Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

20 A Dramatic Story C WAS beginning to be difficult to keep track of all the threads that were woven into the mys- tery, and I'll confess that right there in the auto- mobile I was in something of a panic when I thought of the job I had taken on, Every new point that came up deepened the obscurity in which the whole affair was wrapped, and I was entirely in sympathy with one of the newspaper men whose business it was to write up the robbery. This fellow attributed the whole thing to a master criminal: THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY! Tha Sleeping City. BIGGEST BURGLARY IN HISTORY BAFFLES THD BULLS! Master Mind Behind tho Wall Street Mystery? The imagination Is sataggered by the posulbiiities opened up by thls morning's outrage on the five banks, If by wiping. out the consclousness of the denizens of the Business Center of a Great City for two hours a gang of criminals can clean that area of all its moveable wealth (for the loss was vastly exaggerated), who can fortell where such operationa will stop? Millions of dollars have been lost in the robbery, Five of the most important banks in the country huve been orippled. The criminal no longer is satisfied with guerllla raids on the Jaw-obiding world. He has declared War! Organized efficloncy is the keynote of this startling coup. In the execution of their fell purpose the gang of criminnis have not wasted o single mavement. The attack wns made with the pre- eisfon that Indicutes a leader of genius, Behind [t ia tho brain of a master crook, a Napoleon of Crime, The mind that could con- ceive the plan of doping a whole diatrict by mysterious means and 80 organize the manguvres of his subordinates Is not the mind of the ordinary denizen of the Underworld. It is the mind of a Warped Genius, To connote the evidence is a matter of difficulty, for there {s no evidence to connote. The mind of the master crook has seen to that- 9.4 The writer goes on for half a column and suc- ceeds in telling how bewildered he is. Then he draws a dramatic picture of the scene, as he imag- ines it, during the two hours: +++ It is like a City of the Dead. About the silent streete re- cumbent forms of sleeping men are huddled in the doorways or are spread ocross the sidewalks. Here and there, with hts uselesa club beside him, Iles the blue-conted guardian of the pence. A faint Gleam of white from another Inert figure shows where the clubman has been overcome, stricken down by the mysterious aleep that has fallen like death upon the idle and the ocoupied allie, Automobiles, with thelr brilliant headHghts throwing the level beama innlsted upon by law, are drawn up In the roadways, and seem to onarry osrgoes of dead men. It is os though some Intangible power had stopped all movement with the waye of a magic wand. From the elevated raliway on Sixth comes the roar and hum of a passing train. 2... That was a point I had missed—and what about the subways? » -. and from pleasure districts uptown is heard the quiet mur- mur of the traffic, the subdued echoes of moving people. Except for these, the allence is the silence of Death. Suddenly, under the pillared mass of no great building, a pinpoint of [ight emerges, and it grows into a blinding glare. Oxyacetylene! It Nghts up a cluster of masked men and Hashes off thelr goggles of blue glass. With unhurrying speed they do their work, and tn their wnconcern cast no gluonce at the huddled forma sround them. ... There’s a lot more like that, before he begins to tell of the first glimmer of dawn, in which shadowy companies assemble and break up, man by man, each going his own way—I suppose with twenty- five kilos of gold apiece! Well, I had not thought of a perfect army of crooks to manhandle the stuff, He finishes up on a great note, like an old-time “movie” subtitle: And the Mind that concelved all thia, the Arch-crook, the Master Criminal, brooded the while over the conquered City. For the thousandth time, maybe, he connoted his plan of campaign, and smiled to think that It could not fall. The whole of clvfilzed Ameérloa Iny at his mercy, and he had the power, plus the will, to bring ruin ond chaos to {ts prosperous centers. The wealth of the nation was his for the grasping. Malign this personality must be, but Is it the motive power of a new anarchistic movement against establHshed order? Ta It, by any ohance, the Master Mind behind a reerudescence of the Iden We used to know as Bolshevism? Until the fdentity of thls Napoleon of Crime is established, until he ts {mmured in our strongest prison, he, with his secret and mysterious weapons, hos the wealth of the Nation at his Mercy! It this Master Mind Js to be benten, only a Munster Mind can do it, and we beg leave to doubt If the present Chief of Police, the spineless and supine Conrad Dickermann, fills the BIH! With all my own theories gone astray I was, as I say, quite in sympathy with this writer in his ATR WONDER STORIES bewilderment. What sort of crooks were they who were capable of relinquishing two million dollars in negotiable securities? It is true that there would have been some difficulty in disposing of the scrip, in the face of the broadcasting by radio of the descriptions, but the thing was not impossible, The newspapet man was right when he said that the robbery was a masterpiece of organization, for in whatever way it was effected, there must have been the slickest co;ordination between the mem- bers of the gang. Nor was he far wrong in attribut- ing the organization to a “Master Mind.” Some- thing of the kind was behind it all. Where neither he nor his fellows were at all helpful was in sug- gesting a reasonable explanation of the anaesthesia. Philanthropy Abroad I WAS hoping that Dan Lamont would perhaps have come on something that would help to ex- plain the mystery, for I was certain that if any scientist in America was better equipped than Dan for making the discovery, he was so obscure as to be useless. Dan is a top-notcher. I found the little chap in a great state of excite- ment, and as soon as he saw me he pulled ott his loose change and began to rattle it in his cupped hands like mad. “You've found the thing that tarnished the gold!” I exclaimed. “No,” he said. ees you've hit on the dope that was used?” «“ 0.” “Then what the devil’s all the excitement about, Dan?” “Jimmy,” he said solemnly, “a wonderful thing has happened. At this moment there is in New York more radium bromide than was ever known to exist in the whole world!” “Well, what about it?” “What about it! What a phelgmatic ass you are, Jimmy ! Don’t you realize what it means?” “No,” said I, merely to egg him on. “It means that experiments in radio-activity, in physics, in therapeutics, can be carried on on a scale undreamt of up to now. It is immense! Great Christopher and the hard-boiled egg! Do you know what it means in money alone—the value of the stuff 2” “Thousands, I suppose?” “Don’t be a fat-head, Jimmy. It means millions, millions! Raditim worth several millions of dollars was sent to five of the scientific and surgical institutes in the city this morning.” It came to me in a flash, “Tn square black boxes, unstamped through the Post Office!” I yelled. “Yes,” cried Dan, “How did you know?” “Because I just missed seeing them this morn- ing,” I said. “Is there any clue to who sent them?” “Not a thing,” said he. “Where they come from nobody knows. Just after you left me this morning, I was called up by the Post Office to go down there in a hutry. You know [’m supposed to be all right about explosives ever since I handled that I. W. W. outrage for them in 1925? Well, they had an idea that something of the sort was on again, and they called me in. “When I got down there, I found a group of officials round five black boxes, containing heavy comnliclooolks.com