The Black Star Part 37

"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!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV-WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHIEF

The head of the police department, knowing that a crowd surrounded the block now, and that news had gone abroad that the Black Star and some of his men had been cornered, and that certain newspaper reporters were standing by and waiting to see whether the police would be made again to look like fools, grew frantic. Also, his determination to capture the Black Star increased. He had his men drive every one out of the bank building and guard the offices and corridors, and, leaving four men to guard the bottom of the shaft, with two others, he got in the box and started to ascend.

The Black Star, from his post above, heard the chief issue these orders, and knew the box was on its upward journey.

"Couldn't be better," he told his men. "Only four at the bottom of the shaft now. You know we have to go, of course? Hurry through the corridor to the narrow flight of stairs in the rear, and climb!"

"But--" one of his men began.

"Silence, fool. The box is almost opposite us!"

The chief and his two men were ascending slowly, examining every inch of the walls with their torches. They stopped for a moment just outside the panel, but evidently saw nothing to make them suspicious, for the box continued its ascent.

It went on until it was at the top, and there the chief held a consultation with his men, and examined the lodge hall's walls, making certain by questioning the men on guard that it would have been impossible for the Black Star and his men to have pa.s.sed through the room without being seen.

Then the disgusted and sorely angry chief got into the box with his two officers again and started to descend, more puzzled than before.

The Black Star heard the descent begin, and growled orders to his three followers. He touched the wall and slipped the panel back three inches, and thus he waited, one hand ready to close the aperture instantly, the other holding a vapor gun. Below him one of his men stretched out on the floor and made ready to grip the cable when the master criminal gave the word.

The box continued to descend. The chief was speaking of the futility of examining the walls again. He was going to double the guard around the block, he declared, and wait for daylight, and go through the buildings inch by inch until he found the Black Star. The master criminal's men, all but the three with him, had been accounted for, and now were in cells at police headquarters, he was saying.

The Black Star hissed a warning to the man on the floor. The box came directly opposite the aperture in the wall. The man on the floor gripped the cable and stopped it, and as he did so the Black Star's vapor gun worked. Three times he pressed the trigger, filling the box with stupefying gas. The chief was the first to topple forward; the other two were unconscious almost instantly.

The Black Star and his men staggered backward, holding the little sponges to their nostrils. The air cleared, and then the master crook opened the panel to its greatest extent, and hauled the chief of police and his two men inside the little room.