Stan stepped back and peered up at the riot fence which surrounded the plant. The fence, a very strong one, was at least twelve feet high; then it was furnished with a setback of barbed wire. A similar setback protected the top of the steel gate. Even a man with a ladder would have had a sorry time scaling this fence. To tackle the thing barehanded was out of the question.
Stan Baxter started. He had heard a groan. The sound was muffled, but certainly it had originated in a human throat.
Then a light flickered briefly inside the building. It was at the lower end of the plant, and Stan saw it only because the groan had seemed to come from that direction.
He took two long steps to his coupé, which was parked in the driveway fronting the gate. He snapped his flashlight from its clips along the steering column. He ran up the street.
On the afternoon which preceded Joseph Callum’s death, Stan had observed a street improvement project here. A sewer main was being placed. At that time he had scarcely noted the work. Mainly he had been watching Selma and John Harne drive away in Harne’s roadster. The steam shovel had been an unimportant factor, but it was all-important now.
During the day, some fifty yards had been added to the trench beside the riot fence. Stan covered that fifty yards at top speed. He leaped into the cab, came out onto the rusted arm of the machine.
It was a steep climb. Stan made sure that his flashlight and Elmore’s .38 were snugly stowed in his coat pockets before attempting it. He made the climb on all-fours.
The thing had looked very simple from the ground. Twenty feet up in the night, with a brisk cold wind whipping into his face, it became a good deal more of a feat Stan balanced precariously erect on the narrow slant of the yard arm. Directly below him was the big metal bucket. Also below him, but several yards away, the fence stretched its wickedly barbed top.
His knees bent in to a jumper’s crouch.
Sole leather whisked a sound into the night. There was another, explosive sound. “Huh-h!”
And then. “Oh, hell!”
Stan was still on the shovel’s arm, sprawled there with his arms hanging over one side of it and his legs on the other. He had been extremely lucky. He had slipped before actually jumping, and he had instinctively thrown himself across the arm instead of plunging down onto the biting edges of the dirt bucket.
The damage was slight — a little wind knocked out.
Stan pulled himself to his feet. It took nerve to do this, and more nerve to stare out over the fence where the steel barbs glimmered their menace.
A little shiver ran up his spine, and he wet his lips nervously. He was not a fool. And even a fool would have been impressed by the possibilities of that barbed wire setback. A man who landed in that hell’s thicket would lose a good deal of blood before he got out.
And even if he cleared it, he might easily break a leg when he struck the waste-rock yard on the other side of the fence.
He crouched. The muscles in his calves bulged in an effort to grip the metal underfoot. He relaxed deliberately. He inhaled deeply, swung his arms twice, and jumped.
The fence seemed to come right up at his face. But he was over it with a breathtaking inch to spare. He struck the rock, stumbled, and rolled over; sat up with his fists filled with small, sharp stones.
He drew a deep breath of relief and got to his feet again. The palm of his right hand smarted with painful lacerations. A trickle of blood ran warmly down one kneecap, exposed where the trouserleg had been torn across.
Stan gripped the gun in one hand, the flashlight in the other. He strode to the deeper shadows along the wall of the plant, and followed the wall until he came to the main door. It was unlocked.
The darkness inside was warmer, and very silent. And he listened carefully, without hearing a sound. Stan knew the layout of the plant only vaguely. The wing to his left housed the offices. The central and right portions of the building contained the machinery, but which departments were which he had no idea.
Stan turned right, toward the groan and the flicker of light...
He was in a corridor, one with a rubber-matted floor. He did not use the flashlight; did not dare to. A vague gray oblong in the distance was his only guide. He supposed it to be a window at the end of the corridor. When he reached it, he would also have reached the right wing of the gigantic plant.
Stan stopped in front of this window. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. He could at least see that he had come out into a second corridor, at a right angle to the first. But the place remained as silent as a tomb.
This silence became menacing, as he thought of it. Where was the watchman? What had happened to Judge Elmore? And whoever was responsible for the groan and that flicker of light at the window? There flashed into Stan’s mind the picture of another man waiting in this silence — waiting in ambush.
It began to look as if he had risked his neck for nothing. Certainly he would accomplish nothing by blundering ahead into the darkness. But neither could he use the flashlight; it would only betray his presence, perhaps make a target of him.
He thought for a moment, and then groped in his pocket until he found a half dollar. His muscular fingers set the coin a-spinning on the window sill.
The half dollar made scarcely any sound at first. Stan tiptoed along the corridor. He flattened himself against the wall as the coin stopped spinning on its rim — keeled over — and gave its prolonged silvery ring.
Now, a footstep.
A door on the other side of the corridor opened. A ray of white light sprang from the opening. It passed the sill, where the half dollar was ringing its final note, and probed that end of the hall.
Stan’s grip tightened on the butt of the .38 — the hard rubber was slick with blood from his lacerated palm. To see him, the other would have to open the door wider.
Instead, the door slowly closed.
Was this a trick? Stan had to chance it. He went forward, shifted the flashlight so that he held it between his biceps and chest, and dropped his left hand to the doorknob. This kept his right arm and the gun free for action.
He tugged gently at the knob. He was not so much afraid of a squeaking hinge here as of a sudden, warning draught of air.
A faint whitish glow appeared. He waited, watched, with the door only inches open. The faint light was motionless, and certainly not pointed in his direction. Reassured, he heeled the door another half foot and knifed his lean figure through the opening.
He could see now that the white glow emanated from an electric torch. The torch itself was out of sight behind a stack of wooden packing boxes, but its area of illumination reached to the opposite wall. There was light enough to see that he had come into Randt’s shipping department.
Some wooden boxes and a greater number of cardboard cartons were ranged across the concrete floor. The cartons bore the Randt label, and prominent stickers that said, Fragile! Use No Hooks!
With the flashlight again in his left hand, Stan started across the floor. He followed a tier of the cardboard cartons, came out behind the electric torch.
The torch lay across a packing box. Its owner had his back turned to Stan. Both his arms were buried to their elbows in the wooden box.
Stan Baxter’s brows lifted in mute surprise.
“Seventy-four.” the man was whispering under his breath. “Seventy-five, six, seven.” A faint rustle of paper accompanied the count.
Stan said sharply: “You’re covered, mister!”
The other man grunted, and then rather slowly turned around. Stan’s gaze searched the face which was thus revealed to him.
It was a plumpish face, well fed and closely shaved. It was also a very fair-skinned face. Stan got an impression of large blue eyes under the blondest of brows. A felt hat, pushed high up from the forehead, let several strands of stringy, tow-colored hair fall across the man’s forehead.