Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1919 - Feb 1920)

38 Bound and Gagged a corner. With a suppressed cry of delight Archie seized them and put them on. A garbage can next caught his eye. Rummaging in it he found — wonder of wonders! — a pair of old broken, dilapidated shoes. "Now if I only had a coat," he mused. "And I've got to hurry, for the last boat for Europe this week leaves in two hours, and I've no time to lose." Peering about he noticed a dingy sign on the wall of the hallway informing visitors in the building that a tailor had his shop in a room on the floor above. He started to tiptoe up another flight. Now it happened that at this moment Don Estaban Carnero was nervously pacing the floor of this shop, waiting for the tailor to press his coat which lay on a chair by the door. Don Carnero's nervousness was due to the fact that within the lining of that coat was secured that priceless document, the charter of the kingdom of Cordillera, which, by a roundabout way, he was taking with him back to Europe. Fearful that political enemies might be trailing him, he had fastened it in the coat, and, not daring to let the garment out of his sight, he had taken it to the obscure shop, where he could wait while the coat was being pressed. As he stopped before the tailor to ask impatiently how much longer he would have to wait, Archie reached the door of the shop which stood ajar, peeped in, and saw the coat. Cautiously reaching in, he seized it, turned, and fled down the stairs, putting it on as he ran. Carnero gave a cry of alarm as he saw the coat disappear from the room. "Get that coat !" he cried to the husky youth, nephew of the tailor, who was loafing in the shop. "I'll give you two hundred dollars for its recovery !" The gangster — for such he was— sprang to his feet and was off. But by the time he reached the street he saw Archie rounding the corner on the rear end of a motor truck, bound for the river front. ^ There was nothing for the Spaniard to do but wait. And wait he did, cursing fate and reviling the tailor. Half an hour later a battered figure entered the room. He wore a pair of battered, broken shoes, a smock made of a window curtain and a pair of plasterer's overalls. Also he had a black eye. "The coat !" cried the Don. "Coat be hanged and you along with it!" the gangster roared "The coat's on board the Cadis, along with my clothes and my gat that that guy took away from me when I jumped i him down at the docks. I In an hour it'll be on the way to Spain." What he had said was true. Not for nothing — had the young ^ clubman learned ju jutsu. By means of it he had turned the tables on the gangster, and had made him exchange clothes with him. "So the tramp poet is trying dirty work," he mused, as he looked himself over with a broad grin, quite satisfied at the turn things had taken, since he was now much better clad, and had a gun in the bargain. So far, fate seemed to be taking care of Archie. Having gained an entrance to the hold of the ship by seizing a loaded truck and wheeling it on board, as though he were one of the stevedores, he stumbled into the laundry room where, among a pile of soiled linen, he found a jersey belonging to one of the crew. It took but a moment more for him to exchange the gangman's trousers for a soiled pair of ducks. He was now much safer. To all appearances he was a member of the crew. Just as he was about to leave he caught sight of the coat he had taken off. "That's too good a coat to leave," he said to himself, as he picked it up. "Besides, it might come in handy. Now for something to eat." It would hardly do, he thought, to try to join any of the crew's messes. He would at once be detected, imprisoned, and sent back. But another way was open. In his college days he had heard tales of students w ho had crossed the ocean on cattle boats, and he remembered stories of how the cooks had befriended them, provided they showed a willingness to work. Now it happened that between a certain second-class cabin steward and the pantryman of the second-class dining saloon on the Cadiz there had been a feud, dating over a period of some months, and springing from some obscure cause connected with a Liverpool milliner. The steward was a large, strong man, who should have been working in a locomotive plant. The pantryman was a decent and worthy fellow, but slight of stature. So, when the steward, warmed by a few drinks taken just before sailing, thrust his head in the pantry and announced that he was coming back in a few minutes to cut the pantryman's mustache off to mail to the milliner for a souvenir, the poor pantryman was thrown into a fit of trembling. He was still shaking a few minutes later when Archie boldly entered the pantry, sat down and began to peel a pan of potatoes By means o f jujutsu he had turned the tables on the gangster, and had made him exchange clothes with him.