The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

52 respectable in appearance—the type, in a general way, of the well-to-do middle-class business man. The name Kingsale suggested English origin, but there was nothing about the dress or manner of the man to connect him with a definite locality. As the train got farther up-town King- sale consulted a scrap of paper as if to verify some traveling directions, and a moment later he produced a small pocket- guide to the city and spread a map upon his knee while he traced certain lines upon it with the end of his finger. At Two Hundred and Seventh Street he got up suddenly, as the train stopped, crammed the map and book into his pocket and left the car by the front end. Jerry had little time enough to catch up the box and scramble to the platform. As the subway ceases to be a subter- ranean system at Dyckman Street and be- comes a light and airy elevated structure, both men now stood in the full glare of day, and Jerry feared for a moment that he would be recognized. Luck was con- stantly at his elbow that morning, how- ever, and Kingsale, facing the other way, stepped to the railing of the platform and looked down to the street. Jerry saw little protection in the slim steel pillars of the structure, and he made the best of the opportunity by darting into the space at the end of a large chest which was placed on the platform for the storage of accumulated waste paper. Peering over the top of the chest he saw Kingsale make a signal with his hand to some one below, then turn, and go hur- riedly down the stairs to the street. Jerry followed close at his heels, keep- ing out of sight, and when he paused half way down and peered over the railing, he saw Kingsale and a dark-skinned, poorly- clad man walking briskly up Tenth Ave- nue. Kingsale’s manner was furtive, and he glanced behind him from time to time, and at Two Hundred and Eighth Street both men stopped and looked all about them, then hurried on, evidently satisfied that they were not spied upon. THE ARGOSY. Jerry Hampton, stealing carefully down ~ the stairs, smiled suddenly at his own as- sured attitude of suspicion. The man under suspicion cannot move without ap- pearing to dissemble, and it might be that Kingsale was out this morning on no more desperate errand than was Jerry himself; it was even conceivable that he might meet the dark-skinned man on no more momentous business than the transfer of a rooster. Jerry preferred to give sus- picion the benefit of the doubt, however. He allowed the men to gain two full blocks on him, then he crossed the avenue and proceeded northward at the same pace they were keeping. He carried the box well up in his arms, to give himself as much as possible the appearance of a tradesman going about his business. King- sale, so far as he knew, had seen him only by that flash of a match, and he would © never guess that a man bearing a heavy box through the streets was trailing him. Presently the two men turned east into the sparsely settled sand lots that border the Harlem River, and Jerry promptly hurried forward and took the same direc- tion on a street a block short of the one they had chosen. Between the two streets there were scattering houses and laborers’ shacks and rank growths of tall weeds and scrub, but from time to time he could see the men, and he managed to keep abreast of them. Down at the water’s edge there was a little village of shacks and boat-houses, and there were four house-boats in sight, one of which was drawn up on the land and apparently converted to urban uses. Another, anchored some thirty feet from shore, was seemingly in commission, for it had an awning stretched over the nar- row after deck and a small tender was moored to the landing steps. Kingsale and his companion stopped suddenly at a point where Jerry could see them by peering through the bushes, and the dark man pointed, as nearly as the watcher could make out, to the house-boat with the awning. Instantly the two turned and retraced COPMICLOOOKS (E@)