The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1932-11-11

Somebody's Done Played Mighty
Mean Joke on You, Reckon"
upon sheet of scratch paper the
elderly man sketched rude outline
map, penciling in the road that Mark
ham should take with the various right
and left turns indicated by guiding
arrows. 'Not much of map" he apol-
ogized, "but maybe it will do"
Markham picked up the black bag,
saying, Z" If they telephone again, tell
them I'm on the way and will try
to overtake them"
At the hotel garage he called for his
roadster and told the night man to
fill the tank. He got in to place the
car for the filling, keeping his seat
until the man finished and came
around for his pay. For this reason a
dark figure had its chance to slip un-
seen from the shadows of a nearby
doorway, to stoop for brief moment at
the rear of the car, and thereafter to
vanish as swiftly and silently as it
had come.
Once across the bridge and headed
northward, Markham let the roadster
out. He was glad the bookkeeper had
told him that Starbuck and Lands had
not passed the distressing news on to
Betty; thus saving her long and
heartbreaking interval of anxiety and
uncertainty before the worst could be
known.
For time nothing interviewed to
make him slacken speed. With the
paved road left behind, however, Mark
hams difficulties began, and he had
to get out the scratch-paper map and
follow its markings. But after he had
made the first two or three arrow-in-
dicated turns speed slackening be-
came strictly obligatory. The road
was now degenerating into country
cart track among the hills.
Spurred on by the sharp necessities,
Markham kept the roadster in motion,
shifting gears only when he was
obliged to. In this manner he had
made something over twenty speedome-
/ ter miles Of the bad going before he
came to the end. On one of the rock
lest of the hills the motor coughed a
| few times and stalled, and not for any
switchings-on of the starter would it
yield another explosion.
He got his flashlight and climbed
out to investigate. So far as he could
determine, the ignition system was in
perfect condition. Next, he tested the
fuel feed by trying to flood the car
buretor-but 1t wouldn't flood. With
a malediction on his Ill luck, he took
off his coat, got out the tool kit, and
began to take things apart to probe
for, the trouble.
Though he was fairly good me-
chanician, the probing process proved
to be glutton of time, and a long
| period of what he could well imagine
might be life and death delay for
Betty's father was wasted before he
had satisfied himself that neither the
gas line nor the vacuum tank was re-
sponsible for the power failure. 1t was
only as last resort that he went to
look at the gas tank gauge. But a
single aiming of the flashlight at gauge
was enough. Though he was assured
that he had left Brewster with sup
ply of gasoline which should have
taken him five or six times the distance
he had Travelled, the tank was now
empty. The small drain cock in the
tank bottom was partly open, with the
last residue of the liquid fuel still
dripping from it.
Under other conditions, and in view
of what had already happened to him
and Lands since leaving Carthage, his
suspicious would doubtless have been