The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-03-08
MAGAZINE SECTION.

When the Fanshawes home was
cSeped,. Gardendale simply folded it's
hands and sighed. The Fanshawe DOM
lcile was equipped with all sorts of
burglar-proOf things-an electric alarm,
mysterious window catches, a noisy
oog, two pistols, one shotgun, colicly
Daby and Mr.. Fanshawe's insomnia
nft' In spite of such model safeguards,
burglars made a very pretty job
oIN II. Therefore Gardendale was be-
yond the point of speech.
Since the burglar age began the town
police had not captured a single house
breaker. The Citizens Protective as
ISOLATION and its two watchmen also
had zero score. The individual citi-
zens, beyond firing stray shots. blow
ing whistles and footing tin horns at
unreasonable hours, were in the same
state of impotence. Several of the men
folk wore the distinction of having seem
burglars, few of having shot at them,
but nobody except Mr.. McIvor ever
claimed to have hit one and he could
not produce the target
The park section of Gardendale con-
tanned a transplanted colony of city
folk who settled there because il was
carefully restricted. You had to have
so many feet of land to build on. your
house must not have a flat roof it
must not be a tenement, a store or a
two-family dwellinS-in short, it had
TO comply with so many exact rules and
prohibitions that the Park was highly
select and ostentatiously proud Of it.
self
But ii was not restricted against bur-
glars. Since the coming of the first,
dearly year ago. Gardendale passed
: Its nights in state of excitement and
suspense. THE Brace and Bit Gang
began it, They had a villainous way
of boring a circle of holes around the
lock of a gentleman's door and then
removing the lock. Half a dozen front
and back doors were neatly bored be-
fore the Brace and Bit Gang became
compassionate and quit.
A month had not elapsed before I'M
pretentious yet effective jimmy WELD
ers came to spend their evenings. They
made a speciality of splintering window
sashes. and they were workmanlike
about it. The second story men who
followed them occasioned less alarm,
because they worked during the fam
FLY dinner hour and did not give people
horrors I'm the middle of the night.
However. they nrospered. They got less
of the Parks ssiIverware but more of
its jewelry. But the coming of the
hold-up brigade was really a very Sc
rious matter. Three respected citizens,
who had been detained in town until
the last train, were further detained
on their walks from the railroad sta
tion by insistent wayfarers.
cardendale's failure to catch or ami
hila,e a burglar was not due to lack of
effort. After the first affair at Mr..
Gates house the men bought revolvers.
When they had demonstrated their in
ability to hit live targets at unknown
Har mis- r. hax hO1 10 n
6kpgs. There was the small, noisy and
C{5Tardly dog; the alert and pugnacious
dog and the large, silent and morose
dog, each householder buying accord
ing to his fancy and Judgment. Some
of the dogs barked when their own
ers came home late and then slept the
rest of the night Mr. Britton's bull
terrior showed promise, because one
dark night, as Mr. Britton set foot
on his own porch, the dog quite I'M
expectedly began to chew his leg. But
Mr.. BrittOn got his pistol and migrate
fully shot ''the only really good dog
I'm the Park" This seemed to discour-
age the other dogs, who thereafter gave
their time TO fighting among them
selves, killing cats and roofing up flow
err beds.
= Electric burglar alarms went off with
! and without burglars so impartially
that after while the Gardendale cit
izen would merely turn off the switch,
cuss the gong and go back to bed. Mr..
Finch invented d scheme of his own.
The central idea was to welcome bur-
glars with uncanny hospitality and dis
arm them through their own astonish-
ment. At night he hung a sign on the
front door, Don't use a brace and bit
or a jimmy. The dining room window
is unlocked" If they should venture
inside after this they would find little