“Come in and take us. This place is as full of death as a drug store!”
Followed a loud and scientific bombardment with machine guns, gas bombs and riot guns. The mobster who had been placed on guard at the back door showed too much of himself and was picked off. A contingent of officers made a quick, planned rush. More fighting inside, with three more Salters dying in hot blood in the parlor and kitchen. What seemed to be the sole survivor fled to the cellar and locked himself in a rear compartment. The walls were of concrete, the one door of massive planking. The chief of the attacking force stood in front of this door and raised his voice:
“Hello, in there! You’re Juney Saltz, aren’t you?”
Gruff was the reply: “What if I am? Don’t try to crack in here. I’ll get the first copper shows me his puss, and the second and the third.”
“You can’t get us all, Juney. And we’ve got more men out here than you’ve got bullets in there. Come out with your hands up while you still have the chance to stand a fair trial.”
“Not me,” growled Juney Saltz from within. “Come in and catch me before you talk about what kind of a trial I’ll get.”
There was a keyhole, only partially blocked by the turnkey. One of the G-men bent and thrust in the point of something that looked like a fountain pen. Carefully he pressed a stud. The little tube spurted a cloud of tear gas through the keyhole into Juney Saltz’s fortress. The besiegers grinned at each other, and all relaxed to wait.
The waiting was not long, as it developed. Juney Saltz spoke up within, his voice a blubber: “Hey! I—I’m s-smothering—”
“But I’m not,” drawled the same high voice that was becoming familiar. “Sit back, Juney, and put your head between your knees. You’ll stand it better that way.”
“I’m—done for!” wailed Juney Saltz. “If they crack in, I—I can’t s-see to shoot!”
“I can see to shoot.” The shrill voice had become deadly. “And you’ll be the first thing I shoot at if you don’t do what I tell you.”
A strangled howl burst from Juney Saltz. “I’d rather be shot than—” And next moment he was scrabbling at the door. “I surrender! I’ll let you bulls in!”
He had turned the key in the lock just as the shot that killed him rang out. A rush of police foiled an attempt from within to fasten the door again. Sneezing and gurgling, two of the raiders burst into the final stronghold, stumbling over the subsiding lump of flesh that had been Juney Saltz.
Blinded by tears from their own gas, they could not be sure afterward of what the scurrying little thing was that they saw and fired at. Those outside knew that nothing could have won past them, and the den itself had no window that was not bricked up. When the gas had been somewhat blown out, an investigator gave the place a thorough searching. Yes, there was one opening, a stovepipe hole through which a cat might have slipped. That was all. And the place was empty but for the body of Juney Saltz.
“Juney was shot in the back,” announced another operative, bending to examine the wound. “I think I see what happened. Squeaky-Voice was at that stovepipe hole, and plugged him from there as he tried to let us in. Then Juney tried to lock up again, just as we pushed the door open.”
Upstairs they went, and investigated further. The hole had joined a narrow chimney, with no way out except the upper end, a rectangle eight inches by ten. Even with six corpses to show, the agents returned to their headquarters with a feeling of failure. “In the morning,” they promised one another, “we’ll give that one Salter we’re holding another little question bee.”
But in the morning, the jailer with breakfast found that prisoner dead.
He had been caught with a noose of thin, strong cord, tightened around his throat from behind. Suicide? But the cord had been drawn into the little ventilator hole, and tied to a projecting rivet far inside and above.
On the same day, police, federal agents, newspapers and the public generally were exercised by the information that Shannon Cole, popular contralto star of stage, screen and radio, had been kidnapped from her Beverly Hills bedroom. No clues, and so the investigation turned to her acquaintances, among whom was Ben Gascon, recently retired from stage, screen and radio.
Benjamin Franklin Gascon left the office of the Los Angeles chief of detectives, where he had spent a most trying forenoon convincing his interrogators that he had no idea why he should be brought into the case. He knew nothing of the underworld. True, he knew Miss Cole professionally, but—and his face was rueful—had no reason to count himself a really close friend of hers. He had not seen her since the termination of their latest radio assignment. His personal affairs, meanwhile, were quite open to investigation; he had grown weary of ventriloquism, and had retired to live on the income from his investments. Later, he might resume his earlier profession, medicine. He was attending lectures now at the University of California in Los Angeles. And once again, he had no idea of how he was being brought into this case, or of who could have kidnapped Miss Cole.
But, even as he departed, he suddenly got that idea.
“Tom-Tom!”
It took moments to string together the bits of logic which brought that thought into his mind.
Things had happened to people, mostly gangsters, at the hands of a malevolent creature; that is, if the creature had hands—but it must have hands, if it could wield a gun, a slip-cord, a knife! It must also be notably small and nimble, if it really traveled up chimneys, down ventilator
