“You as much as decoyed me in here!” the girl snapped.
Canadan squirmed. “I couldn’t help it! They threatened to kill me if I didn’t pretend everything was all right!”
Shack eyed the orange-stand girl. “Where’s Nace’s red-head?”
“Go jump in the lake!” she spat at him.
“C’mon, sister! Where is she?”
“I don’t know!”
Shack spun on Canadan. He cocked the revolver he held. “Where is she? Spit it out quick!”
Canadan rolled his eyes, blew a groan through his big moustache, and moved his limbs as if he were being tortured.
He began, “I don’t—”
“Out with it!” Shack snarled. He shoved his gun muzzle against Canadan’s temple.
Canadan shrank from the weapon as if the blued steel were a burning iron.
“She’s down in the hold, handcuffed to a brace!” he wailed.
Shack looked at Nace, at the orange-stand girl, jeered, “You private dicks trying to stem each other out of a reward made it easy on us!” He went out.
Three or four minutes passed. Tubby, juggling his gun, admonished fiercely, “You could yell, and people outside wouldn’t pay no attention, on account of so much yelling around the fair grounds. But I wouldn’t try it!”
Shack came back. Ahead of him, he propelled red-headed Julia. She was disheveled. A two-inch strip off the hem of her sports frock was balled in her teeth, held there with twine. Handcuffs clinked on her wrists.
She eyed Nace, made buzzing noises through her nose. The sounds — long and short dashes and dots — transmitted a diguised message.
“So this is the way you rescue me?”
Nace snorted.
Chapter V
Horror in the Sky Ride
Using more handcuffs from Nace’s zipper bag, Shack secured the prisoners to the metal posts of the stateroom bunks. Sheets from the bunks were converted into gags.
Shack spent approximately ten minutes in the tying process. He did a thorough job.
Only Nace and the two girls were fastened. Canadan was not touched.
“What’re you gonna do with me?” Canadan whimpered.
Shack leered at him. “We’re taking you along, brother. We’ve got a little job to do! And if the cops are wise to us, there may be some lead flying. In that case, it’ll be just too bad for you. It was your loose mouth that made us all this trouble!”
Canadan moaned. “I will be seen on the robbery scene! The police will think I am equally guilty with you fellows!”
“Ain’t that too bad!” Tubby jeered.
“Who said anything about a robbery?” Shack rapped.
“You’re going after the diamonds?” Nace interposed.
Shack came over, leaned down and rasped the rough cylinder of his revolver across Nace’s face. The steel tore flesh. Four or five scarlet strings sprawled down Nace’s cheeks and off his jaw.
“Don’t ask goofy questions!” Shack advised.
Nace, saying no more, held his head to one side so the crimson would not soil his dark linen suit. His white Panama lay to one side.
Tubby kicked the hat under a bunk, waved his gun at Canadan. “C’mon, tall stuff! We’re taking the cuffs off you. But if you start to run, say your prayers first!”
The bracelets were removed from Canadan’s wrists. He stumbled out of the stateroom.
Shack stopped in the door to glower at Nace. “It may interest you, shamus, to know we’re comin’ back!” He chuckled nastily. “This old boat would make a swell meteor, wouldn’t it?”
He pulled the door shut behind him, locked it.
Nace listened. He lost track of footsteps. There was a monotonous roar of sound — loudspeakers, bands, concession barkers, the bawling of paper-mache dinosaurs in prehistoric world exhibits. The mumble penetrated even to the innards of the ancient lake boat, blanketing the footsteps.
He heard the speed boat start. Shack, Tubby and Canadan had departed by water.
Nace braced a wristband of his handcuffs against the edge of the berth. He pressed, apparently endeavoring to force the wrist circlet tighter. There was a click.
The cuff dropped away from his wrist.
The orange-stand girl stared, wide-eyed.
“I’ve had my own handcuffs put on me before,” Nace told her. “I had a special brand made up. You have to turn the key into a certain position when you lock them, or they won’t hold.”
Working rapidly, Nace freed the girls. He ungagged them. Julia, manacled with cuffs which had belonged to the orange-stand girl, proved more of a problem.
Nace took a small metal spike of a probe from his zipper bag. Two minutes work was enough to pick the lock on Julia’s manacles.
Nace crawled under the bunk and got his white Panama hat. He jammed it on his head, scooped up his bag.
“You two had better beat it somewhere!” he told Julia and the orange-stand girl.
“I’m seeing it through!” said the girl in the orange dress. “I’ll take back what I said, Nace. I’m just a bum!”
Red-headed Julia gave her a mean look. “You said it, honey!”
They scrambled out of the old boat, ran down the gangplank, vaulting the chain on which hung the “No Admittance” sign.
“Where to?” Julia demanded.
“The building which holds the diamond exhibit!” Nace rapped.
They ran. That was quickest. The semi-circular bridge over the lagoon with its numerous concession stands was crowded. They took the right rail, where the throng was thinnest.
Nace pointed. “Look! Half way down the lagoon — directly under the cables of the sky ride!”
“Their speed boat!” Julia gasped. “They’re leading us!”
They left the bridge, passed the hump of an exhibit known as “The World a Million Years Ago.” A gigantic ape stood in front of the exhibit, wagging its head slowly, mechanically. The ape was wood, cloth, artificial hair and paint. The Hall of Religion bulked gigantic on their right.
“Not much farther!” Nace grunted, and took the center of the midway.
Purposefully, he increased his pace. The two girls were left behind.
Ahead, a sudden bedlam of yelling arose. Shots snapped. Somewhere, a siren shrilled. The sounds mounted, became a thunderous babble.
“Too late!” Nace gritted.
The uproar was coming from the exhibit building which held the diamond display.
Smoke poured from ventilating rifts in the ceiling of the vast structure. People were milling about the doors. Others, inside, were struggling to get out.
Nace took an entrance marked, “Employees.” Down a brilliantly lighted passage, he plunged. There was smoke, acrid with the tang of scorched paint and varnish.
Police and special Century of Progress officers had already thrown a cordon around the diamond exhibit. Nace struggled close enough to glimpse the display. Tear gas smarted his eyes.
The robbery had been successful. The much-advertised burglar-proof diamond case had yielded its contents. The metallic block of a safe below the case, into which the diamond display dropped when the case was molested, had an enormous hole eaten in its side.
Edges of the hole glowed red-hot.
To the left, the wall of the exhibit booth was in flames.
“They got our attention with that fire over there,” a cop was yelling. “Then they wiped out the side of the safe and grabbed the sparkler. We couldn’t do much in the smoke and excitement.”
The officer fell to coughing from the effects of the tear gas.
Nace backed out, rubbing his eyes. The special police on guard wore gas masks. The thieves must have worn them, too.
Julia was at Nace’s elbow. How she had kept track of him was a miracle.