Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

10 AIR WONDER STORIES I mention Jaxon’s watch because through it I dis- covered a curious thing. I was setting out to do the round of the district, when I found that I had left my own watch behind me. I looked at the clock in the main hall, and it seemed to me to be slow. “Ts that clock on time, Jaxon?” I asked. “Ought to be,” he replied. “I checked it with my own watch last night, Let’s see——” And he took his famous time-piece from his pocket. He pulled off the chamois cover in which he always carried it, “Well, P’m dodblasted!” he exclaimed, as he looked at the half-hunter face. ‘‘What in hell’s happened to my watch?” The gold case was tarnished to a dull brown- green. From the look of it, one would have judged the watch to be a brass one that had lain for days on a sea-beach. Jaxon was bewildered, but I'll admit that my astonishment—if I did not show it—was even greater. From some little training in chemistry I could think of no reagent, even in the most up- to-date laboratory, that had such an effect on gold. The incident set me thinking, and before I had got into the street I had discovered that the gold leaf, So plentifully used in the interior decoration of the bank premises, had tarnished much in the same way. I said nothing about this additional discovery to Jaxon. I kept the fact to myself, and left him looking round for polishing material. As it chanced, the first person I met on Broad- way was Dick Schuyler, who had been in the same flying squadron as myself during the European War. He was, and is still, a commander in the sea division of the Air Police, so I grabbed him to act as safe-conduct for me round Wall Street. “What do you make of it, Jimmy?” he demanded straight off. “A scientific feller like you should have a theory.” “T don’t know a thing about it yet,” said I. “You cops should have more information than I have. Is it right that these other banks have been robbed?” “The Subtreasury, the Trade, Dyers’ National, and the Guaranty,” he said, making most of the mouthful, ‘There’s a report, too, that the Post Office has been visited as well.’ The extent of the affair was beginning to impress me. Dick Schuyler has a cheery, careless manner, but he is not given to speaking without the book, and this confirmation brought me to a realization of what the morning’s outrage involved. “But what were the police doing all the time?” I demanded. “Sleeping, as far as I can make out,” he said dryly. The details of the affair, as Dick told me them, were incredible. The first intimation that anything was wrong in the Wall Street district came when a policeman recovered consciousness to find himself lying on the sidewalk. He thought he had fainted or suddenly dropped into sleep, and in either case was afraid of losing his job, for they want neither sluggards nor heart cases on the force. He got to his feet, glad that he had not been discovered by his patrol, and he began to hurry along his beat. He had not gone far when he fell over the feet of some- body who was sprawled across the steps in a door- way, and he stooped over to investigate. He found it was his own inspector, and he had no sooner laid hands on him than the sleeper awoke. Dick aid not go into details of what the cop said to the inspector, or vice versa, but it must have been mighty interesting. Anyhow, the pair joined forces and set off round the district. Green Gold HEY were half-dazed, the two of them, and to their badly working intelligences it seemed as if they had suddenly found themselves in a city of the dead. All along the sidewalks and in doorways, even in the middle of the streets, sleeping men were lying at intervals. Dick Schuyler wanted to bet me that there never had been as bewildered a pair of men in the history of the world as those two cops, but I would not take him. Tt is difficult to bring things together in their right sequence. What I gather from the many accounts I got that morning is that suddenly the police headquarters became noisy with repeated telephone calls, as bank after bank reported it had been robbed. Squads of police were rushed into the area at once, but when they arrived the thing was over and the thieves had got clean away. I re- member wondering what would have happened under the old system of direct alarms to police headquarters. But this system, of course, had been largely discarded after the scandal of 1930, when the police were proved to have been in collusion with the crooks who effected the big robbery of the Dyers’ National. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened to the police if they had been rushed into the district during the unac- countable two hours. The other four banks were in a like case to the National Metallurgical. For two hours in the morning the guards and watchmen had been asleep and could tell nothing. Something in the nature of oxyacetylene had been used to effect entrance to all the buildings concerned, and their strong-rooms had been cut open by the same means. The thieves had got away with an enormous haul while the district was fast aleep. I got much of this information from Dick Schuyler as we were walking along, and I had the chance to confirm a lot of it first-hand. The neighbourhood now was filling rapidly, and auto- mobiles and motorcycles were beginning to be frequent in the street. Newspaper men were every- where, eagerly searching for information, but, beyond the one central inexplicable fact of the mys- terious two hours, found little data for their write-. ups. One excited little reporter rushed up to Dick and myself, and danced round us, waving a note- book. “Say!” he yelled. “What do you know about this, eh? Were you eye-witnesses?” “As far as I can see,” Dick told him, “eye-wit- nesses are just what there aren't.” But he shot a quick account of what he had heard to the little man, and advised him to get after the foot police and the watchmen of the banks. The little man wanted nothing so much as a reasonable theory to explain the success of the raid, but we wanted that just as much as he did, and he went off with an openly exhibited contempt for our lack of Imagination, comnliclooolks.com