the balance of the night, the would-be assassin
did not return.

There was no question in Barney Custer's mind as to whom the bomb
was intended for. That Maenck had hurled it toward the house after
Barney had seized him was merely the result of accident and the
man's desire to get the death-dealing missile as far from himself as
possible before it exploded. That it would have wrecked the house in
the hope of reaching him, had he not fortunately interfered, was too
evident to the American to be questioned.

And so he decided before the night was spent to put himself as far
from his family as possible, lest some future attempt upon his life
might endanger theirs. Then, too, righteous anger and a desire for
revenge prompted his decision. He would run Maenck to earth and have
an accounting with him. It was evident that his life would not be
worth a farthing so long as the fellow was at liberty.

Before dawn he swore the gardener and chauffeur to silence, and at
breakfast announced his intention of leaving that day for New York
to seek a commission as correspondent with an old classmate, who
owned the New York Evening National. At the hotel Barney inquired of
the proprietor relative to a bearded stranger, but the man had had
no one of that description registered. Chance, however, gave him a
clue. His roadster was in a repair shop, and as he stopped in to get
it he overheard a conversation that told him all he wanted to know.
As he stood talking with the foreman a dust-covered automobile
pulled into the garage.

"Hello, Bill," called the foreman to the driver. "Where you been so
early?"

"Took a guy to Lincoln," replied the other. "He was in an awful
hurry. I bet we broke all the records for that stretch of road this
morning--I never knew the old boat had it in her."

"Who was it?" asked Barney.

"I dunno," replied the driver. "Talked like a furriner, and looked
the part. Bushy black beard. Said he was a German army officer, an'
had to beat it back on account of the war. Seemed to me like he was
mighty anxious to get back there an' be killed."

Barney waited to hear no more. He did not even go home to say
good-bye to his family. Instead he leaped into his gray roadster--a
later model of the one he had lost in Lutha--and the last that
Beatrice, Nebraska, saw of him was a whirling cloud of dust as he
raced north out of town toward Lincoln.

He was five minutes too late into the capital city to catch the
eastbo