The lighter functioned perfectly. The fountain pen gave no hint of having been out of condition. Yet the clothes were as empty as an empty meal sack.
Sid Rodney walked to the door.
He found himself staring into the black muzzle of a huge revolver.
“Stand back, sir. I’m sorry, sir, but there have been strange goings on here, sir, and you’ll get your hands up, or, by the Lord, sir, I shall let you have it, right where you’re thickest, sir.”
It was the grim-faced servant, his eyes like steel, his mouth stretched across his face in a taut line of razor-thin determination.
Sid laughed.
“Forget it. I’m in a hurry, and...”
“When I count three, sir, I shall shoot...”
There was a leather cushion upon one of the chairs. Sid sat down upon that leather cushion, abruptly.
“Oh, come, let’s be reasonable.”
“Get your hands up.”
“Shucks, what harm can I do. I haven’t got a gun, and I only came here to see if I couldn’t...”
“One... two...”
Rodney raised his weight, flung himself to one side, reached around, grasped the leather cushion, and flung it. He did it all in one sweeping, scrambling motion.
The gun roared for the first time as he flung himself to one side. It roared the second time as the spinning cushion hurtled through the air.
Sid was conscious of the mushrooming of the cushion, the scattering of hair, the blowing of bits of leather. The cushion smacked squarely upon the end of the gun, blocking the third shot. Before there could have been a fourth, Sid had gone forward, tackling low. The servant crashed to the floor.
It was no time for etiquette, the hunting of neutral corners, or any niceties of sportsmanship. The stomach of the servant showed for a moment, below the rim of the leather cushion, and Sid’s fist was planted with nice precision and a degree of force which was sufficiently adequate, right in the middle of that stomach.
The man doubled, gasped, struggled for air.
Sid Rodney took the gun from the nerveless fingers, scaled it down the hall where it could do no harm, and made for the front door. He went out on the run.
Once in his car, he started for the address which had been given on the receipt of the express company as the destination of the parcel of machinery, Samuel Grove at 6372 Milpas Street. It was a slender clue, yet it was the only one that Sid possessed.
He made the journey at the same breakneck speed that had characterized his other trips. The car skidded to the curb in front of a rather sedate-looking house which was in a section of the city where exclusive residences had slowly given way to cleaning establishments, tailor shops, small industries, cheap boarding houses.
Sid ran up the steps, tried the bell.
There was no response. He turned the knob of the door. It was locked. He started to turn away when his ears caught the light flutter of running steps upon an upper floor.
The steps were as swiftly agile as those of a fleeing rabbit. There followed, after a brief interval, the sound of pounding feet, a smothered scream, then silence.
Sid rang the bell again.
Again there was no answer.
There was a window to one side of the door. Sid tried to raise it, and found that it was unlocked. The sash slid up, and Sid clambered over the sill, dropped to the floor of a cheaply furnished living room.
He could hear the drone of voices from the upper floor, and he walked to the door, jerked it open, started up the stairs. Some instinct made him proceed cautiously, yet the stairs creaked under the weight of his feet.
He was halfway up the stairs when the talking ceased.
Once more he heard the sounds of a brief struggle, a struggle that was terminated almost as soon as it had begun. Such a struggle might come from a cat that has caught a mouse, lets it almost get away, then swoops down upon it with arched back and needle-pointed claws.
Then there was a man’s voice, and he could hear the words:
“Just a little of the powder on your hair, my sweet, and it will be almost painless... You know too much, you and your friend. But it’ll all be over now. I knew he would be suspecting me, so I left my clothes where they’d fool him. And I came and got you.
“You washed that first powder out of your hair, didn’t you, sweet? But this time you won’t do it. Yes, my sweet, I knew Crome was mad. But I played on his madness to make him do the things I wanted done. And then, when he had become quite mad, I stole one of his machines.
“He killed Dangerfield for me, and that death covered up my own short accounts. I killed the banker because he was such a cold-blooded fish... Cold-blooded, that’s good.”
There was a chuckle, rasping, mirthless, the sound of scraping objects upon the floor, as though someone tried to struggle ineffectively. Then the voice again.
“I left a note in my clothes, warning of the deaths of you, of myself, and of that paragon of virtue, Sid Rodney, who gave you the idea in the first place. Later on, I’ll start shaking down millionaires, but no one will suspect me. They’ll think I’m dead.
“It’s painless. Just the first chill, then death. Then the cells dissolve, shrink into a smaller and smaller space, and then disappear. I didn’t get too much of it from Crome, just enough to know generally how it works, like radio and X-ray, and the living cells are the only ones that respond so far. When you’ve rubbed this powder into the hair...”
Sid Rodney had been slowly advancing. A slight shadow of his progress moved along the baseboard of the hall.
“What’s that?” snapped the voice, losing its gloating monotone, crisply aggressive.
Sid Rodney stepped boldly up the last of the stairs, into the upper corridor.
A man was coming toward him. It was Sands.
“Hello, Sands,” he said. “What’s the trouble here?”
Sands was quick to take advantage of the lead offered. His right hand dropped to the concealment of his hip, but he smiled affably.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my friend Sid Rodney, the detective! Tell me, Rodney, have you got anything new? If you haven’t, I have. Look here. I want you to see something...”
And he jumped forward.
But Rodney was prepared. In place of being caught off guard and balance, he pivoted on the balls of his feet and snapped home a swift right.
The blow jarred Sands back. The revolver which he had been whipping from his pocket shot from his hand in a glittering arc and whirled to the floor.
Rodney sprang forward.
The staggering man flung up his hands, lashed out a vicious kick. Then, as he got his senses cleared from the effects of the blow, he whirled and ran down the hall, dashed into a room and closed the door.
Rodney heard the click of the bolt as the lock was turned.
“Ruby!” he called. “Ruby!”
She ran toward him, attired in flowing garments of colored silk, her hair streaming, eyes glistening.
“Quick!” she shouted. “Is there any of that powder in your hair? Do you feel an itching of the scalp?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“Get him first,” she said.
Sid Rodney picked up the revolver which he had knocked from the hand of the man he hunted, advanced toward the door.
“Keep clear!” yelled Sands from behind that door.
Rodney stepped forward.
“Surrender, or I’ll start shooting through the door!” he threatened.
There was a mocking laugh, and something in that laugh warned Rodney; for he leaped back, just as the panels of the door splintered under a hail of lead which came crashing from the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun.
“I’m calling the police!” shouted Ruby Orman.