Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

156 He ran to the phone down the hall and called the police and fire depart- ment, then, as an afterthought, rang the office of the family physician. The police alarm was unnecessary. Reserves were already on their way, routed out by the radio in the nearest station. Meantime, Haskins and Whitley ex- hausted their strength pounding on the steel door and shouting their master’s name in vain. There came no sound in reply through the thick partition. The police were equally helpless when they arrived. The sergeant was forced to content himself with throwing a cordon of men around the house and hunting outside clews of the intruder, but got no re- sults. The firemen followed a few mo- ments later and began battering at the door and windows with their axes. At last they forced an entrance through one of the steel shutters. The door was unlocked from the inside, and a score of men rushed in, including the menservants of the household. The mysterious explosion had pre- sumably taken place in a small inside room between the sitting room and the laboratory. In this room was located vthe telephone with the microphone at- tachment for broadcasting, and to it Haskins led the officers and firemen. The little apartment was completely wrecked, even its steel partitions bulged and cracked from the shock. The rescue party took in the situa- tion at a glance then looked at one another in bewilderment. In_ the wrecked room they had fully expected to find at least one mangled body. There was nothing of the sort in evi- dence. There was the battered microphone, torn from its wiring and twisted out ef recognizable shape by the force of the explosion. Strewn about the floor were the fragments of a desk, a big filing case and two chairs, together with broken glass from the transoms. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the two doors of the room were warped and half torn from their hinges. _ But Edison Ward must have stood in that room at the instant of the rend- ing percussion. Yet there was not so much as a spot of blood to indicate it. They made a quick search of the other rooms with like result. At*one side of this small intermediate inner room stretched a large laboratory. At the other side was Ward's bedroom, sitting room and bath. Except for a slight disarray of the furniture and other equipment these other rooms had escaped damage, thanks to the steel partition and doors. There was no trace of Ward and his assailant, dead or alive. Never- theless the one door into the suite had been dead-bolted on the inside. So had the steel shutters of all the win- dows. . “ Well, what seems to have been the big idea?’ demanded one of the fire- men, staring accusingly at Haskins. “Don’t jump on him. We all heard it. Weren’t you listening in on the radio?” cut in the puzzled police ser- geant. “Radio, hell!’ snorted the fireman. “We'd just got back from a fire when this call came in. We ain’t police with nothing to do but sit around and listen to bedtime stories.” “Well, you can see for yourself somebody’s tried to blow up the works,” the sergeant pointed out, ig- noring the sarcasm. “ We all heard Mr. Ward talking, heard some rough- neck tell him he was going to croak, then heard this explosion and a scream that would curdle yer blood, an’ then nothin’ more.” “Well, it’s a cinch this explosion wasn't the one ye heard,” the fire- fighter declared. ‘“ There was nobody here or there’d be remnants of ’em here now. The guy that threw the bomb must have got in, if at all, ahead of Mr. Ward, who seems to have bolted the windows and doors from the inside. And neither he nor Mr. EOPMNICGLOOOKS (E@)