Hoo Li lay in the box. He was knotted grotesquely — that is, his body was. For he was quite dead. Upon the moon features were five grisly purple splotches, a tiny puncture in the center of each. It was as though a sinister, poisoned claw of bones had grasped.
Nace indicated the green skeleton leg which had been upon Reel’s chest, and which Reel had flung at him.
“That must have killed the Chinaman,” he said dryly. “Reel took it off the body when he wanted to play dead. He played dead to fool me, of course. He wanted to stick around and see what that rumpus in the hall was, and he figured playing dead was a good way to do it.” Nace frowned at the girl. “That’s what happened, wasn’t it?”
She shuddered. “I guess so. I was really a prisoner, and got away! That much is the truth.”
Nace went down into the basement. He found wires that obviously had been used to bind the girl. He came back.
“I believe you,” he said. “Now, what else do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“You came back from Europe with all this crowd three weeks ago. What were you doing in Europe? And what is this green skull thing they want?”
She shivered. “I wish now that I had not called on you for help.”
“Why did you?”
“I was afraid Reel was going to kill me.” She shivered again. “He would have, too.”
“You made a deal with him a minute ago?”
“No.” She sounded earnest. “I merely let him go. He would have killed me even then. That’s why I came into the hall and locked the door.”
Nace frowned shrewdly down at her. “I see it! You’re after the green skull, too. You let Reel loose in hopes he would get it, so you would have a chance of seizing it from him.”
The girl blinked at him — tears were in her eyes. “You are clever!”
“And you and Jimmy Offitt were working together!” Nace suggested.
She suddenly burst into tears. Her shoulders shook convulsively. No acting about this! He held her close with an arm about her shoulders and let her sob.
“Jimmy Offitt was my brother!” she said at last. “My name is Rosa Offitt.”
“Go on,” Nace urged.
She shook her head. “No! I will not tell you any more! And I wish you would go clear away! Forget all this! Report the bodies, if you want to. Tell the police what you know. But go away!”
Nace grinned wolfishly.
He took his Panama from inside his vest, yanked it low and glowered from under the brim.
“Nix, kid!” he snorted.
He led her outdoors, and headed for the Plaza.
“Where are you going?” she wanted to know.
He told her.
“So that’s where Baron von Auster, Moe and Heavy are hanging out!” she gasped. She seemed genuinely surprised at the news.
There was no excitement around the Plaza — no one lurking near. Nace made very sure of that. Then he took the girl in and rode the elevator to the sixth floor.
The corridor was quiet, except that, from down below somewhere, a radio was making a soft mutter.
Nace had brought his canvas bag. He got out his listening apparatus and planted it against the door where he had eavesdropped earlier in the night.
He heard no sound. Gently, he tried the knob. The door was unlocked; it swung open. Lights were on in the apartment. Without crossing the threshold, Nace stared inside.
“So Heavy is the latest guy to take the three-strike!” he murmured grimly.
Heavy was a pile on the floor. He looked like the victim of some horrible joke, a prank concocted by a twisted mind — a brain with a twirk of utter fiendishness in its makeup.
Nace was tough. But the sight on the floor was too much. It got him. He swung forward with long strides and knocked a hideous green skull away from Heavy’s features.
Some sinister jokester had arranged the skull in a position of biting hungrily. Brownly poisoned pegs, substituted for front teeth had brought death to Heavy. A knot on his skull, however, denoted he had first been knocked out by a blow from behind.
Pivoting from the macabre sight on the floor, Nace got the girl. She had not tried to flee, but possibly that was because he had been keeping an eye on her.
Nace went from room to room of the apartment. He found no one. The stereotyped nature of the fittings told him the place had been rented furnished.
He tried the inner doorknob for fingerprints, using white powder from his carry-all. The knob had been wiped clean.
His attention next went to the green skull. He picked it up between two books he found in a case, and placed it on a table, under a lamp.
An article called the green skull was behind the mess, it seemed. He wondered if this was the skull. He found nothing to bolster that belief.
He frowned at the girl while stemming his pipe. “This wouldn’t be the green skull everybody is after, would it?”
She hesitated — not thinking up a false answer, but debating whether she should tell him the truth or not.
“No,” she said at last. “That — is not it!”
“What does the green skull look like?”
“I do not think I’ll answer that.”
“Now, look here—”
She held up both hands. “Oh, don’t start yelling at me! I’m trying to think it over — trying to decide whether to tell you the whole story or not.”
Nace squinted his eye that had been darkened in the fight on the baseball diamond that afternoon. Then he turned his attention back to the green skull.
The color, use of a few chemicals from an analysis kit in his bag showed, was due to nothing more mysterious than malachite green aniline. The skull had apparently been soaked in the concoction, a form of green dye.
The skull itself was undoubtedly genuine. It was impossible to tell with certainty how long the owner had been dead.
“Do you know where this came from?” he asked the girl.
She took time to debate her answer.
“Hoo Li, the Chinaman, was a devotee of an Oriental cult known as the Hara Sabz Haddi, the cult of the green bones,” she said finally. “Instead of the usual form of image, a green skeleton is used by the Hara Sabz Haddi. Hoo Li carried one around with him. I don’t know where he got it — the Orient probably.”
Nace took another squint at the green skull. “It has got the characteristics of an Oriental skull, all right.”
“It must be part of Hoo Li’s religious rigamarole,” the girl said slowly. “He was a fanatical follower of his cult. He tried to convert all of them to his heathen religion at one time or another. I think Reel was half won over. He had green skulls on the brain. Take that reading lamp, the one with the orange bulb, for instance.”
“You know a lot about them!” Nace said.
“I ought to!” she retorted.
“You were one of the gang, eh?”
“No!” She sounded emphatic, “But my brother and I have followed them and watched them for weeks, both in Europe and America.”
“So that is why you all came into the States on the same liner?”
“Yes!”
Nace felt of his notched ear, felt of his bruised eye, and scraped blond hair down over his forehead. He felt an urge to grab the woman and shake her. She got under his sunburned hide. She was, he realized, about as clever as they came. She was playing a game — and she was going ahead with it, even though he did have her a prisoner.
She seemed worried.
“Did you find out anything while trailing Baron von Auster, Moe and—” she indicated the body on the floor, “—this man?”