The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 213: what you’re looking at

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

WIZARD OR CROOK. is, unless I’m greatly mistaken, the most dangerous crook I’ve ever run up against.” CHAPTER IV. GOING OVER THE GROUND. ‘THE library of Darius Poe, the mil- lionaire book-lover and collector, was a massive structure erected in the rear of his square, old-fashioned house on one of the fashionable avenues. Built of huge blocks of granite, it presented almost the appearance of a fortress, for it was entirely without windows—the lighting and ventilation being managed by a system of sky- lights and vent-holes in the roof— while the only visible entrance was guarded by heavily barred and bolted doors of solid bronze. True, there was another smaller door for Poe’s private use, and con- necting through a passageway with the residence, but that.did not need to be taken into account, for the old gentle- man always kept the keys to it in-his own possession, even sleeping with them strung on a cord around his neck. Obsessed, too, with the fear that some one might break in and steal some of his gathered treasures, the owner had fitted the place with every sort of burglar alarm. “By Jove!” murmured FE. Boling- broke Ramsdell, as Detectives Brady and Schmitz showed him these various features according to their instructions from the commissioner, “it doesn’t look as though there were any way to break in here, short of a blast of dynamite! ” “Pshaw! This is nothing,” re- turned Brady and Schmitz with one voice. “ Wait till you get inside.” They did not speak without reason. Inside, where the long rows of rare and valuable books stood in shelves, and where, spread out in glass cases, were manuscripts and parchment palimp- sests, many of them worth a king’s ran- som, stood a ponderous steel safe, 199 walled up with granite, bedded in con- crete, and protected by a powerful electric current. “If anybody who didn’t know the combination had laid a hand on that contraption, he’d have been dead before he knew what hit him,” explained Brady. “Yet the Bible was taken from in- side it.” “Exactly. And that, too, without any drilling or blowing, and what’s more, without the slightest sign to show how the thief got into the build- ing. The doors were locked and bolted, the skylights fastened down, the alarms all in good working order, not a crack or grating open through which so much as a mouse could have wriggled.” “Perhaps old Mr. Poe may have turned the trick himself?” suggested Ramsdell. “One of them sleep-walking stunts you mean, eh?”’ queried Brady. “ No; we investigated that lead and made nothing of it. His valet, who sleeps in the same room on account of the old chap’s having heart disease, and who is accustomed to waking at his slightest move, says he didn’t make a stir from the time he turned in. “ Besides, there is the letter,” Brady added. ‘‘ Sure, a man would never have written anything like that and left it for himself.” “True, there is the letter,’ assented Ramsdell, as though he had just re- called its existence. “‘ A rather un- usual feature that, don’t you think, Mr. Brady?” “Unusual! I call it the most colos- sal piece of nerve I ever ran across. Why, just think of it! This guy tells the old man that in order to get his book back, he’s got to put the $25,000, of all places in the world, right in this very safe that’s just been robbed. Looks like he didn’t take much stock in all the bolts, and bars, and burglar alarms that’s around here, doesn’t it? According to that, the fellow feels free to walk in and out of here whenever cComicbooks CO