The Black Mask — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

mt er s ¢ es j J + over * sb his window at the Glyimpiés wid their * perennial snow peaks like old men in nightcaps. Coming out of his trance with a jerk Peiperson grabbed his hat and was halfway out of the door of his. private office before Carranaugh could heave himself to his feet. “Where’re you going?” “To those hotels. Come on! Hurry! You have the list? Must get busy. There’s something queer there. Might as well start at that as well as at any other place, now that you’ve roped me into this, And I’d have murdered you if you had left me out! Then we can go down to the morgue and the bank and—” The rest was lost to Carranaugh as Peiperson stopped to tell Chris, his of- “fice boy, that he probably would not be back that afternoon and to tell any possible callers that he was busy figur- ing on a big contract. ‘And that’s no lie!” he said to Jim as they ran for the descending elevator. Going from one hotel to another un- til they had talked with the clerks and attachés of all seven they gradually pieced together the amazing and per- plexing problem of the apparent seven- fold identity of Samuel Smith. As they left the Hotel Butler, the last on Carranaugh’s list, Jim uttered a piously emphatic belief in his future eternal condemnation, and Tom Peiper- son agreed, for both of them. Mulling, wordless, over this mystery within a mystery, they walked over to- the morgue and as silently checked up the items of the dead man’s former appear- ance that coincided exactly with the seven times told description they had just listened to. Discuss it from every angle, they were no nearer a solution when, within a block of the Totem National, Peiperson halted, saying: “No use both of us covering the same -ground—there’s plenty for each of us matt do, and then some. You go on to Sats a a VE wee oy ‘the bani: ‘and have Snbdelier: let you examine that vault, as you” suggested, and pick up anything more you can about the way the body of Smith looked when they found it. I don’t suppose -any of ’em had the brains to take a flashlight of the vault interior before they disturbed the lay-out. That’s what comes of keeping the newspaper boys out of it! If they had been let in on it from the jump-off we wouldn’t have to be depending upon the alleged mem- ories of a lot of incompetent witnesses who have probably forgotten most of what they did see and imagine a lot that never was, they’d have a detailed and exact description by someone who knew how to see and what to look for. This hush stunt makes me tired.” “But in that case maybe we wouldn't have had a chance at the fifty thou- sand.” “That’s so. Maybe not. Anyway, it’s too late now. While you are at the bank I’ll get busy and see if I can learn any more about this ‘Samuel Smith’. Talk about your alibis! Meet me at my office—wait for me or I will for you. Adios?” CHAPTER VI Ir was close to nine o’clock that eve- ning when a tired, hungry, perplexed and perspiring advertising man let him- self into his office to find an equally hungry and perplexed detective await- ing him. “Well, what’d you find?” “How about it?” “Your lead, Tom.” “Tt won’t take me long to tell. Smith left town the day before the bank was burgled.” “Left town! But the dead—” “No, alive. Six times or six of him. He took boat for Victoria, San Fran- cisco and Skagway, and train for Spo- kane, Portland, and Vancouver, B. C.”