The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

GETTING AWAY FROM THOMPSON. wheel; and quite as if it were the most natural and legitimate thing in the world to have done, he said happily as he started the motor: “T got ’em, Jane!” “Got what?” “Their license tags!”’ said Mr. Farnham. “T stole them!”’ CHAPTER XVII. PLANNING A BURGLARY. MSS JANE FAYRE’S six, now beyond all laws of man, paused after several miles of very swift going. Its driver con- sidered the locality, which was quite as lonely and cheerless as other localities in which the car had passed recently; a deep gorge lay to the left and a hill of scraggly growth to the right—but it seemed to satisfy Mr. Farnham, for he pulled into the blacker shadows at the side and stopped short. “Wilbur,” Jane said, “it is a crime to steal license tags!” Her companion chuckled without any remorse. ‘“Tt’s a worse one to use them, my dear, but those things don’t count with a man who tries to kill constables. I don’t know that a little two-cent crime like this isn’t almost beneath me now, Jane.”’ se nal “Tt was too bad to have to do it, of course, but Providence left that car for us to loot. I'll pay for their tags a little later, you know, and square the whole thing; but just now we need those numbers more than their rightful owner does.” ‘“‘And when they catch us?” “This will hardly figure among the other things they’ll have against us, Jane,” sighed Mr. Farnham. ‘There was a certain beauty about those tags that was irresistible from the very second I spotted them, there in the dark. For one thing, they’re nothing like that infernal G 1200, so we're safe enough on the number question until the happy farmer gentleman discovers what happened and starts /zs little alarm over the telephone wires. And I don’t believe that will happen before morning, either,” the budding criminal declared as he stepped down. “Why?” “Because they looked like home-keeping, . respectable people, and they’ll hardly be 267 joy-riding around the wilds after dark. : Wait till I get these things fastened on, Jane, and I’ll break the real horror to ou!” Flashlight in one hand, wrench in the other, Mr. Farnham switched off the head- lights and went humming to the front of the car, worked there for a time and passed, humming still, to the other end; while Jane stared into the inky night and tried her best to feel that no string of swift, avenging automobiles was coming up behind, laden down with armed men. It was a sufficiently strange train of thought for a young woman who had stepped out of Newport’s ultra-civilization only four or five days ago, but she found nothing very grotesque in its pursuit. Jane, indeed, had reached the stage of being quite game and quite resigned; they had come to the point, as Farnham truly said, of taking very long chances and there was no turning back now. If they won, all was well. If they did not—Jane refused to think longer upon that possibility. “Well, that’s done!” said Mr. Farnham’s matter-of-fact tone, as he returned to her side. “Does this particular spot oppress you, Jane?”’ “No.” ‘“‘Mind staying here for five or six hours?” “Not if—if it is safe to stop and stop- ping will do us any good, Wilbur,” said Jane. “But why—” — “Because it is necessary, if we’re ever to get away with this thing,” the other went on. ‘Everything has gone wrong so far, and I am almost ready to believe that it’s because we have tried to handle an extraor- dinary situation by ordinary methods.” “T don’t know what you mean.” Mr. Farnham sighed and laughed softly. “Vou will know, presently,” he said. “Jane, dear, tell me all about this justice’s house in Batesford—the place where you were married. Is it in the center of the town, where lots of people are moving around?” ‘No, it’s away out on the north side of Batesford.” “Fairly isolated?”’ “Tt’s half a block to the next house.” “Well, that sounds rather promising, at least,” murmured Mr. Farnham. ‘People go to bed pretty early up that way, don’t they?” i ‘The place is like a graveyard after ten o’clock,” said Jane. Go 0) AUUG S (C@