SNAPSHOT ARTILLERY.
By BERTRAM LEBHAR.
(This interesting story was commenced in No. 153 of Nick Carter Stories. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.)
CHAPTER XVI.
A NIGHT’S WORK.
Patrolman John Hicks, of the Oldham police force, was a fairly vigilant guardian of the law—in the daytime. But when his turn came to do night duty, which happened regularly every second week, he always felt drowsy, no matter how much sleep he took by day to prepare himself for his nocturnal vigil.
“Which goes to show that night work ain’t the right thing for a man,” Mr. Hicks was in the habit of complaining to his intimate friend. “It’s against nature. The daytime was made for man to work in, and the night for man to sleep in. Even the dumb beasts and the birds close their eyes at night. When you try to reverse this order of things, Nature rebels—and you can’t blame her.”
Being anxious to offend Nature as little as possible, Officer Hicks had cultivated the habit of going to sleep standing up. So proficient had he become in this difficult art that he could lean against a lamp-post and slumber as soundly as if he were in his own comfortable bed at home.
The night which Hawley had selected for his photographic exposé of police conditions in Oldham happened to be one of the nights on which Patrolman Hicks was on duty.
He had selected the most comfortable lamp-post on his beat, and was propped against it, enjoying a deep sleep, when a big, black touring car, containing three men, came along.