Adventure, February 1917 — page 197: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HEN he saw it first, Officer Larry McQuade was watching the noon press of humanity from Street. On the corner across there was a sudden widening eddy in the stream of pedestrians and loud excited cries. He had been standing as if at attention; but now, all thought of his official dignity gone, he ran forward, dodging street cars and motor trucks with surprising agility. _ As the officer neared the disturbance a slim and dapper young man with sophis- ticated eyes detached himself from the fringes of the crowd and made off. He was the only individual who was moving away from the scene of the excitement; he went with a repressed haste that was unnatural. Larry swerved instinctively. Somebody had done something; witness the crowd. Here was a fellow who might have done it; witness his endeavor to escape in an inno- cently ‘casual manner. More than that, Larry saw that the young man, out of the tail of his eye, saw him and quickened his gait with a nervous, sweeping arm gesture. Officer McQuade grasped him by the shoulder just as a portly, crimson-faced man popped out of the crowd, crying: “‘That’s him, officer. I’m sure that’s the fellow. He picked my pocket right there on the corner.” For a swift instant the two in the street stood apart and still, the prisoner as if the shade of an awning on Liberty C. Jones X justice had caught up with him, the police- - maneas if wondering what an older head would do next. Larry McQuade was as new as his uniform; it was his first chance - to make good. Back in the gaping crowd one man caught the full significance of that momentary in- decision. He was a gray man—gray_ of hair and eye, and so unobtrusive that no man ever favored him with a second glance and few men ever saw him at all. Even the shape of his gray hat was designed to shroud his features, and from under it he shot a swift glance at the prisoner. is native common sense came to Officer McQuade’s assistance. He possessed no handbook on ‘‘What To Do When You Have Captured A Pickpocket,”’ but, since he believed he had the thief, the next thing -to do was to recover what the thief had stolen. Larry searched his prisoner at the curb. A good gold watch without chain or fob, a card-case, a pocket-knife, keys, and some small change, was what he found. The. fat man had lost a pocketbook and the prisoner did not have it. “T tell you he took it not two minutes ago,” blustered the victim, his voice rising as his assurance waned. and forty dollars in it in gold certificates. I’m not mistaken, I know. He got it and he must have it.” By what he had seen of Larry McQuade the gray man was made bold to remain well 195 IOOK “Tt had a hundred - (E@)