The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1923-05-30


make sure he was not being
watched. Then he slipped
quietly from the counter top, walk
noiselessly to the door, and eau
tiously turned the knob. That
door, as he already knew, was
locked.
He wheeled slowly about, stu
dying the narrow chamber in
which. he found himself pris-
oner. High up in the brick wall
at the rear was two-foot win
dow, guarded with bar-iron sunk
In the masonry. A few feet
beyond this opening he could see
a white-washed plane of un-
broken brick, but nothing else.
Between him and the printing
room stood a wooden partition of
implanted matched pine. Here
and there along cracks in the
boards he could make out the
glimmer of light, presumably from
an electric bulb swung above the
busy hand press. But no crevice
was broad enough to permit him
q glimpse of that room which he
SO oished to inspect.
The front of his narrow prison
was shut off from the outer
office by partition of pine no
heavier than that which ran along
the side. And Kestner, when he
realized that it would require no
great effort to force a way
through a barrier so flimsy, felt
less disturbed in spirit. The
worthy in the Stetson hat he
concluded. had merely taken an
ordinary, precaution to keep
new and untried recruit under
surveillance. He had not i'm
prisoned an acknowledged enemy.
He had merely impounded an un-
stable adventurer who. could later
be made to serve certain ends.
Kestner returned to his study
of the little chamber. Except for
the counter and the tarpaulin he
found it as bare as a cell. The
one thing that worried him. now
was the loss of his shoes. But a
source of even greater perplexity
was the fact that he could sec
nothing of the printing room next
TO him. And to investigate that
printing room was his first bust.
ness in life.
He explored the partition wall
foot by foot. Then he took out
his pocket knife, squatted down
at the inner end of the counter,
and found two boards where the
tongue and groove of the matched
pine did not. come close together.
He cut away the wood along
this narrw .fissure, timing each
knife stroke to synchronize with
the clank' of. the press. Each
silver and shaving of pine was
brushed carefully up and hidden
beneath the counter-end. And a
ten-inch shift of the counter, he saw
when he had finished, could easily
hide all signs of work.
But that work resulted in a
quarter-inch crevice which COM
manded a reasonably clear view OF
the next room. And Kestner,
leaning forward, could see the
shock-headed dome of a middle
aged man at work above the hand
press, picked out by the light from
an unshaded electric bulb. On
shelves beyond the press stood a
litter of grey camp-blankets and
waterproofs and wooden boxes that
looked suspiciously like cases of
ammunition. One corner of the
room WIS piled high with larger
boxes. A couple Of these had been
broken open, apparently for in
spection. From the unsealed end
of one protruded the stock of an
army carbine.
Exceptional and significant as
this merchandise appeared, it did
not interest Kestner so much as
did the man at work beside the
press. He watched that man as
he "a eflIiIV re-iDkpd his rollers
and continued to feed in his sheets
of cinnamon-broWn bond paper,
some eight or nine inches square.
He watched the STOPPING shoulder
ed and swarthy skinned worker as