In a moment, Gooch followed, covering Jeck and Zeke with his revolvers.
“We’ll go to the house!” Gooch snapped. “I’m gonna ask some questions! I’m gonna get to the bottom of this, I am!”
They moved to the house. Nace, hanging back, let the others enter first.
“The telephone is out of order,” he said shortly. “I’m going after the local coroner and sheriff.”
Sergeant Gooch sniffed, half from anger, half from grief. “Now listen, Nace! We won’t get anywhere by ringin’ these hick cops—”
“The old copper spirit!” Nace answered. “Nobody can do anything quite as well as a New York flatfoot!”
He heeled around and strode across the lawn to the road, thence along the pike in the direction of Lake City.
Once out of sight of the house, however, he slipped silently into the brush. Working through it, he reached the lake shore, then turned left. He used only enough caution so that those in the house did not hear him. He ducked into the warehouse.
Chapter VI
Murder By Suction
In one of the stall-like storerooms nearest the wharf end, he found an assortment of diving suits. These ranged from light metal head rigs — nothing but a helmet and short shoulder mantle to ponderous, all-metal suits for deep-water work.
The fact that Honest John was in his underwear indicated that he had been planning to use a diving suit. The detective would naturally have removed his outer clothing so that he would not be soaked in case the diving garb leaked.
But none of the diving suits had been used within the last hour or so — not one was wet. Bending low, Nace scrutinized the place, catching the light from various angles.
There was a faint deposit of dust on the floor. It was scuffed with many tracks — tracks of men in bare feet, and prints of men in shoes. And in two spots, lack of dust marked where two diving suits had recently lain.
After these discoveries, Nace took great care not to mutilate the tracks in the dust.
He lifted one all-metal suit, complete with helmet, and carried it out into the passage, thence toward the dock. He lowered it, reentered the warehouse. In an end stall in the structure, he found a powerful air pump, already set up. No doubt it was there for the purpose of testing diving suits. There was plenty of air hose.
The compressor was operated from an electric motor. It made some little noise when he switched it on. It might be heard at the house. He found an electric lantern, waterproofed for diving use.
He began donning the diving suit. This proved to be something of a task. The rig had not been tailored for a man of Nace’s unnatural height. It was of ample girth, however, permitting him to assume a crouching position.
Nace was basing his procedure on a well-grounded suspicion. Honest John had been in a diving suit, or about to get in one, which meant he had been preparing to enter the water for some purpose. That purpose could hardly have been anything except the securing of the Caroni treasure.
Honest John must have discovered the possessor of the treasure making a dive to see that the hoard was safe, and had been murdered for his pains. No doubt Tammany had been slain for the same reason. The killer, knowing the wet suits would betray the loot hiding place, had gotten rid of them, probably dumping them off the dock.
The Caroni swag, unless Nace’s guess was far wide, was concealed somewhere around the dock, under water.
Nace adjusted the air valves on the suit. The air pump was fitted with automatic controls. It would need no attendant for the short dive that he expected to make.
He closed the thick glass window of his helmet, clumped to a ladder, and laboriously let himself into the water.
The sun was low. The wharf shadow lay over the water where he was descending. This made the depths gloomy. With foresight, he had switched on the electric lantern before starting down. It diffused a pale luminance.
The water was much deeper than he expected. He settled on the mud bottom, began to play his light. Almost at once, he picked up footprints in the mud. They had been made recently — fine mud was suspended in the water in and around each print. Nace followed them.
The trail angled in toward the wharf piling. Nace tugged the air hose carefully behind him. He saw one of the moccasins, swimming under water. Farther in among the pilings, he discerned another. The writhing, repulsive things made him shudder.
A few feet within the forest of piles he found what he had expected.
Several rubberized bags were stacked close together. He grasped one of them with the claw-like pincers which served as hands on the metal diving suit.
Treading slowly, feeling his way back through the fog of mud he had stirred up, he returned to the stair-ladder. He climbed laboriously, the sack clinging to one claw. Reaching the wharf finally, he dropped the bag and began to work upon it with his iron claws.
The rubber-coated fabric was tough. He wrenched at it, tore it.
Pieces of jewelry, many neat bundles of currency, cascaded out. It was beyond a doubt, Caroni’s treasure. The rest would be easy to get. It could await capture of the murderer.
Nace suddenly sensed a faint jarring against the wharf planks. He tried to spin. He knew the jarring was from the slam of feet as men leaped toward him.
Before he got around, a stout manilla rope looped over his shoulders. It snugged. Nace, as clumsy as a pile of scrap iron in the ponderous metal suit, was jerked off his feet. He slammed down with a great rattling and banging.
It was then that he saw his assailants numbered two. Jeck and Zeke! They piled fiercely upon him.
Nace rolled, seeking to get slack in the rope, so he could free his arms. The armored diving suit was a protection against the blow of any fist or club. Jeck and Zeke apparently did not have guns. At least, they were not flourishing any.
Nace lifted a great metal blob of a weighted shoe and crashed it down on Jeck’s foot. The foot flattened out as if it were a meatball that had been stepped on. Jeck screeched, fell, and almost succeeded in tying himself in a knot around his injured foot.
Zeke jumped upon Nace’s steel back, like a gigantic, rusty bullfrog upon a small turtle. He was a bigger man than Nace, possibly stronger. That, coupled with the unwieldiness of the diving suit, kept Nace from arising. He was, in fact, held helpless.
Zeke got hold of the rope and succeeded in securing the awkward metal arms of the diving suit.
“Quit yer whinin’!” he snarled at Jeck. “C’mon and hold this bird in his tin nest! I got somethin’ to try!”
Jeck wailed, “That girl! She got away from us at the house—”
“Never mind her! She ran toward town for help, and it’s more’n a half mile to the nearest house! We got time!”
Zeke left Nace, ran along the wharf, and disappeared in the warehouse. Jeck got up on one foot, hopped over, and sat on Nace. When Nace yelled, Jeck unscrewed the glass window and opened it so he could hear the words.
“You would have done better to keep out of this!” Nace told him. “I was sure you didn’t pull those murders!”
Jeck showed surprise through his pain. “How’d you know that?”
“It was all Zeke, right from the first. There was nobody in the hearse when you grabbed it. That made it pretty certain that Zeke had already ditched the body, killing the filling station attendant while he was doing it. Then he tried to kill me in my office. That showed he was scared of me.
“He telephoned the police that lie about the body, so as to get me in trouble so I couldn’t help the girl. Probably he intended to plant Jud Ogel’s body in my office. I have no proof of that, of course. Neither can I prove that he shot at me and murdered the taxi driver, but he wasn’t with the girl, and he could have done it.