Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

22 motor-cycle since his 'teens, he retained control of the machine with consummate skill, and it was well for him that he did so, for at the rate he was covering the ground a crash would have meant certain death. The dust billowing out behind him in dense clouds, he negotiated that track without mishap, and finally reached the point where it joined the road once more. And it was as he picked up the highway anew that he discerned two cars in front of him—two cars which were careering in a southerly direction, and which were separated by a distance of about three hundred yards. The one nearest to Terry was the big sedan in which Degado and his con- federates had left the yard of the kelp plant. The other automobile was that occupied by Jean and Snapper, and it was plain that the girl-reporter and the cameraman had taken the alarm, for Jean was driving at top speed, and Snapper was looking back fixedly at the car containing Boroff's agents. Terry guessed Jean and Snapper must have seen the sedan coming up behind them—must have recognised it as the one that had been parked in the kelp plant's yard—and, perceiving it to be packed with men, must have divined that they them- selves were being pursued for some reason. Jean was clearly endeavouring to keep ahead of the crowd in the sedan, anyhow. Yet that sedan was gaining on her car Steadily, as Terry soon realised. Meanwhile, however, he was overhaul- ing the automobile containing the crooks, and the gangsters were still a hundred yards to the rear of the vehicle driven by Jean when the revenue officer caught up with them and passed them. Had they identified him they would doubtless have made some attempt to deal with him. and it was to guard against such an eventuality that Terry had seized the helmet and .ierkin of the motor-cyclist he had laid low in the yard of the kelp plant. Those articles of clothing and the goggles that he had adjusted over his eyes stood him in good stead now, as they con- stituted a disguise that prevented Degado and his cronies from divining who he was. Indeed, the rogues possibly recognised the bike, and mistook Terry for its owner, since the latter had resembled him in build. At any rate, Terry blazed past them un- challenged, and a minute later he was drawing level with Jean and Snapper. But, just as the occupants of the sedan had failed to identify him, so his fiancee and her companion likewise failed to place him, and Terry was swerving close to Jean's car when Snapper jerked himself to his feet and brandished the tripod of his camera in a threatening fashion. "Get away from here!" the Press photo- grapher shrilled. "Get away from here, or I'll wrap this around your neck!" Terry lifted one hand in a restraining gesture, but at that Snapper swung at him with the tripod, and if the lieutenant had not instantly ducked he would have been knocked clean out of the saddle. As it was, he escaped the blow by inches, and before the Press photographer could repeat his effort, he thrust up the goggles he was wearing. "Cut it out. Snapper!" he panted. "Cut it out!" The cameraman uttered an exclamation that was echoed by Jean, and sank back into his seat. In another moment Terry set one foot on the car's running-board and clutched at the door of the auto. Then he abandoned the motor-cycle, which immediately overturned and slewed across the road to finish up on a strip of barren terrain between the highway and the sea clifT.s. Terry now climbed into the car he had boarded, and, scrambling acro.ss Snapper, settled himself between his fiancee and the cameraman. At the same time he spoke to the girl breathlessly. "Move over, Jean!" he rapped out. No', i-in'ier BOY'S CINEMA "Edge up into the corner and let me have the wheel!" She did his bidding and surrendered the controls to him, and, though he could not exact from the car a higher speed than that Jean had attained on the straight, he showed better judgment on the bends in the road—was able to take curve after curve at a pace which Jean could not have equalled, and which the driver of the pursuing sedan could not match, either. The sedan ceased to gain on the smaller car, and Terry had even increased the latter's lead to some slight extent when he came on to a stretch of highway that was a mile or so in length and had no twists in it. Bordering the edge of a wooded ravine that yawned on the right, it was a stretch of road that would have given the man at the wheel of the bigger and more powerful automobile a chance to cut down the hard-won advantage Terry had ob- tained. But there were more bends farther south that would have favoured the lieutenant again owing to his superior ability as a driver, and the crooks resorted to gunplay in order to bring the chase to an end. Degado was the first to open fire, and the smash of the shot he discharged sounded sharp and clear above the high- pitched scream of the cars' engines. The bullet was directed at the back of Terry's head, clearly visible to the crooks above the folded hood of Jean's auto, which, unlike the machine occupied by the gangsters, was an open tourer. It was a bullet that grazed the fabric of the lowered hood, and, missing Terry by a mere fraction of an inch, it pierced the windscreen in front of him. The glass splintered as the slug tore through it, a myriad cracks radiating from the hole that the leaden missile had drilled in the screen. Immediately after- wards a blattering fusillade smote the air as, with the solitary exception of the man at the wheel of the sedan, Degado's accom- plices followed his example. That fusillade was ineff'ective, for none of the shots found their target, but they passed un- pleasantly close to Terry's helmeted head —to hit the windshield as Degado's bullet had done. Riddled, the glass of the screen fell out of its frame, and as the fragments clat- tered about the feet of the tourer's occu- pants Terry barked a command to Jean and Snapper. "Duck!" he ordered tensely. "Those birds are trying to pick me off, but they're liable to hurt you in the process!" His injunction was superfluous, for ali'eady Jean and the cameraman were in the act of crouching lov/. As for Terry, he bent over the steering-column so that his head was no longer in view of the pursuers, and with the wind blowing against his countenance at gale force through the shattered screen he drove on with the accelerator pressed hard down on the floorboards. Now unable to see anything of the fugitives, Degado and his confederates riveted their attention on the rear wheels of the tourer and aimed at the tyres in the hope of puncturing them and thereby arresting the speed of the smaller car. But their gunplay was inaccurate, although several shots kicked up spurts of dust only an inch or two from one or the other of the wheels. Leaning forward in the driving-seat, eves glued on the road ahead, Terry spoke through clenched teeth as he heard those shots ricocheting from the surface of the highway. " They're trying to blast the tyres off the rims!" he said. "Let's hope none of 'em score a hit, or it'll be all up with us!" He darted a glance at a guard-rail that fringed the right-hand side of the road. It was a glance that took in the steep declivity beyond the rail, and Terry winced as he visualised the possibility of tiie tourer going over the edge of the slope if a tyre-burst caused him to lose control. Such an eventuality would mean certain Every Tuesday death for Jean, Snapper and himself. He was convinced of that. The sharpness of the decUvity, the depth of the ravine and the speed of the car were factors that would spell doom for the thi'ee of them if the tourer left the road on that side. With that dread thought haunting his mind he pulled well over to the left. Meanwhile, Degado and his cronies were maintaining a steady fire, and it was as one of the gangsters' bullets clanged against the near-side rear wing of the touring-car and was deflected skyward that Jean Norman stretched out her hand towards the door by which Snapper McGee was sitting. "I've just remembered something. Terry!" she panted. "There's a gim in the door-pocket beside Snapper. I put it there this morning. I'm not used to handling firearms, but I might be able to give those crooks a taste of their own medicine with it." Terry answered her abruptly. "You lie low, Jean!" he rapped out. "If you show yourself and start blazing at those guys back there you'll have a hail of lead singing around your ears. Keep down!" Snapper moistened his lips and addressed the revenue officer in a queru- lous tone. "I ain't much good with a gun either," he faltered, "but I'll take a chance and see what I can do, Terry. You keep drivin' as fast as this bus will go, and I'll try to cripple that sedan." He fished in the pocket to which Jean had referred, and, his fingers closing on a Colt revolver that was nestling there, he withdrew the weapon and twisted round. Then, hugging his camera with his left arm, he raised himself tentatively and pointed the gun at the front near-side wheel of the car containing Boroff's hirelings. He pulled the trigger of the Colt, and a shot ripped from the muzzle of the weapon with an ear-splitting blast. But that shot soared harmlessly towards the heavens, for, inexpert marksman as he was. Snapper was unprepared for the recoil of the revolver. Before he could fire again the ruffians in the sedan discharged a volley at him, and a slug blistering the back of his uplifted hand, the Press photographer uttered a yelp and let go of the Colt. It struck the edge of the door by which he had been seated, bounced off ei"e he could retrieve it, and pitched to the high- way, whereupon Snapper cowered down in a discomfited fashion. "You all right, feller?" Terry called to him, regretting that he had ever allowed the cameraman to take the risk of attempting a gun-duel with their foes. " Yeah!" Snapper croaked. " Yeah, I'm all right! But I " The sentence was never finished, for Degado and the other gunmen in the sedan had focused their attention on the back wheels of the tourer again, and it was at that moment that one of their bullets hit home, biting into the rear off- side t.vre of Jean's automobile. The tube burst with a loud report, and immediately afterwards the car holding the three fugitives seemed to sling itself sideways in a grinding skid—a skid that carried it to the right and towards the guard-rail. Desperately, Terry wrenched on the steering-wheel, but no man could have corrected that fearsome skid. Completely out of control, the auto hit the guard-rail and crashed through it—to hurtle down the slope of the gulch, somersaulting madly in its descent! (What happened to Terry Kent, Jean Norman and Snapper McGee? Were they wiped out by the car's wild plunge over the rim of the ravine? Will Boroff continue his activities unhampered by the law? On no account must you miss "Wolves At Bay," the ninth pulsing: i ejpisodc of this hii^h-tcnsion serial, pub-1 lished by kind permission of British Lion | Film Corporation, Limited.)