by Lester Dent
The alleged meteor was a tub-sized blob of metal. Its surface was bulbous, pocked, and vaguely remindful of distorted pictures of the moon. The scientists were uncertain just what kind of metal it was.
The meteor had been found in swanky Lincoln Park. It had given off a great, white-hot light which had emblazoned the apartment houses facing the park. It was still red-hot when they found it.
Some persons claimed they had seen it flash across the sky. These individuals became doubtful when pressed for details. Maybe it had not blazed through the heavens, they admitted.
The scientists, at the suggestion of the police, decided to drill in and get the diamond.
Nace stood and watched.
“So this is the way we’re going to spend our time at the Century of Progress!” complained Julia.
Julia was Nace’s red-headed assistant. She was stunning in gray sports frock and tiny hat. She carried a large pancake compact, the new type. She might have been a society deb.
“This may be something for us,” Nace told her.
“Who’s going to pay us?” Julia was highly commercial. “Since when did we start working for nothing?”
“Was anything said about you hanging around?” Nace demanded. “Drag your skirt out of here and look at the fair.”
Julia hung around. She kept away from Nace, and pretended elaborately not to know him.
THEY core-drilled the diamond out about dark. The gem was taken into a private room to be put under microscopes. Three policemen accompanied the two experts who were to do the examining.
Nace tried to get in. The sergeant in charge of the cops apparently did not like private detectives. He refused to let Nace be present.
Nace went to a phone booth nearby and called the head of the Chicago police. That worthy requested that police sergeant be put on the wire, and he would damn well see that Nace was present at proceedings.
Nace started to get the sergeant.
Then things happened.
Over where the remnant of the meteor lay, there was a terrific, white-hot glare. Nace tried to stare at the spot. It was as if he had been in a darkened room, and had suddenly sought to peer into the eye of a powerful searchlight. He was blinded.
Men and women screeched in fright and agony. There was a panic-stricken rush from the spot.
Nace felt a wave of heat against his face. It was if a welding torch had been held a few inches from his features. He spun and ran with the others. But he veered to the right as he did so. The room where they were inspecting the diamond was over there.
The angle of a wall cut him off from the terrific glare. But even the reflected blaze of the hellish light ached his eyes. He made small caverns over his eyes with his hands, peering through the thin flesh where his long, bony fingers rested together. So incredibly brilliant was the luminance that it went through his palms as though tablet paper. Sunlight never equaled it.
He reached the door of the room which held the diamond.
The door burst open. Behind it was another white-hot glare. It was as if the lid of Hades had been shoved ajar.
The three cops plunged out. The two scientists trailed them. They slammed the door.
Nace put a palm against the door, with the idea of shoving it open again. But it was so hot that he wrenched his hand away. The plywood began to smoke. Paint curled off.
Who-o-sh! The door burst into flame.
Nace retreated.
The other glare was subsiding rapidly. Nace approached it, eyes shaded.
The meteor was glowing with an awful heat. It lay in a pit it had melted in the floor. It had rested on a metal table. Molten metal from the table and liquidized sand from the concrete poured down the side of the pit.
It was impossible to approach within twenty feet of the spot. Modernistic fittings all about were smouldering or blazing. Smoke was filling the great exhibition buildings.
Backing away, Nace shook his head rapidly. On his forehead, a small patch of scarlet flushed out and rapidly assumed a definite form. The mark had been unnoticeable heretofore.
The crimson blotch had the shape of a coiled serpent—an adder. A Chinaman had once hit Nace on the forehead with the hilt of a dagger which bore the carving of a coiled snake. He was destined to carry the scar. It was garishly noticeable under the shock of blond hair. It came only when he was angry or puzzled.
He was puzzled now. He had never before seen such infernal heat as this.
There was another thing which worried him. Red-headed Julia was nowhere in sight.
EMERGENCY fire apparatus arrived and extinguished the blazing parts of the exhibition building. Great clouds of steam poured from the supposed meteor. It cooled enough that it could be examined.
It was put under the X-ray again. The human skull was no longer discernible. It had melted into nothingness by the amazing heat.
The diamond was found to be missing from the room where it had been taken for examination.
Nace collared one of the scientists who had been making the inspection.
“I don’t know what happened!” the man groaned, and wiped his forehead. “We were just starting to inspect the stone, and there was a blinding light in the ceiling. We looked up. All hell seemed to be coming through the plaster. The light was so bright we couldn’t tell what it was. We ran!”
Nace prowled a little. He found one of the strange meteor-like lumps of metal in a self-melted pit in the floor. Its heat, he concluded, had been terrific enough to dissolve the diamond!
Most of the ceiling was gone. The room above, he found, had been one used only for storage.
Nace said nothing. But he thought a lot. The skull in the meteor and the diamond had been evidence. By striking twice, the hellish heat, whatever it was, had wiped out both skull and diamond.
With a hammer, Nace knocked off a hunk of the strange, clinker-like metal. He borrowed a microscope from an optical concern exhibit, some chemicals from another display, and retired to a theatre where television shows were given periodically. It was not show hour and the theatre was empty.
Nace was something of a scientist himself. He set to work making an analysis, applying various acids and watching the resulting reactions.
The adder scar became even more pronounced on his forehead as he proceeded. The first half dozen tests had gotten him nowhere. The job was going to take some time.
He pocketed the bit of clinker, went out and circled for some minutes through the crowds. There was much excitement. Gaunt and blond, only a little under seven feet in height, Nace skirted the throng, threaded its center.
Red-headed Julia, his assistant, was still nowhere in evidence.
NACE returned to the television theatre. He moved his microscope and chemicals to the projection booth behind the screen. There was more privacy in the booth. He turned out the other lights.
Before resuming his task, he crumpled twenty or thirty advertising pamphlets he found on a table and strewed them along the aisles of the darkened theatre.
He was back in the booth, applying a chemical mixture to the meteor fragment when he heard one of the paper balls crackle. Someone had stepped on it.
Nace had planted the paper in hopes it would give him just such a warning.
His eyes roved, came to rest on a spool of fine insulated wire. He seized the wire and tied the end to the neck of a small chemical bottle. This he placed in the glass bowl in which he was mixing ingredients.
He tweaked the wire. This caused the bottle to rattle in the bowl, giving off a tinkling sound, as if chemicals being mixed.
He eased out of the booth. From time to time, he tugged the wire, which he unspooled as he backed away. Glassy jingles came from the booth each time he yanked. From the noise, the prowler would think he was still at work.
Someone had spotted his lone-wolf investigations. He was not displeased. Such a possibility had been in his mind when he went about them so openly.
Nace circled warily in the darkness, found an aisle and eased d
own it, still unspooling his wire. He felt out the location of his crumpled paper balls and carefully avoided them.
From time to time, he gave the wire a gentle jerk. The bottle in the bowl tinkle-tinkled.
He listened carefully. No sound—except the bottle in the bowl.
He crept toward the door, ears aching from the strain of listening. At the entrance, the nearness of the light switch intrigued him. He considered, put a hand on the switch, hesitated, tinkled his bottle in the bowl. Nothing happened.
He turned on the lights.
No one was in the television theatre.
Absently, Nace fished a pipe out of a pocket. It was stubby, with a big bowl. He clamped it in his teeth. He liked to bite on something when the going got bewildering or tough.
He snapped at the pipe stem—surprise made his teeth set hard, so hard the tough bakelite broke like gravel.
Something grisly, blinding was happening to the ceiling over the projection booth. It was dissolving, a white-hot, sudden flash, as if it were so much ignited flashlight powder.
He saw a great ball of incandescence swoop downward upon the booth. Heat that seared like flame washed against his face. His eyes pinched shut involuntarily. He heaved around, shouldered through the door.
The hell heat had struck at his life, coming from above, from one of the rooms overhead.
A thought struck him. He spun back, flat on the floor, eyes closed. He crawled a few feet. His hands, groping, gathered in balls of the crumpled paper. He carried them back outside.
The outer exhibit rooms, brilliantly lighted by electronic bulbs, seemed in a twilight after that terrific glare in the television theatre. He brought the paper wads close to his eyes, peered at them.
None were flattened, as they would have been had someone had stepped on them.
A FRESH uproar seized the vast exhibit as the new blaze was discovered. Fire apparatus, still on hand from the other two fires, charged the spot.
Nace worked left, mounted stairs. Smoke rolled like living, smudged masses of cotton. He waded through it. The exhibit rooms upstairs were deserted, sucked clean of their throngs by the previous excitement below.
The room above the television theatre booth was occupied by an exhibit of surgical instruments. A vast hole in the center, over the booth, glowed with intense heat.
Nace tapped a coat pocket. The fragment he had chipped from the clinker of strange metal reposed there. He went downstairs again, ducking aside as a fire hose flung spray in his direction. He had an idea what they would find in the projection booth—another of those strange clinkers.
He circled through exhibition rooms, his pace rapid, uneasy. His unusual height enabled him to peer over heads.
He saw no trace of red-headed Julia.
He found a phone, put in a call to his hotel.
“Anyone left word there for Lee Nace?” he asked the girl on the phone board.
“A young lady telephoned a few minutes ago,” he was told. “A young lady who gave her name as Julia.”
“She leave a message?”
“Yes. She said she would be in the room which holds the diamond exhibit at the Century of Progress grounds.”
Nace hung up. He produced a guide book, scraped a finger nail down the list of exhibitors, and found the location of the structure which held the diamond display. It was down the midway a short distance.
Chapter II
The Scared Man
THE room was big, done in modernistic metals and woods. The paint scheme was brilliant.
In the center stood a metallic looking block. It was several feet square, perhaps waist high. Atop it was a glass case—the diamond exhibit case.
There was a diamond in the case worth three hundred thousand dollars. There were others almost as valuable. The case was fitted with tear gas. The glass was bulletproof. The gem display would drop automatically into a safe the instant the bulletproof glass was assaulted. Or so a printed sign said.
People milled about, staring at the brilliants, pressing faces against the cases to read the identifying cards. The Century of Progress show was so vast that the three appearances of the mysterious and frightful white-hot flame had not drawn spectators from the diamond exhibit.
Nace lounged in, slouching so that his height would not draw attention.
Julia was across the room, showing interest in a sample of the blue ground from which diamonds were taken. She was very pretty. She was getting, from nearby men, more attention than the diamond exhibit.
Nace produced his stubby pipe. The stem was ruined where he had bitten it. He dug an extra stem from a flat case which held several. Ruining stems was a habit of his; he carried spares always.
He stoked the bowl with tobacco, applied a match. Smoke crawled from his lips. Long puffs; short ones! A close observer might have perceived they were spelling words in the Morse dot-and-dash code.
“What’s up?” he asked with the smoke puffs.
The red-head lost interest in the sample of blue ground. She flipped open her flat pancake compact and went to work on her complexion. There was a bright light over the blue ground exhibit. The compact mirror caught this and tossed a reflected dab of luminance against the ceiling. It winked dots and dashes as the powder puff covered and uncovered the mirror.
“Over in the northeast corner—the man who looks scared,” she transmitted.
Nace removed his pipe, pretended to inspect the bowl. His gaze went on to the scared man.
The fellow was somewhat taller than Nace, which made him not many inches under seven feet. He had a small face, an enormous gray moustache. His dwarf features seemed bunched back of the big moustache. The rest of him was a collection of bones in a well-tailored sack.
His eyes held fear. They roved. His hands strayed nervously. His gaze went frequently to the diamond case, but seemed interested not in the contents, but in the crowd around about.
“O.K.,” Nace puffed, measuring smoke carefully through his lips. “What about him?”
“I saw him acting queer when the big blaze first hit in the other building,” Julia heliographed with her compact mirror. “I tailed him here. He’s got something on his mind.”
“You’ve been watching him all the time?”
“Sure.”
“He didn’t have a try at scragging me in the television theater?”
“He hasn’t been near any television theater!” Julia looked worried. “Has somebody been after you?”
“They’ve been messing around. Keep your eyes open.”
Nace walked over to the man who was scared. He cupped a palm under the fellow’s right elbow. The gesture looked friendly. Actually, it placed Nace in a position to block any effort the man might make at drawing a gun.
“Some trouble, brother?” Nace asked.
THE man looked around, down. His eye stuck out a little. He began to tremble. He said nothing.
Nace tugged gently. In a dazed way, the man let himself be guided out of the press around the diamond case. Nace stopped him near a stand that sold an orange drink.
A girl in an orange-colored dress operated the stand. She was big-boned, but not hard to look at. She wore orange-hued earrings.
She came up, asked, “Two?”
Nace nodded, dropped two dimes on the marble and she set out two glasses.
The bony man was studying Nace nervously. He did not touch the orange drink.
The girl in the stand withdrew to the far end. She was fully fifteen feet distant. There was noise in the exhibition room—the conglomerate jumble of voices, loudspeakers, music somewhere.
Only if Nace raised his voice, could the girl overhear.
Nace produced his agency badge, displayed it.
The man trembled more violently, muttered, “The police!”
“What’re you worried about?” Nace questioned.
“I’m not worried!” the man retorted, and shivered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Better spill it!”<
br />
The man swallowed rapidly, said nothing.
Nace, deciding the fellow was about to walk off, reached out and took him firmly by the elbow.
“I’m not a cop,” he explained. “I’m a private detective.”
The man braced himself, scowled. “Leggo me, or I’ll hand you something for your jaw!”
“My business is helping people out of trouble,” Nace told him. “You look like a customer.”
“My looks deceived you, then!” snapped the man.
Jerking, he got loose. He spun and walked rapidly away, eyes staring straight ahead.
Nace glowered after him. On Nace’s forehead, the serpentine scar came out like something faded in by a concealed color camera.
Across the room, red-headed Julia made an impish mouth over her compact.
Nace, drawing deeply on his pipe, let out smoke in dots and dashes.
“Follow that monkey,” he directed.
Julia closed her compact, started away, then turned back abruptly and seemed to find something of renewed interest in the blue ground display.
The scared man had wheeled and was returning.
He stopped in front of Nace, looked about uneasily. No one was close. The girl with the orange dress and orange earrings was still at the other end of the stand. She seemed half asleep.
The frightened man’s voice was a wispy whisper.
“Can I talk to you and be sure it won’t get to the police?” he demanded.
NACE sucked deeply on his pipe. The bowl gurgled, hissed, popped faintly. “That depends.”
The other wet his lips. “Depends on what?”
“On whether I think the cops ought to have you or not.”
The man looked at the adder scar on Nace’s forehead. “But how can I tell—”
“You can’t!”
The other squirmed, swiped nervously at his big gray moustache. Facial expression said he was making up his mind.
“I’ve got to take the chance!” he gulped at last. “I’ve got to do something! I thought of going to the police! I really did! But after that—after what happened to that thing they thought was a meteor, I didn’t dare. They might not have—well, er-r—”
