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Show Ls Ryley Cooper (WNU Service.) Copyright by Courtney Eyley Cooper PRECEDING EVENTS Joe Barry, country youth In New York, ekes out a living as caretaker in a poor room! ng house and accordion player In Louie Bertolini's restaurant. Lured by the open country, he spends a night in the fields, neglecting neg-lecting his duties. NeJct day Ber-tolini Ber-tolini discharges him. A frequent fre-quent visitor to Bertolini's offers of-fers him $10,000 to impersonate 1 a "bootlegger" in 'trouble. It means a penitentiary sentence for Joe, and he hesitates. The man, "Martin," gives bim $1,000 'on account." Next day Joe deposits de-posits $800 In country banks, giving his name as Joseph Bradley. Brad-ley. A circus attracts him. Outside Out-side a tent he sees an accordion and s tempted to play it. A girl. Sue Dayton, niece of the. owner, who admires the music, urges him to take a position with the circus. Joe says he must first return to New York "on business." busi-ness." He has decided to refuse re-fuse "Martin's" offer. In his room four men accost him. Bewildered. Be-wildered. Joe sees the men, who are detectives, find large amounts of -noney, a machine gun, and two revolvers. Next day, at the police station, he learns the man he had known as "Martin" was an impostor. CHAPTER III Continued 9 "That'll be all, Mr. Martin. Sorry to have disturbed you." The distinguished man departed. Pete Maxwell pulled up a chair. "Now listen, sport, there isn't any sense in you trying to beat this rap with a lot of clown stuff. You've got too much to explain. All that money In your pockets ; that water-soaked suit and those shoes with mud on them." Joe's tongue licked quickly at dry lips. "I don't know anything about the money. But about those clothes. I had tliem on day before yesterday and got caught in the rain." "Where?" "Up by Newburgh, near a little town called Orr's Mills." Pete Maxwell glanced hastily toward the captain. The three other detectives detec-tives shuffled into an attitude of attention, at-tention, their arms on the table. "Go right ahead," said Pete, then Interrupted at almost the first sentence. sen-tence. "What did you go up there for?" Joe Barry shifted ; the first bubbles of a slow hate were beginning to rise. "I'm trying to tell but you won't listen !" "We haven't missed a trick. Hop to it." Joe Barry began his recital again, only to meet with more interruptions, cross-statements between the various men, returns to the beginning of his story. But at last they let him finish. Then Pete straightened, and stretched, pressing bis hands wide at the sides of his chest. "Bridge player, eh sport?" he asked. , "No." "You believe In leading trumps In a pinch though. Now we'll play a few. Mind pushing the button, Captain?" Cap-tain?" The captain complied and gave a command to the officer who responded to the signal. Out he went, to almost .immediately re-enter with four other persons. Joe was ordered to his feet. They all looked at hlra carefully. Then, bewildered, he beard himself identified, first by a farmer who swore him to be a man who had come to his door at midnight, seeking a place to sleep, then by the two others, gawking apple knockers, who proclaimed him f'e t whom the had ursued on his exit from a haystack. Cloudiness again assaulted Joe's mind. He had told all this, as a means to his own release. Then, by police necromancy, his witness had appeared, not to help him, but to damn him. Joe's dark, tired eyes stared stupidly, from one to the other. Deep within his brain, something begain to caution him to tighten his tongue, to say nothing more, lest every word he uttered should be used for his own condemnation. condemna-tion. Then the three were led out again, only a stocky man remaining. "Hon about him, sheriff?" asked the captain. "I guess he'll do. The boys at the j tilling station in Newburgh weren't any too particular, of course. - But from the general description of the tvo that were on the truck, this one seems to match up with the fellow who got away. Dark hair, medium sized " "Lots of people are dark and medium me-dium sized." Joe half rose with a final burst of desperate appeal. "Besides, "Be-sides, I wasn't on any truck. If you'll let me tell my story " "We'd be delighted If you would, sport." said the captain caustically. "But you seem to think you're dealing with a hunch of children." Again Joe Barry was led back to ' his cell, pondering dully. Hate was In his heart; he had been duped, tricked, his honest story twisted Into a confession of a crime, the true extent ex-tent of which he did not know. But his nalred. strangely enough, was clarified sutliciently to exempt these men who turned this night to one of terror. They were merely instruments; instru-ments; Joe all hut forgot them in the searing memory of the personality who had engineered this. Martin ! He knew no other name for htm. Alone in his cell, bent on :he satted bunk, black hair stringing over bis sweat-caked fingers as he bent his head to his hands, Joe Barry strove to tear the tangled events of the last two days apart and weld them anew Into something that would possess perspective. Something had happened near Orr's Mills, which had to do with that overturned over-turned truck, something with which this man Martin had been connected. Now Joe remembered the careful questioning ques-tioning which had been carried on in the car under the guise of mere casual interest; the extraction of Incidents, where Joe had been, whom he bad seen, what he had done, what be knew about that wrecked truck ; in fact, his every action from the time he had left New York until he had returned. Out of that, Barry saw now, a man had gainec the knowledge that here was some one who had been near the scene of 'i crime and whose every action, ac-tion, instead of proving an alibi for him, wouiJ aid to conviction. Martin must have wanted such a person to take the place of a guilty man. So he had engineered an . acceptance of a proposition to go to prison, to so conduct con-duct one's actions as to cause suspicion. sus-picion. But Joe knew now that these suspicions were not merely the ones which Martin had designated. That i Bewildered, He Heard Himself Identified, Iden-tified, First by a Farmer, Then by Two Others. machine gun, those two automatics, and that money which Pete Maxwell had extracted from the pocket of his old clothing were evidence enough of serious things impending. Joe shuddered from the possible charge which rose constantly before him. The hours passed. Then the turnkey came in to take him to the patrol that was to conduct him, with other, prisoners, to police headquarters for the morning "line-up." When the patrol stopped on Center street, Joe hardly noticed his surroundings. sur-roundings. Another place of confinement, confine-ment, another stopping place in this shifting journey to a market place of human frailties. He entered the building, with the other scuffling occupants of the patrol, A man in uniform sat in a sort of enclosed en-closed throne in the big rotunda; It might have been an office building Information In-formation desk. Then came an office with the methodical taking of names. After that a hallway, flanked by office of-fice doors with the names of interminable inter-minable bureaus upon them; after that, the line dived into a narrow stairway, under guard. Then they took his name again, in a little cage, where another fat man fondled various vari-ous keys from a rack which hung above his desk. Once more, he was in a cell, noticing vaguely that he possessed pos-sessed a mate, and staring as vaguely about bim. More hours went by. Then the turnkey came and got him ; Pete Maxwell Max-well was waiting in the grilled cage outside the holdover proper, to take him to the photographer's. , The endless detail, the constant shifting, moving about, from cage to cage, handcuff to handcuff. Then Maxwell Max-well opened a door and put Joe Barry into still another cage, a big one this time, with some twenty other men. a cage which reached nearly to the ceiling, and opening upon a wide room, fitted mostly with tables and photographic photo-graphic apparatus. Inside the cage, some men sat, some paced, up and down, up and down, hands behind them, faces to the floor. At first there were only a few, then others came from the benches, and still more; pacing, turning swiftly, and moving back again. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |