Mac moistened the pellets, released some of the contents of the bulb — almost pure oxygen — and had a tiny acetylene flame capable of eating through inch steel.
It ate through the slim trees in a matter of seconds.
Mac trimmed the poles, bound them together at the top and had a slim tripod a foot or so higher than the fence. He climbed it, with Nellie steadying the base, leaped, and was in the clearing.
He went to the gate. And their precaution against lifting that lever was found to be justified.
There was a charge of explosive wired to the lever that would have blown Mac and Nellie sky-high if they had disturbed it.
Mac disconnected the deadly little bundle, and Nellie then opened the gate and came in.
The clearing held nothing suspicious. That could be seen, in the moonlight, at a glance. So the two went on to the laboratory building.
“You stand at the left of the door,” said Mac. “Ye pass your hand across in front of a certain spot, four times, and the door opens.”
“Photoelectric cell, of course,” nodded Nellie.
And again the two looked at each other.
“A cell could set off explosive, too,” said Mac.
They went to the first window, and Mac applied the tiny but terrifically hot torch to the steel casement and the latch inside. The contents of the torch ran out before the job was quite done; but a hard push broke the seared, fused metal, and they opened the window.
All the burglar alarm bells in the world seemed to be wired to that window and to sound off when the window was opened.
“Gracious, what a din!” said Nellie.
She flashed her small light around, found the light switch and clicked it. Only after she had done it did she stop to think that this, too, could have been a death move. But it wasn’t. So she hunted for the switch that controlled the bells, turned it off from a distance with a window pole, and sighed with relief when the racket subsided.
“Well,” she said, “if anybody’s lurking around they will certainly know now that somebody has come in! What’s next, Mac?”
“We’ll have a look at the door-openin’ mechanism,” said the Scot.
There was the little bundle of explosive, hooked up to the cell so that if they had opened the door they would have ended up in their graves.
Mac gingerly set the bundle down on the floor and opened the door, which could be opened from the inside on a regular latch.
“We’ll give the lab the once-over,” he started to say.
From the open door behind them came a deep Yankee drawl.
“Put your hands up, you two!”
Mac whirled to leap. But he didn’t. Half a dozen men, with deputy written all over them, stood beyond the doorway in the clearing. At their head was the man who had spoken, the sheriff, according to his badge.
Mac had been ready to depend on his bulletproof covering, but he saw at a glance that he couldn’t. The sheriff had a shotgun in his hands, and it was pointed at Mac’s head.
“Nice of you to leave the gate and door open.” the sheriff drawled. He was lanky and had a lantern-jawed face and a voice like a guitar. But Mac knew of no enemy more dangerous than a drawling but quickmoving country sheriff on a rampage.
So he kept his hands up. And so did Nellie.
They kept them raised a little all the way back to the Kinnisten jail, through the dark woods where normally they’d have tried for a break. They didn’t let them hang naturally to their sides till the cell door had banged on each of them.
CHAPTER XII
The Mob
The sheriff still had two deputies with him in the back room of the local jail, though Nellie and Mac were now carefully handcuffed. He was taking no chances with his two prisoners. And when he began to question them, the reason for his care, and the grimness of his lean face, became apparent.
“What did you two do with the body?” he began bluntly.
“Body?” said Nellie.
“Body!” said Mac.
“The body of Morel,” said the sheriff.
There was a surprised silence on the part of the two prisoners.
“Look,” said Mac, “there’s been some mistake. You don’t want to hold us. We—”
“I know,” said the sheriff, “you’re important people. We can’t do this to you.”
“I wouldn’t claim too much importance for myself,” said Mac. “But the mon we work for is important. Ye’ll have heard of him. Richard Benson. They call him The Avenger.”
The sheriff spat accurately into a can in the corner.
“You pick ’em good while you’re at it,” he said. “The Avenger, huh! And you’re connected with him! That’s a hot one.”
“We can prove—”
“You murdered Morel,” said the sheriff. “He has been gone for days from the lab. We were gettin’ uneasy about it; he’s the most distinguished citizen in these parts. And then we got the tip that he was murdered and that his murderers would come back tonight. The tip came from a guy who seems to be very close to Morel.”
“Tip,” snapped Mac, looking suddenly at Nellie, “from a guy close to Morel?”
But Nellie was staring at the sheriff, whose attention had suddenly become centered on her head. The sheriff’s hand whipped out, and when it came back it had the dark wig in it. Nellie was revealed in her natural, dark-gold blondness.
“Disguise, huh!” snapped the sheriff. “And you sneak into Morel’s lab like a couple of burglars, over the fence and through a window—”
“We did that because we suspected a trap had been set for us,” explained Nellie. “It had been, too. There was a charge of explosive wired to the gate mechanism and another to the building door—”
“Stop stalling,” said the sheriff. “You killed Morel. We know that. If you confess, things might go a little easier for you. Well?”
The absurd grilling — absurd to Nellie and Mac, at least — went on for an hour. Then they were returned to their cells, each with a pair of nickel-steel bracelets on.
The cells were adjoining — there were only four cells in the place — so they could talk if they each stood close to the cell door.
“This is it!” Nellie said suddenly.
“This is what?” snapped Mac, sore at the crazy twist that had thrown them into the local jail.
“The trap,” said Nellie.
“Huh?”
“This arrest — this jail. This is the trap.”
Mac still didn’t get her and said so.
“The explosive at gate and door were all very well,” Nellie said. “If we got killed by either of them, fine. Lila Morel and one of The Avenger’s aides were out of the way. That’s the way the gang figured it. But if we escaped the explosive, then this was the real trap. This arrest for the murder of Morel.”
“That doesn’t make sense. There’s nothin’ to worry about here.”
“I wonder,” said Nellie.
“But look! There isn’t a chance of proving we’re murderers. We’ll be out of here by morning, with Muster Benson’s help. The worst that can happen is a night in a cell.”
Nellie was shaking her blond head, though Mac couldn’t see that; he could only hear her.
“This is the trap, I tell you,” she repeated. “I’ve got a hunch on it.”
The sheriff and a deputy came in, then.
The four cells were on one side, and taking up the other half of the front of the building was the sheriff’s office, a desk and chair in otherwise vacant space.
“You take over for the night, Lem,” said the sheriff. “This jail ain’t as modern as some. These two are slick customers and might just think of a way out. So you’ll stand guard in here till morning. Here’re the keys.”
“O K,” said the deputy, a burly youth with a grin.