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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1940-04-11, Page 6imnigpM’, april mo THE EXETER TIMES-AD VQCATE CHAPTER XI Johnnie Cope bate? “Think they’ll be safe?” Hendringham nodded back as he spoke towards the shed where the mechanics had already resumed their labors. Prepared to set off with Cope in the car, he had qualms about leaving the others unprotected. “I fancy so. One reason for my wanting you away from here this morning is to give the impression that everything is finished. That's why I'm making all this fuss about stowing this junk as publicly as possible.” His hands were full of the spoilt pieces that they had brought from the Gresham Works, and he was busy stowing these in the dickey, which he ostentatious­ ly locked in the end. Hendringham objected that he did not see any signs of their being under observation. “You can bet your life we are, though," he was assured. “There’s probably a fellow in one of those trees over there, or else a new lod- ger in one of the cottages with a window that commands the yard, It’s up to us to spread the idea that we’ve got everything we want. The more they believe that the less likely they will interfere with our friends in the workshop. Anyway they’re not going to do much attacking in an open space during the day. They don’t want to run foul of the police either. When we see our friends Mr. Mench we must try to encour­ age the idea in him that we are all set for our trip to town this after­ noon -with the completed sample, so to speak, in our pockets. If we do that he’ll call his bullies off and concentrate on some stupendous coup on the road to London. He won't want to strike until we’re actually on the road because he’ll reckon we shall have the tubes as well as the samples on us then. He will have made up his mind by now that the tubes cannot possibly have been destroyed in the explosion a couple of nights ago, and he’ll con­ centrate on getting hold of every­ thing in one stroke. Meanwhile everyone he’s got will be employed in keeping a -watch on us and set­ ting his traps, and as they -won’t know within hours when we really mean to start it will be rather a har­ assing afternoon for them. There are two sorts of strategy for these occasions. One is to keep the other side on tenderhooks, the other to lull them into a sort of complacency that means carelessness. I don’t fancy Mench is the sort to be lulled.” He drove straight to the board-! iug-house. where he dropped his passenger, saying: “Give you pre­ cisely forty-three minutes for a bath a shave and a change of clothes. I shall have ten minutes less than that if I pick you up here when I’m done but you’ll find shaving an awkward matter, I expect. Anyway, however painful it proves, see you don’t keep me waiting.” Hendringham, grinning at the pre­ cision of his instructions, protested that he never did keep anyone wait­ ing, which was approximately true, and made his way to his room. Three quarters of an hour later he was more or less shaved, the sore patches on his cheeks being the ex­ ceptions, and attired, in a less dila­ pidated suit, he smoked a cigarette and speculated as to the most cut­ ting form of comment with which to greet a Johnny Cope already two minutes behind his schedule. Five minutes later he had forgot­ ten his urge to score in a growing anxiety, for in all their acquaint­ ance he had never known Cope to be as much as a minute late for an appointment of his own making. A minute later convinced that something serious had happened, he set out to walk to the hotel. He reached there as the clocks were striking eight. There was a slight rain falling and few people about at that hour. In the lounge a maid, perfunctorily dusting the piano, in­ formed him that Mr. Cope had not yet come down. She was positive of Painful Boils Bad Blood the Cause When boils start to break out on different parts of the body it is an evidence that the blood is loaded up with impurities. just when you think you are rid of one, another crops up to take its place and prolong your misery. All the lancing and poulticing you may do will not stop more coming. Why not give that old, reliable, blood purifying medicine Burdock Blood Bitters a chance to banish the boils? Thousands have used it for this purpose during the past 60 years. Take B.B.B. and get rid of the bad blood and the boils too. The T. Milburn Co., Ltd., Toronto, Ont ] that, because there was no one yet i in the breakfast room. Evidently she j was aware that Cope had not been J in his room overnight. Hendringham told her he would slip upstairs and see if his friend was up, affecting flippancy, though he was increasingly perturbed. He hurried upstairs and along the cor­ ridor where, for some reason not yet clearly defined in his mind, he kept carefully to the thick carpet that rendered his footsteps inaudible. Outside the door of Number 17 he paused to listen. There was a, low mumble of voices. Evidently Cope had been detained by company, but that -was totally unlike Cope. Very stealthily he tried the handle. The door was locked. For a moment he stood thinking and then, acting on a nfemory of the way Cope had been as he put it sandwiched between the mysterious Mr. James, he tiptoed to the door of Number 16 and tried the latch. The door opened freely and a cau­ tious glance showed the room to be no longer occupied, though it was evident that someone had slept in it that night. A similar essay re­ turned equivalent results, at door 18. It was possible, of course, that Messrs. Marsden and James were both enjoying baths, ^but unlikely, as there was only a single bathroom on this floor. Puzzled and now definitley sus­ picious, he made his way upstairs in search of Mr. Marvel’s room, which he recollected Cope having stated to be immediately above Number 17. He found it easily enough, the two floors being identical in disposition. It was, Ike Cope’s, the fifth room from the staircase end of the corri­ dor. The latch yielded here also. The opened door betrayed an empty room, bedclothes tumbled, an un­ latched suitease, pyjamas tossed aside, shaving tackle strewn about the washbowl, window* open w’ide to the morning air. He closed the door behind him and tried to listen for sounds from below*. There was not so much as a murmur, though he listened for the period of a whole minute, and imagined himself to have been lis­ tening for five. But just as he was growing convinced that the floor was too thick for sounds to pene­ trate, he seemed to catch a suddeif queer noise that might have been due to the shifting of furniture in one of the lower rooms, or might have been a choking effort to con­ trol a groan. For him in his now excited state of mind it was indis­ putably the latter. To the Rescue Springing to the window*, he gaz­ ed below. Immediately beneath some twelve or thirteen feet away, w*as a balustraded square of crumb­ ing plaster and wet shiny lead-work, the roof of the porch that formed the hotel entrance. Between him and this porch there projected from the wall a -huge bracket of scrolled ironwork that bore tile sign of the place. The top member of the bracket was some three feet below the sill over which he w*as leaning, and its low*er member reached the brickwork immediately abtjve the window of Number 17. Evidently the window of Number 17 was open, for from above he could now just hear the sound of voices again, low*, urgent voices, with occasionally breaking across them a louder, more urgent voice that was Cope’s. A glance about the market place show*ed this to be empty except for a shopboy taking down the shutters of an establishment on the far side in preparation for the day’s work. He was a leisurely boy, and whistled unmusically as he worked. A cart was rumbling over, the stone setts of one of the narrow streets that led out of the square and from other streets came the noises of milkmen yodelling competitively. Concluding the boy distant enough to be unlike­ ly to notice anything unusual about the front facade of the hotel, he de­ cided to trust his weight to the iron bracket beneath him. If that prov­ ed an inadequate support it was an easy drop to the porch below, but he did not wish to appear on the porch to begin with. If his fears for Cope's safty proved groundless, he wanted to get back again with­ out discovery of himself. On the other hand, if his help was needed, he wanted to reconnoitre and form a plan. There would probably be three men to deal with since three were misSing from their rooms, and also since it would take quite that number to restrain a man of John­ ny Cope’s uncanny energy. On these grounds he cofirmed his impulse to trust his weight to the sign, feeling fairly confident that to do so was the one way in which lie could pro­ ceed with a chance of escaping Cope’s redoubtable satire if his in­ tervention should prove unneces­ sary. Actually at the moment he was* dreading that satire far more than the prospect of tackling three experienced gangsters or that of being caught in Mr. Marvel’s bed­ room. The^e thoughts flashed through his head and he acted on them as if by a single reflex. In a couple of seconds he was perched precarious­ ly on the iron bracket, clinging to its tortuous members*' and devoutly wishing that some long-dead smith had seen fit to make the top of the thing more acceptable as a support for a man’s chest. Gradually he manouvred his body over and twisting, his feet into the interstices of the scroll-work, craned down­ ward until he was just able to bring his eyes to the level of the top of Number 17’s single window. The window was open a few inches at the top and he was able to peer in and command what was precisely a bird’s eye view of the interior. In the room were three men bend­ ing over a fourth who was stretched out on the bed, his hands and feet secured to the posts at each corner. Tn the hand of one of the men who now bent hesitantly over the one on the bed was a little 'bright object familiar to one who had seen it pro­ duced on several occasions for the benefit of some sufferer, most re­ cently for that of “poor little Pain- phlett” dying in agony on the harsh surface of a newly-ploughed field. The men with the hypodermic set was saying: “Lots of people commit suicide with one of these. We’ll pump you full and leave you quite tidy, Mr. Cope. The scandal won’t worry anyone but your relatives, if you have any." “Dead men are not reputed to give very much information away, you know." The 'voice was that of Johnny Cope and it was as caustic­ ally indifferent as if he himself had been the threatener. “Perhaps not, but there’s a long time silent, and we don’t reckon to have much trouble With that fellow Hendringham once his smart friend is out of the way. What we can’t get from you we’ll get from him all right. Now, for the last time, if you do'n’t answer before I count to three you’re in for a nice little over­ dose of whatever the beastly drug is you carry about with you. One, two, three.” The 'needle descended against the exposed skin of the victim’s forearm, dimpled it a sec­ ond, penetrated. A sharp little crack of sound echo­ ed across the sleepy square. The tradesman's boy stopped whistling and stared around. His brain was not acute enough at that hour for him to observe anything unusual about the front of the White Horse. A pedestrian now hurrying to his business in the distance did not even trouble to look around. If either the boy or the pedestrian had been able to hear the sudden yelp of pain from the man with the hy­ podermic syringe, or the clatter of the syringe across the floor as he spun around and clapped a hand to his thigh, they have connected the sounds with the spectacle of a gentleman hanging by his knees from the sign of the White Horse and holding a gold cigarette case in his hand as if about to console himself for his discomforts with a smoke. It was easy for Hendringham to draw himself up, indeed it improved his comfort to do so, which was why, when the two unwounded men rush­ ed to the window and leaned out to stare into the square, as if they were suspecting the tradesman’s boy, he was able to remain unde­ tected long enough to bring the wea­ pon within some three feet of the shoulders of one of them. At the first suggestion of an impulse to look upwards ’on the part of either of the men he fired again. Immed­ iately both men sprang back and took cover one on either side of the window. The pedestrian had gone his way, the boy, imagining no doubt, someone of his own age ex­ perimenting with toy bombs, did not this time even quit whistling. How It Happened “Anyone annoying you, gentle­ men?" It was the voice of Johnny Cope, from the bed, Ironically key­ ed as usual and sounding neverthe­ less as if its owner were entirely happy in the changed situation. “Damn you, Cope! Who the devil have you got on your side this time? Again the ironic Voice, a trifle more playfully this time: “My guard­ ian angel, of course. Didn’t you know I possessed a guardian angel? We all have one, you know, so long as we don’t get so far depraved as to drive him from.our side. Mine’s a particular useful shot, and the third time, I migh’t ^arn you, he shoots to kill. He’s been merciful up to now, winged ’one of you and pinked another in the softer part of the thigh apparently. The next one will get it through the head, so don’t say I haven’t warned you. I’ll give you all until I have counted to three to get out of this room and if any of you attempts to assault me WINTER’S SNOWFALL The Exeter Times-Advocate Established 1873 and 1387 at Exeter, Ontario Published every Thursday «iorn.hU!l' SUBSCRIPTION—?2.00 per year in advance RATES—Farm or Real Estate sale 50c. each Insertion for first fom insertions. 25c. each subse­ quent insertion. Miscellaneous ai> tlcleg, To Rent, Wanted, Lost, or Found 10c. per line of six word*. Reading notices IQc. Card of Thanks 50c. Legal ad­ vertising 12 and 8c. per line. I* Memoriam, with one verse 50o. extra verses 25c. each. Member of The Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association per line, Professional Cards ever so little again my Guardian An­ gel will see to it that that is the last assault of a lifetime. Now . . one . . two . . .” There was a simultaneous move­ ment towards the door, and casting nervous glances at the window the three of them bundled unceremon­ iously out. One was nursing his upper arm, the other groaning as he limped across the floor. • Cope speeded them with an offer to come and dress their wounds for them if they would wait for him to get loose. (To be Continued) - OBSERVE ANNIVERSARY Mr. and Mrs. Allen Swayze, of 13 Rogers avenue, London, quietly cele­ brated their 50th wedding anniver­ sary on Wednesday last. Mrs. Sway­ ze is the former Miss 'Ida Broderick, of Exeter and since the couple mar­ ried in London, they have always lived in West London. CAN OFTEN BE PREVENTED Your child’s coughing at night- caused by throat “tickle” or ir­ ritation, mouth breathing, or a cold—can often be prevented by rubbing his throat and ch'est with plenty of Vicks VapoRub at bed­ time. VapoRub’s swift poultice- and-vapor action loosens phlegm, relieves irritation, clears air pas­ sages, tends to stop mouth breath­ ing. This helps M -_________ him relax into! /|CKS ^healing sleep. 93 INCHES Since December 20th last, when the first snow* of the season came, 93 inches—nearly eight feet—of the “beautiful” have fallen in Goderich, according to the records of J. E- Mutch, Government meteorologist at Goderich. He has carefully record­ ed the precipitation each day for the preceding twenty-four hours. A great deal of this snow still remains with us, and inasmuch as ten inches of snow, melted, makes one inch of water, there’s sloppy weather ahead. GLADMAN & STANBURY (F. W. Gladman) BARRISTER, SOLICITOR, &c Money to Loan, Investments Made Insurance Safe-deposit Vaults for use of out Clients without charge EXETER and HENSALL CARLING & MORLEY BARRISTERS, SOLICITORS, LOANS, INVESTMENTS, INSURANCE Office; Carling Block, Main Stree', EXETER, ONT. 50th ANNIVERSARY Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Grieve, of Egmondville, celebrated the fif­ tieth anniversary of their marriage last week. On Sunday afternoon there was a family 'dinner and on Tuesday many friends called at their home to extend best wishes and congratulations on this highly esteemed couple.—-Sehforth News. Dr. G. F. Roulston, L.D.S.,D.D.S. DENTIST Office; Carling Block EXETER, ONT. dosed Wednesday Afternoons Illustrated—Chevrolet Special De Luxe Sport Sedan. STABILIZED FRONT END C-4I4B steel to give true front-end stability. The Stabilized Front End means freedom from squeaks and rattles —saves you money on repair bills. The strongest and most rigid body and frame construction known to modern automotive engineering— makes for solid, long-lasting comfort and safety. With double-acting shock absorbers, and with spring action varying auto­ matically according to load and de­ flection, “balanced springing” assures uniform riding smoothness. ... ' ' s. "■ t-s, s"' features which make i.t^possibl^! PERFECTED KNEE-ACTION (On Special De Luxe Models) Assembled as an integral unit com­ plete in itself, to assure perfect bal­ ance and, therefore, perfect springing, steering and braking in each indivi­ dual car. Easiest ride on any road! AUTOMATIC RIDE STABILIZER chassis frame, and linked to the lower Knee-Action member, it im­ parts genuine steadiness on curves and sharp turns! SCIENTIFICALLY BALANCED SPRINGS Dr. H. H. COWEN, L.D.S.,D.DS. DENTAL SURGEON Office opposite the Post Office. Main Street, Exeter Office 36w Telephones Res. 36) Closed Wednesday Afternoons ARTHUR WEBER LICENSED AUCTIONEER For Huron and Middlesex FARM SALES A SPECIALTY PRICES REASONABLE SATISFACTION GUARANTEED , Phone 57-13 Dashwood IL R. No. 1, DASHWOOD FRANK TAYLOR LICENSED AUCTIONEER For Huron and Middlesex FARM SALES A SPECIALTY Prices Reasonable and Satisfaction Guaranteed EXETER P. O. or RING 138 USBORNE & HIBBERT MUTUAJ FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY Head Office, Exeter, Ont. President ............. JOHN Kirkton, R. R. Vice-President .... JOHN Dublin, Ont. HACKNEY 1 MCGRATH Rad i a tor, hood, head­ lights and fenders are firmly and se­ curely bound together in a rigid frame- w o r k of structural IMPROVED WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION DIRECTORS W.. H.. COATES .................... Exeter ANGUS SINCLAIR .... Mitchell, R. 1 WM. HAMILTON .... Cromarty, R. 1 T. BALLANTYNE ... Woodham, R. 1 AGENTS JOHN ESSERY ........... Centralia ALVIN L. HARRIS .... Mitchell R. 1 THOS. SCOTT .................... Cromarty SECRETARY-TREASURER B. W. F. BEAVERS ....... ....... Exeter GLADMAN & STANBURY Solicitors, Exeter Lumber Shingles Scientific distribution of weight over springs in this longest of all lowest- priced cars—completes the story of today’s finest ride,“Chevrolet’s Ride Royal!” Come in and try it today. RIGID ALL-STEEL BODY AND BOX-GIRDER FRAME Snell Bros. & Co., Exeter Associate Dealers: G. Koehler. Zurich: J. E. Sorowl Lucan Our Prices are the Lowest they have been for several years. If you are building it will pay- you to call and get prices. Just think Matched Lumber at $35.00 per M. feet A. J. CLATWORTHY Phone 12 We Deliver Granton Extinguisher Causes Fire in Seaforth School Rays of the hot sun being reflect­ ed through a glass fire extinguisher caused a fire in a wooden bookcase at the Public (School on Tuesday af­ ternoon. Shortly after the pupils were dismissed a teacher noticed smoke coming from the end of the bookcase, and upon examination dis­ covered the wood was scorched and smouldering. The glass fire extin­ guisher had acted as a magnifying glass to such an extent that the wood was set on fro.—-Huron Expositor.