"The beautiful young daughter of a wealthy family is robbed of her money and jewels, and she herself disappears soon after... A young man fleeing a band of murderous hobos becomes the target of a lynch mob... Frozen to silent rigidity, they sat straining every faculty to catch the minutest sound from the black void where the dead man lay. As they listened there came up to them, mingled with inexplicable footsteps, a hollow reverberation from the dank cellar- a hideous dragging of chains behind the nameless horror which had haunted them through the interminable eons of the ghastly night. Up, up it came toward the room at the head of the stairs where they huddled fearfully. They could now hear quite clearly what might have been the slow and ponderous footsteps of a heavy man dragging painfully across the rough floor . It stopped in front of their hideout and all was silent. Suddenly there rang out against the silence of the awful night a piercing shriek, and a great The Oakdale Affair force began to bend the flimsy door...." Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, "Lost worlds" and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter.