Show dy francis lynde by 0 irwin myer berrice by william chapman SYNOPSIS owen landals young inventor in the lettla town of carthage has developed an extraordinary silencer which la stolen rom a sate in his laboratory tells wally markham his chum the only person beside himself knowing the combination of the sate Is betty lawson daughter ot a college pro lessor with whom the inventor Is tn love markham takes a plaster cast of a woman s footprint found beneath the window of the laboratory and takes an opportunity to fit it to one of bettys shoes they are identical betty tells markham herbert canby a stranger bosine as a promoter had driven her home the previous night and that she had dozed in the car mark 1 I 1 ham does not tell bandla of his discovery suspicious of can bys honesty he ae arches his hotel room in his absence finding two loaded automatic revolvers and a complete et of burglars tools CHAPTER IV continued the dertl you say I 1 bert canby a burglar armsbury bury ejaculated that 3 ridiculous wally I 1 grant you anything you care to charge him with in the blue sky field be la burglarizing the community pocketbook to the queens taste in the promotion schemes but he doean doesn t need a cracks mans kit to do that what did you do with it I 1 put it back where I 1 had found it it Is up to you to rediscover it if you want to I 1 dont know how it got there or what use it any he means to male of it but its there rut see here wally perhaps what the manager was about to say was left unsaid for at that mo mant the office door opened to admit the promoter himself and the leather case he laid upon armsbury bury s desk was the one earlham had so lately re stored to its hiding place I Iello markham 1 canby exclaimed cheerfully glad to find you here two witnesses are better than one any day in the week then to oreg bury A few minutes ago aa I 1 was putting my grip away I 1 found that thing hidden in the bottom of my wardrobe it isn t any of mine BO I 1 m turning it in what Is it armsbury bury search me I 1 opened you know not without witnesses it may be an internal ma chine for all I 1 know suppose you open it john and let ns see what it Is earlham suggested armsbury bury un buckled the straps and spread the contents of the bag on his desk candys astonishment was either real or faultlessly simulated well ill be d dl he burst out that set your back teeth on edge who do you suppose planted that outfit on me where did you say it was queried armsbury bury sparring for time under the bottom of my wardrobe the bottom board Is loose and when I 1 opened the door to put my grip away I 1 saw that one leg of the trousers had got caught under the loose board and when I 1 the clothes up the board came with cm and there in one corner was this thing what Is it a plant or a joke earlham was watching canby narrowly as he talked but his open eyed frankness was as convincing as it was disarming ir t Is a joke somebody must have a badly distorted sense of humor markham put in it strikes me that the point of a joke like that would be rather hard to discover oh I 1 dont know canby returned with an easy laugh there are still a few stand patters in carthage who are calling me all the hard names they can dig out of the dictionary I 1 dont doubt some of them would be ready to shout 1 I told you sol if I 1 should be caught with a burglars kit in my poa cession its up to you now bury what alu you do with the stuff 1 I suppose I 1 ought to turn it over to the police he said half doubtfully that would be the part of a good law abiding citizen canby agreed on the other hand though it would earn a good bit of unpleasant pub for the hotel wouldn t it it would armsbury bury admitted with a wry smile 1 I guess lock the bag up in the hotel vault for the time being and wait to see what if any thing develops that Is sensible meanwhile III keep an eye out for the joker it it Is a joke well what do you make of it john markham asked after canev had gone just what you did I 1 imagine the fact that he brought the stuff here to me clears him dut that isn t all you remember alie series of burglaries we had last winter dont you at the time they were going on we had a man and a woman who was registered as his wife in suite abree candys room about the time when the town got desperate and called in a well known detective agency to work with the local police the couple van dished disappeared beav een two days and you think the man was the burglar 1 I ve always had a sneaking idea that he might have been and had nothing to tie it to this hidden tool kit knocks out the doubt doean doesn t it aih holding a mental reservation or two on his own part markham said u aa well I 1 suppose that clears up the mystery and got up to go bisot quite armsbury bury smiled it doean doesn t tell me why you wanted to break into candys room in his ab sence I 1 had a notion which now beems so foolish that id like to keep it to myself earlham pleaded and he had climbed into his car and was driving home before he recalled an incident the significance of which he had entirely missed at the moment namely candys mention of the fact that a trousers leg of the fallen suit of clothes had been caught under the loose board and had so been the means of disclosing the hiding place of the burglars kit by george thought markham 1 I wonder it that was bis way of telling us or me that he knew somebody had been prying around in his diggings I 1 wonder 1 but the wonder became tant when as he was passing the I 1 andla house he saw owen waving a newspaper as a signal for him to stop its come at last just as I 1 said it would I 1 owen said passing the newspaper to markham read that I 1 markham read the news item to which landals was pointing at an early hour this morning the inhabitants of the quiet village of Pert hdale were electrified by the als covery that their one and only bank the Pert hdale security bad been wrecked actually torn to pieces as to its interior by an explosion which the devil you bayl bert canby a burglar should have rocked alie town to its foundations A charge of explosives heavy enough entirely to demolish the bank vault to make junk of the fittings and furnishings and to shatter every window in the building had been fired some time during the night the perpetrators of the robbery getting away with cash and negotiable ties amounting to over the singular thing about the bold robbery Is the fact that the crash of the terrific explosion was not heard even by persons sleeping directly across the street from the bank nor by either of the towns two night watchmen the theory Is that some new explosive noiseless in its operation was used by the robbers and every effort Is being made to ascertain it such an explosive Is known to science fieres where we get action 1 markham snapped jam a few things into a grip and tell your family they look tor you back until they see you do the same and come around for you in a jiffy it we spin the wheels we can be in Pert hdale before dark the noiseless explosion settles it it iso question about that these beggs had my box and used it hight I 1 hustle your make ready or ill beat you to it time Is the es sence of the thing we want to hit the trail while its warm im gonel and with a roar of its po erful mo tor alie roadster shot away CHAPTER V an obstacle race markham spun the wheels on the run to Pert hdale to such good purpose that it was only a little after dark when the blue roadster turned in at the yard of the country town tavern delaying only long enough to wash off the dust of the long drive mark ham and landals went to the dining room there was little to be gathered from the excited discussion of the mysterious bank robbery the ma opinion gravitated toward the belief that some new and noiseless explosive must have been used up in the air natural ly markham commented as they were leaving the dining room well find somebody who too excited to talk sensibly somebody who can give us a little real information ak in the office and when he came out stockwell president of the bank la our man lives just around the corner well go and hear what he has to say they found the banker easily ap proa chable the more easily after markham had introduced himself as the son of a banker we aw the account in nn indian apolla paper so mr landals and I 1 drove over to get the facts nt first hand markham explained if these bandits have got hold of something new there ought to be a concerted effort made to run them down before they wreck us all glad to give you the facts but they are meager thus far was the ready reply at about three big gers one of our two town night watch men saw an auto come in from the east and he supposed it was merely a belated tourists car passing through as quite possibly it was A little later he saw the car standing in the street opposite the bank and a man had the hood open and appeared to be doing something to the motor the next time he walked his beat which was about an hour later the auto was gone and the bank was a wreck and he bad beard nothing in the meantime markham queried not a sound and neither did anyone else so far as we can learn an explosion that ought to have aroused everybody within the town limits dlan t abou arou anybody it was the watchman who discovered the robbery yes passing the bank on his later rounds he found broken glass all over the sidewalk the front windows had been blown out he gave the alarm and came and called me I 1 could hardly believe my eyes when I 1 saw what bad been done the interior of the building Is a complete wreck showing that an enormous charge of explosive mut have been used even the concrete walls are shattered this auto that the watchman saw markham went on has there been any effort made to trace it we have done what we could nothing definite has come of tt the roads are full of cara coming and going at all hours of the day and night we coulden couldn t very well authorize indiscriminate arrests on a mere suspicion all we could do was to try to trace a car which had presumably parsed through Pert hdale at a certain hour of the night such a car has been found and traced but the occupants three business men of louisville on their way to look at a western mine were able to give a perfectly clean bill of health you say this car fitted the watch mans description landals put in where was it seen last at terre haute passing through at about seven this morning the three men had breakfast there and that is where they were questioned As I 1 say they produced a clean bill of health and had the documents to show for it you got this by wire over long distance from the sher iff he said the men laughed and invited mm to search them and their car said they robbed a bank yet but they might need to before they got through with their mining venture As they left the bankers house markham said well what do you think owen are we on the trail of your black box there the slightest doubt in my mind wally ive simply invented a new horror and these scoundrels whoever they are are using it god only knows what do what about this terre haute clew which seems to be no clew at all ive been thinking about that while mr stockdale was talking it struck me all at once that tho three men might have been running a bold bluff it would be the cleverest way of throwing everybody off the track so markham acquiesced and then abruptly are you good tor an all night drive owen anything to get action all right well go its a long chance but it seems to be about the only one we can take turns driving and manage a bit of sleep that way it will probably proe a wild goose chase but well make it accordingly halt an hour later the blue car took the road again following the trail to the westward driving and sleeping by turns they reached terre haute early in the morning and markham ordered all the morning papers when they came they both went through them painstakingly and found nothing if the Pert hdale exploit had been repeated elsewhere the news had not reached the press wires rather leaves us up in the air docan t it markham remarked As that the three men we have traced this far are the Pert hdale bank wreckers and stretching the probabilities a good bit we dont know which way they went from here I 1 suppose there Is nothing for it but to wait until the lightning strikes again somewhere with the weapon got the bandits feho are using it won t stop with the looting of a single country town bank you still think they have your black box there cant be a doubt in the light of what we learned in perth dale we 11 hunt up the sheriff who telephoned mr stockwell kwell maybe be can tell us which way the men in the black touring car went from here As it turned out the sheriff coulden couldn t tell them the thing they needed to know though he could and did give them a fairly good description of the three coupling it with of a discouraging nature you fellows are barking up the wrong tree was the form the advice took 1 I put those men through the mill yesterday morning and they came clea as a hounds cootu why they give me the addresses 0 a dozen prominent people in louisville and offered to stop over while I 1 wired about cm I 1 ion wire did couf lan als put in TO na |