Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

“YOU'VE KILLED PRIVACY!” around in the kitchen, virtuously get- ting his own breakfast when the cook came down, bleary-eyed and yawning. “Seems like I never slept so hard in my life,” she exclaimed, “and woke up with a headathe, too. Nobody else up but you? What happened to Mr. Haskins that he didn’t call us as usual this morning?” The butler himself appeared a mo- ment later trying to look dignified in spite of puffy eyelids, and the fact that he was an hour late in rising. “T fancy my alarm didn’t go off this morning,” he exclaimed. “ Well, we'll have to step lively now. Mr. Ward will be ringing for breakfast directly.” The other servants hurried in with similar excuses in the next few minutes. But seven o’clock, Edison Ward’s regular rising hour, came and went without the customary sounding of the buzzer. Haskins stared at the clock uneasily. “Even Mr. Ward is oversleeping this morning,” he remarked, with a tone of satisfaction at having his own dereliction so well supported. “If it were winter and the furnace going I should say we were alli affected with coal gas. I wonder, Whitley, 1f Mr. Ward wouldn’t like you to call him.” “T will do so presently,” Whitley agreed, “if we do not hear from him.” But it was three-quarters of an hour before the familiar buzzer sounded, and when Ward appeared at breakfast, he appeared even more groggy than the rest of the disorganized household and had little appetite. After breakfast he dragged himself slowly back to his suite, and lolled list- lessly on the divan for a few moments, glancing over the newspaper. Then, finding himself nodding he pulled him- self together with a jerk and paced the room to start his blood stirring. “ Getting groggy as the deuce, shut up like this,” he grumbled. “Ill have to break out whether or no if things don’t come to a head before long.” Half idly he wandered over to a 173 small cabinet set against the wall, opened it and took out a roll of film from its back. He did the same thing to cabinets in each of the other three rooms. “Might as well go through the forms as usual,” he told himself. *‘ I’ve been letting my friends, the plotters, slide the last two nights, while I was catching up on my other work. Well, if I’ve missed anything it’ll all be here,” and he disappeared in a dark room in the corner of his laboratory. Some time later Edison Ward burst out of the dark room a changed man. His eyes were flashing with excitement, and all traces of the morning’s groggi- ness had vanished. He had a large package under his arm which he hur- riedly thrust into a suitcase and then going to the house-phone, called up the garage. “ Bring the closed car around direct- ly,” he ordered, “I’m going to the of- fice to-day.” This sudden emerging from his sup- posed state of annihilation caused a buzz of excitement in the Ward house- hold, and considerable secret anxiety on the part of Whitley, who could not help worrying lest this new move on his master’s part might not have something to do with last evening’s performance. When Ward went down to the car he had the chauffeur draw the curtains in the hope that he might reach his of- fice without being recognized on the way. He was successful as far as rec- ognition was concerned, but was not able to escape the tide of public curi- osity that swept around the Ward car when it appeared at the gate with the curtains so conspicuously down. Ever since the first bomb threat a special guard of policemen and a special corps of newspaper men had haunted the front gate of the Ward grounds. These two professional groups were surrounded day and evening by a con- stantly shifting crowd of the curious public, which had been particularly large during the last two days since the COPMICGLOOOKS (E@)