The unknown Luna

There could be no more fitting introduction to this most amazing narrative from the pen of James Peter Munn than that article in the Morning Mercury.

Munn, it is no breach of confidence to inform the reader, was a reformed burglar; although the author of two books which achieved large sales and were most favorably received by the reviewers-"Forty Ways of Cracking Safes" and "The Sandbagger's Manual"-Mr. Munn developed small skill with the pen, so that the breathless interest aroused by his revelations hangs more upon the matter than the style. The Mercury article should do its mite toward preparing the reader for what is to come.

In the first place, the story was what newspaper men call a "scoop."

The article in the first edition ran as follows:

QUINN'S CASTLE VANISHES.

AND SO DOES QUINN! WITH HOUSE AND BELONGINGS. THE HARLEM SAGE DISAPPEARS IN A SINGLE HOUR. LEAVING NOT A TRACE BEHIND.

What happened to Professor Quinn last night? And what happened to the strange steel structure known locally among Harlem residents as Quinn's Castle?

For Quinn and his castle were snuffed out like a candle-gleam some time between the hours of eleven o'clock and midnight. Patrolman Casey, who travels a beat in that part of Harlem, avers that he passed the castle at eleven o'clock, and that it was there; he passed its site again at twelve, and it was not there.

Considerably exercised, Patrolman Casey made search for the castle, and although he beat up the country for a dozen blocks in all directions, he failed to find it. And what is more, Patrolman Casey declares that he took the pledge when he went on the force and has been a total abstainer ever since.

Corroboration of the officer's report is not lacking. Certain residents of the vicinity state that they saw the professor's weird dwelling yesterday evening; its windows were aglow and it appeared evident that the professor was entertaining friends. The first gray dawn this morning showed a bare lot with the steel house missing.

Is it another case of Aladdin's palace dissolving into thin air at the "presto!" of some wonder worker? Or is it a plain case of larceny undertaken on a gigantic scale? A golden opportunity offers itself to a sleuth of the Sherlock Holmes school; and for such a person the Mercury presents the following facts:

First, the so-called castle was projectile-shaped, of boiler-plate construction, and measured some twenty feet in diameter, tapering to a point thirty feet above ground. It was covered with a sort of paint that gave it the appearance of frosted silver.

Second, there is much low shrubbery surrounding the site of the castle, and if the castle had been blown down and rolled from the ridge it stood on into the river there would have been left evidences in plenty of such disaster.

(Note: The castle certainly weighed five tons, possibly five times that. Nothing short of a cyclone could have budged it, and there was hardly a breath of air stirring the whole night long.)

Third, Professor Quinn, ever since he erected his steel house and moved into it, has been regarded as mildly insane. Like Abou-ben-Adhem, he desired to be entered on the angelic scroll as one who loved his fellow-men.

Last summer he read before the Astronomical Society a paper entitled "The Mutability of Newtonian Law," and was laughed out of that honorable body for his inconsistencies. Although adverted to as "The Harlem Sage," Professor Quinn is no Merlin, nor does he possess the ring of Gyges that rendered its wearer invisible.

Yet where is he? And where is his castle? Until some Vidocq appears and solves the mystery, echo can only answer "Where?"

So much for the article in the first printing of the paper. The bright young man who stood sponsor for the "scoop" had meanwhile been very busy with fresh details, and the second edition contained the following addenda:

It has just been learned that Mr. Emmet Gilhooly, the multimillionaire and president of the railroad combine, was a guest of Professor Quinn last night, and must have been in the castle at the very moment it faded into oblivion.