“Your unsupported word is good enough for me,” Lacy said. He played skillfully for the man’s tremendous and insane vanity. “You’re a deadly enemy, but a fair one. You’ve beaten me and I admit it. I thought I was clever but you outfought me at every turn. I wish—”
Lacy hesitated impressively.
“I wish to God that I—”
The Ace took the bait in one egotistic gulp.
“You wish you were serving a real leader instead of a grafting gang of politicians and policemen, eh?”
Tattersall Lacy shook his head as though in confused half-denial.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did. But you’re so damned afraid of breaking the law—” He gestured fiercely. “The trouble with you, my friend, is that you don’t think clearly. I do! How many men did you murder in France?”
“I killed them with the full sanction of the law.”
“Law?” sneered the Scarlet Ace. “The only law is the law of the strong! Brains and strength, that’s all that counts. A man like you is out of place fighting with crooked politicians and stupid police. You’re neglecting your own self-interest.”
“Are you asking me to join your organization?”
CHAPTER IV
HALLS OF DEATH
“Why not?” the Ace growled. “By God, I like you, Lacy! You’ve got brains, ability, guts. I can give you the one thing you’ve never had—the one mighty thing every strong man wants.”
“And what is that, pray?”
“Power!” the Ace snarled. “More power than you ever dreamed it was possible for a human being to possess! The power to take what you want, to hold what you take, to live like a king with no law but your own will to deter you.”
His voice rose almost to a scream. He was like a shouting maniac. His gloved right hand clenched into a fist like steel.
“Say the word,” he cried in a cracked, passionate voice, “and I’ll place you in power second only to myself. The wealth of New York is in my grasp right now. Acknowledge me as your Master and fight under my leadership, and we’ll conquer this whole weak-kneed country and rule it together like kings. I offer you power, wealth—” his voice slurred “—and the conqueror’s right to love conquered women.”
He lolled back in his chair with a hoarse laugh. He was drunk with his own boasting conceit. He had forgotten completely the fact that his prisoner had not yet divulged the names of the secret six on the Emergency Council for Crime Control.
Tattersall Lacy tried grimly to keep the madman forgetful.
“You spoke of women,” the major said softly. His friends in Amusement, Inc. would have been amazed at the sly leer he contrived to express with a faint shrug and a crooked smile. “The love of fair ladies,” he lied smoothly, “has always been of pleasant interest to me. I have in mind at least one. Unfortunately, I’m afraid she’s beyond my reach.”
“No one is beyond reach,” the Ace said. “Who is she? Name her.”
Lacy shrugged again. He was cool, watchful.
“The woman’s name is Zita,” he said.
“Ahh…” The Scarlet Ace exhaled the ejaculation.
“You asked me to name her,” Lacy said. “May I smoke?”
He withdrew a cigarette from his platinum case and lit it with steady fingers. He blew a cloud of smoke and allowed his gaze to lift negligently toward the towering figure of the deaf-mute who stood motionless behind his criminal Master.
“You have selected someone who happens to be particularly high in my favor,” the Ace said. “Zita is no ordinary woman, my dear Lacy.”
“Your mistress, perhaps?” Lacy said blandly, one eye on his glowing cigarette.
It was a deliberately risked shot, a dangerous goad to secure a reaction—and perhaps a clue to the true status of this mysterious beauty in the house of crime. Lacy was fully prepared for the violence of the reaction.
With a bellow of rage the man in scarlet leaped to his feet. He towered above the flat desk like a devil incarnate.
The stolid deaf-mute sprang forward and stood watching his Master anxiously for a sign.
For ten absolutely silent seconds John Tattersall Lacy’s life hung by a thread. He didn’t stir a muscle. The cigarette between his fingers seemed frozen. The blue smoke from its tip seemed to waver. And he managed to keep smiling faintly. Perhaps it was the smile that saved him.
“You damned fool!” said the Ace very quietly. He sat down.
The deaf-mute moved back behind his chair and became again dull and impassive.
“You will kindly not mention Zita’s name,” the Ace said huskily. With an effort he recovered self-possession. “I’m afraid we’ve strayed a little from the purpose of this interview. Kindly let me have the names of the six public-spirited citizens who compose your Emergency Council for Crime Control.”
Lacy steeled himself. Better to die swiftly and desperately than to betray under the agonies of torture the names of men who had handed their lives into his keeping.
“Speak!” said the masked man.
And, suddenly, on the echo of that word, came a harsh clamoring interruption. Somewhere in the house of crime an alarm bell began to toll a brazen, monotonous warning.
For a second the eyes of the two men clashed. Then the Ace sprang away from his chair with a high-pitched cry of dismay and fury.
“Treachery!” he screamed. “You fool, do you think you can elude me now? By God, you’ll die, and you’ll die this instant! I’ll watch you die, Lacy!”
He gestured to the tall horrible figure of his bodyguard. The deaf-mute leaped forward with a soundless shout that exposed the pink cavern of his maimed mouth. A long bladed dirk glittered in his hand.
Tattersall Lacy shrank backward, but a clutching paw caught him and stayed his flight. Powerful fingers gripped his throat and held him helpless and dangling.
The deaf-mute’s face glared down at his victim with a bestial grin. Lacy tried to hold the murderous right wrist away but his strength was unequal to the task. The knife point began to descend—slowly, inexorably.
At that moment, drowning out the monotonous clanging of the hidden alarm bell, there echoed a sudden smashing report like thunder. The deaf-mute quivered. Lacy’s upturned eyes saw an ugly bluish hole gaping in the broad forehead. The man’s massive body relaxed and crashed to the floor.
Lacy spun about. The woman, Zita, was in the room! A smoking pistol was in her hand. She stood as though carved in ice, staring at Lacy.
The Scarlet Ace gave a fierce, frenzied yell and turned to run. With almost a single motion Lacy bent, ripped the knife from the deaf-mute’s dead fingers and sprang at the terrified Master criminal.
He forced him downward, straddled him with both legs and raised the dirk for a swift, merciless lunge.
“Drop the knife!” Zita screamed.
Lacy hesitated. Zita’s finger slowly tightened on the trigger of her weapon.
“Drop the knife!” she repeated harshly, “or, God help me, I’ll kill you without a second’s hesitation.”
He gaped at her. He saw that she was tensed to kill him if he disobeyed. The knife fell from his fingers. He moved back a step, watching her narrowly.
With a whimper of fear the Scarlet Ace regained his feet, turned like a terrified rabbit and scuttled out of sight behind a huge tapestry in the rear of the chamber.
There came a faint whining sound like the hum of automatic machinery—then silence.
The girl’s lovely bosom was heaving. She swayed with a sick horror, her eyes averted from the horrible huddle of the dead man on the floor.
“Damn you!” Lacy spat at her. “Why did you let him get away?”
She made no answer. Just stood there facing him with a white and tortured countenance. The gun still menaced him. He eyed her, debating grimly within himself whether to rus
h her and take a chance on the swift, deadly bullet she had just proved she was capable of firing.
She solved the difficulty herself. With a shrug she turned the gun in her hand and held it out to Lacy with the butt foremost. He snatched the weapon from her and stared into her eyes for a long instant. Her eyes were as level as his, and as clear.
“Just whose side are you on, my friend?” he said coldly.
Tears streaked her cheeks. Her voice came faintly. “I—I couldn’t let you kill him but I—I admire you, Major, and I want to save your life, if I can. Follow me if—if you think you can trust me.”
She swayed away from him. A panel clicked open. Zita beckoned urgently and Lacy, with a wry twisting smile, followed her.
They were in a hallway like a gray stone tunnel. The walls and ceiling and floor were the same cold gray. The floor was covered with a heavy linoleum material stamped with a design of darker gray squares and circles to imitate stone tiles.
The leader of Amusement, Inc. tiptoed carefully along with Zita to a turn in the corridor. Beyond that turn he knew that there was a flight of stairs leading aloft and below. He had used his eyes to good advantage when the effeminate man in the black mask and the two hulking wrestlers had conducted him from the sealed room where he had first recovered consciousness.
They met no one on the staircase. The house of evil was like a tomb. They crept like dark phantoms down the steps.
“Where are we going?” Lacy whispered in her ear.
“We’ve got to get to my room. It’s the only chance we have.”
As they reached the landing of the staircase a tremendous explosion shook the house without warning. The force of it staggered Lacy and flung the girl to her knees.
“What was that?” she gasped.
“I don’t know. It sounded like a bomb explosion.”
He looked narrowly at her. She was pale with an uncomprehending fright. Whatever the explosion meant, Zita didn’t understand it. Was it some clockwork device of the Ace to block off any exit from below?
Suddenly he pulled Zita down beside him against the thick carpet treads of the stairs they had just descended.
Somebody was coming up from the floor below. They could hear the steady methodical scrape of feet. The carved newel-post at the turn of the stairs was broad and ornate. The major hunched downward in its shadow, waiting.
His victim had no chance to cry out. Tattersall Lacy’s gun swung against the fellow’s temple like a swift glitter of light. He saw the mouth fly open and the eyelids quiver. The man collapsed like a poled ox. He was one of the wrestlers, the same man who had struck Lacy in the face earlier in the adventure.
The major’s hands rolled him expertly and ripped a gun from the inert body. One quick glance and his smile gleamed with a grim approval. The gun was fully loaded.
He had barely time for that mirthless grimace. Feet were racing down the long hall. A bullet thudded into the oaken newel-post, splitting it open in a jagged gash. A second bullet and a third whined past Lacy’s averted head.
He dropped to his knees and fired at the onrushing thug. The sound of the crashing gunfire echoed like thunder in the silent house. The thug fell in mid-stride, with arms stiffly outflung.
Zita was tugging fiercely at the major’s arm, pointing down stairs. Then she hurried down. He whirled and sped recklessly after her. At the turn on the landing below a streak of flame spat past their faces. The girl screamed and threw herself sideways. Half blinded, Lacy fired at a dodging figure and missed. Again flame spurted at him. His wrist lifted like the flick of a snake’s tongue. His two vengeful bullets drilled through the body of his foe, scarcely an inch apart.
In another second Tattersall Lacy had scooped up the hot gun from the floor where it had fallen. “Quick!” Zita gasped. Her arm was linked desperately with his.
“Which way?” he growled.
She pointed down the long L-shaped corridor and they raced for the corner—only to pull up short. There was a man waiting beyond the turn with a leveled weapon. He fired promptly, but his bullet went wild. Plaster dust from the wall powdered the girl’s hair. Lacy roared with rage as he recognized the gunman.
He saw the heavy gun jerking in a slim womanish hand, saw the silken black mask with narrow slitted eyeholes. It was the man Karl, the effeminate scoundrel whom Lacy suspected was one of the chief lieutenants of the Ace.
Lacy dove forward at him. The frightened Karl twisted around and ran like a deer. He didn’t know that Lacy’s borrowed guns were empty now. But Lacy did! His last shot had been a faint and harmless hammer-click.
He forgot Zita and raced at top speed after the fleeing Karl. In a dozen mad strides he caught him, jammed a muzzle against his back and yanked him around.
“Drop it!” the major roared.
Karl’s fingers relaxed and his loaded gun clattered to the floor. Lacy stooped, dropped his own useless weapons and grabbed it.
“Thanks,” he jeered harshly.
Zita had fled back along the hall. But in his exultation over the capture of Karl, Lacy forgot her.
The frightened rogue backed away. Lacy leaned and ripped the black mask away with one swift jerk. He glanced at the face and felt an instant crawling disgust. The sight of the man’s rouged lips and penciled eyebrows made Lacy gulp with a fierce aversion.
He shoved his cringing prisoner grimly ahead of him. About midway down the corridor there was a shallow alcove cut in the left wall, a narrow recess not more than a foot or two in depth. A heavy bronze door formed the inner wall of the alcove. Lacy tried the door before he put his back to it. It was locked.
His prisoner tried suddenly to tear away from the major’s grip. Lacy slammed him with the gun-barrel. Karl screamed shrilly and sank to his knees. The major swore viciously at him.
“Stand up on your feet or I’ll blow a hole through your spine!”
Deliberately he held the fellow stiffly in front of him like a human shield. He peered cautiously beyond the alcove. Men were edging slowly along the hall from either end. Lacy’s lips tightened. They had him bottled up at last.
“Yell at ’em! Tell ’em they’ll surely kill you if they start shooting,” he growled in Karl’s ear.
There was a spiteful crack down the hall and a bullet grazed the alcove and sheered into the plaster.
“Don’t shoot!” Karl screamed at them. “For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I order you not to shoot! Where’s the Master?”
Lacy crouched warily and sent a bullet roaring over the shoulder of his human shield. One of the attacking party coughed, propped himself with one hand and a knee and then fell over. The rest of them ducked backward out of sight.
Instantly Lacy whirled his human shield to face the other flank. His pistol spat twice. The roar of gunfire became continuous, like thunder rolling in a hollow vault.
The advancing thugs were firing recklessly, oblivious to the shrill screaming of Karl. The sound of that screaming was knifelike and horrible in the major’s ear. Karl’s screech died suddenly as though a hand had been clapped over his mouth. The bullet had struck him and torn his body, spinning, from the major’s tight grasp. It was a merciful end to a warped existence. The man with the rouged lips died instantly; died before his bleeding body struck the floor.
Lacy emptied his gun with mechanical accuracy. He saw another onrushing thug collapse. But he knew that he was done—finished. The gun he had wrested from Karl was empty. He waited calmly for the final rush.
“Quick!” a voice behind him gasped suddenly. “Hurry!”
His head jerked backward. The bronze door behind him stood open. A white-faced woman stood beckoning urgently. The woman was Zita.
CHAPTER V
STRANGE ALLY
There was no time for Lacy to hesitate, to worry about the possibility of new treachery. The thugs in the hallway had sensed that the major�
��s gun was empty. With savage yells of triumph they were racing toward him from both ends of the long corridor.
“Quick!” Zita screamed again.
Lacy hurdled the bleeding body of Karl and threw himself headforemost through the open doorway. He landed on hands and knees and regained his feet with a catlike bound.
The bronze door clanged sullenly as Zita slammed it shut. She tugged with both hands at a trigger-like lever and, as the mechanism whirred, the great rigid bolt clicked into its braced slot.
“Is there any other way they can get in here?” Lacy panted.
“No. It’s my own room. The mechanism of the other entrance is known only to me and—and the Master.”
He glanced at her sharply and she flushed and looked away.
From the other side of the bronze door there came a dull steady pounding and the faint sound of a confused shouting.
“Let ’em yell,” Zita said contemptuously. “If we get to the elevator first they can’t head us off. They’re checkmated.”
“Where are the windows? Are we on the street level?”
“No. The street is below. We must go up.”
“Why up?” Lacy rapped suspiciously.
“Oh, you fool, don’t you understand? Do you think you could force your way out now? It’s too late for that! The Master has every street exit guarded, front and rear. Our only chance is to get to the roof and try to attract attention. They won’t risk firing at us out in the open gardens.”
She was sobbing with a fierce excitement, tugging at his reluctant arm. “Hurry, or you’ll be killed! I can’t let them kill you!”
His gray eyes bored into hers. This girl was no traitoress. Whatever her relations with the bloodthirsty Master might be, she was playing Lacy’s game for the moment.
He noted the significant fact that she had changed from the silk lounging pajamas to a street costume. It was added proof that she had deliberately prepared beforehand to escape with Lacy from the house of crime. Perhaps the very clanging of the bell that had interrupted the Scarlet Ace’s inquisition of his helpless prisoner had been a cunning stratagem of Zita’s! The major felt dizzy and confused. He could hear dimly the sound of men yelling, the dull smash of gunfire. Somewhere in the house below them he heard the shrill blast of a whistle.
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