by Lester Dent
“Quite understood, eh?”
“That’s it.”
“What mightn’t they understand?”
“It’s horrible! So very horrible!” The man was becoming excited. He came closer; his face was almost against Nace’s. “Tell me, did they get a close enough look at that diamond to identify it? I mean—enough of a look that the jeweler who sold it would recognize the gem?”
“No.”
The man was perspiring. “That’s too bad! Too awfully bad! I was in hopes the police would get a clue to the man’s identity!”
Nace nodded as if he understood everything. “What’s this all about?”
The fellow peered narrowly at Nace. “Maybe I had better go to the police with this, after all! It’s big! So very big! And ghastly!”
“You’d better let me be the judge about the police!”
The man glanced to right and left, behind him. “They may be around here! I think I saw two of them a minute ago!”
“Two of who?”
The bristling gray moustache came so close that it almost touched Nace’s face.
“Would you believe me if I told you there was a gigantic plot underfoot?” the fellow demanded. “A plot to steal millions! A plot which even includes the theft of the diamonds in this very room! But it won’t stop there! They have that devilish stuff—the hell heat! It will melt the strongest bank vault as a blow torch melts butter. It will consume the bodies of men, and leave not a trace!”
“It left a trace last night,” Nace pointed out. “There was a human skull and a setting from a ring embedded in that supposed meteor.”
The man squirmed. “They didn’t use enough of it! They were inexperienced. But they know how much to use now. They are liable to be here any time, after these diamonds—”
The girl in the orange-drink stand had been watching—although she was certainly out of earshot. Now she came forward, with a cat speed and silently.
A pepper shaker stood beside a basket of oilpaper-wrapped sandwiches. She scooped this up, twisted it open, dumped the contents in the palm of her left hand.
Leaning far out, she gave Nace a swipe across the eyes with the hand which held the pepper.
NACE clapped both hands over his eyes. The girl had been behind him; had taken him by surprise.
He bent double and lunged violently away from the spot. He heard the orange-stand girl rap excited words.
“C’mon, tall boy!” she called, evidently to the man to whom Nace had been talking. “You and me are going places!”
“I don’t understand!” gulped the tall man’s voice. “Who are—”
“Clam up! C’mon!”
That was all Nace heard. There was no pepper in his eyeballs; he had closed his lids in time. But flakes crammed the tiny wrinkles in his lids and clung to the skin. He dared not open his eyes, or they would begin smarting.
A drinking fountain stood down a passage and around a corner. He had spotted it on his way here. It was a tribute to his sense of direction when he bumped blindly into it.
The fountain, like many others about the Century of Progress grounds, was one which started flowing automatically when one bent over it. The mechanism held a photo-electric cell which caused the water to go on when blanketed by the head-shadow of a drinker.
Nace bent over it. Water gushed against his face, a chill stream. He brushed his face from side to side, washing off the pepper.
Back in the diamond exhibit room, he could hear no undue excitement. Perhaps the pepper throwing incident had passed unnoticed.
Nace washed violently. The delay irked him. But it was necessary. If he did not get all the pepper off, it would be minutes before he could see.
He debated. The girl in the orange stand—obviously she wasn’t what she seemed. But how had she known he was about to get the tall man to tell what he knew?
The pepper all removed, Nace straightened, spun and barged back into the tall man with the moustache.
Nace roved his eyes.
Julia, his red-haired aide, was also gone.
The eerie flush of a serpent glowing redly on his forehead, Nace elbowed for the exit nearest the orange-drink stand. The case of diamonds was a scintillating blaze. A fat man, staring at them, jeered, “I wonder if anybody is sucker enough to think these are the McCoy?”
Nace went on. The gems were real enough. The fat man was fooled by the case. It was as near thief proof as science could make it, but it looked innocent as a cigar case in a corner drugstore.
Reaching an exit, Nace stopped. From where he stood, it was possible to see some several thousand people. Loudspeakers mouthed on poles along the midway, the announcer describing a boat race in the lagoon. No one seemed interested. To the south, an artificial dinosaur in an oil company exhibit was wagging its head and tail and emitting bizarre roars.
The tall man, the girl from the orange stand, red-headed Julia—none were in sight.
Nace, hearing faint movement behind him, stepped sidewise and pivoted. Two men who had been about to grasp his elbows from behind clutched empty air and looked foolish.
“What’s the idea?” Nace demanded sharply.
BOTH men were stocky, thick. Their combined weight would total near four hundred pounds. The day was hot; not twenty men in sight wore coats. These two wore theirs.
Each dropped a hand to his right hip, under his coat tail.
“Behave yourself, and you won’t get hurt!” one growled.
Nace jutted a long, scowling face at them. “You guys try to pull a circus on me and I’ll make somebody think he got hurt! What’s the idea?”
“We’re the law!” grunted one.
“Police detectives!” echoed the other.
“So what?”
“We want to know what happened in there. What’s up?”
“Search me!”
“Cough up! We saw you pullin’ some kind of an act inside. You gotta explain that, or we’ll throw your pants into the can on suspicion.”
Moving slowly so as not to excite the pair into using their guns, Nace drew his agency badge and displayed it.
“Private shamus, huh?” one muttered. “What’s your name?”
“Lee Nace.”
The two swapped sharp glances. They had heard of Nace. That was not surprising. He was one of the most widely known private operatives in the country. Scotland Yard had even brought him to England for a time in a consulting capacity. Magazines of national circulation carried his articles on criminology.
“Well, Nace, what happened inside?”
“I was talking to a guy and a dame in an orange stand smeared pepper into my eyes. Then her and the guy went off together, I guess.”
“Who was the guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why was you talkin’ to ’im?”
“He looked scared.”
The two again traded looks. They made displeased faces.
One grunted, “That sounds thin! You’d better come and tell it to the sarge!”
Nace gritted, “Now listen—”
“There ain’t no use arguin’ with us! We got orders to snap up any suspicious characters around the diamond exhibit. And you fit!”
“I haven’t the slightest idea—”
“Nix!” One grasped Nace’s arm on either side. “Let’s ankle!”
Through his teeth, Nace said, “A cop—always my pal!” He let himself be led away.
They took the center of the midway. On either side, modernistic exhibit buildings reared. An autogyro pulling a long aerial advertising sign had joined the two dirigibles overhead. Barkers cried their wares, not in the old-time carnival style, but through vacuum tube amplifiers and loudspeakers. Two men, dressed exactly alike in white-trousered military uniforms and carrying small hand sprayers went past arm in arm—advertisement for a fly spray.
Nace started to veer right. The pair tugged him back.
“The Exposition police headquarters is over here,” Nace objected.
&n
bsp; “Sure it is! But we’re takin’ you to the city station!”
THEY worked through the crowds. Possibly half the men carried souvenir canes. Four out of every five walked gingerly, on tired feet. Parties of four and six were frequent—family groups.
Benches in the shade were crowded; those in the sun were deserted. The announcer at the loudspeaker had finished the boat race and was telling the throngs what a great thing the Century of Progress was. An old man and an old lady sat on a bench in the shade, both with their shoes off.
They came to the turnstiles at an exit, hipped their way through, Nace in the center. They dodged traffic across a street. There was a parking lot ahead, long, rowed with thousands of cars.
“We’ve got an iron in here,” offered one of the men.
Nace said nothing. His long face was placid, but the serpentine scar was like a design done with ocher.
A parking lot attendant took a check one of them presented, then guided them down an alley of cars. He came to a large coupe, snatched a duplicate tag off the radiator, then wheeled and walked away. He did not look back.
“Get in!”
Nace, opening the coupe door, kept his eyes downcast. He could see the shadows of his two companions on the ground.
One of them was lifting a hand above Nace’s head. The fist gripped a gun.
Nace, from the shadow, calculated how the blow would fall. He shifted his gaunt frame slightly—took the smashing swing of the gun barrel directly atop his head.
He sprawled down on the running board, slid from there to the ground, and lay motionless.
Chapter III
The Heat
“THAT’S kissin’ ’im, Shack!” chuckled one of the two men.
Shack laughed fiercely. “Feel of his wrist, Tubby, and see if he needs another one!”
Stooping, Tubby laid the tips of stubby fingers against Nace’s wrist. “Hell! He’s still tickin’!”
Shack elbowed closer. “I’ll hand him one alongside the temple! That’ll do the job!”
“Hey, wait! Hadn’t we better ask ’im some questions?”
“What for?”
“Hell! To find out how much he knows!”
“Nix!”
“But maybe the cops are wise! We can tromp this bozo until he tells us whether they are or not! Then we’ll know whether it’s safe to go ahead with the big idea!”
“Waste of time!” Shack jeered. “This Nace don’t know nothin’! He just saw Canadan actin’ jittery an’ started to talk to ’im! Move over! I’ll fix Nace!”
“But that dame who snatched Canadan after she throwed pepper in Nace’s eyes! For cryin’ out loud! Who was she? Where’d she take Canadan? What was her idea?”
“Will you move over an’ let me swing this Roscoe?”
“But that orange-stand dame—”
“She ain’t our worry! We had orders to get rid of Nace. T’hell with the dame! She’ll be taken care of!”
“Oh, all right!” Tubby sidestepped to give Shack room to swing his weapon. Suddenly his arms flew up. They windmilled. Tilting over, he slammed into Shack. Off balance, they both sprawled down in the narrow space between the parked cars.
Nace came to his feet. He still held Tubby’s ankles, which he had grasped. He lifted on the ankles, elbows braced close to his side. When he had Tubby dangling off the ground, he angled a leg around expertly and knocked a heel against the fellow’s temple. Tubby became slack.
Grunting with the effort, Nace heaved Tubby atop Shack. He fell upon the pile the pair made, spearing expert blows with a bony fist.
Shack fired his gun. The bullet squealed off under cars and caused a tire to blow out somewhere with a bang almost as loud as the shot itself.
Nace grasped the gun hand, succeeded in gouging the barrel into the ground. It went off again. The earth closed the barrel end, and the powder gases, backed up, split the cylinder open, rendering the weapon useless.
Tubby began to squirm, reviving. His weight still held Shack down. Nace, braced atop the pair, burrowed teeth into his coat sleeve and yanked out his shirt cuff. A wrench of his teeth tore the cuff entirely off.
The links in the cuff were rather large, elongated. His fingers found a catch in one, opened it. A small lid flew up. Two tiny darts dropped out.
Scooping the darts up, Nace jabbed one into Shack, the other into Tubby.
The struggle went out of both men. They seemed to go soundly asleep. They would remain thus for perhaps two hours, thanks to the drug contained in the tips of the diminutive darts.
Nace heaved both men in the rear compartment of the coupe and locked them in.
Getting behind the wheel, he used Shack’s keys on the ignition and drove out of the parking lot. He saw the attendant peeking out of a sedan in which he had taken concealment at sound of the fight.
Nace turned down a side street, hit Michigan Avenue and wheeled right.
Reaching up, he removed his entire thatch of blond hair. It was attached to a rubber-padded steel skull cap. He wiped perspiration from his close-cropped natural hair, which was of a hue which exactly matched that of the wig.
He replaced the steel-lined wig. When Shack had struck him down, the thing had saved him, not only from unconsciousness, but from almost certain death.
NACE parked the coupe in front of a little hotel in the loop district. He did not examine the pair in the rear. To do so might attract attention. The streets were crowded. Cracks in the floor boards would admit air enough for the pair, anyway.
Entering the hotel, Nace got his key and went to his room on the ninth floor. Up until he entered the room, he moved as if in a great hurry; but once inside, all his bustle departed. He sat down by the telephone, stoked his pipe, waited.
Minutes dragged. Nace killed time by looking for the name of Canadan in the telephone directory. Canadan, of course, had been the name of the tall man with the enormous gray moustache. There was no Canadan listed.
The phone rang.
Nace swept up the instrument. “Shoot, baby!”
“My, oh my!” Julia said sarcastically. “By chance, you weren’t camped there by phone pining away for my dulcet voice—”
“Cut it out!”
“Go ahead! Bite me!”
“I’ll tear your arms and legs off if you don’t start telling things! This is big! That Canadan was on the point of—”
“That the tall one who hides behind the gray cookie duster?”
“Sure. He was just opening up when that orange-stand girl pulled her act.”
Julia’s voice became businesslike. “I trailed that girl from the orange-drink stand. She took this Canadan along. He didn’t seem to want to come. I think she put a gun in his back.”
“What’d you learn?”
“Not much, except that they like to ride the taxicabs. They went up and down Lincoln Park. They stopped once and got out. They went over to where a little crowd stood, then came back and got in their hack.”
“What was the crowd?”
“A bunch rubbering at the spot where that meteor fell last night. The thing melted a big hole in the ground where it hit.”
“That wasn’t any meteor.”
“Well, I’ve guessed as much. But do you know of a better name to call it?”
“I’m not sure what the dang thing is,” Nace admitted.
“They’re in the Idyll House, now,” Julia continued. “It’s a little hotel in the loop.” She gave an address.
“That’s only half a dozen blocks from here,” Nace told her. “What’re they doing?”
“Sitting here in the lobby talking. They’ve been talking every time they left the Century of Progress grounds.”
“Then she isn’t holding a gun on him now?”
“Nope. They seem to have come to an agreement. At least, they’re mighty sociable.”
“Have they seen you?”
“Just here in the hotel. I had to show myself. There was no other phone near. The girl has looked me over two or th
ree times, but I don’t think she smells anything.”
“Can she see your lips?”
“Sure.”
Nace groaned deeply. “Turn around so she can’t see your face! She’s a lip reader. She must be! At that orange-drink stand, she wasn’t close enough to hear what I was saying to Canadan, but she knew I had him on the point of talking. A lip-reader is the only way to explain it.”
“For the love of mud!” Julia said sharply.
“What now?”
“You were right, Lee! She’s wise! She’s up on her feet and coming over here!”
“See what you can get out of her!” Nace rapped.
“Can you tell me something, so I can make a play that I know more than I do?”
“You know as much about it as I do—except that two plugs named Shack and Tubby tried to sashay me. And the diamond exhibit out at the Century grounds must be a part of it.”
“A lot of help you are!” Julia’s voice changed—evidently she was addressing the girl from the orange-drink stand. “I say now, honey—are you an old friend or something? The way you’re staring—”
There was a short, sharp racket. Scuffling! The phone went dead.
Nace jammed his pipe stem between his teeth, strained his ears. The receiver at the other end must have been hung up. There was no sound. The pipe stem made crunching sounds as his teeth worried it.
He ran out of the room, paced circles in the elevator cage as it lowered him, and dived into his car. He headed toward the Idyll House.
THE Idyll House proved to be a wedge of brick between department stores which were closed at this hour.
Nace saw two running policeman before he saw the hostelry. The officers were headed for the hotel. Angling his car in to the curb, Nace sauntered in behind them.
The two cops were getting the story from the desk clerk. Voices were loud. Nace heard what was said without appearing to show interest in proceedings.
“A man and a woman grabbed another woman out of a telephone booth and made off with her,” announced the clerk.
“Which way’d they go?”
“South. They got in a taxicab.”
One cop dashed out to spread an alarm.
“Who were they?” the other officer asked the clerk.
