CHAPTER I
OUT FROM THE FOG
A heavy fog had come sweeping in from the lake. Lights from street lamps glowed dimly like great, bleary eyes. Store windows were mere blankets of pale white light.
Jimmie Drury hated fog. He was thinking as he crossed the Madison Street bridge: “Perhaps the devil is a monster breathing out fire, but when his fires are banked he must breathe out cold, gray fog which is worse. He——”
Just then the thing happened. A shadowy figure stepped from behind a steel girder of the bridge. A husky voice said:
“As you are!”
Jimmie’s figure went rigid. Involuntarily his right hand gripped something hard and round in his right side pocket. Something struck his chest. There was a blinding flash. Then Jimmie went down like an empty sack and out like a match.
When he came to he found himself the center of a curious group surrounded by fog. A policeman was bending over him. His first sensation was one of surprise that he was still alive. Then, like an electric shock, a thought came to him:
“Did—did he get it?” he stammered. His hand went to his belt.
“No,” he answered his own question, “he didn’t get it. But did I get him? That’s the question.”
“Poor dear,” sighed a bespectacled old lady at the edge of the crowd, “he must be delirious. It’s the shock.”