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The War-Makers

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  The War-Makers
  
  by Nick Carter (John L. Chabliss)
  
  (This story originally appeared in Nick Carter Detective Magazine, April, 1936)
  
  
  
  A
  
  Complete
  
  
  
  
  
  Book-Length
  
  
  Novel
  
  
  A man had his price~and because of it the
  
  United States was plunged to the brink of war!
  
  But another man couldn’t be bought~and it was
  
  Nick Carter who saved the nation!
  
  
  
  By Nick Carter
  
  THE WAR-MAKERS
  
  “Yasah,” said Moses, staring past Duane’s shoulder,
  
  CHAPTER I.
  
  “it’s a funny-looking place, suh.”
  
  THE HOUSE BY THE ROAD.
  
  Duane agreed. Considering that they were seventy
  
  I
  
  miles from New York, in the foothills of the Catskills, T had rained in torrents all the way down from with woods all around them and the rain pouring down, Schenectady, so when Jack Duane glimpsed the the thing they saw through the trees, some three hundred lights of what looked to be a big house through the yards from the country road, was indeed peculiar. It trees, he braked his battered, convertible sedan to a looked more like a couple of Pullman cars coupled stop at the side of the road.
  
  together and lighted, than like a farmer’s dwelling
  
  Mud lay along the fenders and running boards; mud
  
  “Fenced in, too,” said Duane, pointing to the high
  
  and water had spumed up and freckled Duane’s face steel fence that bordered the road, separating them from and hat. He pulled off the latter—it was soggy—and the object of their vision. “And look there—”
  
  slapped it on the seat beside him, leaning out and
  
  A fitful flash of lightning in the east, illuminating squinting through the darkness and falling water.
  
  the distant treetops, showed up the towering steel and He was on the last lap of a two weeks’ journey network of a high-voltage electric line’s tower.
  
  from San Francisco, his objective being New York City.
  
  The roving journalist muttered something to
  
  There he hoped to wangle a job as foreign express his puzzlement, and got out of the car. Moses correspondent from an old crony, J. J. Molloy, now followed him. “Well,” said Duane presently, when they editor of the New York Globe. Adventurer, journalist, had stared a moment longer, “whatever it is, I’m barging globetrotter, Duane was of the type that is always on in. We’ve got to have some gas or we’ll never make the move.
  
  New York tonight.”
  
  “It’s a place, anyway, Moses,” he said to the large
  
  black man beside him, his servitor and bodyguard, who MOSES agreed. The two men started across the had accompanied him everywhere for the past three
  
  road—the big Negro hatless and wearing a
  
  years. “Somebody lives there; they ought to have some slicker—the reporter in a belted trench coat, his brown gas.”
  
  felt hat pulled out of shape on his head.
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  “It’s a big thing,” Duane said as he and Moses crawled across its wetness until he was at the edge of halted at the fence and peered through. Distantly, he the glass, his idea being to attract attention from above.
  
  could see now that the mysterious structure in the
  
  He peered down, and then squatted motionless in
  
  woods was at least a hundred yards long, flat-topped surprise.
  
  and black as coal except from narrow shafts of light
  
  that came from its windows. “And look at the light
  
  coming out of the roof.”
  
  IN the huge shed-like structure there below him, whose interior was a blaze of light from several Kleig lamps That was, indeed, the most peculiar feature of this affixed to the walls, a man and a young woman were place they had discovered. From a section of the roof performing some sort of experiment.
  
  near the center, as though through a skylight, a great That they were oblivious to the rain on the roof, to
  
  white light came out, illuminating the slanting rain the isolation of their quarters and its fantastic setting and the bending trees.
  
  off here in the woods, was quite evident to Duane from
  
  “Damnedest-looking thing I ever saw,” Duane their attitudes of concentration. Each wore cape-like confided briskly to his servant. “Give me a boost up.” affairs that reminded the journalist from San Francisco Though his eyes were getting larger by the second, of a surgeon’s gown, such a thing as he, himself, had Moses obediently cupped his hands. Duane inserted a worn at one time in medical school. Only these outfits muddy shoe, and the next moment was perched looked very heavy and thick, as though composed of a precariously on the top of the fence. An instant he clung rubbery material.
  
  there, studying the ground below; then he leaped,
  
  What they were doing he could not make out at first,
  
  landed, and the fence separated him from Moses.
  
  so engrossed was he with the enormous array of
  
  “I’m going in,” he told his man. “I don’t see how machines and devices, the like of which he had never it can be a farmer’s place or anything like that, but seen before, and with his amazement at coming upon maybe they’ve got some gas anyway. You wait here.” such a scene under such conditions.
  
  Moses’s reply was drowned in the lash of the rain
  
  The man whose face Duane could just make out
  
  as it came down harder, and Duane turned and headed above the cape and hood of dark rubber, was well along through the trees. Though getting gasoline was still in years. Nose glasses perched on an aquiline nose, and his main interest, his curiosity was aroused by this the sharp, intellectual face beneath was that of a man of thing ahead. What he had first supposed to be a native’s science.
  
  dwelling was now a mystery, and his reporter’s nose
  
  The young woman he could not make out, nor did
  
  for news bade him unravel it.
  
  he try, for he was now beginning to get an inkling of Breaking through the trees, he walked across what they were doing; it gripped his entire attention.
  
  soggy ground to the long building, noticing that it was Standing at the end of the table and facing down
  
  made of sheet-metal, that off to one side was a separate the long shed, the man held in both hands a long, black structure—a cottage, from which no lights showed. cylinder, at whose front was a thick, blue glass lens. It He also made out a dirt road that wound in from farther looked for all the world like an immense flashlight, down and realized that, had he and Moses proceeded except that from the rear end a heavy wire came out.
  
  a little farther, they would have found a gate.
  
  Duane could see that the same line weaved across the
  
  There was a big door at the nearer end, and Duane floor, connecting with some part of the humming motor.
  
  knocked on it as loudly as he could. Desisting, he heard The black cylinder was pointed at something at the
  
  a steady humming from inside, like that of a motor. far end, which Duane could not see. Hastily shifting his Again he knocked and shouted, “Hello! Anybody position, he pressed his face closer to the skylight, and there?”
  
  now could make out a tier of small cages, each of which The echoes of his voice died. Whoever or whatever held a guinea pig. They were some fifty feet from the was inside could not hear him, because of the rain and tall scientist.
  
  the hum of the motor, or whatever it was. Duane
  
  walked to the nearest of the narrow windows and tried to peer in; but it was painted on the inside. It was then WATCHING, Duane saw the man press a button at the top of the cylinder, while the girl, behind him,
  
  that his gaze lighted on a wooden ladder that lay beside looked on intently. There was no observable result, the building—a ladder long enough to reach the roof. except that Duane thought he detected a faint diminution The flat top of the building was tar-papered except in the hum of the motor.
  
  for a twelve-by-twelve skylight near the middle. Duane Then he realized that the result was there, but that
  
  4
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  he had not seen it. One of the guinea pigs was no longer a sound that froze him where he was. An automobile standing up, munching leaves, but lay stiffly on its side was coming up the road that led in to Fraile’s secret in the cage.
  
  workshop.
  
  Before Duane’s mind could act on that phenomena,
  
  Its headlights dimmed, it swung into view through
  
  he saw the scientist wave the cylinder back and forth, a the trees, and the journalist from San Francisco beam of light coming from it like a flashlight, leveled wondered if Fraile’s final test of his invention had been at the cages fifty feet away. Duane then saw half a dozen anticipated. Perhaps this car contained men who were other guinea pigs in a tier of the same level follow the officials of the war department, come secretly to pass example of the first one, toppling over as though life on it.
  
  had been pushed out of them in the twinkling of an
  
  Duane’s mind leaped immediately to Moses, who
  
  eye.
  
  waited outside the fence, wondering if he had been
  
  As the scientist turned off the cylinder’s light and discovered. But the probability that the visitors had laid it on the table behind him, Duane whistled come from the south, from New York, allayed that noiselessly in amazement.
  
  worry.
  
  He had seen nothing whatever pass between that
  
  He squatted lower, peering over the edge of the
  
  cylinder and the tier of guinea pigs. He had heard no roof, and saw the machine—a long, official-looking sound. But something had emanated from that strange sedan—draw to a stop at the far end of the building,
  
  “flashlight” in the hands of the scientist, which, directed saw half a dozen men get out quietly. They conferred on the pigs, killed them quickly, much better than a together a moment before they passed along the back bullet, more swiftly than gas or poison.
  
  of the laboratory, to reach the door at which Duane
  
  “—seems to be no flaw.” The man down there was had knocked. The rain had lessened in the past few speaking to the girl, nodding his head with satisfaction. minutes, and with the motor turned off, their own Duane heard the words faintly, for the motor had been knocking was plainly audible to the reporter, as it must cut off. “It is as deadly as the one I devised a year ago, have been to those inside.
  
  and the cost of the operation is about one per cent. All Duane looked toward the roof’s edge. He could
  
  that remains is to increase the range—a matter only of escape now without being observed. But now, despite size and power.”
  
  his awe, curiosity was coming to the fore again. It would The girl, who had thrown back her hood and slipped do no harm to delay a moment and hear the first words out of the protective cape, revealing herself as a most of the forthcoming conference; moreover, it would be attractive young woman of twenty-two or three, safer to wait until all were inside.
  
  impulsively threw her arms about the older man, crying Voices came from below, the sound of footfalls, a
  
  out in delight: “Oh, dad, it’s a triumph! What the war called question. It must have been answered department doesn’t owe to my father—Doctor Fraile!” satisfactorily by those outside, for Duane heard the Jack Duane could not hear what more she said, and squeaking of a heavy lock. Then voices again, and he in any case he had heard enough. Doctor Fraile! Irving guessed that the visitors were inside. He crawled Fraile! The wizard of the United States war department. cautiously back to the skylight and peered down.
  
  At first he didn’t understand. The six visitors,
  
  IT was then that Duane began to realize what a thing grouped not far from the door, were ringed about Fraile he had stumbled on by sheer accident, and he forgot and the girl and the younger man, much as they might completely his desire to borrow some gasoline, to have had they been war department officials come to continue his trip to New York. His best move now was inspect and congratulate.
  
  to make himself scarce as quickly as possible.
  
  But their faces were hardly the sort he would have
  
  Of Irving Fraile he had heard more than a little in expected. Their attitudes were tense.
  
  the past year. He was the inventor who was known to
  
  And then—with a thudding heart—Duane realized
  
  be working secretly for the war department on some that these were no officials, either of the war department unannounced instrument of warfare, and the fact that or of anything else. They had no business here, these Duane, purely by accident, had discovered his secret six men.
  
  laboratory, was not something to be noised about.
  
  Still rather stunned and amazed at the outcome of A CRY from the girl came suddenly, punctuating his midnight foray, Duane started for the edge of the Duane’s last thought. Fraile backed off and gripped
  
  roof and the ladder. Before he could reach it, he heard the table’s edge, pointing to the door and shouting 5
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  fiercely, “Get out of here! You have no business to and Powder Company; Oscar Lomas, head of the House be—”
  
  of Lomas, bankers, and Martin Nye, owner and czar of
  
  The sentence was unfinished as two of the men the Nye chain of newspapers.
  
  sprang toward him, grabbed him and held him helpless.
  
  They sat in a room overlooking America’s greatest
  
  At the same instant, two others pounced on the girl, city, a room known to scarcely half a dozen people tore her dress as she whirled to flee, leaped after her beside themselves. They had assembled to confer, as and caught her, then held her in a viselike grip.
  
  they had done before, on the state of the nation with The sixth man, the leader, had an automatic pistol relation to a certain foreign power.
  
  in his hand, was brandishing it. Even now, Jack Duane
  
  “Well, gentlemen,” said the secretary of war, Mr.
  
  did not understand what this was all about, what was Knox Reeder, “things are about the same, as you know.
  
  really happening below, in the glare of the Kleig lights. Only, a little worse.”
  
  He caught a square view of the leader’s
  
  The others nodded.
  
  countenance—a round, dark visage, marred by some
  
  “The state department still seems to have hopes of
  
  skin disease. The man was a Chinaman.
  
  untangling the situation by some diplomatic
  
  Even that meant nothing to Duane, and he legerdemain, but the president and I and most of us in continued gasping for another minute. A mad burst of Washington can see only one end to the present situation.
  
  struggling came from Irving Fraile, his thin face gone Emporia is apparently determined on war, despite white with fear and rage and frustration. The girl everything we may do to try and stop it.”
  
  screamed and fought, was struck, and fell to the floor.
  
  The secretary paused. His eyes went around the
  
  The leader pointed to the long, black cylinder on table.
  
  the table, shouted something which was unintelligible Caspar Tait, smallish, dapper, with the dark hair and to the reporter. And then Duane saw that whatever this trim mustache of a foreign count, drew his lips together, was there was something very phony about it, that it stared thoughtfully at his manicured hands. Lomas, the was time he took a hand. Both Fraile and the girl were banker, whose stolid, square-cut, mid-Victorian figure in obvious danger.
  
  was legendary in the world’s financial marts, cleared He made for the ladder quickly. More cries reached his throat, and waited. The hawk-faced Martin Nye sat his ears from below. Duane cast ahead to determine forward, gray eyes fixed on the war secretary.
  
  how he should fight, weaponless as he was.
  
  “However,” resumed Knox Reeder in a brisker,
  
  The ladder slipped as he hurried over the edge harder voice, “we aren’t meeting to weigh the and started down it, and he snatched at the roof to possibilities. The purpose of this council, as you all steady it. His hand slipped. A foot lost its rung and know, is such that it assumes that war is coming, and plunged through.
  
  coming in a comparatively short time. You would
  
  Duane swore and grabbed wildly for support as probably like to hear the latest from Washington, as far the ladder pitched over backward, carrying him to the as the diplomatic situation goes.”
  
  earth. Even then he could not have escaped and rushed He touched his finger tips together. “The Jackson
  
  to the aid of Fraile, for it was not much of a fall. But incident”—he referred to an American army officer who, there had been a stone just at the spot where his head touring for pleasure in Emporia, had been arrested as a had been when he came down.
  
  spy a month before—”has taken a turn for the worse.
  
  With a last, grunted oath for his own clumsiness, The State department hasn’t made it public yet, but Duane saw the night changing to dazzling day, then Emporia is going to execute him!”
  
  back to darkness again; and he lay where he had fallen.
  
  The others took this in.
  
  CHAPTER II.
  
  OUR intelligence service has now definitely
  
  A SECRET CONFERENCE.
  
  established that the recent border clashes with
  
  Mexican rebels were instigated, financed, and in one or I
  
  two cases led by Emporist agents. The implications of N an office on the twenty-second floor of a New that are manifest.”
  
  York skyscraper the following morning about ten
  
  Nye nodded grimly, his eyes narrowing. Caspar Tait
  
  o’clock, a conference was in progress.
  
  looked pained.
  
  The United States secretary of war occupied the
  
  “Other things are about the same. The matter of the
  
  head of the mahogany table, and facing him from three Alaska— an American cruiser inexplicably dynamited sides were Caspar Tait, president of the Tait Munitions 6
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  two weeks earlier while in Emporia waters—is still the Martin Nye pursed his lips. Lomas wore a look of
  
  focal point of the trouble, and the sore spot that will grim satisfaction.
  
  eventually have our citizens clamoring for war, unless
  
  “In another week, we can start turning them out,”
  
  something very conciliatory is done.
  
  the secretary was saying. “Fraile has assured me that
  
  “There is no evidence that they intend to do the range is a matter of power and focus, and that up to anything of the sort. The preposterous claim now of five thousand yards hardly a change will be needed.
  
  their foreign department is that the Alaska was about
  
  “Just what the gun is, I can’t tell you, because I
  
  to be scrapped, and was blown up by its own crew, don’t know myself. It is based on some abstruse theory under orders from Washington, in order to provide the of electric waves, is painless, utterly lethal, and withal United States with a casus belli!”
  
  is the deadliest war machine ever invented by a human.”
  
  “Haw!” exclaimed Nye.
  
  Nye tapped the table and murmured, “So I guess
  
  Sardonically, the secretary nodded.
  
  we need have no fear of an invasion.”
  
  “It’s all deplorable. Of course, with things as they
  
  “Hardly,” smiled the secretary. He then went on to
  
  have been in Europe, we of the war department have say that there had been for some time in America an never taken quite the air of confidence that most organized espionage ring, in the pay of the enemy.
  
  Americans entertain—that the United States is slated
  
  This ring, known to the government, had only
  
  for peace and will not be drawn again into conflict, begun to be taken seriously in the past few months.
  
  despite whatever happens across the Atlantic.
  
  The capture of one of its members—a member who
  
  “The trouble with that is that it takes no account of had carried a partial list of spy numbers—had given the other fellow, You may resolve not to fight, but when the American intelligence service an inkling of its the time comes you may find there is nothing else to magnitude.
  
  do!”
  
  In New York City alone there were believed to be
  
  “Absolutely!” said Nye.
  
  over two hundred spies, all operating under one head.
  
  “That’s the trouble,” said Tait.
  
  “That head, and their headquarters, is important.
  
  We have reason for thinking that the head of this spy SO that’s the situation,” said the secretary, ring, here in New York, is some one of considerable straightening briskly in his chair, “and I don’t have prominence—some one who has means of learning to tell you why the president asked you to act with me government secrets.”
  
  in planning for the emergency.
  
  Tait—Nye—Lomas—all sat up a little straighter.
  
  “We have already made a start. The war department Knox Reeder wore a hard, worried look. “We know has done more in the past two months than in the five only that he is called ‘Mr. B’ by his agents, this master years previous.”
  
  spy. I want to warn you to guard yourselves, even more The others knew. Hidden antiaircraft defenses particularly than in the past. Reveal this council and around all major cities had been manned to wartime our decisions to no one, not even to your best friends!”
  
  strength; coast defenses had been doubled; the navy
  
  There were murmurs of positive concurrence. The
  
  was in position, and a steady, though inconspicuous secretary of war arose from his chair.
  
  movement of troops from the interior, had been taking
  
  “That’s all. Our greatest danger today, I believe,
  
  place for some time.
  
  lies in this Mr. B, and his spies. The nation will be Railroads were even now refurnishing their rolling ready when the time comes, as apparently it is coming.
  
  stock that had long stood idle; munitions dumps were But if our plans should leak out—the Fraile invention, being established in key locations; great quantities of for example—it would change the situation.”
  
  food, clothes, metals and raw materials were being
  
  He looked around at the three faces, adding that,
  
  accumulated by the government.
  
  in addition to the intelligence service agents, men were
  
  “We are ready,” said Mr. Reeder, “or almost ready, working night and day to destroy the ring, find its at any rate. Doctor Fraile has just perfected the death- headquarters, and uncover its head; he had hired an ray gun, on which he has been working for over a year.” investigator on his own, so convinced was he that the Tait sat up. “He’s perfected it?”
  
  spy ring was their greatest menace.
  
  “I had a telephone call yesterday,” Knox Reeder
  
  “Be more careful than ever, gentlemen.”
  
  nodded. “It is finished, and the cost of operation is not much more than that of a machine gun, for one that WITH those last words, the United States secretary size.”
  
  of war turned to depart, when suddenly a
  
  7
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  He had ordered them to halt, had shot the driver, but they escaped....
  
  8
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  telephone rang near by. Every one of the four swung to decorations, the latter having the air of a Greek temple, stare at it, where it stood half concealed in a niche in the former wearing that of the lounge room of a political the wall. Like the office, that telephone was known to club. Small tables held cigarettes and siphons—objects hardly four people in the country, and each man which an occupant occasionally sampled. In one corner wondered who could be using it.
  
  a chess game was in progress; somewhere else two
  
  The secretary strode to it, lifted the receiver, waited. people bent over a map.
  
  A man’s curt voice reached his ears, and he nodded,
  
  All this was screened from outsiders by heavy
  
  spoke. Then, for a minute or two, he listened, and the shades that were drawn to the bottom on all the others saw the blood rush from his face.
  
  windows, front and back. The light came from glass
  
  Slowly, he replaced the receiver and turned. “The chandeliers that were suspended from the high, painted very worst has happened,” he said. “I cannot understand ceiling, making a blue haze of the cigarette and cigar it. That was my investigator, whom I hired to find Mr. smoke.
  
  B. He reports that enemy spies last night kidnapped
  
  In this scene of guarded activity, two men and a
  
  Doctor Fraile and his daughter from their laboratory woman sat on a lounge in a far corner, conversing upstate, stole the death-ray invention, then disappeared! seriously.
  
  How they learned of it, or where Fraile was working,
  
  The woman, seated between her companions, was
  
  is a mystery. I must leave at once!”
  
  a tall blonde creature in her middle thirties, voluptuous The others were on their feet, thunderstruck. The of eye, with the round sensuality and childlike secretary turned and hurried out without another word. complexion of a Norse maiden. Looking at her innocent Tait and Nye and Lomas stared at each other.
  
  eyes, one would have been excused for not guessing
  
  that she was known in five nations as the shrewdest
  
  CHAPTER III.
  
  female spy since the World War.
  
  THE SPY RING.
  
  The man at her right, small, black-haired,
  
  insignificant-looking and of no ascertainable age, was O
  
  equally innocent of aspect, was equally to be feared by N the north side of Forty-seventh Street in New any government.
  
  York City, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues,
  
  The other man—a large, bestial, olive-skinned
  
  stands a large white, stone building, five stories in person whose face was made unsightly by a skin height, which was originally built to serve as the art disease—happened to be the assembly’s lone museum of an ambitious millionaire. Abandoned a year Chinaman, though there were other bloods in his veins.
  
  or so before—when the wealthy man went into Lacking the reputation of his conferees, he made up bankruptcy—it now bore no clue to its occupancy for it in the fearsomeness of his appearance.
  
  beyond the metal plate that said:
  
  EASTERN RELATIONS LEAGUE
  
  THE trio was in the midst of a rapid discussion in
  
  which the words “cylinder,” “airplane,” “fast
  
  steamer,” reoccurred, when the door at the back, which Had any one asked what that meant, say, the all had been watching, opened suddenly. A man of policeman who passed it daily, passed its marble portals, medium height, clad in a dark suit, whose face was he would probably have shrugged his shoulders in covered by a black mask, stepped into the room.
  
  ignorance. Nobody knew and nobody cared about it.
  
  At once there was sounds of “Pssst!” all over the Whoever rented the building paid a fancy sum, and room, and conversation died abruptly. Some one that was sufficient.
  
  whispered to a neighbor who had failed to observe the Behind the brass door, brass-studded, heavy, which entrance: “Quiet! It’s him!” and the neighbor snapped led into the edifice, around eleven o’clock that April shut his mouth precipitately.
  
  morning, a number of men and women were sitting
  
  The new arrival, having closed the door quietly
  
  about in a large, ornate back chamber.
  
  behind him, advanced to the center of the room.
  
  They were of varying aspects and nationalities,
  
  “Greetings,” he said in a soft voice.
  
  Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Japanese, a Russian
  
  Murmurs of greeting and much throat-clearing
  
  or two, and a single Chinaman. In all, there were came from all sides.
  
  eighteen, smoking, talking in low, tense voices, casting
  
  “Mr. B” turned this way and that, scanning the faces
  
  occasional glances toward a door at the back.
  
  of those present through the eye slits in his mask. He The room’s furnishings contrasted oddly with its
  
  9
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  seemed to be checking them off with each movement MR. B listened to this without moving a muscle.
  
  of his head.
  
  For an instant the drop of a pin could be heard in
  
  “All here, I see,” he said in that same mild the room, until Toya continued: intonation; “that is, all that I expected for our little
  
  “Shakoff was driving and when we refused, he
  
  demonstration.” A note of satisfaction entered his tones. started to shoot. This agent shot him down at the first
  
  “You slept well last night, I hope,” he said, addressing blast. I threw him out of the car, in order to get behind them as though they were children.
  
  the wheel. The man was plainly afraid to shoot too
  
  “You had reason to. We have succeeded! Are the much, because of Fraile. We left him behind.”
  
  prisoners safe?” The last in a snapped aside to the big Mr. B drew a deep breath. “Alive?”
  
  Chinese.
  
  “I think we wounded him, but he was not dead.”
  
  The bestial man nodded. “I came from looking at
  
  A snort of rage from the spy leader sounded in the
  
  them but a moment ago.”
  
  room. “You think you wounded him?” he cried. “What Mr. B nodded. “It would take more science than does that mean? Describe the man. What did he look Fraile commands to escape from that cellar. We will like?”
  
  have them here in a minute, and then will do what we
  
  “He was a tall person,” said Toya. “He wore a gray
  
  did not do last night. It was no time then, you suit and had the hard face of a detective or agent. His understand—at two in the morning—to risk attracting car was a coupe with New York license plates.”
  
  the curiosity of some passer-by by letting him show
  
  Mr. B, listening, could be seen to set his jaw beneath how the thing operates. It is different now, with the the mask. For a moment he stood there, fear visible in street crowded with traffic.”
  
  his very carriage. Then his voice cracked out at Toya: He paused. The eighteen or twenty spies waited “He was an agent, a detective! He must have been for what was to follow.
  
  retained by some one to work with the intelligence
  
  “Toya!”
  
  department in finding us. He must have gotten wind of The big Chinaman started briefly, came forward.
  
  our plans about Fraile and hurried there alone to stop
  
  “What happened to Shakoff last night?”
  
  us, arriving too late. Somebody here talked!”
  
  Toya licked his lips. Before he could speak, Mr. B
  
  Nobody stirred. Suddenly the blonde, voluptuous
  
  went on: “You left here with five men—six of you, all woman rose up from the couch and drifted across the told—for Fraile’s laboratory. Shakoff was not with you room to where Mr. B stood. Beside him, she whispered when you returned. I noticed it—even though you in his ear, turned and went back to her seat.
  
  brought Fraile and his daughter and the death-ray
  
  The spy leader swung slowly, until his eyes were
  
  cylinder—even though you succeeded. Shakoff was resting on a white-faced man of middle age, an missing. What happened to him?”
  
  American, who sat not far away, opening and closing
  
  The big Chinese opened his ugly mouth. “He was— his hands at his sides.
  
  he was killed.”
  
  “Walker. Stand up!”
  
  “Killed?”
  
  The man stood up. He might have been a
  
  Every person in that room started as though struck, bookkeeper or even a stockbroker in ordinary life.
  
  except the four who had been Toya’s other companions
  
  “The orders yesterday were that our plans for last
  
  last night. They looked guiltily at the floor.
  
  night were not to be spoken of outside this room under
  
  “Killed?” repeated the spy leader, advancing. “By any conditions! You, with Shakoff, were seen last whom? You mean by Fraile—resisting?”
  
  evening in Leon’s Restaurant on Broadway, talking
  
  Toya shook his head. “No. No. Something very secretly together. Your lips were read. You were happened we didn’t anticipate. Let me explain.”
  
  discussing the forthcoming capture of Fraile.”
  
  The leader waited.
  
  Walker’s teeth began to chatter faintly.
  
  “We were attacked as we were starting back,” said
  
  “A man was watching you at the time, according
  
  Toya. “There must have been a leak somewhere”—he to my informant. There is now no question that he was glared about him—”something went wrong with the the detective who attacked the party with Fraile, that plans. When we had captured Fraile and the girl and he learned of the plans through the disobedience of gotten the cylinder and were in the car half a mile away you and Shakoff.”
  
  on our way back here, a car coming toward us suddenly Walker, his hands shaking, could not find his
  
  blocked the road. A man—an American, an agent he tongue. Mr. B drew from his coat a blue-black automatic must have been—leaped out and called on us to revolver, to which a silencer was attached, and pointing surrender.”
  
  it at the terror-stricken agent, clicked off the safety.
  
  10
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  “You jeopardized the success of our biggest coup, in addition he was gagged with adhesive tape. He knew and have endangered the safety of all of us. That what he was facing.
  
  detective is still alive, and aware of Fraile’s abduction, A silence followed their appearance. The prisoners
  
  and a tempest will begin any moment, whereas we had could not have spoken had they wished to do so. Now hoped—because of Fraile’s secrecy—that his Mr. B broke the hush, enunciating his words in a careful, disappearance would go unnoted until we had gotten deliberate manner.
  
  the ray out of the country.”
  
  “You have, no doubt, guessed the situation by this
  
  The gun steadied. “Shakoff has already paid for time, Doctor Fraile, and know exactly who we are. For his foolishness,” said Mr. B, then pulled the trigger, that reason, I won’t waste time in telling you. Also, of just as Walker let out a choked scream.
  
  course, you know why we captured you, why you are
  
  here, with your daughter. It was not enough to acquire WHEN the powder smoke had cleared away and your invention; we must also be quite certain as to how Walker lay on his face on the floor, the leader it is used.”
  
  made a gesture to Toya and replaced the gun in his
  
  Toya crossed the floor and ripped the tape from
  
  pocket. The big Chinese proceeded to drag the dead the doctor’s lips. Fraile, not moving, drew in a long, spy by the heels from the room.
  
  deep breath.
  
  Mr. B sat down and looked around. The execution
  
  Barsino arose and left the room, returning presently
  
  had been witnessed by stony faces, mostly approving. with the death-ray flashlight, the long, dark cylinder
  
  “The price of disobedience,” said the leader coldly. with a cord attached to its end. Mr. B took it in his
  
  “Our position is not nearly as good as we had hoped. hands, looking at Fraile.
  
  That agent, or rather detective, has undoubtedly
  
  “The value of this we know, and its general idea.
  
  reported by this time to whoever retained him. We will What we require is a detailed statement of the principle have to work fast.”
  
  involved and every operation that went into the making There was one more detail to be settled, however. of it—plus a demonstration.”
  
  He turned to Toya who had returned, was at his elbow.
  
  Fraile made no reply. After some moments of
  
  “Barsino has reported to me that he suspects there was waiting, Mr. B asked if the scientist was attached to his another individual at Fraile’s last night, at the time of daughter. Still Fraile did not answer, and the next your raid. Were you aware of that?”
  
  instant, Toya and two other men were standing behind
  
  Toya looked incredulous. Mr. B turned to the dark the white-faced girl, prepared to do the bidding of their Barsino and bade him tell his story. The latter broke leader.
  
  into speech, reciting how he had looked back along the rainy country road as they sped away just before being THEN Doctor Fraile spoke. “You have the cylinder.
  
  attacked by the agent, and could have sworn that he
  
  I take it that you are going to smuggle it out as
  
  saw a large black man standing beside a car some soon as possible. Your scientists will need no distance behind. Taking him for a native of the country, demonstration or detailed explanation, once that is in he had said nothing until later.
  
  their hands. It will tell its own story.”
  
  As Barsino finished, Mr. B asked Toya what he
  
  “But we want you to tell it,” insisted Mr. B.
  
  thought of that. The big aid was still baffled, but finally Fraile drew another breath, advanced and took the
  
  reckoned it had nothing to do with their capture of cylinder from the leader of the spies. Then, so suddenly Fraile, which the black man could scarcely have that there was no doubting its sincerity, he pointed and witnessed.
  
  exclaimed: “You have lost the outer lens! This thing is Mr. B appeared satisfied. “Enough,” he said. “And worthless without it! I can demonstrate nothing!”
  
  now bring in Fraile and his daughter.”
  
  Slowly and ominously, Mr. B turned his eyes that
  
  When Doctor Fraile and his daughter, Jocelyn, were were just visible through the slits of his mask, on Toya.
  
  pushed into the big room a few minutes later, the chairs “Well?” he snapped. “You had charge of carrying it?
  
  of the eighteen enemy spies had been pushed together Were you so careless that you lost a part?”
  
  to form a semicircle.
  
  Toya, the brunt of all errors it seemed, came
  
  The black-masked leader, Mr. B, sat in the center, forward, scowling fiercely, and looked at the cylinder.
  
  his hands folded quietly in his lap.
  
  That it meant nothing to him was obvious. He turned a The war department’s key scientist halted in the black look on Fraile, as though wishing to claim him a center of the room. His hands were tied behind his back; liar. “He’s——” he began in a loud, harsh voice, but 11
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  the spy leader cut him off.
  
  this thing could be kept secret until every force had
  
  “If he lies, we can settle it later! I don’t think he been put into motion for finding the spies and rescuing lies. Therefore, you lost a part, either while bringing the Frailes; and who was to be notified first.
  
  the thing here, or at the laboratory! Go and search the As for the latter, he would have to advise the
  
  limousine!”
  
  president the moment he reached Washington. As for
  
  Toya rushed out. Nobody spoke or moved for five the former—that of locating the spies—he was on his minutes.
  
  way now to learn the exact details of what had happened
  
  “There is nothing there,” announced Toya in a thick from his personal investigator, and find out what could voice, returning. “If we lost something, it must have be done.
  
  been at the——”
  
  He had, therefore, requested his cab driver to make
  
  “Enough!” Mr. B stood up, anger and frustration all the speed possible; and it was not many minutes in his voice. “Take them out,” he gestured at the before his machine pulled into a parking place at the prisoners,. Four men swarmed forward and hustled the Battery, not far from the slips whence ferries left for Frailes from the room before they could say a word. Staten Island.
  
  The rest of the company waited for the leader’s next
  
  The secretary did not get out immediately. After
  
  words.
  
  saying something for the driver’s benefit, he leaned
  
  He turned and raked Toya with a stream of scornful forward and glanced at the line of cars parked near by.
  
  vituperation, ending, “Get out! Leave!”
  
  In one of them—a streamlined, high-powered, plain
  
  Toya departed hastily, by a rear door.
  
  black coupe with New York plates—two men were
  
  Mr. B looked around, stood unspeaking for a sitting. Almost at once the taller and older of these two moment or two, brooding, then said, “A fine triumph! men got out of the car, came over and stepped into the There is nothing to do now but go back to the place in back of Mr. Reeder’s cab, closing the door before he the Catskills and hunt for the missing lens. And if spoke. As he sat back beside the war secretary, he said, Fraile’s absence has been reported—as it certainly quietly, almost casually: has—we may have plenty of trouble before we get it.”
  
  “You might call me Smith,” and then: “Shall I start
  
  Angrily, he swung and strode to the back door. “You right in?”
  
  will all wait here. I must find out what is being done
  
  “Yes—Mr. Smith. Start right in. The whole story.
  
  before we make another move. Keep all under strictest First of all”—Mr. Reeder was looking at the profile of guard.”
  
  his investigator he had seen only once or twice before—
  
  The door closed behind him.
  
  a clean-cut, chiseled visage, brown, hard,
  
  expressionless, mature—”first of all; how did you know
  
  CHAPTER IV.
  
  that Fraile was abducted last night? You didn’t say over
  
  THE SHAKOFF CLUE.
  
  the phone.”
  
  “I was there,” was the immediate response. “I tried
  
  A
  
  to halt it and failed because I arrived too late. Give a FTER leaving the skyscraper in midtown New minute,” went on the agent who preferred to be called York City that held the office of the secret war “Smith,” “and you’ll understand.
  
  council, Mr. Knox Reeder, United States secretary of
  
  “At five yesterday afternoon I was in a Broadway
  
  war, entered a taxi-cab and told the driver to take him restaurant, whose name doesn’t matter, watching two to the Battery. As he sank back against the cushions, a men who I was convinced belonged to the spy ring.
  
  gray-haired, thoughtful man whom not one American You recall that in my last report, two days ago, I told in a hundred would have recognized, his face was very you that I thought I had located a cafe that was a regular grave.
  
  meeting place for some of the spies.”
  
  To say that he was stunned by the news of the
  
  The secretary nodded. He was impatient.
  
  abduction of Doctor Fraile and his daughter and the
  
  The other was continuing in an emotionless voice:
  
  theft of his invention—news that came like a bombshell, “I was right about the cafe, as I became certain last just when he was thinking that matters generally were night, and was observing these men, hoping they would moving expeditiously—to say that would be a great lead me to the main headquarters. They were talking, understatement. But to add that he was bereft of thought and I listened. I heard them discuss a plan to capture would be putting it too strongly.
  
  Fraile and his daughter, then steal the death ray, last Badly shaken though he was, the secretary was night.”
  
  already thinking ahead on what was to be done, how
  
  12
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  Smith went on, touching only lightly on his surprise
  
  Knox Reeder nodded slowly. “I’m glad there’s
  
  at what he had heard—a surprise due to the fact that he something at any rate,” he said. He made a movement.
  
  had thought Fraile’s work and present whereabouts “It’s time I left. I’ll leave this in your hands for the were known only to the general staff and the secret present. Doubtlessly, the president and the general staff war council. It was too late to summon help, even his will want a corps of intelligence men concentrated on assistants, for if he were going to thwart the spies he New York immediately. But until there——”
  
  would have to leave immediately.
  
  “A moment, sir.”
  
  He hurried out to the Catskills in his fastest car—
  
  The secretary paused.
  
  but encountered trouble on the way. A drunken driver
  
  “I’ve got to ask you something. How do you
  
  had crashed into him, delaying him for twenty minutes, suppose Fraile’s work and his whereabouts leaked out and by the time he approached Fraile’s place, the spies to the espionage ring, to Mr. B?”
  
  were already departing with their prize.
  
  The Washington official looked for a long minute
  
  He had ordered them to halt, had shot the driver, into the gray eyes that met his levelly. Finally he said, but they had escaped, after wounding him slightly.
  
  “That is the greatest mystery; in some respects the most horrible aspect of the whole business. I cannot
  
  THE secretary of war was nodding, rapidly, with a comprehend it. Fraile’s work and the location of his tense, harried look on his face. “And you could secret laboratory were known only to myself, the tell nothing from their faces, or the car? Did you see president, the army general staff in Washington, the Fraile?”
  
  members of the secret war council, and yourself.”
  
  “I saw Fraile. They used him as a shield when I
  
  After a hesitation, the agent said, “They might have
  
  threatened to shoot, and also the daughter——No, the learned of his location by accident, of course. But on faces meant nothing to me, except that I recognized the other hand——”
  
  the two men from the cafe. The car, either. It had no
  
  “Yes,” said the secretary after a pause that
  
  license plates.”
  
  threatened to last some time; “on the other hand, they Reeder drew a breath. “It’s a terrible business,” he might have been told.”
  
  said. “I have taken you into my confidence, Mr. Car—
  
  He said no more. With a sudden, nervous movement
  
  —Smith, and you know what Fraile’s invention means. he clambered from the taxi and tendered a bill to the You know the situation diplomatically. I have just come driver. The tall, wide-shouldered investigator followed from a meeting with the secret war council—as, of him out, stood a moment eying him; then, with a brief course, you know, because you phoned me there—a nod he swung on his heel and went back to his car.
  
  meeting that is just one other phase of the general, secret mobilization. But this—this audacious kidnapping of AS the launch bearing Secretary Knox Reeder Fraile and the stealing of his invention——”
  
  swung out from its dock and headed across the
  
  Smith cleared his throat, spoke quietly.
  
  harbor for Governor’s Island, the secretary’s personal
  
  “I have something of a clue,” he said. “The man I investigator gave rapid instructions to the other shot last night—the driver of the car—was one of the detective who sat beside him.
  
  men I watched in the restaurant.”
  
  The end of them was: “You on Tait, G on Lomas,
  
  Mr. Reeder turned.
  
  and R on Nye. Get out now. I want the car. I want to
  
  “They tossed him out of the car,” the other see what G got on that money belt.” And he went into explained. “I fetched the body back to my house.”
  
  gear.
  
  The secretary of war began to understand. “You
  
  The other man slipped out, vanished quickly on
  
  hope, through him, to learn where the rest of the ring— the sidewalk, and the dark coupe backed off, turned
  
  —”
  
  and sped up lower Broadway. A siren wailing inside it
  
  “Not too fast,” cautioned Smith. “I hope to—yes. cleared a path; it made no stops for traffic lights, reached But so far I haven’t even learned the name of this corpse. Union Square in a few minutes and cut west.
  
  There was nothing on him to identify him immediately
  
  Shortly after that it pulled in before a brownstone
  
  or tell where he lived, and the only chance—a specially house on lower Fifth Avenue, and the investigator manufactured money belt—is being looked into now jumped out and ran up the steps.
  
  by one of my men. From that we may learn who he
  
  Inside, he confronted a younger man, blue of eye
  
  was—and after that it will be a gamble. But it’s a and alert, who said immediately, “I got it. Man’s name chance, and I thought I’d mention it.”
  
  was Shakoff, and here’s the address.”
  
  13
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  The elder detective took the paper. “Good,” was combing every article in the room, clothes, personal all he said as he stuffed it into his pocket. “Chick,” he effects, what few letters there were, books and added, “has instructions. He’s calling in a minute. Get magazines. This, right here, was the “gamble” of which them and relay to Roxy.” He turned and was gone.
  
  he had spoken to Knox Reeder.
  
  His dark coupe went north again, then east, and
  
  Would there be anything in this room pointing to
  
  again crossed Union Square. After a while it was Shakoff’s connection with the espionage ring headed crawling along a narrow, dirty street on the East Side, by Mr. B? Anything to show where the headquarters while the man inside peered out and up, scanning of the spy ring were, who some of the other members numbers. Presently he stopped, got out the paper.
  
  were?
  
  It showed the name of the spy whom he had killed
  
  He learned that Abraham Shakoff, born thirty years
  
  last night, plus an address that should be right along before in southern Europe, a draftsman who had studied here.
  
  at a local university, had been working until yesterday The coupe moved on. After another hundred yards for the Department of Public Works of New York City.
  
  it veered in to the curb and parked. The man got out, His bankbook showed large deposits, though his salary locked the car, dropped keys into his pocket and walked could not have been much.
  
  up a flight of sandstone steps to a dirty door, above The spy angle was confirmed, but nothing was here
  
  which a sign said:
  
  to directly connect Shakoff with the ring that had
  
  kidnapped Fraile last night, with whom he had been
  
  HOTEL ACME
  
  shot, though there were maps and blue prints that might ROOMS BY DAY AND WEEK
  
  well have their meaning.
  
  Smith sat down finally. His gray eyes were coldly
  
  The hotel was built at a triangular intersection and calculating. So far the trail was clear, perfect, but so extended through to the next street. The investigator far was not enough. How could he leap from this room knew that, though Shakoff had lived here, this was and Shakoff who had been of the spy ring—to the place certainly not the headquarters of the espionage ring, where Shakoff’s five companions had returned last where Fraile was being held. He, therefore, entered night—bringing Fraile, his daughter and the death ray?
  
  boldly and approached a desk behind which sat a slant-The man’s eyes drifted to the door. He pondered.
  
  eyed clerk reading a magazine.
  
  Abruptly he rose, went downstairs and told the clerk
  
  “Shakoff,” said Smith and showed a bronze badge. that if any one came to visit Shakoff’s room they were The clerk bounced up. “Yes, sir,” he said quickly, to be allowed to go up; and further, if they asked fawningly. “It’s room twelve, captain, but he ain’t in whether any one else had preceded them, the clerk was now.”
  
  to say no and make it stick.
  
  “I know it,” said the other, and with hardly a pause
  
  Nodding vehemently, the clerk promised, and the
  
  kept on to the narrow stairs that led upward. At the top investigator returned upstairs, closed the door with the he faced down a long hall, at whose other end was night latch on, then seated himself on the bed. A gun another flight of stairs. Moving that way, he looked at was deposited beside him.
  
  the room numbers. He saw that twelve was above and
  
  Perhaps, he was thinking, the other spies would
  
  went up another flight, walked until he came to twelve. not be certain that Shakoff’s room had been clueless.
  
  His reason for not troubling to ask for a key was Perhaps Mr. B, wary lest his dead informer have left apparent as he pulled a ring from his pocket, fitted one something to give him away, would send men here this into the keyhole and readily turned the lock.
  
  morning to make sure.
  
  Before opening the door, however, he stepped back,
  
  drew a .45 revolver from beneath his coat, cocked it CHAPTER V.
  
  and stood to one side. The door burst inward as he “MR. NICK CARTER IS BUSY.”
  
  booted it, but the room beyond was empty.
  
  Smith stepped in, still holding his gun, cast about
  
  until he saw the closet door, jerked open sidewise. It, AT that moment, however, the man known as Mr.
  
  too, was void of life, and the gun went back under his B, who half an hour before had left his spies at
  
  coat.
  
  their headquarters in Forty-seventh Street, was not
  
  thinking of Shakoff, as he came out of a subway station AFTER that, the private investigator for the at Canal Street and hurried toward a large white office secretary of war spent a good thirty minutes building. Needless to say, he no longer wore his mask.
  
  14
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  The problem that occupied the spy leader’s mind work and what it meant to the nation at this moment.
  
  was of sending men as quickly as possible out to Fraile’s To Duane, Fraile was still merely a scientist working laboratory in the Catskills and retrieving the lost lens for the war department, developing something that before the storm broke.
  
  might never be used.
  
  Even now it might be breaking; even now
  
  “I’ve got an earful to give you, J. J.,” he said.
  
  government agents might be guarding the secret “Listen close.”
  
  laboratory in the woods, and Mr. B’s one thought was
  
  J. J. Molloy, still showing his gladness at the sight to find out about that as soon as possible; then, if the of his pal, nodded once and waited. A medium-sized coast was clear, to dispatch a mob.
  
  man with a mild face, he contrasted sharply with the
  
  How he intended to learn what the government brown good looks of Duane.
  
  knew at this juncture was something that only Mr. B
  
  “I guess you got my wire from Pittsburgh,” Duane
  
  could have answered; he who was suspected of being said, “and knew I was on my way here with Moses to
  
  “a person of prominence in New York,” who had access try to get a job. Well, I’m here and I still need a job, but to government secrets.
  
  I ran into something last night up in the Catskills that’s He strode hastily through the portals of the office knocked everything else out of my head.”
  
  building, nodding curtly as a newsboy spoke to him
  
  He recited then how he and Moses, their car
  
  with respect. As he passed the directory on his way to needing gasoline, had seen the light.
  
  the elevators, his mind concentrated on what lay ahead, He told the whole story, from the first sight of the
  
  the tail of his eye remarking two men who stood there. lights through the trees to the discovery that the scientist One was a strapping fellow of twenty-seven or so, below with the death cylinder was the famous Irving blond of hair and tanned; the other was a huge Negro. Fraile, and then to the arrival of the six men, his own They were talking swiftly, the while the white man subsequent fall. He had awakened to find Fraile and scanned the directory board, and Mr. B caught the the others gone, as well as the death cylinder.
  
  words, “got to tell Molloy about that business last night J. J. Molloy, a medium-sized, mild, little man,
  
  upstate—”
  
  listened with rising interest and excitement, and when Mr. B narrowed his eyes a little, kept on to the Duane was through he got up and closed the office door, elevators. Presently he was out of sight.
  
  even turning the key. Duane divined that Molloy saw
  
  In the lobby, Jack Duane had turned and sent a even more in this business than he himself had.
  
  curious look after the retreating back, frowning a little.
  
  “Man,” said Molloy in a soft voice, “this is a story!”
  
  Then he swung back to Moses and said, “O. K. Wait
  
  Duane waited.
  
  here. I’ll go up and see J. J. Molloy.”
  
  Molloy pointed, lowering his voice, even though
  
  it was impossible that any one outside could have heard IN the office of the city editor of the Globe, Jack him. “You don’t realize the present diplomatic situation, Duane from San Francisco stretched his long legs, do you?”
  
  lighted a cigarette and leveled a finger at the face of Duane blinked his eyes. He had followed the
  
  his old friend. Greetings were over, and Duane, his mind newspapers more or less, but the real truth of the still full of what he had witnessed last night in the situation was beyond him.
  
  foothills of the Catskills, was eager to get it off his
  
  “Because,” went on Molloy, and he spoke for
  
  chest.
  
  several minutes.
  
  After the fall from the roof of Fraile’s laboratory
  
  Duane listened, and listened further to the real
  
  and his subsequent awakening to find the scientist and import of Irving Fraile and his death-ray invention.
  
  his daughter gone, Duane had hurried back to his car
  
  “You mean,” he cut in, suddenly, while Molloy was
  
  with the idea of chasing the six men. But there he had still speaking, “that war is a certainty, and that these heard news from Moses that, surprising him, changed spies stole Fraile’s invention not just to be stealing, the complexion of things, and after some thought he but to use against us within the next year?” He was had decided to make New York as quickly as possible halfway out of his chair.
  
  and get advice on what was to be done.
  
  The Globe man said that was exactly what he He did not know, of course, the real status of the meant. He jumped to his feet. “Great Scott!” he men who had captured the scientist, though, with the exclaimed; “this is terrific! If the war department night to reflect in, an inkling of the truth had come to doesn’t know of this, they ought to be notified him. Least of all did he realize the imminence of Fraile’s immediately! For all we know, Fraile’s absence hasn’t 15
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  The automatic went spinning just as the reporter from San Francisco saw 16
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  four men springing forward from three sides of the square, furnished room.
  
  17
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  even been discovered yet, that these spies have him for Nick Carter’s address on lower Fifth Avenue, which locked up somewhere, with the death ray!”
  
  the reporter had gotten from the editor. They arrived Duane looked at him. Suddenly he said, “Wait a there as the clocks of Manhattan were striking noon.
  
  minute! There’s something else I wanted to tell you
  
  Duane ran up the steps and rang the bell.
  
  that may answer that question.” He said that, after
  
  The door was opened after only a short delay by a
  
  awakening and finding his way to the car, and telling small dark man, plainly a servant and, Duane guessed, Moses of what he had seen, he had learned from his a Filipino. The journalist went to the point immediately.
  
  man that the car containing the enemy spies and their
  
  “My name is Duane and I want to see Mr. Nick
  
  three prisoners had been attacked a little farther down Carter on extremely important business. You can tell the road by a man who ordered them to surrender, then him I was sent by his friend, J. J. Molloy of the Globe.”
  
  shot at them.
  
  Without a trace of expression and almost before
  
  “Moses didn’t see any more than that,” Duane Duane finished speaking, the servant was shaking his ended, “but do you suppose it could have been a guard head. “Mr. Carter—he not here. He very busy on or government agent, either sent there to guard Fraile important case. He cannot take on any other business or tipped off to what was to happen?”
  
  right now.”
  
  Molloy pondered, lips parted as he breathed.
  
  Duane got out a five-dollar bill. He did not know
  
  Finally he said, “It seems likely. If that’s so, then the Nick Carter’s servant. “Listen,” he said, somberly, “this government must know by this time and probably has business I’m talking about is ten times more important a thousand men looking for Fraile right now.” He stood than anything he could be working on now, I don’t care up, came around and laid a hand on Duane’s shoulder. what he’s doing.”
  
  “I’ll tell what I would do. Go and tell this story to The Filipino did not even see the banknote. The
  
  a man I’m going to recommend and leave it up to him. door began to close. “I have said,” he intoned curtly.
  
  He has government connections; he’d know just what
  
  “Wait a minute!” Duane cried, and shoved a foot
  
  to do.”
  
  against the door. “I tell you this thing I’m talking about
  
  “Who’s that?”
  
  is important to the whole country! It’s—it’s——” he
  
  “A private detective. I’m surprised that he hasn’t broke off, not wanting to say too much. “I’m not trying been called in already. I’ve known him for a long time, to bribe you. If Carter’s not here, how about one of his and I came into contact with him some months ago assistants? Has he got any?”
  
  when he solved the murder of Harrison Ballard, the
  
  “They not home either,” answered Carter’s Filipino
  
  chairman of the president’s utility commission.* You servant, who all too often in the past had heard such probably remember. I figured in that case, myself, in a monumental pleas and had learned to discount them.
  
  small way.”
  
  “Very sorry. You have to enlist aid of some one else.”
  
  Duane sat up. “You mean Nick Carter?”
  
  And he closed the door.
  
  Molloy nodded. “He’s the very man.”
  
  Duane raised his hand to hammer the panel, let it
  
  fall. There was no use insisting further, himself. Molloy, JACK DUANE sat silent, pondering. Molloy’s advice notified of this unexpected obstacle, might be able to was sound, particularly in view of the fact that reach Nick Carter and convince him of the importance Fraile’s abduction was so much more important than of Duane’s visit. Meanwhile—
  
  Duane had realized.
  
  The San Francisco reporter turned and hustled back
  
  And although the reporter from the west coast was down to his cab, intent on getting to a phone and desirous of working on this business himself, it would advising Molloy of the situation. But, on the point of certainly be wiser to take a man like Carter into his giving an order to the hackie, he paused and bethought confidence and let him handle the official end of it. himself.
  
  Duane could not deny that, even after hearing Molloy’s Why not go ahead on his own? If Carter was off
  
  news, he was as much concerned with rescuing Fraile’s on some “most important case in a long time,” as his enormously attractive daughter, whose face had stuck servant had phrased it, why yap at his heels for aid?
  
  in his mind, as in saving the inventor and his cylinder. Couldn’t he, himself, take on alone the job of finding He, therefore, agreed to follow Molloy’s counsel. where Fraile and his daughter were held prisoner?
  
  A few moments later, he took his departure. Downstairs, he picked up Moses, and in a taxi they headed at once JACK DUANE’S blue eyes glinted grimly. He had money enough for a few weeks; he was footloose,
  
  * Note: See “Whispers of Death”—Vol. V, No. 5
  
  he knew New York City—and already he had an idea
  
  18
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  for possibly trailing the six men who had kidnapped window.
  
  the scientist.
  
  His own forehead had been creased by a bullet;
  
  “Moses!”
  
  blackness was hitting his eyes. Stunned, unbelieving, Moses sat up like a shot, in the back of the cab. he tried to get into the room.
  
  “Yasah!”
  
  Unconsciousness struck him suddenly like a mallet;
  
  Duane jumped in beside him, slamming the door. he went down.
  
  He snapped an address to the driver—that of the hotel where he had put up early that morning after coming CHAPTER VI.
  
  in from the north—and then sat back and assailed his UNDER SUSPICION.
  
  black servant’s ears with rapid speech.
  
  “We’re going to have some action, big boy. We’re
  
  going to the hotel, get some guns, pick up the car, then DOWNTOWN, uptown, and mid-town, meanwhile, head for—Chinatown.”
  
  went Caspar Tait and Oscar Lomas and Martin
  
  Moses gaped. “Chinatown, Mistah Duane?”
  
  Nye.
  
  “Chinatown,” Duane nodded grimly, and slapped
  
  The three other members of the council had left its
  
  his servant’s elephantine knee. “We’re calling on every office precipitately, immediately after the departure of doctor down there who treats skin diseases.”
  
  Knox Reeder.
  
  That Moses’s mind was as dark as his skin was
  
  Nye to his office, Lomas to his bank, Caspar Tait
  
  quite evident from the vacant way he snowed his teeth. to his home. But all were having the same thoughts.
  
  “Yasah?” he said, dumbly.
  
  In his shiny, resplendent limousine, Tait had hurried Duane said, “Yeah. The point is that I only know uptown to his twelve-room Park Avenue apartment, and one thing about any of those fellows, and that is that there he was now, smoking his fourth cigar of the day, the leader had a certain skin disease that required X pacing up and down.
  
  ray treatment. I knew that as soon as I looked at him. I The portent of Fraile’s abduction was clear to him.
  
  worked in a hospital once, you know.”
  
  He knew—this small, dapper munitions king—that
  
  Moses knew, only too well. It was in a hospital, the only way the enemy could have learned of Fraile’s three years before, that Jack Duane had saved the life invention and whereabouts was through some one close of the huge Negro, brought in after a street brawl and to the government—either some one on the general staff given up as lost by the other doctors.
  
  in Washington or one of the four men on the secret war
  
  “Now do you get it?” said Duane. “That leader was council.
  
  a Chinaman. The chances are he’s going to a Chinese
  
  Mr. Tait ruled out the general staff; he didn’t even
  
  doctor for his X ray treatment. So I’m going to visit consider the secretary of war—all of which left him every Chink doctor in New York until I find the one realizing that either he, Oscar Lomas or Martin Nye who’s treating him, and then I’ll run down the leader was a traitor to the nation.
  
  and rescue Fraile and the girl.”
  
  His state of mind was not eased by something he
  
  The cab was at their hotel, and Duane jumped out, had noticed a moment before. There had been a young followed by his servant. They hustled inside, took an man down on the street—six stories below—a quietly elevator to the second floor where Duane’s room was, dressed and grim young man who, at the moment of strode down to the door. The reporter was fumbling Mr. Tait’s looking out the window, had been observing for his key, still thinking rapidly ahead of how he hoped the munitions king’s window.
  
  to trace the spies, when a room maid appeared beside
  
  Was it possible that he was being watched? Caspar
  
  him, key in hand.
  
  Tait walked to the window again, cautiously drew aside She was about to make up his room, would open its heavy portiere. The young man was still down there.
  
  the door.
  
  That decided Mr. Tait. Perhaps they suspected that
  
  Duane nodded, stepped back, and the woman he was the mysterious Mr. B himself? He turned unlocked the door and pushed it open. She was in the suddenly and rang a bell. When his valet appeared, he act of stepping aside, to allow the journalist to precede ordered his topcoat and hat, said to have the car brought her, and was directly between Jack Duane and the room, to the door.
  
  when a burst of gunfire that shook the walls came from inside. The maid shrieked once, stumbled and collapsed CASPAR TAIT rode south on Park Avenue in his to the floor—and Duane saw three men leap from
  
  limousine, and behind him, at a discreet distance,
  
  various hiding places in his room and dash to an open an unostentatious roadster followed the same trail. The 19
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  munitions king, after one glance backward, had not seemed to linger on the wainscoting in his big office, looked again.
  
  seeing through it to the great money building around
  
  His car kept on for some twenty minutes, turning him, the creation of his family.
  
  finally from lower Broadway into Wall Street’s smoky
  
  “But what are we to do?” Tait demanded. “It’s
  
  canyon. Presently Mr. Tait alighted and entered the huge obvious now that Reeder thinks that one of us three”—
  
  block of masonry that was the House of Lomas. A he lowered his voice with an involuntary glance toward private elevator lifted him to the third floor, where in the door—”is the source of the leak.”
  
  an outer office of heroic dimensions he handed his card
  
  “Do?” echoed the banker. “There’s nothing to do.
  
  to a girl behind a desk.
  
  It’s in the hands of agents by now, I suppose.” Abruptly She told him with great respect that Mr. Oscar he said, “What about Nye?”
  
  Lomas would see him immediately, that he was to go
  
  Tait swallowed. “What do you mean?”
  
  right in. Mr. Tait passed through another outer office, Lomas pressed his finger tips together, paused for
  
  was admitted to the private sanctum of the city’s a long moment as though weighing what he was about greatest banker. He and Lomas, who had parted a few to say, then launched into a speech.
  
  hours before at the secret office of the war council, His remarks lasted some four minutes, a long
  
  stared at each other across the financier’s inlaid walnut speech for Mr. Lomas. What they came to was this: desk.
  
  neither of them knew anything much about Martin Nye.
  
  “Have a chair.” That was all Lomas said. He seemed
  
  His appointment to the secret war council, along
  
  to divine at once the motive for this call, as his gray with the munitions manufacturer and the banker, had eyes penetrated the other’s face. Mr. Tait got the surprised them both a little. They had put it down to impression, indeed, that Lomas had been expecting him his staunch backing of the Administration, plus the to turn up any minute.
  
  undoubted influence of his fifty-odd newspapers.
  
  “You may go, Westcott.” Lomas’s stolid, old-
  
  But he was not “one of them.” His beginnings had
  
  fashioned figure made a gesture toward an assistant been humble, obscure. In the early days, his papers had who was turning the pages of a financial report. “Close gone in for sensations, war-scares, murders and divorce the door. I’m to see no one.”
  
  scandals. His own private life was not above suspicion.
  
  The young man nodded and withdrew. Oscar And his motives——
  
  Lomas sat down, shoved over cigars which were
  
  “Well, he’s always worshiped circulation above
  
  refused, closed the box and leaned back, drew his thin everything else; and circulation means the dollar,” said lips closely together, as though he were sucking a piece the billion-dollar banker.
  
  of invisible candy. There was silence for almost two
  
  Tait had listened in silence. Now he nodded.
  
  minutes.
  
  “Money,” he said, “is Nye’s god. But even so. Lomas,
  
  “Well?” said Lomas.
  
  what possible sum could he have been promised to do
  
  “I’m being watched, Lomas. Already!”
  
  a thing like this? He’s fabulously rich already!”
  
  The banker raised an eyebrow ever so slightly.
  
  Lomas got up and walked to the window, looked
  
  “Then I suppose so am I,” he said. He added: “There out. Turning, he said, “I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve talked was a young, blue-eyed fellow in here a moment ago too much. Let us leave it at that. I wonder, though, doing something to the telephone. He said he was from what Nye is thinking about right now?”
  
  the company.”
  
  Tait leaned forward. “It’s terrible, man! Don’t you
  
  realize what it means? After what Reeder said just AS for that, a casual onlooker would have said that Martin Nye was having much the same thoughts
  
  before he got that telephone call? That one of us three— at that moment as the other two men who constituted either you or I or Martin Nye——”
  
  the secret war council. The subject of Lomas’s
  
  Lomas interrupted in his dry, emotionless voice: suspicions, seated before his desk on the fourth floor
  
  “I realize, Tait.” Presently: “It’s terrible, as you say. of the Globe building near Canal Street, drummed I’ve been thinking the same thing ever since I got back restlessly with his long fingers and stared glassily at here. Terrible, not only as far as we are concerned, but the opposite wall.
  
  because of the thing itself. You know what Reeder said From the council’s conference in the skyscraper
  
  about this invention of Fraile’s.
  
  office in midtown, he had gone to several places before
  
  “If it’s really stolen and continues to stay stolen—” coming back here, to his private office in the building He did not finish, but his narrowed, gray eyes that housed his greatest newspaper, the Globe. And for 20
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  the past half hour he had sat thus at his desk, his lean, and done in connection with the happening which Nye hawkish face twitching now and then with some inward had heard of from Knox Reeder. Molloy recited what thought, a large hand coming up occasionally to rub the reporter from the west had told him.
  
  his cheek.
  
  Nye stood up. “I heard this three hours ago,” he
  
  From time to time he arose to pace his office. It blurted out suddenly. “From the——” he broke off.
  
  was a huge affair with desks for several secretaries, a Molloy, gaping, was also on his feet. “You heard battery of telephones, a news ticker and other it? From——” That sentence, too, went uncompleted.
  
  paraphernalia. But the famous publisher was alone in J. J. Molloy was staring at his employer.
  
  it now, having dismissed his secretary on arrival.
  
  Nye sat down. “I heard it,” he said, quietly, “from
  
  Apparently, he could not drive from his mind the the secretary of war. He had just learned of it from a memory of Knox Reeder’s last, shocked announcement private investigator of his own.”
  
  in the secret office of the war council two or three hours Neither man spoke for another minute. Then
  
  before: that Doctor Irving Fraile, whose invention he Molloy burst out with speech he could plainly not had mentioned with satisfaction but a moment before, control, despite the august position of his chief. He told had been kidnapped by the very enemy spies he had of sending Duane to see Nick Carter and lay the facts also spoken of.
  
  before him.
  
  Martin Nye, owner and controller of fifty-four
  
  What was the government doing right now? Should
  
  newspapers all over the United States, in every one of he get in touch with Duane and call him back? Were which he took a voracious and dictatorial interest, licked agents on the case yet?
  
  his lips and moved his head from side to side.
  
  Martin Nye, after a long hesitation, told his editor
  
  A knock sounded on the door, and the czar of what he knew. Nothing had been done at the time he journalism called an impatient, “Come in.”
  
  had learned the news from Knox Reeder. He believed
  
  His secretary advanced a tentative head. “Mr. Nye, that action was being deferred, until the secretary of I know you said not to be disturbed, but Mr. Molloy war returned to Washington and notified the president.
  
  says he’s got to see you about something very As for sending the man, Jack Duane, to see Nick Carter, important.”
  
  Nye didn’t see how that would affect things one way
  
  Nye wanted to know what the editor of the Globe or the other. Carter should know enough to keep it quiet.
  
  had on his mind. The secretary said she didn’t know.
  
  The conversation came to an abrupt end. Nye at
  
  “All right, send him in,” said the great man impatiently, the door, pulled his hat from a rack. For a moment his and J. J. Molloy entered the office quickly a moment eyes rested on those of his editor as he said, “I’ll have later.
  
  to do something about this,” and went out.
  
  Jack Duane’s friend, flushed and excited of aspect,
  
  Molley watched the door close, whistled softly and
  
  burst into low, confidential speech as soon as the door followed the publisher. Neither man, however, had seen was closed. “I’ve been trying to find out where you the shadow of a crouched shape on the fire escape were, Mr. Nye, for the past two hours. I’ve learned outside the closed window.
  
  something that you ought to know immediately!”
  
  Nye looked up at his New York editor. “Well,” he
  
  said, “what is it, J.J?”
  
  VERY shortly after that, behind the locked door and
  
  drawn shades of the large white, stone building in
  
  Molloy pulled up a chair. “A man I used to know Forty-seventh Street that had been built for an art in the west came in to see me about eleven this museum and now was the headquarters of Mr. B’s morning—a fellow named Jack Duane who’s here espionage ring—the blonde, voluptuous woman with looking for a job.” The words tumbled out. He went on the dreamy eyes answered the telephone, heard the curt, to tell of Duane’s story of the night before, how he had cold voice of the master.
  
  stopped in a place in the Catskills and, purely by
  
  Mr. B was saying: “Have the men left yet to get
  
  accident, witnessed the kidnapping of Doctor Fraile.
  
  Toya?”
  
  “Doctor Fraile, Mr. Nye!” Molloy repeated, as the
  
  The woman said they had, but that they had not
  
  publisher started back, his eyes half closing. “The war returned.
  
  department’s scientist! Irving Fraile!”
  
  “When they arrive, dispatch them immediately to
  
  Nye didn’t move. Apparently he was thinking that the laboratory in the Catskills, to get the missing lens.
  
  this was hardly believable. Masking his thoughts, he I have reason to believe the coast is clear. But there is fired questions at his editor as to what Duane had seen no time to be lost. Government men may be on their 21
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  way there now.”
  
  his mind brought back a man who had passed him in
  
  The woman assured him it would be done.
  
  the lobby of the Globe building, who might have
  
  “Anton and the other two are back from their overheard him and Moses talking. Had that been a spy, ambush at the hotel?”
  
  he could have had Duane watched immediately——
  
  “Yes, sir.”
  
  The cops were at the bed, having observed his
  
  “Tell them for me”—the voice became biting, return to consciousness. They began firing questions.
  
  contemptuous and ominous—”that they failed That the three men had escaped in the confusion, Duane dismally! That cursed reporter is still alive!”
  
  learned immediately. His first impulse was to blurt out
  
  “What?” cried the woman. “How is it possible? the whole story to the police what he had seen last night, How do you know ?”
  
  who the men were, why they were trying to kill him.
  
  “It’s possible because they shot instead of the
  
  But at once a thought jerked him up. Molloy’s
  
  reporter a maid who was opening the door. I know statement of the situation made him suddenly realize because I learned—never mind now. That man may be that the war department might be as anxious to keep dangerous! He started off to contact Nick Carter. By Fraile’s abduction a secret for the present as were the now, he may have located him, unless Carter, himself, enemy spies.
  
  is already working on the business, as I suspect.
  
  “I don’t know who it was or what it was all about!”
  
  “Tell Toya and the others to go heavily armed to he protested at once. “We were just about to come in the place in the Catskills, to take every precaution. As when these three fellows—who were hiding here—
  
  for Anton and his two bungling assistants—they will started shooting. I never saw them before! I’m a stranger wait there for me.”
  
  here, from San Francisco! I just got in this morning!”
  
  “You are coming?”
  
  The detective sergeant in charge of the detail that
  
  “I will be there within an hour, in time to meet had arrived post-haste after the call from the Toya when he returns from the Catskills.”
  
  management narrowed his eyes on Duane’s face.
  
  The telephone clicked dead. The blonde, Beyond him, the big journalist could see bluecoats, voluptuous female spy hung up carefully her own other detectives, the white face of the manager. Dimly receiver and turned to face a roomful of questioning he could make out a sheet-covered something just eyes.
  
  outside the door.
  
  “What’s your name?” clipped the sergeant, though
  
  CHAPTER VII.
  
  he must have learned already from the management.
  
  TRACING TOYA.
  
  Duane told him. Sitting up, his mind traveling more
  
  swiftly every second, he jerked out his wallet and
  
  J
  
  showed his press card.
  
  ACK DUANE opened his eyes to find himself lying
  
  Shouts came from outside the window, where
  
  on his bed, his head bandaged, Moses bending over detectives were examining the fire escape. From the him, and the room full of police. He could not remember hall, Duane could hear the press and babble of guests, what had happened for a moment; he seemed to be back drawn by the shooting. He steeled his face to a shocked, in his old Cardova at eleven last night, with Moses at incredulous innocence and, after a single warning his side, rattling through rain toward New York City, glance at Moses, stared back at the sergeant.
  
  to get a job from J. J. Molloy.
  
  “Jack Duane,” the latter was saying curtly. “San
  
  Then his head cleared in a flash; it all came back to Francisco News-Leader. Whatcha doin’ here in New him. He sat up suddenly. “The maid!” he said. “Was York?”
  
  she——”
  
  “I came to get a job. That paper let me out a month
  
  “She was killed, boss,” said Moses, hoarsely. “Four ago, and I came on here to get a job on the Globe.
  
  bullets got her.”
  
  Listen! You know Molloy, editor of the Globe?”
  
  Duane sank back. Shocked as he was, he did not
  
  “Never mind Molloy, Get up off the bed, Duane,
  
  fail to realize that the three men had been after him, or whatever your name is. Those punks were after you, had laid an ambush for him here in his room, which so you must’ve known ‘em. They killed the maid.”
  
  could only mean that they were enemy spies, already
  
  Duane swung his feet to the floor. “But, sergeant, I
  
  aware that he had witnessed last night’s affray in the tell you——”
  
  Catskills.
  
  The sergeant grabbed him. “Come on, let’s have
  
  How they had learned was what astounded the the truth! Who were those guys? What are you—some reporter. He could think of no way, though strangely
  
  22
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  sort of reporter racketeer? And those mugs were trying the reporter’s car and headed down Fourth Avenue for to rub you out?”
  
  the East Side, and Chinatown. In a pocket, Duane
  
  Duane drew a deep breath, tried to take it easy. already had a list of Chinese doctors obtained at a
  
  “Listen, sergeant,” he said in his sincerest voice, “I’m hospital where he had gone to get his head wound telling you the truth. I never saw those guys before; I treated.
  
  don’t have an idea why they tried to bump me. They
  
  While that was going on, a third person still
  
  must have made a mistake. I just got in here this occupied a room on the lower East Side—the personal morning. I don’t know a soul in New York but J. J. investigator for the secretary of war who went under Molloy, the editor of the Globe. I just came from seeing the name of Smith. Sitting on the bed of the dead spy, him about a job. Call him up! He’ll tell you the same Shakoff, with a revolver beside him, he waited still—
  
  thing!”
  
  impatiently, fearing with every passing moment that
  
  The sergeant took pause. “How could they have his hope was not to be realized, that Mr. B would not made a mistake?” he demanded, though over his send some one here, whom he might trail back to the shoulder he told a detective to get Molloy on the wire. spy headquarters.
  
  “Maybe they took me for some one else!” Duane
  
  If so, he rather dreaded to think what he might tell
  
  said. “Maybe they got in the wrong room!”
  
  to Mr. Knox Reeder, who at that moment was arriving
  
  in Washington in an army plane, intent on hurrying
  
  THAT idea, plus Duane’s obvious air of sincerity, straight to the White House and giving the news of suddenly made the sergeant waver. He turned, gave Fraile’s abduction to the president.
  
  orders that all guests in nearby rooms were to be held for questioning. Molloy had been reached on the phone meanwhile; and, though the sergeant took it without IT was half past two when Jack Duane and Moses entered a doorway on Pell Street in Chinatown and
  
  letting Duane speak to the editor, the Globe man must climbed a flight of stairs to a doctor’s office above.
  
  have realized what had happened, and done some quick They had visited six already, asking each whether he thinking.
  
  treated for a certain skin trouble a man who answered He told the sergeant that Duane’s story was the description of the Chinese leader of last night.
  
  absolutely true, and that he could think of no reason This time they were slated for success. The doctor,
  
  why the west coast reporter should be shot at. It must a small, bespectacled, intelligent Celestial, recognized have been a mistake.
  
  the description immediately.
  
  The sergeant turned back to Duane. The tide had
  
  “Yes, sir, he is one of my patients. He comes in
  
  turned. Moses was questioned about the men—how here twice a week for X ray treatments. If you have much he had seen—what he had done, etc.
  
  authority, I can give you his address in a moment.”
  
  But it was plain now that Duane’s story was
  
  It took several minutes for Duane to prove the
  
  believed; it was only a matter of time until he would be authority, but his countenance plus his press card released.
  
  managed to do the trick. To the big, tanned reporter, By now, the reporter had begun to chafe at this the Chinese doctor handed a card taken from his files.
  
  delay. The fact that his own life was in danger made Duane read the card, which said: him all the more eager to get started on what he believed was a good clue to running down the spies and rescuing TOYA SONG.
  
  Fraile and his daughter: that of the skin disease of the Chinese leader.
  
  The address was not many blocks away, and his
  
  All the same, it was another hour before he and heart went a little faster as he realized he had at least Moses got away. They were taken to the nearest precinct traced down one of Fraile’s abductors.
  
  station, booked as witnesses, questioned again, and so
  
  “I’ll write this down,” he said in a steady voice,
  
  on. As a matter of course, Duane’s effects were searched and proceeded to do so, then handed the card back.
  
  and his .38 automatic discovered.
  
  “Thanks terribly. I can’t say much about this, but it’s He showed a pistol permit for that, however, that police business. I want to get this Toya badly.”
  
  luckily applied in New York State, and was allowed to Duane and Moses departed. The reporter’s car was
  
  keep it.
  
  near by. They entered, started north, Duane talking
  
  So at sometime after one that afternoon, Jack Duane while they drove.
  
  and Moses, free at last from the police, stepped into He was hopeful that Toya’s address might prove to
  
  23
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  be the headquarters of the spies, where they were to come with them at once, but that Toya did not want holding Fraile and his daughter. If that were so, to go, even though the leader wanted him back at shouldn’t he get reënforcements, in the shape of either headquarters, he arguing that they had just arrived there.
  
  police or government agents?
  
  Duane’s heart thumped harder. Toya responded in
  
  He could call Molloy, he reflected, and have him guttural monologue. He seemed to have a grudge attend to that; but first he decided to reconnoiter Toya’s against the leader for ordering him out.
  
  lodging, which might not be the main spy hideout at
  
  Then:
  
  all.
  
  “Will you sit and argue?” cried one of the others.
  
  A narrow doorway was all that it consisted of, as “There is no time to be lost. If we are going back to the Duane saw the moment he braked his car on the other laboratory to hunt for that missing lens, it will have to side. Two streets came together at an angle, and the be done soon! Even now, Mr. B may have called, left building that housed Toya’s room or rooms was shaped word for us to——”
  
  like a pie wedge. Four stories in height, of brick, it Duane heard no more, but here, he thought, was
  
  looked quite large—large enough to be the headquarters another possibility, something entirely new. Had the for a number of men.
  
  spies actually lost something last night?
  
  Duane stepped from his machine and, telling Moses
  
  He pushed the safety off his weapon, having made
  
  to wait, crossed over to the doorway. To one side was a up his mind what to do. He might slip out and wait, try fish store; on the other a laundry. He guessed that the to trail these men now; and in many ways that was the building above contained rooms for rent; a tenement wisest thing to do. But if he lost them, he would never or cheap lodging house.
  
  forgive himself.
  
  Duane stepped into the doorway; his eyes lighted
  
  With a gesture for Moses to stand aside and be
  
  on four metal mail boxes that were tacked to the dirty ready, he slipped a hand around the doorknob, tried it wall. He saw that one of the boxes bore the name of gently.
  
  Toya Song, with the room number, 7.
  
  The door was locked. A faint sound came from it
  
  He climbed the stairs, having decided to move as the reporter, untrained in sleuthing, tested it. At once boldly and see what happened. He looked up a hallway the voices stopped within, and Duane cursed himself at the top—a hallway that ran through the building to for a fool.
  
  the other street, and saw another stairway at its end.
  
  He stood there a moment, not knowing what to do,
  
  Moving cautiously, he came to Room 7. Then he then backed off, releasing the knob. His mind was a stiffened, whirled, hearing feet.
  
  whirl; the gun felt wet in his hands. Those men in there The head of Moses appeared above the staircase, knew now that some one was outside; at this instant his eyes like platters. He came all the way up and they were doubtlessly going for guns.
  
  sneaked down to Duane, whispered, “Ah couldn’t let
  
  Duane whispered to Moses. Shoulder to shoulder,
  
  you come in alone, Mistah Duane.”
  
  they set themselves in the hallway. They were at the
  
  Duane shrugged, nodded, and turned his head to door together, lunging with all their strength, and before the door, from which low voices were coming. Then the charge of the big Negro the lock was shattered; the he looked at Moses and whispered, “He’s here!”
  
  door crashed in, hurling them into the room.
  
  Stumbling, still clutching his gun, Duane strove to
  
  CHAPTER VIII.
  
  pull up short and cover the men. He had not reckoned
  
  GAS.
  
  with a small rug that lay just over the threshold, on which a foot went sliding from beneath him, throwing
  
  T
  
  him headlong.
  
  HE black servant nodded his big head. His eyes
  
  The automatic went spinning just as the reporter
  
  were bulging. “Toya!” whispered Duane. “And from San Francisco saw four men springing forward some one else!”
  
  from three sides of the square, furnished room. Moses Duane reached carefully under his coat, drew his was downed with one terrific blow from a gun butt.
  
  automatic, palmed it. His heart was thumping with Duane, caught flat on his face, was knocked out just as satisfaction and anticipation. He listened. The voices readily.
  
  were low. Four men were in there, he thought. Were
  
  the other three spies, too?
  
  He could not hear much, but from the rise and fall FOR the second time in an hour or so, he opened his eyes after being in a coma and looked up at faces.
  
  of talk thought that three of the men were urging Toya But these were not the faces of policemen and 24
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  detectives; and Duane was not lying on a bed.
  
  outside and called Molloy, he now saw clearly. Should He was on the floor; his hands and feet were tied.
  
  have arranged for police or agents to come and watch
  
  The four spies, including Toya, looked down in the house, to trail the four spies when they left, without astonishment at their prisoners. Then one of them, any possibility of losing them.
  
  pointing to the still unconscious Moses, burst out, “It’s All that he had accomplished was now to be lost;
  
  them! The newspaperman and the Negro! We heard— he and Moses would probably be finished off, merely
  
  —” And he went on to tell how Mr. B had called some because he had thought he could play the sleuth—he, a time before and told of a reporter and a Negro who had mere reporter, and a reporter out of a job at that.
  
  learned of Fraile’s capture, two who had to be put out Toya was standing near the door, surveying the
  
  of the way.
  
  room and nodding quickly with satisfaction. He
  
  “Anton and two others were sent to a hotel to wait, whispered something to the others who were beside for this man! They must have failed!”
  
  him, and they, too, nodded, their eyes going to a point Jack Duane nodded grimly. “They failed,” he on the side wall.
  
  agreed.
  
  Duane threw his glance that way.
  
  Toya, his loathsome face contorted with alarm,
  
  It was the gas jet at which they were looking—and
  
  stooped over, grabbed up the reporter by the throat and the blond fellow from San Francisco suddenly flung him across the room against a cot. One of the understood.
  
  others rushed to the door, peered out, closed and locked One of the spies came back, heading for the
  
  it. Apparently, the disturbance had gone unnoticed.
  
  window. Picking up a newspaper, he tore it into strips Clenching and unclenching his big hands, the and choked the cracks at top and bottom. Returning, Chinaman who had led the raid on Fraile’s last night he joined the others in scanning the scene, having suddenly exclaimed, “We’ll finish them here, and then dragged what rugs there were closer to the door.
  
  leave.” He strode over to Duane, jammed his head
  
  “It is good,” said Toya. “Now we must fly. We are
  
  against the wall and, half choking him, demanded how going again, you said? To Fraile’s?”
  
  he had learned of what had happened the night before.
  
  “If my guess is right, almost at once.”
  
  But before the journalist could even attempt to
  
  “Come. Turn it on!”
  
  answer, one of the others broke through with
  
  The four went out, shutting the lock-shattered door,
  
  explanations. He cited Barsino’s story of seeing the against which the rugs were stuffed as well as possible Negro on the road. This white man, with him, must from the inside. But not before one of them had turned have been inside Fraile’s fence, looking on.
  
  the gas jet wide open.
  
  For a moment the ugly Toya looked frightened.
  
  “And there is that detective, too! The one who attacked us!”
  
  “MOSES.”
  
  The big Negro on the floor opened his eyes,
  
  “I say we must finish these and leave! At once! rolled his head. “Yasah, Mistah Duane.”
  
  Now you can understand the need for haste, maybe!”
  
  “We’re in trouble. Bad trouble.”
  
  By now, Toya understood. Saying nothing more,
  
  “Yasah, Mistah Duane!”
  
  he threw the bound, husky Duane to his back on the
  
  Jack Duane stared at the ceiling. Through his mind
  
  bed, snatched up more rope from a tangled heap on the ran a fleeting panorama of what had happened since floor that appeared to have come from a trunk in the last midnight, when he had seen the lights of Fraile’s corner, and proceeded to tie the reporter down to the place through the trees and had decided to stop for gas; bed.
  
  he marveled at the adventure he had stumbled on.
  
  Over his shoulder meanwhile, he snarled
  
  Adventure, though, was hardly the word to express
  
  instructions to the others, who at once went to work on his present situation. It looked more like a sort of Moses. In a few moments the two intruders were both suicide.
  
  thoroughly helpless, the white man on the bed, the
  
  He had only himself to blame, he knew, for no one
  
  Negro pinioned in spread-eagle fashion on the floor, had asked him to play the freelance in attempting to between a radiator and a heavy clothes closet.
  
  trace the men who had kidnapped Doctor Fraile and
  
  Moses’s eyes had fluttered open during this process. his daughter. Molloy had suggested Nick Carter and, He closed them again, almost at once.
  
  though Carter was busy on something else, Duane could As for Duane, he was cursing himself for the way well have gone somewhere else, and thus washed his he had bungled this job from the very moment when hands of the matter. It was, after all, government he arrived outside the door. He should have crept business, and Duane had enough to worry about on his 25
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  Before he could move, an oath sounded from the roadside and two 26
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  men--one of them Toya--rushed at him with drawn guns, firing.
  
  27
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  own, what with trying to get a job.
  
  The gas was strong now, and he coughed. Moses, too,
  
  He wasn’t sorry, however, even now. He could not burst into a fit of sneezing that left tears running down have picked a more vital business in which to seek his ebony face.
  
  excitement. After what he had been told by J. J. Molloy, Still the jet hissed on, as though the room were a
  
  he reckoned that what he had been doing was just about balloon which was being inflated.
  
  as important as anything in the country today.
  
  Jack Duane went back to working on his bonds.
  
  And then, too, there was Doctor Fraile’s daughter— There was a knot just under his chin where the rope He shook himself out of his momentary reverie. had been pulled tight around the bedpost, tied there to The smell of gas was in the room. He began to fight his keep his shoulders flat.
  
  bonds, throwing himself this way and that; and on the By squirming and sinking lower in the bed, he
  
  floor Moses started doing the same thing.
  
  managed to ease the knot, until it slipped up near his It was a couple of minutes before the reporter lips. Then he tried to get his teeth on it, to pull it loose.
  
  realized that he was wasting his strength, that his only Unfitted for such subtlety, Moses had resumed his
  
  chance of getting free was by getting his fingers on threshing on the floor. The big Negro’s two hundred one of the knots.
  
  and thirty pounds sounded like a piano being moved.
  
  “Take it easy,” he called to Moses, noticing that
  
  Duane could accomplish nothing with his teeth
  
  the gas smell was a little stronger. The hiss as it came against the knot. The gas was thick in the room now, through the jets was a kind of venomous reminder that and his head had begun to spin. A glance showed that they did not have forever. The spies, he thought, were Moses’s efforts were getting weaker; a glazed look had on their way to the headquarters.
  
  come over the big Negro’s eyes.
  
  And from there, they were going back to Fraile’s
  
  Desperately, the reporter tried to shout—a final
  
  laboratory in the Catskills to get something lost or effort. Scarcely a sound came forth; only a weak croak.
  
  forgotten last night, judging from what they had said.
  
  Silence came suddenly from Moses. He was out. Duane
  
  If only he could get away! If only some one else kept on trying to get his teeth on the knot.
  
  knew that fact, which now loomed as the one hope of
  
  It could not last long. The small room, sealed up,
  
  getting their trail, finding the main hiding place.
  
  was laden with the odorous atmosphere. A terrific
  
  “Find a knot!” he snapped to Moses. “Get your headache, that had been creeping up on Duane for the teeth or fingers on it. You won’t escape that way. This past fifteen minutes, now struck him with full force.
  
  rope is too strong.”
  
  He sank back, writhing. His eyes protruded, and his
  
  The Negro said: “I’ll yell, Mistah Duane! Dere sho mouth came open wide as he fought vainly for the oughta be somebody else in dis heah place!”
  
  oxygen that wasn’t there.
  
  Duane wondered why he had not thought of that.
  
  After a few more minutes, he slackened on the bed.
  
  Capping that, came the question: why had the spies
  
  not thought of it, too—and gagged them?
  
  NOT very far away, just then, the private investigator for Mr. Knox Reeder, the detective who called
  
  A SHOUT from Moses reverberated through the himself Smith, was pulling on his hat and preparing to room. Duane’s eyes flickered to the one window, abandon the room of Shakoff.
  
  which had been stuffed with paper. His heart sank, and After spending four hours—except for a brief
  
  he partially understood why the men had not troubled interlude when he slipped out to telephone his house—
  
  to gag them. The window gave on an air shaft; the rooms in sitting on the dead spy’s bed, gun at hand and hoping above and below might be untenanted, even if Moses’s that Mr. B would send some one here to get Shakoff’s cry escaped through the stuffing.
  
  effects, he had now decided that the hope was not to be
  
  “Heyy-ulp!” yelled Moses, stretching his mouth realized.
  
  to the size of a grapefruit. “Muuhhh-dah! Pohhhlice!”
  
  Either the spy leader had not even considered the
  
  It echoed and reechoed. To Duane, it seemed possibility that his headquarters might be traced through impossible that some one in the tenement or lodging the missing Shakoff, or he had known from the start house, whatever it was, would not hear; or at least some that the dead man would have nothing dangerous in one on the street. He had forgotten how city traffic his lodging.
  
  drowns out other noises.
  
  Whatever the case, the Shakoff clue had proved
  
  For another moment Moses yelled, then subsided. valueless. If anything were to be done by Mr. B, it would Duane shouted on his own, shouted until he was hoarse. have been attempted by this time. And that left the 28
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  secretary’s investigator with practically nothing on like the two that Stanislaus told me had——”
  
  which to base a hunt for the place where Doctor Fraile He dashed in, turned off the gas, crashed out a
  
  and his daughter were captives.
  
  window with a scooped-up chair. Jerking a knife from
  
  He pulled open the door and stepped out into the his pocket, he slashed the bonds of the big Negro on hall. Where to turn now? It was sixteen hours since the floor, dragged him into the hall.
  
  Fraile had been abducted and his invention stolen last When he had done the same thing for the big,
  
  night; almost five since he had given the facts to tanned blond man who had been on the bed, he stared Secretary Reeder at the Battery.
  
  again, rubbing his cheek, muttering: “It’s them, for sure!
  
  By now, the secretary was in Washington, had The ones who tried to see me this morning!”
  
  already notified the president. By now agents of the
  
  Dropping to his knees, he applied artificial
  
  intelligence service were doubtless pouring into New respiration to the white man. Jack Duane’s face was York City by the dozen; and by this time, too, Mr. B blue. After several minutes, he coughed; his eyelids and his spies might be spiriting away their prisoners fluttered. In the house, meanwhile, some one else had and the stolen invention, to some place even more smelled the gas, had set up a cry, and people were impossible to locate than their present hideout.
  
  running.
  
  The man called Smith went down the hall toward
  
  Duane looked up. The world was spinning; he still
  
  the stairs. Just what would be his next move he didn’t thought he had reached the end as he looked into the know. There was still the question of the “leak” of Tait, face of a stranger. As for Smith, though the mystery of Lomas and Nye—but he pinned small faith on that for these men was baffling him, a more urgent problem immediate results.
  
  was back in his mind.
  
  He had stepped out, telephoned his office an hour
  
  He had to get away before police arrived, asked
  
  before. There had been no word from the three assistants questions, delayed him.
  
  whom he had detailed to do certain things regarding
  
  “Man—fellow—listen—Molloy——” The blond
  
  those civilian members of the war council. His servant’s man was choking out words to this man he had never voice had told him instead of two oddly-matched seen before. “Mr. B—spies—going back to Fraile’s—
  
  visitors—visitors who had called that morning, in lost something last night—tell Molloy——”
  
  whom the man had no interest whatsoever.
  
  He sank back. The words he had uttered, had they
  
  Pondering what he was to do next, Smith hurried been said to a perfect stranger, as he thought, would down the stairs to the second floor of the triangular have been meaningless. But the man, though amazed, building, and was making for the last flight, when understood. He said: “Good Lord!” And then stared something stopped him.
  
  down. His eyes suddenly flashed with hope.
  
  The smell of gas. It came down the hall to his
  
  nostrils—thick, alarming—too strong to be normal.
  
  CHAPTER IX.
  
  He turned back, looked quickly up and down the BACK TO FRAILE’S.
  
  hall lined with doors. He was in no mood for wasting
  
  time. This place was a rat trap; the gas escape might be natural enough; his only interest here had been in THAT night. In Washington, a conference at the Shakoff’s room upstairs, and that was a dead issue now.
  
  White House that included the president, the
  
  But the idea that something might be wrong, that cabinet, the army staff and special advisers.
  
  some one might be attempting suicide, kept him from
  
  In New York, in the art museum on Forty-seventh
  
  going his way peremptorily. Suddenly he strode down Street, another conference between Mr. B and his spies, the hall, stopping and sniffing before each door.
  
  the purpose of which was to plan a swift flight as soon as Toya and his men returned with the missing lens
  
  THE smell got stronger. Conviction that somebody from Fraile’s, to which they had started an hour before.
  
  was trying to end his life spurred his movements.
  
  In New York also, a car containing Jack Duane and
  
  He came to a door numbered 7, sniffed, and was certain Moses, made as fast as possible for the place in the that this was the room. He tried the knob; the door Catskills.
  
  pushed in, and he entered.
  
  And farther along the road to Fraile’s laboratory
  
  What he saw, on the bed and floor, held him upstate, a coupe contained investigator Smith. And motionless a moment in utter astonishment. “The several miles behind it, a limousine with Toya and four devil!” he muttered as he ducked his head. “They look other spies.
  
  An hour or more had passed since Duane had
  
  29
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  regained complete consciousness in the tenement of that Fraile’s captors had been so careless as to lose Toya’s room. He had found police about him, and a something from the death-ray cylinder—a cylinder crowd.
  
  which they had taken such risks to get. But at this stage, Discovery that his bonds had been slashed, the gas it was the only hope.
  
  turned off, a window broken open, had left him baffled; By eight-thirty they were within fifteen miles of
  
  though somewhere was a memory of a lean face the tucked-away spot in the woods where Duane had bending over him, of words spoken.
  
  happened on Fraile’s laboratory. Cars had passed them The police had been inquisitive, but Duane had both ways, and the reporter had looked searchingly at fallen back on complete ignorance. It had not been easy all going north, but without seeing anything that looked to make the story stick, but he had managed it. Now, suspicious.
  
  with that behind him, he was off to make a final effort Another half hour of driving, and Duane knew that
  
  to rescue Doctor Fraile and his daughter.
  
  the long sheet-metal shed which he had thought last
  
  If what the spies had said was really coming to night looked like a couple of Pullman cars, was only pass—that a contingent was returning to the Fraile place half a mile or so ahead.
  
  tonight to get something lost there—then there was still He slowed down, until he was running at a crawl.
  
  a chance of trailing them as they returned, letting them Moses perked up. Duane, tense now, watching the sides lead him to their headquarters.
  
  of the road, said: “I want to find a place to run into the All that bothered the San Francisco reporter now woods; get the car out of sight.”
  
  was the mystery of how he had been rescued. Some
  
  Moses, comprehending, watched his own side.
  
  one had certainly done it, and Duane even had a vague After a hundred yards they saw an old road, over which notion that he had muttered something to this man— trees hung, that afforded what they sought.
  
  something about the spies going back to Fraile’s
  
  Duane drew up ahead of it, backed around until
  
  tonight.
  
  the old sedan was twenty feet off the road and well
  
  Delirious, he had thought himself finished, had screened by the dusk and woods.
  
  grabbed at any straw.
  
  He got out, slapping his pocket to make sure the
  
  The road unwound before his car as he switched gun was handy. “I’m going on ahead, Moses, and take on the lights and settled down for the seventy-mile a look at the place. If Toya Song and the others are drive. Moses, still badly shaken from the ordeal in the there now, I’ll come right back here. We’ll wait until room, the excitement of the day, was not doing much they start back. If they’re not”—he paused, pondered—
  
  talking. Only now and then he turned his black face, to ”I’ll come back, anyway, and we’ll watch the road to cast a round-eyed and wondering glance at his master. see them arrive.”
  
  “How’re you feeling now, Moses?”
  
  The Negro nodded.
  
  After a hesitation: “Well, I’se been bettah, Mistah
  
  “Stay here in the car. Don’t move. I’m not walking
  
  Duane.”
  
  into any danger, so you needn’t get protective. All I
  
  “Big day we’re having, eh?”
  
  want to do is sneak up and see if they’re there.”
  
  “It sho is, suh! I’ve been thinkin’, maybe you
  
  “Yasah.”
  
  oughta gone somewhere else to look fer a job.”
  
  Duane made his way back to the road, peered out
  
  Duane smiled, a trifle grimly. “No,” he said, “I’m cautiously, listened, to make certain that no car was glad I came here.”
  
  coming at this moment, then trotted across to the other side and vanished in the woods.
  
  THEY crossed from New Jersey into New York The laboratory was on this side of the road, half a about eight o’clock. It was getting chilly. Duane mile farther. He had seen the high steel fence, guessed thought wonderingly of his trip down this road late last that it did not extend this far. It would be easy enough night, or rather early this morning, heading for New to scale it, and he wondered why something more York after witnessing Fraile’s kidnapping. Though he protective had not been provided for the war had known then that he would do something about what department’s ace scientist. Possibly, he mused, they did he had seen, he could hardly have anticipated the not want to draw too much attention to his secret excitement of today.
  
  laboratory.
  
  If only, he thought, the spies went ahead with their
  
  The ground was muggy, the trees still moist from
  
  projected return to Fraile’s tonight. He was not entirely last night’s rain. It was not hard to walk quietly, even certain that he had heard correctly; it seemed strange for this journalist who had spent the bulk of his life on 30
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  city streets. He kept a hand on the gun in his pocket, suspicions, thanks to the traffic.
  
  more for the feeling of confidence it gave him than
  
  After that, it would simply be a matter of keeping
  
  anything else. He had no expectation of using it.
  
  a safe distance until they were back at their
  
  After fifteen minutes of careful advance, he caught headquarters, or whatever they called the place where his first sight of the fence that surrounded Fraile’s land. they were keeping Fraile and his daughter. In New York Trees on its other side still obscured any vision of the City, probably. It seemed a certainty that after this laboratory, which was not far away now. Duane moved expedition they would go nowhere else.
  
  along the fence until he found a sapling that grew close With a last grim look at the waiting limousine, the
  
  beside it on his side, and up this he shinnied, until he lighted laboratory, the San Francisco reporter turned was level with the top.
  
  and beat a stealthy retreat.
  
  After that, it was easy work to get over the fence.
  
  He was back at his car a little later, to find Moses
  
  Memory hit him again as he crouched momentarily on still sitting rigidly upright in the front seat. In a low the inside. A picture of himself last night—doing just voice, Duane told him what he had found. Moses, this thing after having been hoisted by Moses—came gulping with inward excitement, nodded. The reporter back to him.
  
  slipped in beside him.
  
  He went on, more cautiously now, and very soon
  
  He wanted a cigarette, but an excess of caution bade
  
  he caught his first sight of the long shed that was Fraile’s him forego it. It was possible that the spies had left a laboratory. Skirting a little, he could even glimpse the lookout on the road near the gate, that the spark of a cottage near by which he had noticed last night. No match might be seen through the trees.
  
  lights were showing in either place; but that did not Duane settled back stolidly, to wait for what was
  
  worry Duane.
  
  to come.
  
  He could see also a dark limousine that stood at
  
  It was almost an hour before he heard the dim hum
  
  one end of the shed.
  
  of the spies’ limousine as it came out from Fraile’s road and into the country “highway.” The hum increased; in DUANE’S heart pumped a little harder. They had a very few minutes the glare of headlights picked out come! That these were the spies, here already, he objects on the road in front of Duane.
  
  had no doubt whatever. Had he entertained any, they
  
  For the first time he wondered if his own machine
  
  would have been speedily dissipated by a voice that had been heard as it arrived here and backed around.
  
  called hoarsely from inside, “I can’t find the light
  
  He wouldn’t allow himself to think of that. The
  
  switch.”
  
  spies’ car came on, growing louder and brighter as it Toya!
  
  gathered speed on the way back to New York. Duane
  
  At the same instant, almost, a man appeared out of nudged Moses, and they both sank lower, scarcely the woods not far from the reporter, where he had showing their heads above the bottom of the seemingly been searching the road that led to Fraile’s windshield.
  
  cottage. He made his way to the door at the nearer end That was wasted effort Duane realized, even as they
  
  of the laboratory—it was still open from last night— did it. If the spies should happen to see that old and entered.
  
  convertible sedan tucked back in the woods, they would Lights went on in the laboratory. Duane backed not need the sight of men in it to become alarmed.
  
  off softly into the woods, until there was no possibility But the limousine went past without a head in it
  
  of being seen. Now for the rest, he was telling himself. turning, as far as the reporter could make out. He Once again, luck had been with him. But what lay ahead glimpsed two men in the front, three in the back, and required work and the utmost caution.
  
  thought he recognized the round Oriental head of Toya, He would sneak back to the car and Moses, would though he could not be sure.
  
  wait there until the spies left. Then, when they had a He elbowed Moses again, saying hoarsely, “Wait!”
  
  start of maybe half a mile, he would take out after in as the big Negro threatened to straighten up and burst his car, driving without lights.
  
  into speech.
  
  There were no turn-offs, he had noticed as they
  
  Silent, they sat for three more minutes, while the
  
  arrived, for two or three miles. The gravel road was noise of the retreating car grew dimmer and dimmer.
  
  not much used. Six miles south, it ran into the concrete Then Duane jerked up, snapped on the ignition and highway, and once on that Duane thought he could pressed his starter, went into gear.
  
  safely follow the spies without arousing their
  
  The old sedan struggled to escape from the mud of
  
  31
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  the woods. A near panic clutched Duane’s insides as head crashing against the windshield as he doubled up.
  
  the thought of being mired here flitted through his mind. The spy looked, hesitated, then turned and ran like mad What a farcical ending for his expedition!
  
  up the road.
  
  THAT, however, was spared him. The tires caught SILENCE fell for two minutes, except for the distant and rolled them out to the road, and Duane twisted
  
  sound of excited talk, of cursing. Then, followed
  
  the wheel. They set out after the now-invisible by two other spies, Toya’s companion returned at a run.
  
  limousine.
  
  The trio stopped and looked down at the butchered
  
  He drove without lights, as planned. They could Toya, looked into the sedan—a car which contained no longer hear the sound of the spies’ car because of two unknown men to them, both apparently as dead as their own, but no misgivings assailed the reporter on Toya.
  
  that score. They were ahead; they could not get away.
  
  “Fill them full of lead!” cried one. “They got Toya!”
  
  Moreover, this was no road on which to risk speeding.
  
  Guns in hand, two of them leaned forward to deliver
  
  A mile was covered, and Jack Duane’s nerves had the shots.
  
  steadied after the first excitement. Something suddenly
  
  “Wait!” yelled another suddenly.
  
  loomed in the road ahead—something that had not been
  
  All poised, listening. Running feet were coming
  
  there as they arrived.
  
  toward them down the road, from the direction of
  
  Scarcely able to see more than the edges of the Fraile’s. It was too dark to see, but some one else was road, he hesitated, then tentatively kicked his brake. coming.
  
  The sedan slowed just as Duane saw that the something They stared at each other for a split-second of
  
  was a board laid crosswise in the road. Even then, his frightened surprise.
  
  mind was more on the limousine half a mile ahead than
  
  “Grab Toya. Let’s go!”
  
  on this trifling obstruction. He touched the gas.
  
  They heaved the big corpse between them and half
  
  The next instant he realized his mistake, and staggered, half ran away from the sedan. Around the realized, too, that something had gone wrong.
  
  bend in the road not far away, they came upon the
  
  His two front tires went out with an overlapping limousine, where the fifth man waited behind the wheel.
  
  bang! that sounded like doom in his ears. His car
  
  “Toya is dead,” announced one, as the Chinaman
  
  stopped. He started to jump out, opened the door.
  
  was dumped unceremoniously into the back, “but we
  
  Before he could move, an oath sounded from the finished that pair, and we have the missing lens. They roadside and two men—one of them Toya—rushed at won’t catch us. Let’s go!” The big car leaped ahead as him with drawn guns, firing.
  
  the three piled in. It roared away and disappeared up Duane jerked out his own automatic and fired point- the road, heading back to New York.
  
  blank at the nearest of the pair. It staggered him, but no more.
  
  CHAPTER X.
  
  Stunned, not knowing yet where he had erred, but THE TRAIL.
  
  realizing clearly enough that he had stepped into a trap, he yelled for Moses to duck down, and shot again.
  
  Toya fell back, leveled his weapon, snarled, “You BACK at Duane’s sedan, the scene remained will follow us, eh?” and pulled the trigger three times.
  
  unchanged for a minute or two. The running feet,
  
  He had not recognized Duane.
  
  coming closer, were louder, though unaccompanied by
  
  The first shot missed. The second broke Duane’s any voice. A dim figure came out of the darkness.
  
  left arm. The third split his cheek.
  
  It was the private investigator for the secretary of
  
  He slumped in the seat, unconscious, and Toya war. He saw Duane’s sedan, jerked to a halt, stared lunged forward, his gun aimed at Duane’s head.
  
  ahead as he heard the limousine getting away, then
  
  “Yow!” yelled Moses in savage rage, then rose up swung and looked into the machine beside him. Two like a tiger. In the very face of Toya the big Negro figures he saw there; their postures were expressive.
  
  emptied his gun. The Chinaman went down with his
  
  A flashlight flicked on and played over the faces.
  
  head almost shot away. The second man, mouth agape,
  
  “Damn!” muttered the man, and then: “But I might
  
  recovered himself just in time. With an oath he raised have guessed it! It’s the same pair!”
  
  his gun. It exploded twice.
  
  He set to work swiftly, stopping only once or twice
  
  Moses moaned weakly, then pitched forward, his to gaze down the road in the direction taken by the spies’ car. Strangely, there was not the frustration on 32
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  Jack Duane . . . had lost his head. In full view of the house, he started a dash around his hiding place, to charge the hide-out.
  
  33
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  his face one might have expected.
  
  question. Who was this man? How had he got here?
  
  By the time Duane recovered consciousness, the Was it possible that he had been Duane’s saviour in the investigator had removed both him and Moses from tenement?
  
  the sedan, had bandaged their wounds as best he could, The man, proceeding, cut off the blond fellow’s
  
  was hastily throwing water in their faces.
  
  thoughts. “Whoever you are, I’ve got something to
  
  Duane himself, though in considerable pain, was thank you for. If it hadn’t been for you and what you not hurt a good deal. Moses, however, would be out of told me there in that tenement, I wouldn’t be out here.
  
  the picture for some time. The bullets of Toya’s But who are you? How did you get mixed up in this companion had both found a lodging in the big Negro’s business? Was that why you called at my house this body, and though he was in no immediate danger, he morning?”
  
  was due for the hospital.
  
  Duane’s mind was having trouble. He batted his
  
  The reporter, starting up from his prone position, eyes. Finally the other’s last words sank into his on the damp road, saw that the lights of his sedan were consciousness, gradually took effect, and he turned on, illuminating the road, saw the tall, lean straightened like a shot. “You—you——” he said, detective bending over him. A streamlined coupe was pointing. “Do you mean to say you’re Nick Carter, the now in position in back of his car.
  
  private detective?”
  
  Duane stared.
  
  Knox Reeder’s investigator smiled briefly.
  
  “Yes,” the man said swiftly, “it’s me again. Don’t “Correct. I’m Carter.”
  
  talk now. We haven’t time. Can you move?”
  
  Duane swallowed. “And you’ve been on this case
  
  all the time? This spy business? This thing of finding DUANE raised himself tentatively, discovered that those men that have Fraile, his daughter and his his left arm was throbbing fiercely. It was bound invention?”
  
  up; the hand had been poked into his coat. Yet he asked
  
  “Of course,” Nick Carter said. “I was hired by the
  
  himself a question. Who was this man? His face loomed secretary of war a week ago to run down this espionage as if out of a dream.
  
  ring that kidnapped Fraile last night and stole his
  
  The reporter’s cheek was still bleeding, despite invention. That’s why my servant turned you down this swabbing. Nonetheless, he managed to find his feet morning. That’s how I happened to be in that house with the other’s assistance.
  
  today, where I rescued you and your man. I was after
  
  But when he saw his car there, saw Moses lying another spy who lived a floor above in the same house.”
  
  like a dead man near by, saw the empty road—
  
  everything rushed back to him. He burst out with: DUANE, trying hard to get all this through his head,
  
  “Where are they? They got away! They trapped me!
  
  began to see light. He had not been the only one
  
  Must have seen me.” He whirled on the other. “And at work to rescue Fraile. The man—why, it must have who the devil——”
  
  been Carter who attacked the spies on this road last
  
  “In my car,” snapped the man peremptorily. “I said night as they left with Fraile!
  
  not to talk!”
  
  They were speeding now along the country road,
  
  Dazed, disheartened and hopeless. Jack Duane retracing the course that Duane had taken an hour and pulled himself into the coupe and slumped behind the a half before.
  
  wheel.
  
  The reporter looked at the profile of this famous
  
  The man was lifting Moses. He did it as though investigator, of whom he had heard so much. Nick the huge Negro were a child. Presently, Duane’s man Carter. So this was he. Not a demi-god or a Sherlock or was deposited in the rumble seat, and the other anything like that. He was a quite ordinary-looking motioned for the reporter to move over.
  
  man, in fact, except for a certain something about his Duane was too foggy to resist or ask questions. He face—a hardness, a blandness, strength. Duane slid aside, and the man got in quickly, started the motor. remembered how the detective had handled Moses.
  
  They moved off, leaving the reporter’s sedan behind.
  
  “Where are we going?” he demanded abruptly.
  
  The moment they were under way, the investigator
  
  “South,” was the laconic answer.
  
  turned his head.
  
  “But what about the spies?” Duane said. “We’ve
  
  “Now,” he said, “who the devil are you, fellow, lost them!” And then: “If you came out here to do the and what are you up to?”
  
  same thing I did, what were you figuring on doing to
  
  The reporter felt like coming back with the same follow them?”
  
  34
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  Carter turned his head. He studied the other, actually was at this time. The man beside him again narrow-eyed. What he saw must have reassured him, held a moment’s silence. He seemed to be thinking.
  
  though his voice was curt as he said: “For a man in
  
  Then he said: “Well, he’s right. I’m not
  
  your position, you ask a lot of questions. How about exaggerating when I say it’s the biggest case I’ve ever answering mine? I still want to know who you are, how worked on. And that covers a good many years.”
  
  you got into this business, how you happened to try to get me this morning?”
  
  The road rushed past them as they sped on. The AT that moment, he went on, the secretary of war was undoubtedly conferring with the president on
  
  private detective added, “Don’t worry about my plans, what was to be done. There ought to be ninety per cent or the spies.”
  
  of the intelligence service massed in New York by now.
  
  Duane suddenly wondered what that meant.
  
  If Fraile was not rescued, if the death ray remained
  
  Something about the tone gave him hope. He drew a in the hands of the enemy spies, and it looked as though deep breath, then launched into his story, his name, it might reach their own war department, it was a good where he was from, how he had witnessed Fraile’s chance that Washington would decide to declare war abduction last night from the roof of his laboratory. He without further delay.
  
  then explained his visit to J. J. Molloy that morning, Duane goggled at that. “You really mean it? But
  
  how he had been recommended to Nick Carter, then why?”
  
  decided to do something on his own.
  
  “To get a jump on the enemy before they have an
  
  When he came to the point of tracing Toya through opportunity to produce the death ray and profit by it.
  
  the skin disease he had noticed—which he had known Only my guess, of course, but it seems likely.”
  
  required X ray treatments—the detective at his side
  
  Duane said nothing for a moment or two. The
  
  nodded in appreciation. The rest was brief.
  
  detective’s car was making top speed. “Listen,” he said, The spies in Toya’s room had caught him and almost tearfully, “tell me where we’re going!”
  
  Moses; it was during their preparation for the gas ordeal
  
  “To find the spies,” said Nick Carter quietly. “To
  
  that Duane had learned that something had been lost or rescue Fraile. Where did you think?”
  
  forgotten at Fraile’s, that they were going back for it Duane stammered, “But how—how——? You
  
  tonight. Duane, coming to after Carter’s rescue, had mean by the license plates or something like that?”
  
  remembered that as the only remaining chance of
  
  Carter grinned patronizingly. “You didn’t think
  
  finding their headquarters.
  
  they’d be that dumb, did you? They’ve probably got
  
  “So you rushed out here,” Carter nodded. “But they three sets of plates in that car.”
  
  spotted you or your car somehow, blocked the play.”
  
  “But how, then?” Duane yelled. “They’re out of
  
  Duane looked at the passing woods. They were sight now? How do you know where they’re going?”
  
  almost to the concrete highway. He began, “For crying The car stopped abruptly, pulling to the side of the
  
  out loud, Carter, tell me what’s up? Are we sunk? Have concrete under the private detective’s capable hands.
  
  we lost the spies, or have you——”
  
  He jabbed Duane with an elbow, bent over and pointed
  
  “Hold it!” The words were clipped out. Nick Carter to the roadway. “See that?”
  
  suddenly was thinking of something else. His head
  
  The San Francisco reporter leaned, peered out.
  
  turned slightly as he said, “How much do you really Something quite tiny glowed visibly, like a firefly, there know about what this means? This abduction of Fraile, on the concrete highway. Before Duane could speak, the theft of his invention?”
  
  Nick Carter had started the coupe off again, and they Duane said: “About the government, you mean? shot ahead. The reporter was just finding his voice after The war department? The coming war?”
  
  three hundred yards had been traversed, when the
  
  One eyebrow lifted slightly in the detective’s face. machine jerked to another stop.
  
  He said nothing for a moment. The headlights had
  
  “And that?” said Carter.
  
  suddenly swung onto concrete; they curved out and
  
  Duane looked. There was another of those tiny,
  
  increased speed. Here was some traffic, in contrast to glowing spots on the highway.
  
  the road they had just left.
  
  Duane grabbed his companion’s arm. “What is it?
  
  “That’s what I mean,” the detective said then. “So You mean they’re dropping those as they go along, you know——”
  
  without knowing it?” His excitement was reaching a
  
  Duane said that J. J. Molloy had revealed to him pitch. “You mean you managed to put something in how vital the disappearance of Fraile and his death ray their car that would——”
  
  35
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  His voice was drowned in the wind as they shot CHAPTER XI.
  
  ahead again and increased speed, until they were “WE HAVE SUCCEEDED!”
  
  making forty miles an hour. Not until then did the
  
  detective vouchsafe to explain. “That’s about it. Not in the car, but under it. I got out to Fraile’s place before DOCTOR FRAILE put down his pen and stood up.
  
  For an hour he had been busy, forced at a gun’s
  
  they did, bringing what I needed with me. While they point to write out a complete explanation of the death-were inside, I sneaked under the car and attached it. ray gun, to be smuggled out if anything should happen After that I just waited for them to leave, having parked to the gun itself.
  
  my car farther up the road. There wasn’t any particular Before him, on the table at the side of the main
  
  rush then.”
  
  meeting room of the spy headquarters, lay dozens of
  
  Duane, now for the first time, regarded the man sheets of paper, covered with fine writing and figures beside him with amazement and admiration, muttered and drawings. He laid down the pen and stood up.
  
  in a low voice, “And I thought I was being smart!”
  
  Mr. B said, “That is good.” He turned and spoke to
  
  Carter smiled, but said no more. His face had gone a pale-haired young man near by who was busily using grim again; his eyes probed the highway ahead, as he a typewriter, asked him how long before he would have increased the speed of his powerful coupe to seventy copied Fraile’s work. Another half hour, said the young miles. Along here the road ran straight without man.
  
  crossroads. It was hardly necessary to watch for the
  
  Fraile pushed back his chair, walked across the big
  
  telltale specks of light that marked the trail every three room to where his daughter, Jocelyn, sat stiffly, her or four hundred yards.
  
  hands in her lap, a man on either side.
  
  F
  
  Mr. B looked at his watch, glanced at the back door,
  
  OR a quarter of an hour they drove in silence. By frowned and muttered: “They should be here by now!”
  
  now they were fifteen miles or more nearer New
  
  Nobody answered him, for every one else was
  
  York than was Fraile’s laboratory. The spies in their harboring the same thought. It was four hours and a limousine were probably fifteen miles farther. But it quarter since Toya and the others had left to seek the didn’t matter! Duane thought suddenly.
  
  missing lens. Their limousine should have averaged
  
  “What is it?” he asked.
  
  almost forty miles an hour. They should not have taken
  
  “Phosphorous in solution. In a big metal can with longer than thirty minutes to find the lens.
  
  an adjustable nipple.”
  
  A knock sounded suddenly at the back door; some
  
  Duane nodded. “Suppose it runs out?”
  
  one leaped to open it. A moment later Toya’s four
  
  “There’s enough in the can for a hundred miles.”
  
  companions rushed into the room. One had a bloody
  
  Again, silence. Duane thought of Moses, turned in arm; all were excited, though triumphant.
  
  the seat and peered back. The big Negro was riding
  
  Mr. B barked at once: “Where is Toya?”
  
  peacefully enough, huddled up in the rumble. Carter
  
  They told him. The spy leader did not stir as he
  
  said above the wind that they would take time to leave listened. The others, having risen, circled about during him at a hospital.
  
  the brief recital.
  
  “And you’re sure,” said Duane, “you’re sure that Mr. B clenched his hands. He turned and pounced
  
  we can’t lose the trail of the spies’ car?”
  
  on one of the three who, with Toya, had bound and left Nick Carter thought a moment, then nodded Duane and Moses to die of gas, and he shook the man tentatively. “I’m practically sure,” he stated. “The only until his teeth rattled.
  
  trouble is, it will take time. When they get in the city
  
  “It was them again!” he screamed. “You fools! It
  
  we’ll need three cars to diverge at each intersection. was that reporter and his servant! They escaped you in I’ve got assistants waiting for me; our cars will have that room for the second time!”
  
  two-way radio communication—but, even so, it will
  
  Blank astonishment gave way to incredulity. Mr.
  
  take time to follow the trail to the headquarters.”
  
  B raged. The men who had helped finish Duane in
  
  “Time!” murmured Duane. “Time!”
  
  Toya’s room swore that they had left him helpless. The
  
  “That’s it,” nodded the other grimly. “We don’t tirade was cut short by a shout from one of the new know what they’ll be doing!”
  
  arrivals: “What does it matter now? They are finished this time for certain!”
  
  The spy leader paused, looked at the speaker. “If—
  
  you—should—be—wrong—this time”—his voice
  
  36
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  said, and it was a terrible thing to hear—”you will pray his ears.
  
  for death!”
  
  Fraile’s hands came up and clutched the shoulders
  
  The threat was received in surly silence. Mr. B fell of Jocelyn.
  
  back a pace, wiped a hand across his forehead, sweat
  
  “And you did not say so this morning?” shouted
  
  gleamed above the mask. Then he snapped his fingers. the spy leader in rage. “You let me think that all you
  
  “The lens!”
  
  needed was that lens? When you knew all the time—
  
  A man passed it over—a round, thick crystal of —” His own anger choked him.
  
  strange-appearing blue glass.
  
  “Yes,” was the answer.
  
  “Where is the corpse?”
  
  Mr. B backed off, took in a deep breath. Along the
  
  “Toya? Outside, in the car.”
  
  wall, the dozen and a half men and women of motley
  
  Mr. B looked at the glass in his hand, muttered, “I nationalities waited for what was to come next. Finally: wonder how they escaped,” and then wheeled around
  
  “Is it complete as it is?” asked the thick, controlled to Doctor Fraile. ‘This is it?”
  
  voice of the leader.
  
  The scientist, perforce, nodded. It was the missing
  
  “Except for the transformer, it is complete,” nodded
  
  lens, true enough; matching exactly the description Fraile. His arms went around his daughter as he added Toya had forced out of him immediately before leaving. reasonably: “What is the point of a demonstration for
  
  “Get the cylinder,” clipped Mr. B over his shoulder. you, anyway? It would mean nothing, would be merely
  
  “There is no time to be lost.”
  
  a sideshow. Your scientists——”
  
  Mr. B cut him off. Pushing aside the girl as though
  
  THEY brought out the cylinder from a closet where she were a branch in his path; he wrenched the cylinder it had been locked since morning, stood Doctor and the lens from Fraile’s hands, turned, jerked his head Fraile at one end of the room, and the spies ranged at the nearest of the men against the wall.
  
  themselves along the side wall.
  
  As the man leaped to his side, the leader handed
  
  Behind the war department’s inventor stood his over the death-ray machine, told him to take it to the wide-eyed daughter, and behind Jocelyn Fraile stood back and pack it immediately in the box that waited.
  
  Mr. B. The blue-black automatic with the silencer
  
  The spy nodded and disappeared. Mr. B, still
  
  attached—with which he had that morning snuffed out without paying further attention to the Frailes, strode the life of Walker—was held against the spine of the down the room to where the pale-haired young man girl.
  
  was still busy at the typewriter, the rattle of his machine
  
  “You know what we want,” rang out the voice of having provided background for what had gone before the head of the espionage ring. “Fit the lens in as it
  
  “How soon?” he demanded, harshly.
  
  belongs; show us how the cylinder works. Don’t lose a
  
  “Fifteen minutes! I’m hurrying as much as I can!”
  
  minute. Make a false move and I’ll shoot your
  
  “You’re making four copies?”
  
  daughter!”
  
  “Yes, sir.”
  
  Doctor Fraile held the cylinder in his hands—the
  
  long, black heavy thing, that in the hands of an initiate THE leader spun around, came walking slowly back could wipe out the lives of a score of people in a few with his automatic hanging loosely from his right
  
  seconds. He hesitated.
  
  hand, his eyes fixed on the tall, bespectacled scientist
  
  “Hurry up!” cried Mr. B, looking at his watch. “It’s and his pale, pretty daughter. He came all the way to nine-thirty. A man must leave here in twenty minutes them and stopped but a few inches from Fraile. His with that contrivance, packed in a box, to catch a plane cold, metallic eyes, through their slits, rested on the in Newark for San Francisco. If you haven’t face of the scientist.
  
  demonstrated it by that time, I’ll kill you both!”
  
  But when he spoke, it was not to Fraile. It was as
  
  Doctor Fraile, his face white, turned full about. though he was putting off until the last moment some Looking into the masked eyes of the spy leader, over decision he had come to regarding these prisoners.
  
  the head of his daughter, he said: “What you demand
  
  “Weimann!”
  
  is impossible. I cannot demonstrate it. All you have
  
  Out of the line stepped the blonde, voluptuous
  
  here are the ordinary electric outlets of the city supply. female, she of the childlike complexion and the dreamy I need a high-voltage current. I also need the motor eyes. “Yes?”
  
  transformer which is in my laboratory.”
  
  “Pack! Be all ready! Norstrom; you, too!”
  
  Mr. B stood there as though he could not believe
  
  The woman hurried out by a side door, could be
  
  37
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  heard passing down a hall toward the back. On her heels
  
  “Our task here is done,” asserted the spy leader
  
  went the small insignificant-looking man who had been with obvious satisfaction. “We have carried out a coup assigned to accompany her in getting the death ray out that will make each of us independently wealthy for of the country.
  
  life, and some of us may stay right here in America to
  
  “Duce! Stillman! Sayiki! Rasch!”
  
  enjoy it. War can begin any moment now, as far as we
  
  Four more emerged from the wall—three men and are concerned. Do I need to tell you that one reason is a woman—and advanced toward the leader.
  
  that it has delayed this long because of you?”
  
  “You leave as soon as the copies are ready. Take
  
  cabs to your rooms, pack everything, then leave the
  
  city by the first train. Duce—Montreal. Stillman— FRAILE was immobile. Possibly his chin rose a little; his shoulders squared, though it was hard to be sure.
  
  Mexico City. Sayiki—Marseilles. There’s a steamer at Mr. B was nodding reflectively. As long ago as the first midnight. Rasch”—he pondered but a moment— of March he had received advices from Emporia that
  
  ”Havana.”
  
  they suspected that the United States was working on a All nodded, separately and together, though they death ray.
  
  did not quite understand.
  
  If that were so, it might change their warlike plans.
  
  The eyes through the mask had not yet left the face They wanted to know all about it, and Mr. B had of Doctor Fraile a foot away. The voice came again, proceeded to learn. Then had come the ultimatum. If explaining: “Each of you will take a copy of what this he and those under him in the espionage ring in New man has written regarding the construction of the death York could locate that death ray and steal it, nothing ray. When you reach your destination—none of them would be too good for them. If there were any chance in the United States, you note—you will mail your copy of that, war would be delayed until it was accomplished.
  
  to the name I will give you before you leave——”
  
  “And tonight it is accomplished,” said the spy
  
  Faces clearing, brightening, they nodded again.
  
  leader, hefting his automatic. “In half an hour—in less As Mr. B did not further address them, the four than that—your invention will be on its way to your slowly returned to their positions against the wall— country’s enemy. Four copies of your specifications and now the spy leader concentrated only on the man will be leaving this country in twenty-four hours, to before him.
  
  reach Emporia by an indirect route. The rest of us will
  
  “I don’t know what you have expected as the end leave this building as soon———”
  
  of all this,” his voice said, quietly, tonelessly. “Whether
  
  “Where are we?” Fraile broke out suddenly, as
  
  you thought—that once the death ray had been disposed though this had been worrying him since last night.
  
  of and we had learned all you could tell us—we would
  
  Mr. B gave him the address of the headquarters of
  
  let you go——” There was almost a question there.
  
  the Eastern Relations League. “In the heart of New York Fraile paled.
  
  City,” he added. “Listen.”
  
  Mr. B began shaking his head. “If so, dispose of
  
  They could hear traffic, could even make out the
  
  such ideas immediately,” he said. “Aside from rumble of a distant “el” train.
  
  everything else, you are too valuable an asset to your
  
  “People are passing us right now—Americans. If
  
  country to be handed over alive.”
  
  they knew——” He looked about him and waved his
  
  Jocelyn Fraile, held in her father’s arms, began to gun at the big brightly lighted room, the array of spies, shake silently. Fraile gave no sign as yet.
  
  the shaded and locked windows. “But they don’t know.
  
  They had captured him, said Mr. B, primarily so And when this place is found, if it ever is, we will be as to make sure that the death ray, as sent out of the gone. We are dispersing tonight.”
  
  country, was complete and in good order. Later had
  
  Fraile said after a pause, “And some of you are
  
  come the additional idea of forcing him to write out Americans!”
  
  the detailed statement of its construction, so that in the Mr. B tapped his chest.
  
  event the machine itself went astray before reaching,
  
  “You will be rounded up eventually—executed. But
  
  there would still be the specifications.
  
  that doesn’t concern me now,” Fraile said. “I can
  
  Since Fraile had been unable to demonstrate the understand your killing me. I only beg of you to free death ray—Mr. B implied that he personally would have my daughter.”
  
  liked to see it in operation—it would necessarily have The young woman in his arms looked up quickly,
  
  to be sent without that. But there was no longer any opened her mouth to protest. It was unnecessary. Mr.
  
  further use for Irving Fraile.
  
  B, stepping back and bringing up his automatic, was
  
  38
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  shaking his head back and forth.
  
  “Look,” said Mr. B, and he himself pointed.
  
  “Dad!”
  
  They saw, beneath the limousine, a yellow, glowing
  
  “Be quiet, darling! For the sake of Heaven, man, pile like a small ant hill, that shone in the darkness like don’t do it to her!”
  
  a thousand lightning bugs. Even as they looked, another
  
  “Dad! Dad! He’s about to——”
  
  drop of the shining stuff was seen to fall from the bottom
  
  “Jocelyn!”
  
  of the car and add itself to the pile.
  
  Crash!
  
  “Followed!” whispered Mr. B. “Outwitted! By that
  
  The side door had burst open. The blonde woman detective! See—out there!” And his leveled finger plunged in, stopped dead at the tableau, then cried at showed where a speck of the stuff, dropped as the Mr. B, “Come! Back! The car! I want to show you limousine came in twenty minutes before, lay halfway something!”
  
  to the street.
  
  Mr. B snarled. He was all ready for the execution.
  
  Silence, growing terror held the others. Mr. B
  
  “What is it?” he demanded harshly.
  
  straightened. “He was out there—that detective.
  
  “I can’t explain! Come at once! They may have Somehow, he learned that we were going again. And been followed, trailed! Come!”
  
  while they were inside the laboratory, he crawled under
  
  “Trailed?” Mr. B echoed then, his voice rising to a the car and put that thing on. And all the way back falsetto. “Trailed! What do you——” He dashed for from the Catskills— right to our door— they left a the door.
  
  perfect trail!”
  
  The blonde was ahead of him. He ran after her down
  
  Behind him, some one made a low moan.
  
  a long, wide hall. She whirled into a room at the back, Mr. B choked, grabbed his throat, swayed as though
  
  across it to the window, grabbed Mr. B’s arm and about to fall.
  
  pointed. “Look!”
  
  The others clutched him. They didn’t understand.
  
  Crouched, still clutching the automatic, he peered
  
  Only he had seen the long streamlined coupe tool
  
  out beneath a shade almost drawn, peered out at the slowly past out on the street—a coupe in which two wide back courtyard—which had been lavishly men were looking directly his way.
  
  expended on the one-time art museum by the wealthy
  
  millionaire.
  
  CHAPTER XII.
  
  Cars were there—all belonging to the spies. The TRAIL’S END.
  
  limousine in which Toya and the others had gone and
  
  come, in which Toya’s bullet-riddled body still lay, was parked to one side. The place was dark.
  
  SPOTTED!” said Carter.
  
  “The ground! Beneath it!” whispered fiercely the
  
  “Was that it?”
  
  woman spy. “Beneath the limousine they used!”
  
  “I saw the car! In that court!”
  
  “You really mean——”
  
  MR. B looked. What he saw caused his jaw to drop “We’re there!”
  
  beneath the ever-present mask, caused him to
  
  Nick banked the wheel. Already twenty yards past
  
  move forward in an unsteady step, clutch the window the back court of the spy headquarters, the big coupe ledge. He muttered something unintelligible.
  
  veered in to the curb, stopped with a jolt.
  
  “What is it?” demanded the woman in a tortured
  
  Carter faced Jack Duane. “We’ve nailed ‘em. Sit
  
  whisper.
  
  tight!” He snapped a switch, spoke swiftly, curtly, into Mr. B shook his head, began to straighten up.
  
  a microphone that came out from above the windshield.
  
  Five men poured into the room, stopped, babbled “Found it, Chick. That you, Pats? Get here, too. Forty-questions. Others were hurrying toward them down the sixth, between Fifth and Sixth. Snap it up!”
  
  hall.
  
  The switch was cut off. “We’ve got to act fast. That
  
  “What is it?” came the demand in four voices at trick of mine went haywire and leaked. It’s only once.
  
  supposed to drop the stuff when the car’s running, but Mr. B spoke. “It is phosphorous,” he said, “or I spotted a pile of phosphorous as big as your fist under something like it. I understand.” His voice was flat, the limousine!”
  
  toneless.
  
  Duane drew breath through his teeth. “Back there?”
  
  “Phosphorous?” repeated some one, as though the He still couldn’t believe it.
  
  spy leader had suddenly gone insane.
  
  “Back there! Of course! I tell you we’ve found
  
  them! The car’s back in that court we just passed! I
  
  39
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  know the place. It’s the court for that old museum on CARTER ducked back, whirled, started running for Forty-seventh Street. They must be holed up in there, his car. He was halfway there when headlights
  
  and what a swell place it is. There are half a dozen picked him out, coming from the west; and, one behind other cars, too. It’s the main scatter beyond a doubt.”
  
  the other, two cars came racing up, pulled in near his Jack Duane, reporter from San Francisco, who last coupe without regard for the fact that it was a one-way night at this time had been rattling southward toward street.
  
  New York without a notion of what lay ahead, gripped
  
  Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan, his assistants who
  
  the door of Nick Carter’s coupe.
  
  that morning had done certain things with regard to
  
  He still found it difficult to realize that they were Caspar Tait and Oscar Lomas—leaped out. Nick was there, at the headquarters of the spy ring, were on the on them the next second; a jerk of his head brought point of rescuing Doctor Fraile and his daughter.
  
  Jack Duane out of the coupe and onto the street.
  
  The past hour had been a leaden thing. Crawling,
  
  “They’re wise,” he snapped. “Must have seen us.
  
  circling blocks, moving back and forth from The lights are going out; they’re watching; that Washington Bridge southward in the city—it had phosphorous under the limousine must have given us seemed that they would never reach the end of the trail. away.”
  
  Carter was speaking again, looking up and down
  
  To his aids: “We can’t lose a minute. Back in your
  
  the dark, almost deserted street: “Now for cars and around to Forty-seventh Street, to the front.
  
  reënforcements. We can’t risk a thing like this alone. Cover that. Don’t show yourselves or try to break in There’s only the four of us—you, me, my two until you hear my whistle. We’ll try to hold off till the assistants.”
  
  cops get here. Duane—come with me.”
  
  He cut on again the switch of the two-way radio.
  
  Chick and Patsy wheeled to one of their cars, piled
  
  Working a dial, he repeated in a singsong voice: in and disappeared. With Jack Duane at his heels, his
  
  “Calling headquarters. Calling headquarters. Calling automatic showing already in the reporter’s hand, Nick headquarters. That you, McGowan?”
  
  Carter headed back across the street for the court.
  
  A voice spluttered.
  
  A rifle, taken from the ceiling of his coupe, was
  
  “Carter. Nick Carter. Listen close.” For three swinging from his hand. They reached again the court’s minutes the detective poured words into the edge, peered again, saw nothing. The faces were gone microphone. Finally: “Tell the commissioner. Yes. At from the window.
  
  least thirty men. As many more as you can spare. No
  
  Studying the layout, Carter pointed to the cars,
  
  sirens.”
  
  whispered, “We’ll have to sneak in, risk being seen.
  
  The switch was snapped off.
  
  You get behind that sedan on this side. I’ll cross over
  
  “He doesn’t know what it’s all about, and he doesn’t behind the limousine. Watch the windows. Don’t show have to. We’ll have to give them some story when it’s yourself or shoot, unless things pop.”
  
  all over. The government may not want them to know
  
  Duane nodded once, then crouched and went after
  
  about Fraile and the rest. They’ll have thirty men here the detective as the other eased into the open space of in fifteen minutes.”
  
  the dark courtyard, sidled along the brick wall that was He got out of the car, told Duane to wait there, its western boundary. Without mishap they reached the shot a glance up and down the block again—a narrow first of the cars where Duane was to hide.
  
  gorge of dark buildings—then ran lightly to the other He dropped behind it. The back of the museum
  
  side and sneaked down to the edge of the court. Leaning was now but sixty feet away. Every window was dark, out, he peered.
  
  every shade drawn. The big back door that opened flush There was the dark court, laden with cars, and on the yard low down—a brass-studded affair like the behind it the looming back of the art museum that faced front—was closed, probably bolted.
  
  on Forty-seventh Street. A few lights showed in the
  
  Carter, having left the reporter, moved sidewise,
  
  building. There was no sign of life about the cars.
  
  keeping behind cars, until he had reached the shelter But even as Carter looked, a light went out upstairs, of the limousine. He and Duane now covered the back followed by another that left the upper floors in thoroughly. From Forty-seventh Street, beyond the blackness. At the same instant he caught a fleeting building, came faintly the noise of a car’s braking, glimpse of a face pressed to a window on the lower meaning that Garvan and the other Carter had reached floor.
  
  their destination.
  
  The rifle in Carter’s hand was aimed loosely at the
  
  40
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  back of the house, but he preferred to delay action until
  
  “Don’t!” he gritted into Duane’s face. “Don’t! Use
  
  the arrival of the reënforcements. This was no time for your head! I know how you feel, but use your head.
  
  fake heroics; for all they knew there were fifty spies in They aren’t going to kill her—yet. They’ll hold her to that big white edifice. To rush in madly would only the last minute as a hostage. Now they’re simply trying mean having themselves butchered.
  
  to get us into the open before the cops arrive——”
  
  Five minutes of waiting, of silence, went by.
  
  He grunted, fell sidewise. A shot had whipped
  
  Suddenly a gun cracked from the downstairs through the flesh of his shoulder.
  
  window.
  
  Duane, panting like a horse, his eyes staring, came
  
  The bullet whipped off the radiator of the car behind to his senses a little. Still cursing fearfully and muttering which Jack Duane was hiding, and both men knew that to himself, he whipped out a handkerchief and tied it things were starting.
  
  around the detective’s shoulder, over the coat and all.
  
  STILL they crouched, waiting. The man who had NO sounds had come from the front to indicate that fired had not been visible. Carter did not bother to
  
  the spies were sniping at the other Carter and
  
  shoot at the window. He was moving sidewise, to Garvan. But now the muffled crack of shots was heard improve his position behind the limousine when three through the building from the front.
  
  more shots came together. Flame burst from a trio of
  
  Duane had subsided, white-faced and trembling.
  
  windows simultaneously, and both the detective and He spasmed, as though a knife had hit him, when the the reporter began to reply.
  
  scream of Fraile’s daughter sounded again. Mingled
  
  For perhaps two minutes there was a duel between with it was an agonized cry in a man’s voice: that of the men in the court and the hidden spies in the house, the war department’s scientist himself.
  
  without result on either side. Carter thought he had
  
  Carter lay flat, watching the windows, reloading
  
  heard a man scream, but could not be certain.
  
  his gun.
  
  Then, as before, the spies’ shooting came to a
  
  Would those cops never come?
  
  sudden halt.
  
  More than Duane realized, the detective would have
  
  In the lull that followed a new sound made itself liked to do just what the reporter wanted: leap up and heard suddenly, as though by design of the spies. It rush the house. But suppose they did, even now, and was a girl’s crying, terror-stricken scream, and Nick the police were a few minutes late in arriving? The Carter froze as he realized what it meant.
  
  result would be a total loss. The four men would be
  
  From behind his sedan, Jack Duane leaped to his shot down before they got inside; the spies, having feet. “Carter! It’s the girl! Fraile’s daughter! They’re— guessed the situation, afraid to charge even with this
  
  —Come on!”
  
  opportunity, would kill the Frailes, scatter and escape He had lost his head. In full view of the house, he before the reënforcements arrived.
  
  started a dash around his hiding place, to charge the Suddenly, Carter tensed, gripped Duane’s arm.
  
  hideout.
  
  Staring upward, the reporter saw the latest
  
  “Get down, you fool!” yelled Nick and sprang development. Halfway across the roof of the art forward. He caught the reporter and threw him to the museum, five stories above them and dimly outlined stone yard just as a volley crashed out from the against the night sky, two black figures were crouched windows; bullets whined overhead.
  
  over and hurrying toward the edge. They carried
  
  “They’re baiting us!” Nick ground out, roughly between them a long box—or so it seemed. They were pulling Duane back behind the sedan. “Keep your head! making for the roof of an adjoining building.
  
  You won’t stand a chance!”
  
  “The death ray!” Duane whispered. “They’re trying
  
  Duane fought to get free. “I don’t care!” he cried. to get it out!”
  
  “Let me go! They’re hurting her, killing her! Those
  
  “Down!” yelled the detective, and struck the other
  
  reënforcements may not be here for an hour! I’m flat.
  
  going——”
  
  A burst of firing, brought on by Duane’s coming
  
  The detective threw him down.
  
  up and the realization inside that the two on the roof Shots rang out from four windows, the spies trying had been seen, tore over their heads, ricocheted off the to get the two men who were not quite concealed as courtyard behind them, spattered into buildings on the they struggled behind the sedan. A bullet ripped Carter’s other side of Forty-seventh Street.
  
  sleeve.
  
  High up, the two figures had almost reached their
  
  41
  
  
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  There was no hesitation about Nick Carter. He covered the spy leader from twelve feet away and gave him the last bullet in his .45 . . . .
  
  42
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  destination. Moving as they were, as near the center of CHAPTER XIII.
  
  the museum’s roof as possible, only their heads and THE WIPE-OUT.
  
  shoulders were now visible. Even so, it looked as
  
  though one was a woman.
  
  Carter cupped his hands, ignoring for a moment THEY crashed through the window at the back, the door having resisted them. Bullets smacked at their
  
  the back of the house. “Get back, up there! Get back in feet; men yelled orders to each other from inside.
  
  or we’ll fire!”
  
  Still no noise of arriving cops came to the detective.
  
  The two poised, stared, then increased their speed Nick Carter was fatalistically deciding that this would for the safety of the nearby roof, still carrying the long finish them both, that he had erred, after all, when his box. Carter muttered something to Duane, pushed him ears caught the sound of the approaching cars and motor aside, propped up the rifle and took aim.
  
  cycles.
  
  Shots burst from the house. Duane answered.
  
  At last, he thought, and brushed Duane aside as
  
  The detective drew a bead, as though he had the latter slipped while getting a handhold on the completely forgotten the danger from the lower quarter. window sill. Aiming through, the detective sent a burst The whack of the rifle was clearly audible above of shots into the unknown darkness beyond, then swung the other shooting. The figure up there that was the himself up, landed, held out a hand for Duane.
  
  man, toppled, struggled to stay upright, fell over the The reporter dropped beside him. In dim light they
  
  edge of the building which they had just reached, charged for a door. A man appeared when they were plummeted to the next roof, six feet below.
  
  almost there, coming out of a hallway. Carter shot at The woman turned, fled back toward the museum’s him, wounded him, then swung his gun and sent the skylight.
  
  fellow to the floor as they stepped out into the hall.
  
  A
  
  All around them they could hear shots; the sounds
  
  PAUSE came after that.
  
  of running feet; the cold, ferocious voice of some one Carter lowered the rifle, looked at his watch. Only giving orders. As Duane heard the last he stood amazed, twelve minutes had elapsed since his call to the police. then shook his head as if unbelieving his own hearing.
  
  Duane, his head cocked as though listening for another Following Carter, the reporter pounded up the
  
  cry from the captive girl, was feverishly inserting a hallway—a hallway which ran from the front to the fresh clip in his automatic. He was pale, distraught, as back, which was empty. A conglomerate clamor was the detective glanced at him.
  
  coming from the front door—where Carter’s two
  
  “Hang on a minute more,” came the whispered assistants were breaking in. Closer, and from both sides words. “They ought to be here——”
  
  of Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Streets cars could be
  
  “Oh,” choked Duane.
  
  heard stopping. Police were yelling; people were
  
  From the second floor of the museum came again massing.
  
  the tortured, uncontrollable scream of Fraile’s daughter, The two men burst into the big room that had been
  
  mingled with the same sort of cry from her father. Some the meeting place for the spies. It was empty, at first sort of torture was going on in there, that was certain.
  
  glance. But even as they whirled to try elsewhere, the Jack Duane could suddenly stand it no longer. He spy, Barsino, rose up from behind the corner divan, jumped to his feet, saying hoarsely: “I’m going in! I’ve leveled an automatic, blasted twice.
  
  got to! Stay here if you want to, but don’t try to stop Coughing, Jack Duane went around in a circle, hit
  
  me or I don’t know what I’ll do!”
  
  the floor. Carter dropped to a knee and laid three .45
  
  He rushed around the front of the sedan, head up, slugs, low down, through the divan. Bits of fluff popped gun held high in desperation, and made for the back up from the upholstered back; something flopped and door of the big building directly before him.
  
  crashed and moaned. Carter leaped to Duane’s side.
  
  Carter rose. Loudly and long he blew his whistle,
  
  He was spirting blood, did not know where he was
  
  the signal for Chick and Patsy. Then, dropping the rifle hit, but said he could fight. On his feet, Duane threw a and putting a .45 revolver in each hand, he charged murderous look around. At a snapped word from the after Duane.
  
  detective, he followed him out of the room and back
  
  There was no more waiting, he realized.
  
  into the hallway.
  
  The door at the front crashed down at that moment,
  
  disgorging the younger Carter and Patsy Garvan.
  
  Luckily, they recognized the others at first glance, and 43
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  came rushing to their sides. Behind them police surged, him. Duane was just grasping the rungs, when——
  
  and all could hear the back door being battered down.
  
  “Help! In here! Help!”
  
  “Upstairs!” cried Nick Carter. ‘They’re all above!”
  
  Fraile’s daughter! Behind the door in the room at
  
  In that, however, he was wrong. Three men the end of the hall!
  
  appeared from a back door, having apparently delayed
  
  Jack Duane abandoned the ladder that led to the
  
  too long as rear guards. They burst into shooting at once. roof, rushed down the hall. Halfway up the ladder, Nick Duane downed one. Garvan got a flesh wound. Carter poised, stared, then kicked out and dropped to Chick dropped a second, and the third man ran yelling the floor below.
  
  for the front—ran into the uniforms of the storming
  
  He urged Chick on. “To the roof! Stop them there!
  
  police. Later, his head was given a dozen stitches, And get the box with the death ray in it! It’s near the though the others did not know that at the time.
  
  edge!” Then he was after Duane. They jerked up short They had spotted the stairs at the front of the hall, before the closed door at the end of the hall.
  
  were making for them. That the bulk of the spy ring
  
  ‘They’re in there!” whispered Duane, hoarsely.
  
  was up there, that Mr. B and the Frailes were either
  
  Carter nodded, slowly put out a hand for the big
  
  making ready to escape or settling down for a siege, knob of the door.
  
  was obvious.
  
  Before he touched it, a voice called out from
  
  It was too late now, however, to think of lying back, inside—a voice that both men knew, though under to fear the consequences that might result to Doctor different conditions.
  
  Fraile and his daughter. The only move was to crush
  
  “Don’t try to come in, or it will be the end of the
  
  the spies as swiftly as possible, to trust to the gods that Frailes!” It was Mr. B.
  
  the Frailes were not killed before they reached them.
  
  Duane’s face became a blank.
  
  Bounding up the stairs, in the teeth of scattered
  
  “I have them here. I am alone, but I am well armed.
  
  fire from above—fire that tumbled back the already The moment that door is opened, both Frailes will be wounded Patsy Garvan—Carter, his adopted brother riddled!”
  
  and Duane reached the upper hallway.
  
  Carter looked at his newspaperman companion.
  
  Room doors were open. Men shot from here and The reporter from San Francisco was dull-eyed, gaping there. They charged abreast down the hall, pausing at at the door; his eyelids were blinking, as though some each door, muttering, “Nothing!” or shooting with one had just given him a crack on the head.
  
  lightning swiftness.
  
  “That’s right,” Nick whispered.
  
  That already the trio had not been butchered was
  
  “Do you hear what I am saying?” cried the voice
  
  miraculous, though their advance was now being of Mr. B.
  
  backed up by the police—men who were rushing up
  
  “I hear you!” Nick shouted back. “Have Fraile and
  
  the stairs in their wake.
  
  his daughter call out, so we’ll be sure they are still alive!”
  
  BUT there was no sign of the Frailes who had been
  
  on this floor a moment before; no sign of the A SILENCE came. Jack Duane gripped the mysterious Mr. B, the spy leader. They were farther
  
  detective’s arm. He had regained his senses. “Am
  
  up, on the top floor.
  
  I crazy?” he asked in a thick whisper. “Is it J. J.
  
  The Carters and Jack Duane, still ahead of the Molloy?”
  
  police, ran for the last flight of stairs. No shots greeted Carter, turning his head, nodded grimly. “J. J.
  
  them as they started up. The hallway was flanked by Molloy!”
  
  exhibition rooms—rooms which were empty. But from
  
  Duane suddenly went berserk. He rattled the knob
  
  the roof, whose skylight was now above them, came of the door, shouted furious oaths at the man inside.
  
  the rush of many feet.
  
  He backed off and threw himself three times against
  
  Spies up there were following the example of the the door’s panels, to no avail.
  
  pair who had tried to escape with the death ray. They Laughter jerked him up. Laughter in the cold,
  
  were attempting to reach the roof of the adjoining taunting voice of Mr. B, that was now hardly building.
  
  recognizable as that of J. J. Molloy, editor of the Globe.
  
  The ladder was in plain sight. As one man, the trio It died away. “So you are still alive, Duane? How did dashed for it, ignoring completely what rooms were you escape the third time?”
  
  on their floor, though one of the doors was closed. Nick Rage and impotence and shame choked Duane so
  
  Carter was halfway up the ladder; Chick was just below he could not speak.
  
  44
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  Nick Carter stuck to his point. “Have them call, yelled back in scorn, working backward on the floor.
  
  Molloy! Have the Frailes call out, you rat! If they don’t
  
  “Not yet, but I’m about to. And don’t think for a
  
  make a noise in two seconds we’ll crash the door moment”—the man inside couldn’t see the swift down!”
  
  movement with which Nick Carter’s revolver steadied,
  
  Molloy’s laugh sounded again. Then he spoke in pointing at the door—”don’t think I’ll hesitate to shoot!
  
  there, and another voice came, that of the war I’m coming now with the girl! Keep out of my——”
  
  department’s captive scientist.
  
  A crash shook the walls.
  
  “Don’t do it—yet. We are both alive, though my
  
  Three more blasts converged on top of it,
  
  daughter is suffering from what they did to her in the hammering, as Carter fired through the door in the past few minutes. I am not armed and this—this man is direction he had chosen, cutting a circle in the wood of covering me.”
  
  the door.
  
  Carter paused. Around and above them the clamor
  
  The echoes had not died before he was on his feet
  
  of the round-up was still going on. From the roof came and putting a fifth shot into the lock of the door, shrill cries, occasional yells from Chick, then the bark throwing himself against it, breaking it open with a of his gun.
  
  clatter.
  
  They heard, too, the clang of arriving hook-and-
  
  In the big room that was half dark, only one thing
  
  ladder engines, and knew that police were about to was visible to the detective in that split-second. It was climb to the adjoining roof. No spies would escape the J. J. Molloy, otherwise Mr. B, on his knees on the floor, net that had been thrown, unless it was this leader inside, blood pouring from three wounds, striving fiercely to still holding Doctor Fraile and his daughter.
  
  bring up an automatic to aim at Fraile.
  
  Molloy’s voice sounded. “You are not going to take
  
  Crouching there, horrified, were Doctor Irving
  
  me, Nick Carter. You have defeated me, I admit. At the Fraile and his daughter.
  
  last minute you’ve blocked me. I recognize it. There is There was no hesitation about Nick Carter. He
  
  no further chance of getting the death ray out of the covered the spy leader from twelve feet away and gave country, or its specifications. But you aren’t going to him the last bullet in his .45, and Molloy rolled take me!”
  
  backward, flopped his arms, then lay flat on his back.
  
  The detective outside didn’t answer. After a swift
  
  Carter looked at Fraile. “I guess he’s dead,” he said.
  
  glance at the still-stricken Duane, he had suddenly gone Jack Duane burst in, rushed toward the Frailes, then
  
  down on one knee.
  
  brought up abruptly, staring at the girl.
  
  The laugh from within again, and then: “I suppose
  
  Her father lifted her up. “At last!” he said, brokenly.
  
  you’ll say you had guessed me?”
  
  “Let us get out of here quickly! Is the death ray safe?”
  
  Carter, closing one eye and sighting at the door,
  
  Chick Carter answered that question by appearing
  
  replied loudly: “Two hours ago, Molloy—when I heard in the doorway with the box in his arms.
  
  from Duane as to how much you’d told him when he
  
  first went to you. That was a slip-up, Mr. Spy. You CHAPTER XIV.
  
  weren’t supposed to know that much. You got it all LAST WORDS.
  
  through Martin Nye, I expect?”
  
  “He wasn’t quite secretive enough with the editor
  
  of his New York paper.”
  
  IN that part of New York that is within hearing distance Nick nodded. “I thought as much,” he yelled back,
  
  of the block on west Forty-seventh Street between
  
  and then drew a gun, aimed it tentatively at a spot on Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it is a mystery even today as the door. “What do you expect to do in there?” he to what happened on a certain spring night when hordes demanded. “Your gang is smashed. You’re licked. You of policemen attacked a supposedly untenanted art can’t get away!”
  
  museum, producing enough gunfire for a small war.
  
  Why it was done; who was there; who were the
  
  A PAUSE followed. And then Molloy called back men and women, some dead and some wounded, who in an edged, decisive voice: “But that’s exactly were carried swiftly away in police wagons and what I expect to do!” They heard his feet move.
  
  ambulances—all that still remains unexplained.
  
  Carter swiftly moved his gun muzzle half an inch.
  
  The morning papers, beyond reporting tersely that
  
  “I’m walking out of here with Fraile’s daughter “certain agents” aided by the New York police had held in front of me and a pistol in her back!”
  
  completely demolished a huge enemy spy ring, had
  
  “You’ve probably got her that way now!” Carter nothing whatever to say about it.
  
  45
  
  Nick Carter (John L. Chambliss)
  
  The War-Makers
  
  Nick Carter Detective, April, 1936
  
  The agents were not mentioned. Even the identity construction—a statement which Doctor Fraile was of the spy leader was not divulged. A seeker might have forced to write and which the spies were about to mail learned from another part of his paper that J. J. Molloy, to——”
  
  the editor of Martin Nye’s Globe, had died suddenly Mr. Reeder nodded.
  
  the night before, but there was no connection shown.
  
  “So that cloud seems to have passed.” The president
  
  As for the motive behind it all. Such was the item smiled, a trifle grimly. “And perhaps now the other that appeared two days later:
  
  cloud—the larger cloud—will pass, too.”
  
  The postmaster general said, “Just what do you
  
  Doctor Irving Fraile, the well-known inventor
  
  mean, sir?”‘
  
  who has recently been connected with the war
  
  The chief executive sat down. “I mean,” he said,
  
  department in Washington, sailed with his daughter,
  
  “that I now think it very possible that Emporia will
  
  Miss Jocelyn Fraile, last night for a two weeks’
  
  hesitate to push us into a war, knowing that we have
  
  Bermuda cruise.
  
  the death ray.” He turned to Reeder.
  
  “Didn’t that investigator tell you that Fraile had
  
  It could hardly have had any kinship with the told him that the spy leader, in one of his boasting feature story that came out a week afterward, telling in speeches, implied that Emporia might alter her plans if glowing terms of a new war machine that was now we really had a death ray?”
  
  being manufactured in considerable quantities for the The secretary of war nodded immediately. “He said
  
  war department—a death ray that promised to make exactly that. They learned of it only a month or so ago.
  
  the United States immune to any fear of foreign attack. It surprised them, but their hope was then to steal it from us and not lose but profit.”
  
  IN Washington, the morning after the round-up, there The president said, “Just so,” in a decided tone.
  
  was another meeting in the White House—a meeting “And my suspicion now is that when they learn that similar in many respects to that called at six o’clock their espionage ring failed in its attempt to steal the the previous evening.
  
  machine, they will reconsider.”
  
  The same men were present—the chief executive,
  
  There were murmurs of: “I hope so! Heaven grant
  
  his cabinet members and the members of the army that you are right!”
  
  general staff. The same subject was under discussion.
  
  “If that is so,” the president went on, “we owe an
  
  But there the resemblance ended. This was a incalculable debt to those men who rescued Fraile and conference of success, for at one o’clock that morning recovered his war invention.” He turned to the secretary a long-distance call from New York City had reached of war. “What is the New York address of that detective Mr. Knox Reeder at his Sixteenth Street mansion, and you hired? I want to write to him.”
  
  the voice of a New York private investigator had told him the news.
  
  He had lost no time communicating it to the THERE were some people in New York who learned what had happened, read its meaning and were
  
  president. The rest of the cabinet and the army staff deeply affected. Caspar Tait, Oscar Lomas and Martin had learned it the first thing in the morning.
  
  Nye of the secret war council, sat in a club uptown and
  
  “They found them? They recovered the death ray? toasted in a low voice to the life of a certain private They broke up the spy ring?” That was a major-general detective.
  
  upon hearing the news a few minutes after entering the As for Jack Duane, he spent several days in the
  
  chamber. Knox Reeder nodded. “That detective I hospital following the fight, recovering from four retained——” he began, but got no further.
  
  separate wounds. But he was contented, nevertheless.
  
  The president was speaking. “Sit down, gentlemen.
  
  Through Nick Carter, he had been promised a good
  
  We all feel the same.”
  
  job on the Globe by Martin Nye. Moses was coming His advisers obeyed, informally dropping into along satisfactorily from his treatment on the road to chairs.
  
  Fraile’s laboratory. But, best of all, Duane. had a very The president faced them. “From what Mr. Reeder positive understanding with Miss Jocelyn Fraile, that tells me, it is definitely certain that the death-ray he would see her as soon as she had returned from machine is in safe hands. Doctor Fraile and his daughter Bermuda.
  
  are safe and sound, and the espionage ring is completely All this leaves Nick Carter and Chick Carter and
  
  broken up. I understand that they even recovered four Patsy Garvan to be accounted for—an operation which copies of a detailed statement of the machine’s is scarcely needed.
  
  46
  
  
  
  
  
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