The Weird Adventures of The Blond Adder

Thunder and lightning gashed the sky over the mountain lake shore. But a more sinister, more diabolical thunder rocked the earth. And a more lethal lightning flared on the ground. It illuminated the grisly horror of man-made death. Fighting through this maze of murder was Lee Nace, ace detective. And with him was a redheaded beauty — who led the way to a terror trap!

Chapter I The Hoarder Horrors

The red-headed girl had a pistol hidden under the newspaper she was pretending to read. She trained it on Lee Nace the instant he stepped out of the hotel elevator.

Nace walked on across the lobby, stride normal. The gun was an automatic. Chances were she couldn’t hit him, shooting from her lap.

Anyway, why should she shoot? He had never seen the girl before. He passed outdoors. Reflection in the swinging door told him the red-head had arisen, was following. She had wrapped the gun in the newspaper.

The street was warmly murky, no one in sight. Mountain Town was an upstate New York summer resort, and the season had not yet started.

Nace waited, thumbing tobacco into his stubby pipe. He stroked a match flame over the bowl, drew in fragrant smoke.

The red-head crowded her gun muzzle into the small of his back.

“Your hat needs straightening!” she said. Her voice was hurried, husky.

Nace lifted both hands and made motions of adjusting his Panama.

Nace was a tall man, so gaunt he had a hungry look. His face was angular, solemn, almost puritanical. His attire was dark, very plain. He might have been mistaken for a young minister.

“I’m going to turn around,” Nace said. Then he wheeled slowly.

He got his first close look at the girl. She made his head swim. Maybe it was her form. Or maybe it was her face, or red hair. Or her clothes; he couldn’t tell. In Broadway parlance, she had what it takes.

“You sold out to them!” Her husky voice was bitter. “I want to know who paid you. You can be a nice boy and talk here, or you can act stubborn and force me to use measures.”

Nace pulled smoke out of his pipe.

“It’d be easy to be nice to a baby like you.” He made it sound like an insult.

She bored the gun muzzle into his breast bone, said scathingly, “The great Lee Nace! The famous private detective Scotland Yard kept in England a year, on a fabulous salary, to study his methods! What a bust you turned out to be!”

“So you know me?” Nace mixed smoke with his words.

“That surprised you, did it?” she clipped. “I’ve seen your pictures. I’ve read some of the ballyhoo about you. That’s what led me to wire for you.”

Nace chewed his pipe slowly until it was half turned over in his teeth. “What’s your name?”

“Benna Franks. You saw it on the telegram.”

“I got no telegram from you.”

She didn’t believe him. “So that’s your story?”

Nace still held his Panama brim with both hands. “Believe it or not, Benna.”

“Are you going to tell me who bribed you not to work for me?” She gored him with the gun muzzle.

“Where’d you get the bribe idea, Benna?” His pipe turned the rest of the way over and was now upside down.

“You’ve been in town since noon. You didn’t call me, as my wire directed. It’s plain they bought you off.”

“Who’s they?”

Her gun gouged. “Quit stalling! Either you tell me who it was, or—!”

Nace blew through his pipe, suddenly and hard. Sparks spurted out, fell on the girl’s hand.

She gasped. Instinctively, her hand jerked back.

Nace’s hands left his hat brim with a speed that dazzled the eye. They reached the girl’s gun. A twist, and he had the weapon.

Benna Franks looked at her slender, tanned hands. The sparks had not burned them in the slightest. She slapped Nace — one, two, right hand, left hand.

Nace dropped his pipe. His ears rang as though full of sleigh bells. Rage smoked his pale eyes. He bent over and got his pipe, and when he straightened, the rage had subsided.

The girl whirled and ran. Nace grabbed, got her arm. He pulled her back hard enough to slam her against his chest. She opened her mouth to shriek. He cupped a hand over it. She bit his palm, but he stopped that by crowding a thumb hard against her nose.

He carried her down the street a few yards, so no one in the hotel would see them. She hissed, struggled, kicked. The perfume she used eddied faintly in his nostrils.

When she showed no sign of ceasing her exertions, he growled, “Lay off, Benna, or I’ll have to smack you down!”

The girl went on scuffling. Nace, watching her eyes, discovered she was looking behind him. He twisted hurriedly. He was just a fraction too late.

A man had glided up behind Nace and the girl. He gripped a wrench. It was all of iron, the sort of wrench which comes as factory equipment with most moderate-priced cars. He slammed it on top of Nace’s head.

Nace dropped.

The girl recoiled, unconsciously straightening her hair, saying hoarsely, “Fred! Fred! You didn’t hit hard enough to kill him?”

“Small loss if I did!” grated Fred.

Fred was almost as tall as Nace. He was thick in shoulders and neck. His face was handsome in a jaw-heavy sort of way.

“Go get in the car, honey,” Fred said. “I’ll bring this bum.”

He stopped to pick Nace up. He was entirely off guard.

Nace hung a beautiful right-hand jab on the point of Fred’s ample jaw. Stunned, Fred piled down on the detective. But he must have done some boxing in his time — he had sense enough to hold Nace’s arms.

Nace banged the top of his head against Fred’s head.

A strange wig of a contraption Nace wore was dislodged and fell off his head. The interesting part of this consisted of a steel skullcap, thin and light, but very stout. It bore thick blond hair and fitted over Nace’s close-cropped natural hair, which was the same color. This had kept the wrench blow on the head from harming Nace to any degree.

The red-headed girl had started for a coupe parked nearby. She came running back and hunted frantically for the wrench, which Fred had dropped.

Nace rolled Fred over, hit him again, then a second time. Fred sighed loudly, became limp.

Nace leaped to his feet. He saw the girl pick up the wrench, and started for her.

Fifty feet distant, a man stepped from behind a building and began firing a revolver at Nace as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.

THE rapidity of the man’s shooting made his aim erratic. The first bullet passed Nace’s head with a sucking smack of a sound. The second broke glass somewhere up the Mountain Town street.

Nace leaped sidewise, landed flat in the street gutter. He pulled himself along the gutter. A four-foot-wide park of grass lay between sidewalk and street pavement; a large maple tree grew out of this. Nace stood up behind this, drew the girl’s gun, got a bead on the man trying to kill him and pulled the trigger.

The gun hammer slapped down with an empty click. Nace tried again. The cylinder made a complete revolution to the accompaniment of more clicks.

The girl had been using an empty gun to menace him.

The man shooting at Nace reloaded his revolver. He resumed his barrage. Bark flew off the tree. Glancing bullets squawled. More windows broke. The powder thunder rolled and boomed in the Mountain Town street.

The gunman ran forward a little to shoot better, and Nace got a good look at him.

The fellow was short, extremely fat. He wore a long tan topcoat, a black-banded black hat. A white handkerchief was tied over his face.

The red-headed girl had seized the unconscious Fred. She dragged him to the coupe. She tried to get him into the seat, but it was too much for her strength. She dumped him on the floorboards, climbed over him, took the wheel.

The coupe sped away with Fred’s legs protruding from the door.

The masked gunman had made no effort to prevent her escape. He emptied his revolver again, and once more started to reload.

Nace flung the red-head’s empty pistol. The gunman, busy reloading, failed to see it coming. It hit him in the face, knocked him down.

The man got up and ran, still reloading the revolver.

Nace ran the opposite direction, across the street. He dived between two buildings, circled around the block and joined some excited natives who were racing to the sound of the shots.

No one, it developed, had more than a hazy idea of what had happened.

“I seen ’em from my window!” excitedly shouted a man who lived up the street. “There was a whole gang of  ’em! They drove off in a couple of big touring cars! They was city gangsters, I’m bettin’!”

“Where’s Jan Hasser, the town constable?” somebody demanded.

“Here he comes.”

Constable Hasser galloped up. He was a thin, wrinkled man. His age was probably forty, but a stringy white moustache made him look sixty. He wore a shiny blue coat. He chewed black, sweet tobacco which he took from a yellow paper package.

“Dern city gunsters shootin’ each other up,” was his verdict.

Nace picked up his pipe without being noticed. He loaded the bowl, put a match flame to it, and went into the hotel trailing fragrant smoke.

“You just missed the excitement, Mister Leeds,” the sleek clerk told Lee Nace.

Nace had registered under the name of Jules Leeds.

“Yeah,” Nace agreed without interest. “Say, who was the eyeful waitin’ in here when I went out? The red-head.”

“That one? Her name is Benna Franks. She runs a summer camp on the lake — Camp Lakeside.”

“On the make?”

“Not her! She’s principal of the Sunday school.”

“Yeah,” said Nace, and went up to his room.

Nace opened his bag, took out a pair of black oxfords which were rather worn. He exchanged them for the low-cuts he was wearing. To his left arm, just below the elbow, he strapped a sheath which held a hammerless .38 revolver. The grip had been machined off the gun, and a wooden knob fitted directly back of the cylinder. The weapon fitted nicely up his sleeve.

The hotel room had a stone fireplace. In this, Nace burned a magazine which contained an article on criminology, written by himself. He tore the leaves off a few at a time, so they would burn thoroughly.

From a coat pocket, Nace produced a telegram. It was addressed to his New York office. It read:

The message was sent Monday; Nace had received it on Tuesday. This was Wednesday. Nace eyed his watch.

The hands said twenty minutes until ten.

Nace folded the telegram and put it in a small, flat silk pack. The pack held other articles. It was half an inch thick, four wide, six long, and it tapered toward the edges. He stuck it on his back, just above the belt line, with adhesive tape.

He left the hotel and swung off across town, drawing briskly on his pipe. He watched his back trail. But no one followed him.

Nace thought a little about the telegram. He had never heard of the sender, Sol Rubinov. Judging from the composition of the message, Rubinov was a foreigner. Nace knew nothing more than the wire divulged.

A faint smile tickled Nace’s solemn mouth. Ordinarily, he didn’t take a case without knowing more about it than this. But he had intended coming up here for a short vacation, anyway.

Houses became scattering about Nace. Sidewalks gave out. He strode a path paralleling the paved road. The way dipped sharply.

Moist air off the lake pushed gently against his face.

The night was sultry. The moonbeams had a bilious yellow cast. Clouds were piled like black sponges around the horizon. Heat lightning jumped about in the clouds. Occasional thunder groaned and boomed.

Half a mile or so distant, a train clamored through the night. It began whistling for a crossing, and whistled perhaps twenty seconds. Then the train must have dived behind a hill, for its sound abruptly became fainter.

It was then that Nace heard a man gurgling and screaming faintly and crashing about in bushes near the lake shore.

Chapter II The Man Who Blew Up

Nace halted. He cupped both hands back of his ears.

The noises continued. The screams were stifled, as though the one who uttered them had a finger in his mouth. The brush fluttered; branches broke. It was as if a drunk was repeatedly falling down and getting up.

Nace slid a fountain-pen flashlight out of his vest and advanced. But he did not have to use the light. The man making the noises staggered out on the beach, where moonbeams bathed him.

It was the fat man who had tried to shoot Nace outside the hotel. His forehead bore a cut the exact shape of the trigger guard of the automatic with which Nace had hit him.

The man now wore a bathing suit, and nothing else. The suit was wet.

A wad of cloth was embedded between the fellow’s pudgy jaws. A wire, tied tightly behind his head, held it there.

He was fighting wildly, desperately, to undo the wire. The effort had torn his fingertips until they were stringing scarlet.

“I’ll take it off, buddy,” Nace said, and stepped out into the moonlight.

The fat man ran toward Nace, still tearing at the wire.

Then he exploded.

Nothing else quite described what happened. The fat man simply blew up. A sheet of blue-hot flame burst open his bathing suit. His head and waving arms sprang fifteen feet in the air. What was left of his lower body slammed into the sand.

Nace reeled back. He clapped hands over his ears. The terrific report of the explosion had deafened him.

The upper portion of the fat man’s body thudded into the sand. Gory fragments strewed about.

Nace shuddered, turned the pen light on himself. His clothing had not been soiled.

He stepped into the brush and crouched down, nursing his aching ears. He had never before heard such a sharp, deafening blast. It had been worse than a pistol discharge alongside his ears. The ringing in his head subsided. Hearing returned until he could detect the flutter of leaves in the faint breeze.

Waves made moist sucking sounds on the lake shore. Far away, thunder clapped and rumbled; lightning splattered the clouds with fitful red.

Running feet came clap-clapping down the paved road. One man! He turned off the road, came toward the lake.

“What’re you doin’?” he yelled. “Dynamitin’ fish in that lake, I’ll bet! By crackey, that’s agin the law!”

It was the Mountain Town constable, Jan Hasser. He came up, a big pistol in hand, his left cheek wadded out with chewing tobacco.

He saw the head and shoulders of the fat man. His mouth fell open. Tobacco juice spilled down his chin, unnoticed.

“Jumpin’ snakes!” he gulped. “That’s my deputy constable, Fatty Dell!”

Nace reached inside his coat.

“No you don’t, by crackey!” yelled Constable Hasser. He leveled his big pistol at Nace. “Stand still, sonny!”

Nace scowled. “I wanted to show you my credentials. Get them — my inside pocket.”

Hasser came over, making a hard mouth under his stringy white moustache. Gingerly, he withdrew Nace’s papers. He read them, peered closely at Nace’s face.

“Lee Nace, huh,” he grunted. “Reckon that’s right. I’ve seen yer picture in the New York papers. Well, what happened to Fatty?”

“He blew up.”

“He what?”

Nace used his pen light. His solemn, puritanical face registered no horror at the scene.

“I don’t see any sign of what caused it,” he said. “The man simply exploded.”

Hasser cleaned off his chin with his sleeve. “Poor Fatty! Who stuffed that rag in his mouth and tied the wire around his head?”

“Search me, Hasser. It was there when I saw him.”

“What were you doin’ around here?”

“I was out walking.”

“That all?”

“It’s enough for the time being, Hasser.” Nace went over and played his thin flash beam along the water edge.

“Fatty Dell swam to this point,” he said. “Here are his tracks leaving the water. Somebody met him. Whoever it was had his shoes wrapped in cloth so as not to leave a distinct footprint. Here are that fellow’s tracks, too. It looks like they wrestled around in the sand some.”

“Who was the other feller?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Nace raced his flash beam out over the water. He waded in, continued out until nearly waist deep. He dipped up a soggy bundle which had been floating on the surface.

“Here’s the rags the other man had wrapped around his shoes. The piece between Fatty Dell’s jaws was torn off these.”

Nace studied the sodden cloth carefully.

“That ain’t liable to help us much,” mumbled Constable Hasser. “Or will it?”

“It’s part of an old shirt,” Nace said dryly. “Size seventeen. That means the wearer was husky. There’s several laundry marks, all the same. That makes it simple to trace the owner.”

“By crackey!” grunted Hasser.

“The owner is not necessarily the man who seized Fatty Dell,” Nace went on. “The fellow who had the rag tied around his feet wore black and white sport shoes. Some of the shoe polish and the white cleaner rubbed off on the cloth.”

“Gimme,” said Hasser, extending a hand. “That thing is a clue.”

Nace passed it over. “Want me to call the medical examiner?”

“Yeah — sure. You’ll find a house with a phone up the road about half a mile.”

Nace swung off. But he didn’t go far. When he judged Constable Hasser could no longer hear his footsteps, he wheeled and ran back silently.

Creeping through the brush, Nace stared at the moonbathed lake shore.

Nace was of the opinion Constable Hasser had appeared on the explosion scene a bit too early. Therefore, he was not greatly surprised at what he saw.

Constable Hasser stood knee deep in the lake. He was industriously washing the fragment of shirt — obviously to remove traces of the white and black shoe polish.

Hasser wrung the shirt out, then scrutinized it.

“That oughta put a crimp in the dang city feller!” His surly mutter reached Nace’s ears.

Coming out of the water, Hasser stared at the fragments of Fatty Dell’s body. He seemed extremely puzzled.

“But why kill Fatty?” he grumbled. “Fatty was goin’ to croak this dang Nace. By crackey, maybe Nace done Fatty in!”

Hasser bit off a segment of plug tobacco, growled, “I gotta find out about this! Better spread a warnin’ about them black and white sport shoes in case it wasn’t Nace—!”

He moved off beyond earshot.

Nace trailed in grim silence. Hasser went to the road, followed it a short distance, then turned off on a path. The path was well made. It crossed gullies via rustic bridges, and was graveled in the low places.

The gravel prevented Nace getting close enough to Hasser to hear what he said, in case the man talked to himself again.

Trees interlaced above the path, making it a black tunnel. But the distant lightning reddened the tunnel occasionally, furnishing another reason for Nace remaining well to the rear.

A wooden bridge boomed under Hasser’s feet. Far-off thunder rumbled a louder echo.

Nace listened carefully, heard Hasser crunching through gravel a hundred feet ahead, and thus relieved, ran lightly across the bridge.

At the farther end, he sprawled headlong over a taut wire.

A man hurtled from the darkness and landed upon him.

Nace twisted quickly upon his back, spun half around and kicked with both legs. His feet hit the attacker squarely. The assailant squawked surprise and pain. He was propelled backward. He made a loud crash in the trailside brush.

Then the man cut loose with a gun. The weapon made a nasty chung-chung-chung series of reports. It was silenced. The silencer swallowed nearly all the muzzle flame.

Nace was burned on the leg slightly. He got to his feet with a rolling convulsion. He jumped the direction which came handiest. It happened to be toward the bridge.

He jumped up and down on the planks, then swung over the rail and hung by his hands, as far under the bridge as he could get. Holding with one hand and a foot, he dug his gun out of the sleeve sheath.

Constable Hasser came charging back along the path, bellowing, “Hey! What the devil—?”

“Shut up!” barked Nace’s attacker. “That damn New York detective followed you!”

The shrillness of the man’s voice, its strained quality, told Nace it was disguised.

Hasser began, “Oh, it’s you, Mister—!”

“Hell!” ripped the other. “Don’t speak my name! The dick is on the bridge somewhere. I tripped him with a wire, but he got away—!”

“Well, we’ll get the gol-dinged—!”

“Nix. Come on!”

The two ran off rapidly. Before they were out of earshot, the shrill, disguised voice of Nace’s assailant drifted back.

“My car is on the road. We’ll leave Mister Detective a present there.”

Nace swung back onto the bridge, wondering about that last remark. He ran to the end of the bridge, stopped there to yank the wire loose. He splashed his flashlight on it for a short instant.

The wire was the same type as the length which had been tied between unfortunate Fatty Dell’s jaws. Nace felt certain that piece had been cut from this one.

Nace left the trail, then moved along a few yards from it. He was wary of another ambush. The remark about leaving a present at the road was still in his thoughts. He wondered what it meant.

He knew an instant later.

A jarring, smashing roar of sound caromed across the woods. A bluish flash, brief, brilliant, splashed on the treetops. Then a procession of echoes boomed from the surrounding hills.

The explosion had come from the left.

Nace discarded caution, sprinted for the spot. He could guess, now, what the present would be. Tree trunks and branches smashed his head, shoulders, arms. Brambles dug at his hide and picked small holes in his clothing. He sprawled into a gulch. After that, he used his flashlight.

Ahead, a car starter made a loud sawing noise; an engine blared up. The machine screamed away in second gear.

Nace reached the road too late to get even a glimpse of the fleeing vehicle. It had whirled around a curve in the highway.

Nace fanned his flash beam about.

Like a white string, the luminance crawled over what remained of Constable Hasser.

It wasn’t much.

Hasser’s head and torso were nearly intact, as were his legs. These two segments lay a full ten paces apart. The explosion which had demolished the man had been nearly fantastic in its violence.

Nace searched some minutes, seeking something which might tell him the nature of the explosion. He found nothing.

Using the flash, Nace hunted for footprints. The leaves were dry, the ground below arid enough to be solid. There had been no rain recently.

Thunder hooted from the horizon, as though in derisive laughter at his efforts. Lightning winked redly.

Nace kept at his search. Constable Hasser had been murdered so Nace could not get hold of him and pry out information. Hasser had obviously known a lot. And his murderer was the man who had also done in the deputy constable, Fatty Dell.

Nace growled sourly. Fatty Dell had been at the lake to kill him — Nace. Constable Hasser’s mutterings had revealed that much. Nace could think of only one reason for their desiring his own end — to keep him from doing any investigating.

They obviously knew of the telegram he had received, signed by the name Sol Rubinov.

Nace doubled to study an object his flashlight had picked up. It was a mushroom, the type called a puffball because of the brownish powder it contains when mature. This one had been kicked and burst open, the brownish powder strewn about.

Nace went back and examined Hasser’s shoes. They bore no traces of the brown powder.

Next, Nace conducted an intensive hunt for the old shirt. It was nowhere to be found. Hasser’s murderer had taken it.

Voices were to be heard, and running feet. Residents of the vicinity were coming to investigate the noise of the explosion.

Nace cut across the woods, making for Mountain Town. No one saw him. Once on the village sidewalks, he set a course for his hotel.

Chapter III Deceit Trail

The sleek hotel clerk was turning a telegram thoughtfully in his hand when he came in.

“Danged if I know what to do with this wire,” he told Nace in a mildly puzzled tone. “The thing came in this morning. It’s addressed care of the Mountain House hotel, but we ain’t got nobody named Lee Nace registered here.”

Nace was holding his pipe. He made a mental note to see that his secretary got a ten per cent wage cut starting next pay day. She was always pulling stunts like this. He had told her distinctly he would be at the Mountain House, Mountain Town’s largest hotel, under the name Jules Leeds.

“I’ll take the wire,” Nace said.

“But your name is Leeds, not—”

Nace proved who he was. Then he opened the telegram. It had been sent from Mountain Town to his New York office, and forwarded back.

“So she was on the up and up,” Nace murmured.

The clerk had an ear open. “What say?”

“Sounds like rain,” Nace replied, after a couple of salvos of thunder had chased themselves across the countryside.

The clerk had been thinking. “Say, buddy, are you the Lee Nace the newspapers write about — the private detective? I read a story where it said people had tried to kill you more’n four hundred times. Tell me somethin’, was that a damn lie?”

“Draw your own conclusions.” Nace put his elbows on the desk and grew confidential. “What’s the low-dirty on Constable Hasser and his deputy, Fatty Dell?”

The clerk’s eyes saucered. “Cripes! You tryin’ to get somethin’ on ’em?”

“Just finding out what’s what.”

“You got a case here, Mister Nace?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I guess Hasser and Dell are all right,” said the clerk. “There was some talk of them takin’ money to let beer trucks pass through Mountain Town. Then there was some scandal last winter when a local judge got hell for issuin’ pistol permits to some New York City gangsters. The judge claimed Hasser and Dell recommended the gangsters to him as honest citizens.”

“That all?”

“Yeah — except Hasser and Dell knock off a crap game sometimes, and take pay for lettin’ the boys go.”

Nace smiled wryly. “What you mean is that Hasser and Dell are all right, except they’re a pair of cheap crooks. That right?”

“Oh, hell! This is just gossip!”

“Sure.” Nace smiled knowingly.

A car drove up and two tourists, man and woman, came in and registered.

It was sultry in the lobby. Flies buzzed. A loose window somewhere rattled every time it thundered.

Nace waited until the clerk was free again. “Where is Camp Lakeside?”

“Red-headed Benna Franks’ place? It’s up the west side of the lake about two miles.”

Nace spilled smoke from both nostrils. It was up the west side of the lake that Constable Hasser had been killed by the strange explosion.

“Much of a place?”

“The camp — yeah, it’s quite a layout. Of course, it ain’t opened up yet. But Benna Franks takes in plenty of jack later in the summer, when the season opens up.”

“Where can I rent a car?”

“Down the street a block. You goin’ up to Camp Lakeside?”

“Keep it under your hat,” Nace warned with an exaggerated air of mystery.

“I sure will. And if there’s anything else—”

Nace left the sleek youth declaring his willingness to be of assistance. The fellow was a good sort; his type had given detectives tips that had broken many a case.

The car-renting concern was a branch of a nation-wide chain. Nace had a card which the chain issued to reliable customers. It enabled him to rent a machine without the formality of putting up a deposit.

The machine was an eight-cylinder green roadster, the fastest heap in the place, Nace believed. It was a two-year-old model. A carbon knock tinkled under the hood as he drove out.

He glanced at the hotel in passing. What he saw made him stamp the brake until all four wheels slid. He burst out of the car, flung across the street, took the hotel stairs with a single vault.

The hotel clerk was draped like a rag across his desk. Crimson ran in a squirming red cord from his nostrils.

Nace turned the clerk on the desk, hunting wounds. He found none, unless a smashed nose counted. The clerk’s face had banged the desk. There was a knot like half a walnut on his head.

The hotel elevator clanked open. Nace watched it, right hand on the ball-gripped gun in his left sleeve. Only the colored operator was in the cage.

Nace flipped a hand at the clerk. “When did that happen?”

“Lan’ sakes, Mistah, ah don’ know!” gurgled the boy. “Dat hadn’t happened to ’im when ah took de ice watah up a minute ago.”

“Who’d you take the ice water to?”

“Old lady in four-ten. Evah night at dis time, she has me fetch her ice water—!”

Nace shoved the elevator operator for the door. “Run out in the street and yell bloody murder!”

“Lawsy, Mistah, I don’ know what to holler—”

“Yell that there’s a murdered man in here!”

The colored boy must have taken Nace’s words to mean the clerk had been murdered. He ran squawling into the street.

Nace whirled out through the back door. He waited in the darkness, one eye on the fire escape, the other on the exit. Seconds dragged and pulled minutes after them.

The hotel filled with excited citizens.

Nace was disgusted. It had been his guess that someone had visited the hotel bent on taking his life, and that the person would flee when the alarm was given. The guess had been bad somewhere.

He walked around and entered the hotel. Several persons had formed a sort of volunteer bucket brigade to relay ice water from the cooler to douse the unconscious clerk. The fellow stirred finally, sat up. He saw Nace and made a wry grin.

“Did you get a look at whoever hit you?” Nace questioned.

“Nix. I was dozin’ with my face in my hands.”

Nace slid a tenspot across the desk. “Buy yourself some aspirin with that.”

The clerk blinked. “You think they came in here huntin’ you?”

“You’re a good guesser, boy.”

Nace kindled his pipe, listening to the remarks of curious citizens who had been drawn by the colored boy’s yells. If the nearly-destroyed body of Constable Hasser, or that of Fatty Dell, had been found, the news was not yet in town.

Turning away, Nace saw something that nearly made him swallow his pipe.

It was Fred — the thick-necked, jaw-heavy young man who had helped the red-headed Benna Franks.

Fred had been working furtively toward the door. He saw he had been observed. He ducked outside.

Nace ran to the door, popped through, rattled his feet down the steps. Fred was diving into a car. It was the same coupe in which the red-head had driven him away from this spot earlier in the night.

The coupe lunged into movement.

Nace’s gun came out of his sleeve, banged once.

The coupe engine died. Nace knew exactly where to shoot to hit the distributor under the hood.

Not aiming his gun at Fred, Nace ran to the machine.

Fred had an automatic in his hands. His arms were steady, but he made no effort to use the gun. He laid it on the cushions.

“Hell!” he said thickly. “I guess I ain’t got no guts to kill a man.”

Nace reached over Fred’s lap for the gun on the cushions. Fred grabbed at Nace’s head.

Nace chopped his hard hand, edgewise, to the man’s temple. Fred moaned and fell over.

Nace got the gun. Then he reached further and plucked a rag off the coupe floorboards. It was the rag the murderer of Fatty Dell had used to wrap around his shoes.

Fred wore black and white sport shoes.

Nace pocketed gun and rag, then hauled Fred out of the coupe and carried him to the rented roadster.

An excited crowd had poured out of the hotel. A beefy, red-necked man ran at Nace, cursing and brandishing a nickeled revolver. He demanded that Nace throw up his hands. Nace showed his agency card and his license.

“Anybody can steal them things and you look like a damn crook to me,” snarled the nasty-tempered man. He added a string of insults.

Nace caught the smell of alcohol on the man’s breath. Pointing behind the fellow, Nace said, “That man will identify me!”

The drunk turned. Nace knocked him down, grabbed the nickeled revolver, unloaded it and smashed it on the concrete pavement. The cylinder was broken off its pin, ruining the weapon.

“Who is this palooka?” Nace demanded of the crowd.

“A railroad dick,” said the hotel clerk, who had weaved out with the crowd. “He always was too free with that gun.”

“He’s too free with his mouth,” Nace growled, some of his anger departing.

He clambered in the roadster. Fred was awake. He said nothing. Nace drove off.

A lightning flash blazed like blood in the street, and afterward darkness came black and muggy. Nace thumbed the lights on. He glanced sidewise and saw Fred gathering himself in the seat.

“The next time I hit you, they’ll need a doctor to wake you up!” Nace warned grimly.

Fred relaxed. “What are you going to do?”

Nace gave him silence for an answer.

The plunging roadster left Mountain Town behind. It banked around a curve, tires squealing in a slight skid, then straightened out.

The headlights picked up clustered cars and people alongside to the road.

“Know what that is?” Nace asked.

Fred muttered, “I stopped long enough to ask when I came in town.”

Nace slowed up until he was through the jam. On the right side of the pavement, a crowd jostled each other to see the remnants of Constable Hasser’s body.

The roadster increased speed, as though trying to catch its headlights. Thunder clapped and gobbled over the engine moan. A sign, white lettered in black, appeared. It said:

Nace jockeyed the roadster into the grounds. Lighted windows glowed in a rather pretentious two-story log building. Nace braked to a stop before it, looked at Fred.

The jaw-heavy young man was pale, trembling. His fists clenched and unclenched.

“Damn you!” he said thickly. “If you lay a hand on Benna, I’ll break your neck!”

“Boo!” Nace said amiably. “Get out and let’s go in.”

Fred quitted the car as if afflicted with a stiffness of the joints. They put feet on a slab porch.

The door opened. Benna Franks stood there. Nace knew positively he had never seen a girl more beautiful. Standing in the light behind her, she looked like an angel with a halo.

She didn’t see Nace at first.

“Fred!” she cried. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“I’m all right, sis,” said Fred.

Nace grinned. So these were brother and sister!

Chapter IV The Third Man-Blast

Nace felt unreasonably good over his discovery for some seconds. It gave him a feeling of elation out of all proportion to its importance in the trend of the case. He was not too dumb to realize why it tickled him, either. It was the red-head, of course. She was getting to him. He’d have to watch his step.

The red-head discovered him. She looked like she’d found a snake.

“What are you doing here?”

“Freddy brought me along,” Nace said, face solemn.

“He’s a liar!” Freddy yelled. “He shot into my car downtown and killed the engine, then knocked me senseless and brought me here.”

Nace’s voice rapped out before anyone else could speak.

“Maybe you’d like to tell what you were doing downtown, Freddy!”

Fred looked like he was been choked. He swallowed twice, made no answer.

“Why did you go downtown, Fred?” the red-head asked.

The jaw-heavy young man swallowed twice more. “To get some cigarettes.”

Nace could see past the girl into the large front room of the log building. It was a small general store, selling everything from groceries to Indian curios.

Cigarettes were prominently displayed.

“Tsk, tsk,” Nace chuckled. But his solemn face showed no levity.

“What was your purpose in coming here?” Benna Franks asked Nace angrily.

Nace, debating his answer, chanced to drop his eyes to her shoes. They were black-and-white sports.

Nace suddenly felt as if the air had frozen around him. It wasn’t so much the shoes — almost all women wore them now. But it was the memory of that shrill voice which had cried out to unlucky Constable Hasser. Nace had taken for granted that it was a man’s.

It could have been a woman’s.

There was something else, too — the red-head’s shoes bore a few brownish smudges that looked powder-like.

Nace thought of the puffball mushroom which had been broken by Constable Hasser’s companion. The puffball had contained a powder this color.

“Where did you get that brown stain on your shoes?” he asked.

“Are you crazy?” the girl snapped.

Nace’s voice turned hard. “Answer the question!”

“It’s cinnamon,” said the girl, startled out of her anger by his tone. “I dropped the cinnamon box in the kitchen.”

“All right,” Nace told her mildly. “Let’s go in and talk.”

“I don’t want you in here.”

“What you want don’t cut much ice.” He gave Fred a shove. “Get inside, you!”

Fred acted for an instant as if he were going to take a swing at Nace. But he reconsidered, felt of his temple, then stumbled inside.

The girl eyed her brother, seemingly surprised at his meekness. Then she followed him in.

Nace stepped across the threshold after them.

He knew instantly that he should have been more careful. But it was too late then.

A gun was shoving a cold round nose to his temple.

“Stand still, shamus!” gritted a harsh voice.

Nace stood still. He rolled his eyes sidewise enough, though, to see the man who held the weapon.

The fellow was blond, slender, snappily dressed. He was very handsome — if one liked features so fine they were almost feminine. In age, he was probably thirty-five.

Nace’s scrutiny took in the blond man’s hands. They were strong, manicured, with the nails so healthily pink as to lend a suspicion of artificial tint. But it was the many small pits in the skin that Nace gave particular attention. Nace didn’t think they were disease pits — they looked more like the result of a spray of hot metal. Yet they weren’t ordinary heat burns.

The blond young man’s gun cocked with a noisy click.

“Spencer!” the red-head shrilled. “Don’t shoot him!”

Her shriek rang out so sharply it startled the blond man. His gun muzzle jiggled, moved upward perhaps three inches. It now rested against the top of Nace’s head, which was protected by the steel helmet-wig.

Nace took a chance. He hit Spencer in the midriff — just about as hard as he could. The blond man made a horrible face and fell to the floor. There, he had convulsions. His first twitch flung his gun skating across the floor.

The girl pounced on the weapon, pointed it at Nace.

Nace shrugged. “All right. Just so somebody’s got it who doesn’t want to shoot me.”

Then he remembered the brown smudge on her shoes and nearly shuddered.

Fred growled, “Gimme that gun, sis!”

“You do, and somebody is liable to get killed!” Nace warned her.

“Get out!” she hissed.

“In my coat pocket is a telegram,” Nace told her. “It’s the one you sent to me in New York. It was forwarded here, and because I had registered at the hotel under a fake name, I didn’t get it until less than an hour ago.”

The red-head eyed him steadily, considering this. She looked like a flame-haired Madonna with the lights playing on her features.

Thunder bawled over the log house roof. Blond Spencer twisted and moaned on the floor.

The girl said jerkily, “I wonder — if — if I’ve had you all wrong?”

“I hope so.” Nace pointed at Spencer. “Who’s this?”

“Spencer — Jim Spencer. He is athletic director here at Camp Lakeside.”

Fred Franks came over and gingerly extracted the telegram from Nace’s coat pocket. He eyed it.

“Forwarded back here from New York City, all right,” he admitted.

Nace picked the suffering Spencer up, dumped him in a chair. Then he seated himself with a flourish, took out his pipe, gorged it with tobacco and applied a match.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this!” he said briskly. “Who’s Sol Rubinov?”

“He is — was the caretaker and man-of-all-work here at Camp Lakeside,” said the girl.

“It was in answer to a telegram signed by Sol Rubinov that I came here. As I told you, I didn’t get your wire until tonight.”

“Oh! Then Rubinov sent for you! That explains it!”

Nace looked at blond Spencer’s shoes. They were plain black.

“Get Rubinov,” Nace suggested. “He may want to be in on this.”

The red-head became pale, somewhat rigid. “I can’t. I don’t know where he is. I think — he has been murdered.”

Fred Franks gave his sister a dramatic stare.

“I know he was murdered, sis!” he rapped. “I saw something on my way to town tonight which makes me sure of it. There was an explosion, just like we heard here night before last, and afterward, at the scene of the blast, the mangled body of Constable Jan Hasser was found.”

The girl shuddered and sank into a chair made out of branches with the bark still attached.

“There was a terrific blast here at Camp Lakeside night before last,” she told Nace swiftly. “Fred and I hunted around several minutes before we found the exact spot. There we discovered—!” Her mouth closed so tightly little muscles bunched around it, and her face looked as if it had been whitewashed.

“We found pieces of flesh and blood scattered around,” finished Fred. “But we couldn’t tell whether it was human. There wasn’t no sign of a body.”

“This happened the night after Rubinov sent me the telegram,” Nace pointed out.

“Constable Hasser chanced to be passing and he laughed at our idea of calling in the state police,” the girl said, voice strained.

“He would!” A fog of pipe smoke was growing in the sultry air over Nace’s head.

Blond Spencer pushed himself out of his chair. He rolled his eyes at Nace, keeping both hands over his middle.

“I’m goin’ to the kitchen an’ wash my face!” he said hoarsely. “Maybe cold water will make me feel better.”

He staggered into the kitchen, leaving the door open. Nace, looking through the gaping door, could see a second door across the kitchen, evidently leading outdoors.

“There just the one kitchen door going outside?” he asked.

The red-head nodded.

Nace sat where he was. Spencer turned on a water faucet in the kitchen. The splashing, mingling as it did with the thunder outdoors, made it seem as though it had started to rain. Nace kept his ears cocked, just on the chance Spencer might try to get out of the kitchen by a window.

“What’s behind all this?” he questioned.

“To make you understand, I’ll have to tell you Sol Rubinov’s history,” Benna Franks said, plainly glad to get away from the explosion subject. “He was born in Russia. His father was a successful shopkeeper, but rather ignorant. He trusted no one. He would not put his money in the banks, but hoarded it always in metal coins. He had a large hoard of coins when he died.

“Sol Rubinov, his son, had the same mania for hoarding. When he came to America, he brought a small fortune in coins gathered by his father. He never made a large salary here, but he saved nearly all of it. And every dollar of it, he changed into gold or silver and added to his secret hoard.”

“He was sure inviting trouble,” grunted Nace. He could hear Spencer splashing in the kitchen.

“Two days ago — the same day he wired you — Rubinov came to me and told me where his hoard was hidden,” continued the girl. “He told me, that in the event of his death, I was to have his money.”

Nace shut his eyes tightly and thought of the shrill voice in the night-ridden woods, of the brown powder on the girl’s sport shoes. He thought also of what a jury would say when they heard Rubinov’s death meant the girl was to have the old Russian’s gold hoard. His forehead felt clammy.

“We looked for the hoarded money, Fred and I,” said the girl. “It was gone, except for one coin wedged in a crack.”

Spencer came weaving out of the kitchen, blond hair touseled, wiping his hands in a towel. The washing had made the strange little pits on his hands stand out more noticeably.

“The hoard was supposed to be in a box under the floor of Rubinov’s cabin,” Benna Franks continued. “This is the single coin we found.”

She arose, extracted a coin from a brown leather bag, passed it over.

At first glance, it looked like silver. But it bore an unusual face design. Nace bounced it on the table. He bit it. He eyed it closely.

“Bless us!” he ejaculated.

“What is it?” questioned the red-head.

“This one coin is worth a small fortune,” he explained. “In the old days, Russia made a little money out of platinum. That was in the days before platinum became so valuable. This is one of those coins. But it has a worth greatly beyond the platinum content as a collector’s piece.”

Nace clattered dottle out of his pipe in a hammered iron stand, reloaded it, asked, “Did Rubinov seem worried when he told you where his hoard was hidden?”

The red-head nodded. “He did.”

Nace blew smoke and followed the squirming gray cloud with his eyes. “How about two or three months ago — when the U.S. government began raising cain with gold hoarders? You know — when the banks all closed for a while.”

The girl gave a slight start. “Why — Rubinov was worried by that! I remember now. He came to me several times and wanted to know all about what it meant. If a man had been getting gold coins and keeping them, could the government take them away from him? That was his question.”

“And you told him?”

“I gave him to understand the government might confiscate his gold as a penalty. That, you recall, was the talk at the time.”

Nace frowned through his smoke fog. “Want to hear me do some guessing?”

They all three nodded.

“Here is what I think happened,” Nace said briskly. “Rubinov got scared and decided to turn his hoarded money into the bank. He wanted a guard while he did it, so he went to Constable Hasser and Deputy Constable Fatty Dell. But Hasser and Dell persuaded him not to turn it in, probably lying to him and telling him it was all right to keep the money.

“Hasser and Dell got someone else to help them — somebody who kills with that infernal explosive. They watched Rubinov and found out where the hoard was hidden. But Rubinov got wise and sent for me. Then they killed Rubinov and stole his hoard.

“The third person, the real murderer, killed Hasser and Dell so as to have the loot for himself. Now he’s trying to kill me so I can’t do any investigating.”

The girl stood up. “Do you want to see the spot where the hoard was hidden?”

“Yeah.” Nace looked at her shoes. “But first, I’d like to see where you spilled that cinnamon on your shoes.”

She turned toward the kitchen. “I can show you the partly emptied box.” Her voice was shrill.

She entered the kitchen, looked at a shelf.

“The cinnamon box is gone!” she gasped.

Chapter V Prowler

The red-headed girl pressed hands tightly to her cheeks. Her eyes acquired a sheen of moisture. She looked very scared.

“Does this — throw suspicion on me?” she choked.

Nace swung over, put a long arm about her shoulders. This seemed to be the thing he most wanted to do at the moment.

“Somebody may be trying to frame you, Benna,” he said.

He felt her shiver, could feel her heart trip-hammering.

The blond Spencer, walking in a half crouch because of the agony in his middle, shuffled into the kitchen. He eyed the shelf at which Benna Franks pointed, then squinted at the window.

The window was near the shelf — an easy arm reach. The sash was up.

“That window was closed when I washed my face a few moments ago!” Spencer barked. “Somebody has opened it since then!”

Nace grunted, herded them all back in the big room, and swung grimly for the door.

“Stay here!” he commanded. “I’m going to browse a little!”

The night outside had turned several degrees blacker. It was hotter. The breeze had died. The world was like the inside of a gigantic bomb, the only disturbance the less frequent bark of thunder and the crackling blaze of lightning.

Nace prowled. He did not use his pen flashlight. And after each gory burst of lightning, he made a wild jump eight or ten feet in the most convenient direction. He was taking no chances of a skulker pot-shooting him.

Camp Lakeside consisted of long lines of attractive three- and four-room log cabins, connected by graveled drives. Boathouses, bathhouses and a sanded beach were down on the lake shore.

Nace weaved among the cabins, covering a few yards, then stopping to listen. He worked down toward the lake. The air here had a faint tang of fish. It wasn’t unpleasant.

At some farmhouse in the distance, a dog howled. The animal was some breed of hound — its howl was long and quavering and eerie, like the wail of an ogre spawned out of the rumbling, flaming night.

Nace wrinkled his sensitive nostrils. He had caught an alien odor, very vague. He advanced a few silent paces. The odor became stronger. He identified it.

Whiskey!

The lightning gushed a white-hot blaze.

Nace jumped a foot — a hulking figure of a man stood almost against his nose. His back was to Nace.

Nace smacked a fist into the fellow’s back. The skulker barked hoarsely in surprise and pain. He folded forward on his knees. Nace pounced on him, fists bludgeoning. He hit the man in the nape, the temple. He reached around to slug him in the jaw — and got kicked in the back of the head.

Nace felt for a moment as if he were a big comet smashing through a galaxy of stars. The kick had been a complete surprise. He was half stunned.

The other man was bigger, heavier. He crawled atop Nace. If the fellow had used his fists then, Nace would have been finished. Instead, he tore at a revolver in his coat pocket.

Nace got his knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and kissed the top of his opponent’s head with it. The man shrieked. The revolver he was getting out of his pocket exploded under his convulsive fingers.

The bullet clouted harmlessly into the ground; the cloth of the coat pocket began to glow and smoke.

Nace hit him again. The man fell over senseless.

Arising, Nace used his flashlight.

It was the beefy, red-necked drunk who had menaced Nace with the nickeled revolver in front of the hotel.

Nace hauled him down to the lake, threw him in, then pulled him out again. That revived the fellow.

The man began snarling, “What the hell do you mean by—?”

“Going to pull an injured innocence act, huh?” gritted Nace. He stung his knuckles on the man’s jaw, and the beefy hulk lay stupefied for half a minute.

During that interval, Nace searched him. He found money, cigarettes, a silver flask entirely empty, and letters addressed to Alva Coogan, railroad detective, in Mountain Town.

“Why were you nosing around here, Coogan?” Nace demanded, after making sure the letters were nothing but advertisements.

Coogan started cursing. A close look at Nace’s knobby fist shut him up.

“Aw — I came up to get even with you for knockin’ me down!” he growled.

“How’d you know where to come?”

Coogan slapped a moist tongue over puffy lips. “They told me downtown that you had come up to Camp Lakeside.”

“You’re a black-faced liar, Coogan. Nobody knew I was headed for this place.”

“I ain’t a liar!” rumbled Coogan. “To hell with what you think!”

Nace laughed nastily and kicked the man to his feet. “A pal of Constable Hasser and Fatty Dell, aren’t you?”

“Quit kickin’ me!”

Nace booted him again. “Pal of Hasser and Dell, huh?”

“What if I was? They were a couple of all-right guys.”

“Were! Were! How’d you know Fatty Dell is dead? I don’t think anybody has found his body yet.”

Coogan shut up.

Nace propelled him toward the house, growling, “You’re in this over your ears, my friend!”

To the unholy tune of bumping thunder and jagging lightning, they strode the graveled walks. The two-story log main building hove in sight.

Nace rapped out a violent grunt. The structure was now dark!

Running the stubborn Coogan ahead of him, Nace clattered onto the porch. Coogan was seized with a shaking as they came near the door. He knew any bullets from inside would hit him. He tried to break away.

Nace struck him, and the man fell.

Letting him lay, Nace reached in, found the light switch and tweaked it. The room glared.

The red-head was tied to a chair. A cloth was tied between her jaws, another over her eyes.

Fred Franks and Spencer were nowhere to be seen.

Coogan had been feigning a knockout. He leaped to his feet suddenly and ran.

Nace yelled at him. Coogan only ran the faster. Nace shot past the man’s head. Coogan put on still more speed. Nace aimed at the runner’s back, but reconsidered. He holstered the gun in his sleeve with an angry growl.

He flung to the girl. She was tied with tent ropes. He wrenched them off and plucked the cloth from her jaws and her eyes.

“I didn’t see who it was,” she begun. “I was struck and stunned a minute after Fred and Spencer heard a shot down by the lake and ran out. Then—”

“Was anything shoved down your throat?”

“Why — what—?”

“Your throat — could they have pushed anything down it?”

“No — I don’t think so!”

He shoved her to the nearest door. “Get in there! Take off your clothes! Every stitch! Throw them out to me!”

“What—?”

“Damnation!” he bellowed. “Strip, or I’ll take ’em off for you! Quick!”

She ran into another room, closed the door.

“Hurry!” Nace rasped through the door. “They may have planted their infernal explosive somewhere in your clothing! Throw the stuff out here.”

The red-head lost no time. The door opened a crack. A frock came sailing through, then underthings, shoes. Nace balled each garment as it arrived and relayed it outdoors with all his speed.

“That’s all,” called the red-head.

Nace eyed the door. “Anything in there you can put on?”

“Yes.”

Nace waited. He did not have the slightest proof that explosive was in the girl’s clothing. He was just playing safe. Perspiration crawled on his forehead. He wondered if the explosion, should one come from her clothing, would be sufficient to blow the log house down. He made no move to go out and carry her garments further away.

He shifted his feet nervously. His eyes roved, passed over the floor.

A small fold of paper lay at his feet. Obviously, it had fallen from the red-head’s garments.

He picked it up, read it.

He pocketed the paper hastily, for the girl was coming out of the other room.

She had put on one of the Indian suits she kept for sale to the summer resort trade. Buckskin blouse and trousers were beaded and fringed, as were the moccasins. It was a very nice fit. In the rig, she looked more entrancing than ever.

She stared at her discarded garments, visible in the light which slanted through the open front door.

“I make quite a few mistakes,” Nace told her dryly. “This may be one of them. Let’s get out of here — the back way.”

They entered the kitchen, crossed it.

Nace noted a large hotel-type electric refrigerator against one wall.

The night wrapped them with sultry gloom when they stepped out into it.

“My brother and Spencer — where did they go?” the red-head whispered anxiously. “Maybe we’d better call them.”

“No. That lunk, Coogan, may be hanging around. He’d love to cut down on me in the dark with a club. Take me to the cabin Rubinov occupied.”

The sepia sky blazed with electric fire at intervals of a minute or so. Far away, the hound still howled. Such sounds as their feet made seemed magnified a thousand times in volume.

“What a night!” Nace muttered.

“It’s horrible! Fighting and killing and attacks—”

“I meant the weather.”

“Oh, that. It’s just a thunderstorm. You don’t notice such things in the city. Out here, well, we get used to it.”

“You like the country?”

“So-so.”

“Rather live in the city, huh?”

“Why so curious?”

“Can’t I talk?” Nace demanded in a hurt tone. He had been wondering how she’d like his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. She ought to like it. The lease was costing him enough. He was just realizing what was wrong with the joint. It needed somebody like this red-head in it.

He’d better forget such thoughts — at least until he found out who she’d killed, or who she hadn’t.

Rubinov’s cabin was on the lake shore. It had a rear porch which extended out over the water.

“He liked to fish,” explained Benna Franks.

They entered. The place was fitted with electric lights. The girl clicked these on. Then she skidded a bearskin rug aside. Nace’s experienced eye did not detect the trapdoor until she lifted it, so cleverly was it made.

Below was a concrete box. This seemed solid. Benna pressed a hidden button and the entire box lifted steadily on a rusty piston until it was waist-high above the cabin floor. Below was visible the lid of a stout wooden chest.

Nace started to reach in. The girl grasped his arm.

“Wait!” she rapped. “Rubinov fixed a death trap! If you touch the chest lid without adjusting another concealed button, the concrete box will fall on you!”

Nace felt a pleasant warmth. She wasn’t trying to do him in. The note addressed to her and signed with Constable Hasser’s name seemed to become a red-hot iron in his pocket.

Benna made the button adjustment, lifted the chest lid and disclosed its empty interior.

“We’ll hunt fingerprints later,” Nace told her. “Where was the explosion which you think killed Rubinov?”

“Just outside this cabin.”

They closed the empty treasure vault, then went outdoors. Nace listened a while, trying to ascertain if anyone was near, then used his pen flash.

Signs of the explosion were profuse. The ground was torn, and swept bare of leaves, branches, even grass, for some feet around.

The red-head shuddered, pointed. “Throw your light on the cabin wall.”

Nace did so. Bloodstains were there, brown and dry.

The girl began to breathe jerkily and make faint noises in her throat. Nace, realizing the murder scene was undermining her nerve, escorted her back toward the two-story cabin.

The front room was as they had left it — no sign of Fred or Spencer, or even the red-necked railway detective, Coogan.

Nace turned out the lights. “Just to play safe. Now I’ll call the state police and have them watch for Coogan, in case he really left this neighborhood.”

He picked up the phone in careless fashion, then stiffened alertly. No line sing came from the instrument.

“Wires out,” he said dryly, and tossed the receiver onto its hook.

“Who could have done that?”

“Search me.” Nace planted his flash beam on her face. “Now let’s look at the refrigerator.”

He could detect no flicker of alarm in her features.

They entered the kitchen, moved to the refrigerator.

“Read this,” Nace said, and gave her the folded paper he had found on the floor.

She glanced over it. “I never saw this before.”

“It dropped out of your clothing.”

“So that was why you had me change—”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I was really afraid there was explosive in your garments. I was mistaken. I found this note by accident.”

“I don’t know — what to think of it!” She sounded scared.

“The bird who tied you up might have left it — trying to frame you,” Nace said, then wondered why he was suggesting alibis to her.

“That must have been it.” A shudder quavered in her voice. “The disappearance of that cinnamon can! Yes — that’s it! Somebody is trying to frame me.”

“Have you looked in the icebox recently?”

“No. We don’t use it until the summer guests come. It’s too big and expensive to run.”

Nace used his handkerchief to lift the refrigerator catch. He yanked the door open.

Benna Franks screamed shrilly, horribly. She whirled from the awful sight in the white refrigerator interior. Wildly, she stumbled from the door.

Nace overhauled her. She fought him in her hysterical horror, scratched his face. After ten or fifteen seconds, he succeeded in trapping her arms.

Then he went back and closed the refrigerator door. It took a lot to get under Nace’s skin. But even he didn’t care for the grisly sight of Rubinov’s remains piled in the refrigerator.

Chapter VI Another Man-Blast

Nace searched and found a quart bottle of applejack in the kitchen cupboard. He administered a shot of the colorless liquid dynamite to the red-head. He was forced to hold her to do it.

Four or five minutes later, she was normal again, except for a nervous rasp in her breathing.

“I’m sorry — that I fought you,” she said huskily. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It seems like everything went to pieces for a minute.”

Nace tried to make his laugh hearty. “That’s all right, Benna.”

“Nace, everything depends on you. Any jury in the country would convict me of these murders on the evidence you’ve uncovered. You’ve got to find out who did it! You’ve simply got — oh, my—!” She was going haywire again.

“Cut it out!” Nace said grumpily, and reached for the applejack bottle.

The lightning flamed outside, and Nace’s eyes instinctively sought the front door. The sky fire danced and flickered several seconds — long enough to let Nace get a good look at blond Spencer.

The man was laboriously hopping toward the log house. His pitted hands were bound before him, his ankles tied, and a handkerchief stoppered his mouth.

Nace played his flashlight outdoors, wary of a trap. Then he ran out, dragged Spencer in, and untied him.

“I was struck down!” Spencer moaned. “I ran out when I heard that shot down by the lake! Then somebody jumped me.”

“Where’s Fred?” Benna shrilled.

“I don’t know,” grunted Spencer.

Nace became hard-eyed. “Did Fred run out of this room ahead of you or behind you when the shot sounded?”

“I went first. I don’t know whether Fred went out at all or not.”

The red-head cried angrily, “Listen, you! Fred is not involved in these killings—”

“Dry up, Benna,” Nace snapped.

She spun on him in a frightened rage. “You’ve got more evidence against me than against my brother! Fred didn’t—”

Nace held up the applejack bottle. “I guess you need more of this to make you see straight.”

She subsided. “I’m sorry.”

Spencer grabbed the applejack, lowered its level an inch and a half and immediately seemed to feel better.

“You can go to the nearest phone and call the coroner and the state police,” Nace told him. “The state troopers especially. I can stand some help around here.”

“Shall I use your car?”

“Use your feet. I may need that car.”

Spencer peered out into the thunder-and-lightning infested night, shivered as though he didn’t like the prospects, then glided out. He made remarkably little noise.

Nace turned the pen light on his face so the red-head could see his amiable grin. “I wish you’d quit throwing fits around here. The tantrums don’t do anybody any good, not even you. They’re hard on your nerves—”

He swallowed the rest. Someone had stepped into the room. Nace slid the knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and pointed it at the spot where he judged the newcomer stood.

Fred Franks’ voice, hoarse with emotion, cried, “Benna! Nace! You here?”

“Present,” Nace admitted.

“Fred!” Benna’s one word was a relieved sob.

Her brother ignored her. “Nace! I’ve got the whole thing solved! I followed the devil to your hotel when he went there to kill you. That’s how I happened to be there.

“A few minutes ago, I saw him tie up Benna and blindfold her and thrust a note in the fold of her dress. Then I followed him and he got the parts of Rubinov’s body and put them in the refrigerator in the kitchen. I saw him throw something in the lake — I think it was that cinnamon box he lifted out of the kitchen!”

“Who is it?” Nace snapped.

“Wait until I tell you the rest! I think I know where old Rubinov’s hoard of money is—”

Flame, blue, sheeting, sprayed in the doorway. In the midst of the horrible blaze, Fred’s body seemed to fall apart. Then the blue glare extinguished and the explosion cracked.

So tremendous was the blast that Nace suddenly stopped hearing things. He was slapped backward as if by a great fist. The floor jumped up, split. The logs of the front wall fell outward, carrying the porch crashing down. The ceiling of the room above fell in.

Nace found a quivering form with his hands — the girl. He rushed her back into the kitchen, then outdoors, thinking the whole house was coming down.

But the building stood.

He cradled the girl in his arms. “You hurt?”

“Fred!” she screamed. “Fred! Fred!”

Nace carried her and ran around to the front of the house. He was afraid she would dash in and be hit by falling logs.

“Quiet!” he hissed in her ear. “The killer is around here somewhere!”

He lowered her to the ground. She lay there, stiffly inert, not even sobbing. She understood the need of silence.

Nace moved a dozen paces to one side and used his flashlight recklessly. The thin beam spiked right, left, straight ahead, behind him. It disclosed no one.

A log fell noisily in the wrecked part of the house. A nail pulled out of a board with a shrill squawling noise. Overhead, thunder chased lightning flashes across the sky.

Nace ran swiftly back to the girl, scooped her up, raced her to his rented roadster and deposited her on the cushions. The starter clashed, the motor gave a surprised moan under his madly stamping feet. The car jumped ahead as though a giant had kicked it.

“Fred!” Benna Franks moaned. “We can’t leave him—!”

Nace replied nothing. They could not help Fred. His body probably reposed in a hundred places in the wreckage.

The roadster tires threw gravel all the way to the concrete road, then rubber shrieked in a skid as Nace straightened out on the highway. The speedometer needle climbed past thirty, forty and fifty. The headlights bloomed brilliantly ahead.

The girl sat white, trembling and wordless in the deep leather seat.

They wheeled into Mountain Town. The windows of Nace’s hotel appeared.

“We’ll look through your brother’s car, first thing,” Nace said.

He braked to a stop before the hotel, then looked around narrowly.

Fred Franks’ coupe was in sight.

They entered the hotel. The dapper clerk grinned at Nace, came forward. He seemed to have something to say. But he didn’t have time.

“Wait here,” Nace told Benna Franks.

He boxed himself in a phone booth, got long-distance to New York City. He talked at length with the man in charge of the identification bureau. The conversation ran ten minutes, fifteen. Phone operators broke in on them twice.

Nace left the booth bright-eyed with satisfaction.

“It was a good hunch,” he told the red-head. “The New York police had his picture and his record. He got out of Sing Sing in a prison break four years ago.”

“You mean the—”

“The murderer. All I’ve got to do now is grab him, and find the money they stole from Rubinov.” Nace said the last wryly, conveying by his tone that quite a bit still lay ahead.

“Mister Nace,” said the hotel clerk tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“I hired a taxi driver to pull Fred Franks’ car around behind the hotel. I thought you might want to look it over, seein’ as how you left here in such a hurry.”

“Great!” Nace told him briskly. “Show me to it!”

The clerk didn’t stir. He looked uncomfortable. “I tried to do a little detective work myself. I hope it won’t make you mad.”

“Moving the car was swell stuff. It kept people from crawling around over it.”

“I done more than move the car. The rumble seat was locked, but I pried it open. Here’s what I found.”

Reaching under the desk, the clerk produced a pair of black-and-white sport shoes. The toes were smeared with brown powder from a matured puffball mushroom.

“I hope you ain’t mad that I done this.”

“Mad!” Nace grinned. “Kid, those are the murderer’s shoes. The New York police just told me there’s a thousand dollars reward for the guy. Consider the thousand your own.”

The clerk appeared relieved. “I’m glad it’s all right, because I found some other stuff that kinda had me worried.”

With that, he pulled four canvas bags from under the desk. They clanked loudly when he deposited them on the desk top.

“Take a look,” he said. “There’s money enough in there to stock a mint.”

Nace jerked the drawstring of one bag, got it loose. He dipped a hand in and ladled up a palm full of silver and gold coins. Some few were of U.S. mintage. The majority were Russian coins of the old Imperial days.

Nace saw dozens minted from platinum.

The clerk scraped sweat off his brow. “There must be a hundred grand in them bags — if those funny looking shekels ain’t phony.”

“I’m betting a million will come closer to it,” Nace muttered. “This is Rubinov’s hoard, all right.”

Thunder laughed noisily over the hotel.

“But how did the money and the shoes get in my brother’s car?” Benna Franks asked hoarsely.

“Remember when you first met me tonight, and we had the merry-go-round outside the hotel?” Nace countered.

“Of course.”

“You drove straight home to Camp Lakeside, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The murderer borrowed your car right after that, got the coin hoard from where they had hidden it after stealing it, and set out to systematically kill the rest of his gang, so he wouldn’t have to divvy. After he did for Constable Hasser and Fatty Dell, he left the car at your place, because he was afraid I’d seen it. He found the puffball dust on his shoes and left them in the machine.”

“It was Spencer who borrowed the car!” the red-head gasped.

“Spencer isn’t his only name,” Nace said dryly. “He’s got a string of aliases that read like the telephone directory. The New York police recognized his description, especially the part about his pitted hands. He got those pocks on his hands when powerful acids splashed on them. He was once a chemist — a chemist specializing in explosives. He later became one of the most efficient safe blowers in the business. He was caught and escaped from Sing Sing four years ago and—!”

“He has been right here in Mountain Town every time since!” cracked a harsh voice.

Nace made a mental note that whatever happened to him, he had it coming for his carelessness — he could have kept a closer watch. Then he turned around.

Spencer stood just inside the door, a pistol in each pocked hand.

The red-necked railroad detective was a little back of him, with a revolver.

Chapter VII Death Shoe

The street outside was vacated. No one else was in the hotel lobby. The hour was long past midnight. Mountain Town went to sleep with the chickens — which was one reason why it was so popular as a summer resort. The urban tranquility was good for city jitters.

Thunder bounced across the hotel roof, rumbled in the street, and when the clashing echoes subsided, Spencer snarled, “Don’t move, anybody! How’d you get wise to me, shamus? I didn’t make no slips.”

“Just one,” Nace said mildly.

“What?”

“You didn’t wear gloves to cover those hands. The scars suggested acid, and that got me to thinking about how it must have taken an explosive chemist to make up those bombs—”

“I don’t want to hear about it!” gritted Spencer. “Frisk ’em, Beef!”

Beef, the red-necked railroad detective, came forward. He knew how a search should be made. He missed little. He even tore off Nace’s coat, ripped his shirt down the back and got the packet stuck to his back with adhesive tape.

“What’s in that?” Spencer wanted to know.

“Knife, file, dooflicker to pick locks with, some yaller stuff that looks like sulphur,” Beef enumerated the packet contents.

“The last must be stuff that makes tear gas when burned,” Spencer grunted. “Throw it away! Finish friskin’  ’em!”

Beef completed the search.

“I’ll eat anything they got left on ’em!” he grinned.

“Tie ’em! Use this!” Spencer flung Beef a roll of wire — the same sort of wire with which Nace had been tripped earlier in the night. “Just tie their hands for the time being.”

Beef did the tying, showing gusto for the job.

Spencer nodded at the money on the desk. “Take it to the car!”

Beef carried the four bags outdoors, making two trips to complete the job. The bags were extremely heavy.

“Now you go out!” Spencer pointed his guns successively at Nace, the red-head, the hotel clerk.

“What are you gonna do?” the hotel clerk demanded.

“Can the chatter!” rapped Spencer.

“Yeah — can it,” Nace said dryly. “Do you want to start the crackpot shooting in here?”

Spencer snarled and kicked Nace in the leg. “Call me a crackpot, will you!”

They all moved outdoors, where the lightning spurted gory luminance upon them.

A sedan was parked at the curb. It had a very long wheelbase. Nace, the girl, the clerk, all sat on the rear cushions. Spencer watched Beef tie their feet with wire, then occupied the drop-seat in front of them.

“To the circus, James,” he told Beef. Both he and Beef laughed at their joke.

The sedan rode rough on over-pressured tires, out of town and past where the explosion had killed Constable Hasser. The headlamps whitened the sign of Lakeside Camp. Several cars and a few people were there, evidently drawn by the blast noise. They were working in the log house wreckage, a grimly silent group, assembling the remnants of Fred Franks’ body.

The red-head began to sob steadily.

The sedan pitched ahead at increased speed. The hard tires sucked noisily at the pavement. Tools banged together under the front seat every time they went over a bump.

Spencer smiled sardonically and watched the sobbing girl.

The car angled off the road, ran a hundred feet up a lane and stopped. Beef said, “This is as good a place as any, Spence.”

Then Beef got out of the driving seat. Spencer also got out.

With a quick move, Spencer put his right-hand gun against Beef’s head and pulled the trigger.

Beef fell, his head horribly mutilated.

Sneering, Spencer wiped the grip of the gun with which he had killed Beef. Satisfied it was free of fingerprints, he threw it into the surrounding woods.

“The goop thought I’d split with ’im!” he growled, referring to Beef. “Maybe he knows better now.”

He scowled into the car at Nace. “What’s the matter with you, shamus?”

Nace was doubled over, wired hands hanging close to his feet. His face was strange.

“What you just done made me sick,” Nace said.

“You’ll feel worse before I’m done,” Spencer promised. He reached into the sedan front seat, brought out a tin box shaped like a tobacco tin, but somewhat larger.

He opened this. It apparently had a double wall. Pale grayish, steam-like vapor swirled out of the box mouth.

Spencer upended the box, shook it. A piece of dry-ice fell out. It was this which was making the vapor.

“My pocket refrigerator,” Spencer leered. “It keeps these babies cool!”

He shook from the box four metallic balls about the size of grapes.

Nace was still doubled over, wired arms hanging down. The fingers of one hand toyed absently with his right shoe. But his eyes were on the killer.

“So those are your bombs?” he grunted.

“There ain’t a more powerful explosive in the world,” Spencer declared with an insane pride. “I made Fatty Dell swallow two of  ’em, an’ tied his mouth so he couldn’t get ’em up. I only had to use one each on Rubinov an’ Hasser, droppin’ ’em in their pockets. But I tossed three in the log house, close to Fred Franks’ feet. I wasn’t takin’ no chances on him.”

The girl gave no sign that she had heard.

“So they explode automatically after they’ve been exposed to normal temperatures a while,” Nace grunted.

“After about three minutes, shamus,” Spencer agreed. “Each one has a tiny detonator of two acids which explode when they get together. They’re held apart by a little wall of a gelatin solution. When it warms up, the gelatin turns to a liquid and lets the acids mix. Then — whango!”

Spencer put the metallic balls back in the can, replaced the dry ice, clamped the lid down and pocketed the container.

“I ain’t quite ready to use ’em. I’ll have to tie all of you more solid. Then I’ll drop a ball in each of your pockets, tie the pockets shut so you can’t shake ’em out, and go off and listen to the fireworks.”

He reached into the car to drag the prisoners out. The dome light, slanting downward on his face, made it a countenance of limitless evil.

He saw Nace was now fumbling with the heel of his shoe. He cursed sharply. “Hey, shamus, what—!”

A crack of a report answered him. The heel of Nace’s right shoe seemed to spit a two-inch tongue of flame.

Spencer jerked convulsively, reeled back out of the sedan. He turned around twice and fell heavily on his back. A sluggish fountain of crimson played on his chest, above the heart, subsided quickly and became a grisly trickle of crimson.

Nace patted the heel of his shoe as though it had done good work. These were the shoes he had donned at his hotel when the trouble first started.

“Short barrel holding a single .32 bullet built into the heel,” he told the open-mouthed hotel clerk. “Fired from a lever inside the shoe.”

They worked on the wires holding each other, and were no more than two minutes getting free.

Nace led the girl away, down the lane toward the road. She’d seen enough hell for one night. His arm was around her shoulders.

The hotel clerk remained behind a while. He took the tin box out of dead Spencer’s pocket, ran into the woods a couple of rods, pulled the lid off the box, and dropped it. Then he broke a dash record leaving the vicinity.

The explosion as the metal balls detonated exceeded for violence anything the clerk had ever heard.

To Nace’s sharp yell, he said he was all right. Then he hurried to overtake Nace and the girl.

“About that gun in your shoe heel,” he called. “How’s it rigged so it won’t go off when you ain’t expectin’ it?”

No answer.

A convenient lightning flash sprayed the scene with brilliance. The clerk saw Nace and the red-head. He had gone a dozen feet past them, and they were pretty well blended in each other’s arms.

The clerk could take a hint. He ambled on down the lane, an appraising eye cocked on the noisy heavens.

“Danged if I believe it’s gonna storm after all,” he grinned.