Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/255

when they settled here. And lots of the better ones did settle amongst us, those that were sick of tyranny anyway.

So I spilled the whole thing to this guy—Yeoto, his name was, or something that sounded like that—and he got jittery with some excitement he didn't want to talk about in public.

"It is, fortunately, within Yeoto's power to help you," he swore. "But come with me to my quarters and elucidation shall be made."

For all I knew or cared, this might have been a blind for a good old fashioned rolling. Anyway, I walked right into whatever it was. And that was my lucky night.

This bird turned out to be an expert dermatologist—funny, I can spell that now but couldn't even say it then—who'd been exiled from Mercury. Guess what for? For removing those supposedly permanent green slave-marks!

HE HAD the evidence, too. Color photos—you know, the before and after kind. And he talked to me about pigmentation until I began to feel green in the puss myself. Maybe I was at that; he kept on feeding me chulco and that's liable to do anything to you.

Anyway, he wanted two grand for the job, which wasn't hay. It just happened that I had a little over two thousand saved up, which I didn't care any more for than I do for my right arm. But, what the hell; I wanted to see Wally and the girl happy, didn't I?

So I snaggled onto this Yeoto and, making him bring his bag of tools and dope along, grabbed a cab for. Elsa's apartment.

She had left, bag and baggage!

After that I remember dimly asking a lot of questions of a sleepy-eyed but pompous doorman, of starting for the Terra-Mars Spaceport with Yeoto, and of catching the girl just when she was boarding the liner that took off in a few hours from then. I must have made a scene and I was certainly getting pretty well along the road to a pass-out. Anyway, the cops gathered around in no time at all and they gathered me in. One of them must have conked me because the next I knew I was tossing in a hospital bed with a head on me that was something, what I mean. It was daylight.

As the fog cleared a little, I managed to sit up and take a look around. This wasn't any jail house; it wasn't even a funny ward. It wasn't a ward at all but a private room. How come?

Seeing a bell push, I squeezed it till my thumb was sore. And all it brought was a grinning orderly.

"So you came to," he cracked. "How do you feel?"

"How do you think?" I back-cracked. "What day is it?"

"Your lucky one," he said. "Your girl's waiting to see you."

"My girl. Don't be foolish, fellow. They don't make any that'd fall for me."

"Well, she paid for your room last night. A Miss Vaughn."

"Elsa!" I gasped, beginning to remember. "How long have I been out?"

The guy looked at his watch. "Twelve hours," he announced.

"Time's wasting," I yawped, tumbling out of bed and diving for the bath room. "Give me five minutes to shave and dress and I'll be ready for visitors—or to go out."

The guy beat it, grinning like a fuzz-wit.

WELL, the rest you can just about guess. All but the first and best part of what happened.

Elsa came in with a breezing rush. And was she a dream! No celluloid glamor gal could be more of a knock-