“When he came back here, the first thing he did was to look and see if his treasure was safe. Honest John and Tom Tammany saw him doing that, and he killed them both. Then he tried to potshoot me and the girl. He probably threw the rifle he had used into the lake. And he claimed he had been following you so as to draw suspicion from himself. You’d better be wise, Jeck, and let me go!”
Before Nace’s argument could get results, Zeke reappeared. He carried a great, writhing, poisonous water moccasin, gripping it just back of the head.
Leaning over Nace, Zeke gritted, “I’m gonna put this thing in the suit with you! That’s what I done with the girl’s nosey brother, when he caught me lookin’ at my swag. Then I’m gonna close your suit up tight and reverse the air pumps. They’ll suck all the air from your suit. Your eyes and tongue will stick out. You’ll look like hell when they find you! Like Jud Ogel looked!”
“I figured that’s the way you did it!” Nace told him hatefully.
“How come you figured that out?”
“That purple beak of yours showed you were a diver. Most old-time divers have schnozzles like that. It’s the pressure that does things to the fine blood vessels under the skin. You being a diver, it was natural you’d think of a stunt like this taking pressure out of a diving suit to do your murdering.”
Zeke shoved the moccasin’s head close to the helmet opening. It was so near that Nace shrank back to avoid its darting tongue.
“You ain’t gonna do much more fine deductin’!” Zeke grated.
Red-headed Julia Nace came racing out of the warehouse. She held a revolver — one of Sergeant Gooch’s police specials. She ran in a semicircle.
While Zeke still gawked at her, the revolver cracked flame.
Before Nace’s face, the head of the moccasin disappeared as if by magic. The bullet had shattered it.
Zeke straightened, yelling. He flung the only weapon at hand — the snake. It gyrated, contorting in the air, toward the girl. She ducked from the hideous thing in spite of herself.
Zeke rushed her. She shot at him. Missed! She fired again, and the bullet tore flesh from his shoulder. Then his fist caught her on the jaw and she dropped as if poled. She hit the wharf hard and did not move a muscle.
Whirling, Zeke ran back. Halfway to Nace, an idea seemed to hit him. He sprang upon Jeck, gibbering, striking with his fists.
Jeck went down, knocked unconscious. Zeke rolled Jeck on his face. Then he backed away, took a running jump and came down with both feet in the middle of Jeck’s back. There was a sickening pop as Jeck’s spine broke. He must have died instantly.
Zeke screamed madly, “By hell, there ain’t nobody gonna get a split of that swag! I bombed the salvage boat so I’d be the one to get it in the first place! I’ve had to kill men since to keep it! I’ll kill a few more! That woman, too!”
He leaned down, grasped the window of Nace’s suit, preparing to close it. He could not resist one last boast.
“I’ll reverse the pump and it’ll suck the air out of your suit! That’ll fix you! I altered that pump especially for these sucking jobs!”
Then he jumped, howled, and clapped both hands to his eyes. He weaved back wildly, pawing at his face. He came blindly to the edge of the wharf and plunged over.
There was a loud splash. A silence! Then more splashes. Zeke began screaming. His voice was horrible.
“I can’t swim! Help! I can’t—”
An ominous guggle-guggle-guggle ended that. There was no more noise. Zeke had drowned.
Nace lay in silent agony. He opened a tear gas bomb that he had the foresight to carry inside the diving suit.
Thirty minutes later, he was rubbing his eyes and confronting the red-headed girl and Sergeant Gooch. The red-head had regained consciousness, unhurt except for an aching jaw.
They had found Sergeant Gooch bound securely in the house.
Gooch was growling, “Them two came to an understanding, then they grabbed me—”
“They wouldn’t have come to an understanding if you hadn’t left them alone while you tried to third degree me!” the red-head snapped.
Gooch flushed under his blue beard stubble. “I thought—”
“I doubt it!” said the girl. “I haven’t seen you show any signs of being able to think!”
Nace eyed her steadily. “Say, are you going ahead with this salvage business that your father ran?”
She hesitated. “No. Why?”
Nace grinned widely. “For years, I’ve been looking for a woman assistant. You’ve got everything it takes. How’d you like the job?”
“I think I’d go for that in a big way!” she said promptly.
“Fine! We’ll show these New York cops some things!”
Sergeant Gooch emitted a forlorn groan.
The Tank of Terror
Grim and horrible were those warnings of the Big Boss. They were found in automobiles, office buildings and in homes. They were the mutilated corpses of men boiled in oil. And they told the Oklahoma police not to be too inquisitive. Into this hotbed of horror came Lee Nace to buck a triple-decked deal of the Big Boss — a reward-hungry newspaperman — and the two-gun Robin Hood of the oil company.
Chapter I
Hot Oil
She was tall, blond, streamlined. The roadster was long, cream-colored, and also streamlined.
She was making motions at powdering her nose, using a pancake compact with a mirror fully four inches across. She held it braced against the steering wheel.
Utter concentration rode her long, beautiful face. The big, flat powder puff dabbed the compact with strangely erratic frequency. It slapped only the mirror — never the powder cake.
Oklahoma sunlight, white and hot, sprayed blond and roadster. To the right, it cooked evergreen stucco buildings of the Tulsa Municipal Airport. To the left, it toasted flat classroom and barrack structures of a school of aeronautics.
In spasms, the sun leaped from the blond’s compact mirror. Her powder puff, whipping systematically, was dividing the beam into dots and dashes.
On hands and knees beside the airport waiting room, Lee Nace crawled. He was very long, bony, blue-eyed. He was gathering together the wind-scattered sheets of a letter.
Standing and staring at Nace were six or seven people who had been his fellow passengers on the recently arrived New York plane.
They were fascinated by the scar on Nace’s forehead. It was a perfect likeness of a small coiled snake — an adder. A Chinaman had once hit Nace in the forehead with a knife hilt which bore a serpent carving, and he was destined to forever carry the scar.
Ordinarily the scar was unnoticeable. But it flushed out redly when he was angry or worried. He was worried now.
Inside the ornate, modernistic waiting room, a male voice was shouting: “Telegram! Wire for Private Detective Lee Nace! Telegram!”
Nace continued picking up the sheets of his letter. He pretended to read each. When he had spilled the sheets, he had taken pains to make it seem an accident.
Slyly, over the paper, he read the heliograph message being flashed by the blond’s compact mirror.
“A reception committee!” she sun-flashed. “Three of them, man with the telegram is one. The other two are wearing coveralls — to hide bullet-proof vests.”
Nace captured two more sheets of his letter, pretended to read, but kept his eyes on the mirror.
“The one with the telegram is ‘Robin Hood’ Lloyd,” the girl continued. “He’s Oklahoma’s bad boy.”
She ended her transmission.