The unknown seven A detective story
“I have a particular score to settle with Ballinger,” said Cole calmly.
“Naturally I want him present when I hand you and your gang over to the
police.”
“When you——” Englebreth was utterly astounded. “If you think this is a
joking matter——”
“I was never more serious in my life, Englebreth. Before daybreak I
expect to hand every mother’s son of you over to the authorities.”
Englebreth stared for a moment longer; then he laughed hoarsely. Cole
could see that his cool insolence had exerted the intended moral
effect. The invalid, though the advantage was all on his side, felt
just a trifle ill at ease. Cole’s demeanor was well calculated to
suggest that a surprise of some sort was forthcoming. Englebreth would
not have been human if he had failed to be impressed by the airy
assurance of one whom he thought wholly at his mercy.
Finally he shrugged. “You must be mad,” he muttered. Then he faced
Latham, who stood beside the chair in which Miss Brownell sat. “I have
something to say to you, doctor. You did us a service once, and that is
something I never forget. If you will——”
“Save your breath,” interrupted Latham contemptuously. “For a time, a
little while ago, I was tempted to enter into negotiations with you,
but Miss Brownell wouldn’t hear of it. What is a mere man to do when a
woman sets her foot down?”
“Your flippancy is ill-timed,” said Englebreth austerely.
“Hasn’t one a right to joke at one’s own funeral?”
“We shall see.” Englebreth’s lips tightened ominously. “You know what
we want from you, doctor. Only a formula that by right belongs to us,
since you worked it out while you were a member of this organization.
Produce it, and I promise to be lenient with you and Miss Brownell.
Unless my senses deceive me”—and Englebreth smiled craftily—“you are
very anxious that nothing unpleasant shall happen to her.”
Latham hesitated, impressed by the cruel smile on the invalid’s lips,
and the girl answered in his place.
“Doctor Latham’s answer is _no_,” she declared emphatically.
Englebreth regarded her curiously, with an odd mingling of admiration
and malice. “You are a stubborn young person,” he muttered. “For the
last time, doctor, I ask you if you will consent to my terms.”
Again it was Miss Brownell who answered. “Doctor Latham refuses,” she
declared. “He knows that your promises are worthless, that you intend
to kill us regardless of whether or not he grants your request. I don’t
think there is anything further to be said.”
“No?” Englebreth’s thin fingers seemed to tighten around the pistol.
“Perhaps I can convince you——”
He stopped short. A squeallike cry of astonishment escaped him, for
Cole had just done a very unexpected thing. It was so unexpected,
in fact, that it seemed like the act of a person whose reason was
tottering. With arms folded across his chest he had casually approached
the chair in which Miss Brownell sat. For a time he had seemed absorbed
in deep thought, but all the while he had been scheming how he might
divert Englebreth’s attention, even if only for a moment, from the
menacing pistol in his hand. Anything of a startling nature, the more
bizarre and ludicrous the better, would serve his purpose. Now he
turned suddenly and gave the girl a resounding slap on the cheek. He
followed it up with another, then with a third.
A spell seemed to fall over the gathering. They had witnessed an act,
in itself trivial and ridiculous, that staggered their reason by its
sheer fatuity. For a measured moment their minds were at a standstill.
That was exactly what Cole had intended, and a moment was all he
needed. He had acted on a fugitive inspiration at a time when all
seemed lost, when a move of a more rational nature would only have
hastened the inevitable.
The resounding smack of the third blow had scarcely drifted out on the
silence when he leaped at the invalid’s chair. In an instant, while the
minds of Englebreth and the two guards at the door were still dazed
from contemplation of a thing so bizarre, he had snatched the pistol
from the cripple’s hand. A moment later he was crouching low behind
Englebreth’s chair, pressing the muzzle of the weapon against his back.
He thrilled inwardly. Once more his mind had triumphed over a critical
situation. The other time had been when he faced Professor Carmody in
the Bureau of Civic Research. The professor had been thrown off his
mental base by a trick just as simple and effective.
“Tell your men to drop their weapons,” he commanded, the muzzle of the
pistol prodding Englebreth’s back. “I’ll give you exactly ten seconds.
Unless you obey, you will be a dead man.”
Englebreth squirmed in the chair, evidently in a state of great terror.
In a few minutes his agile mind might reassert itself, but just now
he was merely a shivering wreck. His trembling hand went up and made
a signal to his men just as Cole was about to call time. Habitually
obedient to the master will, the men at the door dropped their pistols.
Cole rose from his crouching position behind Englebreth’s chair. Latham
and the girl stared at him bewilderedly, the latter moving her hand
dazedly over the cheek that Cole had struck, both seemingly unable to
realize as yet what had happened. Englebreth was breathing raspingly.
The two guards at the door gazed dully at the erect figure behind the
invalid’s chair.
“Pick up those pistols, Latham,” said Cole quietly. “Pardon my
rudeness, Miss Brownell. It was necessary.”
She smiled uncertainly, evidently beginning to understand. It was
several moments before the physician could shake off his stupefaction.
He moved haltingly over the floor and dazedly took possession of the
pistols.
“It was magnificent, Mr. Cole!” murmured the girl, at last grasping the
psychological stratagem by which Cole had reversed the situation.
“But if I hadn’t seen it happen, I would have sworn it couldn’t be
done,” said Latham.
Cole’s face was grave. His ruse had only averted their immediate
danger. Any moment other members of the organization might pour into
the room, crushing them by superior numbers. Every second counted now.
Holding the pistol in one hand, Cole drew the telephone to him and
spoke a number in the transmitter. Only a few words would be needed to
make Carlin understand the situation, and within an hour reinforcements
would arrive. He wondered, as he waited for his connection, if they
could hold out until then. Impatiently he jigged the hook, muttering
heartfelt imprecations upon the state of the rural telephone service,
and then, in a twinkling, something happened.
He saw the cripple’s weazened hand move stealthily along the side of
the desk, became conscious that a heretofore unnoticed door had burst
open behind him, heard the girl’s quick, startled cry, saw the light
blotted out as if a pall had suddenly dropped over the little room,
felt a stinging blow at the back of the head, and, with Englebreth’s
diabolic chuckles dinning in his ears, fell to the floor.
CHAPTER XXVI
A CRY
“Gold! Gold!” The vibrant murmurs, edged with a triumphant and sinister
note, echoed in Cole’s ears as he opened his eyes. The house was
shivering with a slow, rhythmic tremor, a throbbing pulsation that
instantly began to pierce the fog in his mind.
From his recumbent position on the floor he struggled to a sitting
posture. Lifting his head, he listened to the grimly exultant pæan
rising from the bowels of the earth.
“Feeling better?” asked a voice which he vaguely recognized at Doctor
Latham’s.
Cole did not answer. The subterranean vibrations seemed to cast a spell
over his awakening senses.
“Hear it?” he asked at length.
“Hear what?”
“This infernal hymn of gold. It will drive me crazy if I have to listen
to it much longer.”
“Then don’t listen. Know what time it is?”
Cole shook his head as if to indicate that the matter was of absolutely
no importance.
“Precisely twelve o’clock,” said the doctor, and Cole heard something
resembling the snapping of a watch lid. “You have been unconscious for
something like ten hours. That was the second knock-out in a night,
Cole. Why can’t these scoundrels show a little versatility?”
“What happened?” asked Cole dully.
“As if that mattered now! Englebreth gave a signal of some sort, and
the next thing I knew about half a dozen of his hired thugs swooped
down on us. My recollections cease at that point.”
“Where are we?”
“In the same room we occupied last night, before we were ushered into
Englebreth’s august presence. The windows are just as tightly shuttered
as they were then, and the door is just as impregnable. I wonder if
these hounds mean to let us starve to death.”
Cole looked about him. An electric light was burning dimly over their
heads. Through a narrow rift in one of the shutters came a shaft of
sunlight, gilding the dust in the stale air.
“Where is Miss Brownell?” he asked abruptly.
“Wish I knew,” muttered the doctor. Of a sudden all the levity had died
out of his voice. “You and I were alone in this room when I came to. If
these rats harm a single hair on her head——” The threat died unfinished
in a groan.
With difficulty Cole rose to his feet and leaned against the wall.
“I don’t seem to remember just where we were at,” he mumbled.
“You gave Miss Brownell a slap on the cheek,” the doctor reminded him.
“It was a brilliant idea, Cole.”
“So it was—but it failed, as I remember,” Cole muttered grimly. “What
was the situation just before that?”
“Englebreth was doing his level best to bluff me into revealing the
formula of the mythical seventh ingredient. Perhaps you remember his
sportsman-like proposition. I was to give him the formula in return for
my life.”
“He would promptly kill you the moment you surrendered the formula,”
Cole pointed out.
“Without a doubt. He would kill all three of us. But, as it happens, I
can’t give him the formula, because it doesn’t exist.”
“But as long as he thinks it does, we are holding a trump card in
reserve,” said Cole, regaining his grip on the tangled threads of the
situation.
“If only we knew how to use it!”
“We’ll find a way,” said Cole confidently, dragging himself to a chair
at one side of the room. “Anything about your person that could be used
as a weapon in an emergency?”
“Not a thing. I am plucked clean.”
“So am I,” said Cole after a hasty survey of his pockets. “No, here is
a stick pin. They seem to have overlooked that. The pin is long and
sharp. You could pierce a person’s jugular vein with an implement of
this kind, couldn’t you, doctor?”
“If you knew exactly where to strike.”
“You do, of course, being a doctor. As a weapon it would be useless in
my hand, so I will transfer it to you. I suggest you conceal it under
the lapel of your coat.”
Puzzled, Latham took the ornament and did as Cole had directed. As he
hid it under his lapel, he seemed inclined to ask a question, but Cole
forestalled him.
“I think some one is coming,” he remarked in an undertone.
Latham, listening, heard the sounds which Cole’s keener ears had caught
first. Folding his arms across his chest, he struck a carefree pose and
looked toward the door. It opened, and two armed stalwarts walked in.
They were followed by Englebreth in his wheel chair. Two more guards,
also armed, brought up the rear. With a cautious look to all sides,
the invalid trundled his wheel chair into the center of the room. The
barrel of a small automatic gleamed viciously in the electric light.
“How do you do, gentlemen?” he said in tones of mock geniality. “Wish
I could offer you some breakfast, but it has been my experience that
people are always more reasonable when their stomachs are empty. I have