“Boys, see that these men strip!”
Nick Searle moved slowly, reluctantly.
“You’ll strip, too, damn you,” he said, “or I’ll write an article accusing you of the murder.”
“Examiner Evades Equal Examination,” sneered Ramsay, moving, however, toward the corner indicated by Hunter.
“No. I’ll join you. That’s fair. That’s what I wanted these boys up here for,” said Hunter, throwing down his gun, and taking off his collar and tie as he moved to the corner.
The police chemists found four naked men and a corpse in the room. They made a minute examination of every article in the room. They analyzed every single thing that they fancied might have played a part in the tragedy. They examined even the tobacco in the cigarettes, the paper with which they were tipped. They found nothing.
Dawn found the men working frantically.
It also found extras on the streets, intimating that there had been a tragedy despite the vigilance of the police. It found a crowd surging about the streets which bordered the spacious grounds of the millionaire’s mansion.
Noon found Hunter throwing up his hands in helpless despair.
Three o’clock found him pleading with the reporters to be reasonable and give him a break. But Searle and Ramsay, insisting upon the right of the press to print the news, were obdurate.
They were released from custody at three fifteen.
Searle took Swift to the Star offices. There they wrote frantically. Swift was given a rewrite man. He gave a few scientific terms covering possible causes of death, made some comment upon atmospheric poisons, and then read the proof on an article that was more wildly speculative than any thoughts he had dared to formulate or utter.
“Celebrated Physicist Hints at Atmospheric Poisoning,” he read, then, lower down, in smaller type: “Mysterious Ray Penetrates Walls and Locked Doors. Possibility that Radio May Act as Transmitting Medium. Scientist Confirms Report that Intoxicated Inspector Delayed Transmission of News to Eager Public.”
The cashier handed Swift a check that was three times the amount of a month’s pay at the state college.
“We’ll want a follow-up to-morrow. You’ll get the same rates,” he said.
“In the meantime?”
“Do anything you want. Keep in touch with the office.”
Swift bowed, reached for his hat.
At that moment the telephone shrilled sharply. One of the men barked excitedly as he listened to the sounds that rasped through the receiver.
Another reporter came in, breathless.
“Here’s a photo of the letter,” he said, and rushed to the dark room.
“Better stick around, Swift,” said Searle. “Hell’s to pay.”
Chapter 2
Trailing an Evil Genius
Events of the next two hours were crowded.
Six new letters had been mailed. Five had been to wealthy men. The sixth had been to none other than the President of the United States of America. Five of the letters contained a demand for money. The sixth letter demanded that the nation accept Zin Zandor as dictator.
The penalty in each case for refusal was death.
The millionaires were to begin paying tribute immediately. The government was given thirty days within which to comply with the demand. At the end of thirty days the President was to die, first of a series of martyrdoms only to be ended by surrender.
But sheer luck had given the law a break.
Post office employees had been instructed to note anything unusual in the mail, particularly anything unusual in the mail addressed to wealthy or prominent people.
One Steve Roscin, a mail carrier, driving to a mail box to pick up the mail, had noticed rather a striking figure striding away from the box.
It was a man well over six feet tall, thin, slightly stooped. The figure was muffled in an overcoat, despite the fact that the day had been oppressively warm. There was a long black beard which concealed the lower part of the face, dark glasses over the eyes, and a crush hat, pulled well down.
But the postman had caught a good look at the right hand. It was a peculiar ring on the third finger that had caught his eye. He described the ring as being carved in some grotesque fashion in the shape of interlaced triangles of white against a background of red.
The postman insisted that the ring was fully as large as a twenty-five cent piece, perhaps larger where it bulged out into a circle of mingled gem and design.
At the time he had paid no great attention to the man, noting only the overcoat, the beard, and the unusual ring. But when he had opened the green box, his eye had alighted upon six letters at the top of the pile of mail.
The uppermost letter had been addressed to the President of the United States of America. The other five letters were addressed to people of prominence in financial circles.
The postman had acted quickly. He had slammed the mail box shut, jumped into his car and whirled about in pursuit of the strange figure.
At the corner he was in time to see the man climb into a red roadster of speedy design, whose make the postman had been unable to determine. In the gathering dusk, the roadster had shot away from the curb and easily outdistanced the lighter car which the postman was driving.
He had abandoned the futile pursuit, and had telephoned to headquarters at once. Experts had appeared, examined the letters for finger-prints, opened them, found their terms, and had immediately started a search for the tall man in the red roadster who wore a peculiar ring and who wrote his letters on a Remington typewriter.
The police predicted an arrest within twenty-four hours, stating they would make a house-to-house canvass of the city if necessary.
Arthur Swift, caught in the excitement of the investigation, remained at the Star offices until nearly midnight.
By that time the telephones were ringing constantly, giving new clews, cases of arrest of suspects. Garages were combed for red roadsters, people were asked to report any tall figure with beard and overcoat that had been seen at or about the time.
The police adopted the theory that the beard was a disguise, that the overcoat was merely to prevent recognition, and that the man probably did not live anywhere near the place where the mail box was located, but had written the letters, then driven to some isolated section to mail them.
By midnight there were no fewer than fifty tall suspects incarcerated at police headquarters, awaiting a complete check of their activities for the day.
Arthur Swift caught Nick Searle for a short conference.
“Look here, Searle, there’s one thing about this business that’s strange.”
“Meaning?”
“The time those letters were mailed.”
“What of it?”
“They must have been already written, held ready for mailing, but the mailing was to be at a certain definite time.”
“The time?” asked Searle, smiling, rather patronizingly.
“The time was when the person who did the writing was certain the death of Tolliver Hemingway had taken place.”
Searle continued to smile, the smile of calm superiority.
“Wrong, Swift. The time was when the writer knew that the people had been advised of the death of Hemingway.”
Swift shook his head.
“No. You see it would have taken the letters twenty-four hours to be delivered at the very least. Therefore, had the writer been absolutely certain of Hemingway’s death, he would have mailed the letters, knowing the press would have the facts long before those letters were read by his victims.”
The smile melted from Searle’s features.
“By George, there’s a thought there! Then you mean the person who committed those murders wasn’t absolutely certain the murders had been committed. He only released certain agencies of destruction, knowing that they should work, but those agencies were not sufficiently certain to make him positive of their success.”