The Japanese nodded.

  “Can’t see steps,” he said. ” Man is a thief. His clothes are very poor. His face grows whiskers. Shirt is very dirty. Pockets have no money .”

  Ben Harper turned to stare at the Japanese.

  “Do you mean to say you searched his pockets, Koshioto?”

  The white teeth flashed in a grin.

  “Koshioto,” he announced, “always searches pockets of dead men.”

  Harper smiled, stared thoughtfully down at the corpse.

  “It is,” he said,” a good time for us to get out of here. I will not be home again tonight. If anyone wants to see me. you don’t know where I am. And— remember about those shoes, Koshioto."

  “The furnace,” Koshioto said, “awaits shoes with fiery impatience.”

  CHAPTER VII

  And Then They Were Three…

  Elizabeth Crail drew the silken robe about her, saw that the chain catch was on the door, and opened it to stare at her visitor.

  “You,” she said when she saw Ben Harper’s face.

  “Yes,” be told her. ” I think this affair is coming to a showdown. I want you to go with me to the Midwick Building. I want to talk with Mr. Delamy. I think I prefer to talk with him alone.”

  She unhooked the chain.

  ” Come in,” she said. “You’ll have to wait while I dress. Make yourself comfortable.”

  She slipped into a bedroom, leaving the door half open. He could hear her quick steps on the floor, the running fire of questions which she asked him.

  ” Was that anything significant,” she inquired,” the thing you found?”

  “I think so,” he told her.

  “Was it, perhaps, someone who was mistaken for you?”

  ” It looks very much like it.”

  “But why should anyone want to kill you?”

  “To keep from being discovered, of course,"

  “Then you must know something that is particularly important,"

  ” Perhaps I do.”

  ” Is that what you want to tell Mr. Delamy?”

  He laughed and said, ” Go on with your dressing, young lady. You know that curiosity killed a cat.”

  She finished her dressing in silence, appeared within less than a minute, ready for the street, her hand on the light switch.

  ” What did you do with your brother?” he asked.

  ” I sent him to find Draper.”

  “He was going to make Draper surrender?”

  “He was going to try to.”

  ” Do you think he’ll be successful?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is he going to do?”

  ” I want him to tell the authorities where Draper is. That is what I told him to tell Draper—that if Draper didn’t surrender voluntarily, Ashley would tell the police where to find bun.”

  Harper frowned.

  “Your brother,” be said, “may not be upon a very safe errand.”

  “Ashley can take care of himself on anything like that. It's when someone starts imposing on him that he’s helpless.”

  ” Well,” Harper said, ” we’ll try to get this damned thing cleaned up, if possible, in time to prevent any more murders.”

  “Do you think there’s danger?”

  ” Great danger.”

  He escorted her to the sidewalk, into a taxicab, refused to answer any more questions until they had reached the Midwick Building, where Elizabeth Crail secured admittance for him. They rode in the elevator to the steel-walled reception room.

  The elevator door clanged behind them. Elizabeth Crail moved with assurance toward the electrically controlled doors.

  A man’s voice said, ” Stick them up—both of you. Keep ’em frozen. Stay where you are!”

  From the inside corridor came the piercing scream of a woman. A man’s voice was raised in a shout. Feet pounded upon the Boor.

  ” You heard what I said,” shouted the belligerent voice of the guard in the secret cage. ” Get your hands up until we get this thing straightened out. Pitley Simms has been killed.”

  Slowly, Elizabeth Crail raised her hands. Harper’s hands were already in the air.

  Someone pounded on the electrically controlled door. The guard in the steel-lined cage shouted, “Slay where you are. No one goes in or out until this thing has been cleared up. Those are orders T*

  ” Will you,” asked Elizabeth Crail, ” kindly tell Mr. Delamy that Mr. Harper is here, and that Pm here?”

  ” Don’t worry, sister,” said the man’s voice,” I’m taking care of those things. That information went in over the telephone as soon as you hit the place.”

  A moment later he said, in a somewhat less truculent tone, “You can take your hands down, you folks, and go in. But you’re to stick close to Delamy. He’s taking the responsibility.”

  The electrical doors clicked open. A half hysterical woman tried to push her way out. The guard worked the switch which slammed the door behind the in-Da—9 coming pair and said, “No yon don’t, sister. People can go in, but no one’s going out any more.”

  Harper tried to quiet her, but the woman was beating on the panels of the door with her bare hands.

  They entered a long corridor. A door opened. Delamy appeared in the doorway of the reception room. His face was grave.

  ” Come in,” he said. ” Poor old Simms just got his.”

  “How did it happen?” Harper asked.

  ” He was in the vault room, looking at some papers,” Delamy said. “We found him there, lying on the floor.”

  “Was there,” asked Harper, “a small hole in the back of his neck?”

  Delamy gave an obvious start.

  “How the devil did you know that?” he demanded. ” There hasn’t been a bit of information go out of this place.”

  ” The reason I asked,” Harper said, ” is that someone tried to murder me by that same method about two hours ago…However, that can wait. I want to see the body.”

  Delamy said, slowly, ” Harper, I’ve got confidence in you, but the others are inclined to feel that you…”

  ” Had you done exactly as I instructed,” Harper said, ” gone to your rooms, bolted the doors and stayed there for twelve hours you would have been out of danger.

  “But Pitley Simms had to go mess* ing through some documents for some reason or other. I don’t know what caused him to be in such a hurry, but that haste cost him his life. If you folks refuse to follow instructions, I don’t see why you should blame me if things go wrong.”

  Delamy shrugged his shoulders and said, “ You don’t need to convince me of the logic of that statement. I’m simply telling you how the others feel. This way, please.”

  He opened a door.

  Several people were moving about a room, in haste and obvious confusion.

  Harrison Gale stared at Ben Harper with his watery eyes. He cleared his throat nervously.

  “A lot of protection you turned out to be,” he said.

  “Shut up!” Delamy told him. “If we’d followed instructions there would not have been any trouble.”

  ” We don’t have to take instruction* from a vaudeville artist,” Boxman said, Ins face twisting savagely.

  “You didn’t have to employ vaudeville artist, in the first place,“ Ben Harper told him. ” Having employed one, you should have followed instructions.”

  He glanced inquiringly at Delamy. Delamy nodded, pushed forward through the group of people and opened a door.

  Harper stood in the doorway, looking about the room with slow, steady gaze. His eyes swung from the man who lay face down on the floor, half m and half out of a vault, to the various windows.

  Delamy, at his shoulder, offered explanations in a low voice:

  ” You can see,” he said, ” the way the room was laid out. It was a vault Each of us has his private safe inside of a private, locked compartment. We have joint access to the vault. All of us have the combination to it. The private safes, on the other hand, have individual combinations. These are possessed only by the individuals who own the respective safes.”

  “And Simms wanted to open his safe?” Harper asked.

  “Apparently.”

  “Had it been opened?”

  ” No.”

  “What had he done?”

  ” Just opened the vault.”

  “Then what happened?”

  ” We don’t know. This much we do know—the lights in the room went off.”

  “What caused that?”

  ” Some sort of a short circuit, which apparently had been ingeniously arranged. You can see where the door, swinging open, struck a bit of copper wire. That wire is connected with the lighting system. It blew out the fuse.”

  Harper stared moodily at the prostrate figure.

  “You’re going to notify the police?”

  “Yes, we’ve got to.”

  “You think, then, that electricity has something to do with the thing?”

  ” How do you mean?”

  “You think the electrical short had something to do with the manner in which this man died?”

  “I don’t know, Harper, I’m sure,” Delamy said. ” It’s too complicated to figure out hurriedly. The thing is utter* ly incredible. There simply couldn’t have been anyone in this room. I know that for a fact. Simms stepped in the room. I happened to be near the door when he entered. He said something about getting some papers out of his safe. It wasn’t until after he had been in there some twenty or twenty-five minutes that I thought I’d better look in on him.”

  ” Just when did you discover him?”

  “Just a few minutes before you came in.”

  ” What did you do?”

  “I got in touch with Harrison Gale; the first one that I met He suggested that we keep it quiet until we could work out some plan of campaign, but the help got wise to it There was quite a commotion.”

  ” Yes, I heard it,” Harper said.

  He stood for a moment, staring about the room, then said slowly, ” Look here, Delamy, this is the second mysterious death in this building. If the police are called in now they’re going to smell a very big rat. They’re going to tip off the newspaper reporters. There’s going to be a big story released about how you fellows are up here in a state of siege, about the mysterious death which strikes so mysteriously it can’t be located, and all that sort of rot.

  ” Now get your gang together. I’ve got a proposition to make them. It’s probably not strictly legal, but I’m willing to take a chance on it.”

  Delamy nodded. He stepped back a few paces and said to someone. ” Get Mr. Gale and Mr. Boxman here immediately.”

  When the other two men stood at Delamy’s side, Harper spoke to them briefly:

  ” You chaps are on a spot. There’s some peculiar form of death that strikes here and you don’t know what It is. It isn’t uniform. It’s in one form one time, another form another time. That’s what makes it so deadly. It’s obvious that we can’t keep the facts from becoming public now.

  ” I’ve got a proposition. I want to have the murders solved before wc call the police. Now, I’m satisfied that the dog attacked Millers. I’m satisfied that he received orders while in a hypnotized condition. Those orders must have come in over the telephone…”

  ” And,” Boxman Interrupted, “ this man, Draper, was the one whose voice was coming over the telephone.”

  ” No," Harper said, ” I don’t think so. You see, there wasn’t anything that Draper could say that would interest Millers over a long period of time. Millers listened just long enough to find out what it was that Draper wanted, and then switched off the tele* phone. That’s proven, because, when Millers’ secretary asked a question and then waked, thinking that Millers would telephone down the answer, there was silence. She had to go up, in order to sec what Millers wanted to do.

  ” Then, again, there’s this death of Simms. It’s a weird form of murder, and…

  ” Wait a minute,” Boxman said. ” Do you understand the implication you are making when you talk about that telephone conversation?”

  Harper stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Ashley Crail,” Boxman said simply.” He coaid have rung the telephone. He could have deliberately planted Draper in the visitors' room in order to make certain that Millers would be sitting by his telephone.”

  Harper nodded slowly.

  ” Right at the present time,” he said, “I’m not interested so much in the identity of the murderer as I am m catching the murderer red-handed. Now, I have an idea that the possibilities of this chamber of death are not exhausted. I think that Simms set off some diabolically clever mechanism which brought about his death. I propose to enter the room in just the manner that Simms did. We’ll move the body so the vault door will close. We’ll dose and lock the vault. We’ll put a new fuse in, but leave the wire so that when the vault door is open it will snake a short circuit which will blow out the fuse and plunge the room in darkness. You fellows can give me the combination of the vault. I’ll go in and turn the dial, just as Simms must have, I’ll stand in exactly the same position. I’D open the door, just as he must have, and I’ll stay in there for twenty-five minutes if necessary, if l can’t discover anything before that time has elapsed.” ” But what do you think you can find?” asked Delamy.

  ” Frankly, I don’t know.”

  ” We should notify the police at once. We’ll haw an awful job squaring things if we don’t notify them at once.” Harper said,” I am not attempting to minimize that responsibility. How* ever gentlemen, I think it is of greater importance to ascertain something about the method of murder than to call in the police and confront them with a baffling enigma.”

  Boxman said slowly, ” I’m in favor of doing as you suggest, Harper, providing you wait ten minutes, during which rime we open all the windows and air the place out. After all, there may be something in the atmosphere— some poison gas or something which should be eliminated from the room.”

  ” What the devil has gas got to do with it?” asked Delamy. “You…” ” Perhaps a lot more than you think,” Harper said seriously. "I don’t know just where you got that gas idea from, Boxman. It may have been telepathy, but I was on the point of nuking such a suggestion myself.”

  Delamy looked from one to the Other, shrugged his shoulders.

  “ It’s all foolishness,” Gale said.” A lot of damn foolishness. There’s nothing in that room that had anything to do with Simms’ death.”

  Harper stared at him, eyes cold and hard.

  ” Then, just bow did Simms die?” he inquired.

  Gale cleared his throat and was silent. Boxman said quietly, ” I take it, then, that it’s settled. I’m going to assume personal responsibility for seeing that you run no unnecessary risks, and I’m going to make just one more suggestion. That is that you talk with Ashley Crail before you go in there.”

  “Why?” Harper asked.

  “If he’s got a guilty conscience, I think you can tell it. You’ve got uncanny powers of observation.”

  Harper said, “Thanks, I will,” and moved away.

  He found Ashley Crail in the corridor leading to the reception room. Crail was white-faced and shaking.

  ” Snap out of it,” Harper said. “You look positively guilty.”

  Crail gave a quick start, tried to say something, but his tongue refused to function. Then he got control of his organs of speech and said,” Don’t you make any accusations like that, or, by Cod, you’ll regret it!”

  ” I wasn’t making an accusation,” Harper said. “I was merely telling you that you should snap out of it.”

  “How the hell can 1 snap out of it when we’re locked up here with some unseen death? I came back here after I saw you, to get some things, and they wouldn’t let me leave. Did you see Draper after you left me?”

  “No.”

  Crail shook his head slowly.

  “Don’t lie,” Harper said. “You know that you saw him.”

  “Well, what if I did?”

  “Are you going to tell us where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?"

  “Because if I did I’d be killed. I’m not going to turn rat.”

  “Do you know who killed Simms?” Harper asked.

  “Good God, not Of course not!”

  ” Do you know who killed Millers?”

  “His dog.”

  “I know, but do you know who incited the dog to the attack?”

  ” No,” Crail said, and lowered his eyes.

  There was a moment of silence, then Crail went on, " Damn it, I wish you wouldn’t Stand there and third degree me like that! I know what you have in mind, and it makes me nervous. It makes me act guilty. I can’t help it. I’m not a smooth actor.”

  Harper stared at him for a moment, then abruptly turned on his heel and walked away.

  “You had,” be said, “better be very, very careful during the next hour. Stay dose to some one all the time.”

  “Good heavens, why?” Crail asked.

  But Harper had already moved away.

  Harper caught Delamy’s eye.

  “Everything’s ready,” Delamy told him. “if you’re going to follow out this crazy scheme. Here’s the combination of the vault.”

  “The vault is dosed?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one is in the room?”

  “No-one except…the body.”

  Harper nodded, stepped to the door of the room, opened it and turned to smile at Delamy.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he said casually, and dosed the door.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Secret of the Vault

  He stepped over the body of Pitley Simms, went at once to the windows, dosed every one of them. He stood for a moment, listen-big. Everything was quiet He stepped to the door of the vault, put a handkerchief over his fingers so that be wouldn’t leave fingerprints on the nickeled dial and slowly spun the combination through-the series of figures which Delamy had given him.