Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

BUM PRO TEM. and had a habit of celebrating every time he got out of range of his wife’s eagle eye. His notion of a swell time, according to reports that never reached Mrs. Agar, was to acquire a thorough jag as quickly as possible. ~ Walt in- tended to spend his little vacation in other ways. He had acted upon the taxicab sug- gestion because it appeared reasonable. Outside the railroad station he had espied a lemon-colored cab and taken it, ordering the driver to go to the Lochinvar Hotel. A ride of some thirty minutes had followed, and then, quite suddenly, the motor stopped and the cab came to a halt. The driver left his seat, appeared to lift the hood and look at the motor, then came around and opened the side door. ‘ Boss,” he began, and Walt leaned forward to listen. ‘That was the last thing he remembered. Something hard smote him on the head and he went in- to dreamland. He came back to consciousness hours later, in the early dawn, and found him- self in the doorway of a deserted house. No cab was in sight. His bags were gone and his clothes were gone—he was dressed in shirt and collar, underclothes, shoes and socks. Near him, on the pavement, lay a suit of clothes, apparently discarded by the cab driver. Of all his possessions nothing re- mained save a pile of premium coupons the thief had evidently tossed out of his bag when taking inventory of the loot. Walt had been saving those coupons for years—he found one in every can of smoking tobacco he bought—and he had brought them with him to exchange fora gift. | Swearing and shivering and dizzy from the pain in his head, Walt put on the suit, picked up the coupons, and started out to look for a policeman. The bite of the wind cleared his head, and before he had gone a block he knew two things for a certainty: first, that 663 the cab had not been a real lemon cab, but a fake; and second, that he could not go to the police with his story. If he went to the police, the papers would get the facts and publish them, which would mean that Tom Garvin, of the Bridge Point Gazette, who got the Chicago papers, would gleefully re- print the item and add some comical comments of his own. And then, Walt knew, all the wise-crackers in town would be waiting impatiently for his return with carefully prepared lines to hand him. He knew that crew! They'd kid him forever and a day. They worked a joke to death and then used a pulmotor on it and started all over again. Better to lose the money! , Also, there was Myrtle. She’d do a lot of giggling, and probably tell him how sorry she was. Likely, by now, she'd hinted to every one that he’d gone to Chicago to try to forget that she’d turned him down in favor of Pete Barsden. She didn’t know that a month after he'd given her the ring he’d started to realize that he wasn’t as deeply in love with her as he’d thought—and she’d probably never know how glad he was when she’d broken the engage- ment. Oh, well— Standing there on the windswept corner of Halstead and Madison, Walt dismissed all thoughts of Bridge Point and its inhabitants. He couldn’t wire any one for money, because that would be worse than letting the police have the story. Anyway, it might not be so easy to convince any one by telegram that he, and not some slick crook, was asking for the cash. Despite the fact. that he was pretty well off at home, right now he was just a penniless bum in Chicago. With that cheering thought in his mind, he looked about him—and shiv- ered more than ever. Sociologists have stated that Mad- ison Street, west of Chicago’s “ Loop” and the river, is the greatest hobo cen- Gomichbooks (E)