by Lester Dent
“My—heart!” he croaked. “This excitement—”
Another paroxysm carried him to the floor. His pudgy hands fluttered, clenching over his heart. He opened his mouth wide and a strange gurgling noise came out. Then he lay motionless.
NACE leaped sidewise—did it as swiftly as he knew how. He crashed to his knees back of a chair, twisting as he did so. His suspicions were right!
Two men stood in the front door. One was round and oily, a small man. The other was a giant, modeled after the lines of a steamer trunk with arms and legs. They both held guns—black automatics.
The weapons were of foreign make, with barrels but little larger than pencils. And on each muzzle was a metal can of a silencer.
Nace whirled the chair toward them. Simultaneously, he plunged for the handiest door. It happened to be the one that led into the kitchen. One automatic made a chung! of a noise. He felt the bullet ridge the Aubusson under him.
Another bullet gouged a fistful of splinters out of the doorjamb as Nace went through. He dived down the hallway. These two behind were seeking to kill him. They had been loitering outside, of course, and had reached the baron with some signal. The baron had sought to draw Nace outdoors into their hands, then, that failing, had sought to keep his attention with a fake heart attack.
Nace sloped into the kitchen, the caulks of his baseball shoes scraping loudly on linoleum.
The cellar door gaped open at one side, a pantry door on the other.
Nace seized a chair, shied it down the cellar stairs—at the same time scuttling into the pantry. He was out of sight before the three men—Baron von Auster had leaped up and joined the other two—came charging in. They heard the clattering chair and were fooled.
“Good! The son of a dog went into the basement!” hissed Baron von Auster. “We will lock him in, then go away from this place! Himmel! I hate to lose my two thousand dollars, which he has!”
“But what about the green skull?” wailed the round, oily little man. “That is worth a lot more than your two thousand!”
“Nein! Our necks are more precious!” the baron snapped. “This man is Detective Lee Nace, the Blond Adder! Have you not heard of him, Moe?”
“Oi! Just a private detective!” Moe looked at the giant who had accompanied him through the front door. “What about that, Heavy? You know New York. Is this Nace such a bad man that we should run away without finishing our search for the green skull?”
Heavy heaved a shoulder against the cellar door, slamming and locking it. “This Nace is worse than bad! He’s hell on runners!”
“Beeilen Lie sich!” rapped Baron von Auster. “Come along! There may be windows to that cellar, although I do not recall seeing any. Let us depart while there is time! I will consider my two thousand dollars as lost!”
They ran out, Moe muttering, “Oi! I don’t see why that Nace didn’t use a gun—”
“He don’t carry any!” Heavy snapped. “At least, no regular gun. Or so the newspapers say!”
Their voices faded into the raucous clamor of the radio.
Nace eased out of the pantry. He glided through the back door, out into the rear yard.
Twilight lay gloomily upon the rank shrubbery and clipped hedges. None of the neighboring dwellings could be seen.
Nace veered around the corner of the house, intent on following the three men who were behaving so viciously.
He stopped suddenly. His eyes, despite the gloom, had detected a path through the grass and shrubs. It looked like some heavy object had recently been dragged to cover.
With long strides, he followed the trail. It led into a bed of tall flowers. It ended at the body of a man.
Nace stared. At the same time, he absently brought his pipe out of his pocket. The pipe was stubby, with a rather new stem and an old, black bowl. He put it in his teeth. He liked to bite on something when he was bothered.
He bit on the stem now—so hard the bakelite broke like gravel in his mouth.
Chapter II
Violence Trail
THE body lay face upwards. The fellow was tall, athletic. He had been rather handsome.
It was not the sight of the corpse that shocked Nace into chewing up his pipe stem. He had seen many of those. It was another thing, a horrible, grisly object—a thing that made the short blond hairs crawl on his nape. It made the weird scarlet serpent scar come out vividly on his forehead.
The arm of a green skeleton lay on the dead man’s chest. The pointed finger bones were embedded in the fellow’s throat, as though clutching. The bones were those of a right arm.
They were green as the leaves of the plants among which the body lay. The fingertips were stained brown. Some kind of poison!
Nace slowly took his pipe out of his teeth, lipped away pieces of the broken stem, cleared his throat softly.
Out in the street, an automobile engine had come to life. That would be the three men in flight.
Nace stooped over the corpse with the grisly green bones clutching its features. He slapped pockets. All but one were turned inside out. In that one, as if carelessly shunted there after a search, were all the man’s belongings.
He examined them. Cards, some money, a billfold, speakeasy passes. The cards bore a name.
JIMMY OFFITT
Importer
They bore no address except that of this bungalow. This, then, was the owner of the place.
Nace ran to the street. The car was gone, except for a murmur in the distance.
Sprinting, Nace made for his own car. He had parked it around the corner. It was a roadster, big, quiet, expensive, but of a model five years old. It was somewhat battered.
In the rumble seat lay three baseballs, two bats, a pitcher’s glove, and five New York Police Department badges. The badges were Nace’s souvenirs of the fight that had terminated the afternoon’s ball game.
The motor caught with the first stamp of the pedal. But the car bearing the three men was hopelessly gone.
Nace knew the machine; he had made a mental note of it when he entered the bungalow—a brand new sedan of inexpensive make.
He wheeled his car westward. He drove fast, using only one hand. With the other hand, he picked a flat case out of the door pocket. This held half a dozen extra stems to fit his pipe. He replaced the broken stem, stoked the pipe with tobacco from a bright silk pouch and, crouching low behind the windshield, fired the weed.
Ten minutes later, he came in sight of a sign that read: The Plaza.
The Plaza was a swanky apartment hotel on the shores of the Sound. It was big, new. It had everything the Park Avenue places boasted, as well as small, good shops downstairs. It had its own golf course, beach, and swimming pools.
Baron Marz von Auster’s white monkey jacket had been labeled as coming from a shop in the Plaza.
The rush of night air—it was now fairly dark—had cooled Nace’s forehead. The weird serpentine scar was gone, almost magically. His shaggy blond hair blew about like a plume. This uncovered the upper part of his left ear, disclosing a large notch—the mark of an old bullet. Nace wore his blond hair long to hide that scar.
He wheeled in to the curb, pipe smoke a fog about his bony face.
A brand new sedan of moderate price was pulling up before one of the numerous side entrances of the Plaza. Baron von Auster and the other two! Nace was sure of it—positive when, an instant later, he saw the trio hurry to the side door and fit a key in the lock.
Nace drew a bag from the roadster rumble. It was rather large, that bag, of canvas and closed with a zipper fastener. It was shabby, for it had seen use. Nace always carried it when he went on a case. It was his bag of tricks, and there were those who said it had no bottom.
His cleated baseball shoes gritted noisily on the curbing. He frowned down at them, then eased into nearby shrubbery. When he came out a little later, he had exchanged his baseball suit for a dark coat and trousers and soft-soled shoes. The dark clothes and sneakers had been in the zipper bag.
&
nbsp; His baseball suit was rolled around the noisy shoes. He pegged the bundle into the roadster rumble. He ran to the apartment house. He had been in the Plaza when dallying with the idea of taking an apartment there. He liked the idea of those side entrances. He knew of no other place in town that was arranged just like this.
The entrances were fairly private—each admitted to a bank of automatic elevators serving the apartments immediately above. There was no bother of wandering through long halls and leaving and entering through a central lobby—unless one desired to do so.
THE door was locked. Out of Nace’s zipper bag came a bundle of master keys. These locks were usually not very complicated. This one was not—in twenty seconds, he was inside.
The elevator was still going up. Nace drew a slender steel rod from the bag and waited. The elevator cage stopped somewhere overhead.
Nace promptly inserted his rod in a small hole provided by the elevator manufacturer for just that purpose, and got the sliding doors open. This broke the electrical connection that permitted the lift to operate. The cage would remain where it was until the doors closed.
Nace propped them open by wedging half a dozen matches in the track. Then he ran up the stairs, hunting the cage.
The car had stopped on the top floor—the sixth. There were doors opening off a small corridor. All were closed. Five of them! His quarry might be behind any one.
Out of Nace’s zipper bag came a can. It resembled a talcum powder container, even to the perforated top. He sprinkled a fine yellow powder over the handiest door knob, then brought his nostrils close to it and sniffed.
There was a pungent odor. But it was not strong.
Nace tried another knob—another. From the fourth, he got a very strong odor. He tried the last one. But only at the fourth was there a pronounced result.
This told him which apartment the men had entered. They had not worn gloves. The hand of one of them, in grasping the knob, had left an oily film—the same sort of a film that accounts for fingerprints. Nace’s powder, a concoction of his own, produced an odor when it mingled with the oil. But so microscopic was the oily deposit that it would not react with the chemicals in the powder after being exposed to the air for some minutes.
Nace listened at the door. There was talk, but it came to his ears as a hollow, unintelligible murmur. The keyhole was not of a type that extended completely through the door. He tried the crack at the bottom. Nothing doing there, either. The crack would not have let a sheet of paper through.
Nace felt of the door, pushed gently. It was of metal, a thin sheet.
Out of Nace’s zipper carry-all came a remarkable device. This consisted of a super-sensitive microphone that could be held to a flat surface with rubber vacuum cups of the type employed in sticking ashtrays on car windows. There was a powerful amplifier, utilizing vacuum tubes of small voltage, and a sensitive phone headset. All three were connected by wires.
Nace set his microphone against the door, donned the headset, and switched on the amplifier. He twirled the volume dials. The murmur of voices loudened rapidly. Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed and, so sensitive was the apparatus, it was like a thunderclap. A truck ran past in the street outside, and the phone diaphragms roared with vibration.
Voices finally became understandable.
“WHAT’S the matter with leavin’ the shade up an’ watchin’ from the darkened room?” Heavy was demanding.
“Oi, and why not?” Moe echoed.
“Does it not occur to you that Reel or Hoo Li, like ourselves, may possess binoculars?” Baron von Auster asked dryly. “They might catch the reflection of starlight upon our own glasses. We will cut small holes through the shades. Ja!”
“O.K.,” Heavy agreed. “There ain’t no sense in takin’ chances, at that!”
There was a little stirring about in the room; a knife ripped noisily at a window shade.
Nace scowled, fingering absently at the sweat-shirt sleeves projecting from the short sleeves of his baseball blouse. These three were watching two men named Reel and Hoo Li. The latter name sounded Chinese. The other—English, probably.
“Hell—they’re there now!” Heavy barked suddenly.
“Nein! I noticed nothing!” Baron von Auster snapped.
“That orange light—”
“That does not mean Reel or Hoo Li are present! Reel, I believe, keeps that light burning in his room at all hours, whether he is there or not. It is, I believe, a light made from one of Reel’s green skulls.”
“Green skulls—ugh!” Moe muttered. “I can’t get it out of my head how that Jimmy Offitt looked when we found him! Them green bones diggin’ into his face!”
Nace was nothing if not surprised to hear this. He had mentally attributed the killing of Jimmy Offitt to these three. Now it seemed otherwise!
“We should’ve left the body of Offitt layin’ where we found it,” Heavy offered grouchily. “We left tracks draggin’ it into them bushes from off the lawn.”
“We could not leave it lying in plain view to be seen by any tramp who chanced to cross the yard!” sneered the baron. “Anyway, the tracks do not matter. That private detective, Nace, already has us connected with the affair. Der Hund!”
“We should have put the croak on that shamus!” Moe snarled.
Heavy gave vent to a big, uneasy rumble of a laugh. “We done the wise thing in beatin’ it! This Nace is poison, I tell you!”
FOR fully four minutes, there was silence. Then Heavy made another of his nervous, grumbling mirth sounds.
“Why not go over an’ be friskin’ Reel’s house for this green skull?” he demanded. “Then, when Reel and Hoo Li show up, we can grab ’em! I know ways of makin’ ’em talk!”
“My friend, I also know ways of making men talk!” Baron von Auster said softly.
“Then why not go over?”
Baron von Auster let several seconds pass, then made a clicking sound with his tongue.
“Himmel! Have you ever been near that black house, my friend?”
“Hell, no! What’s that got to do—”
“A great deal! That house is a place of peril! I am honest when I tell you I would not dare go there unless Reel and Hoo Li are on hand to welcome us. And you know I am no coward.”
Nace considered this. They were watching a house—and they were afraid to go near it.
He took out his pipe, put it away again. He felt absently of the notch in his left ear. The apartment house was very silent, probably due to the soundproofed construction.
Nace fell to wondering about the mysterious woman who had called him. He did not know her name—knew nothing except that she had called him with an excited plea for aid.
He would, he was sure, recognize her voice if he heard it again.
Word of the girl suddenly came from within the room.
“That girl, what about her?” Moe asked abruptly.
Baron von Auster chuckled. “I should not be surprised to learn she is lying somewhere with a part of the green skeleton clutching her pretty face. No doubt she possesses dangerous knowledge. Reel and Hoo Li will not give her a chance to get to the police.”
“Blazes!” Heavy grunted. “You say Reel is doin’ the killin’ with the green skeleton?”
“Ich weiss nicht!” snapped the baron, then translated into English. “I do not know—for sure! But who else could it be? Jimmy Offitt and the girl—Rosa Andricksen—were working together, against us. We all know that. Ja!”
A match scratched—evidently Baron von Auster lighting a cigarette.
“The green skull vanished!” he continued. “Who could have gotten it but Jimmy Offitt or Rosa Andricksen? It is obvious Reel and Hoo Li sought to recover it, just as we three are seeking it. Ja!”
“And they got it first!” Heavy growled. “They croaked Jimmy Offitt, after scarin’ him into tellin’ ’em where he had it hid! The girl was there, so they grabbed her, too. She got to the phone and squawked to this Nace guy. That’s how it figures
, huh?”
“That is how it figures, mein Herren. Reel and Hoo Li now have the green skull. As soon as they appear at Reel’s black house, we shall go and have our try at getting it!”
Silence fell. One of the men coughed, and the concussion in Nace’s headset was ear-splitting. The trio seemed to have settled down to wait, binoculars glued on some neighboring dwelling. A black house where an orange light burned.
Nace detached his listening device and eased it into the zipper bag. He walked down the stairs, carrying the bag, released the elevator doors so the cage could operate and swung out into the night.
He was going to hunt that black house with an orange light. It looked as if the next developments would be there.
Chapter III
The Grasping Foot
LEE NACE made a tall, bony, somewhat incongruous figure in the pale night, dark clothing and sun-broiled features merging with the gloom. Removing his shapeless white Panama, the only article of his attire which clashed with the murk, he rolled it and shoved it inside his vest. At the end of the apartment house, he stopped and let his gaze rove.
Before him lay the Plaza golf course. It sloped down to the sea, spotted with trees, and with some carefully cultivated brush between the fairways. It had the name of being a sporty course.
Beyond the golf links were scattered houses, great mansions. Nace knew the men upstairs must be watching one of these—they were looking in that direction.
The moon had come out faintly, and was casting creamy luminance. Two of the distant houses were very white. A third, one nearest the water, was extremely dark—black and ominous as a coffin. An orange light glowed from a downstairs window.
“That’s it!” Nace decided, and set out.
He charged his short pipe, planted the cracked stem in his teeth, and gnawed it as he strode along.
He swung in a wide circle, keeping out of sight of the three sinister watchers in the Plaza, and reached the shore of Long Island Sound. He followed the beach.
The golf course shrubbery now shielded him from the watchers at the Plaza. He shook dottle out of his pipe, chewed it cold.
