The man he followed walked directly to the door out of which the woman was emerging. He ducked under her arm, brushed against her, and entered the lobby of the building.
Swift followed.
Once the man turned. By the simple process of freezing into complete immobility, Swift defied detection. All about were the figures of men staring with glassy, unseeing eyes at what was going on about them.
There was a policeman standing at a marble table in the center of the flagged floor. All about were counters, wickets, gilt cages.
Swift realized he was in one of the big banking establishments. The man he followed walked to one of the cages. He took a key from the inert hand of a guard, unlocked the cage door, pulled it open, entered.
There were piles of gold on the counter, stacked up in glittering spheres of coin. The man scooped them into the suitcase. Then he left and went to another cage. Here he repeated the process. Here, also, there were several piles of large-de-nomination currency. The man scooped these in with the gold.
When he had selected the cream of the plunder, he closed the suitcase and turned toward the door. Swift became stockstill, standing with one foot out and up, as though in the act of taking a step. The man passed within three feet of him. When he had gained the street, Swift followed.
His quarry led him to a corner a block away. Here he sat the suitcase down, right beside a traffic policeman who was in the act of blowing his whistle.
He had left thousands of dollars in stolen gold and currency unguarded, right within reach of a policeman’s hand. Yet he was perfectly safe in doing so. No one could move fast enough to pick it up.
The bank bandit shuffled into a jewelry store, selected several diamonds, dumped them into his pocket, returned to his suitcase, bowed his head to the policeman in ironical thanks, picked up the bag, and crossed the street.
Swift followed.
The man walked as rapidly as the air resistance would allow. He seemed intent upon reaching a certain destination as quickly as possible.
He turned into an alley. A truck was standing there, motor running. The suitcase was tossed into the truck. There were more suitcases there, all of the same general design.
As Swift watched, another figure came around the corner, walking in the same pavement-shuffling manner, carrying a suitcase. He tossed this upon the truck, paused to speak with the man Swift had been following.
Then the two turned and came directly toward Art Swift.
Once more he froze into immobility. They passed close to him. One of the men stopped.
“Say, I’ve seen this guy before. Who the hell is he?”
Swift remained motionless, one foot reaching out as though taking a step. Yet he knew there was something different in the studied balance of his pose from that of the other men who were caught in arrested motion.
“Never lamped him,” said the second man. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
But the man Swift had been following wasn’t so certain.
“I’m telling you there’s something funny about this guy. He stands funny, he looks funny. I’ve seen him before. I think he was standing in the bank I frisked. Let’s go through his pockets and see who in hell he is.”
“Aw, forget it. We got no time to be pulling all the funny stuff. That newspaper gave the whole show away, Doc Zean is croaked, and we ain’t goin’ to be able to get no more of the stuff. We gotta work fast and make a clean-up while the getting is good.”
They moved away. Swift heard the man he had followed fling a final comment.
“When we come back we’ll see which way he’s walking and what he’s got up his sleeve. He looks off color to me.”
The men reached the mouth of the alley and turned away.
Swift started for cover, and, as he approached the place opposite which the truck was parked, saw a swirl of motion at the opposite end of the alley.
He adopted his usual expedient of standing absolutely still.
Two men, loaded down with suitcases, came into the alley. One of them stopped.
“Say, that guy wasn’t there last trip!”
“What do we care? He couldn’t do anything.”
“Yeah, but he might be stallin’.”
They set down their suitcases, walked with quiet menace directly toward Art Swift.
Then Swift caught sight of something else. Another man glided swiftly into the alley. There was something familiar in the posture of that man. He gave a swift glance and found that it was Nick Searle of the Star.
In some manner the reporter had speeded himself up so as to get into the game. Art thought of the metal box the girl had received, a box containing a complete assortment of the rubber capsules. Probably Searle had secured possession of that and had injected sufficient of the serum to take part in the strange game which was being enacted.
The two bandits approached Swift. Searle was not far behind.
“Hey, you, what you doing here?” asked one of the men, pausing before Swift.
Swift endeavored to keep his face entirely devoid of expression. He fixed his eyes upon distance, and held his breath.
“Aw, he’s all right,” grumbled one of the men. “Just some poor mutt that strayed into the alley and we didn’t notice him the other trip.”
“The hell we didn’t,” insisted the more suspicious of the two. “He just wasn’t here, and if he wasn’t—”
He moved his hand in a swift gesture, directly toward Swift’s eye.
“If he’s on the up-and-up, we can stroke the eyeball,” said the man.
Involuntarily Art blinked.
“Ha!” exclaimed the bandit, and jumped forward, his fist swinging in a terrific uppercut.
Art sidestepped, jerked his head back to dodge the blow, and shot out a straight left.
He found the atmospheric resistance slowed his punches somewhat, but the superior strength which had come to his muscles with the speeding-up process largely overcame that. It was his clothes that suffered most.
As he launched that straight left, the resistance of the air held his coat sleeve stationary. He had the peculiar sensation of feeling his sleeve peeled back from his arm, and the bare arm flashed forward in a quick punch which connected.
But the second man was busy. He swung a slingshot, and only missed Swift’s head by a matter of inches.
“The damned spy!” yelled the man who staggered back under the impetus of Swift’s punch.
Art knew he was no match for the two men, and jumped to one side, hoping to get where he could have his back to the wall. But they understood his maneuver and closed on him from different angles.
He ducked, caught a punch on the back of the head, felt his stomach grow cold as a fist landed in the solar plexus, and dropped to his knees. He flung out his arm, reaching for the legs that sought to kick him in the face, caught an ankle, jerked it, and had the satisfaction of seeing the man go down.
Chapter 7
The Man Who Mastered Time
With a roar Nick Searle joined the conflict.
That was the determining factor. The men had hardly expected an equal battle. Having Swift down and getting ready to knife him was one thing; having that wiry young man on hands and knees grabbing at their ankles while another man swung lusty fists was quite another.
It took but four punches to decide the battle. The two bandits sprawled on the cement.
Swift was still on hands and knees, writhing in pain. But he had managed to tackle both of his adversaries with groping hands which had kept them from doubling up on Searle.
“Hurt?” asked Searle.
Swift made a wry face, gasping for breath.
“Wind — knocked — out.”
Searle helped him to his feet.
After a few seconds Swift got over the temporary paralysis of the diaphragm which had been induced by the blow he had received, and gave a wry grin.