thousand, said Juan, after a moment of contempla- tion. It will be a lot of trouble for me to get rid of that. I'l1 take it, answered Tony-Know. Juan arose from his swivel chair and walked over to the wall that was without ornaments of any kind. Pressed at a certain spot, the wall yielded to Juan's touch. Behind the panel in the wall there ap- peared a safe, securely riveted to the beams in the wall. After several turns the safe opened and Juan thrust his hand into it. Withdrawing it, he lay on the desk a large pack of thousand dollar bills. Leaning over them he began counting and putting them into a separate pile. Tony's crafty gaze shifted from object to object in the room and finally came to rest on the bookends at the end of the desk. Slowly he edged his hand toward them. Juan was still counting- one hundred and eighty-eight, one hundred and eighty-nine. Tony grasped the iron book- end in his hand and, raising it above his head, brought it down with a sick- ening thud on the base of Juan's skull. Juan slid to the floor without uttering a sound. Tony scooped the money up into a pile, put the emerald into his pocket with the money, rifled the open safe, and walked quickly to the window on the opposite side of the room. He raised it noiselessly, and putting his legs through the window, he dropped some ten or fifteen feet to the ground below. Some distance above the ground, through an open window, lace cur- tains waved farewell to scurrying footsteps that died away into the en- folding gloom. III. SAN FRANCISCO - 1934 Mr. Samuel Terry, millionaire curio collector, sat at his breakfast table, having almost finished his repast. Before him rested the morning paper. The sheets were turned so that he could easily read the advertise- ments without constantly leafing the pages. Terry was growing old: his hair was grey, not only from age, but from years of needless responsibility. In his declining age he had turned from the continual worry of amassing a fortune to the humble hobby of collecting curios from all parts of the world. Perusing the paper his eyes ran from one advertisement to the other. seeking some item of interest or some new shop he could visit to add more THE MISSILE Page nineteen