Love stories; Mystery fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Ranchers -- Fiction
The Sheepfold in Central Park is a U-shaped structure of red brick walls
and a low roof that is mostly gables. One of the wings is winter
quarters for the Dorset flock. The connecting curve, the lower half of
which is an archway, houses in the upper Shepherd Tom and his family.
The remaining wing, although built for a different purpose, is now used
as a garage for the motor cycle police. Within is parking space for all
the machines in regular use in the park and some extras.
Into this garage strode Why-Not Pape, a man in a hurry. His only
introduction to the policeman in charge was rather extravagant, if
wordless—one made in brute Belgian. He returned Kicko’s greeting—the
fact that he and the police dog were friends did the rest. It was
amazing how easily his coup was carried out as planned, backed by the
dog’s infallible memory.
“Which are the spare fire-crackers?” he asked the uniformed garage
keeper with bluff authority. “I’m in a gasoline hurry to get up the
line.”
His wait had more intensity than length. He counted upon a long-standing
claim among safe-workers, of which he had been assured by that piece of
human flotsam out at Hellroaring, that the “big box” in the New York
Police Headquarters would be the easiest “cracked” in the city were
there anything in it worth stealing. He knew it to be a fact that many
never-solved robberies and murders have been “pulled” within the shadow
of precinct stations; had seen substantiated in the day-by-day news the
theory that the best “hide-out” is under the arresting arm of city
government. And his act upon deduction meant nothing against the police.
He simply wished to profit for once by his knowledge of human nature
reduced to the _N_th degree. Even unaided by the dog, he had expected to
carry through by daring of a first-draft sort.
“What’s the case, sergeant?”
With the question the attendant member of the force waved a hand toward
the sheaf of ten machines which are kept unassigned to particular “speed
cops”—an emergency motive-power reserve.
Without necessity of an equivocation as to who he was, without flashing
the badge of authority which he did not have—merely by using that slang
term for the noisiest of motor vehicles which was in common usage in the
Yellowstone as well as in New York, Pape had declared himself in his
part.
“Big,” he answered. “Bigger than all the park.”
Frowning and abstracted from a hurry to be off that was by no means
assumed, he wheeled one of the emergency machines into the open doorway.
“Want any help?”
The rookie was ready; had grasped the handles of a second cycle.
“No. Do I look like I needed help?” In earnest now he frowned, but not
abstractedly. “Don’t want any uniforms following me. Ain’t that kind of
a case.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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