Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933

Charles Herrington Alone Knew the Hiding Place of the $5,000,000 and Herrington Was Going to the Chair With His Lips Stubbornly Sealed

Chapter I

The old delivery truck, with one headlight glaring white and the other darker than the night, squealed to a halt in front of the penitentiary gate.

Before it had stopped rolling, a bruised, dishevelled young man was off the running board. The youthful driver’s lower jaw had been sagging in astonishment ever since he had picked up his strange, forceful passenger among the Westchester hills. Now his jaw dropped to the limit as he looked at a bill which had just been thrust into his hand.

Without a word the stranger limped rapidly toward the gate of the prison.

The keeper on duty looked him over with a flicker of interest as he approached.

“What you’re looking for is the hospital, fellow,” the guard declared, grinning. “This is the big house.”

“Assistant District Attorney Mark Telfair of New York County to see Acting Warden Crawford,” the visitor stated with crisp intensity. “Open that gate!”

The keeper thought of several witty retorts, but when he opened his mouth and the gate simultaneously, all he said was, “Yes, sir.” Cut, blood-stained and dirty though the tall young man’s face might be, his blue eye punched a hole in the keeper.

In forty-five seconds Mark Telfair was in Deputy Warden Crawford’s office. The gray-haired, mild-mannered acting head of the prison stood up in keen surprise at the condition of this young representative of New York’s reform district attorney. His coat was split up the back; his collar torn loose from his neck; a lacerated knee showed through a gaping rent in one trouser leg. He was muddy from head to loot. On his taut countenance dried blood mingled with the mud. There was mud caked in his light brown hair.

“What’s the time?” Mark Telfair demanded. “My watch was broken in the spill.”

“There’s plenty of time — plenty,” Warden Crawford assured him. “The execution is set for eleven-thirty; it is only ten twenty-five now. But you’re hurt, man — I must call Doc—”

Telfair’s injured leg buckled under him; he dropped into a chair with a grunt of pain. But he sat bolt upright. “Forget the doctor, Warden. I bear a conditional reprieve from the governor for Charles Herrington,”

“The governor’s secretary telephoned that you were coming,” Warden Crawford said. “A conditional reprieve, you say? What—”

“Herrington must speak!” Telfair replied.

“Herrington must speak!” Warden Crawford repeated. “What— But what happened to you, Telfair?”

“A roadhog in a heavy roadster crowded me off onto a steep slope. When my car stopped rolling and I came to I had to dig myself out from under.”

He pulled out of his coat pocket a thin metal rod about four inches long with an onyx knob on one end. Scowling, he regarded it.

“That’s my only clew to the fellow who wrecked me,” he said. “When he jammed his fenders against mine this little guide, fastened to the outer edge of his front fender, was snapped off. I found it on the road.”

“A roadhog!” murmured the warden. “Are you sure it was no one else?”

“Who’d profit by melodrama?” Mark Telfair demanded. “If my failure to get here meant life for Herrington there might be a reason. But it doesn’t, necessarily.”

“Nevertheless I would turn that thing over to the local detective force,” Warden Crawford asserted. “It is a valuable clew. You say you bring a—”

“I bring Herrington a mere respite, if he wants to take it.”

The acting warden sighed. “I had hoped that until Warden Grant recovered from his ptomaine attack there would be no executions,” he said plaintively. “I am a humanitarian, Mr. Telfair; I deeply appreciate your self-sacrificing effort to reach the prison in time to give Herrington at least one more chance of life—”

Mark Telfair snorted as he laid a document on the warden’s desk. Crawford caught it up at once.

“I’m a humanitarian, too, Warden,” Mark Telfair said curtly. “I might not sentence Herrington to the chair for killing Detective Mahon but I’d pull the switch on him with my own fingers if it would help us find that five million he stole from hundreds of poor devils of depositors. I know two of them. One’s an old carpenter going blind slowly. The other’s a scrubwoman crippled with rheumatism who figured that her three children would never go to institutions while she had her nest-egg. There have been three suicides.”

He dragged himself to his feet again while the warden examined the governor’s conditional reprieve. “Five million will buy a lot of bread and butter these days, Warden. Herriffgton’s robbery wrecked that bank. If he’d give up his loot the bank could open again.

“I’m here to find out where that money is; Herrington may live or die and be damned to him!”

Warden Crawford, now standing with shoulders drooping, nodded disconsolately.

“I did not dare hope that he would be reprieved,” he said. “A bank cashier who deliberately plans to put his crime upon an assistant’s shoulders and shoots a police officer when his plans go wrong is not likely to win the clemency of our governor.”

“His defense that he thought Detective Mahon was a crook was too thin,” Mark Telfair declared. “When Mahon stopped him at the 138th Street bridge he had the stuff in his car. Right then Herrington realized there’d been a slip-up and it was the pen for him. Coolly he killed Mahon, changed his plan to straight flight, and tried to get away.”

“It may have been panic, not plan, that made him kill,” the acting warden pointed out.

“His brain was working fine,” the assistant D. A. said crisply. “Why? Because when he realized an hour later the cops were closing in on him he hid his loot somewhere among these Westchester hills.”

Mark waved a hand toward the back country. “And he did that so he’d have a hold over the bank — over the state itself. His original plan had probably been to secrete it on his own place in Yorktown Heights and then play the innocent bystander while his assistant whom he had framed went to the pen.”

“Well?”

“The governor will not bargain with Herrington. His attitude has been too defiant throughout; he is too confident that he will escape the chair. However, it might be possible to save hundreds of depositors from privation, if that million and a half in cash and three millions and a half in bonds is recovered.”

The warden inclined his head in agreement.

“The governor’s last word to Herrington, to be delivered by me tonight, is that he will grant a short reprieve if Herrington will disclose the whereabouts of the loot.

“The governor will then review the evidence in the case, and decide whether Herrington is to die in the chair or to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. That’s all. May I see him at once?”

Chapter II Eyes on the Rod

Warden Crawford pressed one of a dozen buttons on a bakelite plate on his desk. “First I must let him know that you are here. It does not do to spring things too suddenly upon a man under the tension of the death house — with the chair an hour away.”

A keeper knocked and entered.

“Naylor, tell Herrington that Assistant District Attorney Telfair is here from the governor,” the acting warden said. “Ask if Herrington will see him at once. Then come back and take Mr. Telfair over. How is Herrington standing up?”

“He’s cheerful, sir,” replied the gaunt death house guard. “Full of spirit.”

When the door had closed on Keeper Naylor, Mark Telfair spoke. “I’ll tell Martin Smythe the governor’s decision. Herrington’s entitled to have his counsel know what’s going on. Where is Smythe?”

The warden picked up his hand phone. “Get me Martin P. H. Smythe’s house — Ossining exchange,” he directed.

“Isn’t Smythe here?” Mark Telfair asked in surprise. “He wasn’t making any last minute efforts in New York, where the governor conferred with the D. A.”

For the first time a note of cynicism entered the mild voice of the warden. “I am compelled to deduce from the failing interest of Mr. Smythe that Herrington has not confided in him,” he said. “Certainly Smythe doesn’t seem to hope that he’ll, ever learn the location of that fortune. Mr. Smythe is a resident of Ossining — he has a big place here — so he can get down in five minutes.”

The telephone tinkled and Warden Crawford conversed quietly for a minute.

“Mr. Smythe will be here as soon as possible, although he was not pleased at my request,” Crawford reported. “He said his client seemed defiantly determined to die; he saw no way in which he could be of further service.”

Mark Telfair nodded. “Smythe put up an infernally good show at the trial,” he said with reluctant praise. “Glad he knows when he is licked.”

He dragged his stiffening body to his feet and glanced at the clock on the warden’s desk. Ten thirty-nine! Fifty-one minutes remained. “Now if I may do a spot of washing and repair work to my face—” he suggested.

Crawford reached for a glistening silver vacuum bottle which stood upon a tray.

“Let me give you some hot coffee to fortify you for the ordeal,” he suggested. A glass clinked in his unsteady hand against the bottle as he poured out the steaming liquid. When Mark refused it the deputy warden gulped it down eagerly himself.

“An idea of Warden Grant’s,” he explained, as he set down the empty glass. “There are moments in this prison when a man needs a stimulant. I don’t know what I’d do without it — tonight.”

“I’ll have some later — if Herrington leaves us without a word,” Telfair replied grimly. “I’ll need it then.”

When Telfair returned from the lavatory a few moments later he found Naylor, the death house keeper, entering the warden’s office.

Naylor’s lined, unlovely face was a mask of apprehension and perplexity. He shook his head in sombre doubt before he spoke to Telfair.

“Sorry, sir,” he muttered. “I told Herrington — gave him your name, sir. He stopped pacing and he laughed in my face.

“ ‘Telfair, hey?’ he says. ‘Well, Naylor, you say to Mr. Telfair that I’m not at home. Not at home! Tell him that.’ And then he laughs in my face again.”

Warden Crawford snapped to his feet. His hands thumped down on his desk as he bent forward. His eyes blazed at the keeper. Mark Telfair stood still.

“Snow?” the warden demanded curtly. “Did you notice the pupils of his eyes?”

“No, sir,” said the keeper doggedly. “No snow. And the doctor’ll tell you the same. He don’t take it and he couldn’t get it if he wanted it. He’s no junky.”

“Bravado, perhaps,” the warden muttered.

“That’s not it, sir,” Naylor ventured. “Bravado — I know it. Some of ’em — mighty few — even carries it right to the chair. But this is different. He’s been talking to me today — melting, though I didn’t try to rope him. He’s happy, sir.”

“Happy? You mean reconciled to his fate?”

“Happy’s the word I mean,” Naylor asserted stubbornly.

“Remember any of this talk?” Mark Telfair inquired.

“Only this evening he laughs at me when I asks if he wants anything special for supper. ‘Don’t pull that old one on me, Naylor, you fool,’ he says. ‘I’m not checking out of this hotel tonight. You’ll be bringing me breakfast. And when I leave this place some day soon the door I go through won’t be green. Is that clear?’

“And then he clenches his hands and raises one fist and shakes it. ‘ I’ve got ’em licked, Naylor, so quit pulling that glum face at me. But maybe you don’t know anything about what’s going on up above.’

“I’m used to queer talk, but that made me sort of creepy. ‘Up above what?’ I asked him, and he grins and shakes his head. ‘No; I’m not talking about heaven,’ he says. ‘And I’m not figuring on escape, either, so don’t get alarmed. It’ll all be perfectly legal and natural. But just shut up about this, will you?’ ”

Warden Crawford shook his graying head. “ ‘Hope springs eternal—’ ” he murmured unhappily. “How horrible these executions—”

His voice faded.

Naylor waited; glanced from one to the other; then quietly withdrew.

“What do you make of it?” Crawford demanded suddenly.

“Nothing whatsoever,” Mark Telfair replied. He sat down and, pulling out the broken metal rod from his pocket, fingered it absently, staring at the clock. “There isn’t much time to save that five million. I’m going to take a turn outside the gate. Your establishment does not seem to be conducive of thought.”

“Perhaps lack of thinking is just as well here,” the warden replied slowly. “I’ll wait for you.”

Out on the sidewalk a few hundred feet from that unobtrusive entrance Telfair encountered a small squad of reporters hurrying, though without relish, up the slope toward the prison gate. He knew several of them but escaped recognition easily enough, for they were immersed in unpleasant anticipation.

Mark Telfair paused when they had passed and looked up at the dark hills above him. In some secret place not many miles from here was concealed a fortune. Its whereabouts was known only to the man in the condemned cell. Within an hour now that man would be beyond earthly reward or punishment. And if he died without a word a host of unfortunate depositors would get no more good of that money — their money — than he had gotten. They would stand penniless, many of them, in the midst of a merciless depression.

Mark Telfair turned and walked toward the penitentiary gate. As he approached a glossy black limousine drew up before it. A small, round-shouldered fat man with a glowing cigar in his fingers alighted and hurriedly entered the prison. Martin P. H. Smythe, the learned counsel for the man about to die, had arrived. Telfair quickened his step.

As he reached the waiting car Mark Telfair glanced at it. The light over the portal was reflected from its polished surface as from a mirror.

“Counsellor Smythe does himself well,” he muttered.

Suddenly his gaze switched briefly to the chauffeur. The flat, round face of the man, almost yellow in that light, was turned almost away from him. But the man’s narrowed eyes, slightly aslant, was covertly regarding him and his torn trouser leg.

Telfair’s own gaze returned to his feet. As if absently he pulled out of his pocket the broken fender guide rod and fingered it.

The flat-faced man standing by the car froze, with fingers glued to the doorhandle. His eyes focussed with intensity upon the broken bit of metal in Telfair’s hands.

Chapter III The Enigma

For an imperceptible moment the chauffeur remained rigid, staring. Then his eyes raised and flinched under Telfair’s casual glance. He moved again; closed the door of the car, and climbed stolidly to his seat.

Mark Telfair entered the prison. The first man he saw beyond the guard at the gate was the keeper from the death house, Naylor.

The assistant district attorney, with a flick of his rod, summoned the man.

“Mr. Smythe’s interested in helping ex-con’s, isn’t he?” Mark Telfair asked. “Gets them jobs — that sort of thing?”

Naylor nodded. “That’s right.” He peered toward the grille. “If Mr. Smythe’s car’s outside you can see a prize specimen at the wheel who did seven years for a payroll stick-up,” he said. “Fellow with a face like a plate — Chink Mitchell. Mr. Smythe’s giving him a chance. Good driver, but I’m betting that hard pan of his is no lie.”

Mark Telfair looked down at his rod and grunted.

“Could you make another try at getting Herrington to see me voluntarily, Naylor?” he asked. “It’s nothing to you, but seeing me is Herrington’s last chance — his only chance — of living till dawn.”

The keeper nodded his gaunt, ugly head. “I’m cold,” he said. “That’s why I’m on the death house trick. But if I can get a break for one of ’em I’ll do it. They got enough against ’em without me bearing down. I’ll try. Don’t count on me succeedin’.”

He walked away. Mark Telfair carefully tucked his broken rod away in his inner breast pocket, knocked on the warden’s door and entered.

Martin P. H. Smythe was distributing cigar ash impartially over every inch of the warden’s carpet. Only a few shreds of his placid, confident courtroom manner remained. His pace was markedly agitated. He glanced at Mark and nodded; then looked more intently at the battered features.

“What happened to you?” he asked abruptly.

“Nothing — compared to what’s going to happen to your client,” Mark Telfair answered curtly.

“Done all I could,” Smythe muttered, continuing his pacing. “The man’s diamond adamant. I’ve cracked some in my time, but it’s easier to get teeth out of Herrington’s mouth than words. And that smile of his — that cunning, knowing leer when I asked him yesterday to try to save his life by giving up his loot— God!”

Mark Telfair crossed to look at the small electric clock on the warden’s desk. It was ten fifty-two.

Acting Warden Crawford sighed. “I had hoped — even prayed — that during my brief tenure of office I would not have to face — this,” he said, running a hand through his curly, grizzled hair. “Warden Grant is more — more robust in his feelings. But he is still far too ill — I am afraid—” His voice trailed off into disconsolate silence and he glanced longingly toward the vacuum bottle on the desk.

“How do you explain Herrington’s attitude?” Mark Telfair inquired suddenly of the attorney.

“Explain it!” Martin P. H. Smythe glared at his legal opponent. “Explain it!” He thrust his cigar between his teeth and clamped them down on it. “Crazy,” he said tersely.

“The doctor—” began Acting Warden Crawford. Then he shook his head and relapsed into silence.

“You’re destroying five million dollars when you destroy this man!” Counsellor Smythe blazed suddenly. “You both know that!”

Mark Telfair, with another look at the clock, studied the wrathful attorney in silence.

“You are well aware, Mr. Smythe, that neither the law nor tire governor gives us any option,” the warden said. “If I—”

The weary voice died away as Telfair softly opened the door and left the office. He waited in the hall, staring at nothing, until Naylor came back from the death house. The keeper’s face was glum; he shook his head.

“No luck, sir,” he said. “He won’t see you. That’s flat.”

“Thanks,” said Telfair. He laid a hand on the handle of the warden’s door, but the keeper stopped him and pointed his finger at a door across the hall.

“In that room is another fellow that’s doing his damnedest to see Herrington,” he said. “His brother — David Herrington — is in there waiting — and he’s wild — wild with greed and rage. He’s been hopin’ that Herrington would see him — slip him a word or two — before he went to the chair.”

“Just to keep the money in the family?” Telfair commented.

Naylor nodded assent.

“But he won’t see him, neither,” he said. “He never would. Just me and Warden Crawford and the doctor is all Herrington would ever talk to — not even the chaplain. And Mr. Smythe, of course.”

“Is he still cheerful?”

Naylor nodded. “Sort of hopped up — though not with snow,” he replied.

“Still walking up and down?”

“No — sitting. And he had a pencil in his hand.” Naylor lowered his voice. “He got up and came close to the bars and stared at me, sir. Sort of intense. His eyes kind of glittered. ‘You wouldn’t break your word of honor to me if I trusted you, would you, Naylor?’ he asks, in a sort of high voice. ‘Not if I gave it to you willingly,’ I answers. It’s funny how some of ’em talk. And he nodded and said, ‘I believe you, Naylor. I want to make sure that if there’s any— Come back a little later.’ And then I came away.”

“A pencil!” Mark Telfair muttered. He motioned toward the warden’s door. “Knock and tell the warden he’s wanted out here, Naylor,” he instructed.

The keeper obeyed. In an instant John Crawford, somewhat mystified, stepped out and closed the door behind him.

“I wanted a private word with you, Warden,” Mark Telfair explained quickly. “It’s hopeless to get any results through Smythe. Time’s getting on. I must ask you to conduct me yourself to Herrington’s cell — to use your own influence to have him hear me.”

Slowly the warden nodded his head. “I’ll do anything, of course. You think—” he paused, seeking for words. “You think we might try this... ah... without his attorney?”

“Yes.”

“Let us go, then,” the warden said.

“One moment.” Mark Telfair went as far as the barred entrance to look out into the street. Neither Martin P. H. Smythe’s glossy limousine nor Chink Mitchell, its flat-faced driver, was in sight.

The warden asked no explanation of Telfair’s movement. He led the way to the death house, received the salute of a keeper on duty, and walked down the corridor where no man slept that night. They ran the gauntlet of sullen, eyes and came to the end, near a small door, where the cell of the penitentiary’s most notorious prisoner was located.

Keeper Naylor was standing before the bars, but he moved away as they approached. Neither the warden nor Mark halted him.

In another moment they were looking through the grilled door at a man who rose alertly from his bed to face them.

“Glad to see you, Warden!” he exclaimed in a high, tense voice, and gestured jerkily toward the lock. “So sorry I can’t invite you in.”

Mark Telfair looked over the prisoner with a swift glance. Despite his prison garb, Charles H. Herrington contrived to appear almost jaunty as he met the gaze of Mark. Tall, erect, carefully shaven, his dark eyes glowed out of deep sockets. His thin lips were twisted into a smile. His whole expression conveyed a sense of sly superiority; even his voice betrayed it.

This condemned felon, about to die in the electric chair, encouraged by some secret source of strength, displayed a sort of sneaking contempt for the governor’s emissary.

Warden Crawford leaned against the iron bars and spoke solemnly:

“Mr. Herrington, I’ve brought Assistant District Attorney Telfair to talk to you. He comes from the governor. For your own sake listen to him.”

The warden stepped away a few steps, but watched anxiously.

The ex-bank cashier had folded his arms and now swayed forward and backward on his toes, burning black eyes upon Mark.

“I have nothing to say to young Mr. Telfair,” he declared. “Am I to be put through a third degree in the very shadow of the chair?”

“You’re too intelligent a man to believe we would do that,” Mark Telfair said steadily. “I don’t know what you’re counting on, but I tell you that a frank talk with me is your one chance to receive a reprieve.”

“And what does a reprieve mean?” Herrington retorted. “Simply time for me to make my revered bank a present of five million — and then execution or life imprisonment.”

“The governor is not bargaining,” Mark Telfair stated. “Your case will be reviewed, proper notice taken of your new attitude. That is all I can say.”

“All right; you’ve said it,” Herrington snapped. “Good-by!”

“Think — man — think!” Telfair blazed. “Think of what your silence means to others!”

Herrington laughed mockingly. “I’m thinking of what my silence will mean to me!”

He turned his back on Telfair and sat down on his bunk.

Chapter IV The Blue Snake Strikes

Mark Telfair walked away. Warden Crawford followed. Keeper Naylor, standing by near the door with the other keeper on duty, shook his head at Telfair, guessing that he had failed.

“What’s the time?” Mark Telfair muttered as they left the death house.

“Six minutes past eleven,” answered the warden soberly. “Less than half an hour now.”

“The governor told me to inform you that once Herrington left his cell to enter the execution chamber his chance of a reprieve was over,” Telfair said crisply. He wiped the perspiration off his forehead. “For the good of the State there is to be no indication of last minute uncertainty. The execution chamber is not to be used as a torture chamber or for purposes of third degree.”

“I understand,” Warden Crawford replied. He halted. “The governor is wise. I must warn Herrington of this. Will you wait for me in my office?”

Mark Telfair assented at once. He moved on with quicker steps toward the warden’s office as Crawford walked back to the death house.

Counsellor Smythe had ceased to pace. His cigar was discarded in an ashtray and he was sitting down, with his small eyes on the face of the warden’s clock. He looked up quickly at Telfair.

Mark stepped in and crossed the room. He drew out of his pocket the broken metal rod and laid it on the desk under Smythe’s eyes.

“Do you know what that is?” he demanded.

Herrington’s attorney did not pick up the rod but bent forward to study it closely.

“It looks like one of those guides they put on fenders to show you how close to things you can drive without scratching your paint,” he said at last in a level voice. “The knob sticks up into sight to indicate the edge of the fender. Why ask me that?”

He paused, nodding his head. “I have two on my own roadster,” he added. “Mitchell put them on so I wouldn’t scrape the side of my garage. This one’s been broken off.”

“That’s right,” Mark agreed. “It was broken off when some roadhog swung his fenders against mine and shoved my light car clear off the road.”

Martin P. H. Smythe muttered a word of sympathy. “They’ll do anything, some of these drivers,” he conceded. “On our roads a man’s life—”

He stopped suddenly and stared at the clock.

“Going to see Herrington?” Mark Telfair inquired. He picked up the bit of metal and put it carefully in his pocket.

“Herrington knows I’m here,” Smythe said. His eyes were held by the red second hand of the electric clock. It moved in an unending series of tiny jerks around the dial. “If he wants me he’ll ask for me. I can’t harrow myself any more about this case — unless to some purpose.”

“Herrington is taking that five million with him,” Mark said.

“I wish that five million was in hell!” Smythe burst out. He caught up his cigar.

“You’ll feel better — after it’s over,” Mark suggested. “I hope you will.”

The stout, round-shouldered lawyer closed his teeth on his cigar. He did not reply.

Soundlessly the little red hand moved on. They waited. The warden did not come. Several minutes passed by. Herrington’s sands were growing swiftly fewer. Mark Telfair inclined his head.

Suddenly the door opened. Both men started. Warden Crawford slowly entered the room. His eyes, too, sought the clock; then he poured himself a glass of coffee and drank it in silence.

“Everything is about ready,” he said in a curt low voice. “In fifteen minutes — Mr. Smythe, I’m sorry to have brought you down here. There is no reason for you to stay longer. And you, Mr. Telfair?”

Mark Telfair turned toward the door.

“May I telephone?” he asked.

Warden Crawford led him to a smaller office, in which was a soundproof booth.

Mark Telfair called a New York hotel, waited, said a few words and waited again. Then to the man who answered he rapidly outlined the events of the evening. Tersely he concluded:

“Herrington will not speak, Governor. But there is something wrong — something queer back of his stubborn silence. I have a feeling that he thinks he has an ace in the hole. And he hasn’t. Let me find out what this means, Governor! If you will grant him a reprieve of twenty-four hours I may be able to uncover something about that five million.”

He was silent for a moment; then spoke again slowly, with great earnestness. “I have nothing definite to go on. Yes, sir; Herrington is guilty of Detective Mahon’s murder. Under the law he should die. But I feel that... that there is some sinister force in action here tonight that decrees Herrington’s execution by the state. The state itself is being used as a tool. Sir, I am not asking you to save Herrington; I am trying, as you instructed me, to save many innocent people from distress and misery. Give Herrington twenty-four hours, Governor; give me twenty-four hours to locate that five million.”

Again he listened, and his face grew grim.

“I am sorry that you think me fanciful or sentimental, sir,” he said with stiff formality. “I understand that the law must be enforced. Yes, sir, I have my orders.”

He replaced the telephone instrument and left the booth.

Two pairs of eyes bore upon him as he entered the warden’s office.

“I have orders to attend the execution, Warden,” he said curtly to the prison official. “I am to follow Herrington to the brink of the grave to seize on any hint he may let fall concerning the hiding place of his loot.”

“It is time to go over to the... house,” Warden Crawford announced. He touched his forehead with a handkerchief.

Counsellor Smythe followed them into the hall; then stopped. “I’ll wait,” he muttered in a hoarse voice. “Might as well see it through — but not — there.”

For the second time that night Warden Crawford led Mark Telfair toward the death house. They encountered a distracted prison chaplain. He confronted them with the face of one in torment.

“No reprieve?” he implored. “And he will not see me? He will not make his peace?”

“I am sorry,” said the warden gently, and they left him.

In another minute they were inside a small chamber. There was no unusual stir; no hurry, no last minute details being completed within. The witnesses were in their places; several keepers attending to no apparent duties were in waiting.

The chair, a plain bit of furniture to which no one would give a second glance elsewhere, occupied its prominent place. The door in the wall that led to the condemned cells was no differed from any other door.

But over this matter-of-fact room there hung an atmosphere so awfully oppressive that it was like a physical burden. The feeling it gave was that this chamber and the people in it were under some terrible pressure. It was a pressure which tortured the bodies and souls of all. And though there was a determined attempt at ordinary composure the faces of men were metal masks — brazen shells stamped down on the human flesh and blood beneath.

“Since Naylor was more friendly with Herrington than the other keepers I’ve let him off this job,” the warden muttered in Mark Telfair’s ear. “Sent him downtown to get me some aspirin — I want to sleep tonight.”

He passed a hand over his forehead. Telfair nodded. His eyes were fixed upon the door in the wall — the portal to eternity for a murderer who was an enigma to him.

The door in the wall opened. Several men entered slowly, as if walking were an unendurable exertion. For an instant Charles Herrington was inconspicuous among them. Then, of a sudden, the eyes in the death chamber picked him out. They raked him from his wooden face to the bottom of his trouser legs, slit to make the fastening of the electrodes more rapid and sure.

Like a well rehearsed actor, Herrington walked toward the chair. But his head turned; his hot, gleaming eyes searched the chamber. Men nervously avoided those eyes that hunted for something — for someone.

Herrington sat down in the chair. With visible haste straps were buckled, the copper instruments fitted to his legs. The keepers stepped back. An inconspicuous sign was made.

Suddenly Charles Herrington sat bolt upright; eyes terribly alive, face no longer wooden. He strained against the straps.

“This has gone far enough!” he snapped. “I warn you—”

Suddenly his body was flung against the bonds about him with a convulsive strength that was far beyond human power. A dynamo was whining near by. The hiss and audible flash of high tension current — the blue snake that strikes with blasting, deathly power — crackled in the chamber.

Chapter V Telfair Goes for a Ride

While flinching men were still listening for Herrington’s words the man uttering them was a corpse.

Charles Herrington was dead — with his lips still parted. There was more to be gone through — another shock to be given — but that was mere precaution.

Mark Telfair and the warden left the chamber; sought the open air.

“Perhaps if the signal had not been given he might have spoken,” Warden Crawford muttered.

“The governor’s orders were explicit,” Mark Telfair replied bitterly. “Once he left his cell — but I still hoped, Warden. Horrible as that scene was, it is nothing compared to what the people he robbed will go through, some perhaps for the rest of their lives. Three suicides so far. And he might have saved them with a few words about the hiding place.”

“They’ll say anything at that last moment — when hope flickers out — when they feel the chill of death,” Crawford replied solemnly. “But he waited too long. You heard him try to stop us.”

He quoted solemnly:

“ ‘This has gone far enough. I warn you—’ Do you suppose he thought we were bluffing, Telfair? Did he feel that we would never execute him while he held the secret of his huge booty?”

“That’s one of the things I’m going to find out,” Mark Telfair replied doggedly. “Herrington’s finished — but I’m not!”

Warden Crawford glanced obliquely at the tall young man.

“You sense a mystery,” he said. “So do I. If I can help—”

“I’d like a look at the things in his cell.”

“I’ll arrange it as soon as—”

“I understand,” said Mark Telfair. “Meanwhile, we have news for Smythe.”

The dead man’s attorney was slumped in a chair in the warden’s office. He had a cigar in his mouth; the tip just glowing. He did not speak as they entered.

“It’s all over,” said the warden.

Smythe’s fat right hand took the cigar from his mouth. “I’m glad it’s all over!” he muttered with a gusty sigh.

“Over!” repeated Telfair sharply. “Where’s the five million?”

Neither man answered.

Approaching the desk, Crawford motioned toward the vacuum bottle. No one moved. The warden searched among the papers lying on the desk top.

“Didn’t Naylor leave a packet here for me?” he asked petulantly. “I sent him for some aspirin — and I do need it!”

“Nobody’s come in while I’ve been here,” Martin P. H. Smythe answered slowly. He heaved himself up out of the chair. “I’m going home. I hope you gentlemen on the state’s side are now satisfied.”

“He should be back by this time,” the warden muttered, ignoring the remark. “Naylor’s a reliable man. I hope he hasn’t gone off on a drunk. They do sometimes.”

He looked up at the lawyer. “Has your chauffeur reported his return?” he inquired. “I took the liberty of asking him to drive Naylor to town — I wanted that stuff rather badly, you see.”

“Mitchell should be outside,” Smythe replied. “I’m going now. Come out and ask him about Naylor if you wish.”

In the corridor a small group of silent newspaper men were being passed out of the prison. They vanished as they had come, hurriedly, in the direction of the town.

The three men approached the grille and the keeper swung the door open.

Smythe’s limousine was just drawing up at the curb. Chink Mitchell sprang out, saluting the warden rather than his master. His flat face was expressionless.

“Didn’t you bring Naylor back?” Warden Crawford asked.

“No, sir; he said he’d hoof — walk back,” the ex-convict replied. “And he lammed before I could give him an argument. I hung around — I waited for him all this time, sir — but I didn’t see him.”

“Huh!” muttered Crawford. “Did he say anything about wanting a drink?”

Mitchell’s eyes blinked.

“He didn’t talk to me, sir — except to say he was walking back,” he replied with dogged emphasis. “I dropped him at a drug store he pointed out.”

Warden Crawford turned away. “I’ll get some aspirin from the doctor, though I dislike to bother him,” he said irritably. “It’s extraordinary that a man like Naylor should take advantage of my decency in letting him off that job tonight. Good night, Mr. Smythe. Coming inside, Telfair?”

Mark’s eyes were upon the hand of the chauffeur, which held open the car door. There was a smudge of black paint upon one finger.

Mark searched for his cigarette case. “I’ll join you in a few moments, Warden,” he replied, and then added in a lower voice: “And I’ll be much obliged if in the meantime you’ll arrange that I may see all Herrington’s effects.”

“I’ll have them ready for you,” Crawford promised, and with a nod to the lawyer turned in at the gate.

“ ’Night!” muttered Martin P. H. Smythe. The springs of the limousine creaked as he stepped on the running board. Chink Mitchell closed the door on him, saluted Mark Telfair meticulously, and mounted his seat. The motor leaped into action.

Mark Telfair stood at the curb, cigarette case in hand, near the rear fender of the car. And then, as the car moved, he swung his pain-racked body into swift action. With a thrust of his hands he gripped the big spare tire in its holder at the back of the car. The machine lunged ahead. In another instant his feet were planted solidly on the projecting fuel tank and he was crouching below the level of the rear window.

The car hummed up the grade, accelerating in second speed. Mark Telfair turned his head to stare backward at the prison entrance. There was no one in sight behind him.

It was, as Warden Crawford had said, no more than five minutes’ run from the mass misery of the penitentiary to the quiet luxury of the estate of Martin P. H. Smythe. To Mark Telfair, riding the gas tank, it seemed longer. Every instant he expected a car to come up behind the limousine and with blazing headlights expose him. But Chink Mitchell kept the glossy black machine flying, and no car appeared, even in the distance.

A moon was rising over the Westchester hills, but it was still too near the horizon and too yellow to cast much radiance on the car.

Once, taking care to keep out of range of the rear vision mirror, Mark Telfair raised his head to glance slantingly inside. Smythe had turned on the domelight to find something; Mark saw that it was a silver flask, and the lawyer tilted it to his lips even as he snapped off the light.

The car purred on, climbing and working its way in a zigzag course back from the river. Suddenly it swerved sharply to the right and swept smoothly up a driveway. Gravel crunched under the whirling tires; then momentum thrust Mark against the polished body as the brakes soundlessly slowed the car. A house, dimly lighted, showed suddenly in his limited vision. He had barely time to drop off and scramble into some bushes beside the drive before the opening front door sent a flood of light over the car.

A man-servant hurried down the steps. Mitchell slid hastily out of his seat to release his master. Martin H. P. Smythe alighted with dignity, his flask well concealed. He paused before the front door, waved the man-servant into the house, and spoke to his chauffeur in a low voice.

Mark Telfair moved deeper into the bushes, traveling in a circuitous course among the elaborate shrubberies of the estate. Well behind the car, which still stood before the door, with headlights glaring, he crossed the driveway. Then, rapidly, he turned the corner of the house and in a wide swing worked around the building. He had no difficulty in finding his way. The moon was already beginning to dispel the darkest shadows of the night.

He came at last to the driveway that led from the house to a low garage set a good hundred yards behind it. The driveway passed several greenhouses and skirted a pond perhaps fifty feet wide which was almost covered with the broad flat leaves of water lilies. Around it paths of stone were inlaid in moss, and a high thick privet hedge offered good cover.

The garage was dark and silent. Telfair approached the square building with great caution, keeping in the shadow of a hedge. His ears were alert for the crunch of gravel and the hum of a motor behind him.

Where the hedge ended he paused. The garage had a double set of doors. These were closed, as was a smaller door beside them.

Telfair scrutinized the windows on the low second floor of the building. Apparently the chauffeur’s quarters were up there. The windows were unlighted.

He crossed the apron in front of the garage and laid hold of the knob of the small door. It was locked. In quick succession, ears strained for any sound from the direction of the house, he tried the larger doors. Locked, too.

“Chink Mitchell doesn’t trust anybody,” Telfair muttered. “Well, where he came from they specialize on locks. He may be right.”

He retreated to the hedge and waited, taking note of the lay of the land by the waxing light of the moon. The driveway did not end at the garage; it vanished in the direction of the road. Apparently Mr. Smythe’s estate sported a service entrance.

Soon he heard the limousine approaching from the house. It halted directly in front of one of the double doors. Chink Mitchell climbed quietly down from behind the wheel. He came around to the rear of the car and stood there a moment, looking across the lily pond toward the house and the greenhouses. It was no idle glance; there was intense effort in that scrutiny. Then his head turned as his gaze swept over lawns and bushes, and down the driveway.

At last the ex-convict swung around to the garage doors, fumbling in his pocket. Keys tinkled; he opened the doors and pushed them back. Hastily he climbed to the driver’s seat.

Mark Telfair was back in his place on the gas tank before Mitchell slid the car into gear. And he was off the tank inside the garage before the flat-faced chauffeur ratched up his emergency brake.

Chapter VI Murder!

The headlights revealed to Mark the interior of the building before Mitchell snapped them off. It had a floor space broad and deep enough to accommodate four cars comfortably. There were within only two cars beside the limousine. One of these, in the corner, in front of the limousine, was swathed in a linen dust cover.

The other, behind which Mark Telfair took refuge in two noiseless bounds, was a heavy, powerful roadster. Crouching low, Mark Telfair kept still, awaiting the blazing radiance of the garage lights.

But Chink Mitchell did not snap on the lights. Instead he remained in his seat for an instant. The slight noise of his fumbling hands reached Mark’s ears. He seemed to be trying to find something.

Mark Telfair reached out in the darkness. He groped for the left forward fender of the roadster behind which he was hiding. His fingers encountered the smooth, curving sheet of steel. It seemed as solid to his fingers as the plates of a battleship. This expensive, low-slung car had been designed with a view to safeguarding its occupants from hazards of the highway. Those fenders would stand the gaff.

His fingers moved on inquiringly to the top of the sweeping curve. Here, if anywhere, a fender guide would be attached. He felt painstakingly for the thin rod or the stump of such a rod. Suddenly he touched something quite different — a small patch of wet, sticky paint.

Mark’s lips tightened in a brief, grim smile. This tiny area of new paint was at the extreme outer edge of the fender — exactly where a guide rod would be bolted to the sheet of steel. But now there was no rod — no marks of the bolts — nothing but a square of fresh paint. And the evidence it mutely gave would be gone in an hour or two, as the paint dried.

“Not quite smart enough,” he muttered.

His fingers confirmed what he already suspected — that these heavy steel fenders had swept his light car off the road with no great damage to themselves. All he found was another drying area of paint — this time covering a long scratch on the forward surface of the fender.

Suddenly he stiffened at the sound of a closing door. Chink Mitchell was out of the driver’s seat of the limousine. A flashlight, partly screened by one hand, moved toward the open doors. Mitchell shut them and shot the bolt, locking himself inside. Then, with his flashlight even more carefully screened, he turned toward the car with the linen dust cover.

Telfair shifted cautiously to watch.

Chink Mitchell lifted up the dust cover. Underneath was a sedan. He opened the rear door. The beam of his light played directly upon something on the floor of the car.

Mark Telfair stood up on the running board of the roadster to see what it was. The flashlight disclosed it plainly to him. His face stiffened.

Chink Mitchell was bending over the body of Keeper Naylor. Every feature of Naylor’s white, gaunt face was vividly revealed. But the back of the prison guard’s head had been crushed in by a terrible blow. Murdered!

Here was reason enough why Warden Crawford had never received his aspirin. And here was reason, too, why the ex-convict who drove Martin H. P. Smythe was careful about locking the garage doors. But why had Naylor been killed — Naylor, the inoffensive death house guard — the only man for whom Herrington had shown a liking.

Chink Mitchell fastened back the dust sheet and crept into the sedan. What followed was a grotesquqe, moving chiaroscuro to Mark Telfair, for the beam of Mitchell’s flashlight was never still; and at close range never revealed more than a part of the keeper’s relaxed corpse.

But what Mitchell was doing was plain enough. He was searching Naylor — searching him with painstaking thoroughness. Once the flashlight’s beam, misdirected for the instant, revealed the chauffeur’s flat face. It was drawn up into a mask of apprehensive tensity; his yellow teeth showing in an involuntary snarl; his eyes deep sunken and small under the contraction of his brows.

Mitchell did his job thoroughly. Suddenly he gave vent to a soft yet exultant ejaculation. He pulled a small wad of paper out of the top of Naylor’s shoe, where it had been rammed in between his instep and the leather tongue. Kneeling over the dead man, he ripped open an envelope, and unfolded the sheet within. He read it slowly, with both hands clutching it. Then, again he muttered an expletive.

Suddenly, with a gasp, he flung himself from the car, sprawling over Naylor’s body in his terror-stricken haste. The light in his hand flicked out.

Mark Telfair, too, was startled by the sound that had so frightened Chink Mitchell. It was very plainly a tap on the closed door of the garage.

In the darkness Mark heard for an instant a faint crumpling as Mitchell disposed of the paper he had taken from Naylor’s body. Then all was (utterly still within the garage.

Listening intently, Mark Telfair heard the noise outside the door again. This time it was more like a scratch than a tap, and it was followed by the loud sniff of an animal. Then, distinctly, a persistent scratching and a whine.

“That blasted mutt!” Mitchell’s whispering voice was tremulous with rage. He crept to the door, unlocked it and softly called in a dog. Telfair heard the pad of feet; then a heavy blow. With the blow was mingled a sound of crunching bone — and then from the dog no sound at all.

The door closed; the flashlight snapped on again, revealing the hand of Mitchell as it caught by the scruff of the neck a limp mongrel, plainly dead.

Mitchell dragged the dog to the sedan and threw him in on the floor beside the murdered man. Then he lifted Naylor’s body further into the sedan, and closed the door. He pulled down the dust sheet over the car and switched off the flashlight.

The silence that followed was hard on Mark Telfair. He dropped down behind the roadster again and waited alertly. He heard nothing, saw nothing, of Chink Mitchell. The man was standing in the darkness, motionless. For several minutes he made no sound, betrayed himself by no motion.

At last Mitchell’s feet tapped softly on the concrete floor. He approached the door; pushed back the bolt softly, and swung open each side. He no longer used the flashlight. The moon’s ray, filtering in through the open doors, gave him enough light to move about in these accustomed surroundings.

He put a spade and a pick into the limousine. Then he unlatched the emergency brake of the car. Straining against it, he rolled the heavy car out onto the cement apron in front of the garage. Working the steering wheel with one hand, he turned the car until it was pointing down the driveway to the service entrance. He opened the rear door. Then he moved some paces down the road and stood for a long moment, looking about him and listening.

Mark Telfair, choosing his opportunity, glided out of the garage. He crept around the corner of the building and flattened himself out against the rough stucco. His foot touched something on the soil at his feet. He picked it up. It was a smooth round stone.

Not until Chink Mitchell turned toward the garage did he move again.

With three long, noiseless strides he came up behind the man. All at once Mitchell whirled around, startled.

Mark Telfair’s right fist, fingers wrapped around the stone, shot toward Mitchell’s head with all the force of his tall pivoting body behind it. The bruised knuckles thudded heavily upon Chink’s broad flat chin.

The ex-convict’s head snapped back on his shoulders. He wavered on his feet, a moment, stepping widely in an automatic effort to balance himself. Then he sagged to the concrete.

Telfair dropped the stone. He bent beside Chink and frisked him as rapidly as his inexperience would permit. He took the flashlight from one pocket and from a shoulder holster pulled out a small, flat automatic. He made sure that the safety was not in position on this diminutive weapon before he thrust it into his pocket.

With a glance around at the dark night he gripped Mitchell by the shoulders and dragged him into the garage. He closed the doors as soundlessly as the ex-convict had done. His flashlight fell upon a scrap of paper on the floor. He caught it up. It was the envelope that Naylor had carried, but it was empty. On it was pencilled: “To be opened only in the event of my death. Charles Hall Herrington.”

Mark Telfair trained the flashlight on the man and settled down to a more minute and methodical search of his body. But though he emptied every pocket, ran his hands along every seam, and inspected shoe tops, trouser cuffs, coat collar and every other possible hiding place, he found no crumpled wad of paper.

Suddenly he realized that Chink Mitchell was stirring. His fist doubled up to deliver another knockout; then he loosened his fist as he frowned thoughtfully down at the round, flattened face of his captive.

Mitchell’s eyes opened — blinked — opened again. With pinpoint pupils he stared into the flashlight that Mark kept levelled at him. His lips formed a word; then he clamped them together and waited.

“Cautious, aren’t you, Chink?” Mark Telfair remarked. “Not saying anything about anything?”

“I don’t know who you are, fellow, but you ain’t got nothin’ on me,” Chink Mitchell retorted thickly.

For a brief moment Mark Telfair played the flashlight upon his own bruised countenance. He caught a flicker of alarm on the ex-convict’s sullen face.

“Now do you know what I’ve got on you?” Mark demanded. “You’re too rough with your fenders, Chink — or not rough enough.”

Over Mitchell’s blunt, unpleasing features there settled an expression neither apprehensive nor resentful — it was more an absence of feeling than anything else. The look hardened upon his face, like a drying, rigid mask of clay, until it became the expression of a wary, wise convict, betraying nothing, threatening nothing. It was the prison face.

Chapter VII Double Deception

Mitchell did not even repeat his claim of innocence; he was now deliberately a voiceless, feelingless creature who would not awaken into life without a lawyer.

Mark Telfair wasted no more time on questions. He marched Mitchell at the point of a pistol to the rear of the garage. As they passed the covered sedan, Chink Mitchell’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly to survey the dust cloth. It hung smoothly, a blank innocent-appearing curtain over the car in which lay concealed a murdered man and a dead dog. Mark glanced at it, too. Though alert enough to forestall any move of Mitchell, his eyes roved here and there in the garage to detect a possible hiding place for the wad of paper that was not on Mitchell’s person.

There was an elaborate work bench laden with tools at the rear of the garage, and on it Mark found a coil of stranded copper wire. He halted his captive, chest to the wall to prevent any sudden movement, and wound turn after turn around him, binding his arms to his sides. As he worked he detected a quiet, almost imperceptible effort on the convict’s part to get some looseness in the wire. His arm muscles were taut; his stomach expanded.

As surreptitiously as Chink Mitchell attempted to get slack in his bonds, Mark Telfair assisted him in his effort. At the same time he broke into a running patter of threats and self-congratulatory remarks.

“You’ll find, Mitchell, that the state doesn’t like to have its prosecuting attorneys crowded off roads,” he assured the silent ex-convict jubilantly, while he bound Chink’s feet as slackly as he had fastened his arms. “And you aren’t smart enough to get away with it, either. We’ll have to find out why you did it, too, Mitchell.”

Chink Mitchell stood like a statue, giving no indication that he heard.

“Undoubtedly you have no liking for district attorneys. But I feel that that would hardly drive you to lie in wait on some side road until I went past. Besides, how would you know, that I was ordered up to the pen? No, Mitchell, I’m reluctantly compelled to believe that there’s somebody behind you. Don’t you want to tell me who it is or what you know about that five million dollars?”

Mitchell did not even part his lips.

“Mr. Smythe’s a nice kind employer, isn’t he, Mitchell? Fancy his giving you a job, with your record, the minute you lost your employment inside. Kind-hearted isn’t the word for it. It must have wounded his sensibilities to have his client, Herrington, go to the chair, don’t you think? Mr. Smythe didn’t say anything about five million to you, did he? Well, perhaps he wouldn’t want to spoil you. I think I’ll have to take up that five million with Mr. Smythe very soon. Perhaps I can drag something out of him about it. Do you think I can?”

Silence. Mitchell waited, flat face to the wall; thick lips tightly compressed.

“Lie down, Mitchell,” Mark commanded genially. He stepped back as he finished the job. “You’ll get flat-footed, standing there like that. And then they’ll take you for a policeman. You wouldn’t like that, would you? And maybe the police wouldn’t, either. Lie down flat while I do a bit of telephoning.”

Mitchell obeyed the command, although he took a step or two out from the wall before he did so. Mark Telfair noted that slight movement, which took his prisoner closer to the shelter of the covered sedan. He did not object.

“Be patient,” he advised, and with the flashlight showing the way, took a dozen steps toward the telephone that rested on a wooden shelf against one side of the building. Here he turned the light back toward his captive. The bulk of the sedan prevented him from seeing Mitchell’s outstretched form. He made no comment upon this fact.

He picked up the receiver and gave a number — the number of the penitentiary. Deputy Warden Crawford was still in his office, and answered at once, somewhat querulously.

“Where did you go?” the warden inquired. “First Naylor — then you! Gone without a word!”

“I’m still looking for that five million, and I’m making progress,” Mark Telfair replied. He made no effort to speak so softly that Chink Mitchell could not hear; neither did he raise his voice above a confidential murmur. “I’ve got Mitchell tied up in Smythe’s garage, Warden.”

“Smythe’s garage! Mitchell? You think he—”

“The car that shoved me off the road is here, too, with the fender newly painted. That’s all I’ve discovered so far, Warden, but I’ll get search warrants out in the morning and comb this whole place over for more evidence. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t give the game away. I was afraid you’d call up Smythe and ask him if he’d seen me. I want everything kept quiet until I can act.”

“It’s incredible!” John Crawford exclaimed. His voice revealed plainly his bewilderment. “You’re telling me, by inference, at least, that a reputable lawyer deliberately attempted to hold up and injure an assistant district attorney, proceeding on a mission of life and death for the governor himself. It’s—”

Mark Telfair ceased to listen to the voice on the telephone. He lowered the receiver from his ear and listened instead to the stealthiest of sounds from in front of the linen-covered sedan. But he did not turn his light that way; nor did he speak to Mitchell. For a moment a fleeting grin swept over his face; then he turned to the telephone again.

“Five million is a lot of money — and it’s handy to have, especially when a man has a big estate to keep up,” he said. “Warden, could you lend me a trustworthy keeper to watch Mitchell until morning? I know it isn’t strictly legal. But if I call in the police now it will leak out as sure as fate — and I want Smythe to have a good night’s sleep.”

“You mean that Smythe knows where that five million is located — that if he got an inkling he was suspected he might... ah... take steps before dawn to hide it beyond all hope of finding?”

“Something like that. It would be the correct procedure for Smythe, would it not?”

“I suppose so — if you’re right,” Warden Crawford replied unwillingly. “Well — I’ll send you a man.”

“Fine! I need only one. No hurry about it. We’re quite comfortable — both—”

From the rear of the garage he heard a sudden movement; then a splintering crash. Looking up, he had a momentary glimpse of a tire vanishing out of the window above the work bench. A shower of glass fell tinkling to the ground. Then absolute silence within the garage. Mark grinned.

“He’s got away!” Mark roared dramatically through the telephone. “Escaped through a window!”

Stamping loudly, he rushed out the door and around the corner of the building. Then he stopped abruptly and flattened himself out against the side of the building, as he had done once before that night.

Hardly had he taken cover when Chink Mitchell came dashing out of the door. He was unencumbered by wire and was barefoot, with his shoes in his hands. He darted across the driveway in front of the garage. His naked feet made no sound. He flung himself headlong through a gap in the privet hedge around the pond; then dropped into a flower bed beyond and lay still. In the vague light of the moon his body seemed to merge into the ground.

Only the fact that Mark, himself in the deep shadow of the garage, had followed Mitchell’s course intently made it possible for him to identify that blur in the garden as a man’s prone body. Mark did not move. Mitchell was in a position to watch the garage and everything that went on around the front and one side.

A minute dragged by, and then another. No sound or abrupt lighting of the house indicated that the sound of breaking glass had roused anyone there.

The stubborn deadlock of watcher and watched continued in utter immobility. And then, abruptly, Mark Telfair broke the spell.

He walked boldly around the corner to the front of the garage, in plain sight of Mitchell. He moved slowly, like a man spent from running. He stepped close to the limousine, still standing outside, and entered the black recesses of the garage.

The moment he walked into the shadows within he swung around alertly. He could still see the blotch made in the flower bed by Mitchell’s body. The man did not move.

Mark Telfair picked up the telephone. He spoke into it loudly, but there was no one on the other end. He spoke again, as if concluding his conversation, and then hung up.

He left the garage. With never a turn of his head toward Mitchell’s hiding place he hurried purposefully down the driveway in the direction of the service entrance. He walked not on the gravel, but along the grassy margin, where his feet made little sound. And he kept moving steadily along until he reached the point where the driveway curved. Past this curve he stopped abruptly and looked around. He could see no sign of Chink Mitchell.

With the greatest caution he eased his long body through the hedge that bordered the driveway. Then, on hands and knees, he crept along toward the margin of the pond. He was now almost opposite Mitchell’s place of refuge. Sinking down onto his chest near a lower hedge alongside a gravel path, he stared intently across the pond.

He had lost the exact position where Mitchell lay. He could see nothing that indicated a man’s body lying in the long flower bed on the other side of the water. He rose on his elbows a bit, staring intently. The profusion of hedges and flower beds around the sunken lily pond made his search more difficult. And then, suddenly, he caught sight of Mitchell.

Chapter VIII The Man With the Knife

The man had not changed his location. Now he was rising cautiously to his feet. He stood upright, listened, then slipped through the gap in the hedge to peer down the driveway in the direction in which Mark Telfair had vanished. In a moment he slunk through the hedge again. He approached the edge of the pond and stopped to look intently toward the house.

There was no sign of life in that direction. He sat down and slipped on his shoes. Then he began to walk around the grassy margin of the pond in tire direction of the prostrate Mark. But he was not looking in Mark’s direction; his vigilance was expended upon the service driveway and the house.

Mark Telfair hastily wormed himself across the grass, wriggling back from the edge of the water. It was his only chance to avoid discovery. He reached the low hedge by the path and crawled along beside it until he came to an opening where the path divided. Then he slipped around to the other side of the hedge and lay flat on the ground, edging his body in close to the stems of the endless row of privet bushes. He could see through the hedge under the leafy screen. But there was also a chance that the man he had captured and then assisted to escape would see him.

Chink Mitchell came soundlessly on around the verge of the pond. He drew abreast of Mark’s long body; then passed within three strides of it. He walked on, perhaps twenty feet further, and then stopped.

Where he halted was the only place around the rim of the pond where there was a stone retaining wall. Elsewhere the banks were natural grassy slopes; here a small dam had been constructed to raise the level of the pond.

The ex-convict stood upon this stone embankment a moment, once more reconnoitering with unfailing stealth. Then he busied himself in a manner that Mark, flattened out on the ground, was unable to make out. But suddenly Mark’s ears answered the question that his eyes had failed to solve.

He heard the clink of metal; the faint jingle of a chain. Then, plainly, he made out the soft murmur and splash of running water.

“A sluice gate!” he breathed. “He’s opened a gate! He’s draining the pond!”

With sudden abandonment of the extreme caution that he had used so far he worked his way closer to the stone dam.

Chink Mitchell was kneeling by the gate he had opened, staring down at the surface of the pond. The water was slipping out through the sluice at a rapid rate, but the pond was broad and long. It would take some time to drain.

As the minutes passed by Chink Mitchell’s attitude of attention grew more tense. He crouched at the edge of the dam, poised like a puma on a branch above a rabbit. The water lilies were sinking on their stems; a shelving strip of black mud was already showing around the rim of the pond.

Mitchell stood up. He wrenched at the mechanism of the sluice gate with feverish impatience; the murmur of the outrushing water deepened to a subdued roar. He came back to the wall a few feet away from the sluice gate and slid his legs over the edge. In a moment he was standing upright in two feet of water. Slashing through the lilypads he waded this way and that. His head turned constantly, scanning every inch of water. As the area of the pond diminished, the water fell more rapidly. Mark Telfair watched it drop, using the impatient legs of the chauffeur as his gauge.

Suddenly Chink Mitchell uttered a low cry and floundered through the lilies.

A few feet from the pond’s edge, where the lilies were thickest, the pads had not dropped flat upon the level bed of mud. They were raised; the broad pads, bending, outlined a sort of rough oblong upon which they rested.

Chink Mitchell flung himself toward that outlined object. He tore aside the lilies; groped in the mud and suddenly lifted up something that, mud-coated and swathed in wrappings though it was, vaguely suggested a large dispatch box in shape. With this clutched in his hands he waded rapidly toward the wall.

Mark Telfair was on his knees, now, with Mitchell’s automatic clutched in his hand.

Mitchell reached the low dam. He rested his burden on the stone top.

Mark Telfair’s breath went out of his body as suddenly as if his chest had been caved in. A man’s figure had appeared on the dam, just over Chink Mitchell. Mark started up; then crouched again.

The ex-convict uttered an audible gasp. His clutching hands released his hold on the wall. He stared upward in dumfounded silence.

“So you figured out where Herrington hid it at last, did you?” the man above him said in a mild tone of voice, “I never gave you credit for such brains, Chink.”

That smooth voice, the voice of Deputy Warden John Crawford, did not startle Telfair as the warden’s sudden appearance had done. He remained stock still, listening intently to catch the words above the decreasing murmur of the drained pond.

“I... I was gettin’ it for us both, Crawford,” Chink Mitchell said with an effort. Then his words flooded out: “That damn D. A. is nearly on to us; with that keeper you killed lyin’ in the garage it wasn’t safe to leave—”

“You’ve saved me some trouble — thanks!” Warden Crawford said in his quiet voice. He bent as he spoke, and faintly accentuated the last word. And as he voiced his thanks his right hand slid in a swift, easy movement along the side of Mitchell’s neck. Something he held gleamed briefly in the moonlight as he made that sure, unhurried gesture.

The ex-convict emitted a bubbling cry. He staggered backward, both muddy hands at his neck. For a moment he balanced, swaying. The smooth surface of the water at his feet was disturbed by something that pattered down upon it from his neck in drops like heavy rain; that continued to fall despite those clutching hands.

Mark Telfair was already leaping toward, the wall. He was on it when the acting warden saw him and recognized his tall figure even in the feeble light.

“Telfair!” he cried, instantly, and waved a hand that still held a knife toward the box at his feet. “I’ve found it— He attacked me and I had to — look at this — look here! Open it! It’s the—”

Mark did not answer. Neither did he bend toward the box. He leaped in. The knife hand suddenly ceased to indicate the muddy thing at Crawford’s feet and. swept upward in a sudden, lightning-like thrust. But Telfair’s left arm was rising to knock it aside even before the blade shot toward him. And his right hand, still clutching Mitchell’s automatic, came down like a mallet on the head of the warden. The man dropped to the ground as if drilled by a bullet.

Mark sprang into the pond and caught Chink Mitchell as he collapsed in the mud. He dragged the gasping man to the wall and heaved him up on top beside the prostrate warden. Then he raised. Mitchell’s pistol and fired shot after shot into the air.

Chapter IX Not Evidence!

The residence of Martin P. H. Smythe blazed with lights. In the lawyer’s small study four men sat around a table.

One of these was Mr. Smythe himself, who kept shifting his unlit cigar from hand to mouth as rapidly as if it were red hot. His forehead bore furrows of perplexity. Beside him sat the chief of police of the town of Ossining, hastily and carelessly dressed, but now wide awake. The chief was unhappy.

Mark Telfair was the third man. He was talking on the telephone and staring with unwinking attention at the fourth, Deputy Warden John Crawford. The deputy, despite a bump on his head as big as a walnut, seemed quite at ease.

On the table was a big steel box, from which a heavy casing of rubber had been removed. It had been pried open. Its contents, eight thick stacks of bills and several piles of bonds, not even damp after their long immersion, lay beside it on the polished mahogany.

Mark Telfair finished his conversation and hung up the receiver. “Warden Grant is returning tonight to take command of the prison,” he stated succinctly. “His doctor thinks now that he is recovering, not from an attack of ptomaine, but from a light dose of some poison like arsenic, which might have been slipped into a vacuum bottle of coffee.”

Deputy Warden Crawford smiled wearily. “Perfect!” he said. “One more crime of which I can be accused!”

He turned to the police chief, a glum, silent man with a heavy jaw who, like Smythe, was looking with incredulous eyes at Mark Telfair.

“Doubtless you are meditating my arrest, Chief, but I advise you to meditate a long time,” Crawford said softly. “Fortunately for me proof is required as well as accusation. Why he should suspect me—”

“Why?” repeated Mark Telfair. “Before I’d been in your office two minutes you instructed Keeper Naylor to ask Herrington if he will see me at once — me, the only man standing between him and death. If! A damned queer question, Warden, and I got back a queerer answer. Suspect you? I—”

Chief Hardwick muttered, “Why should a man like Deputy Warden Crawford—”

“Five million dollars is the answer!” Mark broke in. “I accuse Deputy Warden John Crawford of the deliberate murder of Herrington in the electric chair. His motive was to prevent Herrington from revealing to the authorities the hiding place of his loot, the approximate location which was already known to Crawford and his accomplice Mitchell. And I accuse him, too, of the deliberate murder of Keeper Naylor because he suspected too much.

“Here’s something Warden Crawford may wish to answer,” Mark went on dryly, and unfolded a dirty, crumpled sheet of paper. “I found it in the sweat band of Chink Mitchell’s cap. No, Warden, I’d rather read it to you.”

“Shoot!” said Chief Hardwick.

“It is signed by the late Charles Hall Herrington,” Mark explained. “It was contained in this sealed envelope marked, ‘To be opened only in the event of my death.’ It reads as follows:

Chapter X “One More Execution”

There was a moment of silence as Mark Telfair finished.

“Huh!” muttered Chief Hardwick.

“Ingenious!” murmured Crawford. “A tissue of lies. I deny it in toto. Let’s see; this adds forgery of the governor’s name to my other accomplishments, doesn’t it, Telfair?”

“Yes. You killed Herrington. He’d have had his reprieve if you hadn’t kept him silent. And you killed Naylor, who received this statement from Herrington. Perhaps some other keeper saw Herrington pass the paper to Naylor and told you. You had to get it, whatever it was, and silence Naylor, who knew too much. You brought Naylor out of the gate to Smythe’s car on the ground that you wanted him to go to town to get you some aspirin tablets.

“In spite of that ugly gash in his neck, Mitchell was able to tell me as he waited for the ambulance before he fainted, what happened to Naylor. As Naylor bent his head to enter Smythe’s limousine you crushed in his skull with a single blow of a blackjack. Then you pushed him in, told Mitchell to drive away, search the body, and get rid of it.”

The telephone tinkled. Smythe answered it; then thrust the instrument toward Mark Telfair. “The hospital.”

“Yes... Yes... I see,” said Telfair, on the telephone. “Tell me about it.”

There was not a sound in the room save for the faint, unintelligible voice issuing faintly from the receiver. Telfair listened at length. “Yes,” he said. “Thanks.”

He hung up, looked across the table at the unworried Warden Crawford, and spoke to Chief Hardwick.

“Mitchell has amplified his statement,” he said. “It seems that Mitchell caught a glimpse of Herrington, who was then unknown to him, inside the wall of Mr. Smythe’s estate. Herrington was carrying something bulky and heavy.

“Mitchell was meeting a train and had only a glimpse of the man. At that time police cars were closing in on Herrington from all sides. He was arrested near Croton half an hour later in a coupe he had just stolen from in front of a grocery store. But by then he had hidden his loot.”

“I assure you I didn’t know the stuff was hidden in my lily pond!” Martin P. H. Smythe broke in earnestly. “It is true that Herrington was an acquaintance of mine — but—”

Mark Telfair nodded. “It was a case of any port in a storm. Herrington knew that he could not reach his own five-acre farm up in Yorktown Heights with his loot. He had prepared the box in New York for submersion — his place is on a lake — and when he realized that the police were sure to get him he remembered your lily pond was close by. It worked. Nobody but Mitchell knew he had been on your place.”

“I certainly didn’t know!” Smythe bleated. He was perspiring profusely. “Mitchell isn’t the first ex-convict I’ve helped because—”

Mark Telfair’s voice broke in. “I can’t say I found your actions suspicious at any time, Mr. Smythe. I exonerated you completely when I rode home with you on your gas tank and you never spoke a word to your chauffeur. If he had been your accomplice you had plenty of things to talk about and, as far as you knew, absolute privacy.

“But Mitchell, Mr. Smythe, has been combing this estate for months to find that loot. Until he read in Herrington’s statement that involuntary hint, ‘as safely hidden as if at the bottom of the Atlantic,’ it never occurred to him that paper money and bonds might be hidden at the bottom of a pond. But ten days ago, when he heard rumors that Herrington might reveal the hiding place to save himself from the chair, he got desperate and confided in Warden Crawford here, thinking the warden might work out some way of getting a tip from Herrington.

“Mitchell says that Warden Crawford told him to keep on searching — that he would see to it that Herrington did not reveal his secret to the authorities. And Crawford did see to it — in his own murderous way.”

“Positively fiendish, I am,” the deputy warden commented in his mild voice. “With your talent you should be on the stage, Telfair. Did I also command Mitchell to run you off the road when I was notified by telephone that you were headed this way — possibly with an unconditional reprieve for Herrington from the governor?”

“You did,” Mark Telfair said.

Warden Crawford waved it all away with a gesture. “Guess, surmise, hope, thought, theory, ex-convict’s words, and so on — all as light as air and just as menacing.”

He laughed gently, deep in his chest, with his eyes fastened in mild mockery upon Telfair’s face.

“You’re a lawyer, Mr. Telfair,” he said. “You can guess just how much a jury would believe when Chink Mitchell, with his crook’s face and his shifty eyes, took the witness stand. His unsupported word is all the tangible evidence you have against me—”

Mark Telfair shook his head.

“Mitchell will not take the witness stand. The blood transfusion at the hospital was not a success. Mitchell is dead. But before he died Mitchell made this brief ante-mortem statement — and that is admissible evidence, Warden. I need not tell you what weight such a statement, made by one who knows he is at the very threshold of eternity, carries with a jury.”

He leaned forward, returning with steady eyes the mockery that was slowly fading from John Crawford’s face.

“I am not an ex-convict, Warden Crawford. My word is as good as yours. I will be in the witness chair, testifying to your third murder this night, if they try you for that — first, Mitchell is dead, Warden, murdered by you — and I saw you make the thrust that killed him.”

“That’s evidence!” grunted Chief Hardwick. “We can take him on that.”

“Don’t be a fool, Hardwick!” the deputy warden said in a high voice. “I deny — I didn’t—”

“Though you said you wanted to save a man from the chair tonight you wanted to see him die, Warden,” Mark Telfair stated with quiet certainty. “You, not the state, forced that execution. You’re going to be present at one more execution, Warden, but this time you’re not going to see the man die.”