Read Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 for Free Online

additional speed within me.
I took the loose end of the chain in my hand. Its links were of twisted iron,
and the final one had been sawed through to admit the loop of the screw-plate, then clamped tight again. But my frantic tugging had widened
this narrow cut once more, and quickly I freed it from the dangling plate.
Then, folding the bunk against the wall, I drew the chain upward. It would just
reach to the window - that open link would hook around one of the flat bars.
                   The noise of breakage rang louder in the front
of the building. Once more I heard the voice of the short councilman: "I
command you all to go home, before Constable O'Bryant fires on you again!"
                   "We got guns, too!" came back a
defiant shriek, and in proof of this statement came a rattle of shots. I heard
an agonized moan, and the voice of the minister: "Are you hit?"
                   "In the shoulder," was O'Bryant's
deep, savage reply.
                   My chain fast to the bar, I pulled back and
down on the edge of the bunk. It gave some leverage, but not enough - the bar
was fastened too solidly. Desperate, I clambered up>on the iron framework.
Gaining the sill, I moved sidewise, then turned and braced my back against the
wall. With my feet against the edge of the bunk, I thrust it away with all the
strength in both my legs. A creak and a ripping sound, and the bar pulled slowly out from its bolts.
                   But a roar and thunder of feet told me that
the throng outside had gained entrance to the hall at last.
                   I heard a last futile flurry of protesting
cries from the councilmen as the steps echoed with the charge of many heavy
boots. I waited no longer, but swung myself to the sill and wriggled through
the narrow space where the bar had come out. A lapel of my jacket tore against
the frame, but I made it. Clinging by the other bar, I made out at my side a
narrow band of perpendicular darkness against the wall, and clutched at it. It
was a tin drainpipe, by the feel of it.
                   An attack was being made upon the door of the
cell. The wood splintered before a torrent of blows, and I heard people pushing
in.
                   "He's gone!" yelled a rough voice,
and, a moment later: "Hey, look at the window!"
                   I had hold of the drainpipe, and gave it my
entire weight. Next instant it had torn loose from its flimsy supports and bent
sickeningly outward. Yet it did not let me down at once, acting rather as a
slender sapling to the top of which an adventuresome boy has sprung. Still
holding to it, I fell sprawling in the snow twenty feet beneath the window I
had quitted. Somebody shouted from above and a gun spoke.
                   "Get him!" screamed many voices.
"Get him, you down below!"
                   But I was up and running for my life. The
snow-hlled square seemed to whip away beneath my feet. Dodging around the war
memorial, I came face to face with somebody in a bearskin coat. He shouted for
me to halt, in the reedy voice of an ungrown lad, and the fierce-set face that
shoved at me had surely never felt a razor. But I, who dared not be merciful even to so untried an enemy, struck with both fists
even as I hurtled against him. He whimpered and dropped, and I, springing over
his falling body, dashed on.
                   A wind was rising, and it bore to me the howls
of my pursuers from the direction of the hall. Two or three more guns went off,
and one bullet whickered over my head. By then I had reached the far side of
the square, hurried across the street and up an alley. The snow, still falling
densely, served to baflle the men who ran shouting in my wake. Too, nearly
everyone who had been on the streets had gone to the front of the hall, and
except for the boy at the memorial none offered to turn me back.
                   I came