Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 Part 22

Robert Delamater was silent as they drove to the hotel. Where had he slipped? He trusted Smeed and Wilkins entirely; if they said his car had not been followed it had not. And the visitor had been disguised; he had seen to that. Then, where had this person stood--this being who called himself the Eye of Allah?

"Chief," he said finally. "I didn't slip--nor Wilkins or Smeed."

"Someone did," replied the big man, "and it wasn't the Eye of Allah, either."

The manager of the hotel was waiting to take them to the room. He unlocked the door with his pa.s.s key.

"Not a thing touched," he a.s.sured the Secret Service men; "there he is, just the way we found him."

In the doorway between the bedroom and bath a body was huddled. Doctor Brooks knelt quickly beside it. His hands worked swiftly for a moment, then he rose to his feet.

"Dead," he announced.

"How long?" asked the Chief.

"Some time. Hours I should say--perhaps eight or ten."

"Cause?" the query was brief.

"It will take an autopsy to determine that. There is no blood or wound to be seen."

The doctor was again examining the partly rigid body. He opened one hand; it held a cake of soap. There was a grease mark on the hand.

Delamater supplied the explanation. "He touched some grease on the old car I was using," he said. "Must have gone directly to wash it off.

See--there is water spilled on the floor."

Water had indeed been splashed on the tile floor of the bath room; a pool of it still remained about the heavy, foreign-looking shoes of the dead man.

Something in it caught Delamater's eye. He leaned down to pick up three pellets of metal, like small shot, round and s.h.i.+ning.

"I'll keep these," he said, "though the man was never killed with shot as small as that."

"We shall have to wait for the autopsy report," said the Chief crisply; "that may give the cause of death. Was there anyone in the room--did you enter it with him last night, Del?"

"No," said the operative; "he was very much agitated when we got here--dismissed me rather curtly at the door. He was quite upset about something--spoke English none too well and said something about a warning and d.a.m.ned our Secret Service as inefficient."

"A warning!" said the Chief. The dead man's brief case was on the bed.

He crossed to it and undid the straps; the topmost paper told the reason for the man's disquiet. It showed the familiar, staring eye.

And beneath the eye was a warning: this man was to die if he did not leave Was.h.i.+ngton at once.

The Chief turned to the hotel manager. "Was the door locked?"

"Yes."

"But it is a spring lock. Someone could have gone out and closed it after him."

"Not this time. The dead-bolt was thrown. It takes a key to do that from the outside or this thumb-turn on the inside." The hotel man demonstrated the action of the heavy bolt.

"Then, with a duplicate key, a man could have left this room and locked the door behind him."

"Absolutely not. The floor-clerk was on duty all night. I have questioned her: this room was under her eyes all the time. She saw this man return, saw your man, here"--and he pointed to Delamater--"leave him at the door. There was no person left the room after that."

"See about the autopsy, Doctor," the Chief ordered.

And to the manager: "Not a thing here must be touched. Admit only Mr.

Delamater and no one else unless he vouches for them.

"Del," he told the operative, "I'm giving you a chance to make up for last night. Go to it."

And Robert Delamater "went to it" with all the thoroughness at his command, and with a total lack of result.

The autopsy helped not at all. The man was dead; it was apparently a natural death. "Not a scratch nor a mark on him," was the report. But: "... next time it will be you," the note with the staring eye had warned the Secretary of State. The writer of it was taking full credit for the mysterious death.

Robert Delamater had three small bits of metal, like tiny shot, and he racked his brain to connect these with the death. There were fingerprints, too, beautifully developed upon the mysterious missives--prints that tallied with none in the records. There were a.n.a.lyses of the paper--of the ink--and not a clue in any of them.

Just three pellets of metal. Robert Delamater had failed utterly, and he was bitter in the knowledge of his failure.

"He had you spotted, Del," the Chief insisted. "The writer of these notes may be crazy, but he was clever enough to know that this man _did_ see the Secretary. And he was waiting for him when he came back; then he killed him."

"Without a mark?"

"He killed him," the Chief repeated; "then he left--and that's that."

"But," Delamater objected, "the room clerk--"

"--took a nap," broke in the Chief. But Delamater could not be satisfied with the explanation.

"He got his, all right," he conceded, "--got it in a locked room nine stories above the street, with no possible means of bringing it upon himself--and no way for the murderer to escape. I tell you there is something more to this: just the letter to the Secretary, as if this Eye of Allah were spying upon him--"

The Chief waved all that aside. "A clever spy," he insisted. "Too clever for you. And a darn good guesser; he had us all fooled. But we're dealing with a madman, not a ghost, and he didn't sail in through a ninth story window nor go out through a locked door; neither did he spy on the Secretary of State in his private office. Don't try to make a supernatural mystery out of a failure, Del."

The big man's words were tempered with a laugh, but there was an edge of sarcasm, ill-concealed.

And then came the next note. And the next. The letters were mailed at various points in and about the city; they came in a flood. And they were addressed to the President of the United States, to the Secretary of War--of the Navy--to all the Cabinet members. And all carried the same threat under the staring eye.

The United States, to this man, represented all that was tyrannical and oppressive to the downtrodden of the earth. He proposed to end it--this government first, then others in their turn. It was the outpouring of a wildly irrational mind that came to the office of the hara.s.sed Chief of the United States Secret Service, who had instructions to run this man down--this man who signed himself The Eye of Allah. And do it quickly for the notes were threatening. Official Was.h.i.+ngton, it seemed, was getting jumpy and was making caustic inquiries as to why a Secret Service department was maintained.

The Chief, himself, was directing the investigation--and getting nowhere.

"Here is the latest," he said one morning. "Mailed at New York."

Delamater and a dozen other operatives were in his office: he showed them a letter printed like all the others. There was the eye, and beneath were words that made the readers catch their breath.