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Show A BOX OF CIGARS By Chester Barnett. HARLEY closed the ledger with, a resounding whack, slid the big volume into place, swept the litter of salesbooks into a stack, raked pens, pencils, erasers and paper cutters into a drawer, and, glancing up, looked into the uncompromising barrel of a tremendous black revolver. The lively tune which he had started whistling on finishing work ended on a high, staccato. "Don't move," the owner of the voice said softly. Charley acted on the suggestion. A tall man, with the shoulders of an athlete, confronted him. The lower half of his face was covered by a China silk handkerchief, while a neat slouch hat was pulled down over his forehead. "Mr. Raffles, I believe?" politely inferred Shar-ley. Shar-ley. "Humph! Why, yes, sir. And I have the pleasure of addressing a man equally famous, Mr. Jack Sharley, expert accountant? Oblige me by permitting your right hand to remain quiet. It displays a tendency to move toward the drawer. If you will allow me, our interests are centered in the safe behind you, and not in the desk." "What!" said Sharley in mock surprise. "Are you interested in that, too? Then we have another an-other tie that binds. What that safe contains, and what it should contain, constitute the terms of the hardest proposition that I have tried to solve for many moons. The gentlemen whose work I am going over seems not only to have been a scoundrel, but a fool as well." The burglar's eyes expressed more or less surprise. sur-prise. 'I'll tell you what, Mr. Burr er Raffles, I'm glad you came along! I've a proposition to make." Sharley paused, deliberating. The burglar watched him narrowly, with suspicious eyes, studying each line of the bookkeeper's thin, expressive ex-pressive face. "See here, old man, put up your gun there. I'm with you in this job." A pause ensued, broken finally by a laugh from the burglar. "You are d accommodating. Sorry to say so, but I don't think I can use you. I believe I can manage it myself." Sharley's face flushed a threatening red. "You do what I tell you, and we will both get along better," continued the thief. "There's ?1,-500 ?1,-500 in that safe tonight, and I'll ask you to unlock un-lock the door and fork over." MFifteen hundred!" Sharley laughed scornfully. scorn-fully. "Why, man,-you can take your paltry fifteen fif-teen hundred. But if y( are with me in this, it is fifteen thousand we .. , after." |