Show FLOYD GIBBONS adventurers club x tae the clue that spelled death by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter ELL sir weve got a detective story to tell today and a W wreal real detective to tell it he is richard D smith and he spins us a swell yarn of how he went out looking for clues and found adventure Advent urd instead or maybe I 1 should say that dick smith found adventure too for he found the clues he was looking for dick says hes he a fifty one and eels feels just as fit as he ever did ile 6 1 magician now not a detective today he goes around to clubs and parties giving other people mysteries to think over instead of solving them himself but not so many years ago he was one of the trusted operatives of an internationally known detective agency and according to some of the newspaper clippings dick must have been a wonder remember all those detective stories you ve ever read most of them start off the telephone rang in the office of the detective bureau well this one Is no exception to that rule the only difference Is that this story Is a true one onland and the telephone rang in dicks home one night in august 1923 while he sat at there listening to the radio dick answered that phone it was the office the office told dick to take the night train tor ogdensburg asburg N T Y way up on the bt st lawrence river r ver report to 0 the e general genera manager manage of the rutland railroad and see if he could find out anything about bags d 01 sugar that had been stolen from the railroad rall road s warehouse on the wa i ter front this was a sweet case looking for stolen sugar dick arrived in ogdensburg on the following day lie ile talked to the railroad cops and the local police he be looked the scene of the robbery over the police knew nothing definite and the scene of the crime yielded it turned and Us directly in the center no clues then dick went and looked up a friend in the U S customs service whose job was to watch the river tor for smugglers trying to run liquor in from canada dick knew that the men of the underworld have very few secrets among themselves and he had a notion that if he could set get the customs men to operate cooperate by capturing a crew of rum runners he could learn something from those rum runners about the sugar theft the customs men fell in with his idea and that same night five of them and dick along with them went out in a government launch and hid in a cove a little way up the th river the first night they spent well just waiting nothing happened but the second night they spied a dark object out in the middle of thel river and waited until it had acme across to the american side then they set out full speed ahead after their quarry and the nest next 10 minutes were the most exciting of dick s life first blood in battle of boats says dick when the other boat saw it could not get away it turned and rammed us directly in the center the other boat was heavier athani than ours our boat was cut clean in two and I 1 with my five friends was wasi thrown into the river then not satisfied with having disabled us as and throw n us in the water the rum runners came back circled around us trying to brain each of us as we were trying to get our bearings in the I 1 water there followed the fight of dicks life the customs mens guns were behind them in the wrecked boat dick was the only one who had a revolver on him I 1 I 1 drew it out and tried to shoot it out with the rum runners I 1 he says I 1 but a piece of iron pipe came down from a 2 boat and knocked the gun out of my hand the man who was yielding that piece of pipe could work a lot faster than I 1 could in the water ater the blow that knocked the gun from my hand also broke the band itself the pipe went up and came down again this time hitting me a hard clout on the head I 1 could feel my senses slipping away from me then for once in my life I 1 thought my time had comee come dick learns why it pays to buy life insurance my last thought was the satisfying one that I 1 had paid my life in aurance premium for a month I 1 said to myself that the folks back home would have a house to live in and a five thousand dollar insurance policy to live on then I 1 felt myself going down under the surface of the water when dick came to they told him chatie had gone down a second and was going down for the third time before help came to him in the meantime an approaching boat had frightened off the rum runners and one of the customs men managed to reach him with part of the wrecked boat he held dick up until the rest of the men could get there then somehow they all man aged to get to the shore all that trouble for a clue and still no clue in sight but after dick had spent a few days in bed resting up he went out again with the same crew of men and another boat they they were after rum runners and no fooling this time ahey caught them four of them and dick talked to them homed ing like this you re in a tough spot now but it might be worse give alve me a tip on who copped that sugar and well well we 11 forget we ever saw you laats the way nay a lot of crimes are solved and on the tip off those birds gave him dick got the men he was after Q service |