The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, the Occult Detector, Volume 1: 1912 by J.U. Giesy & Junius B. Smith

Author:J.U. Giesy & Junius B. Smith [Giesy, J.U.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Altus Press
Published: 2014-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII.

“Colonel Mac’s” Reputation.

MORNING found us still speeding across the barren country, and we made Las Vegas without further incident, got the train for Goldfield, and in due time arrived at that place. I assisted Miss Sheldon in the change at Las Vegas, and we chatted together until we reached her home town.

A bluff and ruddy Englishman met me at the steps of the coach as I alighted, and introduced himself to me as John Curzon, Dual’s friend. To him I mentioned Miss Sheldon’s accident, and we saw her safely to a cab. She shook my hand at parting and urged me once more to call, and I promised to do so on the subsequent evening, after which Curzon and I returned to his waiting motor. He spun the crank and the engine exploded with a roar. We climbed in and were soon whirling away for his town house.

“I got Abdul’s message,” said Curzon, after we were running on the third speed. “He wired me to meet you on this train.”

“Whose message?” I inquired.

“Abdul’s— Oh, Dual’s,” said my acquaintance. He smiled at me in quizzical fashion. “Just how well do you know that chap?”

I explained that I had met Dual while working for my paper, and Curzon nodded his head. “He’s a funny old chap,” he remarked. “Not everybody knows his real name. You see his father was a high-caste Persian, and his mother a Russian princess, or something like that, I believe, but Abdul didn’t like his name. Said it attracted too much attention to his oriental blood, so he dropped the ‘b,’ shuffled the ‘a’ about a bit, and got Dual as a result.

“His first name, Semi, he took because, as he explained, he was only half Abdul anyway, his mother being of a different race, and there you’ve got the whole thing. I believe you have a letter for me? He mentioned that you would.”

I handed over Dual’s letter of introduction, and Curzon put it in his pocket without a glance.

“Any friend of Abdul’s is a friend of mine,” he declared. “Some years ago he made me rich. It was on his advice that I bought up the abandoned prospect, which is now our mine, and which has made us both independently well off. He insisted that it was a mine, and it was.

“He certainly has a wonderful brain, and he does a lot of things which I don’t pretend to understand. Still, I always feel that I owe him all I have. If it hadn’t been for him I suppose I’d still be wandering round with a burro and a bag of beans, as I was when he took me up. Now, Mr. Gordon, that we are introduced, I want you to consider yourself my guest. As Semi himself would say: ‘My house and all that is in it are yours.’ ”

I was expressing my thanks for such hospitality when we arrived at the Curzon place, and my host turned me over to a sort of Jap butler, who escorted me to my rooms.

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