Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

222 up from the Junction, about four o’clock, and when the district attorney phoned to the jail for news, she had told him where Sheriff Butts was when he phoned in. Joe thereupon phoned the Junction hotel. The proprietor readily recognized Hank’s description. He even added to it that the gentleman had been accompanied by a girl, and had “borried fifty dollars from me, and left a motorcycle as security.” The sheriff had been there, but wasn’t looking for Hank. He was after “ two des- prit men, one of whom had bruk jail.” He had since left, after the posse had eaten up all the food on hand. Joe told the chief the meager details. The chief grinned. ‘“ He’s a fox,” said he. ‘ Planted the gal to fool Myers, and then came back. Well, I wonder—” | He ceased to wonder. A volley of shots from somewhere downstairs sounded in the empty corridors of the Times building. Oaths, yells, imprecations, howls, groans— a veritable inferno—seemed to have broken loose. Joe looked at the chief. “We'll go down together,” said the man wearing the Times crown. ‘“‘ Mebbe Hank has met the district attorney, face to face.” They were disappointed. It was merely Sergeant Timothy O’Brien, clutching an individual whom he recog- nized, immediately, as a “ push-carter.” Only, Goose-eye, having foregone the ped- dling of rheumy bananas to rejoin his pal, Pancake Hearn, and the two of them, hav- ing slept the sleep of security in the furni- ture van, had made the fatal error of emu- lating the pitcher that goes too often to the well. Pancake, his sinewy hand yet clutching the “little old man ” which was relied upon to drag off a safe door, was not yet entirely “ cooked,” but on his way to his last earth- ly oven. Acting Captain Overton and the two other officers present, learning that Joe was a shorthand man as well as a notary, hur- riedly took Pancake’s antemortem state- ment in the office of the late Mayor Ord- way Marshall, whose safe they were vio- lating, when the alarm beneath the door- mat trapped them. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “ All I know,” said Pancake, “is that I was hired to do dis job. I come to town to pull it off before they cooked his nibs. I was in jail when dat come off. I—got my pay—to-night—it’s in me kick. We back- tracked in the van and laid up with the old Portugee dat wanted all the papers in this box—” ‘“ Mordaunt?”’ ealmost screamed Overton, as Pancake’s eyelids twitched. He grinned, and bowed his assent—with the same gesture greeting the Invisible One who led him out of the lure of to-morrow’s headlines. Goose-eye confirmed the statement. They locked up the latter in Mr. Fitch’s cell with Mrs. Avery’s aid, and hurried down to the lower portion of Downington. The “ old Portugee,”’ who insisted that his son “speak respectfully to those in au- thority ” was gone. It was a year before he was located abroad, and then he cheated justice by a sudden demise. The chief found a messenger boy perched on his desk on his return to the city room, waving a fat envelope in Hank Thomas’s well-known typewriting. He tore it open, frantically. The aftermath of the mayor’s murder was boiling again, for he read: DesR CHIEF: ; I will be in the arms of the well-known Mr. Morpheus, alias the Sand-Man, when you get this. Dead for sleep. Battled verbally with Myers. Such a vindictive legal gentleman I never saw. I went to sleep on his hands. Then only did he lay hands on me. In sheer self-defense, I defended myself. Mr. Myers, somehow, got one eye in the way. I don’t know just how it happened. He fell over his dictagraph wire, and thus ruptured the connection with his concealed stenographer. That brought the stenographer out of his concealment. Not knowing that I was fed up temporarily this misguided youth manifested braggadocio, with a headpiece. To preserve the dignity of the Commonwealth I was coerced into immuring them both in the same secret cell which the stenographer was guilty of betraying by his untimely emergence. You will find them both behind the alleged Session Laws for the Year 1800, et seqg., but please do not wait another eighteen hundred before pressing the back of that shoddy vol- ume and thus unlocking them, or I fear that ! Gomichbooks (EO)