The House of Invisible Bondage

J. U. Giesy · Junius B. Smith

Jan 2012 · eStar Books

About this ebook

Imer Lamb is locked up for a strange attack on a friend. Semi-Dual sets out to find out the truth behind this mystery...Excerpt"You can't always tell what a thing is by how it looks," said Bryce.I nodded. We had been talking over cases we had handled, that morning in our suite of offices on the seventh floor of the Urania Building, indulging in reminiscence--as much as anything.Jim was my partner in "Glace and Bryce-Private Investigators," and had been an inspector of police before our partnership was formed. He was a big-boned, heavy-set chap with a round head and a stubby brown mustache above the long, black cigar he was smoking. And he was a most dependable man.He had come into my private room some half-hour before from his own on the other side of our suite, with a morning paper doubled up in his hand."Mornin', Gordon," he said, sitting down. "Well, here's another social luminary turned into a comet, started chasin' his tail an' gone clean out of his orbit.""Yes?" I accepted his statement, which, though phrased in sidereal terms, was not at all enlightening to my mind. I had not read the paper carefully that morning, and, as a matter, of fact, Jim generally scanned the news more carefully than I."Yep!" He nodded, and shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "Here's this Johnny, Imer Lamb, actin' a dammed sight more like a ram from all accounts--""Imer Lamb, the amateur tennis expert, golfer, swimmer, and general all-around, athlete--the society Johnny who took up aviation recently? What's he done--crashed his plane?" I asked.Jim grinned. "Not exactly his plane," he said. "But he's crashed all right. He's crashed his way into jail, accordin' to the paper. Beat up his valet over here in Monk's Hall, that bachelor apartment on Park Drive--almost killed him from all accounts--an' is taken to the hoosegow. Now what would a man want to beat up his valet for?""Well," I said, "I can think of any number of reasons from mere incompetency to meddling with his private stock." Actually, though, I felt my interest quicken to some extent.Imer Lamb was a young man of exceedingly good looks and exceedingly plenteous means, who, since his father's death some years before, had cut a pretty wide swath in the social and sporting world. He had just missed the amateur tennis championship the previous year, and was equally good at golf. He had raced his speed car in Florida, and had recently taken to the air in the latest type of rich man's plaything-aeroplane that Hispano built. "Hasn't he a brother in the brokerage business?" I added.