“My looks deceived you, then!” snapped the man.
Jerking, he got loose. He spun and walked rapidly away, eyes staring straight ahead.
Nace glowered after him. On Nace’s forehead, the serpentine scar came out like something faded in by a concealed color camera.
Across the room, red-headed Julia made an impish mouth over her compact.
Nace, drawing deeply on his pipe, let out smoke in dots and dashes.
“Follow that monkey,” he directed.
Julia closed her compact, started away, then turned back abruptly and seemed to find something of renewed interest in the blue ground display.
The scared man had wheeled and was returning.
He stopped in front of Nace, looked about uneasily. No one was close. The girl with the orange dress and orange earrings was still at the other end of the stand. She seemed half asleep.
The frightened man’s voice was a wispy whisper.
“Can I talk to you and be sure it won’t get to the police?” he demanded.
Nace sucked deeply on his pipe. The bowl gurgled, hissed, popped faintly. “That depends.”
The other wet his lips. “Depends on what?”
“On whether I think the cops ought to have you or not.”
The man looked at the adder scar on Nace’s forehead. “But how can I tell—”
“You can’t!”
The other squirmed, swiped nervously at his big gray moustache. Facial expression said he was making up his mind.
“I’ve got to take the chance!” he gulped at last. “I’ve got to do something! I thought of going to the police! I really did! But after that — after what happened to that thing they thought was a meteor, I didn’t dare. They might not have — well, er-r—”
“Quite understood, eh?”
“That’s it.”
“What mightn’t they understand?”
“It’s horrible! So very horrible!” The man was becoming excited. He came closer; his face was almost against Nace’s. “Tell me, did they get a close enough look at that diamond to identify it? I mean — enough of a look that the jeweler who sold it would recognize the gem?”
“No.”
The man was perspiring. “That’s too bad! Too awfully bad! I was in hopes the police would get a clue to the man’s identity!”
Nace nodded as if he understood everything. “What’s this all about?”
The fellow peered narrowly at Nace. “Maybe I had better go to the police with this, after all! It’s big! So very big! And ghastly!”
“You’d better let me be the judge about the police!”
The man glanced to right and left, behind him. “They may be around here! I think I saw two of them a minute ago!”
“Two of who?”
The bristling gray moustache came so close that it almost touched Nace’s face.
“Would you believe me if I told you there was a gigantic plot underfoot?” the fellow demanded. “A plot to steal millions! A plot which even includes the theft of the diamonds in this very room! But it won’t stop there! They have that devilish stuff — the hell heat! It will melt the strongest bank vault as a blow torch melts butter. It will consume the bodies of men, and leave not a trace!”
“It left a trace last night,” Nace pointed out. “There was a human skull and a setting from a ring embedded in that supposed meteor.”
The man squirmed. “They didn’t use enough of it! They were inexperienced. But they know how much to use now. They are liable to be here any time, after these diamonds—”
The girl in the orange-drink stand had been watching — although she was certainly out of earshot. Now she came forward, with a cat speed and silently.
A pepper shaker stood beside a basket of oilpaper-wrapped sandwiches. She scooped this up, twisted it open, dumped the contents in the palm of her left hand.
Leaning far out, she gave Nace a swipe across the eyes with the hand which held the pepper.
Nace clapped both hands over his eyes. The girl had been behind him; had taken him by surprise.
He bent double and lunged violently away from the spot. He heard the orange-stand girl rap excited words.
“C’mon, tall boy!” she called, evidently to the man to whom Nace had been talking. “You and me are going places!”
“I don’t understand!” gulped the tall man’s voice. “Who are—”
“Clam up! C’mon!”
That was all Nace heard. There was no pepper in his eyeballs; he had closed his lids in time. But flakes crammed the tiny wrinkles in his lids and clung to the skin. He dared not open his eyes, or they would begin smarting.
A drinking fountain stood down a passage and around a corner. He had spotted it on his way here. It was a tribute to his sense of direction when he bumped blindly into it.
The fountain, like many others about the Century of Progress grounds, was one which started flowing automatically when one bent over it. The mechanism held a photo-electric cell which caused the water to go on when blanketed by the head-shadow of a drinker.
Nace bent over it. Water gushed against his face, a chill stream. He brushed his face from side to side, washing off the pepper.
Back in the diamond exhibit room, he could hear no undue excitement. Perhaps the pepper throwing incident had passed unnoticed.
Nace washed violently. The delay irked him. But it was necessary. If he did not get all the pepper off, it would be minutes before he could see.
He debated. The girl in the orange stand — obviously she wasn’t what she seemed. But how had she known he was about to get the tall man to tell what he knew?
The pepper all removed, Nace straightened, spun and barged back into the tall man with the moustache.
Nace roved his eyes.
Julia, his red-haired aide, was also gone.
The eerie flush of a serpent glowing redly on his forehead, Nace elbowed for the exit nearest the orange-drink stand. The case of diamonds was a scintillating blaze. A fat man, staring at them, jeered, “I wonder if anybody is sucker enough to think these are the McCoy?”
Nace went on. The gems were real enough. The fat man was fooled by the case. It was as near thief proof as science could make it, but it looked innocent as a cigar case in a corner drugstore.
Reaching an exit, Nace stopped. From where he stood, it was possible to see some several thousand people. Loudspeakers mouthed on poles along the midway, the announcer describing a boat race in the lagoon. No one seemed interested. To the south, an artificial dinosaur in an oil company exhibit was wagging its head and tail and emitting bizarre roars.
The tall man, the girl from the orange stand, red-headed Julia — none were in sight.
Nace, hearing faint movement behind him, stepped sidewise and pivoted. Two men who had been about to grasp his elbows from behind clutched empty air and looked foolish.
“What’s the idea?” Nace demanded sharply.
Both men were stocky, thick. Their combined weight would total near four hundred pounds. The day was hot; not twenty men in sight wore coats. These two wore theirs.
Each dropped a hand to his right hip, under his coat tail.
“Behave yourself, and you won’t get hurt!” one growled.
Nace jutted a long, scowling face at them. “You guys try to pull a circus on me and I’ll make somebody think he got hurt! What’s the idea?”
“We’re the law!” grunted one.
“Police detectives!” echoed the other.
“So what?”
“We want to know what happened in there. What’s up?”
“Search me!”
“Cough up! We saw you pullin’ some kind of an act inside. You gotta explain that, or we’ll throw your pants into the can on suspicion.”