Chapter VIII: Melba Gale

“Guess I’ll borrow your motor cycle, old man, if you don’t object,” said Hawley to his host.

“What! You don’t mean to say you’re going to Oldham again?” the latter protested. “How about your doctor’s orders to keep quiet and avoid all excitement?”

“I shall try to avoid excitement as much as possible while I’m in town,” the Camera Chap replied dryly. “But I’ve got to go this time. When duty calls, physician’s orders don’t count, you know. Here’s the telegram, old man. You can see for yourself that it’s really a case of must.”

His host perused the telegram and shook his head disapprovingly. “I can’t say I think much of a boss who won’t leave a man alone during his vacation--especially when that man has been ordered by his physician to keep his thoughts away from business. This managing editor of yours must be a peach, Hawley.”

The Camera Chap laughed. “Oh, Paxton is all right. There isn’t a whiter man in the newspaper game. The _Sentinel_ must need that picture badly, or you can be sure they wouldn’t have bothered me with it. May I have the motor cycle?”

“Of course, if you are determined to go. But if I were in your place, I’d send them back a telegram that they’d have to get another man to do the job. Seems to me that they could have got the picture just as easily by wiring to a local photographer and leaving you alone. Surely anybody can take a picture of a building. No particular skill required for that.”

Hawley smiled grimly. “Some buildings are harder to take than others. I’ve a sort of an idea that this snapshot of the city hall is going to be one of my masterpieces. I’m eager to get at it.”

His host shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t see why the job should appeal to you so greatly. I thought you liked snapshots which involved risk. Surely there isn’t anything particularly thrilling about taking a picture of a building.”

Perhaps it is needless to say that the Camera Chap’s host was not aware of the new anticamera bill which the Oldham council had recently enacted. Hawley did not enlighten him.

Five minutes later, just as the Camera Chap was about to start, his friend made an astonishing discovery.

“Why, you absent-minded beggar!” he exclaimed laughingly. “You’re actually going off without your camera. Don’t expect to be able to take a picture without it, do you?”

The Camera Chap grinned. “I’m leaving it behind purposely,” he said. “No use taking my big camera for this job. I’ve got a kodak in my coat pocket, and that’ll serve the purpose just as well--better, in fact, for this particular snapshot.”

Of course, Hawley would have preferred to have taken his larger camera with him, but he realized that it would have been sheer folly to have attempted to photograph the city hall with anything larger than a kodak. With six months in prison staring him in the face, he had to be content with a smaller picture.

The pocket camera, however, had an excellent lens, and, of its class, was the very finest instrument obtainable. The Camera Chap always carried it with him so as to be prepared for such emergencies as this. On many occasions in his eventful career it had enabled him to turn defeat into victory after he had been foiled in his attempts to use his more conspicuous apparatus.

“It really is kind of odd that Paxton should have given me this assignment,” Hawley mused, as he motored down the steep mountain road which led to Oldham. “He was so emphatic in urging me to obey my physician’s orders to forget that there was such a thing in the world as a camera. When I gave him my telegraph address and told him not to hesitate to send for me in case I was needed, he replied that he wouldn’t think of doing so unless the entire city of New York was burning and there wasn’t anybody else to photograph the conflagration. Paxton always means what he says, too. Funny that he should have sent me this telegram.

“But, then,” he added, anxious to make excuses for his managing editor, “I suppose he figured that this was such an easy assignment that it couldn’t do me any harm. Of course, he doesn’t know about this new anticamera law. If he had known of it, no doubt he would have preferred to go without the picture of the city hall rather than have asked me to run the risk of going to jail.”

The Camera Chap had traveled two-thirds of the distance to Oldham, when suddenly, as he approached a bend in the road, there came to his ears a sound which caused him to put on more speed, in spite of the fact that the motor cycle was already going at a rate which the steep down grade and the unevenness of the road rendered somewhat dangerous.

It was a scream which caused him thus to risk his neck--the piercing, startled cry of a woman. It appeared to come from just beyond where the road turned.

Rounding the curve without taking the precaution of slowing down, Hawley came in sight of an automobile--a small runabout--standing in the roadway. At the steering wheel of this machine sat a girl who was cowering in terror from a ragged, rough-looking fellow of the hobo type, who stood on the running board.

The Camera Chap took in the situation at a glance. Evidently the runabout had broken down, and the tramp, seeing that it was stalled on this lonely country road, and that its sole occupant was a girl, had not hesitated to annoy her.

The noise of the approaching motor cycle was warning enough for the ruffian. Before Hawley could get to him, he had jumped from the step of the car and dashed through the thick brush which lined the roadway.

The Camera Chap applied his brakes and brought his motor to a stop alongside the car. Then, with a reassuring word to the girl, he jumped from his wheel and went in pursuit of her annoyer.

But the bushes were so thick at this point that the slight start the fellow had was sufficient to enable him to get away. Hawley went crashing and floundering through the brush for some time in the hope of hitting the trail of the fugitive, but finally had to give it up as useless.

“I’m afraid I’ve lost him,” he said, somewhat crestfallen, as he returned to the girl in the automobile. “I don’t suppose he can have gone very far, but these bushes are worse than a maze at a county fair.”

“It’s no matter,” said the girl, with a smile. She seemed to have recovered a great deal of her lost composure. “I’m just as pleased that you didn’t catch him. I really don’t think the fellow meant any harm. He asked for money. The reason I screamed was because he looked so rough. The road here is so lonely that I lost my nerve when he came through the bushes and climbed onto the car. I suppose if I’d given him a few cents he’d have gone away quietly enough. I’m afraid I’m rather silly to be scared so easily.”

“Not at all,” said the Camera Chap. “I guess anybody would have been scared under the circumstances. What’s the matter with the car; a breakdown?”

“Oh, no,” the girl replied. “There’s nothing the matter with the car. I stopped merely because I--I was waiting for somebody whom I expect to meet here.”

Her hesitation and the vivid blush which accompanied these words enlightened Hawley as to the gender of this somebody for whom she was waiting.

She was an exceedingly attractive girl, and Hawley found himself envying the man whom she expected to meet. But as he had no desire to intrude upon this tryst, he stepped over to his motor cycle, and turned to the girl inquiringly.

“Guess I’ll be getting along,” he said, “unless, of course, you prefer to have me remain until the arrival of this--er--person you’re expecting. Are you afraid to be left alone here?”

“Oh, no,” she answered, in a tone which told him of her eagerness to get rid of him. “I’ll be all right, thank you. Please don’t let me detain you. I don’t intend to stay here. I’m going to turn the car around and ride slowly back toward Oldham until I meet--the friend I’m expecting.”

“That’s a very sensible idea,” Hawley said. “While the machine is in motion you’ll be in no danger of annoyance from any more tramps.”

He doffed his cap, and was just starting the motor of his cycle when the girl called to him.

“I quite forgot to thank you for your timely assistance,” she said, giving him a gracious smile, which did a lot to atone for her evident anxiety to have him depart. “I assure you that I am very grateful.

“I live in Oldham,” she went on. “If you would care to call on us, I am sure my uncle, with whom I live, would be glad of the opportunity to add his thanks to mine. My name is Melba Gale, and----”

“Gale!” the Camera Chap repeated, speaking more to himself than to the girl. “That must be merely a coincidence, of course. Surely you are no relative of Gale, of the _News_?”

“Do you mean the New York _Daily News_?” the girl inquired, some astonishment in her tone. “I have a cousin who for several years has been a reporter on that paper. It is with his family that I am living. I am an orphan, and my Uncle Delancey’s house has been my home ever since I was three years old. Do you know my cousin?” she asked, looking at him keenly.

“I have met him,” the Camera Chap replied evasively.

“In New York?”

“Yes.”

“Then, perhaps you can tell me,” the girl began. Then she broke off suddenly as, glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of a young man mounted on a bicycle who was approaching from the direction of Oldham.

It needed only one glance at her flushed, radiant face to tell Hawley that this was the lucky man who was expected.

The Camera Chap would scarcely have been human if he had been able to refrain from staring at the latter. Naturally, he was curious to see what the fellow looked like.

And, as the bicyclist drew near, Hawley experienced another great surprise.

This young man who was hastening to meet Miss Melba Gale, niece of the proprietor of the Oldham _Daily Chronicle_, was no stranger to him.

It was his friend, Fred Carroll, proprietor of the _Chronicle’s_ bitter rival, the Oldham _Daily Bulletin_.