a smaller man, who seemed to be pointing directly at the windows through which Jonathan Gibbs gazed. The coincidence was food for somber thought. As though concerting some plot aimed at Gibbs, the two slowly crossed the street. Then he heard his bell ring three times.
It was the first time its rasping voice had ever sounded during his tenancy. Gibbs opened the door to the landing silently and listened. He heard the front door open and steps advance along the flagged passage.
Then he heard the footsteps begin the ascent. They passed the floor of offices; they passed the dressmaker's door and began to climb the flight that led to him alone.
Softly he locked the door and stood a few feet back from it. To the knock he returned no answer.
Instead, he advanced to the front window; this time there were two policemen by the armory steps. And as he looked the raps at his door grew louder.
He looked about him wildly.
"Trapped!" he groaned.
"After all these years to be caught!"
Fear roused him from inaction. Before long they would burst in the door. He wondered how many were skulking there in the shadows.
The fire escape at the rear was his sole hope. It was pitch dark, but he dared risk no light or make the descent slowly. He had gone but half a flight when he trod upon a flower pot placed there in violation of all the city’s fire ordinances.
He clutched about him wildly and found only a piece of rotting rope. For a moment it promised to stay his fall; then he felt the old strands giving.
The paved yard to which he crashed was fifty feet below. They had not been wrong in Blackport who assumed that the man they called Jonathan Gibbs was dead.
TO BE CONTINUED
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They Signed on the Dotted Line
BUSINESS cannot be troubled by such trifles as being arrested; this is the slogan of an Omaha, Nebraska, life insurance salesman.
Pinched for reckless driving, the purveyor of policies was brough into a police station and hooked. While the accommodating desk sergeant was arranging to let the violator out on bonds, the salesman was delivering a lecture on the extreme importance and absolute necessity of the sergeant being at once insured; said insurance, of course, to be taken out in the company the salesman represented.
Before the astonished policeman realized that anything had happened, he was signing his John Henry on the dotted line. This same supersalesman has been credited with selling a policy to a man with whom he had a collision; informing the other motorist that he was taking chances on driving without being insured.
