The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

HAMPTON OF jostling indignant passengers on right and left. He crossed the bridge and sped down the opposite stairs at the risk of his neck. The guard of the nearest car of the ex- press was sliding the door into place, but Jerry uttered a startling yell, leaped the intervening space and thrust his package into the aperture in time to hold the door. ‘““Whatstmatterwidyer!’ yelled the out- raged guard, as he reluctantly slid open the door again and let the man follow the package. : “Much obliged!”’ exclaimed Jerry, pant- ing; “I had to make this train—next one wouldn’t do.” He entered the car and sank into a seat, while the guard gave the starting bell and soliloquized darkly. As the express shot up-town Jerry sat with his eyes wide open for the local that he was pursuing. There was a local just leaving the Times Square station, and ‘he figured that it was the next behind the one he wanted. Columbus Circle was passed without sight of another, then Sixty-Sixth Street flashed by. He leaned forward, holding his breath, and as the express rumbled into the Seventy-Second Street stop he saw the local standing at the plat- form. Out he shot, not a second behind the opening of the doors, but just one second too late. The doors of the local slammed in his face and the starting bells jangled. “Express to Dyckman Street!” the guards were yelling on the train he had quitted, and he darted back without a moment’s hesitation, once more running afoul the same guard and forcing him to hold the door for an instant. “You're a nut, all right!” muttered the guard, and Jerry smiled at him in complete agreement, then dropped his box in the vestibule and fixed his eyes on the window. As the express got under way it over- hauled the slower-running local, and with great joy the watcher had another glimpse of the gray-bearded man in the last car. The local had three stops to make before the next express station, so there were THE HEIGHTS. 51 three chances of the man’s eluding him, but he trusted to luck. The Orpington cockerel cackled a digni- fied protest as the box was set down with a thump on the platform at Ninety-Sixth Street, but the bearer paid no heed; he was watching at the rear of the platform: for the second local to pull in, another one having been passed about Ninety-Third Street. 3 He had not dreamed, he told himself, that locals crawled so snail-like; it seemed an interminable time before the two white head lamps came in sight, and the cars lumbered past him with tantalizing slow- ness. Then came the last one, and he al- most cried out for joy when he saw his man, still there. Without haste now, he stepped into the front vestibule of the car, put down his box, and stood with his back to the front end, concealing himself from the passen- gers within. At every station after that he stood ready to grab the box and get out, as he held his hand up to conceal his face and eyed all those who alighted. . At One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh Street, the end of the local’s run, the man got out, and Jerry followed at a discreet distance and saw him walk to the other end of the platform and lean against a post to wait for a train bound farther north. Jerry retired behind another post and waited too, and when a Van Cort- landt Park train stopped he stepped into the rear vestibule of the car selected by the other man and stood so that he could watch his mevements without being him- self observed. Delroy had called the man Kingsale, but _ Jerry was not convinced that that was his name. It would do as well as any other, however, and he was quite satisfied with the manner in which things were moving. - He saw his recent assailant clearly now for the first time. He was, as Eugenia had said, about fifty, and his hair and pointed beard were tinged with gray. He had nothing of the aspect of a criminal, but was, on the contrary, rather quiet and Gomichboo (CG <S) ~. COs