"Let's look over the edge. Maybe he went bugs and jumped. I knew a guy that did that once."

"Nothing doing," said Murray, peering over the parapet of the building.

Mystery.

"Say—" it was Gloria who spoke. "Do you suppose those birds—the tetra-axes or whatever Beeville calls them—?"

They turned and scanned the sky. The calm blue vault, flecked by the fleecy clouds of summer, gave no hint of the doom that had descended on the artist.

"Nothing to do but go home, I guess," said Murray, "and report another robbery in Prospect Park."

The meeting of the colonists that evening was serious.

"It comes to this, then," said Ben, finally. "These birds are dangerous. I'm willing to grant that it might not have been they who copped Massey, but I can't think of anything else. I think it's a good idea for us to leave here only in pairs and armed, until we're certain the danger is over."

"Ain't that kind of a strong step, Mr. Ruby?" asked Kevitz. "It don't seem to me like all that business is necessary."

Ben shook his head decisively. "You haven't seen these things," he said. "In fact, I think it would be a good idea for us all to get some guns and ammunition and do target practice."

The meeting broke up on that note and the members of the colony filed into the room where the supply of arms was stored, and presently to form an automobile procession through the streets in search of a suitable shooting gallery.

When targets were finally set up in the street in automobile lights, the general mechanical efficiency of the colony revealed itself once more. Gloria Rutherford was a dead shot and the artilleryman from Governor's Island almost as good; Ben himself and Murray Lee, who had been to Plattsburg, knew at least the mechanism of rifles, but the rest could only shut their eyes and pull the trigger, with the vaguest of ideas as to where the bullet would go. And as Ben pointed out after the buildings along the street had been peppered with the major portion of Abercrombie and Fitch's stock of ammunition, the supply was not inexhaustible.

"And what shall we do for weapons then?" he asked.

Yoshio, the little Japanese, raised his hand for 

 Prev. P 30/160 next