Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 9 “About five o'clock, Mr. Boon. I—I—woke up—” “You woke up! Do you mean to tell me you had been asleep?” “T wish I could say—I musta been doped—me and all the other five guards i “What! All six of you doped?” “All of us, Mr. Boon,” Jaxon said, sullenly. “And what’s more—it looks like everybody in the district has been doped ——” “Rubbish!” the old man barked. “Talk sense, if you can, Jaxon. Who could dope a whole dis- trict?” “I wish I knew—and I am talking sense, Mr. Boon, As far as I can make out, everybody be- tween here and Battery Park was asleep between three and five this morning, Yes—and what's more —this is not the only bank that’s been robbed. The Sub-Treasury, the Guaranty Trust, the Trade Bank, and the Dyers’ National—they’ve all been en- tered. All the lot of them ne Jaxon slumped forward in his chair, The old man shot a look at me and signalled to know if I thought the guard was mad. I shook my head. Way back there on the Argonne I had seen infan- trymen get into the same sort of daze after a punish- ing fight. Jaxon had all the symptoms. He was sane enough, but a beaten and bewildered man. Just then a detective came in, a headquarters man, and with him was the bank's own investigator. They both confirmed what Jaxon had said about the other banks, and both the detectives were as bewildered as poor Jaxon, They could make neither head nor tail of the affair, and when they had both finished, the man from Headquarters could only sit and shake his head, letting out staccato laughs and curses. I was beginning to imagine I was still in bed and dreaming it all, and I could see that the old man, for all his poker face, was getting the same feeling. He got up quickly from his chair and started off to look round the building. It was plain that entrance had been made into the bank through one of the windows next to the main door. A section big enough to pass a full-size man had been lifted clean out of it, and the steel astragals round the panes had been cut through as if they had heen strips of cheese. I did not need the detectives to tell me that the cutting had been done by powerful oxyacetylene. I could see that plainly enough when I examined the edges of the removed section, which had been neatly set against the wall on the sidewalk. Jaxon led the way to the door of the great vault. When the president saw what had been done to this elaborate piece of mechanism he grunted as if some- body had hit him. There was a neat aperture cut in the central panel of the door, sufficient to let anyone step into the vault without trouble. The fame had sheared right through the machinery of the complicated locks, and there had been no attempt to find the easiest line. The hand that had done the work had simply cut out a chunk from the door, four square, and had not turned aside even for the gun-metal wheel handle, This had a segment shorn clean from it, and the severed fragment was lying on the floor. It was mighty good work even for oxyacetylene, Without a word of comment, my father stepped into the vault by the opening, and I followed him, The compartments inside had all been broken open, and the floor of the vault was littered with bonds and securities that seemed to me to be worth stacks of money. I saw a pained expression creep into the old man’s face, and I permitted myself the first question that morning. “Bad?” I whispered, “Bad!” he repeated soberly. “Lord, son—there will be a lot to do before we get over the badness of it!” I always had thought my father would make a game loser, but the way he took the disaster filled me with admiration for his self-control. I couldn't say much to him then, for he is not the man you can readily offer sympathy to in words. I just sort of put my hand under his arm and gave it a bit of a squeeze, and I remember how it flashed on me that his biceps would have been a credit to a good heavyweight. The old man had a chunky brown face that had the appearance of having been modelled by a vigorous thumb, and had it not been for his thatch of silky white hair he would have looked, at the moment in the vault, for all the world like a bronze statue in a business suit. His fighting chin went up, and he gave me a short nod. “It will take me some time to estimate the damage, Jimmy,” he said. “Just take a look round the district, will you, and bring back as accurate a report as you can of what has really happened. These fellows are too rattled to please me.” “Right,” said I, and left him there. A Little Investigation § tes first thing I did when I stepped "from the yault was to get Jaxon into a corner and ask him about the doping idea. I shot questions at him, but got little out of him beyond the fact that from three till five o’clock he had been oblivious of every- thing. He had waked about five to find himself sitting on the floor of the reception hall with his back to one of the partitions.. He had no memory of falling asleep, nor of sitting down. It had been ae if those two hours had been cut clean out of his ife. The other guards told much the same story. The lack of detail in their accounts was maddening, and for a minute or two I began to consider the whole thing a frame-up. But, beside the consideration— if the report of the whole district being doped were true—that the frame-up was unparalleled in the history of crime, the guards were all too sincerely bewildered to be lying. I could see that they were ‘not acting a part, and that poor Jaxon, in par- ticular, thought himself disgraced forever. He was heartbroken. Jaxon had been with the bank for a quarter of a century, and his reputation for honesty and loyal- ty was unimpeachable. More than once his faith- fulness had saved the bank from loss, and indeed there had been one occasion when he had been wounded by sate-breakers before he shot two of them in defense of his charge. The bank had presented him with a fine big gold watch, of which he was tremendously proud. He believed it kept better time than any clock in the State Observa- tory. comnlicloooks.com