The Argosy, August 1905 — page 199: what you’re looking at

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

4 Pod * > SA PLURALITY OF BURGLARS. a BY EDWARD A. MOREE. A summer night’s adventure with a housebreaker who proved to be more than the stuff of which dreams are made, after all. | OPENED the wooden door, meant to __ protect the house against burglars, with the sort of homesick feeling which everybody who has spent a night in a summer-closed town house has ex- perienced. Really, it seemed a pity I had not hunted up father and stayed with him at the club. But the fever was on me, and I simply had to look up that refer- ence. I was a little sore, however, on the merry old Rabelais for not having been more decent with his jokes so that I could have found him without coming all the way back to town. But Rabelais isn’t for all men, and I was in town, and 1 intended to do a lot of reading that night. As soon as I got into the hall I lighted the gas. The yellow globe over the lamp made everything look so un- earthly, especially the canvas-covered furniture, that I immediately put it out and started up-stairs in the dark. Every step gave out a creak that sounded lke a gun explosion in that closed-up silence. And despite the efforts of a caretaker, there was a tomb- like musty odor pervading the place which was exceedingly oppressive. I was in that mental condition, a legacy from our Stone Age ancestors, when everything is magnified into some- thing to be afraid of. I was very alert, and, indeed, I had a half-feeling, of which I was very much ashamed, that something was about to happen. I was nearly at the top of the stairs when I caught sight of the erack under the library door. I believe that my heart actually stopped beating for several seconds. There was a light in the library! A burglar in the house! “Be eae was happening. I stopped on the stairs to collect my wy, D aa ae Be 7 4 Pa =e - . . The silence was worse on my nerves than the trooping of a hundred burglars” through the hall beneath me would have been. I stood it for a while, until I could come to a decision as to what to do—for I am a yery careful man, and never do even the most trivial things without giving them a great deal of thought. This characteristic was accentuated now that there was a real emergency be- fore me. I remember trying to think when I had ever before been confronted with the problem of catching an actual burglar. Of course the first thing to do was of a negative order, That was not to make a noise. J therefore very calmly and very deliberately took off my shoes. Then before starting to descend the stair, in search of help, I looked to see if my burglar was still in the library. The light had disappeared! “Nice position this,” I thought. “Tere I am, right in the path of a desperate man bent on escaping. He probably heard me take off my shoes!” Gut I was not going to run away. No, the face of a lace-bedecked ancestor seemed to stare out from one of the portraits in the hall and bid me pre- serve the dignity of a family of fighters. I crept up one step, intent on seeing the thing through if it should cost me my life. I had vo more than moyed than the light in the library flashed out through the crack again. Still there? What Inck! And then, he certainly had not heard me or he would not have flashed the light from his lantern again. Satisfied that the intruder was still in a capturable situation, I made a quiet descent of the stairs. You can bet that as soon as I rea the bottom I took the precautio arm myself. True, the armory fae’ of our house were not very exte * ae a * - Pes. ars re >t ee, 4 ti te % - & comicbooks.com