“My costume,” Zita murmured coldly, “is none of your impertinent business, Karl. As for permission to do whatever I please, are you implying I need yours?” Her sneer cut like a knife.
“Get out!” His shrill voice cracked with sudden rage.
She shrugged and turned away with a provocative sweep of her body. As she walked past Lacy their eyes met for an instant. Zita’s face was calmly inscrutable but flames were slumbering in her dark eyes. Her words sounded like gay mockery, but Lacy sensed meaning behind the low amused laugh.
“Good-by, Major,” she said in a slow drawl. “It’s quite a pity you have to die so soon. I enjoyed your little story. You tell it rather well.”
The man in the black mask stared at them suspiciously.
Zita disappeared the same way she had come. Lacy strained his eyes but he was unable to detect how she manipulated the panel. For an instant she was a pale glimmer of green beyond the opening. Then the silvered wall became solid again.
Tattersall Lacy stood quietly as the two thugs advanced on him and seized his arms.
“Search him, Boss?” said a husky voice.
“Never mind,” the man in the black hood said. “Hustle him along.”
They obeyed literally. Lacy’s feet stumbled helter-skelter down a long corridor behind the quick strides of the girlish-voiced Karl.
The fingers clamped on both the major’s arms were like steel hooks. He protested and a free hand buffeted him in the face with a violence that made his ears sing.
“None of that!” the masked man said sharply. “No unnecessary violence, please. The Master’s orders were strict.”
They ascended a flight of stairs, turned back along another corridor. Tattersall Lacy’s eyes veered watchfully. In his mind he tried to fix carefully the details of halls and staircases.
He was halted at last before a massive door.
“The prisoner is here, sir,” the masked man said, apparently to the door itself.
“So I see,” said a new and mysterious voice. “Excellent, Karl! Let go of his arms, please.” The hidden voice crisped with sudden anger. “What’s this? Your face is bruised, Major. Has someone struck you?”
The thug on Lacy’s left turned pale with fright. He began to stutter something.
“Quite so,” said the Voice smoothly. “You disobeyed my orders, but that’s quite all right.”
Judging from the abject, doglike fear on the unhappy thug’s face Lacy was certain that it was not quite all right.
The Voice became jovial. Lacy couldn’t detect the origin of the sound; it seemed to float clearly and without echo in the air itself. There was no sign of its owner.
“Come in, my dear Lacy! We must have a chat. I’ve been waiting a long time to see you.”
The door swung open and the major stepped unwillingly forward. His three guides didn’t follow. The closing door shut them out.
CHAPTER III
MADMAN’S NET
In the compact barrack room high up in the dizzy pinnacle of the Cloud Building, disciplined men gathered their equipment together with a quiet and orderly speed.
Rifles melted from the racks. Ammunition moved from hand to hand. A bronzed-faced sergeant with bulky, powerful shoulders passed out a steady supply of squat steel eggs to a trio of picked grenadiers who stood somber-eyed and silent, stowing away the deadly little Mills bombs in small haversacks slung from their shoulders.
There was a curious tenseness in the cool sunlit room. No one of these ex-marine crime destroyers wasted time in useless chatter. They had listened to a brisk unemotional statement from Pat Harrigan, followed by the quick orders of a line sergeant. Speed! Get ready! Shove off!
Harrington was the only staff officer present. Ed Corning was down in the basement of the huge skyscraper, superintending the tuning up of a certain camouflaged Gray Goose bus and an innocent looking red-and-blue taxicab. Charlie Weaver was still away on advance scout duty, mapping the neighborhood of a certain brownstone dwelling. The method of attack was Weaver’s responsibility.
And Major Lacy?
Men looked at one another with a sober restraint in their eyes. The Old Man was caught! Unconscious and in deadly peril of death! There wasn’t a man in the penthouse headquarters of Amusement, Inc. who didn’t love that tight-lipped leader of theirs with a grim devotion. His unseen presence seemed to fill the room. He was captured by murderers, out of action. And unless these tanned ex-marines of his smashed their swift way through hell and high water…
Pat Harrington spoke in a low voice to the sergeant at his elbow.
“Got the Bandelore torpedo ready? We may have to rip right through the front door if Captain Weaver’s survey is accurate. We can’t waste any time skirmishing, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve packed the Bandelore myself, sir, in the suitcase carrier.”
“Good. Hurry the men along, will you?”
He turned on his heel and ran through a corridor to the staff officers’ quarters.
A moment later the voice of the sergeant barked with authority. The men fell into formation and marched stolidly through the ornate and high-ceilinged foyer toward the opened door of the secret elevator that connected the penthouse with the motor exit in the gloomy basement.
The elevator descended swiftly, carrying six men at a time. The sergeant went down with the first group; Harrington descended with the last.
Ed Corning was down below watching with a moody eye the loading of the bus. Harrigan walked over to where he stood in the shadow of a huge concrete arch blocked off by great sliding doors of wood which were now closed tightly together.
It was hot under the bright glare of the electric arc. Corning’s face was damp with perspiration. A little to one side, drawn well out of the way of the bus, the staff taxicab waited, with Sergeant Dillon, the major’s personal chauffeur, behind the wheel.
Harrigan nodded to Corning. “All set, Ed?”
“Just about. Bascom’s driving the bus, as usual. Shake it up, men!”
“Has he got the orders straight? He knows where to go—what to do?”
“Yep. Stop fidgeting, Pat, for God’s sake. Weaver reported that there’s only one guy on duty in the parking lot, and Bascom will take care of that part. It’s the simplest arrangement because Bascom will have to stay with the bus anyway.”
A door slammed. A voice called: “Ready to go, sir!”
Ed Corning’s silver whistle blew a short single blast.
Without any fuss the big bus got under way as the wooden sliding doors moved apart. The bus moved under the concrete arch that divided off the private area which was leased by Amusement, Inc. from the Gray Goose Corporation. It lumbered through the gloomy Gray Goose repair shop, passed the deserted terminal platform and climbed the long ramp of reinforced concrete that led upward to the sunlight of Sixth Avenue and the murky L structure that ran past the frowning rear of the gigantic Cloud Building.
The sign on the front of the bus read: SPECIAL. Chintz curtains covered the windows. Through the windows could be dimly seen a jovial bunch of clean-shaven young men on an outing. They smoked cigarettes, chatted idly with one another.
The loaded racks and baggage carriers were invisible from outside. A flapping banner tacked on the rear of the truck read:
ALOYSIUS J. SLATTERY
DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION—ANNUAL OUTING.
Two minutes after the bus turned into Sixth Avenue and lumbered north, a red-and-blue taxicab followed, looking very demure indeed for a car that was a custom-built, armored job with a racing motor under the battered and dented hood.
The bus rolled monotonously uptown, bearing steadily toward the east as the lights changed, until presently, with a snorting rumble of its motor, it turned dexterously out of traffic and came to a standstill in a small automobile parking lot.
A sleepy looking ma
n in shirtsleeves emerged, yawning, from a tiny wooden shack in the rear of the lot and came slopping forward through the unkempt weeds that grew in sickly profusion on the hard cindered earth.
He rubbed his eyes.
“What d’ye want—gas?” he grumbled.
“C’mere a minute, fella,” said the driver of the bus with a bright and cheery smile.
He beckoned and allowed his hand to remain outstretched. His muscular fingers suddenly caught the parking man by the collar and yanked him bodily into the bus.
There was a faint yelp and no further sound. The shirt-sleeved man didn’t reappear.
Instead, the jolly young bronzed-faced lads of the Aloysius J. Slattery Democratic Association began issuing from the bus by twos and threes.
A trio of them turned the street corner and drifted along until they were opposite a certain stately looking brownstone dwelling. These three carried haversacks slung from their shoulders. Each had a bright yellow box of breakfast cereal in his left hand. They looked like “free sample” salesmen canvassing the neighborhood for an advertising campaign.
Other young men in khaki shirts and gray civilian trousers made a circuit of the block to the rear of the brownstone dwelling. They disappeared through the paved delivery entrance of a tall yellow brick apartment house. They carried with them a long wooden box. The lid of the box was held on loosely by a hedge of bright pried-up nails. It wasn’t a light burden to carry. Rifles are heavy.
A red-and-blue taxicab turned suddenly into the parking lot and stopped near the motionless bus with a squeal of its powerful brakes.
Charlie Weaver was the first one to hop out. The staff car had evidently picked him up at a prearranged spot. He said nothing, merely jerked his wrinkled little face toward Bascom, the driver of the bus.
“All ready, sir,” Bascom said mildly.
“Stations!” Weaver growled in a low voice.
Ed Corning turned on his heel and trotted off after the vanished riflemen. Pat Harrigan swung a heavy suitcase from the hands of Bascom and Weaver and the red-headed Pat took hold of it between them.
They carried their burden gingerly around the corner and walked along toward the brownstone house.
Weaver nodded with satisfaction as he glanced across the street. The three Mills bomb “salesmen” lurked unconcernedly in a dingy doorway opposite as though they were dodging the eagle eye of their advertising boss.
The only other person in sight was a letter carrier and he was far up the street and walking rapidly away. By a stroke of luck there were no empty cars parked at the curb, though that would not have deterred the grim-faced Weaver for a second.
The two staff officers of Amusement, Inc. walked up the short brownstone stoop, still lugging the heavy suitcase.
The door looked like a pretty heavy barrier to crack. Weaver’s closer view confirmed his earlier judgment. For all of its innocently ornate appearance the thing was a powerful icebox door. In the center panel was a cumbrous ornamented metal knocker with a swanky little design in bas-relief.
The two men wasted no time. Harrigan heaved up the suitcase with a grunt and held it steady while Charlie Weaver wired the stout leather handle to the knocker. The job was done in a matter of seconds.
Across the street the cereal salesmen watched. One of them tossed away a half-smoked cigarette with a lazy gesture.
Suddenly the two officers turned, walked together down the stoop and trotted off at a brisk pace, like two men in a hurry to keep a belated appointment.
“All right?” Harrigan panted.
“All right,” gulped Weaver.
But there was a sick stab of worry at Charlie’s heart as he hurried away along the bright sunshiny sidewalk.
Just before he had set the fuse of the Bandelore torpedo he could have sworn he had heard faintly the grim clang of a warning bell somewhere within the sinister house that held Tattersall Lacy.
With his back to a closed door, Tattersall Lacy stood still, staring watchfully. The room into which he had just unwillingly stepped was vividly ablaze with artificial light. On a raised dais at one end the red-hooded figure of the Scarlet Ace was visible, seated behind a square polished desk. Directly in the rear of the Ace stood a silent ominous figure with folded arms and dull, malevolent eyes. This bodyguard, or whatever he was, was huge and powerful. There was something steadily and pitilessly evil in his malignant and unwinking gaze.
“I seem to be here,” Lacy said thinly. “How do you do?”
There was an empty chair in front of the desk and the Ace’s robed arm gestured briefly.
“Sit down, Major.”
He leaned toward a small box-like contrivance on the desk and said clearly: “That will be all, Karl. Dismissed.” He chuckled as his fingers disconnected the microphone switch. “The rest of our little chat, Major, will be strictly confidential between you and me.”
Lacy’s eyes flicked inquiringly toward the evil faced bodyguard and the hooded Ace chuckled again.
“You probably won’t believe me. But, then, so few people do. This admirably meaty fellow is a deaf-mute, my dear Lacy. Very melodramatic, eh? But very convenient for my purposes. I assure you that the poor fellow’s infirmity makes it impossible for him to hear anything or to tell anything. You can safely forget him unless you turn violent. And with an empty gun in that hidden holster of yours, I think you’ll find it sensible to be very lamb-like in your conduct.”
Lacy said nothing at all. On the desk, a little to one side of the microphone, he saw a bronze signal button and behind it a horizontal row of smaller white buttons. He wondered tautly whether or not the bronze button controlled the opening and closing of the door through which he had entered.
The Ace leaned forward and his masked voice became silken, almost caressing.
“I rather like you, Lacy. I really do. You’re the first man whose energy and boldness has caused me real worry. You’ve killed some of my agents, you’ve spoiled some of my plans for profit. But at the same time I must admit you’ve succeeded in making life amusing for me and—I speak in all sincerity—I’d really prefer not to kill you.
“That’s very nice of you.” Lacy’s words were polite, but his smile was pinched and haggard. He knew the absolute peril of his position, the hopelessness of any escape except by the use of his wits.
“All I ask,” the Ace purred, “is that you answer truthfully one or two simple questions and in return I guarantee to release you as smoothly and painlessly as I captured you.”
“And if I don’t answer?”
“You can’t avoid answering, my friend. I’m merely trying to make things easier for both of us.” He laughed a little.
“Let me tell you at once that I’ve made quite a study of medieval torture methods. My laboratory in the basement is equipped with some very interesting devices to persuade courageous people to answer questions. I always tell my prisoners these things in advance. Most of them see the point immediately. A few stubborn ones have to be convinced by having their flesh torn. Am I clear?” Lacy shrugged. He was sparring for time, for a chance to think.
“What do you want to know?” he muttered.
“Sensible man,” the Ace growled. His hateful slitted hood bent eagerly forward.
“You are the leader of a vigilante organization composed of volunteer ex-marines and called Amusement, Inc.?”
“Yes.”
“Its object is to wipe out crime—and incidentally to destroy me?”
“Yes,” Lacy spat harshly. His jaw jutted.
“In this task you are assisted by three marine officers, namely:—Charles Weaver, Edward Corning, Patrick Harrigan. Is that correct?”
“It is,” Lacy admitted. There was nothing to be gained by denying what the Ace already knew.
“A few minor questions,” the red mask sneered. “You enjoy the secret cooperation of the
government in your war on crime?”
“Of course. You’re well aware of that fact.”
“Tell me,” the Ace purred. “You are well financed, are you not? As a matter of fact you have practically unlimited funds at your disposal, haven’t you?”
Lacy was silent.
“Is it government money or is it money advanced by certain very wealthy and, let us say—” his voice was an ugly snarl “—certain public spirited private citizens?”
Lacy’s face turned helplessly away from that blindly staring scarlet hood. He swallowed and didn’t answer.
“Is it private wealth? Answer me, or by God, I’ll—”
“The money is advanced by private citizens,” Lacy replied huskily.
A peal of harsh laughter made the blood-red mask of the Ace quiver for an instant. Behind him the tall figure of the grim deaf-mute never moved from his vacant, granite-like watchfulness.
“Six millionaires, eh? Six meddling fools! The so-called Emergency Council for Crime Control! A pack of wealthy meddlers hiding like rats behind their secret code names. I want their real names and I want the information now! Who is your Mr. Monday?”
Tattersall Lacy said nothing.
“All right. We’ll pass Monday temporarily. Who is Mr. Tuesday?”
He called the six code names one after another and the lips of Tattersall Lacy remained tightly compressed.
“You have less brains than I gave you credit for,” the Ace sneered. “Now let us see how much courage you have.”
His hand moved toward the microphone switch.
Lacy said faintly: “Please! Just a moment!”
Time! He had to play for time! His tremulous fear was a perfect piece of acting. His outstretched hand trembled like a leaf. His words were thick, terrified.
“Please! A moment! Let me think for God’s sake!”
The Ace barked a short scornful laugh. His finger withdrew from the switch.
“Will you let me go unharmed,” the major stalled, “if I give you the names?”
“I promised you I’d free you,” the Ace growled sourly. “Do you want a better pledge than my word as Master?”
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