It was so dark there that he hardly could see the ground under foot. Twenty assailants might be waiting in the gloom for aught he could tell. The reporter was not ashamed to take frankly to his heels and rush out onto the lighted street as fast as he could. He noticed that the lounger had disappeared from the theatre doorway.
Hoping now that he had thrown his unknown pursuers off the trail, Buck visited a second moving picture playhouse. There a drunken man plumped roughly down into the vacant seat next to him and tried to pick a quarrel without any excuse at all. The reporter would have taken this as rather a joke had it not been that there was no vile odor of intoxicants on this drunkard’s breath. Shoving the rough to one side, Buck hurried out of the theatre, walked quickly down the street to the next corner; crossed there to see if he was followed; turned the next corner; walked two blocks along an ill-lighted deserted side street and there jumped into a dark doorway to listen.
Yes! there was no mistake about it! He could hear the patter of running feet less than a quarter of a block behind. Ere Buck had time to flee, rubber heels on the pursuers’ shoes deadened their footfalls again and two shadowy figures appeared directly in front of his hiding place. They paused there, breathing hard, and holding a hasty conference.
“How ever did he get away from you, Hermann?” snarled the bigger of the two men to the other, whom Buck now recognized as the “drunken man” of the theatre.
“Why talk about that now that he has again eluded us?” he growled. “If only we had him here on this dark street, we could soon finish with him.”
“Yes, we must catch him at once. He must still be in the neighborhood and isn’t armed. I made sure of that in the restaurant a couple of hours ago. But anyway, he can’t go far without Otto, Wilhelm or some of the others seeing him. They are covering all of these three streets, you know.”
The man addressed as Hermann grunted his assent.
“I’m winded from that run after the fool,” said he. “Let’s sit down in this doorway and rest for a few moments.”
Buck’s heart began to beat faster. He knew that his discovery and assault were only a matter of a few seconds. The scoundrelly pair had now approached within arm’s reach of him, so without further delay the reporter swung aloft his loaded cane and brought it down in a smashing side blow on the head of the nearest man.
