The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 147: what you’re looking at

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

FLIRTING WITH DESPERATE, HAZARD. in his expression now. Lewis’s eyes shifted, then dropped before his gaze, ‘“ 'That’s what it is,” he explained— “a game. I sent your partner out on a bluff. There’s no such number, so far as I’m aware, as 8063 Lake Street. I can tell you that, before Brady comes back to report it.” The fat man grunted. He shifted his quid with deliberation, still regard- ing the reporter narrowly. Beyond that grunt, however, he said nothing. “Well,” hazarded Lewis nervously, “there you are!” Pete opened his lips. | “Yeah,” said he. “And here you are—that’s the main thing, my friend. Here you are, and here you'll stay, till Brady comes back to say the address you give him is a vacant lot. Well— we sorter figgered you might try some- thin’ of the kind. But can you tell me where it’s got you anything? ” Lewis shrugged ruefully. “You cannot,” nodded the other. “No, pal—we ain’t to be shook by no such small-time stunt as this. And we're goin’ to get what we want out of you yet. Maybe next time you'll see fit to give us the right steer to where this Perkins really is!” ‘Say, listen to me!” Lewis put in earnestly. ‘‘ I mean what I say now. I don’t know any more than a man on Mars where Perkins is to be found— his hiding-place is as much of a mys- tery to me as it 1s to you. Do you un- derstand that?” Pete smiled scornfully. “Why,” he asked, “ you ain’t mis- laid him, have you? Yow took and bunked him out of sight. And now you tell me you can’t remember where you put him—’ ‘“T had nothing whatever to do with his disappearance,’ Lewis struck in. “You’ve made a mistake, that’s all. Instead of being an employee of the Concrete Trust, as you and your part- ner think, let me tell you I never so much as knew that organization was in existence before to-night. You’ve mistaken your man from the start!” 133 The stout tough scratched his chin. He shot a quick look at Lewis out of the corner of his eye. Then he stirred uneasily in his chair. The seriousness of the reporter’s tone carried with it the ring of conviction. “Tf you wasn’t the guy that shot Perkins,” Pete slowly asked, ‘‘ what was you ddin’ bein’ hustled to jail by them two coppers to-night? Don’t tell me that was a false arrest. You look enough like the fellow they been writin’ up in the papers as the one that done that job to satisfy a blind man—”’ ‘ Hold on!” and Lewis, turning, sat down on the side of the bed. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “ I can see where that, and maybe a lot more, puzzles you. Well, there’s just one way to make you understand. I'll tell you the whole story.” He had decided he must do that. It was the only chance he had left of escaping. By making a clean breast of the hoax he had perpetrated in the newspaper’s behalf, in consequence of which he had been unfortunate enough to be found by these two thugs in the hands of the police, perhaps he could satisfactorily demonstrate the fact that they might as well part now, first as last. To be sure, he had given his word to Brennant that he would not divulge the paper’s secret. But what possible damage could it do the Meteor to let this stranger from another town in on the truth of the affair? Assuredly no harm could come from a confession in this case. And so he explained the whole thing, from beginning to end, to the fat man; telling him how the newspaper had been up against it for a crime-story; the way in which such an item of ap- parently genuine news had been pro- duced; the accident of John S. Per- kins’s name being used as that of the “victim ” of a murder which actually had never taken place—Lewis held nothing back. “And them actor-friends of yours, that you say helped you carry out the oO cComicbooks CO