Inspector Hunter snorted. “Foolish to have amateurs in a place like this.”
Searle frowned. “One of the first things you’ve got to learn, Swift, in a situation of this kind, is to see things and see them accurately. Don’t go letting your imagination run away with you. Now all the Star wants is the use of your name and some scientific terminology. Maybe you’d better curl up and take a nap.”
But Tolliver Hemingway, accustomed to appraise character with unerring accuracy, leaned forward.
“Tell us what you saw?” he said.
Arthur Swift turned red. Under the rebuke of the reporter who had employed him, he realized how absolutely foolish it would sound for him to mention that the right hand and arm of a man had disappeared — had become simply as nothing.
“Why... I guess—.”
The steady, keen eyes of the multimillionaire bored into the young man’s face.
“Yes. Go on. Nothing’s too absurd to be given careful attention.”
“Well,” blurted Swift, “if you’ve got to know; it sounds sort of goofy, but—”
He broke off as a cry of alarm burst from the lips of Carl Ramsay.
“The odor!” he cried.
And there could be no doubt of it. The room was filling with a peculiar odor, a something that was like orange blossoms, yet was not like orange blossoms. It was too sickeningly sweet to be pleasant, yet so cloyingly rich that it was not unpleasant.
Tolliver Hemingway was on his feet, his gray eyes snapping.
“All right, boys; don’t think I’m afraid, and don’t think any hysteria is going to get me. Inspector, I’ve one request. If anything should happen, search every man in this room, from his skin out. I have an idea this—”
He paused. A look of surprise came over his features. He clutched at his throat.
“I... am... not... afraid,” he said, thickly, speaking slowly as though paralysis gripped the muscles of his throat.
“It... is...”
And he swayed on his feet, lurched forward, flung out a groping hand. The hand clutched the rich cloth which adorned the table on which Inspector Hunter had set his empty glass, and on which the whisky bottle reposed. The cloth came off. The glass crashed to the floor. The bottle rolled across the room.
Tolliver Hemingway crashed to the floor.
He was dead by the time they managed to open his collar and take his limp wrist in their fingers.
Inspector Hunter rushed to the window.
Outside, the searchlights played silently across the darkness of the grounds, their beams interlacing, bringing trees and shrubs into white brilliance, casting shadows which were, in turn, dispersed by the rays of other cross-lights, flickering and flitting. The whole side of the building was covered by floodlights, and the inspector had no sooner thrust his head from the window than a voice from below called up.
“All right, inspector?”
“Anybody come near here?”
“No, sir. Of course not, sir. Our orders were to shoot on sight.”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Laughlin, O’Rourke, Maloney, and Green.”
“One of you sound the alarm. The others wait there. Shoot any stranger on sight.”
Inspector Hunter whipped a service revolver from his belted holster, and fired two shots from the open window, signal to the various guards. Almost immediately a siren screamed forth the agreed signal of death.
Inspector Hunter turned back to the room, then, suddenly snapped his revolver to the level.
“Get your hands up, Searle!”
The surprised reporter, in the act of shooting the bolt on the door, regarded the inspector with a puzzled frown.
“I’ve got to get to the paper. I can handle this so much better on the ground than I can over the wire. We’ll get out an extra—”
There was no mistaking the cold calm of Hunter’s voice.
“Get away from that door or I’ll shoot you like a dog. You know what this means. It’s the beginning of a reign of terror. This is once that the news comes second. You men will remain here. The murder will be kept absolutely secret until we’ve exhausted every possible clew.
“And every man in this room is going to be searched from the skin out. Everything in this room, including the very air, is going to be analyzed. Damn it, I’m going to get at the bottom of this!”
And Nick Searle, white-faced in his rage, slowly turned back from the door.
“The Star will break you for this,” he said, in a low tone, vibrant with anger. “You can’t pull a stunt like this and get away with it.”
“The hell I can’t,” said Inspector Hunter, his cold eyes glittering over the barrel of his service revolver. “Get back in the corner, and take your clothes off. Every damned one of you take your clothes off.”
He turned to the window.
“Green, send up some doctors, and two of the chemists. Let no one else come in to the grounds or the house. Let no one leave. Keep your mouth shut. Have two men come up here and knock on the door. Let them have their revolvers in their hands. Let them shoot to kill at the first sign of disobedience to my orders.”
And then Inspector Hunter slammed down the window.
The sickening sweet odor was still in the air, but it was not as noticeable as before.
“Boys, take off your clothes and stand over there in the corner, naked as the day you were born.”
Ramsay sneered. “Inefficient Inspector Insults Interviewer.”
Searle added another thrust: “Police Inspector Drinking at Time of Tragedy.”
Hunter whirled on him.
“You’d use that? After my pulling the wires to get you in here so you’d have an exclusive?”
“I’d use anything,” said Searle, his face still white. “The news comes first. You can’t hush this thing up, and you can’t stall it. The Star will get scooped by every paper on the street.”
Inspector Hunter shook his head, slowly.
“It won’t get out.”
“Aw, hell. It’s getting out right now. There were reporters watching the house, watching the grounds. Think they heard those shots and the alarm siren without putting two and two together? They’ll have extras on the streets within an hour announcing the death, and they’ll make a pretty shrewd guess at what’s happened afterward.”
Hunter lowered the gun slightly.
“The department will issue flat denials. We’ll deny the death. We can’t let this get out. It would rock the city. It would start a reign of terror. This means the police are powerless.”
“You can’t hush it up. Your denials will only get you in bad at the start, and give the other papers that much more prestige when you finally have to admit the truth.”
Hunter shook his head.
“This is an emergency the like of which has never faced the city before.”
He jerked up his revolver as one in whom the last vestige of indecision has vanished.
“Get over there and get your clothes off.”
“Hunter Has Hysterics!” rasped Ramsay. “Intoxicated Inspector Incarnate Inefficiency!”
“Get your clothes off!” yelled Hunter.
There was a double knock at the door.
His eyes squinting over the barrel of his revolver, Hunter threw open the door. Two uniformed policemen with drawn guns stood gaping on the threshold.