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Show . . . . ... ... I THE STORY THUS FAR: Adam Bruce, FBI operator. Inspector Tope and Mrs. Tope met in the Maine woods. Tope found A maji murdered at auto camp operated by Bee Dewaln. He was believed to be Mr. Ledforge, head of New England utilities. utili-ties. Ledforge's friend was found in hospital hos-pital with head Injuries. His chauffeur, KeU, was located, admitted that he hit Holdom on head, upon Holdom's orders. KeU claimed he was hunting for his wife. Tope and Bruce went out to lodge where Eberiy, another friend of Ledforge's, was staying. They knew by now that the murdered man was not Ledforge. They also knew that a woman and man were present about the time the murder was committed. CHAPTER XI "Sure even if I have to put on a song and dance to keep them amused." He hurried away, and the old man turned to watch the proceedings here. Adam and Cumberland came beside him. The wrecking-crew must have worked late last night to accomplish so much. -Two pines of good girth had been cut and trimmed to serve as shears; their butts anchored on the rim of the ledge, against iron bars set in holes drilled in the solid granite; their tips crossed and lashed with chains from which a steel pulley and cable were suspended. suspend-ed. The shears were guyed with wire cables carried back and anchored an-chored to trees in the fringe of the wood behind. Men were busy tightening tight-ening the cables, tending the winch, shouting questions and commands. At the edge of the precipice the foreman, on his hands and knees, watched a man who swam nude in the quarry pool below. The fall from the pulley descended beside this man. He floated on his back, paddling pad-dling with his hands, and called up: "More slack, Mike! I must get a hitch around the axle!" "O.K," said Mike, and waved his hand in signal. The winch creaked; the ropes whirred; the steel fall descended six Inches, a foot, two feet deeper into the water. "I'll try it now," the swimmer decided. "Don't take any strain on It while I'm down." He made a neat surface dive; his heels gleamed in the sun. He seemed to be out of sight for a long time; but at length Adam saw a pale blur In the gray water, and then the man's head appeared. He rolled on his back, lay breathing deeply for a moment, shouted: "Take up on it now! I think I've got it! Don't lift just draw it tight!" The fall drew taut and stopped; and the swimmer once more descended. de-scended. When this time he broke the surface sur-face again, he swam a little away from the chain. "Now take it up!" he called. "Till the front end is out of water, so I can see if the hook Is set all right!" The winch revolved, and the fall began to climb laboriously upward. The man swam away -a rod or two and waited. So out of that gray concealing water, wheels appeared, and a fender, fen-der, a mudguard, the front of a streaming radiator. Adam's heart leaped, driven by an intense excitement. excite-ment. This was, after all, no more than a car which some one had wished to hide; yet its resurrection from that hiding place, where it might have lain forever, had in It something dramatic, almost oni-nous. oni-nous. It was like the emergence of a monster, slowly, from its lair; slow, lethargic and ponderous with consequences! "Hold it!" called the man below. The winch stopped while he swam toward the car. Adam felt some one beside him. Here was Tope, on hands and knees, peering down; the District Attorney just beyond. "O.K!" shouted the swimmer triumphantly. tri-umphantly. "You can have it! Take it away!" He began to swim toward the farther side of the quarry, where his clothes lay on a rock in the sun. Mike Frame waited till the swimmer swim-mer was well clear before he gave the signal. And at last It was here Just below be-low them. It hung six feet beyond their reach, its bottom toward them. They all stared at the bottom of this car, searching it with eyes absurdly ab-surdly intent, as though it might have some secret to reveal. And then suddenly Tope stood up; he spoke to Mike, In sharp Irritated tones, "What are you going to do with it?" he demanded. "Eh?" said Mike. "Do with It? Why drag It out of there! That's what you wanted, wasn't It?" Tope's temper flared. The old man was tired. Impatient. "How?" he insisted. in-sisted. "You can't reach out and pick it like an apple, and you've got no way to swing these shears in. You've wasted all this time and it's as far away now as It ever was! Man, you " Then abruptly he checked himself. His eyes were fixed on the car, hanging hang-ing now within ten feet of them, six feet out of reach. He moved to one side, approaching the edfie of the precipice as closely as possible, he men on the winch continued to wind; the car ro.'e higher. And Tope c;illerl sharply: "Slop! Stop It!" Mike lifter! his hand In sicnal Mat C'miherlarrrl came to Tope's side, at.k'-d. "What is It, Tope?" 'I he old man was staring in si lence at the car; and Adam came to see. And then he felt the inside of himself suddenly slip away like wheat out of a bin from which the bottom Is removed. The windows of the coupe were closed, and they were somewhat clouded by a gray deposit of silt accumulated during the days the car had lain here submerged. These windows were, incredibly, not broken; bro-ken; the car must, turning in the air as It fell, have landed on Its wheels. The window toward them was that on the car's left side, next to the wheel. And against the glass of this window, win-dow, from within, a hand was pressed! Four slender fingers touched the window, from knuckle to first joint; the backs of four fingers. There was upon one of them a ring, a gold band, a wedding ring. The hand with the fingers pressed against the glass had moved a little, in a short arc that left a smeared quarter-circle in the silt on the glass. There was in this mark a terrible suggestion that the hand had moved in signal, in a last pitiful appeall They could see the rest of this mmmk "Ton promised to tell me If Mrs. KeU was found." hand dimly, the forearm faintly; but nothing else at all save one thing: about the wrist, something like a black cord was knotted; seen even thus dimly, it seemed to have been knotted tightly, to have cut Into the soft flesh. And this was, clearly, a woman's hand and arm. Cumberland muttered: "Tope, there's someone in the car." Tope nodded. "It's Mrs. Kell," he said' briefly. "You'll have to " He checked, his thoughts absorbing him. "Lower the car again, till it's awash," he directed absently. "Swim out or make a raft or somethingget some-thingget her out of there quick's you can. Send for the ambulance. Take her to the undertaker's. I'll meet you there." ' He turned and strode away, Adam beside him; they reached the car and started down the road. They came to where Ned Quill held two cars of newspaper men in restraint. Adam turned off the road, crashing through the underbrush to pass them; and Tope leaned out and shouted: "Let them go on up, Ned! There's a murdered woman, in the car, up there. They've got a right to be on the spot!" Then as the newspaper cars started start-ed up the hill, he bade Adam stop, called Quill. "Ned," he said, "I'll be in town, at the undertaker's. Come up there when you've seen the Tennant girl." "Right," Quill agreed; and he said: "Doctor Medford's on his way down here. I talked to him on the phone awhile ago." Tope nodded. "Good. We'll watch for him," he agreed. They went on. When they turned Into the main road, Tope pointed to an approaching car, cried sharply: "Hold up! There's Medford." Doctor Medford alighted to speak to them; and his tone was respectful. respect-ful. "You were right, Inspector," he said. "Found a drug in him, eh?" Tope asked. "Gas in his lungs," the medical examiner replied. "And doped. Chloral, I think; but morphine too. I'm not an expert on such stud. We don't have much of it to do, up here. But after you'd told me what to look for" Tope nodded. "They're getting a woman dead out of the quarries up here. Doctor." he said. "I want to know how she was killed. And if she'd been given chloral, or morphine, mor-phine, I want to know that too. I'll be at Will Banion's." And a moment later, as they started on, Tope touched Adam's arm. "I'ull up nt that filling station, Adam," he directed. "There's bound ( to be a phone there. Call up New York. Tell them to find out whether wheth-er Bob Flint, that young pilot, had been given chloral, or some other knockout drops." Adam went to obey, and Tope sat deep In thought. His eyes were closed, so that he did not see young Joe Dane at the wheel of a car that presently went racing by. Adam returned from the telephone. tele-phone. "They'll get it," he said briefly. 'He put the car In motion, then asked: "Why do you want that. Tope?" Tope said abstractedly: "I figure he had Flint fly him up here, and back to New York in the morning. He could give Flint a drink of doped whisky, say. Flint would take off in the plane, pass out after he got Into the air, and crash. Then he couldn't testify " Adam uttered an ejaculation: "That's awful!" ' "I know it," Tope agreed. "But who, Tope?" Adam insisted. "Who is 'he'?" Tope said Impatiently: "Oh, let me alone, son!" And he said no further word till they came into the borders of North Madderson. Then at last he spoke. "Go to the jail, Adam," he directed. direct-ed. "We'll get something out of Kell now enough so we'll know how to go at Holdom." Adam nodded. "Something happened hap-pened on their trip up here Friday, all right," he agreed. "But I don't see what It was!" Tope said briefly: "It was a plant, a game, a play somebody tried to stage." "How do you figure that?" "Because Holdom told Kell to hit him over the head." Adam nodded. "That's right." He asked eagerly: "That was to make Holdom look like a victim too? Then you think he " Tope said grimly: "I think some one made a sucker out of Holdom. Used him. Holdom's a crook, Adam. Always has been, in little ways. You heard Mat, at the quarry; heard what he said about Ledforge filing charges against Holdom, with the Stock Exchange authorities." "You figure Holdom was double-crossing double-crossing Ledforge, and knew he would be found out, and killed the old man." Tope said quizzically: "Ledforge filed those charges himself yesterday, yester-day, Adam. How could he do that If Holdom killed him Friday?" They reached the jail behind the courthouse; and when barriers had been removed they came to Kell. They found the big man sitting on the cot in his cell, his head between his hands. He did not look up at the sound of their steps, nor when they paused before his cell door. The guard who had led them thus far knew Adam of old. and at the young man's word left them here; and Tope spoke, gently. "Kell?" he said. Kell roused, and he came slowly to his feet, the bars between them. He stared; and then he seemed to remember them. "I know you, sir," he muttered. "You promised to tell me If Mrs. Kell was found." "Yes, Kell," Tope assented; and he added harshly: "She is found!" "Where Is she, sir?" Tope said pitilessly: "The coupe was in the quarry, Kell. We got It out today. She had been murdered, and tied in it, tied to the wheel, before it was run over the precipice preci-pice into the quarry." "Dead?" Kell whispered, holding his breath. "Yes, dead," said Tope; and the breath came out of Kell In a long sigh, and the big man shivered like a stricken animal. He backed away, his hands up before his face; he slumped down on the cot again. Tope added harshly: "I think you killed her, just as you tried to kill Holdom 1" "I didn't, sir!" he protested. "I didn't!" "Mr. Holdom says you dldl'Tope declared. "You tried to kill him! Because he was chasing your wife, Kell!" "No sir, I didn't, sir!" Kell mumbled: "Dead? She's dead?" "Of course," Tope Insisted. "You killed her." "No sir. No!" "Then did Holdom? Was that why you tried to " "No, It wasn't Mr. Holdom," Kell answered. "I took him back, left him by the road. But when I came home, she was gone." And the big man cried suddenly, starting to his feet: "I meant to hit him easy, thp way he told me to; but when the wrench started down, I thought about the way he had bothered her; and I hit harder than I'd meant to." He caught himself. "Where is she, sir?" "They're bringing her to town," Tope told him. "What did you do to Mr. Ledforge, Kell? Or did Holdom Hol-dom " And Kell cried pitcously: "Let me alone, sir! Wait. Let me see her first. I can't believe it. Let me see her. Then I'll tell you anything." He collapsed, sobbing like a child, his head in his hands. Tope hesitated; hesitat-ed; but in the end he said: "Well, nil right, Kell. I'll wait. I'll come for you later." TO BE CONTINUED) |