The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

138 that they had him completely cowed and at their mercy at last. But the streets through which they had set out to guide their captive to the station-house were so congested at that hour—the close of day in the teem- ing business section—that the same thought, by coincidence, had occurred to both officers simultaneously : What if an attempt at rescue should be made by friends of their prisoner? As it happened—this from the story Lewis was still reading—the fellow was also the perpetrator of at least a score of daring crimes, planned and carried out in different parts of the country at various times in the past. Indeed, their captive was none other than the notorious “Silver” Bob Slade: alias a dozen additional surnames—the feared, respected and admired of every lesser criminal in the business. Any miscreant would deem it an honor to be of service to this famous rogue. And, in the jam of people filling the street, who could tell but what a dozen crooks might even then be wait- ing their chance to free the master rascal from his present predicament? Thus it had struck his captors as a wise move to steer their prisoner up a narrow and deserted alley. They turned up this empty lane. And, hardly had they gone a quarter of a block away from thronged Nicol- let Avenue, when their captive, whir- ling on them with incredible rapidity, started such a battle for freedom on his own account, that his previous at- tempt to resist capture back in the office of that newspaper seemed merely a farce by comparison. Desperately the two detectives had fought to hold the man. One of them, it was thought, had been seriously wounded in the fray—an internal in- jury. But the result was foregone. The culprit shook off his captors at length. And away he fled, leaving both officers tripped and rolling over each other in the gutter—all but dead after their terrible struggle to hold the mis- creant. THE ARGOSY. Well—Lewis’s eyes had shifted from the print—if this effort could be beaten for an example of the height to which the gentle art of lying might be ~brought ! Of course it was easy enough to understand the reason Inspector Flinch and his assistant had for concocting the yarn that must have made Ananias and Baron Munchausen turn like whirling dervishes in their separate graves. They were ashamed to admit that they had been held up and robbed of their pris- oner. It would put them in a more fa- vorable light to claim that their captive had got away from them single-handed —being such a desperate character that nobody could hold him. Just then the reporter’s eye fell on the column beside the one that contained this melodramatic account of his es- cape. He caught his breath. One thousand dollars had been of- fered for his recapture and delivery back into the hands of the police. Some- where, the newspaper pointed out, this daring rogue must be at large in the city. All points of egress from town were still carefully watched. It was impossible that the escaped culprit could have skipped out of Minneapolis by any conceivable route. And there- fore the public was advised to keep its eyes open—to be on the sharp lookout for the chance to earn. a considerable sum of money. . The runaway murderer wasn’t going to be hard to recognize. For, while he had broken loose from his captors and taken to his heels, nevertheless he was not quite free after all. There were those handcuffs on his wrists—it would be impossible to mistake him. It was hardly likely that he had been able to get free of the manacles him- self. To keep their advertisement of his identity from being removed unwit- tingly by some locksmith or other, to whom the runaway assassin might go with a smooth tale of how he happened to be handcuffed, offering to pay for having the things unlocked or chiseled off his hands—to frustrate such an at- oO COMmMiclhoo S CO