Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

In the cellar of the mystery house Hal fights a madman and his murderous slave.

What Has Gone Before

Benjamin Hearn, Charles Murray, his partner in a company constructing a clam, and their attorney, Howard Evans, have each received a mysterious card bearing a double cross. They know that it is a threat from an old enemy.

That night Howard Evans’s house is burned to the ground; Evans is murdered. Hal Evans, his son, Mrs. Evans, and Dan Bottis, a loyal chauffeur of the dead man, go to the Hotel Belmore, where Captain of Detectives McCoy interviews Hal.

Hal tells the captain about the strange card, but when he wants to show it to him, discovers that it has disappeared.

McCoy enlists the aid of his friend, Christopher Morgan.

While Hal is away from the hotel, his mother vanishes. Morgan learns that Mrs. Evans went away with a man, and took the jewels that she had deposited at the hotel safe. Apparently she had been lured by a forged note purporting to have come from Hal.

On the heels of this comes news of two fresh disasters. The dam has been blown up. And Hearn is found murdered.

Hearn is throttled by the unknown.

Dorothy Hearn, his daughter, is robbed of her jewelry by a man with huge hands and a luminous death’s head face.

McHenry, foreman at the dam, comes to New York with his wife and takes a room across from Hal Evans’s.

Morgan learns from the police record that a former partner of Hearn and Murray, named Wallace, had been swindled by the pair shortly after the latter’s marriage to a chorus girl. The girl had later divorced Wallace, married a Levantine named Papaniotis, and subsequently had left him.

Murray is shot in Hal’s hotel room by the man with the luminous face, and Hal is attacked.

Hal is kidnaped by the avenger, who turns out to be the man Wallace, now “McHenry.” Chained to a stone wall, Hal is forced to listen to a terrible tale of misfortune which Wallace, half mad, pours into his ears. Wallace thinks that Hal’s father had been instrumental in his downfall, and is going to exact vengeance from Hal.

Dorothy Hearn also falls into Wallace’s hands.

Chapter XXIII All But One

Some time later, Hal came to his senses, stimulated by a vague feeling of urgency that he could not define. The muscles of his shoulders and back had stiffened and felt horribly sore when he tried to move.

Suddenly, in the darkness, he became aware of a hand on his arm and a voice in his ear.

“Hal!” came the whisper again.

The fog that lay over his senses lifted and cleared.

“Dan! How did you get here? Have you brought the police?”

“Police nothing. There wasn’t time.”

“Can you get out again? If you can, go for help! McHenry is the murderer. He’s Wallace. He’s mad as a hatter. Find Morgan and McCoy and bring them — bring plenty of men—”

“Think I’ll leave you here?” whispered Dan savagely. “I saw what you got! Gawd knows how long that monster had been at it—”

“You’re wasting time! Go for help!”

“I can’t, Hal! I came in your car. It’s out of gas. Dunno where I am. By the time I get back you might be — I got it! I came in the window. I can climb out and haul you after me! Can you stand on your feet?”

“Maybe I can, but I won’t. The man’s mad, Dan! He’s got some scheme to revenge himself on Dorothy Hearn. If he plans to abduct her, he will. He’s infernally clever. He’ll bring her here. I can’t leave her to be tortured without a friend in the place! Go for help and you can save us.”

“I’ve told you I can’t go and get back in time. No gas. The car’s way off on a side road, Lord knows where.”

Hal felt ready to burst with exasperation.

“Have you got a gun?” he hissed furiously.

“I just had time to follow you! Thought it was fishy the way McHenry hung around without doing anything. Saw him look at you once, when you weren’t looking—”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“No use. You wouldn’t have taken no stock in it! But I knew you wouldn’t shoot a man and then run. So I left the lobby and hung around outside. Didn’t know what to think.”

“Nor how to think, either!” said Hal.

“Yeah? Well, when that wheel chair came out right after the murder I did some thinking! I looked at the trunk and saw the air holes along the top of it. I did some thinking then, when I guessed you were in that trunk! You would of thought it was a rabbit — and not been so far out, either—”

“How did we get here, and where the hell are we?”

“I got your car started. When the taxi pulled away, I followed. Going up through the park it was stopped all of a sudden; I guess by the party inside. There was a big car near and I saw that thing in the taxi get out. The taxi went on and they took the trunk away from the road.

“After a while the driver of the big car and whoever it was in the taxi came back with you between them. They left the trunk, I guess. But they lifted you in the big car and got in themselves, and drove away—”

“You never thought of picking up a policeman and having him stop the car?” whispered Hal with sarcasm.

“I was too far away to be sure the figure they carried was you! And if I tried anything like that they might of got away. That car was faster than yours. Wonder you wouldn’t keep yours with gas in!”

“Go on,” whispered Hal.

“I followed that car way uptown and around for a while, and then clear back down again. It was a big, blue car. Guess it was the one that Brooks got your mother in. It stopped on a corner and McHenry got in. I was way behind, luckily. Then the car beat it out toward Yonkers.

“Once past Harlem it stuck to side roads for miles. I had to dim the lights and I sure bumped around, trailing their tail light. It crossed the main Hudson road. Then I ran out of gas and had to stop.”

“That’s funny — that you had to stop!”

“Is it? Well, I left the car pointing the way I had come, hoping the police would find it. I ran ahead a while and there was the river in front and no side road and no car! I galloped around in bigger circles, over fences and through bushes until l saw a light. It was this window. I crawled up to it in time to see that guy pasting you with that rope—”

“All right,” whispered Hal. “Now, for the last time, will you get out of here and go for help?”

“Not without you,” retorted Dan obstinately. “Think I’ll leave you here alone to get beaten up again?”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Hal, “give me strength to deal with this dumb egg! All right, then, stay here and get shot for your pains! If any one comes, roll under the bed. If it’s the black man you lie still. He’d break you in two. If it’s McHenry alone, I’ll jump him and you grab his feet when I whistle. Maybe he carries a gun. We’ll have to get that away from him—”

“I’ll handle him if I can get my hands—”

At that moment, from a distant part of the cellar, came despairing cries that rose steadily until they became broken screams. Both Hal and Dan felt a coldness along their spines. The voice was that of a man beside himself with pain and terror.

They listened until the shrieks died away, listened still, in awed silence, until, faint at first, but growing louder, they heard the shuffle and check of footsteps upon stone. Almost without a sound, Dan rolled under the cot. Some one fumbled at the door. Then the light flashed on.

Hal turned his head slowly. Wallace and Nimbo were in the room and approaching him. Wallace was empty handed. The Nubian carried a tray with two dishes of gold and a thin-stemmed wine glass. He set them on the table within easy reach of Hal. One plate bore a piece of dirty bacon rind, the other some moldy crusts of bread. The glass was full of muddy water.

Wallace seated himself on the end of the table. Nimbo stood at his side.

“I’ve brought you the sort of banquet my daughter enjoyed for eighteen years,” explained Wallace evenly. “You were whipped to-night as she was whipped. She is dying, so Nimbo took toll of revenge for her. The debt is a heavy one and will take some time to pay, Evans.”

“It won’t take long on this sort of food,” said Hal. “Who else have you been torturing just now?”

“I told you that my daughter Gloria is dying. It is only a matter of hours. I think Papaniotis has satisfied himself of her approaching dissolution and therefore of his own, because when she dies I will kill him. Though Nimbo has beaten him almost every day, he seems to cling to life. But Gloria does not. He has not made life attractive to her.”

Again Hal sensed an abyss of suffering beneath the pitiless voice. Despite his own wrongs, he felt a certain respect for this broken-hearted madman with his iron self-control.

“That’s — pretty tough,” he admitted. “Even if my visit here hasn’t been particularly entertaining, I’m glad my father had no hand in your troubles.”

Wallace lifted one eyebrow in ironical disbelief as he glanced about the room.

Suddenly his regard grew fixed, then flashed back upon his prisoner. Hal guessed that he had seen the cellar window hanging open a little from the top. Hal returned his stare blankly, but Wallace was not deceived.

He drew a revolver and laid it across his knees, at the same time motioning toward the window.

“That should have been nailed up,” he rasped. “Our guest is not as weak as he looks. See to it!”

Grinning anxiously, the Nubian rolled his eyes at the revolver and hurried out of the cell. Soon he was back again with a hammer and a dozen long nails which he drove in the sash.

Lacking leverage from the inside, it would be impossible now to open the window, even if the glass was broken. The panes were too narrow for the passage of a man’s body through the space they occupied.

And Wallace had two prisoners instead of one, though he did not know it.

Nimbo returned to his master’s side. To attack Wallace during the black’s absence had been out of the question because of that ready revolver.

“You complain of your entertainment,” observed Hal’s captor. “Would you like to hear how my revenge was accomplished? It was difficult and intricate, but successful.”

Hal nodded shortly. He hoped that both Nimbo and the revolver might disappear during the narrative, giving him a chance at Wallace.

“I planned the work long in advance,” began his captor. “My position at the dam was important for its contact with Hearn, but more important to avert suspicion.

“In order to use it as an alibi it was necessary to be in two places at once, so far as the usual methods of transportation are concerned.

“I bought a seaplane and learned to fly. In the wild country above the site of the dam there is a little lake. I hid the plane there before I became ‘McHenry.’

“In this way I was able to carry Nimbo from above the dam to the inlet near your home last Saturday night and arrive early in the evening. There was the symbol to leave and we had to make other preparations.

“After the house had been fired we went back to the plane and reached our little lake before daylight. So far as the workmen knew, I had never left the dam.”

Hal’s grief and rage returned full flood. It cost him a violent effort to hold his tongue.

“Sunday night we blew up the dam. Monday evening we removed Hearn. After his death, the police permitted me to leave for Buffalo to visit my ‘sick wife.’ I made for the plane instead. Nimbo had reached it ahead of me—”

“How did he get away from the dogs?”

“He walked in the stream for a few yards and then took to the trees. His arms are strong, as you may remember.”

“Sort of missing link,” said Hal with a savage glance at the Nubian.

Nimbo stared back at him blankly.

“We came down on the Hudson that night, not far from here. The next day I drove into town for your mother. That was Tuesday—”

“How did you know where to find her?”

“One of my agents met me at your home Saturday night and followed you into town Sunday morning.”

“Don’t see why the police let you leave the dam Monday night — right after you murdered Hearn.”

“I had another agent in Buffalo, Evans. He wired me to hurry to the bedside of my mythical invalid wife. I had only to show that wire to the police.”

“And the same man wired from Buffalo asking for quiet rooms for you in New York!” Hal exclaimed.

“Almost obvious — now that you know,” replied Wallace with a faint sneer. “To continue. We drove your mother to a place of safety. Later we returned to New York to get Dorothy Hearn’s jewels. I found them myself, just before she woke. But I slipped out of the window while she was staring at Nimbo’s luminous skull.

“It was touch and go that night. We had to work fast. But I got back to the plane in time to reach the lake, the dam and the inquest in Barton the following morning. I left Nimbo behind to prepare for his part on Wednesday afternoon. It was all play to him. He does not know what fear means.”

“He will,” muttered Hal.

“I doubt it. By the way, I trained him to stand on a chair if any one except his victim could see him. I wanted the police to think they had a definite clew and look for a man of great height as well as strength.”

“We gathered that,” Hal retorted.

“Did you? How interesting. As regards Hearn, I knew that he had skimped on cement and would wish to examine the damage alone. It was simple to post Nimbo at the top of the dam, where the concrete was faulty. When Hearn got up there, Nimbo throttled him, pinned the symbol on his chest, and flung him to the bed of the stream. I wished the crash of his body to distract attention and give Nimbo more time to get clear. As I led the pursuit and did the firing, I was pretty sure he would not be hit. Of course he escaped.”

“For the moment,” retorted Hal.

Wallace chose to ignore the prophecy.

“My agent in Buffalo,” he continued, “wired McCoy that I would leave Barton after the inquest and take the train to New York. I did so.

“In the meantime, my New York agent drove Nimbo to a station where my train would stop. We came to New York together and accepted the suite opposite yours—”

“You mean that your nervous wife was — Nimbo?” cried Hal. “You smuggled him into the hotel—”

“Of course. My ‘wife’ was supposed to have a terrible skin disease. So Nimbo could keep out of sight and I could bandage his face and hands when the waiters came in. Huddled in a wheel chair, his bulk was hardly noticeable.”

“You must have enjoyed my sympathy,” said Hal.

“Or your stupidity. That empty suite seemed a gift from the gods. The god of vengeance, perhaps—”

“Next comes Murray. He was shrewd enough to guess his danger and guard his person. I did not dare risk Nimbo in a direct attack on him. Then came that matter of the contract. Another gift from the god of vengeance! What I overheard you say to Murray over the phone, and what you afterward told me, showed me how to get Murray away from his men.

“When I left the hotel that afternoon, I phoned you, as Burke, telling you to stay there all evening. Then I phoned Murray that you wanted to see him. Later, I sent Morgan and McCoy on a wild-goose chase to Long Island — to find a double cross waiting for them.

“It was probable that you would take Murray upstairs to discuss your misunderstanding and that he would leave his guards in the lobby. Nimbo was waiting behind our door. He had the automatic which we had taken from your room the night before, when we got the contract.

“Nimbo shot Murray, throttled you, dragged you into our suite and locked you up in the big empty trunk we brought with us for that purpose—”

“You got me out of the hotel in a trunk?” demanded Hal quickly. Dan had already told him so. But Dan was not supposed to be hiding under his cot at that moment.

“Of course. Nimbo left the automatic to incriminate you. Your disappearance would look like flight. The police would believe you guilty, at least until after we escaped.”

“But how did you escape?”

Wallace nodded toward the big Nubian.

“My ‘wife’ was supposed to be highly neurotic. I explained that the shots and subsequent excitement had almost brought on a stroke and it was vital to get her away. The police let me send her and her trunk to a nursing home. An hour later, Morgan himself let me get away to see that she was comfortable. He will be annoyed with himself to-morrow, when I fail to appear at his office.”

Wallace paused for a moment.

“So here we are,” he concluded — “all but one.”

“What do you mean?” cried Hal, although he guessed.

“Your little friend, Dorothy Hearn, owes a debt,” replied his captor.

“Why? What has she done? If you dare touch her—”

“Well?” inquired Wallace tonelessly.

“I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!”

“You mentioned that before, I think. Her payment begins to-morrow — here.”

Chapter XXIV The Shuffle of Feet

Hal’s thoughts raced. Too much confidence might lead Wallace to suspect Dan’s presence. He tried pleading.

“But there’s no sense in it! She’s never done you any harm. Why punish her?”

“So far as I know, my tiny children had never done any one any harm. Yet they suffered horribly — for eighteen years — all through their childhood and youth.”

“What’s that got to do with Dorothy Hearn?”

“They are my children. Hearn made them suffer. Dorothy Hearn is his daughter. There still remains a debt from his family to mine — what is left of it.”

“That’s not sense. It’s madness! What about mother?”

“I shall release your mother,” replied Wallace evenly. “She profited by your father’s treachery to me. But she has lost her money and she’s going to lose her son. You and Hearn’s daughter will pay most of your debt elsewhere. Your mother has suffered and will suffer enough.”

Between rage and dread, Hal had to fight for control of himself. He almost lost the struggle.

“It’s all lies!” he shouted. “You’re not Wallace! You’re Irish! You’re McHenry — a sore employee—”

His captor studied him keenly.

“You want all the facts? You’d like to denounce me later, eh? But you believe my story. Have it so.

“In twenty years of wandering I made by bread in many ways. I was on the stage for a while. The part of an Irishman is easy to play. The part of that ignorant, suspicious sailorman who befooled Papaniotis was much more difficult. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

Hal shook his head slowly.

“You’re insane, of course,” he declared, “or you’d know that you can’t heal old scars by making new ones. There’s something in the Bible about vengeance. Maybe you know it.”

Wallace stood up and pocketed his revolver.

“The Lord had His chance for eighteen years, Evans. But He let my children suffer. Now ‘Vengeance is mine’! I think that’s all between us for to-night.”

He walked out of the cell. Nimbo followed, snapped off the light and bolted the door behind him.

Hal lay still. His back hurt him terribly. But it was forgotten in the torment of his thoughts.

His mother was a prisoner of this madman, who might or might not keep his word to free her. Hal had little doubt that Wallace would capture Dorothy, despite Morgan and McCoy, judging by the devilish ingenuity he had already shown. He and Dan were unarmed — helpless as yet—

If Dan had only gone for help—

A bump and a muffled curse focused his attention elsewhere.

He lifted himself painfully on one elbow. Dan was crawling from under the bed.

“Maybe we can’t get out,” muttered Dan. “But you wanna stay, don’t you?”

Hal dropped on his face with a stifled groan.

“You win the cut glass bath mat, you long eared, wall-eyed, pig headed ass!” he whispered.

“Is that so!”

“And there’s your bray! Well, climb up on this bed and see if you can lay your ears back and kick out these bars overhead. If you step on my back, I’ll pull you apart!”

Dan climbed obediently, fumbled about and shook the bars until the bed creaked under him.

“Not a chance,” he whispered.

Dan stepped off the bed. He felt his way to the door, explored its surface, tested the bolt and returned.

“Nothing doing there,” he said. “But it’s got a bolt on the inside. We could keep ’em out—”

“Sure! While they smoke us out — or starve us to death. You’re mother’s little helper, you are!”

With a sore back, a raging thirst and a sense of utter helplessness, Hal was letting go a little.

“Anybody that didn’t know you,” muttered Dan resentfully, “ ’ud think you was kinda irritated!”

Hal gasped and lay still.

“Well,” he muttered at last, “here’s half the bed. Might as well get some sleep. Maybe Wallace will give us a chance at him alone to-morrow. If we can get his gun and bolt the door, you can keep the others away from the bars and the window...”

“I’ll sleep under the bed,” Dan broke in.

He arranged Hal’s coat over his sore back, took off his own and crawled into hiding.

Luckily, the summer night was so warm that the cellar was not uncomfortably cool.

Shock and exhaustion spared Hal an awakening to his plight until midday. Dan woke earlier, ravenous with hunger. But he kept as quiet as possible, anxious to let his companion sleep and regain his strength.

At noon, Nimbo unbolted the door and flung it open, rousing Hal. The big Nubian shuffled into the room. After him entered a grizzled, hard-eyed individual with a wealth of tattooing on his bare arms. He carried a tray of dishes and a coffee pot. Nimbo removed the dishes with their mocking contents. The sailor set his tray on the table with a crash.

Nimbo grinned vacantly at Hal and the two tramped out again. The door closed. The bolt shot home.

Hal sat up quickly, stared at the tray and sniffed. Unless both sight and smell deceived him, here was a real breakfast: coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon frizzled by an expert, a covered dish that might mean toast—

Dan’s head and long lean neck were thrust, turtle-fashion, from under the cot.

“Food!” he croaked.

Hal reached for the tray, then drew back.

“Food it is. But why — after that other muck? Drugs? Disease germs? Damn Wallace!”

“If you’re gonna let a little thing like that spoil your appetite,” muttered Dan, “lemme taste it—”

“Nothing doing. You’re my ace-in-the-hole if Wallace comes in alone. I’ll taste it myself—”

He did so, since Dan could not scramble out in time to prevent him. There seemed nothing wrong with the food. Hunger conquered caution. Hal began to divide the meal into two equal shares.

Dan stood by with itching fingers. But a dim light filtered into their cell through the window and Hal ordered him out of sight again under the bed.

In a moment he was wolfing his share and passing the other half down to Dan.

Both felt better after the meal. But Hal’s sense of well-being was purely physical. To think of Dorothy in the hands of this madman stung him to apprehension.

About two thirty Nimbo appeared again. This time he was alone. With another grin at Hal, he picked up the tray and departed, bolting the door as usual. But he failed to switch off the light.

When Dan stuck his head out, Hal ordered him, in a vicious whisper, to pull it in again.

A little after three they were startled by hoarse screams from the same distant point. The muffled sounds rose to a crescendo of horror, and ceased abruptly.

Still listening, the two prisoners heard the shuffle of feet along the passage, approaching their door.

“Now for it,” whispered Hal. “Keep out of sight!”

But the shuffle passed on and stopped. Then they heard it again, from somewhere close at hand.

Hal looked up suddenly. The square of barred darkness above his head now showed a light beyond.

He rose cautiously to his knees to look through the bars. Just before his head reached the level of the opening the light beyond went out.

Hal rose no higher, but lay down again. No good showing the silhouette of his head against the light in his cell. He wanted his captors to think him weaker than he actually was. It might add a fraction to his chances.

He was hardly prone again before the cell door opened and Wallace strode in. Hal turned his head wearily. The man’s face was drawn and pale. But his eyes blazed.

Nimbo shuffled in at his heels.

“You heard that bellowing?” Wallace demanded.

“Another victim?” queried Hal in a weak voice.

Wallace advanced to the table. There his figure began to lose its erect tensity. His shoulders drooped a little. The light of fury faded from his eyes, leaving only shadows of hopeless tragedy. The glance that met Hal’s seemed turned inward and blind with pain.

“Gloria died this morning,” he muttered. “She died while I was gone. You heard Papaniotis before he followed her. If I could kill him a thousand times—”

The harsh voice trailed off into silence.

Hal felt his judgment reeling. This was plain murder! Yet Wallace had suffered — was suffering — almost past endurance because of Papaniotis’s old cruelty.

It needed Hal’s dread for Dorothy to steel his determination. Tragedy or no, this madman must be downed.

Wallace looked slowly in his direction, as though seeking him with blind eyes.

“I have done you and your mother an injustice,” he droned monotonously. “You will suffer no more harm from me. As soon as possible you will be liberated. Your mother is here and quite unharmed. In other ways I have done what I can to make amends. It is too late to bring back your father and my friend. I made a mistake there—”

“You’ve made more than one,” said Hal grimly.

“Yes. I trusted to letters — for eighteen years.”

There was a little silence.

“How did you learn that dad never betrayed you?” Hal demanded.

“An old letter. Some one sent it to the papers. Morgan, no doubt. Your father wrote it soon after my crash. He offered to help me. I never got it. You were right.”

Hal studied his captor blankly. Here were sanity and madness, cheek by jowl. Hands still shaking from one murder, Wallace sincerely regretted another. Having wreaked his triple revenge with almost incredible skill and foresight, he had shown a simple-minded carelessness in confessing his crimes. He had bedeviled Hal and his mother. Now he would make amends. Then Dorothy might escape harm if Hal pleaded her cause—

But Hal hesitated. While admitting his human mistake, the man still usurped the prerogative of a deity. He had inflicted a sort of rough justice, demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Hal’s heart sank. If Hearn had been guilty, how could Dorothy hope to escape such mad, distorted revenge?

Wallace straightened his shoulders and spoke.

“In the meantime,” he sighed, “you are again to witness the justice of punishment inflicted in kind. Nimbo!”

Before Hal could stir, the black had lifted him like a child and stood him up on the bed. The Nubian leaped to his side, gripped him by one wrist and arm and spun him about to face the dark, barred opening.

Hal turned his head quickly. Wallace was eying him. To risk an uppercut at the black’s jaw would be madness.

With the skill of long practice, Nimbo bound first one of his wrists and then the other to the bars. He stepped down, leaving Hal securely lashed, his enemies behind him in the lighted room and mysterious darkness before him.

The bed creaked as Wallace took the Nubian’s place, his head close to Hal’s at the bars.

A wall switch clicked. Hal found himself looking into a cell like his own, now flooded with light. But it lacked a window. Presumably the barred opening was intended for ventilation.

On the far side of the cell, with its head against the wall, stood a cot like his own. Dorothy lay there, dressed, and fast asleep.

Hal caught his breath at the sight of her.

She lay with her head away from him. Her slim, arched feet projected limply beyond the foot of the bed. Her ankles were bound to the bar there. The rope ran under the bed, where it was fastened out of her reach.

Hal turned his head to face Wallace.

“Untie her and let her go!” he ordered with desperate calmness. “I love her, Wallace. You have no quarrel with me. You owe me something for that beating.”

“No!” said Wallace.

“If you must torment somebody, take it out on me! Not on a girl!”

“No! That it happens to be she who must suffer is your misfortune, not my fault. Her father was guilty!”

Hal jerked at his fettered wrists. His eyes narrowed to slits, glimmering with a chill, desperate purpose.

“I’ll kill you for murdering my father!” he promised huskily. “But if you touch that girl in there, you madman, I’ll torture you to death! I’ll follow you until I get you, as you followed them!”

For an instant Wallace hesitated; then he shrugged.

“The two cases are not the same, Evans. Wait and watch.”

Chapter XXV The Last Stand

When Dorothy reached the offices of her father’s lawyer that afternoon her detective escort left her. She was admitted at once. Elder was conferring with a man past middle age. He greeted her warmly, then asked leave to present Judge Moreland.

Dorothy saw a rather stern-looking man of great natural dignity. The sternness was modified by his smile.

“So this is Dorothy!” he echoed the introduction. “Pardon my familiarity. You had been eating mud pies when I last saw you.”

Dorothy laughed. “My passion for mud pies has faded.”

“Has Mr. Elder told you that we are closely related?” asked the judge. “I don’t — quite understand.”

“Your father asked me to be your godfather and I accepted the honor, promising to come to your aid in time of need. Not every one takes such a promise seriously. But I have always managed to keep my word, Miss Hearn.”

Dorothy smiled uncertainly. Judge Moreland nodded.

“When I heard of your father’s death I came up from Baltimore, where I have been living in retirement. I am without other ties. You must not hesitate to let me keep my word to poor Ben. Mr. Elder tells me that your affairs are in a muddle. That won’t do. I hope you will let me take your future into my hands. I am a just man, Miss Hearn. It will be a pleasure to me.”

Dorothy was touched, so touched that her eyes filled with quick tears.

“You’re awfully kind,” she said. “But — we’re quite strangers. I have no claim on your kindness, Judge Moreland. Playing godfather to a child is no more than a pretty custom.”

“It is more to me. Only some fifteen years have passed since you were kind to a bachelor who was rather at a loss in your presence. You put me at ease by presenting me with a large piece of sticky candy. What’s more, I ate it!

“I’ve asked Mr. Elder to prepare for me a statement of your financial position,” he continued. “While his clerk is at it, will you join me at lunch, so that I can apologize for taking such a liberty?”

“So that you can use your legal skill to override my objections!” she corrected, smiling. “Well, I accept the invitation to lunch. For the other, I don’t see why—”

“The lunch is all I ask,” replied the judge gravely, “until we are better acquainted, Miss Hearn.”

He rose and held out his arm in a courtly way.

Dorothy accepted it with a small brown hand, warming to the obscure sadness she read in his face.

Down in the street, Judge Moreland called a taxi and helped her into it. They drove to another large building farther uptown. Here, the judge explained, he had told his chauffeur to meet him.

He dismissed the taxi and looked about for his car.

“The rascal isn’t here,” he smiled. “Probably he is waiting at the other entrance.”

He led her through the long foyer toward the next street. As they trod the tiled floor side by side, Dorothy felt a surge of gratitude to her escort. In his position, not one man in a million would have considered himself obligated to help her. An upright judge, she mused. He had called himself a just man, not a generous one. What a quaint point of view!

Almost as soon as they appeared in the street beyond, a big, dark-blue limousine drew up at the curb. The chauffeur jumped down to open the door. About to slip lithely into the tonneau, Dorothy’s finer instinct made her wait to allow the judge to hand her in.

He took his place at her side. The door slammed. The driver hopped back to his place. As the car drew swiftly away from the curb, Dorothy turned to smile at her companion.

At that instant she felt a sharp pain in her arm and uttered a little cry of surprise.

Judge Moreland looked his concern.

“What is it, my dear?” he inquired anxiously.

“I pricked my arm on something!” she exclaimed. “Why — I feel quite ill—”

Darkness swooped down upon her senses. She did not even feel the judge slip his arm about her waist and draw her nodding head to rest against his shoulder.

Later, she was dimly aware of a shout and a grinding crash. She tried to stir. Something stung her arm. Again she lost consciousness.

Her next impression was very shadowy. She thought some one was carrying her — an interminable distance—

She felt herself laid on a resilient surface and drowsily opened her eyes.

Close above her floated a black and dreadful face. She tried to scream, but could manage no more than a pitiful murmur of fright. A third time came the pain in her arm and again she fell asleep.

She was still unconscious, though on the edge of waking, when Hal first saw her on the cot in the next cell. His pleading and threats came to her as a blur of sound.

She lay still, too listless to raise her eyelids.

Then she saw Hal’s face against the bars, his bound wrists, Wallace’s hand at his throat and Wallace’s face at his shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” she gasped. “What are you doing there, Hal? Is that you, Judge Moreland? What’s happened—”

Suddenly she remembered Morgan’s warning. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stared at them with scared eyes.

Wallace’s voice rasped in Hal’s ear.

“Nimbo! Get in there. The lash!”

Hal turned a desperate face in time to see the black grin vacantly and shuffle out of the room. Yet this might be their chance, if only he could free himself. He jerked and strained at his bonds. They would not give way. But he hoped the creaking bed would cover the noise Dan might make as he crawled from beneath it.

Far from guessing his object, Wallace dropped the knife he had snatched up from the table and gripped Hal’s shoulders with both hands, swaying with his struggles as he looked past him into the next cell.

Hal saw Nimbo roll into sight, lash in hand, and approach Dorothy. Her sharp scream of alarm set him beside himself. But the ropes held.

Suddenly there was a double weight on his shoulders and a shout in his ear. Wallace let go of him, stumbled back and toppled to the stone floor.

From the next room came a frightened scream of pain.

“Dorothy!” Hal veiled insanely.

Behind him as he fought his bonds he could hear a thrashing struggle in progress. A second cry reached his ears and he grew desperately sane. There was one loose loop in the rope. He caught it with his teeth and ground at it like a savage animal.

A knife glittered past his eyes and sliced the taut rope near one wrist. Dan hacked at the other. He was free.

He turned swiftly. Wallace was just lifting his head from the floor, struggling to draw his revolver, his face dark with the choking Dan had given him.

Spurred by a shriek from the next room, Hal sprang off the bed and landed on Wallace with both feet, knocking him flat again.

“Get his gun, Dan!” he yelled. “Hold him here—”

Regaining his balance, he flung himself into the hall. Wallace found his voice at the same instant.

“Nimbo!” he shouted. “Here to me!”

The cry saved Dorothy from further harm.

As Hal tore into the next room, Nimbo was turning toward the door. Wild with rage though he was, Hal realized that he was no match for the black if they came to grips. Nimbo crouched and sprang at him. Hal put everything he had into one hasty swing. It missed Nimbo’s jaw but landed in his great, thick neck.

Having made no attempt to guard himself, the black took the full weight of the blow and went over backward with a jar and a grunt. He lay still for a second in sheer surprise.

Desperately cool, Hal remembered the sailor who had brought his food. He turned like a flash, bolted the door on the inside and whirled again. Nimbo had scrambled to his feet. Hal met his savage charge with a straight-arm blow on the nose and leaped aside to escape his clutching hands.

Ignorant of such fighting, the black did nothing but try to rush him. Again and again Hal struck and escaped, swinging and jumping clear with a savage and primitive lust.

Dorothy watched the fight without a sound. Instinct warned her not to cry out lest she distract Hal’s attention for one fatal instant.

Still Nimbo came on, his great, battered face snarling and smeared with blood, his huge hands reaching, reaching.

Once he maneuvered Hal against the bed, forcing him to leap clear over it behind Dorothy’s shrinking back.

Hal heard a shot in the next room and a yell of pain from Dan. His heart sank. He struck and struck again in savage anxiety.

Suddenly Nimbo turned from him, ran clumsily to the door and switched off the light. Swerving in the sudden darkness, Hal brought up against the bed. Nimbo sprang for the sound. Justin time Hal distinguished the luminous face as it bobbed close. He struck with all his force. The black grunted with pain, but one of his clutching hands touched Hal’s arm, turned, and gripped it.

With a furious, twisting wrench Hal managed to free himself. It was a close call. He dared not risk such another. Darting sideways he felt for the bed and scrambled across Dorothy, knocking her flat. Luckily for Hal, though unhappily for the breathless girl, Nimbo clambered after him instead of turning aside to cut him off.

It gave Hal time to blunder to the door, find the switch and snap it on again before the Nubian bore too close. Nimbo followed all his movements by ear, with an uncanny accuracy.

Again Hal escaped the black’s rush.

Suddenly the latch of the door rattled. A great voice boomed at Nimbo to open the door. A furious pounding began on its panels.

Dan must be out of the fight. Every instant Hal expected the inside bolt to give, or a shot from the barred opening to bring him down.

But he dared not even glance aside.

He had landed half a dozen blows on Nimbo’s throat and chin that would have knocked any other man unconscious. The black only growled in response, mouthing at him like an animal, the ferocity of his rushing attack increasing as Hal’s hard, bare fists crashed against his face and body.

The most nimble of footwork was vital against such a giant. Hal was tiring fast. But the Nubian seemed made of steel springs.

Hal fought on without hope, getting what satisfaction he could out of his punishing blows.

At last, as he slipped between his opponent and the foot of the bed, his foot struck a caster, spinning him half about. In a flash the Nubian gripped his shoulders and yanked him over backward. His head struck the stone floor with a crash.

Before he could stir the man was on top of him, snarling with hate, those terrible hands clutching his throat despite his sudden, thrashing efforts to avoid them.

Dorothy screamed at the top of her voice, flung herself over the foot of the bed and buried both her small hands in the murderer’s hair.

Fighting in vain to draw one breath of air, Hal heard her screams more faintly as the roaring in his ears increased. The room grew dim. Nimbo’s bleeding, snarling face seemed to recede to a vast distance.

With a last shudder he lost consciousness.

Chapter XXVI A Crumpled Fender

The news that Dorothy had been abducted and that McCoy’s men had failed to trace her, left a vibrant silence in Morgan’s office. The columnist was angry — and anxious.

He stared at his companion with eyes that glinted under bushy brows. The police had accomplished nothing in the case. Now they had blundered badly.

But not all the responsibility was theirs.

McCoy and he had blundered at every turn.

Morgan surged to his feet to stride back and forth. A glimmer of white caught his eye. Some one had slipped an envelope under the door. He swooped for it.

The captain needed only the slight stiffening of Morgan’s big body to jump up and look over his shoulder.

Morgan held a card bearing the familiar symbol. Dollar signs and skulls occupied the first seven spaces as before. In the bottom row, where two had been vacant up to now, the middle space contained a cat-o-nine-tails sketched in ink but unmistakable. The final space was still empty.

“Good night!” Morgan rumbled. “This is foul! We’ve got to get those men and get ’em quick!”

“What’s it mean?”

“It means they’ve turned from murder to torture! There’s no time to lose. How long will it take that raid car to get here?”

“Half an hour. Twenty minutes more, maybe.”

“What time is it now?”

McCoy looked at his watch.

“Just on two.”

“Eh? What? — By Gad, Ross—”

Morgan’s face flamed darkly. Dropping the card, he pounced on the classified telephone directory and slapped through its pages. He sat down with the big book open before his eyes and diligently applied himself to the telephone.

His calls completed, he turned to McCoy.

“Ross! Locate the cops who went to the Belmore last night! Let me talk to ’em!”

McCoy called the nearest police station.

“Here,” he growled. “Here’s the sergeant.”

Morgan put a rapid fire of questions that brought the captain upright in his chair, thanked the sergeant, and replaced the receiver.

“Right under their noses!” he snapped.

“What d’ye mean?”

“McHenry! He’s Brooks. And we let him go. Not a woman was admitted last night to any nursing home in the Bronx. But half an hour after the murder, McHenry wheeled his suffering wife out of the hotel while your cops stood by. The sergeant says her face and hands were bandaged. She’s a he, Ross. The murderer was in that chair.”

“But McHenry came down here to help us! He was up at the dam when Evans was murdered—”

“Not he! Why did he wire for a quiet suite? He knew the one across from the Evans’s was empty. He took it to get Evans. He’s played with us like a pair of kids!”

“You think he got Evans out—”

“In that big trunk the sergeant speaks of!”

“If young Evans has been knocked about—”

“He can stand it!” Morgan snapped. “But they’ve got Dorothy Hearn. She’s a girl, Ross! God knows what we’ll see in that last space—”

“Why?” growled McCoy. “Where’s their motive?”

“Damn the motive. We’ve got to save that girl.”

“There’s nothing to do but go out there—”

“Where? Got any program?”

“See that cop at Mount Vernon. Get a description of the car. Look up our patrols out there. What else can we do?”

McCoy was almost humble.

Morgan dropped his head in his hands. Suddenly he sat up with a shout, grabbed the telephone and called his paper.

Five minutes later he hung up in triumph.

“Ross! Can you get hold of a police boat — to meet us at Yonkers? There’s just a chance—”

“Sure I can. What for?”

“McHenry’s our man. He had to be at the dam every day. How could he strike down here and get back there by morning? And what an alibi! — Only a plane, Ross. But no plane could land in that rough country. He had to have water — and a seaplane. My people looked it up on a big map. There’s a little lake not far above the dam but less accessible. That’s where your murderer went when they lost track of him up there—”

“Still I don’t get the police boat idea—”

“That dark-blue car is up the Hudson somewhere! McHenry’s through at the dam. He’d bring his plane away so it wouldn’t be found there. He has to come down on water. If we go up by water, there’s a chance we may see his plane!”

“Right! But I’m sending that carload of police by road as well. I’m counting on those patrols. If we both have luck, we can take him from both sides—”

Morgan nodded impatiently. McCoy called headquarters, ordered a police boat, told Burke to send out a general order to pick up McHenry, and asked for news.

“Nothing new on the big case, sir,” Burke reported.

“Well, send out an order to watch for a big trunk. McHenry had one with him.”

“A park patrolman found a big trunk in Central Park this morning. No shelves or drawers. Pierced with air-holes—”

“That’s the trunk! Why didn’t they report it to police headquarters at once?”

“They did, captain. You hadn’t mentioned a trunk—”

“That’s right. My fault. Get that police boat started for Yonkers as quickly as possible, will you?”

The Force loved McCoy because he played fair.

Morgan was calling Mount Vernon when they heard the siren of their raid car in the street far below. The motor cycle cop was conscious again and they could see him.

Their progress northward to the Boston Road was a thing of sound and fury. McCoy led in his own car which Hardy drove. The raid car followed. Both sirens blared as they tore through the streets. Morgan was glad to have it so. Any one who saw them would think they were going all the way by road.

At the hospital, McCoy was led at once to the ward where his patrolman lay.

The man looked up with sullen apology in his eyes.

The captain grinned and touched his shoulder.

“Tough luck, Smith. Let’s hear the story.”

Smith lay back and looked his gratitude.

“That girl came out with an elderly man. They took a taxi. I trailed ’em. They stopped uptown a ways and let the taxi go. I watched ’em through a long lobby and took a couple a’ corners in time to see ’em pulling away in a big blue car. That looked fishy — the change and the blue car — but you said just trail ’em. Of course, I got the number.”

He repeated it. McCoy wrote it down.

“Right. Then what?”

“I followed ’em uptown, keeping back. They crossed the Harlem toward Mount Vernon. I closed in a bit. I noticed they was on good terms. The girl had her head on his shoulder.”

Morgan suppressed a groan at this point.

“Well, sir, they turned into a side road that leads over to Yonkers. It winds a lot and I had to close in for fear of losing ’em. I figured they’d take me for a civilian now, anyway. But they must have seen me earlier. I took a curve fast and there was the car pulled up across the road. I hit the front fender. That’s all I remember until I woke up here a while ago.”

“All right,” nodded McCoy, rising. “Anything you need?”

“Not a thing, sir, thanks! I’m sorry—”

“Forget it and get well. Come on, Morgan.”

In a few minutes they were speeding toward Yonkers. There Hardy stopped long enough for Morgan and McCoy to get out, then tore northward again, leading the raid car.

The police boat was waiting. McCoy took command and they shot away up river, putting on speed until a bow wave of clear water hissed high to port and starboard.

Soon after they passed Irvington, Morgan got his companion to pull in and hug the east shore.

The grim walls of Sing Sing swung into sight, rose high above them, slipped past. Suddenly Morgan shouted.

“See that old dock? Pull in closer—”

The wheel was put over. The boat careened as she veered to starboard, nearer the shore. Drawing close, they saw that the wharf was old, belonging to a disused factory.

“Here we are!” cried Morgan. “Look!”

A road dipped down a ravine toward the wharf. At one time it had crossed the railroad lines. Old planking led across the tracks. More recently, the fence that guarded the right of way had been built across the road.

Now something had torn through that fence, flinging its woven wires to left and right. And just clear of the tracks lay a crumpled, dark-blue fender.

As the boat pulled cautiously alongside the wharf, they noticed that a post at the end of it had been broken off short very recently, for the splinters were bright yellow.

They landed and hurried across the tracks. Chips of dark-blue paint clung to the broken wires of the fence.

One of the men in the boat called to them and pointed. In the eddy downstream floated a black leather cushion.

“Out of control!” rasped McCoy. “They’re drowned!”

“Drowned nothing!” Morgan snapped at him. “Here went McHenry’s incriminating dark-blue car, with nobody in her. The house is somewhere above!”

“They went past the next town with Mrs. Evans.”

“And doubled back. McHenry’s clever. But he’s not far away, nor Evans and his mother and Dorothy Hearn!”

“Would he leave such a clew so close to home?”

“He figured we’d come by road and never see it.”

Morgan did not trouble to add that, even by water, McCoy had missed the clew until it was pointed out to him.

“Worth having a look, anyhow,” McCoy agreed.

He called an order. The boat was made fast. All except two of the men on her came ashore to join him.

McCoy led them up the road to the top. Seeing no house, he sent his men into the woods on either side, in a widening circle. He and Morgan stayed on the road.

Presently a man came trotting back to them.

“Empty car farther along, sir,” he reported.

Another policeman burst out of the bushes to their right, ran up and saluted.

“Big house off there near the cliff, sir. Looks old and deserted. But I saw a light—”

“Got him!” cried McCoy. “Wait here for us, you two. Tell the others to wait when they come back.”

He strode along the road with Morgan until a bend showed them the car. Morgan stared at it and whistled softly.

“Bottis! That’s young Evans’s car. Bottis smelled a rat and trailed ’em! They’ve got him, too, or he would have phoned us for help long before this. The house, Ross!”

The men from the boat had collected again on the road. The man who had found it led the way to the house. Presently it showed through the trees, an old-fashioned wooden structure with cupolas and wooden lacework.

The men spread out to surround it. Morgan spotted the light, low down in a cellar window.

Suddenly they heard the muffled report of a revolver.

“Blow the charge and be damned!” roared Morgan. “I’m for the front door—”

McCoy drew his whistle and blew it. His men closed in about the house. He raced after Morgan, arriving in time to see the big column writer burst through the aged front door with a crash. They both heard the alarm bell that rang somewhere below. Three men crowded in after them.

Somewhere beneath them came an agonized screaming in a girl’s voice. It turned Morgan cold.

He thundered down the hall. Luckily, the cellar stairs were exactly where he hoped to find them. He plunged down, McCoy and the others at his heels.

Dorothy’s cell was near these stairs, Hal’s beyond. When the warning bell rang, Wallace and the sailor had been pounding on her door, which Hal had bolted on the inside.

At the first alarm, Wallace thrust the sailor along the passage toward the front of the house and followed him.

The two were at the far end of the corridor when Morgan came clattering down the stairs. McCoy saw them and yelled an order to halt. Wallace opened a door at the far end, thrust the sailor through, and started to follow him just as McCoy drew his revolver and opened fire.

But it was a long shot. McCoy’s bullets went wide. Wallace vanished and slammed the door. McCoy and his three men raced in pursuit.

Intent on the frantic screams from close at hand, Morgan had no attention for anything else. He located their source and hurled himself at the door of Dorothy’s cell.

For all his reckless weight it would not yield. The screams continued. Cursing McCoy, he ran into the next cell in search of another door.

Dan lay writhing on the floor there, struggling to drag himself toward the bed, his face a mask of agony.

When Morgan entered he turned with a snarl, then waved toward the barred opening and held out the revolver he had taken from Wallace.

“That sailor shot me from the door!” he groaned. “Get the black! Take this and get him through the bars! Quick, before he—”

Morgan jumped on the bed and glared through into the cell where Dorothy lay screaming and tugging at Nimbo’s hair. Hal was just losing consciousness. The girl’s writhing little person was directly in line with Nimbo’s figure as he crouched over Hal. Morgan roared at her to roll to one side, but she was too frantic to hear him.

Taking a chance, he fired at the Nubian’s bent leg, at a point below and in line with his body. Though no great marksman, he had the luck to send his bullet home.

Nimbo howled with pain and shambled to his feet, sweeping Dorothy aside. Still, in his animal fury, he saw Morgan and started toward the bars.

Morgan took careful aim and fired.

The heavy bullet struck the black between the eyes and crashed through his brain. He reeled backward and down across Hal’s body, dead before he struck the floor. But the tremendous vitality in his squat frame kept him jerking and twitching for many seconds after.

Dorothy lay in a limp heap where she had fallen, dangling by her bound ankles. A glimpse of Hal’s face sent Morgan into the corridor again.

McCoy and his men were still trying to break down the door through which Wallace had escaped.

“Ross!” bellowed Morgan. “Come back here and break down this door! It’s touch and go with Evans—”

Against all his instincts, McCoy abandoned the chase and came pounding back with his men.

Without orders these three hurled themselves as one against the door. The bolt snapped and they tumbled into the cell in a heap. Morgan scrambled over them.

“First aid! Quick!” he ordered. “The boy’s been strangled. The black’s dead. I’ll see to the girl—”

He waited until the men had begun to work over Hal. Then he turned to Dorothy. He cut away the ropes from her chafed ankles, picked her up in his arms, and laid her on the bed.

She would be all right, despite the pink welts on the soles of her feet. Black with anger, he turned to see what hope there was for Hal. And at that moment Hal opened his eyes, drew a long painful breath, felt of his throat and sat up weakly, stung thereto by a deep, subconscious memory of danger.

Morgan turned suddenly. A long, lean figure had crept to the door, dragging a broken leg, its tortured face seeking Hal. Dan saw his friend sit up, knew that all was well, and dropped senseless in his tracks.

In the meantime, McCoy’s whistle and his yell for an ax had brought more men pounding down the stairs. One of them had found an ax somewhere back of the house.

McCoy led them racing along the corridor. Two or three blows knocked out a panel in the door at the end. He reached through to the bolt and the door swung open.

They found themselves in a long tunnel roofed with heavy planks. It led downward and straight for the cliff.

When they had covered about forty yards, stumbling through darkness, the tunnel swerved sharply to reveal an inclosure lighted by electricity about fifty feet farther on.

Suddenly this was flooded with daylight. Now they could make out the side of a plane.

They heard a tremendous, swelling-roar. The plane stirred and shot out of sight.

With an oath, McCoy ran on and burst into a great cave in the cliff looking over the Hudson. He was just in time to see an amphibian plane swoop across the waiter toward the police boat. The men on the boat scrambled to unlimber the gun in the bow.

Before they could train the gun the plane rose in a wide, graceful arc, and headed south toward New York.

Chapter XXVII An Act of God

One hasty glance showed McCoy why they had not seen the hangar from the boat. A huge canvas curtain, painted to resemble the face of the cliff, had hidden the mouth of the cave. It was counter-weighted, so that a touch had sent it up and let the plane escape.

He led his men back on the run, telling one of them to cut through to the main road, meet Hardy and the raid car, and lead them to the house.

The other men from the boat had scattered through the building. Morgan had found Mrs. Evans unharmed in one of the upper rooms and set her free. The police had found her jewels and Dorothy’s. A room on the ground floor held the corpse of an emaciated young girl in a gorgeous bed.

The cellar had yielded another gruesome find. This was the body of an elderly foreigner, swarthy and fat, his face still convulsed with agony. His color and the puncture in his wrist indicated that he had been poisoned.

Dorothy had regained her senses and now lay weeping and shuddering in the arms of Mrs. Evans. The sailor’s bullet had shattered the bone of Dan’s leg above the knee. The wound had been roughly bandaged. Dan was still unconscious.

But McCoy had time for none of this. He was in search of a telephone. In the upper hall he found one.

He got Burke at headquarters and told him to send out a general alarm for McHenry’s amphibian plane, locally and as far as possible throughout Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was a large order. McCoy had no great hopes of immediate success, but in the end the plane would be found and McHenry traced and captured.

As he concluded, Morgan’s voice boomed in his ear.

“Don’t hang up yet!”

“Wait a minute, Burke,” McCoy complied.

He turned to find Hal as well as Morgan at his side, the younger man wheezing through a bruised and swollen throat.

“Why not catch McHenry yourself?” inquired Morgan.

McCoy glared.

“He got away in a plane! How the hell do I know where he’ll come down?”

“I think we do know!”

“Well? Well?”

“Well! Well!” Morgan echoed. “McHenry told Evans his story. He’s Wallace. He’s got Pap-who’s-is in his power. Collared his money and his yacht and came here to get revenge. His job’s done. Pap’s dead. But the yacht’s somewhere! He’s got a seaplane—”

“Burke!” yelled McCoy. “Gimme the chief!”

The captain sweated over that appeal to his superior. And the police commissioner backed his men. Given a sketchy knowledge of the situation, he promised to ask for a naval seaplane and the fastest Federal rum chaser available. McCoy was to come down river in the police boat. The chaser would be waiting at the Battery.

“I’m going along!” croaked Hal as McCoy hung up. “I told McHenry I’d get him for killing dad!”

“Right!” nodded McCoy, and, turning, plunged down the stairs again.

In a storm of fierce orders he arranged for a guard on the house, transportation to New York for Dan, Dorothy and Mrs. Evans when Hardy arrived, and a search for the chauffeur. Then he was away and racing down the road, with Morgan, Hal and six of the men from the boat lumbering after him.

He yelled an order before he reached the police boat. She was cast off as they tumbled aboard. In a moment she backed clear of the wharf and headed south.

As the fast little vessel tore downstream like a vibrant living thing, Hal croaked and wheezed out the story Wallace had told him.

Then McCoy explained the chief’s plan of campaign. To locate McHenry’s plane was out of the question. But the naval plane was to quarter the harbor mouth and the sea beyond in search of the yacht. The chaser would follow to sea and stand by. If the plane located the yacht, it was to come back and lead the chaser in pursuit.

All this, if the yacht Circe were not actually in port. But it seemed more likely that she would be standing off the harbor mouth, or out at sea.

It was sheer deductive gambling. But the chief knew Morgan’s guesses and thought this one worth testing.

As they neared the Battery, a steel gray chaser shot to meet them, seemed about to ram the police boat and curved alongside with a flurry of spray, its high bows wet and glistening in the sun.

McCoy, Morgan and Hal scrambled aboard her, to find a crew of youngsters who feared neither man, beast, nor devil.

The hard-eyed young commander put himself at McCoy’s orders, adding that he and his crew had seen McHenry’s plane come down the Hudson and head straight out to sea.

“Pity we couldn’t follow it then,” he observed.

“Follow it now,” said McCoy evenly.

Hal had thought the police boat fast. But the chaser tore through the water like a bullet, the bow rising higher and higher as their speed increased.

He clung to the quivering rail of the bridge while the wind whipped his clothing and rainbows danced in the flashing spray. Staten Island wheeled past. At length the shores began to open and recede. Now they were crashing into the long Atlantic swells.

The lightship was to be their rendezvous with the plane. When they neared it and drew alongside, the commander hailed the blunt-bowed craft.

“Ain’t — seen — no — plane!” came faintly across the water to them. “Fog — just — cleared — hour — ago.”

The only man-made thing in sight except the lightship was a tramp steamer to southward.

Morgan touched the commander’s arm and pointed, his face pale green.

“Since your craft has wings,” he groaned, “suppose we hail the tramp.”

The commander looked at McCoy. McCoy nodded. They wheeled and tore south.

The little steamer grew larger and more distinct. Suddenly the commander whistled.

“Look at her stem!”

They drew nearer the rusty craft. Now even the landsmen could see that her stem sloped back from her forefoot. Nearer still and they saw that her bows were buckled in clear from the waterline. The chaser ranged alongside.

“Seen a plane?” bawled the commander.

A man on the tramp’s bridge took up a megaphone.

“Plane — came — over — us — half — hour — ago.”

“Seaplane?”

“Su-ure!”

“What course?”

“Dead — astern — our — course.”

“What happened to your bows?”

The man on the bridge leaned forward and the megaphone waggled in his hand.

“Rammed — yacht — Circe — last — night — fog — no — lights — no — horn — cut — her — in — two!”

“My God!” muttered Morgan.

“Anybody saved?” McCoy prompted the commander.

He yelled the question.

“Three — seamen — she — sank — quick!”

“Where away?”

“West — south — west — thirty — knots!”

“Can you make port?”

“Yes — got — her — plugged!” floated down to them.

The commander waved his hand. There was a hasty consultation on the bridge. Wallace had been heading for his rendezvous with the yacht. He had seen the wreckage and returned to land. There was nothing to do but go back to the lightship and wait for the naval flyer to find them.

“There’s a plane now!” shouted Hal suddenly.

It was low down to the north, making for the lightship. The commander signaled for full speed and they leaped away to intercept it.

Presently the flyer saw them, wheeled in a wide arc and came drifting overhead, his engine throttled down. Something dropped, breaking out a tiny parachute an instant later. The commander maneuvered his craft so that the message floated down just back of the bridge.

A waterproof box contained a folded slip of paper.

“Plane down at sea forty miles out. Follow me,” ran the message scribbled on it.

The naval plane was drifting off toward the southwest. The chaser tore away in pursuit.

Half an hour later they found what they sought.

Wallace’s plane had crashed, snapping off a float and both wings, and turning turtle.

The wings and the float were drifting near by.

The other float was upside down and awash.

The chaser pulled alongside. One of her crew dived overboard into a creaming swell and made a line fast to the submerged fusilage. With the block and tackle on one of the boatfalls, they hoisted it clear.

Wallace’s drowned body was strapped into one of the seats. They found no trace of the sailor.

The tanks were empty, which accounted for the crash. In his hasty flight, Wallace had taken with him little more than enough gasoline to reach his rendezvous with the yacht.

His body was taken aboard the chaser. The commander cruised about for a while, but the sailor had evidently drowned and washed away.

At length the chaser headed west-south-west at full speed. Where the Circe had gone down they found traces of oil and a few bits of flotsam from the yacht, but no survivors.

They headed reluctantly back to New York.

“What a death!” muttered Hal to Morgan. “Searching, searching until his gas gave out — for a yacht that went to the bottom last night!”

“Better than electrocution. His death comes pretty close to what they call an act of God!”

Chapter XXVIII Restitution

Next morning Mr. Wilder called on Hal and his mother. The little lawyer was jubilant. He had just dropped in, he said, to tell them that an unknown benefactor had deposited to their credit half a million dollars each.

Mrs. Evans demurred. She said that Wallace must have stolen the money from Papaniotis and they had no right to it. Wilder insisted that Wallace had made more than a million in breaking Mr. Evans on the stock exchange. The money was his to restore, if he chose, and ethically theirs.

Hal went to the hospital that afternoon. Dan’s leg had been set as soon as he arrived. Now his temperature was down and he was doing nicely.

Before Hal went in, the nurse warned him that Bottis would be lame for the rest of his life.

Dan lay contemplating the huge cast in which his leg had been slung, above the level of his eyes. At sight of Hal he scowled.

“Whatcha want?” he demanded sullenly.

“Just dropped in to see which was uglier, you or Nimbo,” explained Hal. “I guess Nimbo was better-looking.”

Dan merely grunted.

“Going to look for that job when you get up?”

“ ’At’s my business!”

“Well, McHenry left me a fortune. So if you want a job chauffing for me, I suppose you can have it.”

“Might be willing to work for your wife!” exclaimed Dan, meaningly. “If you wasn’t around too much!”

“Haven’t got one yet!” snorted Hal. But he flushed.

“Huh! Well, you will, Handsome!”

Hal leaned over and stuck his fist under Dan’s nose.

“Now, listen, you mule,” he said. “Whether I marry or not, you and I are going to stick together, do you hear? If you marry, your wife has got to reckon on that. If you ever try to leave, I’ll push your ugly chin up through the top of your head!”

Dan turned his face away.

“Is that so?” he snarled huskily.

Hal turned in haste and stalked out, his heart warm with gratitude toward Dan.

Mrs. Evans had taken rooms in another quiet hotel. Hal had found her there, no worse for her adventure. He had his hands full, however, standing guard over her. The reporters were wild to get at them both.

Twenty-four hours after his rescue, Hal himself had nothing worse than a very sore throat to remind him of his narrow escape from death.

Dorothy had been sent to a nursing home to recover. By cashing a check and using his smile to advantage, Hal surrounded her with fruit, flowers, and anything else the doctor would permit. He was not allowed to see her.

Three days later she was well enough to leave. Hal went to get her. Mrs. Evans had rented a little flat and arranged it attractively with some of Dorothy’s furniture.

She let them in, noticed that they did not seem to have much to say to each other, pleaded some shopping and departed. Left alone, they faced each other squarely. Dorothy rushed into speech, her eyes shining with gratitude.

“Hal! I’ll just never forget! You almost gave your life to save me a little pain!”

“Here’s what I want to know,” said Hal. “When can we get married? Think we ought to wait a whole year?”

“Pooh!” said Dorothy explosively.

She turned away, touched this and that, then swung to face him, flushed but calm.

“Just because we’ve shared an adventure together I suppose! Don’t be so old-fashioned!”

“You know better than that!” said Hal advancing.

Dorothy retreated a little way.

Hal found that his breathing troubled him.

“Not because we’ve shared a bad scare,” he stumbled. “Oh, here, Dorothy, let me show you—”

He advanced another swift pace. Since she failed to retreat in time, they collided.

The shock of it to them both was out of all proportion to the impact. It lifted Dorothy off her feet.

After a moment she pushed him away, shook her bright hair back from her face and looked up at him with a self-possession that concealed anxiety.

“It’s not just romance?” she gasped.

“It’s the very tip-top of romance!”

“Why, so it is,” she admitted slowly.

Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him.

“We’ll have your mother to live with us! Of course, I haven’t a cent. Heavens, I never thought of that!”

“She’s much too wise, sweetheart! But I guess we’ll have to keep Dan. One of his legs will be shorter than the other.”

“As if we wouldn’t!”

The doorbell rang. Dorothy slipped out of his arms and went to answer it.

Morgan walked in, looked at their flushed faces and the light in their eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“Guess there’s not a thing I can do for you,” he grumbled.

“There’s... there’s one thing that puzzles me,” Dorothy stammered. “How could Wallace know that Judge Moreland was my godfather and that I used to eat mud pies?”

“The first is pure invention, my dear. A Judge Moreland does live in Baltimore. Elder wired him. He never met your father.

“The other was a guess, because Wallace left this country before you were born. Most children eat dirt at some early stage in their careers, especially girls, they say.

“I suppose they want to see what it tastes like and make the men eat it when they are older. Of course, your father had friends who gave you pennies.”

“You’re sure it’s all right for mother and me to keep that money?” Hal demanded.

“Right as rain. Pap-something-or-other was an orphan and probably illegitimate. His government collars the huge bank account he had in Nice and the one Wallace had here. They’re more than satisfied.

“Before Pap sold his wife into slavery, it seems he made a will in her favor and that of her children. With all four of them dead, Wallace would inherit from the children as next of kin. There was plenty for Wallace to leave you what he did.

“Oh, yes, I just called to say that after legal representations, Pap’s government have agreed to leave a hundred thousand dollars to you, Miss Hearn, by way of slight restitution.”

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Dorothy.

“Anything else?” inquired Morgan restlessly.

“Just our thanks to you. We want to forget—”

“I like that! When I planned all that fracas out there to bring you two together!”

Hal burst out laughing.

“Your method was a bit painful! We would have found each other anyway! It’s written in the stars!”

“There’s gratitude for you!” Morgan grumbled.

He had taken a licking over the case. His failure to save them suffering made him want to demonstrate a very real humbleness. But he did not know how to go about it.

“Well, I’ll leave you together,” he growled. “I’ll leave your door on the latch for myself, too.

“In the meantime, I have a little work of my own to do, though I can never make McCoy realize it!

“So — God bless you, my children!” He lumbered out again.