Of course, Hawley would have preferred to have taken his larger camera with him, but he realized that it would have been sheer folly to have attempted to photograph the city hall with anything larger than a kodak. With six months in prison staring him in the face, he had to be content with a smaller picture.
The pocket camera, however, had an excellent lens, and, of its class, was the very finest instrument obtainable. The Camera Chap always carried it with him so as to be prepared for such emergencies as this. On many occasions in his eventful career it had enabled him to turn defeat into victory after he had been foiled in his attempts to use his more conspicuous apparatus.
“It really is kind of odd that Paxton should have given me this assignment,” Hawley mused, as he motored down the steep mountain road which led to Oldham. “He was so emphatic in urging me to obey my physician’s orders to forget that there was such a thing in the world as a camera. When I gave him my telegraph address and told him not to hesitate to send for me in case I was needed, he replied that he wouldn’t think of doing so unless the entire city of New York was burning and there wasn’t anybody else to photograph the conflagration. Paxton always means what he says, too. Funny that he should have sent me this telegram.
“But, then,” he added, anxious to make excuses for his managing editor, “I suppose he figured that this was such an easy assignment that it couldn’t do me any harm. Of course, he doesn’t know about this new anticamera law. If he had known of it, no doubt he would have preferred to go without the picture of the city hall rather than have asked me to run the risk of going to jail.”
The Camera Chap had traveled two-thirds of the distance to Oldham, when suddenly, as he approached a bend in the road, there came to his ears a sound which caused him to put on more speed, in spite of the fact that the motor cycle was already going at a rate which the steep down grade and the unevenness of the road rendered somewhat dangerous.
It was a scream which caused him thus to risk his neck—the piercing, startled cry of a woman. It appeared to come from just beyond where the road turned.
Rounding the curve without taking the precaution of slowing down, Hawley came in sight of an automobile—a small runabout—standing in the roadway. At the steering wheel of this machine sat a girl who was cowering in terror from a ragged, rough-looking fellow of the hobo type, who stood on the running board.
The Camera Chap took in the situation at a glance. Evidently the runabout had broken down, and the tramp, seeing that it was stalled on this lonely country road, and that its sole occupant was a girl, had not hesitated to annoy her.
The noise of the approaching motor cycle was warning enough for the ruffian. Before Hawley could get to him, he had jumped from the step of the car and dashed through the thick brush which lined the roadway.[Pg 41]
The Camera Chap applied his brakes and brought his motor to a stop alongside the car. Then, with a reassuring word to the girl, he jumped from his wheel and went in pursuit of her annoyer.