CHAPTER XXXIII—PUZZLED POLICEAs he ceased speaking, the Black Star turned suddenly and gave his prisoner a shot from the vapor gun. His own men evidently had guessed what was coming, for they turned their faces away, and each held a small sponge to his nostrils, for in that close space the vapor seemed twice as heavy.“Quick, now!” the master criminal instructed his men. “I don’t know how it happens that the police came down on us, but they’re here, and I suppose the block is surrounded. We can’t go up, and we can’t go down—yet. The men upstairs must have been overcome, since the fighting has stopped, and the bank is full of police. So we’ll try the halfway station.”He tugged at the cable, and the car stopped. He flashed his torch on the wall, and then pulled the cable again and forced the car to ascend as slowly as possible, while he looked closely at the wall.“Here’s the scratch we made,” he said finally, and stopped the box. He pressed against the wall, and a new aperture showed. “In with you,” he instructed, “and don’t forget the loot.”The three men stepped past him and into a tiny room that had been constructed between the walls, halfway from the first floor to the third. The Black Star followed, turned to tug at the cable and send the box on to the top of the shaft, and then closed the opening and turned to face his three men and his unconscious prisoner.“Here we are!” he said. “Speak in whispers now, and we’ll be all right. We have some ventilation here, and you may smoke if you wish. This little room was connected with an airshaft in the building, you’ll remember. You see what forethought does? I had this constructed just for such an emergency. The percentage of chance was against it ever being needed, but I thought it better to take no chance, and you see what it has meant. That is why I always win. I prepare for every possible contingency.”The police, at that moment, were trying it. Down below, the chief was ordering his men to hammer through the wall, since they were unable to find the spring that released the panel. Those above had been unsuccessful in their search for the spring, too, and both above and below officers were smashing at the wall with axes, trying to cut their way through.Down in the bank, Muggs was raging.“I knew you’d let him get away!” he cried. “I knew it!”“We’ve got him trapped,” the chief answered.“How do you know it? Ain’t you got some respect for the Black Star’s schemes by this time?”“We’ll get him—you’re worrying about Verbeck, that’s all. I don’t think he’ll hurt your boss.”“The Black Star’ll get out some way!”“Take it easy, Muggs,” the chief advised. “We’ve got the entire block surrounded. Every door and window is being watched. Why, I’ve even got men watching the sewer connections. Not a rat could get out of this block without being seen and caught.”“Yeh? We had him surrounded in a house once out on the river, and didn’t he get to the roof and streak it away in an aëroplane?”“Well, you may be sure he hasn’t any plane on the roof of this building, Muggs. He couldn’t have driven it here and landed—he’d have been smashed to bits, and, besides, some one would have heard or seen him. An aëroplane makes a noise. And he didn’t have any on the roof at supper time, because one of the watchmen we found bound and gagged lives up there, and he just told me he’d seen nothing suspicious. We’ve got him in a trap, I tell you.”The wall crashed in, and the men fell back, half expecting to face a fight with the Black Star and his men. But their torches showed them a dark shaft running up between the walls and a cable in one corner of it, and that was all.They cleared away the debris. Up in the lodge hall the other policemen smashed through the wall, too, and sent a shower of bricks and plaster down. Through the shaft they held conversation with those below.“That box business is up here, chief, but she’s empty,” one of the men called.“What’s that—empty?”“Not a sign of anybody in it or anything. It was at the top of the shaft.”The chief sputtered a moment in impotent rage, and then shouted his orders up the shaft.“Two or three of you get into that blamed thing and come down, and you examine the walls every inch of the way. Keep your torches going and have your guns ready. I tell you they’ve got to be in the shaft somewhere!”Then he stepped back and waited. The cable moved, and by glancing into the shaft the chief and his men could see that the box was descending slowly. The chief turned to send a captain outside to warn the men who surrounded the block that closer watch was to be kept.“They’re in this block—and they can’t get out without being nabbed!” he declared.And then the box struck the bottom of the shaft, and with a sigh of relief a lieutenant and two men crawled out.“Not a thing!” he reported. “We examined every foot of the walls, and there isn’t a crack nor a hole a mouse could get through. The top of the shaft is solid wall, and so is the bottom. The Black Star and three of his men went in there and took Verbeck with them, and they’ve gone up in smoke or something!”“You’re a fool!” the chief retorted.He got in the box himself with two men, and went up and came down again, and confessed himself bewildered. Reports came in from the streets that not a person had left the block. The Black Star and the others, it seemed, had melted into thin air and drifted out and away.The Black Star at that moment was chuckling softly and assuring himself that his prisoner was not regaining consciousness. He had used the vapor gun in the box before reaching this hole in the wall, because he didn’t want his prisoner to know where he had been. For the Black Star intended having his little joke.He and his three men had held their sides to keep from laughing aloud as the police went up and down the shaft, so close to them at times that they could hear the muttered curses of the officers.“The entrance to this little room was the best job of all,” he said. “They could look right at it and not see it, and, if they did see it, they couldn’t get in.”“But we’re due for quite a rest here,” one of his men complained.“Don’t get nervous,” the master criminal warned. “We are due to get out of here before daylight, and don’t you forget that. Don’t think that I intend to stay here all day to-morrow, waiting for to-morrow night. If we did we might find that the stupid police had sealed up the bottom and top of the shaft. That’d be lovely, wouldn’t it?”He chuckled again as his three men shuddered at the thought of being interred alive. He went to the wall and pressed against it, and the panel slid back three or four inches. Leaning forward carefully, the Black Star glanced down.He could see the flashes of the police torches at the bottom of the shaft, and he could hear Muggs and the chief in a lively argument. Glancing up, he saw the flash of a torch at the top. He reached out, knowing that his hand could not be seen unless several torches were flashed down the shaft at the same time, and pulled at the cable. The box began to ascend.It was halfway to the hole in the wall before the chief noticed it, and then, thinking the men above were raising it, he shouted for them to lower it again. While they conversed by shrieks and yells, the Black Star brought the box opposite the sliding panel and gripped the cable there.The men below and the men above tugged at the cable, but the box remained in place. The Black Star, still chuckling, took pencil and paper from his pocket and scribbled a note, and pinned it to the breast of the unconscious man before him. Then he tumbled his prisoner into the box.“Go down to your friend, the chief, and mystify him, my dear Mr. Verbeck,” the Black Star said. “You have not indulged in much action this evening. I trust the chief will unbind you, and that when you regain consciousness you’ll join in the chase.”He chuckled again, tugged at the cable, and sent the box downward, and then closed the panel and sat down beside his men.“Listen now, and you’ll hear a roar!” he exclaimed.“But how are we goin’ to get out, sir?” one of the crooks asked.“Don’t worry about that. What time is it?”The man flashed a torch and glanced at his watch.“It’s almost two o’clock.”“Ha! Then we’d better get out of here within the hour. It’ll be daylight by four-thirty, and I want to be back at headquarters before then. You know how I am going, of course.”“I know how you’ll go if you get out of here,” the man replied. “Getting out of here is what is worrying me.”“Don’t worry—it causes gray hairs. Listen!”They could hear a commotion at the bottom of the shaft. The box had reached its destination, and the bound, gagged, and unconscious man had been seen and taken out.“It’s Verbeck!” the chief cried. “He’s doped, or something!”“Vapor gun!” Muggs explained.“Then they’ve sent him back to us. But where did he come from? Answer me that! He didn’t come from the top, and there’s no place between here and the top where he could come from. Unbind him, you men, and take that gag off. Maybe he can tell us something when he gets rid of that vapor dope. What’s this—a note?”One of the men held his torch, and the chief read it swiftly:Dear Chief: Here is Roger Verbeck safe and sound. Since you don’t seem able to make very much war against me, perhaps you’ll revive Verbeck and let him get into the game. I’ve kept him pretty quiet to-night. I’m sending him to you out of the sky, my dear chief, you might say. At least, you don’t know where I am sending him from, and cannot find out. I don’t know how you got on my trail so swiftly to-night, but it didn’t save the bank from losing a vast sum, and didn’t help you much, did it?*****“If I ever get my two hands on that man he’ll never live to stand trial!” the chief promised. “Verbeck conscious yet? We’ve got to look into this business. I tell you the Black Star’s somewhere in this building. He’s somewhere in that shaft——”“But he can’t be,” a lieutenant protested. “There isn’t a place in the shaft where a man could leave the box.”“Nevertheless——”“Verbeck’s come to!” one of the men cried.They knelt beside him, aided him to sit up, tried to get him to talk. They shot questions at him as bullets come from a machine gun, and he waved them away.“Where did they take you, Verbeck?” the chief demanded.“I—don’t know. I’ve been unconscious——”“All the time?”“They did it—just after the box started up. That’s the last I knew—until now.”“They’re in that shaft!” the chief cried. “I’m going up again to see!”
As he ceased speaking, the Black Star turned suddenly and gave his prisoner a shot from the vapor gun. His own men evidently had guessed what was coming, for they turned their faces away, and each held a small sponge to his nostrils, for in that close space the vapor seemed twice as heavy.
“Quick, now!” the master criminal instructed his men. “I don’t know how it happens that the police came down on us, but they’re here, and I suppose the block is surrounded. We can’t go up, and we can’t go down—yet. The men upstairs must have been overcome, since the fighting has stopped, and the bank is full of police. So we’ll try the halfway station.”
He tugged at the cable, and the car stopped. He flashed his torch on the wall, and then pulled the cable again and forced the car to ascend as slowly as possible, while he looked closely at the wall.
“Here’s the scratch we made,” he said finally, and stopped the box. He pressed against the wall, and a new aperture showed. “In with you,” he instructed, “and don’t forget the loot.”
The three men stepped past him and into a tiny room that had been constructed between the walls, halfway from the first floor to the third. The Black Star followed, turned to tug at the cable and send the box on to the top of the shaft, and then closed the opening and turned to face his three men and his unconscious prisoner.
“Here we are!” he said. “Speak in whispers now, and we’ll be all right. We have some ventilation here, and you may smoke if you wish. This little room was connected with an airshaft in the building, you’ll remember. You see what forethought does? I had this constructed just for such an emergency. The percentage of chance was against it ever being needed, but I thought it better to take no chance, and you see what it has meant. That is why I always win. I prepare for every possible contingency.”
The police, at that moment, were trying it. Down below, the chief was ordering his men to hammer through the wall, since they were unable to find the spring that released the panel. Those above had been unsuccessful in their search for the spring, too, and both above and below officers were smashing at the wall with axes, trying to cut their way through.
Down in the bank, Muggs was raging.
“I knew you’d let him get away!” he cried. “I knew it!”
“We’ve got him trapped,” the chief answered.
“How do you know it? Ain’t you got some respect for the Black Star’s schemes by this time?”
“We’ll get him—you’re worrying about Verbeck, that’s all. I don’t think he’ll hurt your boss.”
“The Black Star’ll get out some way!”
“Take it easy, Muggs,” the chief advised. “We’ve got the entire block surrounded. Every door and window is being watched. Why, I’ve even got men watching the sewer connections. Not a rat could get out of this block without being seen and caught.”
“Yeh? We had him surrounded in a house once out on the river, and didn’t he get to the roof and streak it away in an aëroplane?”
“Well, you may be sure he hasn’t any plane on the roof of this building, Muggs. He couldn’t have driven it here and landed—he’d have been smashed to bits, and, besides, some one would have heard or seen him. An aëroplane makes a noise. And he didn’t have any on the roof at supper time, because one of the watchmen we found bound and gagged lives up there, and he just told me he’d seen nothing suspicious. We’ve got him in a trap, I tell you.”
The wall crashed in, and the men fell back, half expecting to face a fight with the Black Star and his men. But their torches showed them a dark shaft running up between the walls and a cable in one corner of it, and that was all.
They cleared away the debris. Up in the lodge hall the other policemen smashed through the wall, too, and sent a shower of bricks and plaster down. Through the shaft they held conversation with those below.
“That box business is up here, chief, but she’s empty,” one of the men called.
“What’s that—empty?”
“Not a sign of anybody in it or anything. It was at the top of the shaft.”
The chief sputtered a moment in impotent rage, and then shouted his orders up the shaft.
“Two or three of you get into that blamed thing and come down, and you examine the walls every inch of the way. Keep your torches going and have your guns ready. I tell you they’ve got to be in the shaft somewhere!”
Then he stepped back and waited. The cable moved, and by glancing into the shaft the chief and his men could see that the box was descending slowly. The chief turned to send a captain outside to warn the men who surrounded the block that closer watch was to be kept.
“They’re in this block—and they can’t get out without being nabbed!” he declared.
And then the box struck the bottom of the shaft, and with a sigh of relief a lieutenant and two men crawled out.
“Not a thing!” he reported. “We examined every foot of the walls, and there isn’t a crack nor a hole a mouse could get through. The top of the shaft is solid wall, and so is the bottom. The Black Star and three of his men went in there and took Verbeck with them, and they’ve gone up in smoke or something!”
“You’re a fool!” the chief retorted.
He got in the box himself with two men, and went up and came down again, and confessed himself bewildered. Reports came in from the streets that not a person had left the block. The Black Star and the others, it seemed, had melted into thin air and drifted out and away.
The Black Star at that moment was chuckling softly and assuring himself that his prisoner was not regaining consciousness. He had used the vapor gun in the box before reaching this hole in the wall, because he didn’t want his prisoner to know where he had been. For the Black Star intended having his little joke.
He and his three men had held their sides to keep from laughing aloud as the police went up and down the shaft, so close to them at times that they could hear the muttered curses of the officers.
“The entrance to this little room was the best job of all,” he said. “They could look right at it and not see it, and, if they did see it, they couldn’t get in.”
“But we’re due for quite a rest here,” one of his men complained.
“Don’t get nervous,” the master criminal warned. “We are due to get out of here before daylight, and don’t you forget that. Don’t think that I intend to stay here all day to-morrow, waiting for to-morrow night. If we did we might find that the stupid police had sealed up the bottom and top of the shaft. That’d be lovely, wouldn’t it?”
He chuckled again as his three men shuddered at the thought of being interred alive. He went to the wall and pressed against it, and the panel slid back three or four inches. Leaning forward carefully, the Black Star glanced down.
He could see the flashes of the police torches at the bottom of the shaft, and he could hear Muggs and the chief in a lively argument. Glancing up, he saw the flash of a torch at the top. He reached out, knowing that his hand could not be seen unless several torches were flashed down the shaft at the same time, and pulled at the cable. The box began to ascend.
It was halfway to the hole in the wall before the chief noticed it, and then, thinking the men above were raising it, he shouted for them to lower it again. While they conversed by shrieks and yells, the Black Star brought the box opposite the sliding panel and gripped the cable there.
The men below and the men above tugged at the cable, but the box remained in place. The Black Star, still chuckling, took pencil and paper from his pocket and scribbled a note, and pinned it to the breast of the unconscious man before him. Then he tumbled his prisoner into the box.
“Go down to your friend, the chief, and mystify him, my dear Mr. Verbeck,” the Black Star said. “You have not indulged in much action this evening. I trust the chief will unbind you, and that when you regain consciousness you’ll join in the chase.”
He chuckled again, tugged at the cable, and sent the box downward, and then closed the panel and sat down beside his men.
“Listen now, and you’ll hear a roar!” he exclaimed.
“But how are we goin’ to get out, sir?” one of the crooks asked.
“Don’t worry about that. What time is it?”
The man flashed a torch and glanced at his watch.
“It’s almost two o’clock.”
“Ha! Then we’d better get out of here within the hour. It’ll be daylight by four-thirty, and I want to be back at headquarters before then. You know how I am going, of course.”
“I know how you’ll go if you get out of here,” the man replied. “Getting out of here is what is worrying me.”
“Don’t worry—it causes gray hairs. Listen!”
They could hear a commotion at the bottom of the shaft. The box had reached its destination, and the bound, gagged, and unconscious man had been seen and taken out.
“It’s Verbeck!” the chief cried. “He’s doped, or something!”
“Vapor gun!” Muggs explained.
“Then they’ve sent him back to us. But where did he come from? Answer me that! He didn’t come from the top, and there’s no place between here and the top where he could come from. Unbind him, you men, and take that gag off. Maybe he can tell us something when he gets rid of that vapor dope. What’s this—a note?”
One of the men held his torch, and the chief read it swiftly:
Dear Chief: Here is Roger Verbeck safe and sound. Since you don’t seem able to make very much war against me, perhaps you’ll revive Verbeck and let him get into the game. I’ve kept him pretty quiet to-night. I’m sending him to you out of the sky, my dear chief, you might say. At least, you don’t know where I am sending him from, and cannot find out. I don’t know how you got on my trail so swiftly to-night, but it didn’t save the bank from losing a vast sum, and didn’t help you much, did it?
*****
“If I ever get my two hands on that man he’ll never live to stand trial!” the chief promised. “Verbeck conscious yet? We’ve got to look into this business. I tell you the Black Star’s somewhere in this building. He’s somewhere in that shaft——”
“But he can’t be,” a lieutenant protested. “There isn’t a place in the shaft where a man could leave the box.”
“Nevertheless——”
“Verbeck’s come to!” one of the men cried.
They knelt beside him, aided him to sit up, tried to get him to talk. They shot questions at him as bullets come from a machine gun, and he waved them away.
“Where did they take you, Verbeck?” the chief demanded.
“I—don’t know. I’ve been unconscious——”
“All the time?”
“They did it—just after the box started up. That’s the last I knew—until now.”
“They’re in that shaft!” the chief cried. “I’m going up again to see!”