“The boat in the lagoon—”
“I know!” Nace cut in. “Listen, you clear out! These birds are bad actors! Snatching them jewels like that took nerve! They won’t stop at anything! You may get hurt!”
As he spoke, he was running toward the lagoon.
“In your hat!” Julia told him.
Nace, as if reminded of something, felt of his white Panama. It was still on his head.
The girl from the orange-stand pounded up, moving fast, skirts gathered above her knees.
“You’re a better runner than you are detective!” Julia told her nastily.
“You dry up!” retorted the other. “Or I’ll pull me some red hair!”
Nace ran past the tower on the Sky Ride. Spidery, streaked with lights, it reared more than six hundred feet. From a point slightly less than half way up, the manifold cables on which the cars ran stretched their great span across the lagoon to the other tower. Elevators lifted to that point, and to the observation platform at the top.
Around the north wing of the Hall of Science, Nace soon located the launch. It bounced up and down on the small waves within the lagoon, moored by the bow to the railing along the lagoon edge.
Shack, Tubby — Canadan — none of the three were in sight.
Vaulting the railing, Nace landed lightly on the speed-boat deck. He wrenched up the engine cover, dived in a hand, grasped a fistful of ignition wires and tore them out.
He threw the wires into the lagoon. The boat would not start soon.
Julia and the girl in orange came up.
“They either haven’t reached the launch yet, or have taken another way out!” Nace told them.
“Let’s go up in the car landing of the sky ride!” Julia suggested. “We may be able to spot them from here.”
“O.K.” Nace ran to one of the nickel-in-a-slot telescopes, many of which were mounted along the lagoon edge to catch sightseer’s coins.
He grasped the glass, wrenched. The mounting resisted. He tried again. It snapped off.
They sprinted for the Sky Ride tower. Nace, holding his hat on with one hand, carried the telescope with the other. He had lost his zipper bag somewhere. It was clumsy to carry, anyway.
Julia demanded, “Nace — do you know what that infernal heat is?”
“I can’t tell you exactly what’s in it,” he threw over his shoulder. “I didn’t get to make a full analysis. But it’s some kind of highly perfected thermit.”
“What’s thermit?” demanded the orange-stand girl.
“A metallic powder which burns with terrible heat. It was used in incendiary bombs in the war. It’s used in welding. Osterfelt, the bird who perfected this stuff, worked for a manufacturer of welding equipment. He must have developed it in the course of his chemical research work. Probably brought it to the Century of Progress for exhibition.”
They reached the tower of the Sky Ride. An elevator was waiting. Nace chucked a dollar bill and two dimes in the window — admission for three. The lift raced them upward.
The cage halted at the car landing. The doors whispered back.
Nace stared, made a sudden gesture to get the doors shut again. He was too late.
Shack and Tubby stood on the car landing, menacing them with drawn revolvers. Behind them stood Canadan. He was handcuffed.
“Sweet, this!” Shack jeered.
He stepped into the cage and rapped the elevator operator viciously over the head with his gun. The uniformed operator dropped. Shack hauled him out bodily.
The operator of another cage — evidently the one which had brought the three men up — lay in a slack pile on the landing, scarlet trickling from a welt on his head.
Shack dumped both elevator attendants in a waiting car.
“Now you get in!” He gestured meaningly at Nace and the two young women.
Julia looked at Nace. Her eyes were wide, scared.
“Just string along with them!” Nace advised her.
She nodded. They entered the car. The big box of an affair had two levels for passengers. They were on the lower. Apparently, there was no one above.
Nace sat down on one of the seats which ran lengthwise of the car. The earth, not quite three hundred feet below, looked very distant.
Canadan got inside. Then came Tubby. He had his arms full of squarish cloth packets from which webbing straps dangled. Parachutes — three of them. He also carried tear gas masks, obviously those used in the raid of the gem exhibit. He tossed the latter carelessly aside.
Shack came in with a large bag. It made a gravel-like rattle when he dropped it on the floor. The diamonds!
It was Shack who got the car in motion.
“We found out how this thing operates earlier today!” he chuckled. “We figured we might have to use this thing for a getaway. Lookit — see that boat?”
Nace followed his pointing arm. On the opposite side of the lagoon, nearly under the point over which the Sky Ride cables passed, another speed boat was moored. It was, as near as Nace could tell by the glow of electric lights, a twin to the one from which he had just torn the ignition cables.
The car was moving. Machinery made a dull moan. The vehicle gave a somewhat unnerving lurch when suspension points on the tracks were passed.
Nace lifted his hands and grasped the brim of his Panama, as if to hold the hat on.
Shack gave him an ugly look. “In case you ain’t guessed it, we’re gonna step in the door when we get over that speed boat, pull the ripcord on our chutes and go down. There’s enough wind to open the chutes before we take off, so we won’t have to run the chance of the drop openin’ them!”
He fumbled in the bag which held the diamonds, brought out a metallic looking egg of an object somewhat larger than a football. “I’m gonna be the last guy out! And I’ll leave this egg for you! You know what it is?”
“Thermit bomb?” Nace guessed dryly.
“Right,” Shack grinned. “A new kind of thermit. There’s enough of the stuff in here to melt the middle out of a battleship. You’ll be cooked so quick you’ll never see the thing let loose!”
“You’re going to kill us?”
“What the hell’d you think?” Shack demanded.
Nace looked at tall, moustached Canadan. “In that case, there’s no need of Canadan playing prisoner any longer!”
Canadan started violently. “Huh?”
“You’re not fooling anybody,” Nace growled. “I’ve had it figured for some time that you were giving Shack and Tubby their orders.”
Canadan’s dwarf face seemed to swell behind his moustache. He blurted, “That is ridiculous—”
“Oh, cut it out!” Nace snapped. “You claimed Shack and Tubby overpowered you back there in the lake steamer, but there wasn’t a mark of a struggle on you. That alone was enough to give you away. You turned them loose. And their taking you along when they went to commit the diamond robbery. That’s a laugh! You went along to supervise the job. They’d never take a prisoner with ’em to look on!”
“You’re crazy!” Canadan sputtered indignantly.
“Your yarn about being scared was intended to interest me until you could get me off some place and dispose of me, but you made it stick with the girl here.”
The girl in the orange dress groaned. “What a bright one I was!”
Canadan gave his handcuffs a tug. They had not been locked. They came off. He threw them the length of the car.
“O.K.!” he snapped. “What’re you going to do about it?”
Nace took off his Panama.
“This!” he rapped, and gave the hat band a tug.
There was a loud ripping sound. Sparks flew as the hat band, turned by the force of the wrench, ground against a friction igniter.