Word: sapper
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...BLUE-H. C. McNeile ("Sapper")-Doran ($2.00). Melodrama being his métier, the author of Bull Dog Drummond fares only moderately well on the cramped stage of the short story. His happiest efforts are with humor and suspense, as Uncle James's Golf Match-a rib-splitter-and the titular tale of this collection, wherein a murder is averted by the veriest trifle. In other instances, suspense is fool's gold. The nugget of denouement fails to pan out. In still others- The Porterhouse Steak, about a starving but proud war hero; The Film That Never...
...seems now that neither of these ideas were correct. Harrison G. Dyar, an entomologist of the Smithsonian Institute comes forward with the answer. He was the sapper of those mysterious passages. Weary with his day's toil Mr. Dyar found pleasure in donning overalls, throwing a pick and shovel over his shoulder, and digging tunnels beneath the most exclusive residential sections of Washington, the capital...
...Middle Ages besieged cities were surrounded by a wall, and the wall was surrounded by a moat. The sapper (or miner) dug under ground until he reached the foundations of the wall. Here he built a shelter by leaning beams against the wall to protect him while he undermined its foundations. As fast as he made a breach in the wall he propped it with beams to keep it from tumbling on him as he worked. Finally he set fire to the beams and fled, leaving the wall to cave in as the supports burned away...