Lights were burning near the front gate. They were not lights from the house itself, but lights held in the hands of men, electric torches and lanterns. He saw the visored caps of cops, saw an automobile and several motorcycles close to the walls. The iron gate was open.
He strode forward, and instantly saw that the gate had been smashed, and that the wall itself was cracked and broken. Loose strands of wire hung down. This havoc had been wrought by some terrific explosion. Agent “X” could guess what it was.
Lips grim, eyes probingly bright, he shouldered up to the group of men.
“Something happen?”
He baited a cop by deliberately asking a stupid question. The blue-coat turned toward him, his face plainly showing irritation.
“Huh!” he grunted. “When mugs get to throwing bombs, something usually happens, doesn’t it? Them hooded guys have been messing around again. The same mugs that tried to snatch Mike Carney out of stir. Now they’ve kidnaped that high-stepping dame of his, and knocked off some of her servants while they were doing it. Better start traveling, pal. The chief’s showing his teeth today. He’s likely to pick up any nosey gent and book him as a suspect.”
The Agent’s casual manner had achieved results. He’d taken the flat foot off-guard, made him talk. From his wallet, “X” drew a business card and handed it to the uniformed man. It was one of many that he carried to help build up whatever character he’d assumed at the time. The card read:
SILAS BURNS
Enright Detective Agency
“Miss St. Clair hired me last week,” explained the Agent. “I’ve been tracing down some threatening letters and keeping my eye on a couple of birds who’ve been parking too close to the house to suit the little lady. I’ll talk with your chief later. Right now, I want to buzz in there and look over the house and grounds before anything is disturbed.”
The cop shrugged and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“O.K.,” he said. “Go ahead. But watch out you don’t disturb anything yourself.”
“X” at once entered the grounds. He appeared to be a case-hardened private investigator interested in getting his job done and collecting his fee. In the spacious gardens he hurried down the marble flags of a flower-bordered path toward the house.
On the crimson-splattered lawn lay the mangled, broken bodies of two of Greta St. Clair’s hired guards. ‘’X” paused, gnawing at his lip, eyes brightly alert. The men had been slain by bombs. One had been slaughtered beyond recognition. The second was one of those who had displayed his marksmanship in the basement chamber of the big house.
THE Agent hurried on. The DOACs had been as pitilessly thorough as they had been in the raid on the state penitentiary. A bomb had split the gnarled trunk of a spreading oak. Most of the windows had been shattered by the concussion. The second-story windows of Greta St. Clair’s bedroom had been a target for the devastating bombs, which had blasted away the barred grating and crumbled a section of the brick wall.
Dread assailed the Agent. He rushed up the steps, impatiently rang the bell. A sunken-eyed, stooped cadaver of a man in butler’s livery opened the door and stared suspiciously at “X.” The man was in the clutch of fear. His haunted eyes evidently had seen the atrocities of the DOACs.
“What do you want?” His voice was harsh, his manner hostile.
“Enright Detective Agency,” snapped the Agent, pushing the butler aside and entering. “Until this thing is cleared up, your job is to do the answering and not the asking. When did the fireworks start?”
The Agent took the butler by the arm and forcibly led him down the high-ceilinged hall. The servant’s chin quivered. Stark terror washed green into the deathly pallor of his mummylike face.
“I–I don’t know — anything,” he quavered in a croaking voice. “I was off duty, taking a nap in my quarters.”
The butler dropped his gaze, and the Agent put bruising pressure into his grip on the man’s arm.
“You’re no good at lying,” he rasped.
He drew the butler into the luxuriously appointed dining room. The table was set for two, “X” noticed at once. The chairs had been pulled back, the napkins unfolded. A champagne bucket stood near the table. The bottle was unopened, and the ice had long since melted.
“Talk — and save yourself discomfort,” grated the Agent. “I’ve no time to waste. Who was Miss St. Clair’s guest? They’d just sat down to dinner, I can see. What time was it? What did you and the other servants do to protect your mistress? How is it that two of her guards were killed, and all the others unharmed?”
The butler choked an answer.
“The DOACs — they came!” he said. “It was nine o’clock. I’d just announced dinner. Miss St. Clair, sir, and a blonde girl — I don’t know her name — sat down. Then there was an awful explosion. I thought the house was coming down. Spats Herndon and Mugsy Moretti, Miss St. Clair’s bodyguards, ran outside. Another explosion, and I saw them torn to pieces by a bomb. What could I do? What could the others do? We ran to the cellar.
“When we came out, the cops had come. Miss St. Clair and the blonde were gone. It’s awful — awful! A man isn’t safe any more. How do I know you’re not a DOAC yourself? How do I know the other servants aren’t DOACs? For talking this much I’ll probably get shot or blown up myself.”
The Agent dismissed the butler. He searched the house feverishly. The blonde — who was she? She had been Greta St. Clair’s dinner guest. Could it possibly be—
In the drawing room, “X” found a lipstick — a special, imported brand he remembered having seen before. Fear was in his eyes as he looked at it. That lipstick—
The Agent had seldom experienced such inner turmoil. He ran from room to room. The St. Clair bed chamber, with all its prettiness and knick-knacks of luxury, had been demolished.
The mansion had become a house of fear. Servants slunk through the carpeted halls. They swivelled their eyes like hunted creatures. They stared at their fellow workers distrustfully. The Agent had made the butler talk, but the other servants were tongue-tied with fright. He left them alone. Harshness only drove them into hysteria. The DOACs had put a pall of horror over the St. Clair menage.
Some of their uneasiness communicated itself to the Agent.
Who was the blonde, he asked himself again and again. Had she, too, been sacrificed to the pitiless, ruthless lightning bolt of destruction that was the bone and flesh of that vast clan of fiends — the DOACs? The Agent’s uneasiness increased when he found a lace-edged linen handkerchief initialed “B,” in a rear corridor. That was all the proof he needed.
He rushed madly from the house and searched the grounds. The gardens spread out in ornamental plots whose profusion of fragrant blooms reflected color under his flashlight beam. None of the flower beds had been trampled. Beyond the damage to the house, there was no evidence of violence.
Abruptly the Agent stopped and stared into space with eyes that were sunken from anxiety. Another question crowded into his perplexed and troubled mind. His operative, Chatfield — what had become of him?
LEAVING the grounds, the Agent nodded to the cop who had admitted him, and continued his search in the timbered, marshy land surrounding the house. Soon he discovered fresh footprints. Suddenly he reached down and picked up a chunk of dull metal.
He gave a harsh exclamation as he stared at it. His scalp twitched. The thing he held in his hand seemed like some loathsome canker burning into his skin.
Farther on, in a tangle of shrubbery, the Agent found Chatfield, and clenched his fists till the nails drove into his palms. For Chatfield was dead — horribly dead.