He snapped at the pipe stem — surprise made his teeth set hard, so hard the tough bakelite broke like gravel.
Something grisly, blinding was happening to the ceiling over the projection booth. It was dissolving, a white-hot, sudden flash, as if it were so much ignited flashlight powder.
He saw a great ball of incandescence swoop downward upon the booth. Heat that seared like flame washed against his face. His eyes pinched shut involuntarily. He heaved around, shouldered through the door.
The hell heat had struck at his life, coming from above, from one of the rooms overhead.
A thought struck him. He spun back, flat on the floor, eyes closed. He crawled a few feet. His hands, groping, gathered in balls of the crumpled paper. He carried them back outside.
The outer exhibit rooms, brilliantly lighted by electronic bulbs, seemed in a twilight after that terrific glare in the television theatre. He brought the paper wads close to his eyes, peered at them.
None were flattened, as they would have been had someone had stepped on them.
A fresh uproar seized the vast exhibit as the new blaze was discovered. Fire apparatus, still on hand from the other two fires, charged the spot.
Nace worked left, mounted stairs. Smoke rolled like living, smudged masses of cotton. He waded through it. The exhibit rooms upstairs were deserted, sucked clean of their throngs by the previous excitement below.
The room above the television theatre booth was occupied by an exhibit of surgical instruments. A vast hole in the center, over the booth, glowed with intense heat.
Nace tapped a coat pocket. The fragment he had chipped from the clinker of strange metal reposed there. He went downstairs again, ducking aside as a fire hose flung spray in his direction. He had an idea what they would find in the projection booth — another of those strange clinkers.
He circled through exhibition rooms, his pace rapid, uneasy. His unusual height enabled him to peer over heads.
He saw no trace of red-headed Julia.
He found a phone, put in a call to his hotel.
“Anyone left word there for Lee Nace?” he asked the girl on the phone board.
“A young lady telephoned a few minutes ago,” he was told. “A young lady who gave her name as Julia.”
“She leave a message?”
“Yes. She said she would be in the room which holds the diamond exhibit at the Century of Progress grounds.”
Nace hung up. He produced a guide book, scraped a finger nail down the list of exhibitors, and found the location of the structure which held the diamond display. It was down the midway a short distance.
Chapter II
The Scared Man
The room was big, done in modernistic metals and woods. The paint scheme was brilliant.
In the center stood a metallic looking block. It was several feet square, perhaps waist high. Atop it was a glass case — the diamond exhibit case.
There was a diamond in the case worth three hundred thousand dollars. There were others almost as valuable. The case was fitted with tear gas. The glass was bulletproof. The gem display would drop automatically into a safe the instant the bulletproof glass was assaulted. Or so a printed sign said.
People milled about, staring at the brilliants, pressing faces against the cases to read the identifying cards. The Century of Progress show was so vast that the three appearances of the mysterious and frightful white-hot flame had not drawn spectators from the diamond exhibit.
Nace lounged in, slouching so that his height would not draw attention.
Julia was across the room, showing interest in a sample of the blue ground from which diamonds were taken. She was very pretty. She was getting, from nearby men, more attention than the diamond exhibit.
Nace produced his stubby pipe. The stem was ruined where he had bitten it. He dug an extra stem from a flat case which held several. Ruining stems was a habit of his; he carried spares always.
He stoked the bowl with tobacco, applied a match. Smoke crawled from his lips. Long puffs; short ones! A close observer might have perceived they were spelling words in the Morse dot-and-dash code.
“What’s up?” he asked with the smoke puffs.
The red-head lost interest in the sample of blue ground. She flipped open her flat pancake compact and went to work on her complexion. There was a bright light over the blue ground exhibit. The compact mirror caught this and tossed a reflected dab of luminance against the ceiling. It winked dots and dashes as the powder puff covered and uncovered the mirror.
“Over in the northeast corner — the man who looks scared,” she transmitted.
Nace removed his pipe, pretended to inspect the bowl. His gaze went on to the scared man.
The fellow was somewhat taller than Nace, which made him not many inches under seven feet. He had a small face, an enormous gray moustache. His dwarf features seemed bunched back of the big moustache. The rest of him was a collection of bones in a well-tailored sack.
His eyes held fear. They roved. His hands strayed nervously. His gaze went frequently to the diamond case, but seemed interested not in the contents, but in the crowd around about.
“O.K.,” Nace puffed, measuring smoke carefully through his lips. “What about him?”
“I saw him acting queer when the big blaze first hit in the other building,” Julia heliographed with her compact mirror. “I tailed him here. He’s got something on his mind.”
“You’ve been watching him all the time?”
“Sure.”
“He didn’t have a try at scragging me in the television theater?”
“He hasn’t been near any television theater!” Julia looked worried. “Has somebody been after you?”
“They’ve been messing around. Keep your eyes open.”
Nace walked over to the man who was scared. He cupped a palm under the fellow’s right elbow. The gesture looked friendly. Actually, it placed Nace in a position to block any effort the man might make at drawing a gun.
“Some trouble, brother?” Nace asked.
The man looked around, down. His eye stuck out a little. He began to tremble. He said nothing.
Nace tugged gently. In a dazed way, the man let himself be guided out of the press around the diamond case. Nace stopped him near a stand that sold an orange drink.
A girl in an orange-colored dress operated the stand. She was big-boned, but not hard to look at. She wore orange-hued earrings.
She came up, asked, “Two?”
Nace nodded, dropped two dimes on the marble and she set out two glasses.
The bony man was studying Nace nervously. He did not touch the orange drink.
The girl in the stand withdrew to the far end. She was fully fifteen feet distant. There was noise in the exhibition room — the conglomerate jumble of voices, loudspeakers, music somewhere.
Only if Nace raised his voice, could the girl overhear.
Nace produced his agency badge, displayed it.
The man trembled more violently, muttered, “The police!”
“What’re you worried about?” Nace questioned.
“I’m not worried!” the man retorted, and shivered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Better spill it!”
The man swallowed rapidly, said nothing.
Nace, deciding the fellow was about to walk off, reached out and took him firmly by the elbow.
“I’m not a cop,” he explained. “I’m a private detective.”
The man braced himself, scowled. “Leggo me, or I’ll hand you something for your jaw!”
“My business is helping people out of trouble,” Nace told him. “You look like a customer.”