Tammany swelled his knot of a chest. “Let’s wake him up and talk to him. I saw you put him in the back.”
“He’ll take a lot of awakening, I guess.” Jeck shoved up on his feet and stood, legs weaving at the knees.
“I hope you didn’t kill him! He seems to be the key to this whole mess!”
Nace angled silently to the rear door. The serpentine scar was bright on his forehead. So they thought he was the key! And he had no idea what it was all about!
Nace wore elongated, ornate cuff buttons. He removed the one from his left sleeve. He worked at the two halves with his fingernails. Hidden lids came open. Two tiny darts were disclosed.
The lock at the rear rattled, then the doors whisked back. Tammany was first to show himself. Nace flipped a dart. It flew too swiftly to be seen, but materialized like a tiny thorn, clinging to Tammany’s neck.
The blank look on the stricken man’s face alarmed Jeck. He sprang forward, only to get Nace’s second dart in the cheek.
For perhaps a count of ten, both men stood still, faces becoming blanker. Tammany was the first to pile down slackly on the concrete. Jeck followed him, seeming to turn into a pile of black cloth.
Nace hopped out and dumped both men into the hearse. It was early, but someone might look out of the neighboring windows and see what was happening.
Locating a set of the web straps used in lowering caskets in graves, Nace employed them to bind both men securely. He tore padding out of the caskets and made two gags.
The men would sleep for two hours or so. The drug on the darts produced an unconsciousness that lasted about that long.
Nace searched them, finding money, cigarettes, and cards that showed them to be Thomas Tammany and Leo Jeck, members of the Lake City country club. There was nothing really important.
Nace’s height made him seem awkward as he got out of the hearse. He went around and looked at the name done in small silver letters on the front door. The Quiet Service Funeral Parlor, of Lake City. He eyed the license number, fixing it in his memory. The gasoline tank was nearly full. The gas was a colored variety — dark amber.
Nace entered his office building, banging his heels along the concrete corridor. The adder was gone from his forehead. He stoked his pipe on the way up in the elevator.
From his office, he put in a long distance call to Lake City. He held the wire, listening to clicks and animated feminine cries as the connection was built up.
“Hello — Quiet Service Funeral Parlor?” he said at length. “I want to find out something about a hearse of yours.” He gave the license number.
“We only got one hearse!” a wheezy voice came back at him. “We rented it out to a feller yesterday.”
“Who was he?”
“Said his name was Smith, from a little town over in Pennsylvania, where he has a funeral home.”
“What did he look like?”
“Say — has something happened to our hearse?”
“It’s safe here in New York, but we’re hunting the bird who was driving it. Describe him!”
“He was a big man. The main thing I remember about him was his nose. It was purple looking.”
“Thanks, buddy!” Nace hung up. Black-clothed Jeck, when he had first appeared, had declared a red-headed girl and a purple-nosed man had consigned him the body in Lake City. Jeck’s story had been a lie, of course, but the part about the man with the purple nose was significant.
Nace got up and walked slowly around the chair. He went to the window and stood looking down. His pipe bubbled and hissed and smoke made a fog against the pane.
Detective Sergeant Gooch sat in a squad car across the street. Beside him in the machine was Honest John MacGill. Honest John was three-hundred pounds of plugging, straight copper. Men like him backboned the police department.
The tense manner of both policemen showed they were watching Nace’s office building.
Nace caught their gaze. Sergeant Gooch waved a cigar he was smoking, then took off his hat and poked a finger inside to show he had been carrying some of Nace’s weeds there. Scowling, Nace pulled down the window shade. There was no particular hate in his scowl. Gooch and Honest John were all right. But they did love to ride a private operative.
Nace, thinking of the search warrant, swung over to the telephone. He had a friend down at headquarters that might be able to tell him what was behind the warrant. Sergeant Gooch would never part with the information, it was sure.
He picked up the phone.
A contralto voice behind him said, “I think you have galloped around long enough!”
Nace spun. She was tall, with red hair and eyes a contrast in blue. Her form was moulded exquisitely upon large bones. The bluing was worn off the double-action Colt which she held.
Nace sucked angrily at his pipe. She had been concealed in the inner room. Nace growled around his pipe stem, “What kind of a game—”
“You might as well save that!” She gestured her gun at the window. “Why did you pull down the shade just then?”
Nace gave her surly silence for an answer.
“It won’t take long to find out!” She whipped to the window with a feline grace, and ran the shade up. “Ah — my friends, the policemen! Well, they aren’t doing any good down there!” She worked at the fastening to get the window open. She was, he could see, going to call Gooch.
Nace pulled his pipe out of his teeth and pegged it at her gun hand. He had practiced long hours at throwing things. His aim left nothing to be desired. The pipe tapped her knuckles.
Pain tightened her finger on the trigger. The gun coughed. Plaster geysered off the wall. Nace took a gangling leap, grabbed her arm, shook it. The gun went skidding across the room.
Holding her tight in his arms, Nace ran to the inner office. He had no idea what it was all about, but the thing smacked of a frame-up.
His eyes roved the inner office with practiced speed. There was no sign of evidence planted to connect him with some crime.
He had the red-head’s arm pinned, but she began to kick at his shins and scream loudly.
Nace carried her back, picked up his pipe, then, still holding her, went to the window and looked down. Sergeant Gooch and Honest John MacGill were not in the squad car. They must have run into the building, drawn by the shot.
The girl had changed her screaming to words.
“Big Zeke!” she shrilled. “Help me!”
Came a banging at the hall door. The spring lock had secured the panel automatically when Nace entered. With a crash and jangle, frosted glass cascaded out of the door. A man shoved head and shoulders inside.
The man was almost as tall as Nace, fully twice as heavy. His hands were rust-colored, huge, shaggy with tobacco-hued hair. His nose was big, and a network of veins that seemed to lie on the surface gave it a purple color.
He bearded Nace with a blue revolver that was a twin to the girl’s weapon. Nace spun the girl away, flung himself backward. A bullet dug plaster on a line with the space he had vacated. More bullets came. They pursued Nace, always a yard or so behind, as he pitched into the inner office.
He slammed the door, twisted the key. His face and hands were pale, but the adder scar was a scarlet stamp on his forehead. Lead began clouting splintery holes in the door.
Nace jerked a coil of linen rope from behind the cold radiator. The rope was there for just such an emergency as this. One end was already secured to the radiator. He jerked up the window and flung out the rope. This window was on the side of the building. It was six stories down to a rooftop.
Something over a dozen feet to the right climbed the spidery metalwork of a fire escape.