The Lucas Street Safe Deposit proudly claims itself to be impregnable, with multiple layers of security, including keys and passwords, to gain access. While accompanying his friend Mr. Carlyle on a visit to "The Safe", the blind detective Max Carrados perceives sounds and smells which lead him to suspect that an audacious theft is in preparation... The story starts at 00:01:20

Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:20 The Last Exploit of Harry the Actor
01:25:37 Credits, thanks and further listening

If you'd like to hear more stories featuring Max Carrados, I have a playlist in development, available here:    • Max Carrados stories by Ernest Bramah  
Or for a selection of other Victorian and Edwardian detective stories, do take a look at the "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" playlist:
   • Rivals of Sherlock Holmes | Victorian...  

About the author: Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) was born Ernest Bramah Smith, probably in or near Manchester, where he attended grammar school. An intensely private man, very little information is known about his personal life. His early career included a stint as assistant to Jerome K. Jerome; his first success as a writer came as a contributor of humorous sketches somewhat in the manner of Jerome, to newspapers and periodicals, and he later became editor of one of Jerome's magazines. As an author he is best remembered for creating two characters: Kai Lung, a Chinese storyteller who appeared in a number of humorous stories from 1900; and Max Carrados, the blind detective, created in 1913. He also wrote science fiction, and his 1907 novel 'What Might Have Been' (also known as 'The Secret of the League') is a dystopian story which was acknowledged by George Orwell as a major influence on his own 'Nineteen Eighty-four'. Orwell was also a great admirer of the Max Carrados stories, bracketing them with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Freeman's Dr Thorndyke as "the only detective stories since Poe that are worth re-reading". The character of Carrados appeared in more than 25 short stories and novels between 1913 and 1934, and by the 1920s was more popular than Sherlock Holmes (whose later cases appeared alongside Carrados in The Strand Magazine). His blindness proves no obstacle to his detective skills; indeed his other senses are heightened and he regularly outwits criminals and fellow detectives alike.

Ernest Bramah Smith died in June 1942, aged 74, in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. He was survived by his wife Lucy Smith.

'The Last Exploit of Harry the Actor' first appeared under the title 'The Great Safe Deposit Coup' in The News of the World, on 5th October 1913. It was reprinted the following year – under the new title – as part of the first collection of Carrados stories to appear in book form, simply entitled 'Max Carrados (Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1914).

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2023