Adventure Magazine Cover — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

I1i2 pursue the subject and suddenly surrendered her- self to a shameless display of her more tender feel- ings for him. Middleton looked bored. Bitterly, then, she resumed her warning and intimated that her own hand might be in the matter. With that she flounced off in the company of Billy the Dude. ‘Black Wolf began making preparations for the next One midnight a gray limousine drew up before a house in New York’s exclusive residence quarter. XIV IDDLETON moved with velvet footsteps, outreaching like a blind man but with no uncertainty— just caution. Only a dull glow came from the searchlight be- cause of a folded handkerchief over the glass. It gave him the light he needed without the glare that might attract attention. Going into a house where people are known to be up, requires a cool head and a steady foot, also much patience. Oddly enough law-abiding people never seem to think that crooks are just about as nervous and tense as they would be if they went into night werk. Middleton went through a hallway to the front of the house and started up the wide stairway, counting noiselessly to himself— “One—two—three—four——”’ He carefully missed the next step. Then— 66 ety. 99 His foot passed up to the eighth step. It was likely that the alarm was not set; or it may have been that the mysterious party who had passed up ahead of.him also knew which steps to avoid. The house was quiet with the dismal silence that bears down like a weight. At that moment he was more interested in being an eavesdropper than a thief. He stood for a time in the dark upper hall, listening. Not a sound, though he conte see a trace of light filtering between and under the heavily draped double doorway of the library. He should, he felt, have been able to hear the hum of even low voices and wondered if something had startled them into silence. Gently, on his toes, he moved nearer and nearer toward the doorway; and he heard nothing, not a movement. He put an eye to the edge of a portiére, pulled it slightly aside and peered through. The library was a large room. It was a library because the architect who had origi- Adventure Middleton and Silkeen Harry got out and ap- proached the home of Frank Holder. Billy the Dude was already on the inside, and Silkeen caught his attention by tossing a pea against one of the windows. “Them parties got somet’in’ on,” said Billy when he jones them. ‘An’ dey don’ t want nobody to get hep Black Wolf fastened a black silk mask over his face. ‘I’m going up,” he said. nally designed the house put it in for about the same reason that tailors put buttons on sleeves. No rich man’s house is complete without a library, and no man is well dressed without some buttons on his sleeves. Men who can sleep in the presence of any book that ever lay open upon their knees must have the library, and usually perpetuate the literary tradition by using it for a smoking-room. When Holder bought the house he got the library. It was a very large room, lined with book- cases on two sides. In the center of the room a long, broad table spread itself as a sort of pedestal for a bronze maiden who towered in artistic nakedness, holding a cluster of shaded, lights i in her ‘upstretched hands. To Middleton’s eyes, recstonied to dark- ness, the dim light was clear enough, though at first he could not make out what he saw. A little cabinet of books had been moved away from the wall, revealing the face of a safe. He had not known of this safe. It had been one thing the artful Dolly had not learned about; but he knew a great deal about safes, and about the clever de- vices used by rich people to keep them from the eyes of burglars. The little cabinet was constructed to swing easily away from the wall; and when in place no one would have been likely to suspect that it was merely a mask for a big fire-proof treasure-box. Safes are fire-proof all right; but one hasn’t yet been made which of itself can beat off a competent cracksman. Every safe must be supplemented with alarms and watchmen before it will do all that its manufacturers claim for it. The best that can be done is to hide the safe from the burglar; so in the making of safes for rich men’s homes the tendency is toward subtlety rather than strength. Middleton might appropriately have felt aggrieved, for there was in Mrs. Holder’s © room a rather ornately disguised little safe which he knew all about and intended to DOO C@