Halt Jaxon rolled his eyes, made faces. “So the note was a come-on!”
“Can the guff! Come on in here!” The Robin Hood made a meaningful gesture with his thumb and a gun hammer.
Gun snouts followed Nace and Jaxon, crowding them to the wall. The blond uncoiled from her chair, closed the door, and stood with her back pressing the panel.
Her blond hair was done in a flat patty on the back of her neck. She slid slender fingers under this, and brought out a tiny derringer, similar to Jaxon’s, but of smaller calibre.
The Robin Hood eyed the small gun with wolfish concentration. “Where’d you get that, sister?”
“From Monkey Ward!”
“Don’t get sassy!”
Nace put in, “Where’s the western chivalry I’ve been hearing about?”
The Robin Hood switched the tall private detective from head to foot with eyes which were unafraid and predatory. He growled, “You behave and keep that mouth shut, and maybe nobody’ll get hurt.”
He came over and slapped Nace’s arm pits, lifted coat tails. Frowning, he searched more intensively. “I’m a son-of-a-gun! You ain’t heeled!”
He fell to examining Nace’s bullet-proof vest. The thing seemed to fascinate him. He thumbed open his own vest and compared it with Nace’s.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked. “I might buy one like it!”
“Made it myself,” Nace advised. “Let’s get down to business.”
“Sure! Sure!” The Robin Hood turned to his two companions. “I want to talk to Nace alone. Take this over-dressed hombre away. Haul him off to that cabin north of Shell Creek. Hold him until you hear from me.”
Jaxon was standing beside a floor lamp. As the two men approached him, he elbowed the lamp violently.
The fixture slammed one man in the face. The fellow ducked back, startled. Jaxon flung upon the other, grasping the gun wrist with both pudgy hands.
The Robin Hood made a growling noise. He slapped his coat violently — two big sixes appeared as if by magic. He hesitated, growled again, then jabbed the guns back out of sight.
He leaped for Jaxon.
The blond, running toward Jaxon, got in the Robin Hood’s way and also in the way of the man the floor lamp had hit. She grabbed Jaxon by the throat and began choking.
Freeing one hand, Jaxon slapped her with the back of his fist. The blow reeled her away. She collided with a chair and went over, tangled with rungs and armrests.
“Beat it!” the Robin Hood rasped at her. “We’ll handle this!”
The blond, still mixed with the chair, fumbled at her nape for the gun under her hair.
Nace, leaping to her, harvested the gun with a single clutch. He pocketed it. Going on, he came up behind the Robin Hood. Both his hands went under the tail of the man’s coat. They grabbed a belt, pulled. There was a snap. Nace’s hands reappeared with the Robin Hood’s gun belt and both big revolver holsters.
The man the lamp had hit drew a gun. Nace flung the captured belt, whip fashion. Both six shooters flew out, but the holsters popped loudly on the man’s face. The fellow squawled, lost his weapon. Nace round-housed a fist to his middle. The man closed like a book.
The Robin Hood was whirling. Nace let knuckles fly at the scarred wolf jaw. They landed squarely.
Arms fanning spasmodically, the Robin Hood reeled toward the window. Unable to help himself, he popped head and shoulders through the sash. He all but fell to his death, eighteen floors below.
The Oklahoma badman wore cowboy boots. Clutching their narrow toes, Nace hauled their owner back in.
Jaxon and his opponent swore, swapped blows, on the floor.
The blond untangled from the chair, ran to a table on which her purse lay and scooped it up. She unclipped it, spaded a hand inside, then shoved purse and hand at Nace and Jaxon.
“Hold it!” she snapped.
Nace promptly jutted his hands above his head. Jaxon tore free of his dazed foe, lurched up and dived at the girl.
Nace tripped him. Jaxon tumbled end over end like a soft ball.
One of the Robin Hood’s men crawled for his fallen gun. Nace, his hand still raised, jumped sideways, and mashed his fellow against the wall.
Ducking, Nace scooped up the gun. Continuing the same movement, he fell behind the bed.
The Robin Hood and his two followers staggered out of the room. The girl followed, banging the door shut.
Jaxon bounced up from the floor, screaming. “You tripped me! There’s ten thousand reward for that guy — and you trip me—”
“I kept you from getting a lead pill!” Nace snapped. Rapidly, he gathered the guns scattered around the room.
When they ran into the hall, an elevator door was sliding shut.
“Gimme one of them guns!” Jaxon yelled.
“To hell with you — hothead!”
Jaxon made faces, ran back into the room.
Nace bore a staccato thumb on the elevator button. Time crawled. A minute! And still no cage came!
“Here they go!” Jaxon squawled from within the room. Nace ran to his side. Jaxon was hanging out of a window. On the sidewalk far below, the Robin Hood, his two men, and the blond, were legging it for a corner.
Jaxon tore at one of the guns in Nace’s hands. Nace held on tightly, would not give it up. The runners below disappeared.
Cursing, his round face purple, Jaxon squealed, “A fine cluck you are! I could have potted the Robin Hood from the window. Damn your hide! Ten thousand reward—”
Nace waved a fist under his nose. “Shut up, or I’ll feed you a mess of knuckles!”
Jaxon squared off belligerently. “Any damn time you feel lucky—”
“Just a newspaper fathead!” The adder scar above Nace’s eyes was red as ink. “You dope! You balled things up!”
“I did like hell!”
“The Robin Hood had something on his mind. He wanted to talk, and I wanted to hear him. But did you give us a chance? Yes, you did — not!”
Jaxon hardened his fists. “I don’t give a damn about that! You wouldn’t come across with the gun! That cost me ten thousand! It burns me up!”
He swung a fist at Nace’s face. Nace rolled back from the blow; his right arm came up; his hard knuckles smacked against Jaxon’s biceps. It was an agonizing blow.
Jaxon yodeled from the pain in his muscles. Nace collared him, hauled him to the door, and gave him the boot.
He slammed the door after the stumbling, enraged oil editor.
Nothing happened for a few seconds; then elevator doors clanged in the hall. Nace looked out. Jaxon was gone.
Going to his canvas zipper bag, Nace carefully replaced the cigars which he had taken out before entering the room. Two were broken. He disposed of these in the bath.
Carrying his bag, he descended in a tardy elevator and left the hotel. He took a cab to the new Union Station, changed to another, and went to a small hotel on Boston.
There was a derrick firm on one side of the hotel, a well-shooter supply house on the other. Walking up two flights, Nace found a room number. He knocked on the door. Silence answered.
Car horns honked in the street below. Over on Main, newsboys were yelling the Telegram.
Nace knocked again, a peculiar signal — two taps, then two more, widely separated.
The blond opened the door.
Chapter III
Drowned in Oil
Nace went in, closed the door. He lowered his bag, then opened it. From it he took a sensitive microphone, fitted with vacuum cups. He stuck this to the door. Wires led from the microphone to an amplifier in the bag, thence to headphones.
The device was a highly sensitive sound pick-up. It would amplify any noise from the corridor a thousand fold. Should anyone approach, the instrument would make the noise like that of an elephant stampeding.