Radio digest (1922)

it'll go down like a paper screen. . . . '■ady?" They blew out their candles, irting them into their pockets to be un ! mpered. "If the door holds, then give it '•ax. . • • Xemo'd be off and away with ull minute warning." I They drew close again, then hurled themI ves in a compact attack, like one man, lainst the door. It creaked and splintered, t held. They drew back and struck again d went through. ► UT they came into no such light as they * had expected. There was the tiniest of >od tires burning in a fireplace; its glow d yellowed the line under the door, but did t banish the dark, rather making, a murky xwn of it. At first they feared that their in had fled, or had already gone when they arged toward him. But a moment later ey saw him. In that first instant he was standing against e farther wall; his back was toward them d his hands appeared to be at his face, ley had but the most fleeting of visions of m . . . and then he was gone. Close to lere he stood was a window; it was closed it not shuttered. Here, perhaps, he had tered; here he vanished. There was a leap d a lunge, a shattering of glass and their larry w as quarry no longer. And what they .d seen of him was merely a crouching form. "It's Xemo!" the captain contended sharp. "After him!" They threw .up the window and went rough, dropping several feet into loose snow. A moment later Mcintosh, straightening », pointed to their own former track, the le they had made coming here from the irks house. "He's taken the only open trail," he anranced. "Headed toward the house we just me from." They found no other furrow than that of eir own making. Head-bent against the ind, protecting their lights all that they mid, but forced repeatedly to wipe the glass sar of blurring damp. ^HEY went forward hurriedly, yet watchL ing to make sure that Xemo had not riven to trick them by making a leap far it to the side. But the track led straight on, id brought them to the front steps and on i to the door. "And now," grunted Temple disgustedly, we've had a pretty chase just about for 3thing. We'll find a very placid, serene id noncommittal Mr. Xemo smoking a cigarette by the fire, id lifting a pair of crooked brows as much as to ask if we've ;en enjoying ourselves." The fragrance of coffee greeted them. "Guess it's pretty ear that time o' day," said Mcintosh, and they went to the ming room. At the table were Paul Savoy, Laufer-Hirth id Mr. Xemo's man, Mohun. "Nemo came in just now, not over fifteen minutes or so efore us," Temple spoke abruptly. "Where is he?" Mohun looked at him stonily, leaning across the table. "You see him?" he asked, his voice grown quick and sharp. "Didn't you?" snapped the captain, growing mystified. Haven't any of you seen him?" They shook their heads. "Then who did come in?" he fairly shouted at them. "We illowed some man here; we saw his tracks; he came in at te front door. Who was it?" T APPEARED that no one knew. If any man had entered, . he had done so unseen. "That's pretty thick," growled Temple. "He has slipped 1 quietly and perhaps gone to his room. If he pulls the blank ice when I find him, I'll . . ." The three hurried through the house toward Nemo's room, rom a remote room they heard a voice, high-pitched and haken: Andregg's voice in supplication or menace. Gateway, vidently, still stood by his torture rack. And presently they eachcd Mr. Nemo's room. "And there he is," Temple gasped, for all along he could ot greatly believe in his own prediction. "Pretending to be sleep and to know nothing of any night's escapade." He whipped back the blankets . . . then fell back with a sharp jaculation of amazement. Tom Blount and Mcintosh thrust orward. Then from Blount bur-t a shout which went echoing razHy through the old house and brought men running. "It's Detective Dicks' dead body, lying here in Xemo's bed!" Smacks of the tomb in here," observed Mcintosh, holding the candle high and staring about. Gateway, hearing the cry, stepped as far as the door, and bellowed out orders: "Keep someone in the room every second. Someone come here and tell me all about it. And don't touch the body or anything about it; when I can get free to come in there I'll grab up clues by the handful." IT WAS Captain Temple, looking perplexed and therefore angry, who reported to him. Beyond Gateway he saw Andregg. sitting on the edge of his bed now, half dressed and looking white and shaken and sick. "Tell me," rasped out Gateway. "It's Dicks' body, all right," growled the captain. "Don't ask me how it got there. . . Maybe the damned house is haunted." Gateway scoffed. Temple told what he could, including a sketch of their visit to the other house, their pursuit of the man they had found there, of his conviction that it was Mr. Nemo. "He came in at the front door; that's all we know. \\ e looked to find him in Nemo's room . . . and found the body of Detective Dicks instead." Andregg leaped to his feet, crying out excitedly: "I'm not the guilty man! . . . With me in my room, look at the things that have happened: Nemo gone . . . Dicks in his place . . ." "Shut your mouth!" raged Gateway, whirling on him, "I've said all the time that you were the murderer . . . and you are! If you have an accomplice, the Chink or one of the wops, that doesn't let you out." He turned again to Temple, saying bluntly^ "This bird is beginning to break, and he's going to break fast. This happening brightens him up a bit, but he'll relapse all the faster when it's over." "You must be crazy!" Temple said shortly, going back to Mr. Nemo's room.