Her eyes stared straight up at the ceiling of the room. She made no move when they entered.
“Living at a normal rate. Can’t see us,” said Searle.
He drew a knife and cut the ropes. Even then she did not move. They watched her anxiously. The closed door was shutting out many of the poison fumes. But there was a chance she had already inhaled too many of them.
Searle reached out and gently touched the eyeball with the tip of his finger. The lid gradually — very, very slowly — commenced to droop.
“She’s alive,” said Swift.
The girl’s lips moved with such slowness that the motion was hardly perceptible.
“She knows we’re here, trying to talk.”
Searle nodded.
“We’ve got to get her out of here. That gas, you know.”
“The door’s closed. Remember, it disperses quickly. It takes a concentrated dose to produce death. He probably had it in the ring. He intended to liberate the gas from the poison ring and fill the room with it. Then he was going to put on some sort of a gas mask.”
“Yeah. Your blow with the club got him groggy, and he sucked in a mouthful of the concentrated gas before he knew what he was doing.”
“How about getting the girl out?”
“Let’s try to carry her. But pick her up gently or we’ll jerk her to pieces, and we’ll have to stop easy like or — wait a minute — I’m feeling queer!”
At that same moment Art Swift felt a peculiar sensation at the pit of his stomach.
“The gas!” he exclaimed.
“No,” said Searle. “We’re coming back to normal!”
There was a brief spell of vertigo, and then, of a sudden, things were normal.
The girl’s eyes were blinking; her lips were forming words.
Beyond the door that led to the, other room something crashed — the body of Zin Zandor, just falling to the floor.
The girl’s rapid words rang in their ears.
“Hoped you would come. They were planning to make this the day of the big clean-up. They had all their men ready to bring on a reign of terror, and they were going to kill me.”
Swift pointed to a door that opened from one side of the room. He picked up a chair, crashed it through one of the panels.
“Let’s get out of here!”
They felt the tang of fresh air upon their faces, saw the street roaring with the busy life of a rush hour. The noise burst upon their ears. In the alley, motor running, was the truck, filled with the strangely shaped suitcases. Sprawled just inside the door, where the two adventurers had dragged them, were the bodies of the unconscious bandits, tied hand and foot.
There was no traffic in the alley, but the street just beyond was filled with activity.
“Load ’em in and start for headquarters,” said Searle, and grinned.
The girl climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I can handle the truck.”
They struggled with the men, got the inert figures into the truck.
“Let’s make a good job,” said Searle.
Swift caught his drift and grinned assent.
They returned to the cellar. The fumes of the deadly gas had dispersed. There remained only an odor, something like that given off by orange blossoms. The dead form of Zin Zandor sprawled on the floor.
They carried it to the truck. Then they loaded the stored treasure. Then they started the truck.
“Go to the Star office,” Searle called to the girl. “We were the ones to blacken Swift’s character, and we might as well be the ones to laud him to the skies as the hero who saved the country.”
The girl flashed him a smile.
“Scientist Saves Day!” she said.
“That reminds me, where do you suppose Ramsay is?”
“Suicide,” said Searle. “We found him just before I met you last. He had blown his brains out and left a typical note — poor chap: ‘Reporter Reaps Ruin — Rum Ruins Ramsay!’ ”
They were silent for a moment.
“He was in on it from the beginning, of course?” asked Swift.
“Yes. He was the contact man. He actually switched the cigarettes. He faked an attack upon himself to divert suspicion.”
Swift sighed. “Man, but I feel sleepy!”
“Effect of the drug. We’ve been living rapidly, perhaps more than a year in the last few hours. It’s gone out of our lives.”
“A year in a day,” laughed the girl.
Swift caught her eye.
“Then I’ve known you a year, Louise,” he said.
Her answering smile contained no trace of offense.
“We can call it that, Art.”
“A heck of a fast worker,” said Searle. “That goldarned scientist doesn’t need to have any one pep him up with a lot of extracts to make him work fast!”
All three joined in a laugh as the truck with its strange load swung to a stop before the Star office, the biggest scoop in a half century delivered at the very door of the newspaper.
The Man With Pin-Point Eyes
Chapter 1
Victim of a Vampire Mind
If you are going to understand this story, you have got to visualize his eyes as I saw them there in that Mexicali dance hall.
I have gazed into the eyes of a swaying rattlesnake. I have seen the eyes of a mountain lion reflect a phosphorescent green from the darkness beyond my camp fire. I have watched the eyes of a killer, crazed with the blood lust, his hand clawing for the holstered weapon at his side.
But I have never seen eyes that affected me as did the eyes of the man who sought me out there in that place which is known as “Cantina Gold Dollar Bar.”
His eyes were gray, but not the gray of the desert. It was as though his eyes had been washed with aluminium paint. They glittered with a metallic luster, and they seemed to be all the same color — if you could call it a color.
When he got closer, I saw that the pupils were little pinpoints. You had to look close to see them. And the whites of the eyes had that same metallic luster, the same appearance of having been coated with aluminium paint.
Those eyes gave me the creeps.
He looked at me for three or four seconds and said nothing. I couldn’t help watching him, couldn’t keep from staring into those funny eyes. It was then I saw the pin-point pupils for the first time.
They looked as though they were turning around and around rapidly, but they always kept the same size. I’ve seen the pupils in a parrot’s eyes do the same thing, only a parrot can change the size of its pupils. This man’s eyes were always the same, always black pin-points against aluminium.
He got on my nerves.
“Well,” I said, “spill it!”
He didn’t speak right away, not even then, but his eyes kept boring into mine. When he finally spoke, his voice was the sort I’d expected, one of those deep, resonant voices.
“I know all about you,” he said.
I thought then he must be doped up. I’d seen those little pin-point pupils before when men were all hopped up. And I’d seen gun-play start awfully fast under those circumstances, so I began to humor him along.
“Sure,” I said, “I could tell that as soon as I saw you. How about a drink?”
He shook his head, not a shake back and forth the way most people would shake their heads, but a swift, single shake of his head.
“No,” he said. “You don’t think I know about you. Let me tell you. Your name is Sidney Rane. You had two years of college in medical school. Then your health broke down and you came to the desert. You got a job as guard for the gold shipments out of Tucson, and you’ve been hanging around the Southwest ever since. You are reported to know more of the desert than any man living.”