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Page 3
"Hands up!" he intoned fearsomely. "I am the mysterious lone bandit of
the boulevards. Your jewels are the price of your lives!" The
six-shooter wavered, looking bleakly at one and then another.
After the first stunned interval, a shout of laughter went up from
those behind. "Good! Good idea!" one approved. And another, having some
familiarity with the mechanics of screen melodrama, shouted, "Camera!"
"Lone bandit nothing! We're _all_ mysterious auto bandits out seeking
whom we may devour!" cried a young man with a naturally attractive
face and beautiful teeth, hastily folding his handkerchief cornerwise
for a mask, and tying it behind his head--to the great discomfort of
his neighbors, who complained bitterly at having their eyes jabbed out
with his elbows.
The bandit play caught the crowd. For a few tumultuous minutes elbows
were up, mufflers and handkerchiefs flapping. There emerged from the
confusion six masked bandits, and three of them flourished
six-shooters with a recklessness that would have given a Texas man
cold chills down his spine. Jack, not daring to take his eyes off the
heaving asphalt, or his hands off the wheel, retained his natural
appearance until some generous soul behind him proceeded, in spite of
his impatient "Cut it out, fellows!" to confiscate his flapping, red
tie and bind it across his nose; which transformed Jack Corey into a
speeding fiend, if looks meant anything. Thereafter they threw
themselves back upon the suffering upholstery and commented gleefully
upon their banditish qualifications.
That grew tame, of course. They thirsted for mock horrors,
and two glaring moons rising swiftly over a hill gave the
psychological fillip to their imaginations.
"Come on-let's hold 'em up!" cried the young man on the front seat.
"Naw-I'll tell you! Slow down, Jack, and everybody keep your faces
shut. When we're just past I'll shoot down at the ground by a hind
wheel. Make 'em think they've got a blowout--get the idea?"
"Some idea!" promptly came approval, and the six subsided immediately.
The coming car neared swiftly, the driver shaving as close to the
speed limit as he dared. Unsuspectingly he swerved to give plenty of
space in passing, and as he did so a loud bang startled him. The brake
squealed as he made an emergency stop. "Blowout, by thunder!" they
heard him call to his companions, as he piled out and ran to the wheel
he thought had suffered the accident.
Jack obligingly slowed down so that the six, leaning far out and
craning back at their victims, got the full benefit of their joke.
When he sped on they fell back into their seats and howled with glee.
It was funny. They laughed and slapped one another on the backs, and
the more they laughed the funnier it seemed. They rocked with mirth,
they bounced up and down on the cushions and whooped.
All but Jack. He kept his eyes on the still-heaving asphalt, and
chewed gum and grinned while he drove, with the persistent sensation
that he was driving a hydro-aeroplane across a heaving ocean. Still,
he knew what the fellows were up to, and he was perfectly willing to
let them have all the fun they wanted, so long as they didn't
interfere with his driving.
In the back of his mind was a large, looming sense of responsibility
for the car. It was his mother's car, and it was new and shiny, and
his mother liked to drive flocks of fluttery, middle-aged ladies to
benefit teas and the like. It had taken a full hour of coaxing to get
the car for the day, and Jack knew what would be the penalty if
anything happened to mar its costly beauty. A scratch would be almost
as much as his life was worth. He hoped dazedly that the fellows would
keep their feet off the cushions, and that they would refrain from
kicking the back seat.
Mrs. Singleton Corey was a large, firm woman who wore her white hair
in a marcelled pompadour, and frequently managed to have a flattering
picture of herself in the Sunday papers--on the
Society-and-Club-Doings page, of course. She figured prominently in
civic betterment movements, and was loud in her denunciation of Sunday
dances and cabarets and the frivolities of Venice and lesser beach
resorts. She did a lot of worrying over immodest bathing suits, and
never went near the beach except as a member of a purity committee, to
see how awfully young girls behaved in those public places.
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