Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUKE arm delivered a terrible and well aimed blow that lifted Simon Mordaunt clear of his seat and hurled him to the street below. As Hank leaped over the hedge, heedless of the wind whipping off his hat, and ran, like a man in a dream, toward the fallen chauffeur, the machine glided, bounded and then ricocheted down the street, careening toward the corner ahead where the push cart man was standing. The push cart folded up like a fan under the limousine’s impact as Hank raised Mor- daunt, whose inert body slipped through the folds of his clothes of its own weight, spilling some things from his inside pocket. A folded bit of yellow paper was flirted by the wind across the narrow street and over the edge of the slope as Hank tried to pick up the insensible chauffeur. His eye, trailing its course, next instant caught a glimpse of Sheriff Butts falling down the steps in his haste, stumbling, recovering and firing wildly in the general direction of the limousine, now careening crazily around the corner, with the push cart proprietor clinging frantically to a door which some one within had opened. Hank leaped toward the sheriff. The distance was too short to prevent the re- porter’s intervention, even at risk of his own life, from a second shot, which might have killed Dorothy Dale, whose blurred outline angled out of view as the limousine came broadside on. The ping of a missile from that vehicle turned the air near Hank’s own head into a long tuning fork, and then Sheriff Butts reeled, yowling like a cat smitten with a well aimed bootjack. His pistol clattered to the roadway and he clasped his wounded fingers. Hank, with a transient wonder as to how the flying fugitive from the jail could have displayed such astounding shooting accu- racy while guiding a ponderous vehicle around a corner and down a steep descent, vaulted the hedge like a greyhound, tore through it with his own motor cycle, and pointed down the hill after the limousine, just then turning the corner at the bottom into a straight road leading away from Downington and into a hilly and wooded country. OF DISDAIN. 215 He took the corner with caution, but once in the stretch, there were two gas- driven ‘“‘ bats” roaring over the macadam, in a way to recall Sergeant O’Brien’s testi- mony at the inquest of the late mayor of the city. CHAPTER XII. THE PURSUIT. ROM the seat feloniously but no less F effectively usurped from its legal driv- er, Pancake Hearn sent Claude Cutler Fitch’s car slithering along the unfrequented highway like a demon. He did not even scruple to ignore the State law about an open muffler; and as for the effect on tires, one would have thought from his recklessness that he had his erstwhile millionaire “ pal’s” entire wealth at his disposal. From the flat top where he clung at full length to the metal rail designed, primarily, to hold merely a suit case or two if securely strapped, an individual called “‘ Goose-eye,” the erstwhile push cart gentleman who had been on hand to “cover” his pal’s emergence from durance vile, peered wick- edly over the sights of his automatic at the solitary pursuer on the motor cycle as he steadily gained on the ascents, now becom- ing more frequent as the road climbed out of the little vale in which commercial Down- ington nestled. F Finally Goose-eye sent his first warning shot shrilling over Hank Thomas’s bare head. If Hank heard it he merely advanced his spark to the last possible notch and ‘‘ gave her the gun” with the last spray of possible gas, Goose-eye grinned. For five miles be- hind this chap there was no one else in sight. \ The “ crush ” had been a howling success, judging by the ensemble of noises from the jail at Panc¢ake’s exit, and although, ac- cording to program it was a little premature —being scheduled to be “ pulled off ” with the aid of Goose-eye when Pancake ‘‘ turned out with the garbage can ” at nightfall, as usual, it was clearly up to the man on the top of the automobile to see to it that the COMI DOOKS