The Winslow mail., 1914-05-23
RDSJBTSSUDaI1SsUD DISTS.TN.5

"The devil-chair" had become a
standing headline in the American pa
pers. Each hour rumors were multi
piled about the travels of the mysteri-
Gus desperate who had affixed a gyro-
scope to an invalids chair and, run
ming upon 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 were searching for
him; cripples were arrested; ropes
were 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 mind
soured by Imprisonment and embit-
tered by wrongs Robbed of vast lands
in western state through the machi-
nations of a gang of scoundrels, rail
roaded to the penitentiary at Nokomis
Falls and paralyzed by treacherous
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 one
of those who had betrayed him, had
escaped the police, and now, bent upon
a 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 habitations, in a deserted
cabin, waiting for the hue and cry to
die down before proceeding to Grand
Valley, where he had reason to be-
lieve 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 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 a populous farming territory,
which, crippled and paralyzed as he
was, he could not hope to traverse in
that vehicle for which the entire coun-
try was searching. So day by day he
ate his 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 cripple
would be an object of suspicious atten-
ton. The journey occupied him three
nights; he lay all day in hedges and
He had but one 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, he
confronted the assassin whose bullet,
entering his spine, left him helpless
and paralyZed below the waist. Poole,
uneasy of conscience, and growing old,
had sold out his interest in the plum
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 had
he dared face the world; sleepless, un-
shaven, he had crept from room to
room of his mansion, fighting with
imaginary enemies and terrors that
he could not down On the fifth morn
ing he shaved and dressed himself,
and, with strong effort of will, went
to his office again. Now, shut up in
the large room with its glass partition,
behind which his stenographers worked
busily, he read those kilograms for the
fiftieth 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 and
ended with personal warning.
The other was from Ricardo, an Ital
fan spy, who had served with Haynes
in the penitentiary. 1t told of the mans
escape and of the terrible machine to
which Haynes owed his liberty. See
newspapers" he ended.
And on his desk the newspapers of
the past five days were spread before
his eyes; in the black headlines Poole
read his own approaching disaster.