Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1918 — A Benevolent Burglar [ARTICLE]

A Benevolent Burglar

By Ruth Alden Hayes

(Copyright, 1817, Weatern Newipaper Union.) Noiselessly the man with a bent wire opened the gate of a rear court, cautiously he crossed the stone-paved yard. He glanced up at the handsome mansion looming before him. It was dark and deserted looking. The intruder fumbled for a tool in his pocket, pushed back a door and was within the house. Burglar Bill Dorsey, if you please—reformed. It did not look that way, but, while the old crafty fHcks were brought into force and professional skill exerted to the utmost, he was innocent as a child as to the notion and purpose in view in thus breaking into the house of rich Seth Payne. Bill groped his way without a misstep, down a cprridor and up a flight of stairs, for he had pursued that Course only a week agone—and had got fiwaf with the swag! In his pocket at the present moment lay that same plunder, a diamond-jeweled wrist watch, a pearl necklace, two valuable rings. He could see a light coming through a keyhole. “Thunder!” Bill expressed voicelessly. Then he took another peep. He could have guffawed, for the man withip his view, kneeling in front of a safe, had on the floor beside him a hammer, a chisel and a screw driver. Bill could not refrain a chuckle at the sight of this kit. “A rival,” he muttered —“but an amateur. Being sincerely reformed, it is my duty to lead this novice out of the downward path. Hello, pal!” With the hearty salutation, Bill pressed open the door and stepped into the room. The other, a young, handsome man of perhaps twenty-flve, made a dive for a coat pocket. Bill put up the hand of vigorous remonstrance. “Don’t draw a gun, pardner,” he submitted, “I’m a yegg, too.” “But I am not,” declared the other. “What are you doing here, then?” interrogated Bill pointedly. “I am trying to get into that safe.” “I see—but you won’t, with those carpenter’s tools.” “Can you?” pressed the other. “Rather,” asserted Bill promptly. “That’s nothing but a cheap old box. I can open it on the combination alone.” “Do it and I will pay you any price you ask,” urged the young man. “Do you belong here?” asked Bill. “Not at all.” “Broke in, like myself?” “Yes —there was an open window, so you might say that.” “Sorry,” said Bill, shaking his head slowly, “but, as I told you, I’ve reformed. I’ve promised Kate, the sweetest girl in the world, to never turn a trick again and I mean to keep my promise.” “Then what are you doing here now?” amazedly inquired the other, who was Arthur Ridgely, and a respectable member of society, and an honest man, and free from guile as a child, but he did not tell Bill this —yet. “Well,” exclaimed Bill bluntly, “I came here to return what I took away a week ago,” and he exhibited the packet. “It was my last raid. Kate said she’d never marry me unless I put it back where I found it, we’ll say as evidence of my good faith in reforming.” “I see, I see,” murmured young Ridgely slowly, as if struck by the oddity of the situation. “You are a good man and I see the hand of destiny in my thus meeting you. I came here like a thief in. the night, I made myself amenable to the penalty for housebreaking, but Influenced by a pure and holy motive.” “I hope so,” said Bill dubiously. “Can you prove it?” “Yes, I can. If you will open that safe, in the left-hand pigeonhole of the upper row you will find, a green envelope. It is of no value, but immensely harmful to Innocent, suffering victims. To get that paper means the freedom, perhaps the life of a reputable citizen, the happiness of an innocent, beautiful girl just budding into womanhood. Man, glorify the reformation you boast of, by doing a deed that w’lil bring you blessings your whole life through!” “Why, you talk like a story book,” said Bill. “Say, Tm interested. A regular romance.” “And a tragedy—unless I get that paper.” “All right,” nodded Bill definitely, after a momeqt of thought. ‘Til help you out. Here’s the bargain. I open that safe. I take out a green envelope, nothing more. You are not to touch a single thing. We leave here and you convince me that you need that envelope for a good purpose before I part with it.” “Agreed—oh, gladly! gladly!” spoke the young man with eagerness. “Stand aside and keep quiet,” and Bill got on his knees before the safe. The other watched him with mingled anxiety and admiration. Bill, expert that he was, focused his acute senses of touch and hearing upon the combination disk. Click! —the tumblers grated, the steel door moved. Bill pulled it open. There was bold, bank notes, bulky securities in vjew, but both passed them by as dross. Bill

located the pigeon hole indicated ant pulled it opeq. * “Is that it?” he questioned, drawing out a green envelope. “Yes, it must be,” said Arthur Ridgely. 3 “Gather up your truck, then, and let us get out of here while the getting is good,” observed Bill tersely. He closed and relocked the safe. He placed the restored fruits of his former visit in the cabinet where he had originally found them. Bill led his companion from the place and left no traces of the double nightly visitation behind them. “Now, then, for a confab,” he observed, as they finally reached the street. “Where shall we go?” “Oh, some quiet restaurant,” said Bill, “anywhere except a drinking joint. Those are the traps that led me to become what I was. Now, then, let’s have the dope,” he added ten minutes later, as he and the strange new friend he had made were seated in a secluded corner of an eating room.

“I am Arthur Ridgely,” spoke Bill’s companion promptly, “reasonably well off and engaged to marry a beautiful young lady. The man whose house we visited tonight admired her, demanded her hand in marriage. Her father was an old business associate. The other held a great power over the father of — oh, I will speak her name, Angela. The possession of a document in that green envelope enabled its holder to disgrace, perhaps imprison Angela’s father. To evade the same, broken heartedly she turned me adrift, sacrificing herself to save her father.” “The father had gone wrong, eh?’ submitted Bill bluntly. “Not in a criminal sense. In order that a large but falling business might be reorganized, he took upon himself the risk of an irregularity. He saved the business and no real wrong was done. That was years ago. I learned the truth from his lawyer, who has visited the wretch who held the document, saw it, noticed where he put it In the safe. Now his fangs are drawn, and oh! the relief, the happiness for those I love.” “Take it,” said Bill impulsively, and handed the green envelope to Arthur Ridgely. - “I Want your address,” said the latter, fairly trembling with emotion. “My city one changes tomorrow, for I am going to get married and leave for a pretty little place in the country," and Bill gave the details as to name and location. One month later Bill was whistling a cheery tune in the rear yard of his new home, and his happy-faced wife was singing as she bent over the washtub under a flowering cherry tree. Abruptly an automobile turned from the road, halted and Arthur Ridgely sprang out. “Dear friend!” cried the exuberant young man, seizing Bill’s hand in a fervor of joy. “We haven’t forgotten you.” “My wife,” spoke Bill proudly, nodding to the smiling lady at the clothesline. “Two brides! Angela,” called Ridgely, and she alighted from the machine. “Good friend, Indeed!” she cried to Bill. “You darling!” she directed at Mrs. Dorsey, as she threw her arms around her neck and kissed her. “You look very happy here, Mr. Dorsey,” observed Ridgely. “Happy!” cried his buxom wife. “He’s whistling at his work all day long and I have to sing to keep from crying for joy.” “It’s just paradise,” declared Bill. “We’ve got a lease on the little place for ten dollars a month and a promise of the use of five acres adjoining.” “You needn’t pay any more rent,” said Ridgely, and he extended a folded document. “What’s that?” questioned Bill. “It’s a deed to the house and lot and the five acres, free and clear —a belated wedding present, Angela’s and mine,” was Arthur Ridgely’s reply.