“Great stuff!” exclaimed the Camera Chap gleefully. “We’ll pay our respects to Patrolman Harrington before we disturb the slumbers of our friends in the woodpile. Is he a pinochle player, too, Parsons?”
“I don’t think so,” the reporter answered, with a laugh. “You’ll most likely catch him in the act of diminishing Windmuller’s stock of goods. He’d have been ‘broke’ long ago for bad habits if it hadn’t been for his pull. His father is a member of the city council and one of Mayor Henkle’s most energetic political workers.”
“Oldham certainly has some police department!” Hawley chuckled. “Please stop a short distance away from Windmuller’s place, old man. It wouldn’t do to drive right up to the door.”
Carroll turned anxiously to the Camera Chap. “Do me a favor, Frank, and cut this one out,” he pleaded. “There’s no sense in taking such desperate chances. Windmuller’s place is almost as tough a joint as Dutch Louie’s. Let Harrington alone, and pass on to some easier ones.”
“I guess this thing is going to be easy enough,” Hawley said confidently. “I intend to work that bromo-seltzer trick over again. I don’t see why it shouldn’t succeed as well in Windmuller’s place as in Dutch Louie’s. In fact, I stand a much better chance of getting away with it this time, for I know beforehand just what I’m going to do, and can proceed with calm deliberation. Besides, practice makes perfect, you know.”
Carroll shook his head deprecatingly; but he realized that argument was useless, and made no further attempt to dissuade his rash and impetuous friend.
Although the Camera Chap’s adventures that night were eventful enough to be worth recording fully, limitations of space render it inexpedient to describe them all in detail here.
In the main, his experience inside Windmuller’s place was similar to what had happened at Dutch Louie’s. Once more he affected a bad headache, and called upon the waiter to bring him a dose of bromo seltzer; and when the white powder was placed before him, he made the same use of it as he had done in the former instance.
Greatly to the relief of his two companions, he emerged from the place unscathed, and laughingly assured him that he had succeeded in snapshotting Patrolman Harrington, and had reason to believe that the negative would be a fairly good one.
Compared with this exploit, the taking of a flash-light picture of the policeman who was slumbering in a lumber yard at the northern end of the town was not a difficult matter. Hawley succeeded in getting a first-class snapshot of this sleeping beauty, and although the bluecoat was awakened by the setting off of the flash-light powder, and, bellowing with rage, chased the Camera Chap through the piles of lumber, the latter managed[Pg 49] to reach the automobile in time to make a safe get-away.