Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

DELIRIUM TRIMMINGS. the other on his mounting speedometer. Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Sixty-five. The little devil could handle a car, so much was certain! “Ts she trying to get away from me, I wonder?” reflected Larry Minot. He drew abreast of her and continued thus for a moment, tooting his horn by way of greet- ing and applause. What happened then Larry Minot has reason to remember rather vividly, but how it happened he doesn’t understand to this day. All he knows is that there was a ter- rific cannon ball sort of a crash, followed closely by a series of bumps and thumps, the whole culminating in silence deep, ut- ter, and strangely full of shimmering pyro- technics. ? He opened his eyes. Well, the heavens hadn’t fallen, anyhow. They were still there, exceeding blue and calm, just as he had left them. But he—where was he? Lying on his back in a swamp, it appeared. He sat up laboriously. Wheels! Wheels in the air, spinning very slowly, slower all the time! Wheels of a little coupé— Somehow he got to his feet. “ Are you hurt?” he cried as he plunged through the swamp. “ Are you all right?” She was most decidedly not all right. He found her caught inside the overturned machine, huddled there grotesquely. With feverish speed he pulled her out, laid her on the ground, listened at her heart. He could hear its faint fluttering message. Not dead, then! ‘Thank God for that. He lifted her tenderly and staggered up the steep embankment to the road, pausing there a moment to get his bearings. A hurried glance to left and night dis- closed no human being in sight, no car ap- proaching from either direction. He saw his own roadster, leaning drunkenly against a tree at the very edge of the bank. It looked as though a breath might dislodge it from this precarious perch and send it crashing down to join the coupé in the swamp. “Ticklish business to get ’er off there,” Larry said, thinking aloud, “ even provid- ing the engine will start, which I doubt. Safest and quickest thing to do is walk, I guess. There must be a house pretty soon.” dll There was a house, just beyond the next concealing clump of trees—a house with a big front yard unbelievably full of chickens and children. At the stumbling approach of Mr. Larry Minot and his re- markable armful, the children gazed in stupefaction. Then one of them, a bare- foot boy with coat of tan and trimmings of freckles, recovered himself sufficiently to turn and run up the path among the scattering fowl. As he ran he shouted, “Mom! Mom! Here comes somebody sick!” in the tone he usually reserved for nothing less than circus parades. Mom and Larry reached the front porch ° simultaneously, the one wiping soap-suddy hands on a checkered apron, the other re- minding himself savagely that his legs must not obey that impulse and give way—not for a minute or so at least. He put the un- conscious girl in a convenient hammock, gasped, “ She’s hurt—auto smash-up—get a doctor—” and then the checkered apron, and the barefoot boy, and the girl, and the universe at large all lurched away from him into oblivion, II. “Herr’s her pocketbook, doctor,” ob- served Mom later. ‘ Little purse or some- thin’. I found it hid in her stockin’.” ‘“‘ Open it,” said the doctor from his place beside the bed. ‘“ There may be something in it that ’ll help us to identify her.” Mom fumbled in the purse as directed, and at length fished forth a slip of paper. ‘Ann Winthrop Hale,” she spelled out frowningly. | ‘“‘ Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Telephone Back Bay 9999. An’ my! Look at all this money!” “Put the money with her things,” said the doctor, “‘ and give me that paper. I'll telephone Back Bay whatever-it-is as soon as I’m through here, and tell the person who answers that these two are going to come out all right. The man’s pretty well bunged up, cuts and bruises, but no bones broken as far as I can see. He'll be good as new in a little while. The girl has a broken leg, and.of course she’s bruised, too. Must have been quite a spill they had.” “Yes, sir!” Mom nodded emphatically. EO PMIC OOO KS (EO)