Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 28, 1928 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

448 container of such a fragile instrument, and like a shadow Nick faded through the arch of the passageway beside an untenanted office building. The odors. of ashes, of machine oil and of bolts of cloth and of yet other odors that assailed his nostrils in that dark and drafty corridor were for Nick the smells of adventure. Alice in Won- derland never turned a corner with more of anticipation in her eyes than did Nick, but Alice in the corridors of the rabbit hole never clutched a forty-five automatic with murderous purpose, This Harry Sherill leading the way, who: had succeeded in giving the negro night watchman drinks of doped liquor, had made sure there was no one to be feared in the bottom of the light court into which this passage led, but Nick had in the bottom of his soul much of that spirit that makes the Boy Scouts a popular organization. Decidedly Nick was not a Boy Scout and yet on occasions he did a -good deed. He could feel as virtuously warm inside as any philanthropist that ever lived when he dropped a small coin in a blind beggar’s cup. It was as dark in that court as the inside of a fountain pen. Nick pro- duced an electric torch, one of those short rods of which the makers still re- fer to erroneously as flasn lights. They are torches, and with his Nick threw 2 cone of silvery light into every ultra dark place in that courtyard in which a living thing might have been har- bored. As the light swept this way and that he photographed every detail of the place on a memory that may have been exceptionally retentive because it had never been seriously overburdened with the sort of things most of us are in- clined to swallow into our minds. “'That’s the unprotected stretch of wall along there?” said Nick question- ingly. “Sure,” satd Harry. “ Why ‘sure 7?” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “Say, you brung me because I was an electrician, di’n’t you?” * Yeah.” “Well, then, it’s an electrician ’at’s telling you that wall ain’t protected. They don’t never wall no burglar alarm lattice on places like that. They don’t figure anybody wants to work that hard.” A. step sounded in the passageway. Nick turned to face the sound. The heavy automatic was snuggled in his hand, his thumb tensely ready to snap back the blant hammer. ““Who’s ’at?” he growled. Me.” . “Quick! Who is 1t?” “Tt's Lefty.” “Why im ’ell dint you say so? | was. just about to plug you.” A part of Nick’s pleasure in his bur- glar expeditions came from just such experiences. He had all the delight of a cat with her claws extended over a mouse. He had known with that first “ me” that it was Lefty; he had sensed it even before the plumber’s helper had spoken. But there is something of the play-ac- tor in all young burglars. Against a slightly different back- ground he nught have aspired to a ca- reer as a motion picture actor; or, in an earlier day to one as a star of melo- drama. So, Nick had pretended to himself that Lefty’s footsteps were those of the inevitable policeman he was going to kill some day. Lefty had given him an opportunity for rehearsal. “We want to open up that wall,” explained: Nick. “ Harry ‘It show you.” In a few minutes the confined air of the court echoed the clink of metal against masonry. “Not more than four rows of brick,” Nick heard. lt was Harry cautioning the younger Lefty. ; After an interval, during which Nick sniffed the odor of lime and brick dust, there was another step im the passage- way. 1A COMIC OOOKS (C@