The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-05-23

"The devilchair" had become a
standing headline in the American pa
pers. Each hour rumors we're multi
piled about the travels Of the mysteri-
Gus desperate who had affixed a gyro-
scope to an invalid's chair and, run
ming upon a single wheel at the rate of
two hundred miles an hour, was pill
Laying and numbering. He was report
ed from Philadelphia, from Baltimore,
from Pittsburgh. Every strange rob-
berry, every unsolved murder mystery
in the eastern portion Of the United
States was laid to his charge. In every
city the police we're searching for
him; cripples were arrested; ropes
we're stretched at night across high
ways, to the detriment of many thou
sand dollars worth of automobiles and
horse flesh. But no sign of the des-
perado was evident, no clue was OBJ
tainable.
Had the truth been known, public
opinion would have veered as strongly
toward John Haynes as it now directed
itself against him. For it was upon
the satisfaction of private feuds that
he had bent all the energies of a mind
soured by Imprisonment and embit-
tered by wrongs. Robbed of vast lands
in a western state through the machi-
nations of a gang Of s~coundrels. rail-
roaded to the penitentiary at Nokomis
Falls and paralyzed by a t~reacherous
bullet, he had made a gyroscope in the
prison machine shop, had effected his
escape, had entered New York and OBJ
tanned five thousand dollars from M
of those who had betrayed him, had
escaped the police, and now, bent upon
q clue which should bring back to him
the missing wife and daughter whom
he had never seen since the dramatic
climax of the conspiracy against him
five years before, he was hiding in the
Adirondack wilderness, far from trails
and human h%abitations, in a deserted
cabin, waiting for the hue and cry to
die down before proceeding to Grand
Valley, where he had reason to be-
Iieve his daughter was to be found.
He had made his marvellous vehicle
out of an old invalid's chair which he
had found in an abandoned barn, and
now, in the solitude of the wilderness,
he planned his movements with a pre-
cision worthy of the man who had es-
capped from the penitentiary in so dar-
ing a way. Grand Valley lay only
twenty-five miles distant from where
he lurked, but to reach it he must pass
through q %populous farming territory,
which, crippled and paralyzed as he
was, he could not hope to traverse in
that vehicle for which the entire oun
try was searching. So day by day he
ate mis- heart out in loneliness, long
ing for the daughter whom he had not
seen since she grew to womanhood. In
the end he wheeled the chair to the
edge of the forest land, hid it in a
clump of trees not far from the high
road, and crawled on his crutches by
night toward his destination. Once in
Grand Valley, he might pass unno-
ticed; but on the roadside a cripple
would be an object of suspicious atten-
ton. The journey occupied him three
nights; he lay all day in hedges and
Swamps.
He had but n clue by which to find
Eleanor; the name of Jack Poole, one
of the least of his enemies-a treach.
erous friend who had urged him to the
duel in which, with an empty pistol, ht
confronted the assassin whose bullet
entering his spine, left him helpless
and p~aralyzed below the waist. Poole
uneasy of conscience, and growing old
AnJ 1ntJ out hsg fnfnroef IN tho Mum
dered property to the land gang, and
had retired to play the part of village
magnate in his native town.
In his real estate office Jack Poole
was staring, terror stricken, at two
kilograms in front of him. A weak
and corpulent old man, with heavy
white cheek-beard and snug, apoplectiC
visage, the shock OF these messages
had temporarily benumbed his facul
ties. They had arrived five days be
fore, and never since their arrival hal
he dared face the world; sleepless, vi
shaven, he had crept from room Il
room Of his mansion, fighting will
Imaginary enemies and terrors tina
he could not down. On the fifth morn
Ing he shaved and dressed himself
and, with a strong effort of will, wen
to his office again. Now, shut up il
the large room with it's glass partition
behind which his stenographers worked
busily, he read those kilograms for th'
fftieth times,
One was from Frank Staples
the Brooklyn lawyer from whom
Haynes had obtained the five thousand
dollars. In yelled and guarded Ian
guage it recounted the episode ant
ended with a personal warning.
The other was from Ricardo, an Ital
Ian spy, who had served with Hayne
In the pe~nitentiary. 1t told of the man
escape and of the terrible machine b
which Haynes owed his liberty. "Se'
pewspapers!" he ended.
And on his desk the newspapers o
the past five days were spread befor
his eyes; in the black headlines Pool
read his own approaching disaster.
His first plan was to fly; but unde
The stimulus of strong potations o
brandy his courage revived. At tn
end of an hour he had mapped out hi
scheme. He could not warn the police
for that would call attention to his owl
part In the conspiracy which had bee
formed to wrest the land from his vic
Tim, but he knew that even in Gran
SHINING MARK IN COMMUNITY