Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/24

20 to the road. Terry rubbed his head ruefully. Angrily my eyes followed the car.

"Forget it," smiled Terry. "I have no kick to register. It moight have been a brick."

He stepped to the newspaper and picked it up. At once he turned to the sporting page. We read the Belgrave entries together.

"Look at Pat McGlynn in the third," yelled Terry. "Nointy eight pounds, and apprintace allowance. The handicapper must have been intoxicated. If Pat McGlynn couldn't bate that field with William Howard Taft up, Oi'm no judge of skates. The pickers have overlooked him, too. Oi'll bit ye could get as good as tin to wan. And us without a cint! Dave, if we can raise twinty dollars be tomorrow at iliven, and tiligraph it to McTurf, we'll be anyway two hundred dollars to the good. Thin we'd go down and show thim poor pick and shovel min how to be happy though married to four dollars a day."

I laughed quietly as Terry raved on.

About two o'clock that afternoon, we came upon a little four by six box by the roadside. Terry peered in the window.

"It must be a pay station," he announced. "There's a tiliphone in it."

This was my second trip over the Black Horse Pike. My first had been made by automobile. The chauffeur, a garrulous fellow, had informed me regarding this very box.

"It's a pay station, all right," I answered cynically. "Not the kind you mean, though. It's one of those diabolic contrivances known as speed traps.

"Another legal shakedown. There's no danger of us getting caught in it today, is there?" I laughed. "At any rate, it's only operative on Sundays when business is particularly good. You see, if it were worked every day, motorists would learn to run through it slowly, and another 'jestice o' the peace' and another 'conshtable' would be working for their living."

"Only on Sunday you say it's worked," mused Terry. "I wonder now—" Again he peered through the window. "There's a copy of the Revoised shtatutes lyin' on the 'phone stand. I wonder now—say, Dave, aren't ye almost a lawyer?"

"Another year at school would have turned the trick," I answered.

"Foine;" his eyes scintillated with the joy of a new-born inspiration. "The trap's sit Ye may be the jestice of the pace, Oi'll be the conshtable. To avoid confusion, and minimize complications, we'll shtop no cars bearin' New Jersey licenses. It moight also be well to sit up yer office in the cut back of this hill. Whin Oi make an arrest, Oi'll have the prisoners droive in. The hearin's had better be proivate."

"You don't mean' for us to—"

He interrupted while I was grasping the import of the scheme: "Ye get me, Oi think."

"Terry, you've got brains," I said with much eclat; no one who knew you long could well gainsay that. This proposition of yours looks good; it teems with the spice of adventure. There's only one serious objection to it; you're taking something and giving nothing in return. Was it Jeff Peters or Andy Carnegie who laid so much