Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1914 — THE DEVIL CHAIR. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE DEVIL CHAIR.

. A Chronicle of the Strange Adventures of John Haynes and His Gyroscope Vehicle

THE SHUNTED MAN OF EUROPE

By H. M. EGBERT

(Copyright by W. G. Chapman)

One by one. the enemies of John Haynes were encountering retribution. Robbed of his vast lands in one of the western states by a gang of conspirators, torn from his wife and daughter, and railroaded into the penitentiary at Nokomis Falls, this Englishman, in the solitude of his cell, had conceived a scheme of revenge which should overwhelm all who had. leagued themselves against him. He had invented, in the prison machine shop, a., gyroscope wheel, which, when attached to any vehicle, afforded it unshakable stability and incredible speed.' He had traveled a hundred and fifty miles an hour by automobile, a little more in an invalid’s chair, while, by attaching to his foot a small replica of his invention and running along a single railroad line, he had achieved more than two hundredmore than three miles a minute. One by one his enemies had died or disappeared. Sometimes there came no notice, sometimes a penciled warning on a morsel of notepaper. The last had been Judge Charteris, one of the Nokomis magnates, wfip had sentenced Haynes to the penitentiary in return for a share in his millions. Two days before his death Charteris had received the warning. He had,called up his ally Hopkins, the chief conspirator, as soon as he received the threat, hired a special train, and within two hours set off for the west coast of America, in the vain hope of shaking off his relentless enemy. That night the train was held up by Haynes and sent crashing down a steep grade into the river, carrying, as was believed, the body of the Judge ijith it In the babbling maniac who was found by the track and subsequently imprisoned for life in the State penal institution for the insane, the guards thought they had found the perpetrator of the crimes; they did not* know that this creature was Charteris himself, a victim of Haynes* vengeance; On the floor of Charteris* smoking room Edward Philemus Hopkins found the four written words Which had driven his friend to his destiny. Hopkins went home. On his hall stable a letter lay, posted in Benderville. "Tour turn comes next,*\was written on the enclosure and nothing more. The words and handwriting were identical with those found on the floor of the smoking room in Charteris* house, and, sick with horror, the man gazed at that fatal message. Hopkins was physically brake, but that, nerveracking terror which he had endured

ever since the first of the gang came to his death proved too much for him. He was a widower; his married children had. long since flown from the parental nest; there were no bonds or ties to keep him in Nokomis. He made, arrangements for the disposal of his possessions, drew $20,000 out of the bank, and took the train eastward. He was not unmindful of Charteris’ death, but to remain in Nokomis seemed still more dangerous, it was a choice of evils. Contrary to his own expectations, he reached New York in safety. He registered at the Hotel Monroe under an assumed name. Next morning a special delivery letter was handed to him by the hotel clerk, and Hopkins knew, before he opened it, that his fate had found him. However, he had a (respite, for the message said: “Go eastward.’’ ; Well, that had been his plan. He engaged a suite aboard the “Phoenix” and sailed for England. He fled from place to place, until, in London, he felt that he had shaken off his pursuers. He did not feel secure, however, until he had crossed the. continent and thus placed another sea between himself and Haynes. From Paris he went to Rome, loitered awhile in Northern Italy, and returned leisurely through Germany to Spa, in Belgium, where he took the waters. . At Spa he made the acquaintance of a pleasant, mild-mannered Englishman named Greaves, and the two became intimate. Both had retired from business and both were seeking for relaxation in travel. Often they sat together in the Casino, watching the youngsters skating on rollers over the waxed boards—for this American sport had become the rage at the fashionable resort that year. “Next year,*’ said Greaves, one night, as he drew a package from his overcoat pocket, “this will be the rage.” And he unwrapped the tissue paper and placed before bis friend a curious little machine, something like a bicycle in miniature. "What is it?** asked the other curiously. : .7, y ‘ “A foot velocipede,” said Greaves.’ Strapped to the foot, It acts exactly upon the principle of the bicycle; and with it one can travel a vast distance without tiring. When this comes on the market the roller skate will have had Its day. I am president of a company which has sole rights in the patent” Edward Philemus Hopkins took the

mechanism in his hands and looked at it;curiously. He turned the wheels and watched them spin for nearly a minute before gradually ceasing to revolve. Between the wheels was a peculiar box-like arrangement, from which there came the faintest buzzing, such as a fly might make. “And this is—” Hopkins asked. x “The motor, ft is a miniature motor bicycle, although, of course, it can be used in the ordinary way. Upon the roads bearing traffic it/can make almost incredible speed; bin given the clear track of a private railroad line, then, of course, one could go very much faster.” 1 Hopkins was thoroughly interested. “Yes, but who owns a private line?” he asked, laughing. “I should greatly like to try.lt some time,” he added. The other leaned forward and whispered in confidential tones. “The truth is,” he said, "I have made secret arrangements with the Government railways to permit me to make a-test to-morrow between this city and Brussels. I have two pairs, and if you care to accompany me I shall be delighted to show you how the contrivance works. The story has been kept secret, but military men are, as you can imagine, thoroughly alert to see what possibilities may lie in the invention.” , . Hopkins accepted the invitation and arranged to meet his friend at seven o’clock the following morning at a grade crossing about a mile east of the city.. Greaves was watting for him in his automobile when he drove up. Hopkins, having dismissed his cabman, greeted his friefld; he .was surprised to find him wrapped in an enormous, fur-lined overcoat, for it was a warm April morning. “Traveling is apt to be pretty cold,” said Greaves. “I am accustomed to it, but you—this overcoat is for yourself, sir.” In spite of his protests Greaves insisted in wrapping it around his shoulders. Weighted down with it, Hopkins could hardly move a step and he submitted with no good grace. However, he was curious to test the mechanism and resolved to make the best of his companion's whim.* Having buttoned the coat, Greaves pulled from the bottom of ttte lining a stout tube of flubber, heavily wound with wire, which he attached to the mechanism. Then he bound it to Hopkin s right foot. “Now cross your legs,” he,said

"How do you feel? Pretty comfort, able? Now try to step the metal.” Hopkina bent this way and that, but he was as fast as though he had been nailed to the line. He could bend his body or knees, but from knee to ankle he remained wholly perpendicular, and the muscular strain of returning his body to the plumb line which the lower part of his legs maintained was so severe that he abandoned further efforts to move. “You see,” said Greaves, “the mechanism is working although it is not at present connected with the running gear. Until It runs or is shut off you will be unable to detach your foot from the metal. But don’t be alarmed — just place your hands in your over, coat pockets.” Hopkins obeyed; a steel trap snapped in each; be' was securely handcuffed, his wrists. caught in an easy, unbreakable grip. And then he understood that all his efforts had availed him nothing and that the blow had fallen. John Haynes went back to the automobile and lifted out a five-gallon can of gasoline. Opening a fold in the back of Hopkinls overcoat, he poured the fluid into a hidden receptacle until the lower part of the garment bulged like a balloon. “Yes, it is rather a weight,” Haynes said ironically. "But you will hardly feel it, Mr. Hopkins, for your feet will carry you to your destination, and the personal effort will be practically nothing. Besides, the gasoline will act as a ballast and so enable you to enjoy greater speed than you might otherwise obtain, while also preventing you from injuring yourself by inconvenient movements. For instance, if you were to lose your balance irretrievably, you might perform the last few thousand miles of your journey with your head and heels horizontal.” Edward Philemus Hopkins stared up at the plue sky. A little cloud was floating overheard, a*lark was rising from the ground, mounting skyward, pouring out her soul in a joyous melody. A few half incoherent words burst from between his lips and John Haynes inclined toward him to catch them. “Fifty thousand dollars?” he echoed. “Not for the world, Hopkins. Not for all you have. You scoundrel,” he cried, with a sudden outburst of fury, “do you think you can buy your miserable life when setter rogues than you have paid the penalty for their treachery? What of the five years that I dragged out at Nokomis Falls? What of my wife and daughter torn from me when I was treacherously entrapped? Answer me that. No, it is no use to scream. Even if anybqdy were near to hear you, that would but rob you of a few more minutes of anticipation.” He paused and strove to recompose his features, which were distorted by the vehemence of his emotion. "In the pursuit of my revenge,” he continued, more calmly, “I have made it a principle of honor to let the punishment, as far as possible, fit the crime. < There was Jack Poole, for instance., He it was who lured me into that fight in which I received a treacherous bullet wound. Jack Poole was not murdered by me, as you believe. He died by his own hand—the result of a new attempt at trickery. Then there was Judge Charter is, who sent me to a convict’s cell. He is not dead, aa you imagine, but is expiating his crimes in a penal institution under an assumed name, just as he sent me to suffer under an alias at Nokomis Falls. And you, Hopkins—you built your railroad from the proceeds of my stolen iSnds. You have made yourself, rich on it; you have helped people to travel. And so lam going to send you traveling." “What are you going to do with me?” Implored the other. "Where am I to go?” For answer Haynes drew from his pocket the early morning edition of the “Belguique." On the first page in huge, black lettering was a column of news, standing out prominently from the type in which the remainder of the page was printed. "You do not read French, I believe, Hopkins?” asked Haynes. “I am sure you do not Had you done so, yon would have understood the warning which I penciled upon the outside of a letter of yours a few days ago, and would have taken yourself from Spa in the hope of eluding me. Well, listen!" He read: "By special arrangement with the Belgian and Imperial German governments, Mr. Cyrps W. Walkenphast will demonstrate the practicability of his new ‘railroad foot velocipede’ by traveling from Spa to Bonn upon a single rail on the morning of April 15. A special line will be reserved for him, and he is expected to cover that distance at the rate of five and.thirty miles an hour, arriving at his destination some time in the afternoon. In military circles the remarkable invention of this clever American, who is stated to own large railroad interests in his own country, is awaited with the utmost eagerness, and it is anticipated that large crowds will line the track throughout the greater part of the journey." He folded up the newspaper and replaced it in his pocket. “You, my dear Hopkins, are Mr. Cyrus Walkenphast,” he said. “Then you are going to send me to Bonn?” asked the wretched man, feeling his hopes revive. • “I am going to send you toward Bonn,” answered the other. But whether you ever get to Bonn appears to me to be gravely problematical. Let us hope not, for your, own sake, since you will inevitably wreck the station, and there will not be much of yourself left to carry away. J “You rogue,” he shouted suddenly, shaking his fist under the other's nose,

"I have done, playing with you. You have enough gasoline to carry yen six thousand miles, for* the consumption is extremely slow in my machine. You will run for six thousand miles at 200 hour over the railroads of Europe—for thirty hours. You’ll need that overcoat before you get through. Pray IJkD the devil, Hopkins—pray for a clear road and no open switches.” Hopkins attempted no reply. He placed no faith in the wild statements of the other, whom he regarded as a madman. His confidence had been steadily rising; he felt assured now that this diabolical machine would carry him, at the most, a mile or two, until it ceased to work. Doubtless men by the roadway would effect his release. He masked his joy, lest the other discover it and change his scheme for one more diabolical. Haynes stooped and touched the mechanism which controlled the gyroscope. The machine throbbed, pulled, leaped forward. Hopkins was out of sight in an instant It was not until Hopkins approached the German frontier that it became positively known that anything was wrong. For, to the crowds of amazed spectators who lined the track at every town and in each hamlet and to the gazing peasants in the fields, Hopkins was nothing but a passing flash —Something that shot toward them out of the void distance at an incredible rate of speed, a blur that flashed over the line as a shadow of some passing bird, and vanished. His cries they thought were those of exultation. And so he passed. But there Is. one human invention more swift than the gyroscope-driven wheel, and only one—-except a rifle or cannon ball. That is the telegraph. As Hopkins shot across the German frontier one of the customs guards, who had spent a year in England, discovered that it was in agony and not for joy that he cried; so did one of the newspaper correspondents who were loitering nesr. And fifteen minutes later the afternoon editions of the central European papers were printing extra issue?, detailing the , amazing story of this mad American, the “new Frankenstein,” as they termed him, who had fallen a Victim to the infernal monster of his own invention. ‘The news was flashed from town to town. By three o’clock enormous crowds had gathered along the track for seven miles, outside Bonn. But at the Ministry of the Interior a hasty consultation had been held. If “Walkenphast” ran into Bonn and could not stop he 'dould run to destruction, for the rate at which he went would have driven him through the terminal with terrific force. And then, besides —and this was no small matter—there would be much damage to property. A hasty order, a few manipulations of the telegraphic keyboard—and the traveler, by virtue of a turned switch, was journeying toward Berlin. Meanwhile, breathless, shocked by the terrific blasts'that blew on him, trussed helplessly, the president of the Nokomis and Western Railroad went racing eastward. The physical pain was not as yet (intolerable, for the gyroscope aided him to maintain his poise, and it was only necessary not to lean too far over, lest he should strain the aching muscles of his limbs. So he ran on and on, tearing through village and town, catching a momentary glimpse of crowds with white, terror-struck faces —then on and on once more, over the open fields, through woods and hills and swamps, borne on by the resistless force of that Insatiable devil that drove him. He thanked heaven for that- one mercy of the fur overcoat which Haynes had bestowed on him. But that had been a part of the man’s scheme, in order that he might prolong the agony, for without It Hopkins would have been "frozen stiff before the afternoon was over. Now operators waited, finger on keyboard, to receive the news brought in by mounted men at every station. And It was ever the same. The mad American still journeyed eastward and his speed showed no sign of abating. Traffic was disorganized over all Prussia. The Minister of the Interior, without waiting to consult his colleagues, . issued another order and a second switch was turned. He had meant to turn the flying man into the Hartz region, a sparsely settled district where the mechanism might wear itself out among the steep mountain grades. But in the confusion the wrong switch was turned, and the next news flashed over the wires was to the effect that “Cyrus Walkenphast” was approaching Munich. More consultation; treachery now and competition among the line managers to turn the fugitive away and secure free passage for their stalled trains. Cooperation ceased; each played his own hand. Hopkins was sent zigzagging throughout South Germany, spinning from line to line,, passing stalled trains on sidings and mobs of shouting men. Some of them kneeled to pray. Many thought him a messenger announcing the approach of the last Judgment Finally, by a sudden consensus of individual plans, he was shunted out of Germany and into Austria, into Bohemia, into Galicia. There, on the vast Polish plains, night fell and shrouded him. Night fell, but still he journey on. He was in Russia now, traveling the vast and almost boundless Steppes. Here the danger of encountering traffic was less, for the lines in the Czar's country were few, and every train was stalled until he passed. He was traveling in a northeasterly direction and there was nothing to do but let him journey on, for he could not have been stayed. The pains in his limbs had become almost unbearable, the east wind whistled through his fer overcoat, chilling and numbing him. At every gap between the separate rails the tiny jolt, at first un-

noticed, threw, him into agony. H» back seemed to have been seared with red-hot pincers. Yet, If he gave way, if he allowed his exhausted muscles to rest,'he would continue onward twisted like an acrobat or a man crucified. After a while the numbness almost overcame the sense of, pain. He longed for death 'now, craved tor it as one in agony who, feeling its inevitable approach, welcomes the darkness with Its merciful surcease of pain. The chilling winds bit him to the bone, his lids were heavy with sleep, and yet he dared not sleep, lest he lose his balance and fall, to awake twisting and writhing on those props of legs, made one with the terrible machine. The balloon-shaped swelling In the bottom of his overcoat had grown much smaller; still, not mors than half the gasoline had been consumed, and only half the night was over when he* rushed out of the darkness into a glare of lights. This was Moscow; where, in anticipation of his arrival a switch had been set to carry him eastward over the single track of the trans-Siberian railway. Ho heard the hoarse shout of the mutttude. He heard the rhythmic chant of the priests who prayed for him. Even to Moscow the news had been telegraphed, and‘east, of this, too, for to Nljni Novgorod thousands watched for the traveler who never arrived. Lights, lights, and always lights. They 1 burned his eyeballs and seared his brain. Then' Moscow was past, and now he was speeding through the forests again. Wolves howled in his track, wild creatures sprang aside through thickets and undergrowth. And still he never paused. The gentle summit of the Ural Mountains hardly checked the velocity of his career. They were passed; he was in Asia, sweeping over the frozen plains, cressing broad forest belts when dawn showed in the sky. When four and twenty hours had passed the man was nothing but an automaton. His face and lips dripped blood from the branding whips of the wind, his legs and feet, his hands and arms and throat were cold as marble and no less stiff. The muscles of his back, inured to their dreadful strain, had ossified, and as some Hindoo fakir, holds his disabled arm aloft, stiff and immovable after It has been in this position, through years oR pain, so he rushed on, erect, unbending, a frozen statue, and consciouness only a flickering spark in the recesses of his brain. The sun rose in the sky. Clouds flung their vast shadows across ths plains, blushing with the first flowers of spring. Once a troop train, bound eastward, rolled out of the distance, and, shouting wildly, the terrified soldiers in the cars fired their rifles at him. But he was gone, a speck in ths east, before the bullets fell. Nothing could stay him now. If the gasoline held out he would rush until he plunged, at the end of the line, the end of Asia, into the cooling sea. He would die there, seven thousand miles from Spa, ho who had paced the Casino only two .nights before, secure in the belief that he had shaken off the grip of his implacable enemy. In his despair tears gushed from his eyes. Death faced him —he might die thus, traveling, and his frozen corpse would run on and on, while the lost soul went—whither? He sought for an answer to his own question and could find none. His life had been heaped up with, wickedness. He had plundered and robbed and feasted in the high places while his victims writhed under the wheel of the juggernaut of his greed. For the first time in twenty years her-prayed for mercy, that some chance might be given him to live, to make atonement. He was half way across Siberia. He had hounded the vast expanse of Baikal, shimmering in the noon sun, and now the country grew more settled. Scared, 'yellow faces peered at him from behind hedgerows. Men with pigtails and women who hobbled as they tried to run, screaming, from him, were seen. But in his new-born love for men he welcome the sight even of these; they were no longer aliens but. brothers. As a man remote from his body, that body which he could feel no longer, he found himself wondering how he had noticed these, when all had been but a blur. And suddenly a vivid thought leaped through his brain. He must be slacking speed. He tried to bend his head to look downward, but had no longer power over his stiffened muscles. Presently there was no longer doubt of it. The gyroscope was slackening. The gasoline was nearly exhausted and the fur coat flapped limply about his knees. He went more slowly. Now he was traveling no faster than a quick train. The speed became that of a slow train, then of an automobile, a horsedrawn vehicle, a running man. And, with a rattling click, the machine stopped, and, finally halted. Then, the cohesive force withdrawn, it toppled from the line. Edward Philemus Hopkins fell to the ground as a statue falls, in the center of a Chinese hamlet. When he was raised the men who carried him held him as they might have carried an arm of a tree. || There is a famous mission school today in Kiakhta, the fame of which has spread far south among the yellow people of China, and far north among the wandering Siberian tribes. It is the work of one man who built and endowed it. An American, he wUI never visit America again—for though the mind is vigorous and alert and the white face, strangely rigid, has come to reflect the Innate nobleness of the soul, this man is nothing but a soul and mind, and the body in as inert as marble.

"YOU ROGUE," HE SHOUTED SUDDENLY, SHAKING HIS FIST UNDER THE OTHERS NOSE,"I HAVE DONE PLAYING WITH YOU"