Marion Marlowe in Chicago, or, Trapped by a Lunatic — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

2 Percy Preston’s white face grew gray with rage and his voice vibrated with passion as he snarled an answer. “And I’m about as crazy as they are,” he muttered. “We've been together a week now, Bill; have you seen anything crazy about meP Naturally, when a man loses his head and flings the wrong girl off of a train into the river, he acts a little queer, but I got over it before I’d been three days in that asylum! Oh, there are no bolts and bars that will hold me, Jones! ill stay free now until I get square with my enemies !” “Well, you’ve got to be mighty careful,” Mark my words, was the quiet answer, and then Bill Jones, who had once been a “supe” with the Temple Theatrical Company, sat down to listen to his companion’s plan to punish those whom he hated. The two young men had been ac- quainted years before in the far West, and had recently met and renewed their ac- quaintance, Percy Preston had been engaged in New York to play heavy réles with the Temple Vheatrical Company through the West, but there was a young girl ‘1 the cast whom he hated bitterly, and dur- during a road tour ing a heavy thunder storm he had thrown her, as he supposed, ‘from the train; but in reality his victim was Miss Marion Marlowe, the beautiful and talented star of the com- pany. je had been incarcerated in jail; then, as he Miss Marlowe was saved, but for this appeared to be deranged, he was transferred to an insane asylum. His conversation with hig companion showed plainly that he had that be avenged for his fancied in- escaped and, furthermore, he had threatened to juries. The conversation between the two took place in a dingy bar-room on one of the worst streets 1 St. Louis, and as the plot- ters talked their voices lower and they took frequent drinks of vile whisky and other liquors. As Preston had grew lower and MY QUEEN. said, they were “on their uppers,” which meant that they were both out of work and out of money, except the small quantity of change which they were now squandering for drink, Neither of them could get work in their Bill wanted, for good “supes” were too plentiful, and Percy Preston did not dare to expose his identity for fear of being hustled back into chosen profession. Jones was not the asylum or the prison to serve out his « sentence. They were two desperate men and the liquor was fast making them more vicious; and, at last, Preston brought his hand down on the table in an emphatic manner. “That’s what we'll do, old man!” he mut- tered, under his breath; “we'll get to Chicago by hook or crook! Once there, the rest will be easy if we’ve got a dollar in our pockets! 1 know scores of men in that town who will Why, they'd commit murder outright if you jingled sufficient do what we want. coin!” said Bill Jones, grimly, beginning to show by his “That's zhe gang we want,” conversation the effects of the liquor he was drinking; “but your scheme sh’ all right, Preston, and it’s an easy one to work! Now, thing for you to do is to disguise yourself cleverly and drop name Preston once and for- ever.” “I'll be Jack Hart from this time on,” said Preston, with a scowl, “and I'll get m’self up so mown mother wouldn't know me. Have ’nother drink, pard, and success to ‘r plot! Here’s that we may oblitrate name of Temple f’rever and square our account with all our enemies !” He head, but his companion was even more under raised a glass of whisky above his the influence of the stuff than himself, and a maudlin laugh accompanied a fiendish whis- per, ECORNICLOOKS COM