The girl rolled over so she could mash her features against the arm of her chair.
Nace trailed downstairs, grim faced. He found the city editor — a youngish man with too much belly — and asked, “Got a back number directory?”
The directory was produced. Nace looked up the number the girl had given him.
“Clarence Oliver,” was the name which followed the number. The address was out on Eleventh. A high number! That meant it was far out.
Nace went back to the P.B.X. girl’s cubby. He had remembered his interrupted conversation with Julia.
The phone operator still sobbed in her chair.
Nace put on her headset and snapped levers. He called, “Hello!” several times but received no reply. Julia had left the wire.
“Did you touch these connections?” he asked the operator.
She shook her head, and tears fell off her chin.
“Keep your trap shut about this!” Nace advised her. “Maybe it’ll come out all right.”
He now called the house from which Julia had talked. A pleasant-voiced old lady — she sounded like an old lady — answered him.
“The blond girl?” the old lady echoed, seeming surprised. “Oh, two men came for her a minute ago, and she left with them.”
Nace turned somewhat pale, the scar on his forehead got proportionally redder. His eyes acquired a frightened look.
“Thank you!” he told the old lady in a thick voice and hung up.
A taxi carried Nace out Eleventh. The machine travelled between forty and fifty, with the horn open. Eleventh was a mixed street. Scattered along it were small stores, greenhouses, root beer stalls, pig stands. There was an ice cream factory and oil-field tool concerns. They passed the Tulsa U. stadium.
Clarence Oliver’s house was a little brick, very neat. The walk was of red concrete. There was a garage to the side, and a tennis court behind.
Watching both windows, Nace ran up the walk. He tried the door. It was locked. He batted the glass out with his fist, turned the spring lock inside and walked in.
The room was loaded with cheap brown furniture, bridge lamps, card tables, a radio. The rug was flowery. All the stuff looked new.
A faint odor reeked in the air. Nace sniffed. He breathed one word, “Oil.”
Nace crossed the room, almost running. The hallway beyond was square; four doors opening off it gave to bath, kitchen and two bedrooms. Nace tried the bath. Nothing there.
He knocked open the end door and found himself in a kitchen, ornate with a white enamel. The oil smell was stronger here, mingling with cooking odors.
A man-sized bundle reposed on the floor, near one wall. It was swathed in canvas. Nace found as he worked over it that underneath the canvas were layers of oilcloth.
Four Winchester rifles had been tied into the bundle to give it stiffness. No doubt the men who had carried it here had wanted it to look rigid, as if it were a piece of furniture.
It was the body of a man. His color was white, parboiled; his clothing was oil-soaked. Nace looked at the face. It was almost unidentifiable. There was a wad of white hair, which might have been a beard which had slipped. A Santa Claus beard.
“App had that kind of a beard!” Nace muttered.
Then he fell to straining his ears. He could hear footsteps out in front, coming up the walk. He went silently to a window.
There were three of them, all strangers. They approached suspiciously.
Nace eased backward quietly and sidled into a bedroom. While the three newcomers tramped on the front porch, Nace worked at his sleeves. He wore cuff links which were oversize, long, and narrow. Under his prying fingernails, tiny secret lids opened in the links. He took out small darts.
The darts were but little larger than pins. The tapering rear ends bore tiny metal vanes to make them travel straight when thrown.
The three men entered the house with the noisy abandon of fellows who felt themselves at home.
“Things don’t look natural around here without Chick!” one remarked.
“I’d like to know exactly what happened to Chick!” muttered another. “Did Nace get him? Or did the Robin Hood?”
“We’ll find out from the evening papers!” grunted a third man. “What we’ve got to do now is get rid of old App’s body.”
They filed past the bedroom door.
Nace threw a pair of his darts in one-two succession. He flung them hard. The men jumped, clapped hands to their arms, swore. Then both reeled crazily and crashed full length on the floor.
Eyes popping, the third man stared at the first two.
“What the hell?” he began. “What ails—”
Nace lunged at him, hands outstretched, fingers splayed. A moment later they were entangled, and rolling on the floor. The man got a gun out of his clothing. Grasping the hand which held the weapon, Nace beat it against the floor. Squealing, the fellow lost his gun.
The next instant, the fellow had produced a knife. The suddenness with which he did this smacked of the supernatural. He struck — the blade zinged across the front of Nace’s bullet-proof vest, opening his clothing.
Nace fell on the knife and hand with his chest. The other was strong, and Nace’s weight was not sufficient to pin him down. The man jerked free, sprang up.
There was only one thing Nace could do. He picked open the secret lid in one of his cufflinks, shook out a dart, and flung it. The other ducked wildly. But Nace had calculated on that. The dart thorned into the fellow’s face.
Almost at once, the man crashed down.
Nace scowled at the recumbent form. He had not wanted to use that third dart. He had hoped to question one of the men. But now all three would be unconscious at least two hours. The darts were daubed with a drug which produced a stupor lasting that long. Nothing, as far as Nace knew, could revive the men before the two-hour interval was up.
Nace began searching his victims. He turned up money, keys, soiled handkerchiefs. After the fashion of crooks, they were carrying nothing which would identify them.
A coat pocket disgorged an object which caused Nace to spring erect and swear thickly. He turned the thing in his hand. It had an ugly significance. It could have come into the possession of these men in only one fashion — with the capture of its owner.
It was the girl’s flat pancake compact.
Chapter V
The Hilltop Prowl
Nace ran to the telephone. The number he requested was the one from which the blond had called — the house at the foot of Reservoir Hill. The wait which followed was so long that he began to think he was not going to get his party. But the pleasant-voiced, elderly lady finally answered.
Nace asked for a description of the two men with whom Julia had departed. In return, he received an accurate word picture of two of the trio who lay unconscious in the room in which he stood.
“Thank you!” he said, and hung up.
He bent over the three, shook them angrily, knowing however that it was useless. That they had seized the girl, there was not the slightest doubt. But it would be two hours before anything could be done toward making them tell where they had taken her.
Nace went to the tennis court in the back yard. With his pocket knife he stripped off the thin, strong cords which supported the net. Carrying these back into the house, he bound the three senseless men. He tied efficient gags between their jaws, then plastered these over with adhesive tape which he found in the bathroom.
There was a small basement under part of the house. It held only a gas-burning furnace. He left his prisoners there.