In the rear of the room, the undertaker uncovered a cadaver.
The dead man was tall, lean. His skin, where the oil had not been wiped off, was strangely white. Fingernails, hair, eyebrows — all were gone.
Nace studied the long, sharp features. Somehow, they struck him as vaguely familiar.
“Hot oil got this one!” he said. “And I don’t mean stolen oil, either!”
“The oil must have been scalding hot!” the undertaker agreed. “That’s what made his hair and fingertips slip.”
“Have the others been like this?”
“You mean scalded? Sure!”
Once more Nace squinted at the features of the dead man. He could not get rid of the idea he had seen the fellow before.
“O.K.,” he told the undertaker.
He went back, and stopped in front of the crap shooters bouncing dice against the body. He scowled at them.
“Cut it out!”
The dicers glared at him. “Who the hell’re you?”
“Cut it out!” Nace said, and beetled his brows.
The trio scowled, changed feet. The strange crimson scar on Nace’s forehead seemed to disquiet them. Then they gathered up their dice and went out, trying to maintain a dignity.
Disgust rode heavy on Nace’s long, bony face.
The undertaker began, “What was the idea—”
“When you’re dead, do you want three guys bouncing dice off your ribs—”
From the direction the three dice rollers had taken, came gasps, low cries of surprise.
“Stand still, you monkeys!” gritted an ugly voice.
Nace came to life like an electrical machine switched on. He dived for the door, whipping out his tear-gas firing cylinder. Reaching the door he got a glimpse of a man — a man he had never seen before. The fellow had a bulky, shapeless body, a long neck, and a chicken-like head.
He carried an automatic shotgun, the barrel sawed off at the magazine.
Nace shoved out the tear-gas cylinder and let it bang. Squawking, the man with the shotgun clutched at his eyes with one hand. With his other hand he slapped the automatic shotgun against his hip. He pulled the trigger three times.
The gun was ear-splitting. Across the morgue room other explosions crashed like echoes. Holes the size of washtubs opened magically in the wall. Plaster, lath, and bits of brick rained. Marble slabs upset on their stands.
Nace jumped clear of the door. Now he retreated further, dragging the undertaker.
The shotgun was firing explosive slugs. They were capable of tearing a man to pieces.
Nace ran to a window. It was frosted glass. He boosted it up and dropped outdoors.
He waded through flower beds, leaping high, and circled the house.
The shot-gunner came out of a side door. He was blinded by the tear gas, feeling his way. He carried his automatic weapon in one hand.
Nace chopped knuckles at the gunner’s elbow. Pain reaction caused the man to release his gun. Nace sprang upon him.
They rolled briefly on the ground, grunting, swapping blows. Then Nace stood erect, his foe unconscious and cradled in his arms. Stooping again, he picked up the shotgun.
The fight, the shots and explosions, had excited the neighborhood. Heads were hanging out of windows. A few pedestrians, positioned close to trees, stood and stared.
Glancing about, Nace saw a small flivver touring which had been parked there since he entered the funeral home. He ran to it.
On the front floorboards, covered by a gunny sack, lay a dozen extra explosive shotgun slugs.
Nace propped his burden in a seat of the little car. He tossed the automatic shotgun in the rear. Then he went to the touring. He ramped the starter. The engine began to chatter, shimmy the fenders, and shake the steering wheel in his hand. He meshed gears and drove away. A bit later, he was guiding the flivver down a tree-canopied avenue of residences.
From time to time, Nace reached over and slapped his slumbering companion. The man was slow to awaken. Opening his zipper bag, as he drove, Nace dug out liquid ammonia in little cloth-covered glass phials. He broke one of these under the man’s nose. The fellow eventually sneezed, grimaced, and began to paw about aimlessly.
“Who sent you and your artillery after me?” Nace demanded.
The man made mumbling animal noises. He was still a little beyond speech.
Nace looked back. A small coupe seemed to be following him. He could not make out the driver. Nor could he be entirely certain that the car was on his trail.
He reached over to sting his companion into wakefulness with another slap.
A cream-colored roadster lunged out of a side street. Angling over expertly, it sideswiped Nace’s flivver. The little car, knocked out of control, jumped at a tree.
By springing suddenly erect, Nace kept his face from hitting the windshield as the car struck. His chest met the glass. It caved; he slid across the hood. His shoulder jarred the tree, and he tumbled to the ground, only slightly dazed.
Skidding all four wheels the cream-colored roadster had stopped as soon as it side-swiped the flivver.
The flivver was up on the curb, leaving plenty of room underneath. Into this space Nace crawled.
Glimpsing the feet of a man who had dropped out of the roadster, Nace wriggled for them. The feet were encased in cowboy boots. Hooking both hands about the boots, Nace pulled. There was a single profane bark and the owner of the boots sat down heavily.
It was Robin Hood Lloyd.
Nace tried to haul him under the flivver. The Robin Hood drew a heavy frontier six. But he made no effort to shoot.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “Why don’t you carry a rod!” He tried to bat Nace in the face with his gun.
Nace dodged back and pulled harder. The Robin Hood came sliding under the flivver.
The fight which followed, Nace was always to remember. The Robin Hood battled with fists and his revolver. He kicked, gouged, bit. Anything went. Nace returned all he received. They bruised themselves against the flivver chassis and against the concrete curb.
Then the chicken-headed man entered the fray. He crouched down and looked under the car. He had secured his automatic shotgun from where Nace had placed it in the flivver seat. Deliberately, he aimed at Nace.
Glimpsing the man, Robin Hood Lloyd threw up his six. Its boom seemed violent enough to blow the flivver off their backs.
The shot-gunner sagged, leaking scarlet from a blue-rimmed pit which had suddenly appeared directly between his eyes.
Nace and the Robin Hood separated as if by mutual agreement. They crawled out on different sides of the roadster and stood erect.
“Before I’m through with this, I’m gonna beat hell out of you!” the Robin Hood snarled. “But not now! I hear old Ebenezer App has been kidnapped! Anything to it?”
Nace hesitated briefly. “Yeah. And just before it happened, App found out who is heading the hot-oil ring!”
“Thanks!” Backing swiftly, the Robin Hood climbed into his roadster. The engine was running and the car got under way quickly. It volleyed off in the direction of town.
A few seconds later Nace saw a coupe pass the corner on a side street, a block distant. The tree shadows made it impossible to tell who occupied the machine. But it was the same coupe which had tailed Nace.
Nace ran around the flivver. One glance told him the man with the shotgun was dead. Getting his zipper carryall from the car, Nace set out across the back yards. He ran the first few blocks, then slowed down to a walk as he neared the business district. Excitement was noticeable in the Telegram Building when he entered. In the glass enclosed circulation room off the lobby, groups of clerks stood under a Santa Claus picture of App and talked. The pretty elevator operators were flushed and perturbed.