The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

200 “Well, I listened for a minute or more and it seemed to me that somebody was sawing something somewhere, but that it wasn’t in our house. I got up and went to the window; it was a lovely moonlight night and you could see the hills for miles and miles. And there—next door and just stepping into the window—was the biggest man I ever saw in all my life!” Down-stairs Dixon closed a window quite noisily. Jane, having suppressed a small scream and stilled another tremble, smiled apologetically. “It was—awful!”’ she went on. “Just standing there and watching him and realiz- ing that he was a burglar, you know. They say that old man next door keeps heaps and heaps of money hidden in the house, and I suppose that that was what he was after. Anyway, I watched him for half a minute before it occurred to me that he ought to be arrested. “T went down-stairs to the telephone and spent another five minutes trying to raise Central before I remembered that one doesn’t telephone in Batesford after mid- night—so I went up-stairs and looked across again, and there he was, so big that he filled the whole room, walking about with one of those little pocket flashlights.” “My child! My child!” breathed Mrs. Porter-Preston. “Well, then I remembered that there must be a sheriff or something in Batesford and that the sooner some one roused him the better—and there was nobody to rouse him but me! I hurried into some clothes as fast as I could and stole out of Edie’s house; and—I don’t know why, but I’d never seen a burglar at close range before and I just ad to have another glimpse of this one, to make sure he was still there. I crossed the little patch of lawn without making a sound and peeked through a cor- ner of the window.”’ “He was still there?” asked with real interest. “He was not only there, but he was right beside the window and waiting for me!” Jane said, turning pale again. “He just reached out one hand and caught me under the arm and put the other hand over my whole face. Then he lifted me bodily into the room!”’ “Jane!” cried Mrs. Porter-Preston. “There wasn’t a particle of effort to it; he did it as easily as one would lift a cat!” her niece pursued. ‘He stood me on my Uncle Horace THE ARGOSY. feet and looked at me through the holes in his mask and he said that if I made one sound he’d tear me in little pieces—and he could have done it. ‘Well, I couldn’t have made a sound if my life depended on it; I may live to be a hundred, but I can never be quite so fright- ened again. I was ice-cold from head to foot, and all the time he looked at me and mumbled something about never making a getaway if I went loose. Then somebody moved up-stairs and it sounded as if they were walking!” ‘And you lived through that!” her aunt breathed. “T don’t know how; my heart wasn’t beating—it didn’t beat one beat for an hour or more,” said Jane. ‘However, the bur- glar heard that step and he lifted me straight out of the window again and stepped out with me—and there we were to- gether in the moonlight and almost at the same second we heard somebody walking on the little cement sidewalk that runs along the main street! The burglar just leaned over and told me to walk with him and that if I didn’t he’d kill me on the spot. I walked!” “Where?” asked Uncle Horace. “Straight to the sidewalk, because, I sup- pose, there would have been no hope of dis- appearing in the garden with all that moon- light. There was a young fellow. passing and he stared at us for an instant and walked on—and he was hardly past when two people jogged by in a buggy and stared at us, too. “That made the burglar swear, horribly! He said something about being identified and then, as we came into the shadow of some big trees, he stopped short, chuckling awfully. His mask was off then, of course, and I could see his face He was the wickedest looking man I ever saw, and he was every inch of seven feet tall!” A shuddering breath escaped Jane, and for a little she seemed quite absorbed in the memory, but she started as Uncle Horace coughed and went on quickly: “What happened after that isn’t very clear; I was too frightened! He backed me up against a tree and held my shoulders and told me to listen to him. He said he couldn’t knock my brains out now, because he’d been seen with me and he was too big to escape a real man-hunt. But he said he had a better scheme than that and that I’d agree to it or die. Go .TOO AMG S (C@