The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-07-23

bredthleSSly up the sandy SlOpe.s Sno could see this man, even as he held her from falling, stop to level his gun at the fleeing figure of Legar She could see him shoot again, and still again, at the same moment that Train and the plunging automobile came throbbing and panting up to the scene, the electric lamps throw ing out their wavering, long columns of white light as they came. Then the stranger, arrested by certain gasping and gurgling sounds from the throat of the half-garroted girl in his arms, stopped down and tore the constructing veil away from the slender, white column of her neck. And Margory, opening her eyes, saw that it was the Laughing Mask bend ing above her.
 Tt was Legar!" she gasped as Train, followed by her father, came panting up to where they stood.
 And there he goes now!" cried the Laughing Mask, pointing down the long lane of light columning out from the cars lamps. Across that narrow river of light they could catch a glimpse of tall figure skulking off into the darkness.
 Follow that man with your car," to the chauffeur.
 'No car could travel through coun- try like that!" protested Train.
 "Then keep your lights on the main road to the west here, so as to pick him up if he tried to break through on that side. I'll swing around by the foundry yards and head him off in the east!"
 And the next moment the man in the yellow mask had disappeared in the darkness. Golden and his daugh- ter stood staring after him.
 Two minutes later the blackness that had swallowed him up was stabbed by a series of flame flashes, followed by the repeated bark of a revolver. From the gloom still nearer the shadowy piles of the Westingham foundry came an answering series of shots.
 "That means he's making for the foundry, sir!" cried the excited Train as he swung his car about.
 "Then, for Gods sake, get us there, as quick as you can," commanded
 
 pulsed and crawled on between the broken shrubbery, in perilous search for some open pathway.
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 But both Legar and his pursuer were by this time well beyond their line of vision. That desperate minded master criminal, in fact, realizing hot o1O < his heels, mounted slag pile, dropped flat and emptied his revolver into the darkness, where the Laughing Mask should have been.
 But the wary pursuer, dropping low beside an empty pitch barrel, held his fire and waited. The moment he heard the crisp sound of footsteps along the slag slope he once moro took up the pursuit.
 That pursuit led through a narrow lane between great piles of structural iron. It led through an abandoned boiler-room, then on through dimly lighted and low-roofed structure of pulleys and lathes, and from there to the brighter lighted and higher roofed metal-room of the foundry itself. There, beside glowing furnaces, half naked men toiled over incandescent annealing boxes and cauldrons of mol ten metal. There gigantic track cranes swung bowls of liquid fire from crucibles to mold beds.
 And there the harried Legar, be- wildered by the sudden bright light ran like a pelted hound down the sandy paths between forge and coke oven and cauldron crane. There, see ing his way blocked by a group o1 round-eyed Lithuanians, he swung catlike, up into the iron network o1 the cable bridges, with his pursuel still close at his heels. And there midway across that smoke stained roof, that echoed with the tumult ot thunderous hammers and directly over king cauldron of molten steel the two men came together.
 There Legar, with his metal claw hooked securely into the iron network above his head, swung about and faced his enemy. And there on that grimy bridge, high above the equally grimy workmen who left their forges and lathes and caldrons to witness the struggle, the two enemies whc had so long and bitterly opposed each other found themselves face to face for their final struggle.
 Yet the man in the yellow mask