The new menace surveyed the four others with a sardonic glance. “Well! So there were two others trying to beat me to it. This seems to be a very popular place.”
Sills and Taylor stared stupidly, while Hornswoggle’s teeth chattered energetically. The first mobster moved back uneasily, muttering as he did so, “For Pete’s sake, it’s Mike the Slug.”
“Yeah,” Mike rasped, “Mike the Slug. There’s lots of guys who know me and who know I ain’t afraid to pull the trigger anytime I feel like. Come on, Baldy, hand over the works. You know—the stuff about your fake gold. Come on, before I count five.”
Sills moved slowly toward the old safe in the corner. Mike stepped back carelessly to give him room, and in so doing, his coat sleeve brushed against a shelf. A small vial of sodium sulphate solution tottered and fell.
With sudden inspiration, Sills yelled, “My God, watch out! It’s nitroglycerine!”
The vial hit the floor with the smashing tinkle of broken glass, and involuntarily, Mike yelled and jumped in wild dismay. And as he did so, Taylor crashed into him with a beautiful flying tackle. At the same time, Sills lunged for Taylor’s fallen weapon to cover the other two. For this, however, there was no longer need. At the very beginning of the confusion, both had faded hurriedly into the night from whence they came.
Taylor and Mike the Slug rolled round and round the laboratory floor, locked in desperate struggle while Sills hopped over and about them, praying for a moment of comparative quiet that he might bring the revolver into sharp and sudden contact with the gangster’s skull.
But no such moment came. Suddenly Mike lunged, caught Taylor stunningly under the chin, and jerked free. Sills yelled in consternation and pulled the trigger at the fleeing figure. The shot was wild and Mike escaped unharmed. Sills made no attempt to follow.
A sluicing stream of cold water brought Taylor back to his senses. He shook his head dazedly as he surveyed the surrounding shambles.
“Whew!” he said, “What a night!”
Sills groaned, “What are we going to do now, Gene? Our very lives are in danger. I never thought of the possibility of thieves, or I would never have told of the discovery to the newspapers.”
“Oh well, the harm’s done; no use weeping over it. Now listen, the first thing we have to do now is to get back to sleep. They won’t bother us again tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll go to the bank and put the papers outlining the details of the process in the vault (which you should have done long ago). Staples will be here at ; we’ll close the deal, and then, at last, we’ll live happily ever after.”
The chemist shook his head dolefully. “Ammonium has certainly proved to be very upsetting so far. I almost wish I had never heard of it. I’d almost rather be back doing ore analysis.”
An Unexpected Surprise!
As Walter Sills rattled crosstown towards his bank, he found no reason to change his wish. Even the comforting and homely jiggling of his ancient and battered automobile failed to cheer him. From a life characterized by peaceful monotony, he had entered a period of bedlam, and he was not at all satisfied with the change.
“Riches, like poverty, has its own peculiar problems,” he remarked sententiously to himself as he braked the car before the two-story, marble edifice that was the bank. He stepped out carefully, stretched his cramped legs, and headed for the revolving door.
He didn’t get there right away, though. Two husky specimens of the human race stepped up, one at each side, and Sills felt a very hard object pressing with painful intensity against his ribs. He opened his mouth involuntarily, and was rewarded by an icy voice in his ears, “Quiet, Baldy, or you’ll get what you deserve for the damn trick you pulled on me last night.”
Sills shivered and subsided. He recognized Mike the Slug’s voice very easily.
“Where’s the details?” asked Mike, “and make it quick.”
“Inside jacket pocket,” croaked Sills tremulously.
Mike’s companion passed his hand dexterously into the indicated pocket and flicked out three or four folded sheets of foolscap.
“Dat it, Mike?”
A hasty appraisal and a nod, “Yeh, we got it. All right. Baldy, on your way!” A sudden shove and the two gangsters jumped into their car and drove away rapidly, while the chemist sprawled on the sidewalk. Kindly hands raised him up.
“It’s all right,” he managed to gasp. “I just tripped, that’s all. I’m not hurt.” He found himself alone again, passed into the bank, and dropped into the nearest bench, in near-collapse. There was no doubt about it; the new life was not for him.
But he should have been prepared for it. Taylor had foreseen a possibility of this sort of thing happening. He, himself, had thought a car had been trailing him. Yet, in his surprise and fright, he had almost ruined everything.
He shrugged his thin shoulders and, taking off his hat, abstracted a few folded sheets of paper from the sweatband. It was the work of five minutes to deposit them in a vault, and see the immensely strong steel door swing shut. He felt relieved.
“I wonder what they’ll do,” he muttered to himself on the way home, “when they try to follow the instructions on the paper they did get.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “If they do, there’s going to be one heck of an explosion.”
Sills arrived home to find three policemen pacing leisurely up and down the sidewalk in front of the house.
“Police guard,” explained Taylor shortly, “so that we have no more trouble like last night.”
The chemist related the events at the bank and Taylor nodded grimly. “Well, it’s checkmate for them now. Staples will be here in two hours and until then, the police will take care of things. Afterwards,” he shrugged, “it will be Staples’ affair.”
“Listen, Gene,” the chemist put in suddenly, “I’m worried about the ammonium. I haven’t tested
