The Weird Adventures of The Blond Adder

Grim and horrible were those warnings of the Big Boss. They were found in automobiles, office buildings and in homes. They were the mutilated corpses of men boiled in oil. And they told the Oklahoma police not to be too inquisitive. Into this hotbed of horror came Lee Nace to buck a triple-decked deal of the Big Boss — a reward-hungry newspaperman — and the two-gun Robin Hood of the oil company.

Chapter I Hot Oil

She was tall, blond, streamlined. The roadster was long, cream-colored, and also streamlined.

She was making motions at powdering her nose, using a pancake compact with a mirror fully four inches across. She held it braced against the steering wheel.

Utter concentration rode her long, beautiful face. The big, flat powder puff dabbed the compact with strangely erratic frequency. It slapped only the mirror — never the powder cake.

Oklahoma sunlight, white and hot, sprayed blond and roadster. To the right, it cooked evergreen stucco buildings of the Tulsa Municipal Airport. To the left, it toasted flat classroom and barrack structures of a school of aeronautics.

In spasms, the sun leaped from the blond’s compact mirror. Her powder puff, whipping systematically, was dividing the beam into dots and dashes.

On hands and knees beside the airport waiting room, Lee Nace crawled. He was very long, bony, blue-eyed. He was gathering together the wind-scattered sheets of a letter.

Standing and staring at Nace were six or seven people who had been his fellow passengers on the recently arrived New York plane.

They were fascinated by the scar on Nace’s forehead. It was a perfect likeness of a small coiled snake — an adder. A Chinaman had once hit Nace in the forehead with a knife hilt which bore a serpent carving, and he was destined to forever carry the scar.

Ordinarily the scar was unnoticeable. But it flushed out redly when he was angry or worried. He was worried now.

Inside the ornate, modernistic waiting room, a male voice was shouting: “Telegram! Wire for Private Detective Lee Nace! Telegram!”

Nace continued picking up the sheets of his letter. He pretended to read each. When he had spilled the sheets, he had taken pains to make it seem an accident.

Slyly, over the paper, he read the heliograph message being flashed by the blond’s compact mirror.

“A reception committee!” she sun-flashed. “Three of them, man with the telegram is one. The other two are wearing coveralls — to hide bullet-proof vests.”

Nace captured two more sheets of his letter, pretended to read, but kept his eyes on the mirror.

“The one with the telegram is ‘Robin Hood’ Lloyd,” the girl continued. “He’s Oklahoma’s bad boy.”

She ended her transmission.

Nace arose and barged in under a striped canopy which could be telescoped out to meet arriving planes. He entered the flashy waiting room.

“Telegram for Lee Nace!” droned Robin Hood Lloyd.

The Robin Hood was a lean, young-old wolf. His chin bore scars, irregular, wavy lines — marks of an ancient beating with knucks.

The men sat side by side on a modernistic divan. They were chunky. Their faces might have been meaty blocks covered with a good grade of brown saddle leather.

Both wore khaki overalls. Both had newspapers spread open in their laps.

Headlines on the papers read:

There was a picture of a man with a flowing white beard. He looked like Santa Claus. Under that was another black-faced type line.

Nace sidled, long-legged, for the seated pair. These men did not know him, or they would not be using the telegram ruse to spot him.

He was still moving when his long arms shot out. His hands, long-fingered, bony, swung hard against the right ear of one man and the left ear of the other. Their heads, driven together, made a hollow bonk!

Each man gave one convulsive quiver as he became unconscious. Then they lay back on the modernistic divan, mouths agape, eyes pinched. The newspapers slid off their laps, revealing frontier six-shooters.

Robin Hood Lloyd stood and stared, a yellow telegram envelope dangling from his right hand. Suddenly he dropped the envelope and began to shake his right hand madly.

A small revolver, dislodged from an armpit, dropped out of the sleeve and hung swinging on a string.

Before Robin Hood could seize his hideout weapon, Nace’s fist lashed. It hit the handiest spot — the undershot jaw which gave the Robin Hood his wolf look.

Oklahoma’s bad boy flippered his hands convulsively. He was not entirely knocked out, and feeling himself going down, wheeled in an effort to land on all fours. He failed and hit the floor all spread out.

The sound as he came down was a metallic clank, as of a pile of scrap iron on the tile floor, rather than a man.

Nace had read about this Oklahoma cut-up in the New York papers. The fellow went around armored like a knight of old — not only with a bullet-proof vest, but with steel leg and arm shields.

The Robin Hood rolled on his back, made a tent over his face with his hands, and moaned loudly.

“The wild and wooly west!” Nace said through his teeth. “I’ll show you how we handle ’em back where the lights shine bright!”

He rushed — bent low, long arms hanging down.

He never did know exactly what happened next. One of the men on the modernistic divan unlimbered with a gun. Or maybe it was both of them. A bullet slammed against Nace’s right side. It spun him just enough so that the second slug got him in the stomach. The Robin Hood managed to draw back both feet and kick him in the head.

Nace’s eyes became two gory bonfires of pain. His insides felt as if they were torn out. He started to cave.

It soaked through his dazed brain that he would die if he did. He hauled up, swayed around, and ran blindly for the white blur he knew was the sunlit door.

When he got outside, he knew it only because he seemed to be in a white-hot snow storm. He pawed his kicked face, beat his body where the bullets had hit.

He wore a bulletproof jacket which had saved his life, but the slugs had mauled him horribly.

Flaying his tortured brain, he managed to remember where they had stacked the baggage from the plane. He veered for the luggage heap. His canvas zipper bag was there. He wanted it. It was his war sack, his bag of tricks, his life preserver. He was too drunk with pain to realize he could not get to the bag before the trio in the waiting room could come after him.

Nace never carried a gun. He subscribed to a theory that toting a firearm tended to make a man helpless, if ever he was caught without it.

Finally he snapped out of the daze. He swiveled around drunkenly on a heel.

His hand, clawing inside his coat, fished out a little metal tear-gas firing cylinder. He exploded it in the waiting room door.

On the opposite side of the building, the roadster engine was moaning anxiously. The blond waited, tense at the wheel.

The Robin Hood and his two followers floundered out into the sunlight. Blinded by the tear gas, they were holding hands to keep track of each other. They acted like three small boys trying not to get lost.

“Come on, guys!” rapped the blond. “Blow!”

The blinded Robin Hood tried to climb into the roadster hood, under the impression that he was getting in the back seat. He hauled out a single-action gun, jabbed it above his head and fanned out its five slugs. Then he found the car door and piled in. “O.K. That’ll hold ’em! Blow!”

The roadster seemed to snug its oilpan belly to the ground, then jump. Scooting away, it left a rain of gravel.

“Did you get the dirty so-and-so?” the blond demanded.

“Hell, no!” The Robin Hood held his jaw with a clench so tight that tendons on his hands whitened like chalk rods. “Damn! Did he land one on my kisser!”

“My heroes!” The girl’s voice was dry. But her eyes were brightly glad.

As if it were clawing cats, the wind tore her blond hair about. It was so very blond, that hair, that it was plainly dyed.

Nace staggered around the airport waiting-room, covering as much ground to right and left as he did ahead.

The field operation office was in the same building with the waiting room, but there were doors, probably closed, through which the tear gas had not penetrated.

Like a dude out of a bandbox, a man popped out from an office window. He wore striped trousers and a gray lap-over tea vest. The pearl grip of a derringer protruded, charm-like, from his watch pocket. He pulled his tiny gun, leveled it. The thing made a sound like a giant firecracker and kicked his fist back in his face.

He looked foolish when the slug dug a geyser of dirt not a hundred feet from where he stood.

Nace leaned, white-faced, against a wall, said, “Better get a bow and arrow!”

The dapper man looked around and grinned. “When I do hit ’em, though, I make a big hole! Say, Skipper, you look like hell!”

The pain had faded the adder scar off Nace’s forehead. It was coming back slowly.

“And I was the cookie who was gonna show how it’s done in the east!” he said dryly. “I done swell! Yes, I did!”

The nattily dressed man reloaded his derringer with a cartridge as thick as his little finger. “Y’know who that was?”

“Mr. Lloyd, I believe.”

“You said it, Skipper! Oklahoma’s contribution to the wild and woolly west — the Robin Hood himself. The lad who can walk down Main Street in Tulsa, from the Louvre to Brown-Dunkin’s, and not a cop can see him — because they’re afraid to. ‘Officers again escape Robin Hood,’ is the streamer an Oklahoma City rag runs every time he has a gun fight with the law.”

Nace grimaced. “You talk like a newspaper man! What sheet?”

The dressy man skidded the derringer back into his watch pocket. “The Telegram! Halt Jaxon’s the name. Oil editor!”

“Know Ebenezer App?”

“I ought to! He pays me!”

“Let’s go hunt him up!” Nace suggested.

Dapper Halt Jaxon made a whistling mouth. “You must be Lee Nace, the private shamus the governor hired to come from New York to come here and work with the boss!”

“The same!”

Nace walked behind the waiting room and came back with his canvas zipper bag. “Do we go?”

“We do!”

Jaxon led the way to a roadster. It was a speedster, low and yellow, remindful of an overgrown canary.

Chapter II The Hot-Oil Ring

The canary car tweeted a horn when it pulled out of the airport parking. It tweeted a different one wen it turned into Sheridan Drive, heading toward town. Not once during the trip in did it sound the same horn twice.

“I was sent out here to meet you!” Halt Jaxon offered a cork-tipped fag from a silver case.

“I need something stronger!” Nace produced a stubby pipe and a silk pouch. “Whew-w-w! What a reception! Is that the usual thing out here?”

“If you’re going up against the Robin Hood, it is! I guess you’re out here on this hot-oil trouble.”

“What hot-oil trouble?”

“For cryin’ out load! Don’t you read the newspapers?”

“Where’d you get the idea your troubles mean anything to Broadway rags?”

“Oh! So it’s like that! Well, for the last year or so, most of the Oklahoma oil fields have been shut down. They passed laws—”

“Proration!”

“Go to the head of the class! The governor had to stick the militia in some fields to close ’em. They’re just discovering that, while the fields were shut down, somebody stole a lot of oil!”

“What do you call a lot?”

“We ain’t pikers! Thirty or forty millions!”

“Barrels?”

“Dollars!”

Nace felt tenderly of his shoe-bruised face. “You wouldn’t kid me?”

“I might, but I ain’t. I tell you, they’re just getting into the damn mess! The governor has investigators all over the state. Wherever they dig, they turn up a dead cat.

“Down at Bowlegs, they found a farm of 55,000-barrel crude tanks plumb empty. In the Oklahoma City field, a lot of leases are running salt water where they should be making oil. The oil has been pulled out by mysterious persons unknown — lifted, heisted, stolen!”

“Can’t they put a finger on anybody?”

“Sure — small fry! But some great big bright brain is behind the whole thing! They can’t learn who! I’m telling you, Skipper, it’s the most colossal robbery in history.”

Nace wiped crimson off his fingers. “What’m I supposed to do? Make news for App’s paper?”

“App owns a lot of production up in the Osage which ain’t in production any more. He’d like to know who pinched the oil! And any news fit to print, we print.”

The canary car swung past MacIntyre airport. Off to the left, derricks in the Oil Exposition grounds stuck up, a horny, cactus-like cluster.

“The hell of it is the way they get drowned in hot oil!” Halt Jaxon said.

Nace stuffed his pipe, then looked at the stem. It was cracked. He took a small metal case from his zipper bag, extracted a fresh stem from the assortment it held. He chewed an average of a stem a day out of the pipe. The total often reached three or four when the going got tough.

“What’s this — drowned in oil?”

“Several state investigators have been found that way. Also oil men and roustabouts. They’re simply drowned — and pretty badly scalded.”

The tower of the Exchange National swelled up ahead. Immaculate Jaxon tooled his canary roadster toward it, trying out different horns on the traffic.

“They all got too close to the master mind!” Nace mixed his question with a mouthful of smoke. “That it?”

“It’s a guess! Yours is as good as anybody’s!”

“The bodies found in any particular oil tank?”

“Never in any tank!” Jaxon touched a button; a horn gave a cow-like moo. “They find the bodies in the damnedest places. One was leaning against a lamp-post as stiff as a board. Some of them have been in hotels, houses — all over.”

“That’s a hell of a note!” Nace drew on his pipe.

The roadster paused for the traffic light on Main, then made a turn.

“App left this message in the office mailbox!” Jaxon fished a finger daintily in the pocket of the tea vest, as if afraid of soiling it. He produced a strip of coarse white copy paper.

Nace took it, read:

The note, typewritten, bore only a typed signature—“App.”

Nace stiffened his brake leg instinctively as the gaudy roadster shaved another car. “Don’t they have any traffic laws down here!”

A moment later he said, “I hope App don’t think there’s anything secret about this! I’m sunk if he does!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Jaxon agreed. Then he added, “Unless you sent some agents ahead?”

“Who do you think I am? The army?”

Jaxon grinned. “Well, I didn’t know! The A. P. has carried stories about you! You’re supposed to be good. I thought maybe you had help. You’ll need it!”

Nace nodded toward an up-and-down sign which said, Telegram, and asked, “That’s the plant, huh?”

“The sweat shop itself!” Jaxon maneuvered his roadster around a corner.

The wind was from the south, bringing a smell of distilling crude from West Tulsa refineries.

Jaxon asked unexpectantly, “What about the blond in the Robin Hood’s car?”

Nace looked interested. “Well, what about her?”

Jaxon laughed. “I see you didn’t get a close look! What a form she had! Oh, man!”

The Crown Block Hotel was not quite the largest in the southwest, but it was generally conceded to be the most sumptuous.

When an oil man hits it rich, his first act was to take a suite in the Crown Block. It did not matter whether he made his strike in Seminole, Borger, Oil Hill, or East Texas. He took a suite in the Crown Block. It was sort of a ritual — a man’s way of telling the cockeyed world he was on top.

Jaxon swerved his roadster in to the curb. They got out, Nace with his canvas zipper bag. There was a flurry, then hard looks, when bellboys tried unsuccessfully to capture Nace’s bag.

They walked a gauntlet of doormen in Czaristic uniforms, and waded in a sea of rich, thick carpet. A silent elevator wafted them up, and they single-filed down the corridor, more rich carpets sponging underfoot.

The door of 1820 was massive, shiny, of mahogany, with a ponderous wrought-bronze lock.

Nace’s eyes roved with habitual alertness. Suddenly he grunted, lifted one foot off the carpet and hopped to the wall, propped against it, he began untying his shoe.

“Must’ve picked up a rock at the airport!”

His hand, apparently resting against the wall as a brace, made a slight rubbing motion.

There was a small, irregularly shaped chalk mark on the wall. This was almost unnoticeable to the casual eye.

When Nace took his hand away, the mark was gone.

Nace tore a bit of inner sole from his shoe, put it back on. Then he opened his canvas bag. He took several expensive looking cigars from a case and pocketed them.

The adder scar, seeming to come from nowhere, was once more coiling redly on his forehead.

“Let’s go!” His voice was dry, with a bit of a rattle.

Jaxon rippled knuckles on the door. A voice invited them in. Opening the door, Jaxon stepped back politely to let Nace in first.

Three men appeared suddenly, shoulder to shoulder, inside the room. The Robin Hood and his two followers!

Frontier six-guns bulked big in their fists.

The blond, without uncoiling herself from a chair in which she sat, said, “Come right in, boys! Cut yourself a piece of cake!”

Nace ambled into the room, hands held far out from his sides. He was so very tall that he instinctively ducked a little as he entered.

Halt Jaxon rolled his eyes, made faces. “So the note was a come-on!”

“Can the guff! Come on in here!” The Robin Hood made a meaningful gesture with his thumb and a gun hammer.

Gun snouts followed Nace and Jaxon, crowding them to the wall. The blond uncoiled from her chair, closed the door, and stood with her back pressing the panel.

Her blond hair was done in a flat patty on the back of her neck. She slid slender fingers under this, and brought out a tiny derringer, similar to Jaxon’s, but of smaller calibre.

The Robin Hood eyed the small gun with wolfish concentration. “Where’d you get that, sister?”

“From Monkey Ward!”

“Don’t get sassy!”

Nace put in, “Where’s the western chivalry I’ve been hearing about?”

The Robin Hood switched the tall private detective from head to foot with eyes which were unafraid and predatory. He growled, “You behave and keep that mouth shut, and maybe nobody’ll get hurt.”

He came over and slapped Nace’s arm pits, lifted coat tails. Frowning, he searched more intensively. “I’m a son-of-a-gun! You ain’t heeled!”

He fell to examining Nace’s bullet-proof vest. The thing seemed to fascinate him. He thumbed open his own vest and compared it with Nace’s.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked. “I might buy one like it!”

“Made it myself,” Nace advised. “Let’s get down to business.”

“Sure! Sure!” The Robin Hood turned to his two companions. “I want to talk to Nace alone. Take this over-dressed hombre away. Haul him off to that cabin north of Shell Creek. Hold him until you hear from me.”

Jaxon was standing beside a floor lamp. As the two men approached him, he elbowed the lamp violently.

The fixture slammed one man in the face. The fellow ducked back, startled. Jaxon flung upon the other, grasping the gun wrist with both pudgy hands.

The Robin Hood made a growling noise. He slapped his coat violently — two big sixes appeared as if by magic. He hesitated, growled again, then jabbed the guns back out of sight.

He leaped for Jaxon.

The blond, running toward Jaxon, got in the Robin Hood’s way and also in the way of the man the floor lamp had hit. She grabbed Jaxon by the throat and began choking.

Freeing one hand, Jaxon slapped her with the back of his fist. The blow reeled her away. She collided with a chair and went over, tangled with rungs and armrests.

“Beat it!” the Robin Hood rasped at her. “We’ll handle this!”

The blond, still mixed with the chair, fumbled at her nape for the gun under her hair.

Nace, leaping to her, harvested the gun with a single clutch. He pocketed it. Going on, he came up behind the Robin Hood. Both his hands went under the tail of the man’s coat. They grabbed a belt, pulled. There was a snap. Nace’s hands reappeared with the Robin Hood’s gun belt and both big revolver holsters.

The man the lamp had hit drew a gun. Nace flung the captured belt, whip fashion. Both six shooters flew out, but the holsters popped loudly on the man’s face. The fellow squawled, lost his weapon. Nace round-housed a fist to his middle. The man closed like a book.

The Robin Hood was whirling. Nace let knuckles fly at the scarred wolf jaw. They landed squarely.

Arms fanning spasmodically, the Robin Hood reeled toward the window. Unable to help himself, he popped head and shoulders through the sash. He all but fell to his death, eighteen floors below.

The Oklahoma badman wore cowboy boots. Clutching their narrow toes, Nace hauled their owner back in.

Jaxon and his opponent swore, swapped blows, on the floor.

The blond untangled from the chair, ran to a table on which her purse lay and scooped it up. She unclipped it, spaded a hand inside, then shoved purse and hand at Nace and Jaxon.

“Hold it!” she snapped.

Nace promptly jutted his hands above his head. Jaxon tore free of his dazed foe, lurched up and dived at the girl.

Nace tripped him. Jaxon tumbled end over end like a soft ball.

One of the Robin Hood’s men crawled for his fallen gun. Nace, his hand still raised, jumped sideways, and mashed his fellow against the wall.

Ducking, Nace scooped up the gun. Continuing the same movement, he fell behind the bed.

The Robin Hood and his two followers staggered out of the room. The girl followed, banging the door shut.

Jaxon bounced up from the floor, screaming. “You tripped me! There’s ten thousand reward for that guy — and you trip me—”

“I kept you from getting a lead pill!” Nace snapped. Rapidly, he gathered the guns scattered around the room.

When they ran into the hall, an elevator door was sliding shut.

“Gimme one of them guns!” Jaxon yelled.

“To hell with you — hothead!”

Jaxon made faces, ran back into the room.

Nace bore a staccato thumb on the elevator button. Time crawled. A minute! And still no cage came!

“Here they go!” Jaxon squawled from within the room. Nace ran to his side. Jaxon was hanging out of a window. On the sidewalk far below, the Robin Hood, his two men, and the blond, were legging it for a corner.

Jaxon tore at one of the guns in Nace’s hands. Nace held on tightly, would not give it up. The runners below disappeared.

Cursing, his round face purple, Jaxon squealed, “A fine cluck you are! I could have potted the Robin Hood from the window. Damn your hide! Ten thousand reward—”

Nace waved a fist under his nose. “Shut up, or I’ll feed you a mess of knuckles!”

Jaxon squared off belligerently. “Any damn time you feel lucky—”

“Just a newspaper fathead!” The adder scar above Nace’s eyes was red as ink. “You dope! You balled things up!”

“I did like hell!”

“The Robin Hood had something on his mind. He wanted to talk, and I wanted to hear him. But did you give us a chance? Yes, you did — not!”

Jaxon hardened his fists. “I don’t give a damn about that! You wouldn’t come across with the gun! That cost me ten thousand! It burns me up!”

He swung a fist at Nace’s face. Nace rolled back from the blow; his right arm came up; his hard knuckles smacked against Jaxon’s biceps. It was an agonizing blow.

Jaxon yodeled from the pain in his muscles. Nace collared him, hauled him to the door, and gave him the boot.

He slammed the door after the stumbling, enraged oil editor.

Nothing happened for a few seconds; then elevator doors clanged in the hall. Nace looked out. Jaxon was gone.

Going to his canvas zipper bag, Nace carefully replaced the cigars which he had taken out before entering the room. Two were broken. He disposed of these in the bath.

Carrying his bag, he descended in a tardy elevator and left the hotel. He took a cab to the new Union Station, changed to another, and went to a small hotel on Boston.

There was a derrick firm on one side of the hotel, a well-shooter supply house on the other. Walking up two flights, Nace found a room number. He knocked on the door. Silence answered.

Car horns honked in the street below. Over on Main, newsboys were yelling the Telegram.

Nace knocked again, a peculiar signal — two taps, then two more, widely separated.

The blond opened the door.

Chapter III Drowned in Oil

Nace went in, closed the door. He lowered his bag, then opened it. From it he took a sensitive microphone, fitted with vacuum cups. He stuck this to the door. Wires led from the microphone to an amplifier in the bag, thence to headphones.

The device was a highly sensitive sound pick-up. It would amplify any noise from the corridor a thousand fold. Should anyone approach, the instrument would make the noise like that of an elephant stampeding.

“Any chance that they suspect you are my agent?” he asked the girl.

“Don’t make me laugh!” The blond patted her hair. “With this layout I don’t even know myself. Gosh, Nace! What if this platinum dye won’t wash off?”

“I guess I could stand that!” As he took out the pipe, and plugged it, Nace eyed her.

Her first name was Julia. Her last name was the same as his own — Nace. She was a cousin, very distant. She had not been an operative in his agency for long and she was already good, and getting better.

She had what it took.

“You didn’t lose any time getting lined up!” he said, making the words both a compliment and a question.

She laughed. “It was easy! Half the people in town know the Robin Hood by sight. But you can save your blarney! I haven’t learned anything!”

Nace fired his pipe, then clamped one receiver of the sound pick-up to an ear.

“What do they want with me?” he queried.

“A talky-talk!”

“What about?”

“Search me. The Robin Hood is all hot and bothered about nothing. When he learned you were coming to town, he said he’d go out and meet you. I didn’t know until later that he only wanted to talk.”

“Everybody in town knew I was coming, huh?”

“The Robin Hood has his ways of learning things! He must have a spy on the Telegram.”

“Is he mixed up in this hot oil?”

“Sure! But there’s a catch to that, Nace! I don’t know how he stands — whether he’s in the ring, or out of it.”

Nace eyed a fly-specked telephone. “Do you think you’re safe, kid?”

“Believe it or not, this Robin Hood is the McCoy. He packs two guns and he’s killed his men. He’ll fight anybody. But he doesn’t shoot in the back, doesn’t shoot unarmed men, and respects women.”

“Chivalrous, huh?”

“That’s straight, Nace! Not one of the gang has made a pass at me; I haven’t heard any dirty stories, and they make their eyes behave. Different from our eastern mobs, eh?”

Nace took off the listener receiver. He went to the telephone, picked up a directory, and thumbed through it.

“Who did you tell ’em you were?”

“Just a little girl who got turned out of the California pen a few weeks ago! For fifty dollars a New York printer faked me a newspaper clipping with my picture and everything.”

Nace found his number. He placed a finger in the dial nobs. When the selector had made his connection he requested, “Ebenezer App, please!”

Probably twenty seconds later, he began, “This is Nace. I just got into town…. Oh, Jaxon told you, did he…. It was a fake note that led us to the hotel.”

A metallic gobble of words poured from the receiver. Nace listened to them for some time, asked, “Who was it?” twice, and hung up.

“App says he found out who’s behind the hot-oil ring,” he told the blond. “He said he accused the fellow and made him admit it — and for me to come over and make the pinch.”

“Who is it?”

“App said he’d spill that when I got there. He flatly refused to name the fellow over the phone.”

Tulsa was a town of a hundred and fifty thousand. Unlike large cities of the east, alleys ran behind the business houses.

Leaving the hotel with his zipper bag, Nace stepped from the rear door into an alley. He swung rapidly for the corner. Newsboys on the street were shouting, “Oil scandal grows! Last oil drowning victim still unidentified.” Every paper bore App’s Santa Claus picture. “Mr. App pushes investigation.”

Nace ignored them, striding toward the Telegram Building. His eyes roved alertly. He saw men in field boots, Osages in bright blankets, pasty-faced clerks with puckers between their eyes that meant eye-strain.

The Telegram was a tall narrow building of brick. Extremely pretty girls ran the elevators.

Nace thought of Julia as he rode up. Ordinarily she was a red-head. The combination of her looks and her brains was hard to find. She had been under his instructions for a month now. Numerous methods of signaling had been part of the training. Sun flashing with the compact mirror was one.

The tiny chalk marks, which he had stopped in the corridor of the Crown Block Hotel to erase, was another. They had warned him of the ambush in the room.

Nace swore. He had gone into that room deliberately. The reckless Jaxon had defeated his chances on learning something — perhaps something valuable.

Nace found a door bearing the name, “Ebenezer App, Publisher.”

He went in and found himself in a reception room — green carpeted, tan walled, fitted with leather chairs and a reception desk.

A girl with stringy brown hair lay across one of the chairs. She wore square-toed shoes and a brown frock with a starched white collar. She had a very long nose.

Blood was drip-dripping from her nose to the carpet.

Nace opened a door marked, “Mr. App — Private.”

The office beyond reeked of emptiness. The furniture was expensive and in good taste.

App’s picture hung on the wall. The Shavian beard bristled. His cheeks were ruddy. His eyes were fenced with little wrinkles. With the addition of a big white moustache, he would have made a perfect Santa Claus.

Coming back, Nace examined the girl with the long nose. When he moved her, her mouth fell open and let a little crimson come out. But she had only been struck on the jaw with a fist or a blackjack.

The fifth paper cup of ice water from the cooler revived her.

Jaxon came in when she was rolling her eyes and gurgling. He had combed his hair, put on a fresh shirt. Once more he looked as if he were right out of a bandbox.

He demanded, “What the hell’s going on here, Nace!”

At this, the girl leaped up. She dropped her cup, pointed both hands at Nace, screamed. “He’s the man who hit me!”

Jaxon sneered, “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Nace laughed at Jaxon, fists up and hard. The oil editor spun and fled from the office like a frightened peacock.

Nace turned back to the girl but did not approach her lest he frighten her. “You’re mistaken, you know! What happened?”

“A man came in! He said Mr. Nace was waiting outside!” The girl’s voice was scared. “He went in to see Mr. App. And then someone must have hit me. I didn’t see who it was.”

That was all she knew. When he had finished his questioning, Nace ambled out into the hall. Jaxon stood there, undecided. He walked off hastily at sight of Nace.

Nace went down to the city room. There was a big picture of App’s Santa Claus countenance on the wall. Nace asked for a late edition, got it, was stared at, and left the building. He hopped a cab at the corner, said, “The morgue the city uses.”

Unlimbered on the cushions, Nace studied the newspaper, centering his attention on the unidentified man who had been drowned in oil. The fellow had been found near Reservoir Hill two days ago.

There was little else of interest — except that no one seemed to know who he was. The body was being held at the morgue.

On the front of the morgue, a sign said, “Funeral Home.”

It was a plain building. Fifteen years ago, when Tulsa was a village it must have been a private mansion. The doors had been enlarged to permit of coffins being carried through.

Nace found a bright-eyed little man in charge. They went into a room where there were long marble slabs and much noise — laughter, shouts.

The funeral home, it seemed, also conducted an ambulance service. The ambulance drivers and an assistant undertaker were rolling craps on a marble slab. They had turned a stiff body on the slab and were using it as a backstop for the dice. They reminded Nace of small boys trying to show how callous they were.

In the rear of the room, the undertaker uncovered a cadaver.

The dead man was tall, lean. His skin, where the oil had not been wiped off, was strangely white. Fingernails, hair, eyebrows — all were gone.

Nace studied the long, sharp features. Somehow, they struck him as vaguely familiar.

“Hot oil got this one!” he said. “And I don’t mean stolen oil, either!”

“The oil must have been scalding hot!” the undertaker agreed. “That’s what made his hair and fingertips slip.”

“Have the others been like this?”

“You mean scalded? Sure!”

Once more Nace squinted at the features of the dead man. He could not get rid of the idea he had seen the fellow before.

“O.K.,” he told the undertaker.

He went back, and stopped in front of the crap shooters bouncing dice against the body. He scowled at them.

“Cut it out!”

The dicers glared at him. “Who the hell’re you?”

“Cut it out!” Nace said, and beetled his brows.

The trio scowled, changed feet. The strange crimson scar on Nace’s forehead seemed to disquiet them. Then they gathered up their dice and went out, trying to maintain a dignity.

Disgust rode heavy on Nace’s long, bony face.

The undertaker began, “What was the idea—”

“When you’re dead, do you want three guys bouncing dice off your ribs—”

From the direction the three dice rollers had taken, came gasps, low cries of surprise.

“Stand still, you monkeys!” gritted an ugly voice.

Nace came to life like an electrical machine switched on. He dived for the door, whipping out his tear-gas firing cylinder. Reaching the door he got a glimpse of a man — a man he had never seen before. The fellow had a bulky, shapeless body, a long neck, and a chicken-like head.

He carried an automatic shotgun, the barrel sawed off at the magazine.

Nace shoved out the tear-gas cylinder and let it bang. Squawking, the man with the shotgun clutched at his eyes with one hand. With his other hand he slapped the automatic shotgun against his hip. He pulled the trigger three times.

The gun was ear-splitting. Across the morgue room other explosions crashed like echoes. Holes the size of washtubs opened magically in the wall. Plaster, lath, and bits of brick rained. Marble slabs upset on their stands.

Nace jumped clear of the door. Now he retreated further, dragging the undertaker.

The shotgun was firing explosive slugs. They were capable of tearing a man to pieces.

Nace ran to a window. It was frosted glass. He boosted it up and dropped outdoors.

He waded through flower beds, leaping high, and circled the house.

The shot-gunner came out of a side door. He was blinded by the tear gas, feeling his way. He carried his automatic weapon in one hand.

Nace chopped knuckles at the gunner’s elbow. Pain reaction caused the man to release his gun. Nace sprang upon him.

They rolled briefly on the ground, grunting, swapping blows. Then Nace stood erect, his foe unconscious and cradled in his arms. Stooping again, he picked up the shotgun.

The fight, the shots and explosions, had excited the neighborhood. Heads were hanging out of windows. A few pedestrians, positioned close to trees, stood and stared.

Glancing about, Nace saw a small flivver touring which had been parked there since he entered the funeral home. He ran to it.

On the front floorboards, covered by a gunny sack, lay a dozen extra explosive shotgun slugs.

Nace propped his burden in a seat of the little car. He tossed the automatic shotgun in the rear. Then he went to the touring. He ramped the starter. The engine began to chatter, shimmy the fenders, and shake the steering wheel in his hand. He meshed gears and drove away. A bit later, he was guiding the flivver down a tree-canopied avenue of residences.

From time to time, Nace reached over and slapped his slumbering companion. The man was slow to awaken. Opening his zipper bag, as he drove, Nace dug out liquid ammonia in little cloth-covered glass phials. He broke one of these under the man’s nose. The fellow eventually sneezed, grimaced, and began to paw about aimlessly.

“Who sent you and your artillery after me?” Nace demanded.

The man made mumbling animal noises. He was still a little beyond speech.

Nace looked back. A small coupe seemed to be following him. He could not make out the driver. Nor could he be entirely certain that the car was on his trail.

He reached over to sting his companion into wakefulness with another slap.

A cream-colored roadster lunged out of a side street. Angling over expertly, it sideswiped Nace’s flivver. The little car, knocked out of control, jumped at a tree.

By springing suddenly erect, Nace kept his face from hitting the windshield as the car struck. His chest met the glass. It caved; he slid across the hood. His shoulder jarred the tree, and he tumbled to the ground, only slightly dazed.

Skidding all four wheels the cream-colored roadster had stopped as soon as it side-swiped the flivver.

The flivver was up on the curb, leaving plenty of room underneath. Into this space Nace crawled.

Glimpsing the feet of a man who had dropped out of the roadster, Nace wriggled for them. The feet were encased in cowboy boots. Hooking both hands about the boots, Nace pulled. There was a single profane bark and the owner of the boots sat down heavily.

It was Robin Hood Lloyd.

Nace tried to haul him under the flivver. The Robin Hood drew a heavy frontier six. But he made no effort to shoot.

“Damn you!” he snarled. “Why don’t you carry a rod!” He tried to bat Nace in the face with his gun.

Nace dodged back and pulled harder. The Robin Hood came sliding under the flivver.

The fight which followed, Nace was always to remember. The Robin Hood battled with fists and his revolver. He kicked, gouged, bit. Anything went. Nace returned all he received. They bruised themselves against the flivver chassis and against the concrete curb.

Then the chicken-headed man entered the fray. He crouched down and looked under the car. He had secured his automatic shotgun from where Nace had placed it in the flivver seat. Deliberately, he aimed at Nace.

Glimpsing the man, Robin Hood Lloyd threw up his six. Its boom seemed violent enough to blow the flivver off their backs.

The shot-gunner sagged, leaking scarlet from a blue-rimmed pit which had suddenly appeared directly between his eyes.

Nace and the Robin Hood separated as if by mutual agreement. They crawled out on different sides of the roadster and stood erect.

“Before I’m through with this, I’m gonna beat hell out of you!” the Robin Hood snarled. “But not now! I hear old Ebenezer App has been kidnapped! Anything to it?”

Nace hesitated briefly. “Yeah. And just before it happened, App found out who is heading the hot-oil ring!”

“Thanks!” Backing swiftly, the Robin Hood climbed into his roadster. The engine was running and the car got under way quickly. It volleyed off in the direction of town.

A few seconds later Nace saw a coupe pass the corner on a side street, a block distant. The tree shadows made it impossible to tell who occupied the machine. But it was the same coupe which had tailed Nace.

Nace ran around the flivver. One glance told him the man with the shotgun was dead. Getting his zipper carryall from the car, Nace set out across the back yards. He ran the first few blocks, then slowed down to a walk as he neared the business district. Excitement was noticeable in the Telegram Building when he entered. In the glass enclosed circulation room off the lobby, groups of clerks stood under a Santa Claus picture of App and talked. The pretty elevator operators were flushed and perturbed.

In the city room, Jaxon was talking to four policemen. The dressy oil editor glared at Nace. “There’s the bum now!”

The policemen came over, jaws out, eyes wintry. One jingled handcuffs suggestively.

Nace got in the first word. “I’m a private detective—”

“We know all about you, brother!” frowned one cop. “We don’t like your kind! And we don’t like the way you’re getting around this man’s town!”

The adder leered redly at them from Nace’s forehead. “So what?”

“So it’s the can for you.”

Nace put his zipper bag on a reporter’s desk, opened it, and extracted a yellow fold of paper.

“What’s that?” questioned the officer.

“Telegraphic commission from the governor — appointing me a special investigator in this hot-oil business.”

The policeman scowled. “Let’s see that!”

Ten minutes later, Nace was alone in the newspaper morgue. The policemen had gone their disgruntled way. They didn’t like it, but Nace had a special permission from the governor.

Jaxon, after making ugly grimaces to express his personal opinion of Nace, had gone off somewhere — probably to the oil editor’s sanctum.

The morgue was a dingy room, a fly-specked Santy picture of App on the wall. There were great steel filing cabinets. These held drawers, and the drawers were gorged with envelopes. There were pictures, mats, clippings, cuts.

The cabinet bore alphabetic file letters. Nace was looking under the “L” guide.

He found a quart of white mule, a pair of dice and two packs of cards, which some reporter must have hidden.

There were four envelopes on Robin Hood Lloyd, all fat. They traced his life from the cradle, his associates, his family, his boyhood chums — all were named.

The file was a potential fortune. It contained material enough to write a book on Oklahoma’s bad boy who was probably destined to take a place alongside Jesse James.

Nace read the clippings, replaced them, then left the morgue. As he was passing the city room, a copy boy ran out.

“Somebody on the ’phone wantin’ you, Mr. Nace!” he said.

“I’ll take it in the booth,” Nace told him, and entered a little glass enclosure, and picked up an instrument.

Julia’s voice came to him.

Chapter IV The Oil-Boiled Trail

“What’s eating you?” Nace asked quietly.

Julia said, “I followed them!”

“So it was you in the coupe!” Nace chuckled.

“Sure! I didn’t have anything else to do so I trailed you to the newspaper, then to the morgue, then away. That is, after we left the newspaper, I followed the Robin Hood, who was following the guy who was shagging you. That’s why I didn’t warn you—”

“Don’t get me dizzy!” Nace chuckled. “Where are you now?”

“In a bungalow at the foot of Reservoir Hill. I tagged the Robin Hood to a house at the top of the hill.”

“Describe the house!”

“I’ll do better than that! Here’s the number.” She gave him a street and numerals. “There’s several houses on the hill and this is one of the biggest.”

“O.K.,” said Nace. “What do you make of this jamboree?”

“Search me, boss! I’m fairly certain the Robin Hood is somebody big in the oil ring. But just now he’s sure going around like a chicken with its head cut off!”

“You know there’s a body in the morgue now.”

“Yes?”

“I just identified the corpse by pictures and clippings at the Telegram. It’s the Robin Hood’s kid brother.”

“Hm-m-m!” Julia made a thoughtful humming sound. “That may explain a lot, boss!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Julia said hastily, “Are you coming out here?”

“What’s the address of this place you’re telephoning from?” Nace demanded.

Again she gave him a street and a number. “I’m going to hang around on the front porch!” she advised. “The lady who owns it is an old dear. So she’ll let me stay.”

Nace drew on his pipe and ran a smoke plume into the upper part of the booth. His forehead, wrinkling, bunched the crimson snake scar. He thought for a minute.

“Hold the wire,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve got to see a man about a dog!”

He planted the instrument on the booth shelf, but did not hang up the receiver. Whipping out of the booth, he dived into a hallway and went up a flight of stairs four at a time.

He knew the newspaper phone P.B.X. operator was in an office on the same floor with the morgue. He had noticed the phone room door.

Rising on tiptoe, he gave a good imitation of floating as he went down the corridor. Nearing the frosted glass panel of the P.B.X. room, he ducked low, so his shadow would not show. He gave the knob a gentle try. It gave; the door swiveled in.

The phone girl looked around, gave him a forced, uneasy smile. Her lids shuttered up when she saw Nace’s peculiar scar. The sight seemed to frighten her.

“Wh-what do you want?”

“A look at your board!” Nace told her.

The girl’s jaw dropped. Her swivel chair squeaked as she spun. She reached both hands for the web of connecting cords on the P.B.X. board.

“None of that!” Lunging, Nace brushed her hands back.

The girl leaped up, mouth agape to scream. Nace plastered a hand over her mouth and forced her back in the chair.

Slotted brass holders under each jack on the phone board bore designation cards. Nace examined these; he followed cords with his fingers. His inspection lasted at least a minute.

He frowned at the P.B.X. operator. The serpent on his forehead seemed to coil and uncoil, as the winkles came and went.

“You’ve got my connection cut in on an outside line,” he pointed out grimly. “What’s the idea?”

The girl shrank down into her chair. “You’re crazy.”

Nace shoved his telegram from the governor under her nose. She seemed reluctant to look at it.

“Read that!” he said harshly.

The girl read. She began to shudder. Her hands opened and shut like the paws of a stretching cat.

“Do you know that a murder accomplice can draw a life sentence?” Nace asked fiercely.

The girl spread her hands over her face and began to sob.

“Cough up,” he commanded. “You’re in a tough spot, kid.”

The girl blubbered, “I didn’t know it was anything very wrong. If I had I w-wouldn’t have done it for fifty dollars a week.”

“Who hired you?”

“A man I met at the dance.”

“His name?”

“Chick Oliver.”

Nace thought of the chicken-headed man who had taken the Robin Hood bullet between the eyes. “Was he a little squatty guy with a long neck and a head like a chicken?”

“T-t-that’s him!” stuttered the frightened operator.

“He was killed about twenty minutes ago!” Nace said ominously, knowing it would do no harm to frighten her a bit more.

She began to rock from side to side and whimper.

“What conversations were you to connect outside?” he asked.

“Anything for Mr. App!” she moaned. “Then, a little while ago, I got a call asking for anything you received.”

“What number did you connect the calls to?”

She gave him a phone number, then quavered, “I h-h-hope I h-h-haven’t done any harm!”

“Oh no!” he jeered. “You haven’t done anything but nearly get me killed and get App kidnapped and probably murdered.”

The girl rolled over so she could mash her features against the arm of her chair.

Nace trailed downstairs, grim faced. He found the city editor — a youngish man with too much belly — and asked, “Got a back number directory?”

The directory was produced. Nace looked up the number the girl had given him.

“Clarence Oliver,” was the name which followed the number. The address was out on Eleventh. A high number! That meant it was far out.

Nace went back to the P.B.X. girl’s cubby. He had remembered his interrupted conversation with Julia.

The phone operator still sobbed in her chair.

Nace put on her headset and snapped levers. He called, “Hello!” several times but received no reply. Julia had left the wire.

“Did you touch these connections?” he asked the operator.

She shook her head, and tears fell off her chin.

“Keep your trap shut about this!” Nace advised her. “Maybe it’ll come out all right.”

He now called the house from which Julia had talked. A pleasant-voiced old lady — she sounded like an old lady — answered him.

“The blond girl?” the old lady echoed, seeming surprised. “Oh, two men came for her a minute ago, and she left with them.”

Nace turned somewhat pale, the scar on his forehead got proportionally redder. His eyes acquired a frightened look.

“Thank you!” he told the old lady in a thick voice and hung up.

A taxi carried Nace out Eleventh. The machine travelled between forty and fifty, with the horn open. Eleventh was a mixed street. Scattered along it were small stores, greenhouses, root beer stalls, pig stands. There was an ice cream factory and oil-field tool concerns. They passed the Tulsa U. stadium.

Clarence Oliver’s house was a little brick, very neat. The walk was of red concrete. There was a garage to the side, and a tennis court behind.

Watching both windows, Nace ran up the walk. He tried the door. It was locked. He batted the glass out with his fist, turned the spring lock inside and walked in.

The room was loaded with cheap brown furniture, bridge lamps, card tables, a radio. The rug was flowery. All the stuff looked new.

A faint odor reeked in the air. Nace sniffed. He breathed one word, “Oil.”

Nace crossed the room, almost running. The hallway beyond was square; four doors opening off it gave to bath, kitchen and two bedrooms. Nace tried the bath. Nothing there.

He knocked open the end door and found himself in a kitchen, ornate with a white enamel. The oil smell was stronger here, mingling with cooking odors.

A man-sized bundle reposed on the floor, near one wall. It was swathed in canvas. Nace found as he worked over it that underneath the canvas were layers of oilcloth.

Four Winchester rifles had been tied into the bundle to give it stiffness. No doubt the men who had carried it here had wanted it to look rigid, as if it were a piece of furniture.

It was the body of a man. His color was white, parboiled; his clothing was oil-soaked. Nace looked at the face. It was almost unidentifiable. There was a wad of white hair, which might have been a beard which had slipped. A Santa Claus beard.

“App had that kind of a beard!” Nace muttered.

Then he fell to straining his ears. He could hear footsteps out in front, coming up the walk. He went silently to a window.

There were three of them, all strangers. They approached suspiciously.

Nace eased backward quietly and sidled into a bedroom. While the three newcomers tramped on the front porch, Nace worked at his sleeves. He wore cuff links which were oversize, long, and narrow. Under his prying fingernails, tiny secret lids opened in the links. He took out small darts.

The darts were but little larger than pins. The tapering rear ends bore tiny metal vanes to make them travel straight when thrown.

The three men entered the house with the noisy abandon of fellows who felt themselves at home.

“Things don’t look natural around here without Chick!” one remarked.

“I’d like to know exactly what happened to Chick!” muttered another. “Did Nace get him? Or did the Robin Hood?”

“We’ll find out from the evening papers!” grunted a third man. “What we’ve got to do now is get rid of old App’s body.”

They filed past the bedroom door.

Nace threw a pair of his darts in one-two succession. He flung them hard. The men jumped, clapped hands to their arms, swore. Then both reeled crazily and crashed full length on the floor.

Eyes popping, the third man stared at the first two.

“What the hell?” he began. “What ails—”

Nace lunged at him, hands outstretched, fingers splayed. A moment later they were entangled, and rolling on the floor. The man got a gun out of his clothing. Grasping the hand which held the weapon, Nace beat it against the floor. Squealing, the fellow lost his gun.

The next instant, the fellow had produced a knife. The suddenness with which he did this smacked of the supernatural. He struck — the blade zinged across the front of Nace’s bullet-proof vest, opening his clothing.

Nace fell on the knife and hand with his chest. The other was strong, and Nace’s weight was not sufficient to pin him down. The man jerked free, sprang up.

There was only one thing Nace could do. He picked open the secret lid in one of his cufflinks, shook out a dart, and flung it. The other ducked wildly. But Nace had calculated on that. The dart thorned into the fellow’s face.

Almost at once, the man crashed down.

Nace scowled at the recumbent form. He had not wanted to use that third dart. He had hoped to question one of the men. But now all three would be unconscious at least two hours. The darts were daubed with a drug which produced a stupor lasting that long. Nothing, as far as Nace knew, could revive the men before the two-hour interval was up.

Nace began searching his victims. He turned up money, keys, soiled handkerchiefs. After the fashion of crooks, they were carrying nothing which would identify them.

A coat pocket disgorged an object which caused Nace to spring erect and swear thickly. He turned the thing in his hand. It had an ugly significance. It could have come into the possession of these men in only one fashion — with the capture of its owner.

It was the girl’s flat pancake compact.

Chapter V The Hilltop Prowl

Nace ran to the telephone. The number he requested was the one from which the blond had called — the house at the foot of Reservoir Hill. The wait which followed was so long that he began to think he was not going to get his party. But the pleasant-voiced, elderly lady finally answered.

Nace asked for a description of the two men with whom Julia had departed. In return, he received an accurate word picture of two of the trio who lay unconscious in the room in which he stood.

“Thank you!” he said, and hung up.

He bent over the three, shook them angrily, knowing however that it was useless. That they had seized the girl, there was not the slightest doubt. But it would be two hours before anything could be done toward making them tell where they had taken her.

Nace went to the tennis court in the back yard. With his pocket knife he stripped off the thin, strong cords which supported the net. Carrying these back into the house, he bound the three senseless men. He tied efficient gags between their jaws, then plastered these over with adhesive tape which he found in the bathroom.

There was a small basement under part of the house. It held only a gas-burning furnace. He left his prisoners there.

His taxicab was still waiting where he had left it a short distance up the street. He got in, perched tensely on the edge of the cushion, and directed, “Reservoir Hill! And make it snappy!”

Reservoir Hill was a knob at the north of the Tulsa City limit. A zig-zagging drive climbed its abrupt slope. The top offered a birdseye view of Tulsa, and mansions clustered there.

Behind the hill was the Osage — a hilly wilderness of scrub oak, spotted with oil derricks and compression pumping stations and a small refinery or two.

Nace dismissed his cab at the top of the hill and went on afoot. There was the faint sound of oil wells pumping in the distance. The tang of crude hung faintly in the air. Nowhere in Tulsa did it seem possible to escape the odor of oil.

The mansions on top were even more magnificent than they had appeared from below. In architectural style they ranged from Spanish, Irish and old English, to American Colonial. The fact that they were expensive, and the grounds well maintained, kept them from seeming garish.

There were no sidewalks along the wide, smooth, concrete parkways. Nace walked in the road, keeping to the left. Street names were painted, in black and yellow panels, on the raised curbs. His eyes searched these.

When he found the one he wanted, he walked on as if it were of no consequence.

He still carried his canvas zipper bag. Indeed, the valise seemed to be out of his hands only when he was in action. He lugged it along instinctively, much as another man wears his hat.

Sheltered by an ornamental hedge, he lowered the bag, opened it, and took out a small but powerful telescope. He wielded this until he located the house to which Julia had trailed the Robin Hood.

Somewhere near, a voice purred, “So now you’ve turned peeping Tom!”

Nace’s first reaction was to jump for cover. He did that. Concealed on the other side of the hedge, he scuttled twenty feet, then stopped.

The voice made hateful laughter. “Scared of little old Jaxon, Skipper?”

Nace angled south a few yards, then worked through the hedge. He found Jaxon hunkered down behind a squatty fir tree.

Jaxon returned Nace’s blank look with an unpleasant smile. “So now I’m in your hair again!”

Nace glared. “Hell, but you’re funny.”

“Oh yeah?” Jaxon seemed to consider the insult. “I reckon I don’t rate an explanation of why you’re here.”

Nace wrinkled the serpentine scar on his forehead. “I’m not quite sure what you rate.”

Jaxon leered. “If you’re wondering how I got the tip-off on this place, Skipper, I’ll tell you! It was the phone girl. She listened in when your platinum-haired dame called you. Mighty slick, your sending the blond on ahead! I didn’t give you the credit.”

“Why are you out here?” Nace asked him levelly.

“Didn’t I just tell you? For the Robin Hood and the ten thousand reward on his head.”

“Blood money, eh?”

“Any money is good money, Skipper—”

Nace flung out a hand and shoved. Sputtering angrily, Jaxon upset. Getting atop Jaxon, Nace clutched and got the little derringer from the oil editor’s watch pocket.

Sitting up, Jaxon lashed out with two angry fist blows. Nace dodged the fists, vanishing from their path in a way that seemed uncanny.

“Gimme that owl head!” Jaxon said.

Ignoring the request, Nace told him, “You can either go back to town, or you can behave yourself and go with me.”

Jaxon considered this, straightening his double-breasted gray vest with angry jerks. In getting the derringer, Nace had torn the watch pocket. Jaxon fingered the frayed edges.

“You couldn’t get rid of me!” the oil editor said finally.

“Okay!” Nace told him. “But you make one crack-brained move and I’ll crown you!”

“I’ll get that ten thousand before this is over,” Jaxon said grimly.

Nace opened his zipper bag to return the telescope. While he had the bag open, he removed four of his cigars, and pocketed them.

“I thought you smoked a pipe!” Jaxon grunted.

“What do you care what I smoke?”

They set off along the street, side by side.

The house to which Julia had trailed the Robin Hood was situated on a street a block to the right. They headed for it, cutting across yards and haunting the shelter of shrubbery.

The house was probably the most unattractive on the hill, but at the same time one of the largest. It was gray brick, squarish of line, rambling — not unlike a cluster of big gray boxes jammed together.

The body of the house had a height of two stories. Atop this sat a square room, the sides almost entirely of glass. These windows were not curtained, and Nace kept a close watch on them.

No one stirred. The absence of curtains lent the mansion a deserted aspect.

Jaxon whispered shrilly, “The Robin Hood may not be in there! He may have left!”

“Shut up!” Nace advised.

They crept up to within three-score feet on the house. There, behind a low, vine-covered fence of steel pickets, they reconnoitered. Using the telescope, Nace not only surveyed the house but also the yard and dwellings around them and behind.

To the rear, Nace saw something which caused him to start violently. However, he made an elaborate pretense and continued his survey of the surroundings.

Then he tapped Jaxon on the shoulder. “You’re going back!”

“What the—”

“Don’t argue! Beat it!”

Jaxon made an angry face. “If you think I’m gonna be left out in the cold on that ten thousand—”

Nace showed him a granite-hard fist. “You’re going to be left cold on the ground if you don’t do what I tell you.”

Jaxon considered this; then, mumbling disgustedly, he crawled away.

He had covered no more than two dozen yards when the Robin Hood and his two followers popped out of bushes and seized him.

Jaxon put up a violent struggle. He kicked, wielded his fists and tried to use his teeth. He sought to cry out, but a hand over his mouth stopped that.

Nace made no effort to go to his assistance, but merely looked on, as if it were all some drama he had staged. A swipe from a six-gun barrel finally reduced Jaxon to a limp pile.

The Robin Hood approached. His two followers came behind, dragging the oil editor.

Nace and the Robin Hood exchanged sour looks.

“You do the damnedest things!” growled the Oklahoma bandit.

“That’s a matter of opinion!” Nace told him.

Diving out a quick hand, the Robin Hood searched Nace. He found the derringer which the private detective had taken from Jaxon.

“Hell!” he snarled, and tried to give Nace back the weapon.

Nace scowled, knocked at his hand. The derringer flew off in the shrubbery somewhere.

The Robin Hood sat back with a pained expression on his wolfish features.

“If I ever catch you with a gun in your hand, I’m going to kill you dead!” he promised.

Nace replied nothing. In the eastern newspapers he had read of this fellow — and wondered how one man could garner such a reputation. Now that he was in contact with the Robin Hood, the answer was clear. The man had a code of honor and adhered to it. He was a character from the old, two-gun west, transplanted to 1933.

The Robin Hood shoved his wolf jaw out. “We’re going in! There ain’t nobody in there, but we’ll go anyway! I want to talk to you.”

They entered the house through a rear door which was unlocked and gave into a kitchen. The furniture, Nace noted, was swathed in dust covers. The place showed few signs of recent occupancy.

Jaxon was deposited on a divan. One of the Robin Hood’s men went into the kitchen, ran water into his hat, came back, and doused the fluid on the recumbent oil editor.

“That bird’s a neckpain,” Nace said, indicating Jaxon. “Let’s get our talk before he wakes up!”

“An idea!” The Robin Hood jutted his wolf face at Nace. “I want to make a deal with you, feller!”

Nace shrugged. “If the deal is to give you the name of the man behind this hot-oil business, when I find out who it is — nothing doing!”

The Robin Hood’s long jaw lowered almost to his necktie. “How’d you know that was it?”

“What else could it be?” Nace spread his hands. “The man dead in the morgue is your brother. You’re out to pay somebody for getting him.”

“I’ll be damned!” grunted the Robin Hood.

“That’s what you came to the airport to see me about,” Nace continued. “And you arranged the hotel trap in case you couldn’t get to me at the airport. You did fix that hotel business, didn’t you — leaving the note in the newspaper office for Jaxon?”

“Yeah!” the Robin Hood admitted. “Say — you’re pretty sharp!”

Nace eyed him intently. “If you’re not afraid of incriminating yourself, you can tell me some things.”

The Robin Hood laughed harshly. “Say, feller, I ain’t afraid of admittin’ anything! If the law ever puts the shuck on me they’ve already got plenty to hang me! A little bit more won’t hurt!”

Nace grinned. “You know, I’d kinda hate to see ’em get you, at that.”

“To hell with what you think!” the Robin Hood scowled. “I’ll blow your damned head off if I ever catch you with a gun! What do you want to know?”

“Have you been mixed up with this hot-oil ring?”

“Sure, I’ve been doing most of the dirty work.” The wolf face became fiercer. “And I got it in the neck! The big boss is trying to hog the proceeds! I don’t know who he is. I never have known!”

Nace waved his arm. “What about this house?”

“This is where the boss always met us. That is, he’d come and talk to us from one room, while we stayed in another.”

Chapter VI The Smoke Trap

Nace squinted at the Oklahoma badman, absently fingering the cigars in his pocket.

“Well, don’t you believe me?” the man scowled.

“What difference does it make?” It was just as well, Nace reflected, to feed the fellow a little sass and keep him guessing. The Robin Hood might have likable qualities, but that did not mean he was a pleasant customer.

Should he get the idea Nace was no longer useful, he would be as likely as not to shove a gun in the private detective’s hand and demand that they shoot it out, wild-west style. He was that kind of a character.

“I’m going to look around!” Nace said, and started for a door.

“I’ve already done that!” The Robin Hood scowled blackly. “You stick here!”

Nace pivoted. “You know that blond girl?”

“Sure! And don’t you go making cracks about her, shamus! She’s a straight little number!”

“Don’t I know it!” Nace said earnestly. “You don’t, by any chance, know where she is?”

The Robin Hood hesitated. “I ain’t seen her since we split up, after leavin’ the Crown Block!”

“I thought so!” Nace’s voice suddenly sounded old, weary. “She has disappeared! The lice working for the big brain back of the hot-oil ring grabbed her!”

The Robin Hood swore softly. “How d’you know that?”

That, Nace reflected, was something else to keep the fellow guessing. No good could come of letting the Robin Hood know that Julia was Nace’s assistant.

Saying nothing, Nace passed through a door. He was cursed at, ordered to come back. He ignored profanity and summons, and began to search.

None of the upstairs rooms yielded anything. The glass-walled box of a room which sat atop the house was entirely bare of furnishings. There was a dust on the floor, a thin film. It was smudged and tracked where men, in the hours or days past, had crouched to watch the surroundings.

He ended up in the basement. This was very large, divided into several rooms — washroom, gym, billiard room, and a larger enclosure which held a furnace.

The furnace was an oil burner, and there was a fuel tank, almost as large as half a railway tank car.

It was very warm in the furnace room. Nace put a hand on the furnace. It was hot. He opened the doors. The fires were out. There was no room for anyone to have been concealed in the furnace.

He went over and started to climb upon the fuel tank, with the idea of peering in the manhole at the top. Instead of doing that, he sprang back, ran to the stairs.

“Come down here!” he called. “I’ve got something for you!”

There was no answer from above.

“Come here!” Nace repeated sharply.

No reply.

Nace climbed the stairs with long jumps, ran into the room where he had left Robin Hood Lloyd and his companions.

Jaxon glared at Nace over the twin blue snouts of a derringer.

“I’m gonna collect that ten thousand yet!” the oil editor gritted.

The Robin Hood and his two fellows had their hands at shoulder level. Their faces held fierce hate, and also wariness. The derringer held only two bullets. But that was enough to kill two men.

Waving his weapon to cover everyone, Jaxon sidled over and disarmed his prisoners.

“Jaxon — you nut!” Nace started forward.

“Get back!” Jaxon snarled. “I’d like nothing better than to sink lead into you!”

In a loud, wolf-howl of a voice, the Robin Hood said, “He had the hideout up his pants leg!”

“That’s your hard luck!” Nace grunted. “You searched ’im — not me!”

“Shut up and plop down on your faces!” Jaxon ordered.

The Robin Hood’s claw-like hands opened and shut. He exhibited all the signs of a man about to make a break.

“Go ahead — if you want to croak!” Nace told him, and lay his full length on the floor. “This lunk ain’t foolin’! That ten thousand has got him crazy!”

Reluctantly, as if their joints were afflicted with a stiffness, Oklahoma’s master outlaw and his two satellites followed Nace’s example in flattening to the floor. They let Jaxon bind them.

When the job was done, Jaxon stepped back. His face was flushed, his eyes gleeful.

“Now to call a flock of cops!” he gloated.

He went to the telephone, picked up the receiver and listened. Making one of his faces, he flung away from the instrument. “Line’s dead! Wires must be cut!”

He seized upon Nace’s bag, stripped back the zipper, and peered inside.

“Regular bag of magic!” He leered at Nace. “I’ll just take this along. I don’t want you gettin’ away and turnin’ your buddies loose!”

He walked outdoors. The rear door slammed.

Nace sat up. Twisting, he managed to reach his left trouser leg with both hands. He grasped it at the cuff, one hand on either side of the seam, and made a tearing gesture. The seam pulled apart.

Six inches of thin hacksaw blade came out.

Jaxon had used wire clothesline for the binding. The hacksaw blade quickly cut through the bonds on Nace’s ankles. He ran to the Robin Hood.

“Hold the blade!” he commanded. “I’ll saw my wrists free!”

Eagerly, the bandit complied. It required perhaps a minute for Nace to loosen his hands. Twice, he gashed himself. Then he sprang erect.

“Now untie me!” growled the Robin Hood.

Nace laughed harshly. “Who said anything about untying you?”

The bandit snarled like a wolf in a trap. “Damn you! If I ever catch you with a gun, it’ll be your finish!”

Ignoring the ominous promise, Nace glided to a window and looked out. There was no Jaxon. But the man had time to depart.

“Have you been watching this house all afternoon?” Nace asked the Robin Hood.

“Go chase yourself!”

“Have you? This is important!”

“Yeah — all afternoon!” the bandit admitted grouchily. “Why?”

“The blond followed you here, and then disappeared. That proves she’s not here — she couldn’t have been brought in without you noticing.”

“How come you know so much about that blond?” the Robin Hood pondered.

Without enlightening the puzzled outlaw, Nace dropped from a window and dived into shrubbery. He angled northeast. Reservoir Hill sloped down there with less abruptness.

Since it was the shag end of the hill, giving only a view of oil wells, a tank farm or two, and numerous long tin oil-well tool supply houses, there were no mansions.

Weeds grew profusely, and to the size of small trees. A single narrow drive, the concrete somewhat cracked, angled down the slope.

Nace ran along the road, eyes downcast. He was taking a long chance — or maybe it was not such a long chance, considering certain deductions he had made.

He soon found what he had hoped for — a car standing in the weeds a few yards from the seldom-used road. It was a limousine, large, the body custom made.

Nace went to it and looked in. It was empty.

“Julia!” he called.

An echo came back at him from the side of Reservoir Hill, but there was no answer. Nace walked a circle around the car, close to it at first, then more distant.

He found crushed weeds, more weeds which had been broken down, then straightened. A trail! He followed it a few yards.

Julia was tied in a ring around a small scrub oak tree — hands and feet lashed together in a ball. She was gagged with a handkerchief and copious quantities of adhesive tape, also blindfolded.

Nace freed her, helped her erect.

“What was it?” he demanded.

She began to describe the two men he had left unconscious in the little brick house out on Eleventh.

“Not that pair!” he said impatiently. “Or did they leave you here?”

“No,” she said. “It was someone else — one man! But I was blindfolded! I can’t tell you a thing about him!”

“O.K. It’s back to town with you!” Nace cocked an eye at the sun. It was some slight distance above the horizon. “Better still, fog out to the airport and grab the Kansas City plane. One leaves in about half an hour!”

“Nix!” she said.

He scowled at her. “Are you gonna be contrary?”

“No!” she explained carefully. “I’m just not going to leave!”

He shrugged, then led the way back up the Hill. Julia bobbed along at his side. The wind stirred her blond hair, and in brushing it out of her eyes, she pulled a handful where she could look at it. She grimaced, “If this stuff don’t wash off — I’ll be a sight!”

She was limping, stiffened as she was by being tied around the scrub oak.

“How’d you find me?” she demanded.

“By using the old bean. They had you, and they couldn’t have taken you to their hangout, because the Robin Hood was watching. So they had to leave you somewhere. I took a chance on it being nearby.”

“Do you know who’s behind this?”

“Sure!” Nace told her. “But don’t ask me who. So far, he’s been too slick for me to prove anything!”

THE Robin Hood and his two companions glared at them when they entered the rambling, blockish brick mansion. Nace had not gagged the trio. Outlaws that they were, they certainly would not yell for help.

The Robin Hood stuttered, “Who — what — for cryin’ out loud!” Then he rolled over on his face and groaned loudly. It had dawned on him that the blond was Nace’s agent. He snarled, “If I ever catch you with a gun—”

Nace looked at the girl. “You heeled?”

She laughed. “Sure! They never found my hideout, and I had no chance to use it!”

Reaching under the patty of blond hair on her nape — it still retained some of its shape — she produced her tiny gun.

“O.K. Watch these cookies!” Nace gestured at the basement. “I’m going down and have a look. There’s a furnace down there, and a fuel-oil tank. The outfit is rigged so that the oil runs though the furnace and is heated, boiler fashion.”

The girl shuddered. “You mean—”

“That this is the joint where the victims have been drowned in oil — or boiled in oil, whichever way you want it.”

She shuddered again. “What gets me is whatever suggested such a means of murder!”

“Simple! Hot oil! Get it? Anybody gets too close to the hot oil, and he gets cooked in the stuff! Every time one of those bodies was found, no one had any trouble understanding what was back of it!”

Nace descended the stairs, entered the furnace room and clambered upon the tank. He was wondering if there might not be a body in it. Apparently there was not.

The tank was so hot he could not bear his touch upon it. He perspired, not entirely from the heat; he was thinking of the boiled body in the house on Eleventh.

Concealed in a recess behind the tank were wires for lowering bodies into the boiling oil, and great bolts of oil cloth to bind the cadavers in afterward, and to spread upon the floor so that there would be no stains.

The cache was in a metal box which fitted in a niche that was disclosed when bricks were lifted out.

There was quite an armament with the other stuff — three army rifles, a half dozen automatics, sawed-off shotguns, and a machine gun. The latter was no diminutive Tommy, firing pistol cartridges, but a full-size weapon chambering long .30-calibre rifle slugs. It was a regulation military gun, airplane type.

Nace was looking at it when the next development came.

“Nace!” the blond called from above. “Watch out!”

Nace scrambled madly off the tank, carrying the machine gun. He ran for the stairs.

There was scuffling above. Before he came in sight of the stairway, he heard feet clattering down it.

Driving a hand inside his coat, Nace brought out one of the cigars. He clamped it between his teeth. Raking a match on a partition, he lighted the weed. He was puffing strongly when he came within sight of the stairs.

Blond Julia stood on the steps. She was struggling, kicking. But she was held quite helpless by the man who was behind her, using her as a shield.

The man wore a long raincoat. His trouser legs were pulled up, so that only his hairy shanks showed below the raincoat. His features were entirely masked by two bandanas, one tied so that it hung behind, and the other in front, perforated with eyeholes. His hands were cased in cotton gloves. One held an automatic.

He pointed the weapon at Nace.

“Drop it!” His voice was hoarse, unreal — a disguised tone.

Meekly, Nace dropped the machine gun. He drew on the cigar and ran a plume of smoke from his nostrils.

“C’mon up here!” he was directed. “And get them hands up!”

Nace followed the orders to the letter.

The Robin Hood and his two satellites still lay on the floor, wired tightly. They glared, cursed in low voices.

“This is the big shot!” snarled the Robin Hood. “The guy who murdered my kid brother!”

“You had no business sending your kid brother punking around to find out who I was!” the masked man growled. Then to Nace, he snapped, “You get over against the wall!”

Nace backed until his shoulders were clamped to the wall. The cigar protruded stiffly from his teeth.

The masked man advanced, menacing Nace with the automatic, shoving the girl ahead of him. He slammed her against the wall, snarled, “You stay there! Behave, and you may live a few minutes longer.”

Then he reached out to search Nace.

Nace blew smoke in his face.

The man cursed, straightened, and brought up a hand to knock the cigar out of Nace’s teeth.

There was a loud crack. Sparks, tobacco, geysered from the end of Nace’s cigar.

The masked man jabbed both hands convulsively in the air. He slanted stiffly backward, as if his heels were hinged to the floor. In his forehead, on the right side, where it had penetrated the brain, was a circular hole somewhat more than an eighth of an inch across.

He crashed his length on the floor, hitting so hard that his heels flew up, then banged back.

Nace took the remains of the cigar out of his teeth, pinched out flaming shreds of tobacco, and pocketed it. The firing barrel inside the cigar, chambered for a .22-long-rifle cartridge, was expensive. Another cigar could be built around it. The thing was fired by a hard pressure of the teeth.

Stooping, Nace started to strip off the mask. Then he hesitated, eyed the girl, and asked, “Want to bet that I can’t name him?”

She shuddered. “Don’t be dramatic!”

He shucked off the mask.

The cherubic, Santa Claus features of Ebenezer App, white beard and all, were disclosed.

The Robin Hood, rearing up from the floor, cried out, “For yellin’ out loud! The last hombre on earth that I suspected!”

“Sly old duck — he was!” Nace said grimly. He looked at the Robin Hood. “He owes his downfall to you!”

The bandit glared. “You’re nuts! I didn’t even suspect—”

“Maybe not! But it was your finagling around with me when I first got here that started App worrying. He thought I smelled a rat, because I hadn’t reported to him. He decided to fake his own death and clear out, I guess.

“Probably that body on Eleventh Street is one of his own men who was about his build. He dumped the fellow in oil, then took him out and bundled some white whiskers in with the body.”

Julia walked to the door and outside. She didn’t like to look at dead men. She called back, “But you said you suspected who it was?”

“Sure!” Nace grunted. “When App told me over the phone that he knew who was behind the hot-oil business, he wouldn’t say who it was. That was queer. It occurred to me that the old goat just wanted me to hurry over and find out he was kidnapped!”

Swinging over, Nace began untying the Robin Hood and his two men.

“What’re you going to do?” snarled the bandit.

“Let you go bye-bye! You did save my life, you know!”

The Robin Hood purpled. “By hell, I wish I’d let the guy slug you with his shotgun when he looked under the flivver! I like you less than any guy I ever saw!”

“Just a pal!” Nace jeered.

“If I ever catch you with a gun, I’m gonna kill you!” the Oklahoma outlaw yelled.

In the distance somewhere, a police siren was wailing. That would be Jaxon and his policemen.

Leaving the bandit and his two men to get to their feet and finish untying themselves, Nace went to the body of Ebenezer App. He searched briefly — found a twin to the automatic which the man carried and dropped when he died. Nace picked up both guns.

He examined the weapons. Both were clipped full of cartridges.

He tossed one to the Robin Hood.

The bandit caught it. He stared, surprised. “What the—”

Nace rapped angrily, “You’ve been shooting off that mouth about what you’d do if you ever caught me with a gun! Well—”

“You’re askin’ for it!” the outlaw ripped. He jutted the gun at Nace.

There was a terrific roar — two shots, almost one, but with a slight stutter which marked a shade in timing.

The Robin Hood squawled. He waved his gun hand madly over his head. It was mangled, and scattered scarlet drops over walls and ceiling.

His automatic skittered along the wall behind him.

Without a word, but with an expression of agonizing chagrin on his wolf face, the Robin Hood whirled and dived through a window. His two men followed him. Running rapidly, they were soon lost to sight.

Nace went to the door.

Blond Julia gave him a disapproving frown.

“Dramatics!” she snapped. “Some day, that stuff is going to be your finish!”

Nace pretended he hadn’t heard, and watched a police phaeton moan up the hill and careen into the drive. Dapper Jaxon sprang out, along with numerous policemen. The oil editor was like a peacock hen with a brood of blue chicks.

“Hot after his ten thousand!” Nace said dryly. “Speaking of dramatics — you’re gonna hear ’em when he finds his bird has flown!”