Kid Scanlan. Witwer Harry Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ says the Kid, still lookin' over at the car. "What are you laughin' at, Stupid?" he snarls suddenly at De Vronde.

      De Vronde give a shiver and the glasses fell off in the bottom of the car. While he was stoopin' down to look for 'em, the Kid turns to Miss Vincent.

      "I only wish he had been drivin' the thing," he says, "because then I'd have some excuse for bouncin' him! On the level, now," he goes on, winkin' at her, "he was drivin' the thing, wasn't he?"

      "Oh, no!" she answers. "I was at the wheel."

      The Kid frowns and thinks for a minute.

      "Well," he says finally, takin' another look at De Vronde, "ain't the brakes or somethin' where he was sittin'?"

      "No!" she tells him, grabbin' him by the arm. "Please don't lose your head now and start a fuss! I'm awfully sorry this happened, but as long as neither of you were hurt and – "

      "It didn't do me no good, that's a cinch!" butts in the Kid, with a meanin' look at his spoiled scenery. He walks over to the car and glares up at De Vronde. "Hey!" he snarls. "What d'ye mean by bein' in a automobile that runs over me, eh?"

      De Vronde moves as far over as the seat will let him, and then falls back on prayer.

      "I must decline to enter any controversy with you," he pipes, after a minute. "You were standing in the right of way and – "

      The Kid grins and holds up his hand. His face has lighted all up and he's lickin' his lips like he always did in the ring when he seen the other guy was pickin' out a place to fall. He's walked around to where De Vronde had been sittin' and piped a little handle stickin' up.

      "What's this?" he calls to Miss Vincent, who's climbin' in the other side.

      "That's just the oil pump," she says.

      The Kid suddenly reaches up, grabs De Vronde by the arm and jerks him out of the car.

      "You big stiff!" he roars. "Why didn't you pump that oil, hey? If you had done that, the thing wouldn't have hit us! I knowed it was all your fault – you deliberately laid off that pump, hopin' we'd get killed!"

      With that he starts an uppercut from the ground, but I yanked him away just as De Vronde murmurs, "Safety first!" and takes a dive. Miss Vincent gets out and gives me a hand with the Kid, and De Vronde sits up and menaces us with his cane.

      "That isn't a bit nice!" Miss Vincent frowns at the Kid. "That's ruffianly! You never should have struck him!"

      "I didn't hit him!" yells the Kid. "The big tramp quit! If I had hit him he wouldn't be gettin' up."

      He starts over again, but I held him until she has climbed into the car with De Vronde and they shoot up the road. Just before they disappeared, De Vronde turns around in the seat and shakes his finger at us.

      "Only the presence of the lady," he calls, "saves you from my wrath!"

      "Come on!" says the Kid, grabbin' my arm. "Let's get the next train for Frisco, before I run after that guy and flatten him! Believe me," he goes on, lookin' up the road after the car, "I'll get that bird before the day is over if I have to bust a leg!"

      And that's just what he did – both!

      All the way over in the train I tried to work the third degree on the Kid to find out what he was goin' to buy, but there was nothin' doin'. He stalled me off until we pull into the town and then he takes me to a street that was so far from the railroad station I come near castin' a shoe on the way over. About half way down this boulevard there's a garage and the Kid stops in front of it.

      "Wait here!" he tells me. "And don't let nobody give you no babies to mind. I'll be right out!"

      He slips inside and I'm lookin' the joint over when a big sign catches my eye. I took one good flash at the thing, and then I starts right in after the Kid. A friend of mine in New York had gone into a place with a sign on it like that one time and made a purchase. Six months later when he come out of the hospital, he claimed the bare smell of gasoline made him faint Here's what it said on that sign,

      J. MARKOWITZ

USED AND NEARLY NEW AUTOSFOR SALE

      It was kinda dark inside and it takes me a minute to get my bearin's, but finally I see the Kid and a snappy dressed guy standin' in front of what I at first thought was a Pullman sleeper. When I get a close up, though, I find it's only a tourin' car. It was the biggest automobile I ever seen in my life; a sightseein' bus would have looked like a runabout alongside of it. There was one there and it did! The thing hadn't been painted since the Maine was blowed up, and you could see the guy that had been keepin' it was fond of the open air, because there was samples of mud from probably all over the world on it.

      "You could believe it, you're gettin' it a practically brand new car!" the young feller is tellin' the Kid. "The shoes are in A number one condition – all they need is now vulcanizin', and Oi! – how that car could travel!"

      "Just a minute!" I butts in. "Before you make this sale, I want to speak to my friend here."

      Both him and the Kid glares at me, and the Kid pushes me aside.

      "Lay off!" he says. "I know just what you're gonna say. There's no use of you tryin' to discourage me, because I'm gonna buy a car. Here I am makin' all kinds of money and I might as well be a bum! – no automobile or nothin'. I should have had a car long ago; all the big leaguers own their own tourin' cars. There's no class to you any more, if you don't flit from place to place in your own bus!"

      "Yeh?" I comes back. "Well, Washington never had no car, but that didn't stop him from gettin' over! I never heard of Columbus gettin' pinched for speedin' and Shakespeare never had no trouble with blowouts. Yet all them birds was looked on as the loud crash in their time. What's the answer to that?"

      In butts I. Markowitz, shovin' his hat back on his ears.

      "That brings us right down to the present!" he says. "And I could tell you why none of your friends had oitermobiles. Cars was too expensive in them days – a millionaire even would have to talk it over with his wife before they should buy one. But now, almost they give them away! Materials is cheaper, in Europe the war is over and now competition is – is – more! That's why I'm able to let your friend have this factory pet here for eight hundred dollars. A bargain you ask me? A man never heard a bargain like that!"

      "Don't worry!" I tells him. "Nobody will ever hear about it from me. If you made him a present of it and throwed in the garage, it would still be expensive!"

      "Who's buyin' this car?" snarls the Kid. "You or me?"

      "Not guilty!" I says. "If you got to have a car, why don't you buy a new one?"

      "This is the same as new!" pipes I. Markowitz.

      "Speak when you're spoken to, Stupid!" I says.

      "Don't start nothin' here," the Kid tells me, pullin' me away. "I don't want none of them new cars. They're too stiff and I might go out and hit somebody the first crack out of the box. I want one that's been broke in."

      "Well," I laughs, "that's what you're gettin', believe me! That there thing has been broke in and out!" I turns to I. Markowitz. "What make is the old boiler?" I asks him.

      "Boiler he calls it!" he says, throwin' up his hands and lookin' at the СКАЧАТЬ