Fay let the convict’s head drop to the ground. He heard the death-rattle. He kicked aside the empty and useless rifle.
The way of escape was not an easy one. Forms moved in the mist. He darted for a row of bushes. He crawled beneath them. He gained the high fence around the estate, where, freed of the necessity of setting his pace to that of the old convict, he broke through the far-flung cordon of guards and watchmen and gained a woods which extended north and west for over a score of miles.
He discovered, toward morning, a small house in course of erection. Its scaffolding stood gaunt against the velvet of the sky. A carpenter’s chest rested on the back porch.
Fay pried this open with a hatchet, removed a suit of overalls and a saw, and dropped the lid. He emerged from the woods, looking for all the world like a carpenter going to work.
To the man who had wolfed the world—to the third cracksman then living—the remainder of his get-away to Chicago was a journey wherein each detail fitted in with the others.
He arrived—after riding in gondola-cars, hugging the tops of Pullmans and helping stoke an Atlantic type locomotive—at the first fringe of the city of many millions.
With sharp eyes before him, and dodging police-haunted streets, he mingled with the workers—seemingly a carpenter.
No one of all the throng seemed to notice him. He walked slowly at times. He thought of old Charley O’Mara, and of the dying convict’s request.
A speck in the yeast, a chip on the foam, he quickened his steps and entered a small pawnshop where money could be borrowed for enterprises of a shady nature.