49

yellow-piped chairs out there for me, and my “How long was I out?”

face was numb with cold.

“An hour,” Ham Brooks said. “You hit “What happened?”

your head on something when you fell.”

Ham Brooks grinned. “The cavalry gal-

“But my head doesn’t ache!”

loped. You finally got the combination on “Monk said it wouldn’t,” he said and McGraff, didn’t you? Too bad you had to take walked out.

a deep breath of the gas when you did.”

“Uh-huh. Say, how did you get here?”

“Up another elevator. Back stairs.

PAULA FENISONG was in the labora-Through a kitchen and a butler’s pantry and a tory. She came out quickly when she saw locker room and a service pantry—you know, me, and took my hands and said, “I’m so this is quite a luxurious place—and on to the glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

terrace.”

Her hands were warm. I nodded at the “I don’t mean that. How’d you find the complaining in the laboratory and asked: apartment house?”

“What’s wrong in there?”

“I thought you knew about the radio “It’s technical and I don’t understand it,”

transmitter we planted on them.”

she said. “But the elderly scientist, Doctor “In Paula’s purse? But they found it.”

Hodges, claims that Spatny’s device is only a “Oh, that one,” he said. “That one was slight improvement over the developments a little two-way outfit Paula was going to use already known to have been made. Nothing in an emergency. Just insurance. The one particularly magical. Doctor Hodges is dis-that counted was in the suitcase.”

gusted. He expected a great deal more. He “You mean with the neutralizer?”

swears terribly.”

He laughed. “The only thing that We stood there. I kept her hands. She gadget would neutralize was McGraff and didn’t object. It was cold and clean out here, McCutcheon. It was a phony. All that show and the night air had an astringent bite that Doc put on at headquarters was phony, too.

was good. There were a million lights of the Part of the rig.”

city around us and cars making contented “Oh.” Then I asked: “Is the fracas sounds in the street below.

over?”

I bent my head and thought, thought “Sure.”

about a guy named Samuel Wales who had “You get all of them? The old man, his come from Kansas City hunting something, shrew, McGraff, McCutcheon, and two but not knowing what he sought. He now had named Augustino and—come to think of it, I a good idea of what it was. I put an arm don’t know the other one’s name. Made of around Paula to see how it would be, and it good solid stuff, though.”

was even better. Then I thought about what Ham said: “The police have them all.”

kissing her would be like, and I tried it, and it “The police are here already?”

was still better. It was better than anything “And gone.”

could be.

I didn’t get that. Then I saw the old Old Scientist Hodges was yelling that it codger who had been bellwether at the sci-was a blasted shame all that trouble had net-entists’ banquet, old Doctor Morand Funk ted everyone so little.

Hodges, who had kicked the banquet secre-He was wrong.

tary’s stern, in the laboratory. He was talking to Doc Savage. He would say something, take a look at a contraption they were dis-THE END

secting, then say something else, and wave his arms. He seemed discouraged.