The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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      The rest was sheer “propaganda of the deed” all over the barn floor, out into the hen-yard, and ending after some fifteen minutes in the far corner of the pigpen.

      This new case, of resisting an officer, is still in court, and has been put over till the March term. Much depends on the status of the set of harness as a dangerous weapon.

      There is also Deak’s counter-suit against Brooks for attempted may­hem. But the fact that Brooks, though he undeniably bit Deak on the right leg and essayed to chew off one thumb, did no material damage because of a total lack of teeth, has a vital bearing on the matter.

      It is a complex case.

      Judge Bartlett resolutely declines to discuss it.

A FLYER IN JUNK

      Originally published in All Story, March 9, 1918.

      I.

      The stout, expansive man with the pompadour lighted still another cigar, leaned back against the leather cushion of the Pullman, smiling.

      “As a deal, it was some deal, believe me!” he remarked, contemplating the ser­ious-looking man with the horn spectacles, who sat opposite. “It ain’t every day o’ the week you can pull off a stunt like that, an’ get away with it!”

      “You say the guy that fell for it, and that you wished the old boat off onto, claimed to be wise to cars?” asked the young fellow in the striped suit, inhaling a lungful of Egyptian smoke.

      “An’ then some!” chuckled the stout man. “He wasn’t after it, for himself. No, he was buyin’ for another guy—man by the name of Robinson, from Boston. The way he put it to me, this Robinson didn’t claim to be no Solomon in the buzz-buggy-business. Didn’t trust his own judg­ment in buyin’ no second-hand wagon, an’ so got him to O.K. the machine. That’s what makes me laugh, even now, when I think of it!”

      The stout man cachinnated, and blew smoke. He of the horn spectacles fixed an interested gaze upon him.

      “‘I know ’em from tires to top,’ says this duck, when he comes to give Liz the once-over. Liz was her name. Just Liz. ‘What I say to Robinson, goes. I have cart blonk,’ says he. Well, when I got through with him, it wasn’t cart blonk he had, but cart junk. Say! They don’t slip anything much over on Jimmy Dill—that’s me!”

      “Was she really on the fritz?” asked the young fellow, while the serious-looking man lent an interested ear.

      “Fritz? You said somethin’! Fritziest ever! She was an old Buick model seventeen, to begin with, crop of 1912. Seven-pass., rebuilt to runabout shape. Sixth-hand when I got her from a guy that had gave her up in despair. I paid him a hundred an’ give him five three-dollar meal-tickets in my cafe. I run the Alarm Cafe in Revere, see? Battleship gray, she was. Sixty H. P., with cylinders as big as pails, an’ took a pail o’ gas, too, every time she coughed.”

      “Some baby, eh?” inquired the young man, with approbation.

      “Oh, boy! Two men to crank her—one to throw her an’ the other to hold his hand over the intake—an’ throwin’ her was a Sandow job, or a Gotch, at that. You had to pump up the gas by hand, every few miles, when the pump was working, which it most usually wasn’t, an’ then you’d stall till you got her patched. An’ no emer­gency. Only a foot brake; an’ one time she busted her universal on the down­grade in a traffic-jam. An’ maybe I didn’t sweat blood, skiddin’ her through—but she coasted right to a garage an’ stopped out­side, an’ all they had to do was come out an’ haul her in!”

      “So you sold her, did you?” interrogated the horn spectacles. “Unloaded her on some sucker?”

      “Did I? But wait till I tell you some more about her. She had her faults, even when I got her, a-plenty. But travel? Say! I never did dare open her up, full. When she really got goin’—an’ sometimes she could be started in less ’n fifteen min­utes—why, there wasn’t no such things as hills to her. She went wild, simply wild over hills. An’ on the level stretches she dusted ’em all, Just a gray streak. Zowie! Never needed no horn, nor nothin’. Make a noise like a pewmatic riveter on a jag. Hear her two-mile off. Some boat!”

      Jimmy Dill puffed smoke-arrows, heav­ily, and nodded strong confirmation. The serious-looking man’s interest seemed growing ever greater. Dill continued with en­thusiasm:

      “Liz was good, ’spite of all her kick-ups, till last spring. Then she slumped sudden, though she still kept flyin’. She was a flyer, even if she begun to show signs of bein’ junk. Tires begun to go bad, with a slow leak in one that we couldn’t fix, noway—all wearin’ down, an’ no more o’ them bolted-on kind to be had. One lug of her cylinder-casin’ cracked off, too. That was bad. Supposin’ another went, while she was doin’ sixty, an’ the engine dropped out? Flowers for yours truly.

      “Magneto went on the blink, too, an’ cylinders wore crooked, so oil worked up, an’ she’d only run a few miles hittin’ on four. Then she begin coughin’ till you’d clean the plugs again. Who the devil can clean plugs every five miles? Her feed got leakin’, too, so you couldn’t pump her up without lamin’ yourself. An’ her gear­shift busted, some way or ’nother, so for a while she’d only run on low—I once brought her home, sixteen mile, on low—an’ then all of a sudden she’d only run on high. After a lot o’ tinkerin’, we got her to run on low an’ high, but no second. An’ boy! The times I used to have, tryin’ to coax her from low to high!

      “I begun to think I’d have to scrap her. But it was only after her radiator blew out, while I was to Ellengone out in the country, an’ I had to plug it with chewin’ gum, an’ then she took to back-firin’, an’ I had to be towed in by a fliv, on the end of thirty foot o’ barb-wire that we cut off’n a farmer’s fence, that I phoned Levitsky.

      “Levitsky, the junkman, come an’ said fifty beans on the hoof, as she stood. I was strong for the fifty, but Bill Heming­way, friend o’ mine—he’s in the garridge business, Bill is—says I can maybe do bet­ter. So I canned Levitsky an’ put an ad in the paper, no price set. An’ several guys come an’ give her the o.o., an’ then blow. Till at last this here wise duck, sent by this here Robinson, arrives.

      II.

      “I HAS LIZ already runnin’ an’ I’m loaded for bear, when he shows up, ’cause he’s already phoned me he’s comin’, an’ I’m not takin’ no chances on not bein’ able to start her. It’s kind of noisy, down by the Alarm Cafe, with lots of electrics and et cet, so Liz don’t sound so awful conspic­uous. She’s all washed an’ polished, any­how, an’ that’s half a sale. The wise duck gives her the up-an’-down, an’ then he says, says he:

      “‘Demonstrate her, will you?’

      “‘Demonstrate is my middle name,’ says I. ‘All goods strictly as represented, or no sale. I wouldn’t take a dollar of any man’s money on no false misrepresenta­tions,’ I says. ‘Money back if not sound an’ kind. Get right in, mister, an’ we’ll hop to it!’

      “So the wise guy gets in, an’ I prepares to make Liz do or die, or perish in the at­tempt.

      “I has her all loaded for bear, o’ course, like I said before. Got enough gas pumped inta the tank on the dash to last her five mile, an’ the plugs all clean, an’ tires СКАЧАТЬ