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Show XL lie Black S of Silence By Francis Lynde Illustrations by O. Irwin Myers (WU Sarrlea) (Copyright bj Wullam Carard Chapman.) d SYNOPSIS Owen Landis, young: Inventor, In the little town of Carthage, has developed de-veloped an extraordinary "silencer," which Is stolen from a safe In his laboratory. Land la tells Wally Markham, his chum, the only person, per-son, beside himself, knowing the combination of the safe, Is Betty Iawson, daughter of a college professor, pro-fessor, with whom the Inventor Is In love. Markham takes a plaster cast of a woman's footprint, found beneath be-neath the window of the laboratory, labora-tory, and takes an opportunity to fit It to one of Betty's shoes. They are Identical. CHAPTER III Continued 3 "I was a perfect dishrag! It made me furious. To think that I can play my eighteen holes of golf and come up smiling, and yet be wrung dry by a few hours on the stage!" "Action and reaction," he suggested. "Nothing is more stimulating than playing to an appreciative tfudience, especially when the player makes such a cracking success of a part as you did of yours last night. And the aftermath of any stimulant is apt to be a let-down that leaves you tlat and (vita a dark-brown taste in your mouth. You ought to have had a bit of supper after the play." "I did that very thing. Bert took me to Pozzoni's." He marked the familiar "Bert" as applied to Canby, setting it down as a measure of the distance Canby had come on the road of the rusher, though a moment's reflection told him that it might mean little In Betty's mouth. She was nothing if not modern. "And after the supper Canby drove you home in his car?" She nodded. "He had to. I was so sleepy I could scarcely hold my eyes open." "StiU, I suppose the long way around was the shortest way home, at that, wasn't It?" he thrust in, with his good-natured grin. "It might have been," she admitted. "To tell the truth, I was so tired and sleepy that Bert may have been driving driv-ing circles around the block for all I knew, or cared." "'Bert," he said; "It's "Bert' and Betty' already. is it?" "Whoops!" she laughed. "Is that the way you feel about It? But what lo you expect? You home boys are so slow. Bert signed me up for last night nearly three weeks ago, and you didn't ask me until day before yesterday. yester-day. A girl has to take what she can get, doesn't she?" "I suppose so," he yielded. In all of this lighthearted give-and-take she was the Betty he knew best; teaslngiy vivacious, altogether frank and friendly, friend-ly, wholly unembarrassed. If she were wearing a mask for him It fitted faultlessly. His thoughts whipped back to the performance of the night before; to her almost Inspired Interpretation of her part In the play. Was she acting a part now? "Some girls can reach out and take anything they have a fancy for," he said, answering her query; "you, for one, Betty, dear. You'll have a lot to answer for by the time you're a woman gro-.yn." "I like that 'a woman grown !' " she retorted. "Am I not white, free and well, perhaps not quite twenty-one, but tionr enough to take the curse ofT? Never mind; if you think I'm a menace to the prace of Carthage, the menace will be removed after Commencement. Daddy i3 going out to the wild and woolly for the summer, and he is threatening to take me along." "Fossil hunting. I suppose?" Though the professor filled the chair of physics in the college it was well kno-.va that his hobby was paleontology. "It wouldn't be anything else. But he promises not to take me Into the Wil is unless I want to go. We have friends in Brewster, In the Tiinanyoni, and I'm to visit with them." "You'll have a good time, wherever you are, trust you for that," he avrrod. "All the same, we Khali miss you, or we'll say B"rt Canby will miss you." "What makes you say that so spitefully? spite-fully? You shouldn't be narrow, Wally, d'ar." "No," he agreed mildly, "nobody should he narrow. But I don't care ko awfully much for Canby; for one thin!', his eyes are too clo'-'e together." to-gether." 'V.nd for other tliin,r-i I suppo.se you'd say he Is too good-looking, dies.-'- too well, Is too sueeeusf til In business, plays too good a game of golf and bridge. I'm afraid you are hopeless, Wally." "Hopeless, and rather proud of it," he laughed, getting up lo go. "Would you lil:! to take a little spin I his fine morning?" "Too busy, thank you. I've a world of thin"-i to do lii-Tore ve clos,. tin-I. tin-I. oil ': for I hi: summer." "All right," he acquiesced, "I'll vanish van-ish and let you get at it." And with that he took his leave, with the mystery of the black box's disappearance as dense as It had been when he alighted from his car at the Lawson door. CHAPTER IV Broken Threads During the four days which Intervened Inter-vened between the disappearance of Landis' black box and the college Commencement, Markham burrowed patiently and alone. If the footprints foot-prints under Landis' laboratory window win-dow had been made by Betty Lawson, her companion, and accomplice, must have been Herbert Canby. Hence, during the four-day Interval, Markham Mark-ham spent most of his time keeping the promoter of real estate schemes under quiet surveillance. Nothing definitely helpful came of this. So far as outward appearance went, Canby ate, drank and slept the Greater-Carthage scheme to the exclusion exclu-sion of most other interests; also, he was gradually overcoming the obstacle of small-city conservatism to the substantial sub-stantial increase of his deposits In the Carthage Saving Bank & Trust, of which Markham senior was the president. pres-ident. Wally dropped In upon his father at the bank for a word of counsel. The young man had inherited a comfortable comfort-able competence from his grandfather, the bulk of which was Invested In a local tool and implement factory, the future expansion of which was threatened threat-ened by one of the ramifications of Canby's schemes. "About that tract adjoining the shops," Wally began. "I was told that Canby is trying to gel' an option on it. Do you know anything about it?" "Nothing definite. Gaultney he's taken over the handling of the estate was here yesterday, and he said nothing about it. I'm reasonably sure he would give us a chance if anybody else were trying to tie the tract up." "I hope he would. But Canby is pretty cagey in his deals, and he knows how much we're going to need that piece of ground some day." "You needn't worry a bit about Can-by, Can-by, Wally. He's nothing but a noisy false alarm as a good many people in this town are going to find out before be-fore they are through with him. As yet, nobody can put a finger upon anything any-thing he has done that you could call crooked, or even shady. Just the same, I shan't be surprised any day if the bookkeeper comes in to tell me that Canby's account has been checked out, lock, stock and barrel. When that happens, if it happens, I'm thinking we shall have seen the last of the young man who says he's from New York." Markham sought Landis in his backyard back-yard workshop, and found the robbed inventor a prey to the most gloomy forebodings touching the use to which his stolen invention might be put. "I'm a total loss, Wally," was the way he described his condition ; "can't work can't even think straight And now Betty tells me she's leaving Carthage for the entire summer." Markham laughed. "Which is another an-other way of saying that the worst Is yet to come, eh?" Then, "When did you see Betty?" "Yesterday. She came to the house to fell the folks goodby. They are leaving for the West tomorrow, she and her father." "Did she come out here to your shop?" "Oh, she couldn't well do less than to include me In the goodbys." "Well, what did you talk about?" "Shucks ! I wasn't fit to talk about anything. She saw it and tried to Jolly me up. Wanted to know If I couldn't take the summer off and go out to the wilderness with her and her father. Of course, she didn't mean it." "Of course not," Markham agreed brutally. "As you say, she was merely trying to jolly you up a bit. But what about the black box? Any. new developments?" de-velopments?" "Nothing; less than nothing. I've been buying newspapers from all around and reading them for the crime news. Plenty of crime, of course, but nothing to hint at any mystery. But it will come, you mark my words!" "Good stunt, that watching the papers. Keep It up." "I shall. I suppose you haven't learned anything?" "Nothing that you could give a name to," Markham evaded. Obviously, he couldn't toll Landis the length to which he had gone in cheeking up the scorched shoe. Neither could he make any mention of his suspicions of Canby. since Landis knew that Canby was Betty's escort on the night of the play. It was a mess, any way one chose to look at It. Later that afternoon Markham learned from the room cleric of the Collier hoir-'O, where Canby had bis rooms, that the promoter had left town, to he away overnight. Whereupon Where-upon he took another lawless step In the path v.liieli, up to the present, bad led nowhere. Ormsbury, manager of the hotel, was a time-tried friend, and to him Markham appealed. "You know me pretty well, John, and I'm going to ask yon to break all lintel traiiilioiiH for me." was the way he began on Ormsbury. "I want to borrow t lie master key to the rooms on the third door for a few minutes. Io I get il V "You've got your nerve, Wally," Ormsbury chuckled. "What's your lay this time? ,re you posing as a mom thii l'? Or are you playing around as an amateur il"'eeliv"? Whoso room do you want to break Into?" "Can't we let I he room number hang up In Hie air for Urn lime he'ng? I don't want' to point a suspicion unless I .Vt.. is suaciiiiug to point It at." "Then you are sleuthing? Why not turn it over to the police, and so stay on the windward side of the law? I suppose you know what' will happen If you should be caught out between bases?" "Of course. But I'm not going to be caught out. The rooms I want to break into are unoccupied just now, and you may be sure I'll leave them exactly as I find them." "You've given yourself away," said the manager, with a laugh. "There Is nobody away on the third floor excepting except-ing Mr. Canby. What have you got on him, Wally?" "Nothing at all. I merely want to see how he lives when he's at home." "All right," Ormsbury agreed, producing pro-ducing the coveted passkey. "It's smashing the traditions, as you say, but I'm banking on your discretion. Don't you want an authorized witness along?" "No ; you'd better not come. What you don't know you can swear you don't know. If anything develops, I'll promise you'll be the first to know it. Won't that answer?" "I guess so for this one time. But, for the Lord's sake, be careful !" With the pick-lock key In his possession pos-session Markham made sure there was no one looking on In the corridor when he opened the door of Canby's sitting room and let' himself In. The sitting room, bath, and the adjoining bedroom were all in order, and it took him but a few minutes to make a rapid but thorough search in every nook and corner large enough to conceal Landis' black box. He didn't find the box ; he had scarcely hoped to. It was when he was shutting the doors of the clothes closet wardrobe in the bedroom that he made a discovery. dis-covery. One of the several suits of clothes had fallen from its hook, and when he reached down to prevent it from interfering with the closing of t he door he found that the bottom board of the piece of furniture was loose. Laying the fallen suit aside, he lifted it. Underneath there was an enclosed space of a few inches in depth. At the farther end his groping hand came in contact with a leather bag lying flat. When he tried to lift it, it was so heavy that he had to take both hands. Taken from its hiding place and opened upon the floor, the case contained con-tained nothing to throw light upon Landis' loss; still, its contents were surprising. First, wrapped in a chamois skin, there were two large caliber cal-iber automatics, new, well oiled and with the magazines filled with cartridges. cart-ridges. Next came a larger piece of leather which served as a wrapping for a set of tools, 'drills, files, steel saws, cut-nippers, pliers, a bunch of objects that he took to be skeleton keys, and, lastly a short steel bar drawn to a chisel-end at either extremity ex-tremity and beautifully tempered; each piece looking to be as new and unused as the automatics. Having, as he believed, plenty of time at his disposal, Markham drew up a chair and sat' down to consider his prize thoughtfully. Of course, there was no doubt as to its nature. It was a complete kit of burglar's tools, with the guns to back It up, a spare kit, as It appeared, since there was every indication that the tools had never been used or the guns fired. What was Canby, figuring as an energetic ener-getic young promoter Intent upon making Carthage grow, doing with a burglar's kit hidden In his wardrobe? During the four days In which he had been quietly pursuing his investigations investi-gations ' Markham had found the clr-Mimstantial clr-Mimstantial evidence, based on clews revealed the morning following the robbery, gradually losing Its hold. Apart from the fact that Betty Law-son Law-son had demonstrated, or had seemed to demonstrate, her innocence of any part in the robbery, Markham was reluctantly re-luctantly compelled to admit that, up to the present moment, he had discovered dis-covered nothing upon which to hang an assumption of Canhy's guilt. Moreover, More-over, if Betty were innocent, her acquittal ac-quittal necessarily cleared the young promoter, since the two were together from the close of the thenter performance perform-ance up to and Including the return to the Lawson house. Yet here was this burglar's kit, cunningly hidden in Canby's Can-by's bedroom, to muddy a pool of his thoughts. Deep In a maze of dubiety, Markham restranped the bag and returned It to its hiding place. Clearly, the first thing to do was to tell Ormsbury of his discovery. Possibly the hotel manager man-ager might be able to Indicate the next step to he taken. In replacing the bag he tried to leave everything Just as he found it, rearranging the fallen suit of clothes so that it might appear as If It hail not been disturbed, and turning turn-ing the key In the lock of the wardrobe ward-robe door. Five minutes later he was handing the passkey to Ormsbury and congratulating con-gratulating himself upon an exceedingly exceed-ingly narrow escape. For, as he emerged from the elevator he had seen Canby getting his own proper key from the clerk. "If I had delayed a few minutes longer." Markham said lo Onnsliury, "he would have caught me red-handed red-handed !" Ormsbury grinned. "It would have served you rigid. I don't quite see how you could have ducked out of It." "Neither do I. At the same lime, I found something 'hat needs an explanation ex-planation quite as much as my presence pres-ence In Canby's rooms would have, If he had found me there." "What was the something?" "A pair of niau-sbe automatic wrapped up In a complete outfit of burglar's tools. hldO-ii under the bottom bot-tom heard lu i'"iKv's wardrobe." n o i i. :: i i i I |