Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 122 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

won oe mm ee —-——— 2 - might murder him rather than let him escape with bis information. Yet Phil’s mother wit did not for an instant desert him. He glanced quickly about him for a closet. There Was none in sight, The bed was too low to crawl under. “He remembered that when on the wharf he had seen the light move y from one room to the other. There must then be a com- municating door, : He looked round, There lay the door immediately behind him, He tried the latch. It turned, but the door refused to open. Tt was locked. Phil was in a desperate quandary. The rat had | been caught in a trap of his own making.—But all his movements, so far, had taken place in a moment of time. The Ow moving fey olutside was yet some distance from the door, ere was still a chance to make a dash for it. He gavea quick step toward the door, and then halted with the thought that he could not possibly “cape, ina strange, dark house, from a man thor- oughly acquainted with every part of it. As he paused in his flight his eyes fell on the bed. A new idea shot through his mind. He shuddered at the thought, but it was the only hope left, and there was no time to waste in sentiment or supersti- tion, With a quick spring Phil was in the bed, the dread! parcel and the wall, and had down deep under the covers, keepi the corded bundle so that no lifting of should be apparent. between wormed close beside e bedclothes The boy had often assured himself that there was | no superstitious foolishness about him, that he was ioo matter-of-fact for that, and it was with a sense of shame that he strove to repress the involuntary shrinking which affected him, as he felt the outlines of the body above him. ** Didn’t think Phil Hardy was sich a baby as to be afeared of a dead woman,’ he thought. ‘“ Live things is all that’s worth af of. Dunno what harm a dead corp kin do yg es As fur sperits, there’s only one kind that I know on; andl dont swaller that kind nor no other kind.”’ With a grim smile at his own conceit, Phil nestled closer under the edge of the corpse, and stretched himself out at full length. He was none too soon. Thestep of the new-comer now sounded on the floor of the room, and Phil’s alert senses traced his progress up to the side of the bed, The boy was half-smothered for want of air, but he lay utterly motionless, breathi & as well as he could under the circumstances, and listening with the utmost intentness. He felt a movement as the new-comer seemed to have touched the bed, or probably made some ex- amination of its dubious contents. Then there came a voice, faint, far-off, hardly reaching Phil’s quick ear under his shroud of bed covers. ‘Tt all looks right,’ the voice said. ‘“‘I dont know what itwas wakened me, but I was sure I heard something moving. I had a sort of foolish notion that it was the woman. But she looks past mov- in Pel *'ghe’s as dead as a door-nail,”’ was Phil’s un- spoken reply. “ And door-nails dont move without hands, so dont worry yourself, Tim Fagan.” “T wish Hendricks hadn't brought t here,” was the next faint remark. “I am afraid he will bring me into trouble. I dont like this half and half busi- ness. Llike folks to be either dead or alive, and done with it.” He seemed to have turned away with this last re- mark. Phil listened with great relief. “The woman’ isn’t dead then, but only playin’ possum,”’ said Phil to himself. ‘All I’ve got to say then is that she’s an old hand at the job.—And now, Tim Fagan, I don’t keer a brass cent how soon you git back to bed agin.” He ventured to slight! lift the bed clothes, so as | agan’s steps were receding. | to get a breath of air. He stopped near the door of the room. ‘I could have sworn I saw the bed move,” he muttered uneasily. “I dont like that thing in the house.—I thought there wasn’t any foolishness about | me, but [dont like it. Why didn’t Hendricks sink it to the bottom of the river and be done with it?’’ ‘4 mighty handy way of bein’ done with things,” was Phil's noiseless rejoinder. “I think he hada notion to try it on, if he hadn’t been afeared.—That’s | right, Fagan. It’s ‘bout time you were gettin’ out. And I hope you'll have dreams for the rest of this blessed night.”’ Phil got his head once more into the air as he lis- tened to the receding steps without. They were fol- | lowed by a fumbling about the next room, and then by silence. The boy was too acute, though, to be im any hurry to move. He let a full half-hour pass before again stirring. It was still dark. The moon had not again | broken forth, He heard a sharp pattering sound in the street. ‘*Tt’s rainin’, sure as fish-bon self. “I hope it'll come down like pavin’ stones. Like to have a little thunder and lightnin’ too. Any- | thing to help a feller out of this scrape.” He was now gliding noiselessly from his covert. In a minute he stood once more beside the bed. ‘Wonder if she és dead, or jist shammin’,” he said, gazing af the scarcely visible outlines before him, ‘They say dead corpses are cold asice. I'll try this one,” He inserted his hand through the opening in the cloth, and laid a finger on the smooth cheek of the woman. “Feels jist like velvet,” he muttered. “And it aint so cold neither. Jist cool, that’s all. snakes the lady aint na deader than I am. wet times and*sweet Th *he said to him- | Sure as | Phil Hardy, the Boss Boy. dont make Rome how! it’s a caution.—And now, re got to worm myself out of this here habita- on,” A fly would have, made more noise than did Phil in his outward progress. It was deep darkness —— 23 soon as he had passed beyond the influence of the open window. Buthe knew just where to find the stairs, and | made his way down them with but a faint creak | ~ which were drowned in the dash of rain out- _ side. | ** Best make fur the back door of the house,” re- flected Phil. ‘ There'll be only a bolt or so to open there. And I want to git my i sg Lag Would- n’t do to leave them. Dunno but my shoemaker’s ——— — ee got his autygraph on them, Aint ol to let agan’s long nose.”’ attitude, Phil Groping along in almost a eg” made his way back through the house without tumbling over any chairs or kicking any tin He felt his way back into the shed kitchen, and suc- ape in reaching the door of which he was in search, . ‘*Only one bolt, and that’s a comfort,” he said, ashe cautiously pulled back the slender iron bar | between him and liberty. Tim Fagan’s dust off my feet. | myself be smelt out that way by Tim “And now, I'll wipe It’s mean dust any- | | how.” | The rain was descending in a brisk shower. But | heedless of that, Phil groped round till he had found | his shoes. | “Tf they aint full of water, Ill sell out!” he | ejaculated. “Think I best go barefoot and carry them Wellingtons.—There’s one blessing in the rain _ anyhow. It'll wash the lampblack off my face an toggery.”” t would have done any one good to have seen him, if there had been daylight enough to reveal the inky rivulets that coursed down his features _and his habiliments, and blackened the ground beneath him. “Till be clean as a Ml yg by the time I git home, that’s one comfort,’’ he thought, as he ace his way down the alley, and into the deserted reet. | Phil trudged homeward through the drenchin | rain, constantly congratulating himself on his good fortune in getting such an easy and clean was ng. __ “There mought be something in luck, after all,” he soliloquized, as an extra heavy dash of water deluged him, ‘Where are you going, boy?” cried a policeman, comfortably enseonced under an awing, ** Home,’’ was Phil’s short reply. * What are you carrying there?” **Shoes,”’ said Phil. | “Stole them, hey?’ | “Dd guv a quarter to the chap that would steal _ them from 'me,”’ replied Phil. “Then why dont you wear them out, and git rid of them that way?” atl: skin turns the water better. Good-night, | Johnny!’’ and Phil was off at a run, for fear his | questioner might dmuse himself by arresting him. | He got safely home without further stoppage by ' the guardians of the night. When his grandmotber entered Phil’s room, next morning, she gave vent toa cry of terror, and ran ss into the passage, wringing her hands in sinay. , She had been unaware of the boy’s return, and the , an she beheld was enough to frighten the anxious old lady. ‘What is the matter, Mrs. Hardy?” inquired the occupant of another room, who had been startled by her cry. __ ** My poor boy!" she moaned in answer. “Some- _ thing dreadful has beppened to him, Iknow. Oh Mr. Sones, just go into his room and look at him. I ' am afraid to see him again." Mr. Jones himself was scared at the first sight of Phil. He had taken off and wrung out his wet clothes, and had them strung round the room in | various positions to dry. As for himself, he lay in bed, covered to the throat, But such a streaked, and only his face visible. _draggied, and generally disreputable face was sel- _ dom seen ona human Se t looked like the map of Turkey, done in charcoal, on a flesh-colored back- ground, _ _ “Tt is some dreadful fever, I know,” moaned the _ old lady from the doorway. “ Or maybe the plague. at, they say, turns people black.” Mr. Jones’s reply was to burst into a peal of saughter, as he passed his hand lightly over Phil’s ace. _ “Ttis lampblack, that is my notion, Mrs. Hardy,” was his response. “ Alittle clean water will be the best cure for his sickness. Been playing negro minstrel, I fancy. . Hardy darted forward and passed hér hands over the boy’s face. ‘“‘As sure as you live it is the case,” she cried. “The young rogue has been turning himself into a blackamoor.”’ This fingering of his face woke Phil from his deep | sluinber, He te his eyes and gazed dubiously | up intothe two faces bending over him. owes busted Lees iy me house afire?”’ ‘Where have you n, you reprobate?” exclaim- | ed Mrs. Hardy, with 4s much temper as she was capable of showing to Phil. “And how did you get | your face into such a horrible plight?” | Up came Phil’s hand, and rubbed over his face lustily. He then held it up before his eyes, a blank | look of dismay spreading’ over his fea , which _ was succeeded by a merry laugh. “Well, I'll be swigged,” he said, “if I didn’t think half the skin had been washed off of me, And here i o > Eee <eaee —— _ —-- Iam streaked like ahyenar. Spose it’s the badness rained washin’ out of me. It ard enough to git Serato toy." groaned Mi. Hany o just look a e boy,” an A ‘ a Got waite poe Wet t Phil, . caught in a drizzle last night,” returned with a grimace of his streaked = are) t set them both laug “Now you slide, granny, you and Mr, Jones. I'll git up and wash myself into a Chris- tian . Reckon I'll have to pus on some of my Sunday fixins, too, till these duds dry.” “But how did it all happen, Phil?’ asked Mr. Jones, curiously. “Tell you arterI git up and scrub my face a bit,” replied Phil, is visitors retired, jeaving Phil to make himself presentable, and to invent some plausible story to satisfy the curiosity of Mr. Jones. CHAPTER VI. PHIL PROSPECTING, Pui. was quite a rejuvenated youth when he pre sented himself at the breakfast-table of his d- mother. His face shone as if it had been polished with emery. He wore his best suit, which set off his handsome figure to advantage; and his eyes sparkled like two rubies. ‘Gettin’ to feel like myself agin,” he said, as he saw the old lady’s eyes fixed proudly on him. “Sort of empty, too. Guess I kin eat my share.” “Tam never afraid but what you will do that, Phil,” she laughingly responded. ** Spose Tee must be a good thing fur boys to have, or they wouldn’t have so much of it,’’ re- plied Phil, in a tone of apology. to grow with me.” reakfast over, Phil proceeded to satisfy Mr. Jones and Mrs. Hardy as to his adventures of the night before. But the story he told them was no more like the reality than his streaked face had been like the red-cheeked countenance he now dis- layed. x * Tt did not strike him as quite advisable to make public nee Doueereaiing. enterprise, or to take too any confidants into the task which lay before m When he at length started out on his usual daily business of Ma Seeing en = he found himself again waylaid by his little friend Susy. “Out late last night again, Phil,’ she said, shak- ing her finger admonishingly at him. ‘TI could {not sleep till 1 heard you comein. Especially when the rain come up.”’ “IT was jist like a drowned duck, Susy,’ confessed Phil. “But I'm all right agin now, little sweet- eart,”’ “And where have you been? And did you find out anything?” she eagerly inquired. “If I tell you, Susy, you won’t tell anybody? Not even your father or mother?” “Nobody. If you tell me not to,” “ Let’s take a seat then, Susy, for it’s a long story. And I know some of it will make your hair stand ht up on end.” e spread her hands resclutely on her curling Jocks, as if determined that they should go into no such perpendicular freaks, as the two took their usual seat, at the head of the stairs, | Phil did not romance to Susy, as he had done to his former auditors. She was the confidante of all his adventures, and he told hera pies, unvarnished tale of his last night’s work. But it was to her romance of the cence dye. She held her breath in terror or excitement at many points in the narrative, and when Phil reached his discovery of the deathly face it seemed indeed as if her hair would stand on end. “Ob, Phil, what did she look like?” Susy breath- lessly exc ed, “ As pretty as a picture.”’ “Are you sure she wasn’t dead?” “Tim Fagan said she wasn’t, That’s all I cept that her face didn’t feel like a corpse's,’ ‘* But you haven't come to that yet,” “Well then Pied mustn't git skeered at what I’m a-going to tell you now, fur I got into difficulties, “Seems somehow know, Busy. But I’m all right now, so dont be gitting ner- vous. She could not Mp well control her nerves, how- ever, as Phil told of his peril and escape. “You're a dear brave fellow, Phil, and it’s just as soon. 88 you or it.” And Susy’s arms were around Phil’s neck in a hug which was full of nervous excitement. ‘What are you going to do now, Phil?” she eager- ly asked. we know, Susy. Tell you to-morrow,” said But it was with considerable trouble that he es- caped from his young friend, and made his way to Ouse bond ot li defined in hi vagabond was not very weli defined in his ideas as to what was best to do in these very critical circumstances. His first movement was toward the neighborhood of the previous night's adventure. The house gtoo! there still; as innocent looking and free from dub ous secrets aS Summer sunshine can make a houwe reacing a novel, and I’m going to appear. The window of the mysteriously-oecupied chamber was closed with a drawn curtain’ This was the only evidence of concealment. Tim Fagan himself stood in the door of the tap-room, tall, raw-boned, muscu- lar; with a thick red whisker and a fierce look about the eyes. Phil blessed his stars that he had not fal- len into that man’s hands the night before. He’d been wuss on me than a lemon- thought the boy, as he noticed the brawny of the meet te slingers, which I s ueezer,” are arm “Tf I'd a-got into them beer- pose he calls honds, he'd jugt GomiiGsoo G cS