Aughinbaugh removed the cigar and flicked the ash. “Mac? He got away,” he said indifferently.
“Got away!” shrieked the senior lawyer. “Gagged, bound hand and foot, tied to the bed—and got away!”
Aughinbaugh surveyed him placidly, and waved his cigar in graceful explanation.
“Yon was a verra intelligent pairson!” said he.
THE END
HIT THE LINE HARD
HIT THE LINE HARD
Chapter I
NEIGHBOR JONES gazed meditatively from his room in the Saragossa House: an unwelcome guest buzzed empty boastings in his ear. He saw, between narrowed lids, the dazzle of bright tracks, the Saragossa Station, the bright green of irrigated fields beyond, merged to a vague and half-sensed background. The object of his attentive consideration was nearer at hand, by the west-most track—a long, squat warehouse, battered and dingy red. And from this shabby beginning, while the bore droned endlessly on, Neighbor Jones wove romance for his private delight.
The warehouse was decked all about by a wide, high platform. A low-pitched roof reached far out beyond the building to overhang this platform, so that the whole bore a singular resemblance to Noah’s Ark of happy memory. A forlorn and forgotten ark: the warped shingles, the peeling, blistered paint, the frayed and splintered planks, were eloquent of past prosperity and of change, neglect and decay.