The Scarlet Car

by Richard Harding Davis

The big burglar for one instant glanced over his right shoulder.

For months at a time, on Soldiers Field, the young man had thrown himself at human targets, that ran and dodged and evaded him, and the hulking burglar, motionless before him, was easily his victim.

He leaped at him, his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the impact of a club, the blow caught the burglar in the throat.

The pistol went off impotently; the burglar with a choking cough sank in a heap on the floor.

The young man tramped over him and upon him, and beat the second burglar with savage, whirlwind blows. The second burglar, shrieking with pain, turned to fly, and a fist, that fell upon him where his bump of honesty should have been, drove his head against the lintel of the door.

At the same instant from the belfry on the roof there rang out on the night the sudden tumult of a bell; a bell that told as plainly as though it clamored with a human tongue, that the hand that rang it was driven with fear; fear of fire, fear of thieves, fear of a mad-man with a knife in his hand running amuck; perhaps at that moment creeping up the belfry stairs.

From all over the house there was the rush of feet and men's voices, and from the garden the light of dancing lanterns. And while the smoke of the revolver still hung motionless, the open door was crowded with half-clad figures. At their head were two young men. One who had drawn over his night clothes a serge suit, and who, in even that garb, carried an air of authority; and one, tall, stooping, weak of face and light-haired, with eyes that blinked and trembled behind great spectacles and who, for comfort, hugged about him a gorgeous kimono. For an instant the newcomers stared stupidly through the smoke at the bodies on the floor breathing stertorously, at the young man with the lust of battle still in his face, at the girl shrinking against the wall. It was the young man in the serge suit who was the first to move.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"These are burglars," said the owner of the car. "We happened to be passing in my automobile, and——"

The young man was no longer listening. With an alert, professional manner he had stooped over the big burglar. With his thumb he pushed back the man's eyelids, and ran his fingers over his throat and chin. He felt carefully of the point of the chin, and glanced up.