YELLOW MEN SLEEP

"Yellow Men Sleep" describes the adventures of a Secret Service agent who travels to the Gobi Desert in search for a mysterious drug that is being imported to America and discovers an ancient civilization.

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An excerpt from the beginning of:


CHAPTER I

THE WAIF

THERE was a quiet urge in her veins that took her to John Levington. It was a gray-feathered night in spring, and she refused to turn back. John held her hands in his, and could not accept as real the great beauty of the world. He had been writing verses as usual when she came to his door, and the gentle lines were as always of her, his Mary, his unattainable. Now the flame that he loved shone forth in her. She threaded her destiny with his. In the dim, dusty hallway outside his door he found her arms about his neck, and that springtide evening flowered in their kiss.

Mary would not go back. Her family, the proper Martins, had estranged her when they refused to receive the man of her choice. The fact that his verse had once appeared in print served only to whet their disapproval. He could not make three hundred a year that way. They would have no more of him, and no further talk. A shining new and silent electric had been brought to the porte-cochere, and long-desired pearls appeared on her dressing-table. These gifts and their bald object won only a storm from Mary. When she had locked her mother from the room, and had lain upon the floor to think and resent, the spring twilight had found her, had touched her cheek and raised her from the rug. It whispered to her, and caused again the familiar tumult in her heart. John, her poet! Twilight pressed the barb of desire in her flesh; her thoughts were bitter-sweet. She admitted to herself that it was not his writing she wanted, for he might not be a great poet. She forgot his delicate praise of her eyes, her light-brown hair, her young limbs. All of that might fade some day. She loved him most for their moments of silence. So, while the last robin of the day caroled outside her window, and the soft dusk sank upon the trees and lawn, she obeyed her own heart, and went to him.

" I will work," he said, when they went gaily down the stairs of the rooming-house.

" You will write, John," she said.

"Yes, and work with my hands, too, for wages. I can make a song of it."

" Where shall we go now?” she asked.

Before another sunset they had forgotten the name of the sallow minister who had sanctioned their joy.

They went to a small Michigan town. John worked in a stove factory, and came home each night with grimy face and bruised hands, to a small house that was lit with happiness. Mary was in a shining dream. The world was a place of beauty and tenderness and passion. John's day-labor was something to laugh at. He was strong, and his bench-mates never suspected him of writing poetry. With his beloved he would go down-town on the summer evenings, carrying a basket, to buy groceries. They found delight in simple things in this small Dowagiac, Michigan. Their cottage was radiant with cleanliness. John grew more robust from his work. His pale-blue eyes shone with a light from within. He took lightly the mistakes that often cost him a day's wages. There was enough. To him the universe was overflowing with sunlight.

The police came, but went away, smiling and powerless. Then the old butler from Mary's house came, and they kept him overnight, until he forgot his errand of malice, and found himself gripping the hand of John Levington when they parted. The butler lost his position, and later Mary's father came. Her mother, also, but the mother remained in the railway station, refusing to set eyes upon the cottage. It would be enough to ride back to the city with her silly daughter. Mr. Martin had stern though kindly words for his girl, and would not consent to remain to dinner, when John would be home. Mary bade him an affectionate good-by. Two silent parents returned to their mansion alone, and their eyes were blurred.

Mary's days were keenly and frankly lived. On Sundays John wrote verses. She remembered the night she had gone to him, and laughed a little at that early idea of love, which had • seemed so complete. Now she knew it had been but a guess at the wide-sweeping truth. Summer warmth raced full through her body. Her arms grew round, and she breathed more deeply. The cosmic life and beauty that were herself, Mary Levington, blossomed now.

In September, when the yellow grasshoppers danced zigzag across the scorched grass, and the sun ripened the apples in the orchard around Dowagiac, Mary began to breathe for two. An overwhelming devotion possessed John Levington — his sacrament. The flood of his desire seemed to have reached the sea, and he lost himself in adoration....