Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

“YOUVE KILLED PRIVACY!’ the daytime, was still unprotected. And when night came and still no one ap- peared in the Moran cottage, Ward’s worry increased. He feared it might indicate they had transferred their headquarters and might strike from an unknown spot. Nevertheless, as soon as dusk came, Inspector Curley sent out a corps of men to the Ward block and prepared to close in on the cottage as soon as Ward gave the word. He had his dinner sent up to the laboratory that night and ate it hastily with his eyes on his battery of televisor mirrors. On one side of him was the mirror connected with the interior of the cottage and on the other the largest one of his set, a circular affair about three feet in diameter, lying flat on a table-top. Seen with the naked eye this mirror was not a mirror at all, inasmuch as it did not reflect anything in the room where it was located. It seemed sim- ply to glow dully from a light beneath it. But Ward was studying it through a magnifying glass screwed to his eye. Viewed this way it presented a pic- ture of the entire Ward grounds and their immediate vicinity, camera ob- scura fashion. It was connected by wire with the top of the tallest chim- ney on the house where under cover of darkness Ward had installed a small circular concave receiving mirror. Seen through the glass at Ward’s eye, every detail of the premises was registered. Here and there were signs of movement. Without the magnifying lens they might have been flies crawl- ing about under the surface of the glass, but thus magnified, they proved to be men. Edison Ward had met and carefully noted each one of the men Inspector Curley had assigned to the job of pro- tecting the Ward place, and on this particular night, of raiding the little Moran cottage. One of his objects now, in thus keeping track of the field of action, was to identify all the men person, directing the movement. 179 in sight, make any suggestions that oc- curred to him as to their strategic po- sitions viewed from this bird’s-eye standpoint, but most of all to make certain that none of the plotters them- selves should mingle in with the police. As he studied the panorama, there- fore, he held the transmitter of the house phone in front of him, connect- ing through to Inspector Curley who was this evening stationed in the serv- ants’ quarters of the Ward home in Now and then Ward had a suggestion to make to the inspector, as to the dispo- sition of the men, which that official carried out through one of his staff who stood at his elbow and acted as orderly. It was a time of intense suspense. While Edison Ward's physical eye was cast over the panorama of the little territory around him, including the in- terior of the plotters’ rendezvous, he Was seeing in his mind’s eye that im- posing array of great factory buildings of the Radio Corporation which were not yet surely s sate from a possible at- tack by Redfern’s dread explosive. As moment by moment slipped by, he feared that at any one of them, he might hear poured forth from the radio across the room a news announcement of such a catastrophe. ‘That fear in- creased as time went on, and he con- tinued to note no sign of life in the liv- ing room of the cottage, or about the little hedge-inclosed yard. But, at length, after over an hour of this trying vigil, his pulse quickened with interest when he saw on the pan- orama view the tiny figure of a man coming through the little gate in the rear hedge of the Moran premises. The man stepped up to the door on the porch, and rapped softly. From the audiphone under the other mirror connected with the interior of the house, Ward got the sound of the rap, and a moment-later saw the stair- way door leading into the living-room open and Redfern emerge. Ward sighed with intense satisfac- (E@) COPMIE OOO KS