The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

FLIRTING WITH DESPERATE HAZARD. Whoever it was had took the bread out of our mouths, by cuttin’ us out of the chanee to earn that five hun- dred, was goin’ to put some of it back. We had a notion that if we come over to Minneapolis, and had a. Htttle talk with the parties that had beat us to it in gettin’ rid of this Perkins, why, maybe—just maybe—we could per- suade ’em that they’d better count us in on what they was gettin’ out of the thing! “So over here we blew this after- noon. We hadn’t no more idea than the police or anybody had, of course, who the ringleader of the bunch that had done up Perkins. was, but we figgered on gettin’ on his trail some way. As a fher, we was goin’ up to see the news- paper in that buildin’ this evenin’— to find out if they had any clues to hand out to a couple of amachure detectives, you know—when there we met you, easy enough to spot from all the de- scriptions that’d been printed, pinched already by the bulls, and bein’ trotted to jail. Well, that was luck for us! “T tips Brady, here, my scheme after you'd gone out of that elevator, and we was trailin’ along, kind of aimless- like, behind. “ “Here, I says, ‘this guy's up against it,’ I says. ‘Suppose we get him away from them cops,’ I says, ‘ and put it up to him, straight, that he’s to give us the tip on where’bouts he’s got Perkins’s*body, dead or alive, hid away. Then, I says, ‘ we'll talk business. “* He can’t collect his pay for, puttin’ the man out of the road, can he, in jail? Well, we can keep him from landin’ there. Out o’ gratitood for that, he’s got to take us in with him. He'll tell us where to go to bring to light Perkins or his corpse. Then, on the twenty- eighth, we'll have that inventor or his body to show to the boss, our five hun- dred will come across, we'll share it up in thirds, and then us for the quick get- away. There,’ I says to Brady, ‘is my scheme in a nutshell—and what d’ye think of it?’” 129 ‘Fhe fat man stopped. He was still looking up at Lewis, but with a smile, instead of the ugly, hard-jawed ex- presston, resting on his face. “And that’s what I’m askin of you,” he went on. “ What d’ye think of the idea? You're satisfied now, I take it, that you don’t need to do no more beat- in’ around the bush. You can see that we're all, as you might say, pals to- gether. So we'll come right to the showdown. You can share and share alike with me and my friend in that five hundred—if you'll just tell us where John S. Perkins is. Is that a bet?” Lewis had been doing some quick thinking. , It was easy enough to un- derstand now the reason for the sud- den disappearance of this Perkins in St. Paul. With those two thugs dogging his heels everywhere he went, their game, as the Independent concrete manufac- turer must have guessed, being to keep him from putting in his bid on that im- portant city improvement job in com- petition with the trust—to prevent it by physical force—no wonder the man had skipped out. To save his skin, probably he had gone into hiding somewhere. He was only waiting for the day before the twenty-eighth of the month to draw around, when he would send in his bid by mail, its eleventh-hour arrival ma- king it too conspicuous to be ignored— Why, to-day was the twenty-sixth. In forty-eight hours more Perkins would have emerged from obscurity, alive and well—proof in the flesh that Lewis had never harmed one hair of his head, mtch less wilfully murdered him. If he had known the facts in the case before, the reporter would have been satisfied to go to jail and suffer what- ever harsh treatment was meted out to him there, in perfect confidence that his tribulations were certain to be at an end in two days’ time— “Well? ”’—the voice of the fat man intruded on his reflections just then. oO cComicbooks CO