The Weird Adventures of The Blond Adder

by Lester Dent

  Tubby, jerking open Nace’s zipper bag, brought to light several pairs of handcuffs. He slapped a set of these on Nace’s wrists, others on his ankles.

  Shack ceased choking the orange-stand girl. They put Nace’s handcuffs on her, ankle and wrist.

  Nace looked at her, snorted, “So you had ’em!”

  The girl glared, then stared in bewilderment at Canadan.

  The tall man wiped his forehead with his manacled hands. “It’s too bad! They sprang upon me when I was not looking!”

  “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 excit
ement.”

  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.

  “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 f
riction igniter.

  Like a stricken match, the hat burst into flame. It blazed brilliantly, gave off a tremendous cloud of billious yellow smoke.

  Nace flung the headgear at Canadan. The man ducked. Nace twisted sidewise.

  He had clamped one hand tightly over his mouth and nostrils. His eyes were closed.

  He found a window. With his free fist, he beat madly against it. The glass was the non-shattering type. It gave like cardboard under the furiously-driven blows. When he had a sufficient aperture, he thrust out his head.

  Even then, Nace did not breathe in air until his lungs were throbbing. He drew in tentatively, made a face, began to cough violently. He hung in the window, limp, features distorted, until the car reached the other tower.

  For a time, he was entirely unconscious.

  THE jar as the car arrived at the landing stage aroused him. He stumbled to the mechanism, got it stopped before the car had rounded the horseshoe turn-track and started back. He gained the door, stumbled out on the platform, then wheeled dizzily and stared.

  Everyone in the car was unconscious.

  It required ten minutes to get police on the spot, turn Shack, Tubby and Canadan over to them, together with the sack containing, at a conservative estimate, some millions in gems.

  Nace got a receipt for the stones. Then he set about reviving Julia and the girl detective from the orange-drink stand. That took another five minutes.

  The girl in orange took her head in both hands and rocked. “Do I feel awful! What’d you do, anyway?”

  “My hat was painted inside with a chemical mixture which, when burned, produces a gas that’ll knock you instantly,” Nace explained. “The hat itself is whitened with a highly inflammable paint, a mixture of celluloid and some other stuff.” He coughed. “I got a dose of the gas myself.”

  The orange-drink girl scowled. “You might have told me in advance what was coming off!”

  Red-headed Julia laughed spitefully. “After the way you clowned around, you should squawk, honey!”

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  The Weird Adventures of the Blond Adder

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