Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

THIEVES’ giant seemed to be ia charge of the un- loading. “Up on the sixt’, up on the sixt’, stupid.” This was shouted from the door- way of the office by a small, waspish man, whose withered, yellowish jaws clutched a double row of false teeth behind tight, thin lips. “ All right,” retorted the giant mild- ly. “No harm done.” The trundling procession resumed its progress, and Barry wondered what he should do next. Many an investi- gator has had cause to ponder on that problem. Barry realized suddenly with a sense of something like failure that what progress his investigation had made so far was due to three factors that did not bring him any extraordinary ~ amount of merit. The most important information had come from Hamilton; then the next had been the offering of Jane; and then, due to a fancy for him conceived by Nick the Grik, he had learned many things that tended to corroborate all that Hamilton had said about Kor- beck’s underworld connections. But the investigator was beginning to understand that to persuade one’s self of the truth of a set of facts was a process much easier to accomplish than the persuasion of a judge and jury. At least, he determined, he would see the inside of that ware- house. “T want to see where this silk is going to be stored,” he said, addressing himself to the waspish man whom the giant had called “ Charlie.” “You came with it?” Charlie’s voice reeked with sus- picion. “Yes.” Barry was purposely curt. “ Hey, Korsovsky.” The big foreman turned and waited silently for instructions. “Take this man up with you; he wants to see how you're going to pack these boxes.” MARKET. 621 “ All right, Charlie. Come on, mis- ter. They rode up slowly in a freight ele- vator with dimensions and power great enough to have lifted the largest of automobile trucks. As the car passed each floor a wood- en gate was automatically raised and lowered, and Barry’s eyes strained to see enough to make a comprehensible picture of the long avenues of piled up merchandise, the pyramids of barrels, the corridors of closed and_ sealed chambers, the mounds of household goods, each mound representing the material part of a home in storage. Some of the mounds were large enough to have filled a good-sized room —and the mounds had been skillfully built so that in the semidarkness Barry had difficulty in focusing his eyes quickly enough to discern any of the stored objects before the rising of the car shut off his view of a floor. “It’s a big building,” boasted Kor- sovsky. “If there should be a fire the boss downstairs with one lever could close all the fire doors dividing the building in half.” “With so much stuff worth a lot of money I should think thieves would bother you,” commented Barry with a shrewd hope of finding out more about the structural arrangement of the warehouse. “A fat chance for the thief, mis- ter. There’s only one way to get out, and that’s the way you came in. If a thief comes in here we get him like a rat in a trap. “ Besides, all the stuff worth steal- ing—furs, silks—are in sealed cham- bers. Silverware and such things are kept in vaults.” “Well,” said Barry, trying to sound playful, “ why should a burglar bother to break into one little house or apart- ment, when he can come to a place like this, where the contents of hundreds and hundreds of houses are stored ?” “Say, mister, breaking into this place would not be so easy,” said Kor- CONIC OOO KS (F@)