by John Blaine
The frantic cavalcade piled down the stairs and out onto the weed-choked lawn, Rick bringing up the rear. As he stepped to the front walk he suddenly remembered.
“Good night! Dr. Bertona is in there somewhere”
The scientists gasped.
“I’ll find him,” Zircon bellowed. The burly professor turned and ran back into the house. Placing the black box carefully on the ground Rick followed the scientist.
Meanwhile Weiss handed the shotgun over to Gizmo and trotted after them.
“Bertona!Where are you?” Zircon’s voice lifted in a roar that shook the walls.
In immediate reply came a frantic rapping on the ceiling almost over their heads.
“Upstairs,” Weiss shouted. He led the way up to where ruddy flames made the hallway light as day. Rick whipped out a handkerchief and held it to his nose as smoke eddied around him.
At the top of the stairs they paused, aghast. In the few moments since they had left, the hallway was a seething mass of fire.
“This way.”Zircon headed for the front room at a run. He pounded on the
door.“Bertona!”
“In here!”
“The keys!”Rick exclaimed in horror. “Joe has them!”
“No time,” Zircon said. He crouched, then his powerful legs straightened as he hurled himself against the door. It rattled and a panel cracked, but it didn’t give.
“Again!”This time Rick and Weiss were with him, shoulder to shoulder.The door
shuddered and creaked.
“Again!”
Rick’s shoulder hit the door with painful force. The hinge screws let go with a rasping screech. The Spin-drifters catapulted into the room, knocking down a slender man who stood within.
Zircon pulled Dr. Bertona upright. “Hurry,” he bellowed.“Fire!”
“I tried to call you,” Bertona said shakily. “I heard noise. Then I smelled smoke-“
He stopped short. Rick gasped. The flames were at the top of the stairs.
Zircon didn’t hesitate. “We’ve got to jump through,” he said quickly. “If we don’t, we’re trapped.”
The bars on the windows! Rick saw at once that Zircon was right. His heart quailed at the thought of trying to get through that barrier of flame, but hesitating only made it worse.
“Here goes,” he said. He ran to the edge of the flame and sized up the situation. The worn carpet was a mass of flame, and fire was licking the stair posts. But a leap would take him through it to the stairs. He held his breath and jumped.
One foot landed on the edge of a stair and he had to clutch at the rail to keep from falling. He turned and shouted, “Come on! If you wait any longer you won’t be able to make it!”
He went down half a dozen stairs as the figure of Weiss appeared beyond the curtain of fire. The little professor leaped into space. Rick caught him as he clutched for balance.
“Herecomes Bertona,” Zircon yelled.
Rick and Weiss braced themselves to catch the scientist. For an instant he hesitated, then jumped headlong. His foot slipped! He fell, half his body in the flames, the other half beyond. Rick got his arm and heaved. Weiss got a grip on his coat collar. They dragged the scientist to safety.
“Down the stairs,” Rick gasped. “Make way for Zircon!”
The big scientist stood at the edge of the flames. He gauged the distance carefully, then jumped. He landed feet first and at that instant the stair cracked under him!
Rick gave a yell of warning as Zircon staggered, fought for balance,then fell forward on the railing! The dry wood cracked, held for a moment, and then collapsed. Zircon tumbled from the stairs to the floor with a sickening thud.
“Scotty!” Rick yelled for his pal even as he leaped to the scientist’s side. If Zircon were hurt, it would take all of them to carry him from the building, and they couldn’t waste time!
Scotty came through the door with a rush and took in the situation at a glance. Zircon was groaning through clenched teeth.“My leg! You’ll have to help me.”
Rick got one arm around his shoulder while Scotty took the other side. Weiss took his colleague’s belt and together they got him upright. It was the work of a moment to get him through the door. Zircon helped as best he could,hobbling on his good leg.
Bertona had gone right on through the door. He was slapping his clothes, extinguishing smoldering sparks in the cloth, and he was weak and pale with shock.
“Your friend,” he managed, “on the lawn . . . you’d better help him.”
“Gizmo!”Scotty exclaimed.
They rushed Zircon down the front steps and away from the house. Then, after seating him on the grass, they ran to where Gizmo was huddled against the iron fence.
There was no sign of Nails or Joe.
Gizmo’s jaw seemed swollen in the uncertain light, but he was breathing normally.
Scotty shook him vigorously and he showed signs of returning consciousness.
“He was knocked out,” Rick said. “He’s okay.” He left Gizmo in Scotty’s capable hands and hurried back to Zircon. The scientist was sitting upright, wincing as Weiss felt for any sign of a fracture.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said finally. “We can hope it is nothing more serious than a sprain,Hobart .”
Zircon nodded. “Bertona, are you all right?”
“Quite.” Dr. Bertona had a soft, pleasant voice. Rick could see that he was slender and not very tall, but it was too dark to tell what he looked like. “I have a few burns, but minor ones,” he said. “My clothing protected me. I’m very grateful to you, gentlemen.
May I ask your names?”
Weiss and Zircon introduced themselves.
Rick fidgeted. He could see that Scotty had Gizmo on his feet. “Let’s get out of here,”
he pleaded.“How?do we know but what the boss and the others will come back?”
He was upset at the escape of Nails and Joe and worried about the possibility of their return with guns. He searched in the grass near the front door until he found the whispering box he had abandoned when they went back after Bertona. There wasmore light now, because the fire was spreading inside the house and flames were visible
through the front door.
“I wonder if there’s a fire department near,” he said. None of them had even thought about saving the house after the first attempts.
“A fire department couldn’t help much,” Weiss replied. “Scotty, is your friend all right?”
Gizmo spoke for himself, chagrin in his voice. “Yeah, I’m all right. I haven’t any right to be, but I am. I got so interested in watching to see if you were all making out all right I forgot to keep a sharp lookout. Nails swung one from the deck that knocked me over backward. I guess I bashed my head on the iron fence because I went out like a light.”
“It’s done,” Scotty said. “No use crying about it. Rick’s right. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Gizmo pointed to a boxlike bulk in the fringe of woods. “There’s the van. I’ll bet my cab is still inside of it.”
“We’ll soon see.” Rick walked swiftly over to the van. It was standing with the rear doors flung wide, just as they had left it. True to Gizmo’s prediction, the cab was inside.
He climbed up to the interior and saw that the steel channels on which they had driven the taxi were in a rack along one wall. With Gizmo and Scotty helping, it was the work of only a few moments to tug them out and place them.
Weiss and Bertona had helped Zircon to hobble over. The big scientist’s leg obviously hurt him, but he said nothing about his discomfort. Nor did Bertona mention his burns.
Gizmo got into the van and made his way through the narrow space to the front of the cab. The boys and the scientists moved out of the way, Rick staying close enough to direct Gizmo as he backed down the twin ramps.
The taxi roared into life. Gizmo shifted gears, then backed cautiously to the edge of the ramps. Rick ran around back and saw that the taxi was lined up perfectly. “C
ome on,” he shouted, “but take it easy.”
Gizmo backed slowly until he was sure the wheels were in perfect alignment, then he rolled the cab down the incline to the ground. “All okay,” he said. “Let’s
go”
“Look.” Weiss pointed. At the very top of the old house a red flame thrust through. The downstairs door was crimson with the fire. The smell of smoke was everywhere now and they could hear the crackle of the flames clearly.
“It’s going,” Rick said. The sight fascinated him. He had seen burning houses before, but always with an efficient fire department working to save them. The old mansion was doomed. He realized suddenly that they should have searched the house for clues about the gang. It was too late now.
“We had better phone a fire department,” Zircon said. “And then I think a phone call toAmes and Hartson will be in order. Does anyone have any idea where we are?”
“I think we’re inMaryland ,” Gizmo said. “What are we waiting for?”
Rick opened the taxi door. Bertona got in, followed by Weiss. Rick noticed that the little professor was limping.
“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“No, confound it,” Weiss said. “I took off my shoe to rap that Joe person on the head. I dropped it somewhere upstairs.”
Rick laughed, relieved. He helped Scotty get Zircon into the cab, then the two boys unfolded the floor seats and got in.
Gizmo put the taxi in gear and circled around. The passengers stared at the house as the cab rolled down the dirt road. It wouldn’t help the old place to call a fire department now. The most firemencould do would be to keep the flames from spreading to the woods.
Gizmo gave the taxi the gas and it shot ahead, bouncing on the rough road. Rick remembered that the worst part of the ride in the van had been at the end. They should reach a hard-surface road shortly.
Sure enough, in a moment the taxi reached a crossroads where the dirt road crossed a macadam highway. Gizmo braked to a stop.
“Which way?” he asked. “I don’t remember.”
Through the front windshield Rick saw a junction where two hard-surfaced roads met in a Y.
“I think it was the left fork,” Scotty said.
Rick shook his head. “It wasn’t a very sharp turn. I think it was the right.”
“So doI ,” Gizmo agreed.
“Are you sure?” Scotty asked doubtfully.
Rick had to admit that he wasn’t. Gizmo wasn’t positive, either.
“Try the right fork,” Zircon suggested. “It’s bound to take us somewhere.”
Gizmo swung the taxi into the right fork and stepped on the gas. There were woods on both sides of them. Rick couldn’t see any sign of civilization.
Dr. Bertona spoke up. “Now that we are safe, may I ask what happened? I was resigned to staying in that room indefinitely. Then I heard sounds that seemed to indicate some sort of fight. I called once or twice, but no one answered.”
“We were pretty busy,” Rick said.
“Very busy,” Weiss agreed. He launched into a recital of events, including what Rick had told him. “And that,” he concluded, “is how we happened to be prisoners.”
Rick spoke up. “Dr. Bertona, what happened atPittsburgh ?”
“Briefly, I was decoyed into a waiting car. When I discovered that I was a prisoner, I tried to get away. I was given a dose of ultrasonics.”
“The whispering box,” Scotty said.
“Eh?The whispering box?A very good name for it. How did you manage to overcome the gang members without being paralyzed by it?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Rick said. In the excitement he had forgotten that the revolt had succeeded in spite of the whispering box Nails had held in his hand. He reached down on the floor and retrieved the captured box. “Here it is. Why didn’t it work?”
“Thank Scotty for the idea that put the box out of action,” Zircon said. “To begin with, we hatched our little plot while you were downstairs talking with- Rick, whom were you talking with?”
“The boss of the gang,” Rick replied. “Go ahead, professor. I’ll tell my story later.”
“Well, we decided that if a break were to be made, it must be at once before they separated us. We assumed that they wouldn’t dare leave us together. Scotty proposed a solution for the whispering box. He suggested that we use the mud wasps’ nests, make a mud pie, and plaster it into the nozzle of the box. That, he thought, would give us time enough to go into action against Nails and Joe.”
So that was why Scotty’s hands had been brown. They had been muddy!
“We had drinking water in our room,” Zircon said. “We used enough of it to wet the nests until they had a claylike consistency.”
“And then you started singing!” Rick laughed at the memory. “At first I thought you had gone crazy, until I got the sense of the song. When Joe opened the door I went in headfirst.”
“Scotty reached over you and plastered his handful of mud right into the box,” Weiss said.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Scotty said. “The pressure in the box would have blown the mud right out again.”
Weiss and Zircon chuckled. “We realized that,” Zircon boomed. “We weren’t sure you did. But we felt it was better to try something than to give up without a struggle.”
“The mud wasn’t necessary,” Scotty said. “Nails didn’t even have a chance to push the button before Gizmo banged into him.”
Gizmo spoke from the front seat.“No signs of civilization yet. Think we ought to turn around?”
More than ten minutes had passed since they left the old mansion and they hadn’t seen a single house or a light. Rick thought they must be deep in theMaryland woods-if they were really inMaryland .
“There must be some sort of village close by,” Zircon said. “Surely the house we just left wouldn’t have been built so far from stores or other people.”
“Doubtless there are houses and stores near,” Weiss said. “We have just taken the wrong road.”
“If we turn around, we lose all this time,” Rick spoke up. “Let’s keep going for a few minutes. Then, if there isn’t any sign of civilization, we can turn around.”
Gizmo nodded and picked up speed again.
“I’ll bet Joe and Nails are still running,” Scotty guessed. “They wouldn’t stay near the house.”
“More likely they are riding,” Weiss said dryly. “I’m sure they know this section of the country better than we. They probably went out of the woods to some near-by
community and stole another car to take them back toWashington .”
“After making a telephone call,” Rick amended. “They probably hated to tell the boss we were free, but they wouldn’t dare not to tell him.” He remembered his conversation with the boss. “He was going somewhere tonight. I wonder if he is pulling
anotherrobbery? Listen, we’d better step on it!”
Scotty switched on the dome light and looked at his watch. “It’s too late,” he said. “If he went out to steal another secret, he has had plenty of time to get back to the city. Do you realize it’s almost an hour and a half since we made a break for it?”
Rick looked at his own watch, unbelieving. It didn’t seem that more than a few minutes had passed. But Scotty was right.
“Anyway,” he suggested, “let’s get to a phone as soon as we can.”
“Lights ahead,” Gizmo called.
All eyes turned to the front. Far up the road, twinkling lights indicated some sort of settlement. In a few moments they were rolling into the driveway of a service station.
Rick jumped out before the cab had stopped rolling. He ran into the station and found the attendant tilted back in a chair, his feet on a desk. He was dozing.
“Wake up!” Rick said. “Listen, do you have a phone?”
The attendant opened his eyes.“Nope.”
“Where can we find one? Please, it’s urgent!”
The attendant thought it over.“MaybeL
ake’s Grocery.Naw , they’d be closed now.”
Rick asked impatiently, “Where are we? There must be a town near here.”
“This is it. Our phones are connected through Kensington, and that’s quite a piece back down the road.”
“Are we inMaryland ?”
The sleepy eyes opened wider. “Shucks, yes. Didn’t you know?”
“Which way isWashington ?”
The attendant looked out at the taxi. “Back the way you came. That driver must be a green hand. Never knew a taxi driver before as didn’t know where he was going.”
Rick was almost dancing with impatience. He had a sense of urgency that was growing by the minute. They must find a phone! If Steve were warned, he might be able to catch the boss!
“Where is the nearest place we can be sure of finding a phone?”
“Kensington fire station.Back the way you came. Turn into the other fork and keep going. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks! Could you give us some gas in a big hurry?” Rick tossed a five-dollar bill to the attendant. Before the man had time to screw on the tank cap, Rick jumped into the cab and instructed Gizmo. “Scotty was right! Turn around and go back, and take the other fork. Step on it, Giz.”
The taxi whirled around, tossing them into a corner. Gizmo straightened out and gave the cab the gas.
The minutes ticked past as the woods flew by on either side. Rick fidgeted, his eyes glued to the highway. The successful break for freedom had taken their minds from the importance of getting in touch with their friends. If only they had been able to call at once, they might have been able to warn Steve that the boss was on the loose.
Gizmo had the throttle to the floor. The speedometer crept up to sixty and past. Ahead, the road was deserted. Rick remembered that they hadn’t seen another car. That should have been warning enough that they were on the wrong road.
The fork of the road approached and Gizmo slewed the cab into the turn without
slowing. A few hundred yards ahead they whizzed past a gas station, closed for the night. Rick thought he could see lights far ahead.
As the distance closed, he was sure of it. What fools they had been! The nearest settlement had been only a few minutes’ drive away!
