“Gee whiz, I’m hungry too, I’ll say that,” said Pee-wee.
“Don’t say it,” said Emerson.
Pretty soon they were rewarded by the sight of another pair of headlights coming around the bend. As the car approached its dimmed lights suddenly flared up and set two bright columns straight against the warning sign.
Slowly, with its great nickel headlights glaring, the big machine moved forward toward the obstruction. It stopped, then advanced very slowly a few feet more. Then, with heart thumping, Pee-wee beheld something which made his blood run cold—a bright-colored shawl with spangles that shone brilliant in the moonlight and a dusky woman with a bandage around her forehead.
But this was not all. For sitting at the wheel was the most villainous looking man that Pee-wee had ever seen, a man with a mustache of a pirate or a Spanish brigand. There was murder in his slouch hat and the scarf which was knotted about his throat (when taken in conjunction with this hat and his atrocious mustache) suggested a man who would not be satisfied with murder; who would be satisfied with nothing less than torture and massacre. He was Bluebeard and Captain Kidd and all the thieving, kidnaping gypsies of the world rolled into one horrible, appalling, brutal spectacle!
And then Pee-wee realized that he was face to face with the escaping gypsies and the Hunkajunk car. He was terrified, trembling. But he would not shirk his perilous duty now.
“Run to the house,” he whispered to Emerson; “try not to let them see you; crawl on the ground for a ways. Hurry up.”
Scarcely had he said the words when he lowered himself to the ground and, crawling through the tall grass which bordered the road, came around to the back of the car. The pulsating engine helped to drown the slight sound of his cautious movements but his heart beat against his chest like a hammer until he had emerged from his concealment and stood trembling but unseen except by the little red eye of the tail-light. Then, his hand shaking, but his resolve unweakened, he raised his arm and with all the furious vigor of an assassin plunged his deadly ice-pick to the very heart of the innocent cord tire which immediately began breathing its last in a continuous hissing sound while our hero started to run.
“Goodness me we’ve got a flat!” called the merry voice of Pee-wee’s sister, Elsie.
She was nestling in the rear seat between Carmen and Napoleon and on the front seat sat Charlie Chaplin close by the terrible gypsy brigand so as to make room for Martha Washington. Elsie was very sweet in her Joan of Arc costume, far too sweet to have had as an escort the gypsy king whose kindly task of taking the party to their several homes the champion fixer had so effectually baffled.