The Black Mask — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

; off into nothingness as he stared at the wall as if his eyes were piercing - through and beyond it to the hiding ¥ place of the missing million. iQ “Spring it, Jim! Spring it!” But Carranaugh insisted that they go and eat their long deferred dinner before he told his vision, declaring that he needed to piece it out in spots be- fore telling even Tom. So it was not until he had fed mightily that he ex- plained his “almost human _ idea.” Then the two fell eagerly to discussing the pros and cons, the possibilities and their plans of activity for the morrow —a morrow that was fairly well begun when Jim caught a Madison street car for his houseboat on Lake Washington and Tom one going south for Mount Baker Park, where he knew that Mrs. Tom would be waiting up for him even at that hour, so unholy for the home- coming of a married man. CHAPTER VII AT nine o’clock next morning Peip- erson appeared at the office of the city engineer and asked to be allowed to examine plats of the Pioneer Square district, new and old, the older the bet- ter. There was little that Tom could not get granted when he asked for it as he knew how to ask. For the next several hours he pored over the maps looking for a certain definite something that he felt convinced was in existence, whether the plats showed it or not. Luncheon and everything else were forgotten as he dug and delved throtigh the dusty blue prints, tracings and brown paper drawings. Finally, as his finger followed line after line on the earliest city map he tld find it came to rest upon two par- lel series of small dashes enclosing word “Abandoned.” MHeaving a i. ee The Man Who Was Seven riness, he borrowed a piece of tracing cloth and a pen from one of the draughtsmen and made a rapid but carefully accurate copy of the street and property lines in the district sur- rounding the spot that had ended his quest and the contiguous waterfront and wharves. This sectional map he then compared and checked with the latest official plat, noting the changes and corrections made by the city’s development and growth. Thanking the engineer who had assisted him he departed, trying to whistle and smoke at the same time. Meanwhile Carranaugh had put in an equally busy morning at the Totem National going over the records of the safe-deposit department, making nu- merous inquiries of the bank official directly in charge and generally, in the opinfon of that official and of Daniels, making a pronounced and utterly use- less nuisance of himself, “Instead of going right out and catching the thieves and returning our money to us,” as Daniels phrased it to his fellow employe, who agreed whole- heartedly, adding that “asking foolish and impertinent questions about re- spectable customers who rented safe- deposit boxes” was not the way he would have set about catching bank burglars if he had been a detective, which, he was devoutly thankful to say, he was not. “Little better than burglars them- selves,” declared Daniels. “No wonder they talk about ‘setting a thief to catch a thief.’”. - And so on in undertones during the interims between Carranaugh’s count- less inquiries of who, why, when and whither about the men who held the keys to those boxes. ; Finally Carranaugh discovered the specific something for which he had been looking as evidently as had Peiper- son, made an entry consisting of three comicbooks.com