The Weird Adventures of The Blond Adder

by Lester Dent

  A spike-snouted, silenced automatic lay on a table. This was one of the unusual guns Moe and Heavy had carried earlier in the night.

  Nace considered briefly. Then he flung himself into the room. He scooped up the gun on the table before the two men could move.

  “Catch a couple of high balls!” he rapped.

  The two might not be baseball fans, but they understood the lingo. Reel’s hands went up. But Baron von Auster only glared.

  “Nein!” he sneered. “The gun is empty! We drew the cartridges before we placed it there!”

  Leering, Nace squeezed the automatic trigger.

  Chung! It was loaded, all right. The bullet streaked so close to Baron von Auster’s head that he ducked wildly. His hands went up.

  ADVANCING gingerly, Nace disarmed the pair. Because there was no place else, he stuffed their guns in the belt of his trousers.

  The girl stood back, dark eyes thoughtful, and watched.

  Nace frowned at her. “I have a hunch you know where that green skull jigger is hidden! You and your brother got it from these two. Don’t you think it is about time you were digging it up?”

  She surprised him by nodding agreeably. “I’ll get it!”

  She stepped to the radio. It took most of her strength to twist the heavy cabinet out from the wall.

  “The thing should be hidden in a spare tube in the radio,” she explained.

  She reached into the instrument with both hands. Her left hand brought out a vacuum tube. The silvered glass of the bulb concealed what was inside.

  Her right hand whipped out a small automatic which had been hidden in the cabinet. She pointed the weapon at Nace.

  “I’d hate to shoot you!” she said grimly.

  He blinked. He had not expected anything this desperate. He had his silenced gun trained in her direction. But he greatly disliked the idea of firing upon a woman.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked angrily.

  “Get out of here!” she retorted. She hefted the silvered vacuum tube. “I’m going to dispose of this to the agent who is here from Europe to purchase it. Then I shall hunt you up, after waiting a sufficient time to permit the agent to get out of this country, and tell you the whole story.”

  “Yeah?” Nace was not sure whether to believe her or not.

  She backed for the door.

  Then disaster came. She had her back to Baron von Auster and Reel, all her attention riveted on Nace.

  Baron von Auster sprang. He seized the girl, using her for a shield from Nace’s bullets. With a free hand, he trapped her automatic. Twisting, he got it.

  The thing happened in flash seconds. Nace suddenly found himself looking into the snout of the little automatic.

  “You will drop your weapon, mein Herr!”

  Nace did not debate long. He might have plinked Baron von Auster through the skull—except that the gun in his hand was unfamiliar and felt unnatural. He did not trust himself to miss the young woman.

  He dropped his gun.

  Chapter VI

  The Green Skull

  LAUGHING a bit hysterically, Reel came over and relieved Nace of his weapons.

  Nace gave the girl the blackest look he could manage, “You fixed things up nicely!”

  She shivered. “Thanks!”

  “That was no compliment!” he snorted.

  “I mean—thanks for not shooting and maybe hitting me! That took nerve.”

  He grinned in spite of himself and the undoubted danger. This young woman not only had nerve, but it was evident she had walked the paths of danger before.

  “Ruhig!” gritted Baron von Auster. “Quiet! Now we will inspect the contents of that radio tube!”

  Together, he and Reel worked on the tube. They gave it a twist. The glass bulb came free of the base—it had merely been glued in place. The bottom of the bulb was open; the filament, plate and grid elements had been removed. The silvered coating of the tube still concealed what was inside.

  Reel shook the bulb. An object wrapped in tissue was jarred out. He tore off the tissue. The green skull was disclosed.

  The thing was not what Nace had expected. It was flat, not unlike a silver dollar, except that it was enameled green. On the face was a raised design of a skull.

  “This is it, mein Herr!” chortled the baron.

  Nace watched intently. He saw Reel place the plate between his palms and give a twisting motion, as though loosening the crystal of a watch. The plate screwed apart!

  It was composed of several flat, thin discs. The surface of these discs had a strangely dull look.

  Reel scrutinized the surface of the discs.

  “It will take a powerful microscope to read the inscribed data,” he declared.

  He went into the kitchen. There was a sound of glass breaking. When Reel came back, he had the bottom of a milk bottle in hand.

  “This will magnify sufficiently to show whether the disc is genuine.”

  He held the bulging glass over the discs. “Yes, it is the real thing! All the information is here! Location of frontier fortifications, size and number of guns—”

  Nace’s jaw sagged. He saw it all now. This disc—or the several discs—held writing engraved with a special mechanism which reduced the letters to such smallness that they were invisible to the naked eye!

  The idea was not new—Nace knew of a novelty shop in New York where one could purchase ordinary pins upon the heads of which was engraved entire poems.

  The discs held military information! The location of secret fortifications in some European country! Reel was an espionage agent. Baron von Auster, Moe, Heavy, Hoo Li—all had been working with him.

  As for the girl and her brother—Nace eyed the young woman.

  “You are in the employ of the government of the country from which this military information came, aren’t you?” he asked dryly.

  She hesitated.

  Baron von Auster and Reel scowled at her.

  “You might as well tell him!” Reel sneered. “We know the thing he has just said is the truth!”

  “Yes,” she told Nace. “That is right. That is why I was working alone—not telling you anything. I was afraid you would destroy the green skull—or give it to your own government.”

  Nace lowered his uplifted hands enough to thoughtfully touch his notched ear. She had judged him accurately. He had no sympathy for espionage systems. Trouble-makers! He would most certainly turn that green skull over to the American Intelligence—he would yet, if he could get his hands on it.

  He eyed Reel, asked suddenly, “Did you know the body of Moe is in your roadster?”

  Reel did not know it. His start of surprise showed that. He gulped, “What?”

  Nace sighed. Reel’s actions had given him his final clue. He knew who the murderer was—it couldn’t be anyone else.

  “You had better watch your friend, Baron von Auster,” he said dryly. “His system seems to be to kill everyone, so that he may collect for the sale of this green skull, and keep the money all for himself!”

  REEL and Baron von Auster exchanged looks. They were not friendly looks.

  Nace continued grimly, “Baron von Auster stole Hoo Li’s green skeleton, poisoned the thing, and started killing everybody. He did in Jimmy Offitt, probably when Offitt wouldn’t tell him where the green skull was hidden.

  “He killed Hoo Li to get him out of the way, just as he killed his two men, Moe and Heavy. And just as he intends to murder you, no doubt!”

  Reel had started trembling a little.

  Nace, guessing partly, filling in what he did not know with what he thought had occurred, went on, “Baron von Auster killed Moe in his own car, and transferred the body to your roadster, Reel. Why do you think he did that, if not to frame the blame on you, should the chance come?”

  Reel glared at Baron von Auster.

  The latter shrugged. “Nein!” he told Reel. “You are wrong! Come! Let us go in the kitchen and discuss this privately! I can explain
everything, Ja!”

  They tore wires off the radio and bound Nace and the girl, wrist and ankle. Then they stepped into the kitchen.

  One of them kicked the door shut. Voices murmured for a moment.

  Then there was a loud gasp, a blow, a stifled cry! Another blow! A form collapsed noisily to the floor. After that, silence!

  Nace gave the girl a stiff-lipped grin, said, “It looks like one of them hit into a double-play!”

  The back door slammed. But a moment later, it opened again. Sounds indicated the unconscious body was being moved by the survivor. But it was not moved far.

  A series of moans, a gasp or two, followed. Then Baron von Auster’s voice shrilled out.

  “Himmel!” he wailed. “Mein Herr Reel! You are not going to kill me with that dynamite? Please?”

  A sharp slapping sound stopped the cry. It might have been a palm against flesh. There was more shifting about in the kitchen. Five minutes it lasted. An age!

  Came a scraping rasp—a match being ignited. Then a fizzing. That would be the fuse burning.

  Baron von Auster screamed shrilly. “He is blowing me up with the dynamite—”

  A blow ended that cry.

  The kitchen door slammed. Feet pounded away in rapid flight.

  NACE, rolling with difficulty because of his wired ankles and wrists, reached the girl. She was seeking to work toward the door. Lacking Nace’s agility, she was not making much headway. Her face was white; fear stared from her eyes.

  “Cool off!” Nace told her, low-voiced. “There’s no dynamite in there! I took it out, hid it in Reel’s roadster, and substituted screwdrivers and stuff! You saw me do it!”

  “He may have found the—exchange!” she gulped.

  “I don’t think so! Here—I’ll get your hands loose. Then you free me!”

  Nace worked furiously at the girl’s tyings. He tore his fingernails, scratched her wrists. The bindings finally gave.

  “Now get mine!” he directed.

  She obeyed—to his relief. A moment later, they were both free and on their feet.

  A report thumped in the kitchen. The percussion cap exploding! The sound resembled a small firecracker. The fact that the dynamite was not in the bag had not been discovered.

  Nace and the girl ran into the kitchen.

  A man lay face-down beside the handbag. The valise itself was partially torn open from the blast of the percussion cap. Nace turned the man over. He wore the Baron von Auster’s summer evening dress.

  It was not Baron von Auster—but Reel. He was lifeless, skull crushed in, evidently from a blow by the baron’s gun.

  The girl gasped, “But I thought—”

  “Baron von Auster is pulling a fast one!” Nace grunted. “He thought the explosion would tear the body up so it couldn’t be identified. See, he even changed clothes with Reel! The baron figured he’d have no trouble getting away if everybody thought he was dead! The pick-up order would go out for Reel.”

  Nace charged out the rear door.

  Flame jumped at him from the shrubbery. Lead took part of the glass from the kitchen door. Baron von Auster had evidently waited to see how his scheme worked.

  Threshing leaves denoted that he was in flight.

  Nace let him go, then followed at his leisure. The girl bobbed along at his side.

  “He’s getting away with the green skull!” she groaned. “That means my country—it will lose valuable information! In case of war, it will mean the death of thousands of men!”

  Nace snorted. He was not going to get steamed up over wars in Europe.

  The chase arched around to the street. Baron von Auster began shooting again. Lead squealed, slashed savagely at leaves. Powder smell filled the street. The chung, chung, chung reports of the silenced automatic were vicious.

  Nace made himself and the girl as thin as possible behind a tree.

  The baron ran on and tried to get away in his little sedan. But Nace had plucked out the ignition wires.

  Back to the roadster belonging to Reel, Baron von Auster ran. He sprang in. The keys were evidently in his possession. He must have had the foresight to take them against just such a contingency as this.

  The machine lunged ahead.

  The jackknife Nace had planted pierced the tire. Air began escaping to the tune of a shrill, erratic hiss.

  Leaning against the tree behind which he had taken shelter, Nace watched. The roadster fled under a street lamp.

  The flat tire was making the rear end bounce up and down.

  The girl half sobbed. “He’s getting away—the murderer of my brother—”

  Nace dropped an arm on her shoulders. “Wait, kid! He’s going to get his, unless I’m mistaken.”

  A moment later, Baron von Auster got his. The ground jarred. A roaring explosion slammed against Nace’s eardrums. Windows broke all over the neighborhood, amid much brittle jangling.

  Rosa Offitt held to Nace with both hands, trembling.

  He crooked an arm around her shoulders. “The jarring set the dynamite. You wait here, and I’ll see how it came out.”

  He ran forward. The roadster was spread over much of the street. The body of Baron von Auster was not greatly mutilated, although the man was undeniably dead.

  In a coat pocket, Nace found the troublesome plaque—the green skull.

  He went back and showed the girl the grisly trinket.

  “Now I pay you off for not playing ball with me!” he said dryly.

  “You mean—you won’t give it to me?”

  “That’s exactly what I do mean. This thing goes to the American Intelligence, if they want it.”

  Her reaction surprised him somewhat. She sighed. “That’s all right, I suppose. You know—we have no fear of the Americans attacking us.”

  Nace squinted down at the girl. He was, he made a mental note, going to take a future interest in her. She was a swell number.

  She shrank against him, as if for comfort, shivering. “What about Baron von Auster—?”

  “That guy,” Nace told her grimly, “fanned out!”

  The Diving Dead

  The man in black looked like a crow in mourning. He said he was an undertaker—and had a coffin ready for Detective Lee Nace. The police sergeant looked like trouble—went out of his way to make things tough for Lee Nace. The red-headed girl looked like a million. She brought haunting memories to Nace. The corpse in the cabin looked like a horrible nightmare. It plunged Lee Nace into an amazing race with a grim and terrible death.

  Chapter I

  Coffin Bait

  IT was the morning of Friday, the thirteenth. Nace accidentally broke the rear-view mirror on his roadster while driving downtown. A black cat angled his path when he was leaving the parking lot. Near his office, a ladder slanted over the sidewalk and Nace forgot to go around it.

  Crass superstition? Sure it was. Nace paid no attention to any of it. Maybe it was his hard luck that he didn’t, for the pay-off was not long in coming.

  In front of his office building, Nace met Police Sergeant Gooch. As far as Nace was concerned, Gooch was another black cat.

  “Hello—tall, blond, handsome!” Gooch smirked around a cigar.

  Nace gave him a bony-faced leer.

  “You’re going for your morning shave, I suppose?”

  Gooch’s teeth mashed his cigar angrily. He had a prolific blue beard, and was touchy about it. He shaved three times a day it was rumored.

  “The same old cop-loving Lee Nace,” he said wryly.

  “Sure! I love cops.” Nace pumped a breezy fist against Gooch’s fat middle. “I’ll prove it. C’mon up to the office. I’ll give you a cigar. I keep a special brand for you public servants.”

  Gooch smiled dreamily, picked the Havana from between his teeth, and held it so Nace could see the maker’s name on the band.

  Nace’s neck slowly became purple as he looked at the band. On his forehead, a small scar reddened out like a design done with red ink and a pen. A long time ag
o, a Chinaman had hit Nace above the eyes with the hilt of a knife that bore a carved serpent. The scar, a likeness of a coiled adder, was ordinarily unnoticeable, but came out vividly when Nace was angry.

  “You got that stogie out of my office!” he rumbled savagely.

  Gooch’s round face was placid. “I hope you don’t mind—”

  “Mind!” Nace shoved his angular face against Gooch’s cherubic one. “If you think I’m gonna have flatfeet busting into my place, you’re crazy! I’ll prefer charges! I’ll have you clapped in your own holdover! I’ll—”

  “Now, now, honey, don’t have a hemorrhage!” Gooch fished a folded paper out of his tight blue suit, presented it. “Look, dear!”

  The document was a search warrant for Nace’s office.

  Nace cradled back slowly on his heels. The serpent still coiled redly on his forehead. His eyes were smoky, far-off.

  “What the hell, Gooch? What the hell? Is this one of your little ideas, or—”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gooch blew smoke airily, then started off.

  Nace planted in front of him. “You’d better tell me—”

  “Tell you—nothing! It’s police business! We don’t roll around gabbing—”

  Nace jerked the cigar out of Gooch’s teeth, threw it in the gutter. Simultaneously, his other hand dove under Gooch’s coat and came out with four more cheroots of the same brand.

  Gooch grasped at his pocket, but was too late to save the Havanas. He made a slit-eyed, wrathful face, lower lip protruding beyond his upper. He gave a difficult, thick laugh.

  He walked away, putting the search warrant in his pocket.

  THE elevator boy stared, fascinated, at the cherry serpent on Nace’s forehead as they rode upward. Nace found his office door locked, and knew Gooch must have used a master key.

  Nace ducked a little, from habit, as he went in. He was tall enough so that the top of a door occasionally brushed off his hat.

  He roamed, gaunt and angry, around the outer office, opening a tall green metal box of a clothes locker and probing desk drawers and other places. Tramping into the inside room, he wandered down a long workbench, delving into cabinets. Nothing was greatly disarranged, but evidence showed that Gooch had made a thorough search.