“Have you been watching this house all afternoon?” Nace asked the Robin Hood.
“Go chase yourself!”
“Have you? This is important!”
“Yeah — all afternoon!” the bandit admitted grouchily. “Why?”
“The blond followed you here, and then disappeared. That proves she’s not here — she couldn’t have been brought in without you noticing.”
“How come you know so much about that blond?” the Robin Hood pondered.
Without enlightening the puzzled outlaw, Nace dropped from a window and dived into shrubbery. He angled northeast. Reservoir Hill sloped down there with less abruptness.
Since it was the shag end of the hill, giving only a view of oil wells, a tank farm or two, and numerous long tin oil-well tool supply houses, there were no mansions.
Weeds grew profusely, and to the size of small trees. A single narrow drive, the concrete somewhat cracked, angled down the slope.
Nace ran along the road, eyes downcast. He was taking a long chance — or maybe it was not such a long chance, considering certain deductions he had made.
He soon found what he had hoped for — a car standing in the weeds a few yards from the seldom-used road. It was a limousine, large, the body custom made.
Nace went to it and looked in. It was empty.
“Julia!” he called.
An echo came back at him from the side of Reservoir Hill, but there was no answer. Nace walked a circle around the car, close to it at first, then more distant.
He found crushed weeds, more weeds which had been broken down, then straightened. A trail! He followed it a few yards.
Julia was tied in a ring around a small scrub oak tree — hands and feet lashed together in a ball. She was gagged with a handkerchief and copious quantities of adhesive tape, also blindfolded.
Nace freed her, helped her erect.
“What was it?” he demanded.
She began to describe the two men he had left unconscious in the little brick house out on Eleventh.
“Not that pair!” he said impatiently. “Or did they leave you here?”
“No,” she said. “It was someone else — one man! But I was blindfolded! I can’t tell you a thing about him!”
“O.K. It’s back to town with you!” Nace cocked an eye at the sun. It was some slight distance above the horizon. “Better still, fog out to the airport and grab the Kansas City plane. One leaves in about half an hour!”
“Nix!” she said.
He scowled at her. “Are you gonna be contrary?”
“No!” she explained carefully. “I’m just not going to leave!”
He shrugged, then led the way back up the Hill. Julia bobbed along at his side. The wind stirred her blond hair, and in brushing it out of her eyes, she pulled a handful where she could look at it. She grimaced, “If this stuff don’t wash off — I’ll be a sight!”
She was limping, stiffened as she was by being tied around the scrub oak.
“How’d you find me?” she demanded.
“By using the old bean. They had you, and they couldn’t have taken you to their hangout, because the Robin Hood was watching. So they had to leave you somewhere. I took a chance on it being nearby.”
“Do you know who’s behind this?”
“Sure!” Nace told her. “But don’t ask me who. So far, he’s been too slick for me to prove anything!”
THE Robin Hood and his two companions glared at them when they entered the rambling, blockish brick mansion. Nace had not gagged the trio. Outlaws that they were, they certainly would not yell for help.
The Robin Hood stuttered, “Who — what — for cryin’ out loud!” Then he rolled over on his face and groaned loudly. It had dawned on him that the blond was Nace’s agent. He snarled, “If I ever catch you with a gun—”
Nace looked at the girl. “You heeled?”
She laughed. “Sure! They never found my hideout, and I had no chance to use it!”
Reaching under the patty of blond hair on her nape — it still retained some of its shape — she produced her tiny gun.
“O.K. Watch these cookies!” Nace gestured at the basement. “I’m going down and have a look. There’s a furnace down there, and a fuel-oil tank. The outfit is rigged so that the oil runs though the furnace and is heated, boiler fashion.”
The girl shuddered. “You mean—”
“That this is the joint where the victims have been drowned in oil — or boiled in oil, whichever way you want it.”
She shuddered again. “What gets me is whatever suggested such a means of murder!”
“Simple! Hot oil! Get it? Anybody gets too close to the hot oil, and he gets cooked in the stuff! Every time one of those bodies was found, no one had any trouble understanding what was back of it!”
Nace descended the stairs, entered the furnace room and clambered upon the tank. He was wondering if there might not be a body in it. Apparently there was not.
The tank was so hot he could not bear his touch upon it. He perspired, not entirely from the heat; he was thinking of the boiled body in the house on Eleventh.
Concealed in a recess behind the tank were wires for lowering bodies into the boiling oil, and great bolts of oil cloth to bind the cadavers in afterward, and to spread upon the floor so that there would be no stains.
The cache was in a metal box which fitted in a niche that was disclosed when bricks were lifted out.
There was quite an armament with the other stuff — three army rifles, a half dozen automatics, sawed-off shotguns, and a machine gun. The latter was no diminutive Tommy, firing pistol cartridges, but a full-size weapon chambering long .30-calibre rifle slugs. It was a regulation military gun, airplane type.
Nace was looking at it when the next development came.
“Nace!” the blond called from above. “Watch out!”
Nace scrambled madly off the tank, carrying the machine gun. He ran for the stairs.
There was scuffling above. Before he came in sight of the stairway, he heard feet clattering down it.
Driving a hand inside his coat, Nace brought out one of the cigars. He clamped it between his teeth. Raking a match on a partition, he lighted the weed. He was puffing strongly when he came within sight of the stairs.
Blond Julia stood on the steps. She was struggling, kicking. But she was held quite helpless by the man who was behind her, using her as a shield.
The man wore a long raincoat. His trouser legs were pulled up, so that only his hairy shanks showed below the raincoat. His features were entirely masked by two bandanas, one tied so that it hung behind, and the other in front, perforated with eyeholes. His hands were cased in cotton gloves. One held an automatic.
He pointed the weapon at Nace.
“Drop it!” His voice was hoarse, unreal — a disguised tone.
Meekly, Nace dropped the machine gun. He drew on the cigar and ran a plume of smoke from his nostrils.
“C’mon up here!” he was directed. “And get them hands up!”
Nace followed the orders to the letter.
The Robin Hood and his two satellites still lay on the floor, wired tightly. They glared, cursed in low voices.
“This is the big shot!” snarled the Robin Hood. “The guy who murdered my kid brother!”
“You had no business sending your kid brother punking around to find out who I was!” the masked man growled. Then to Nace, he snapped, “You get over against the wall!”
Nace backed until his shoulders were clamped to the wall. The cigar protruded stiffly from his teeth.
The masked man advanced, menacing Nace with the automatic, shoving the girl ahead of him. He slammed her against the wall, snarled, “You stay there! Behave, and you may live a few minutes longer.”