The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

the operating room seemed glowing like a furnace, in the electric glare. Then something shook and gave; a roar burst up into the sky; through the fire-shot smoke flared a glorious fan of radi­ance, and the multitude shouted hoarse­ly—the east wing had fallen in like a cardboard-house, and the brick operat­ing-pavilion, with blazing roof and crack­ing walls, was standing alone in that carnival of flame.

      “Hose, here hose!” the shout rang. “Crash!” went the skylight as a stream hit it; down jingled and clattered a shower of glass, down soused a torrent of muddy water. Miller’s big arms and body shielded the woman’s face; smoke poured in, down, all about them—gray, greasy, strangling smoke.

      “That blanket! That blanket!” cried Miller in a choking gasp. “There! Now, raise the shoulders! That’s right! Now under—now over—so! . . . .”

      The woman lay wrapped, head and all, like a monster cocoon.

      Smash! smash! The door from the etherizing-room trembles, breaks, gives—sharp spurs of firemen’s axes splinter it, shatter the lock—the door breaks down—two, three firemen stumble in, heads muffled, axes in gloved hands.

      “Out! Out!” they roar dully. “Only chance is through de winder out here in de nex’ room! Clear out!”

      One seizes Miss Willett and carries her off bodily through the curling smoke. Benedict, shielding his head with his hands, rushes out wildly. Then comes a sudden dash of waters all over Miller and the woman, as some other firemen get a line of hose up the ladder into the next room.

      “Wait! Hold on!” yells Miller. “Turn that the other way!”

      And gathering up in his strong arms, as if she had been a child, the uncon­scious woman who had branded him a coward, he bears her out of the now fiercely flaming place, through the win­dow of the etherizing-room, down the swaying, smoking ladder.

SPEED LIMIT

      Originally published in The Cavalier, November 15, 1913.

      “She’s certainly a jim-slicker!” murmured Judge Amos Bartlett, shifting his quid. He spat accurately, fin­gered his goatee, and laid a hand on the glossy saddle of the machine.

      “By Joe Beeswax! a right smart contraption, ain’t she, now that I kin see her by daylight? Looks twice as hun’some as she did last night, when she come. Gosh, I cal’late she wun’t take nubbody’s dust! Bet two fingers on the choppin’-block, an’ resk it, she’ll hum!”

      With the eye of love he studied his purchase.

      Right-o! she surely was a dazzler as she stood there in her bravery of blue and gilt, just uncrated, with the morn­ing sun coruscating her nickel-work.

      And, gazing, the old judge felt a thrill of temptation poignant as the long-forgotten passions of a youth now dead these forty years.

      “Gosh a’mighty, why not?” he murmured, giving dalliance the rein. “I know I could! I useter navigate a by-cycle as smart as any of ’em; an’ the book says this here ain’t a mite harder to handle. Dog my cats ef I wanta try her the fust time, with every­body buttin’ in an’ tellin’ me how to break the critter. What I need’s a leetle spin all by myself out Pinhook way an’ back, jest to git the hang of it like. After that mebbe I wun’t s’prise ’em, hey?”

      Foreknowing that he would yield to temptation, he still considered a bit.

      “Shucks!” he grunted at last “I got any God’s amount o’ time ’fore court’s called. That there Brooks land case ain’t docketed till nine. No namable reason I sh’d wait till afternoon. I—I’m a goin’ to!”

      A new light flashed in the spectacled eye. The judge breathed a trifle faster and spat again.

      “I kin!” he exclaimed with emotion. “Reckon I ain’t seen my boy Hiram run a wood-cutter an’ ensilage-chopper two years fer nawthin’! He allus said it was plumb easy. All ye need’s com­mon sense, an’ I reckon that’s my long shot. I’ll take a run right off now, while th’ road’s clear. Out to Pinhook an’ back makes a good route. Jim Hick! I kin an’ will!”

      Not five minutes higher the August sun had crept when it beheld the judge, there in the barn, communing with the direction book and with the mechanism of the Antelope—consulting them in alternation.

      “H-m! Well, that’s done now. Tank ‘F’ is filled with naphthy. Con­nections at ‘B’ is all fixed. Leever ‘D’ is set right. Switch ‘X’ is turned. Cor-rect!

      “‘Now,’ he read—‘now run the motorcycle along a smooth road a few feet till the ingine begins to explode, then mount, pedal a short distance if necessary, and—’ Lawzee! Ef that’s all they is to it—”

      Right glad at heart that his help­meet, Luella, wasn’t visible, he furtive­ly trundled the machine out of the barn, through the straw-littered yard, and out onto the road that led to Pin­hook.

      “It’s jest as well she ain’t seen me,” he muttered. “Women-folks is sech pesky idjits, allus ’skivin’ in where they ain’t asked ner wanted. Here goes, by gum!”

      Back into the toolbox he slapped the half-read book of directions, set the spark, and gave the motorcycle a vigor­ous push along the road.

      At first nothing happened; but all at once, making music to his ears, put-put! Put! Put! Put-put-put! the engine caught.

      Judge Bartlett made a little rheu­matic run, scrambled aboard—though just how he couldn’t have told—and, righting the machine that slued hard a lee, Mazeppa was in the saddle!

      “Crimus!” he cried as he set­tled himself firmly, braced his Con­gress-booted feet on the rests, and gripped the long, curving handles. “The go-darned critter b-b-b-bounces some, d-d-d-don’t she?”

      But the judge had little time to con­sider bounces. Already the needle of the speedometer was edging its way past “20,” and a sudden wind seemed to have sprung up from nowhere, flailing his long goatee and whiskers as it whipped his wrinkled face.

      “G-g-g-gosh!”

      All his attention speedily fixed itself on the one problem of keeping the An­telope somewhere in the road. Past him flickered the apple rows of his orchard.

      Then the long stone wall that bound­ed his farm slid away, and right ahead of him yawned the sharp descent of Billings Hill.

      The needle now marked 55, and still was rising. With a sickening sensation the judge realized that in his haste to start he had read the instruction book only far enough to learn about starting. The art of stopping he had omitted.

      Now some vague, wild notion glim­mered through his brain of perhaps try­ing to get the toolbox open again, find the book, and—but no! Impossible!

      He dared not for so much as a single second release the death-grip of even one hand.

      To his staring eyes the road had developed into an endless gray ribbon whirling beneath him. Trees, walls, telegraph poles flicked flashing by. The shaking became terrific. Amos felt his store-teeth clatter madly in his gaping jaw.

      Crash!

      What was it? Only a loose boulder powerless to swerve the force of the great wheels. On sped the machine.

      But a twelve-dollar set of “uppers” gyrated through the air, struck the grit far behind, and bounded into the ditch as though in search of the flap­ping straw hat that but a moment be­fore had sky-hooted rearward in a meteor trail of dust.

      The Bean place loomed ahead. Amos glimpsed the huge white barn, the sugar maple grove, the glint of sunlit waters beyond.

      “Help! Help!”

      The farm lay behind. Vaguely a dog’s barking mingled with Ezra Bean’s startled shout. The spattering roar of the engine swallowed all.

      “Jay Ree-oo! Team!”

      Delrine Bates