Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

RED “Never mind,” Hilda ordered. “You keep your eyes open for a uni- form.” Nora still protesting, they drove north looking for an officer, and traveled a mile before they saw one. He argued that he could not go off his beat, but agreed to ride with them un- til they picked up the patrolman who covered the district in which they claimed the explosion had occurred. All this occupied five or six minutes, but finally the cab was turned around and headed back for the frankfurter stand. CHAPTER XVII. WO MEN IN A BOA’. * Owl still and don’t make any fuss,” S commanded the man with the gun. Lester Lucus obeyed, and when Chipmunk showed signs of irrupting he kicked him in the shins. Lester had lived some twenty-seven years or so without meeting a lethal weapon which was pointed in his direction. He had been too young to participate in the Great War and he had, until recently, taken tales of brigandage with a grain of salt. This, however, was the second occasion within a few weeks when he had looked into the business end of a revolver; so, compared to Colter, he had experience. The cab rumbled over the bridge and there was silence for a moment. Both the men upon the folding seats glared at them grimly, the second man look- ing as if he would also produce a weapon in jig time should occasion re- quire it. “We won’t make a fuss,’ Lester said quietly after the painful silence. “T see you are not officers after all.” The unpleasant face of the man with the gun twisted into a disagreeable erin. “Ver a good guesser, kid.” “Why pick on a couple of poor HOT. 649 frankfurter men?’ he ventured. “ Or if you want to hold us up, why not do it? We don’t want a ride.” “And I always did hate Brooklyn,”’ said the irrepressible Colter. “Shut yer face,” commanded the gunman. More silence. Somebody said once that when several people are together and a silence-falls it is possible to hear the flapping of the wings of angels. All they heard was the rumble of trains, the rattle of automobiles, and the toot-toot-toot of a tug with a tow which was passing under the bridge and notifying all and sundry that it had three barges in its string. By and by they were over the bridge and moving through traffic in Brook- lyn, and by this time, it was quite dark. The strange thing about Brooklyn is that nobody knows it very well. Hundreds of thousands of persons re- side in the suburbs of that vast settle- ment, journey daily to and from New York for years, and are familiar only with the view from the elevated trains. Hundreds of thousands more never see down town Brooklyn at all because their movements New Yorkward are always underground. Persons in business in one neigh- borhood get lost when they turn a cor- ner, and a person who wishes to hide where nobody would ever find him could do no better than take a room in a house on one of those mean side streets within a mile of the terminus of the bridge. Les tried to guess their route by looking out of the window, but in two or three minutes he was in foreign ter- ritory so far as his knowledge of the borough was concerned; so, when one of the bandits pulled down the curtains of the taxi, he didn’t hamper the young man much. “ Say,” pleaded Chipmunk, ‘‘ what’s this all about? Be good fellows and tip us off. Why are you taking us sight- seeing with the curtains pulled down? Are you going to hold us for ransom? COPMNICGLOOOKS (C@)