CHAPTER XII
Elizabeth looked rather surprised when Bill wandered up to her steps a second time in one day. But she was a wise little girl, oh, much, much wiser than her kind, and she said nothing; just greeted him in her pleasant low voice, and gave Bill the chair she had been sitting in. If Bill had not been a mere boy, this in itself would have made him wonder. Elizabeth’s chair faced the De Lorme house. It was Elizabeth’s silent little sarcasm to offer it to Bill when he was pretending that he had come to call on her.
And Bill, being a mere boy, did not even notice that Elizabeth had changed seats, but took her chair and felt lucky to think that he could have an unobstructed view of the house next door!
In three quarters of an hour, when two spruce looking officers came up the street, Bill had talked himself to a standstill. He only wished the man who had said slurring things about his work that afternoon was about ...
But up the streets at last came the two officers and went up the steps of the De Lorme house, and rang the bell. Bill stopped trying to talk.
It seemed a year before the door opened, and then Bill could not see who was standing within, but he saw the heavy portal suddenly swing shut, and at that moment both men sprang forward and pressed it open. With a scuffle they both plunged into the hall, and Bill could stand no more. Again Elizabeth found herself alone.
Bill leaped across the lawn and was close on the detectives’ heels when they closed on Mr. De Lorme. But that gentleman was not yet in their grasp. With the quickness of a trained athlete, he sprang into the parlor and stood with a table between them.
“What does this intrusion mean?” he asked harshly. “Are you drunk? Have you mistaken the house?”
“Neither!” said the Major. “We are here to arrest you. Better come quietly. It will be better for you in the end.”
“Arrest me?” said Mr. De Lorme, smiling. “Arrest me for what? Why should you arrest an old and harmless student like myself?”
“You know why,” said the Captain bitterly. “Don’t try to escape! If you are curious, we can tell you where your dynamite is hidden, and where your accomplices in this city are located. Come, step up here, and get these bracelets on. Why, we know you! It is nearly the thirteenth, and you are known as 'The Avenger.’ Does that convince you?”
He took a step forward, and De Lorme found himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver.
With a queer, nervous motion, he fussed with his watch chain for a moment, then clapping his hand over his mouth, dropped into a chair. He looked at the men strangely, his face twitched, and his outstretched legs jerked for a moment. Then he straightened up and laughed aloud, a jeering, sneering laugh, looking from one to the other, and past the men at Bill, whose flesh crept at that sardonic sound. Then his head dropped, bobbed queerly, and both men sprang to his side, crying “Poison!”
De Lorme was dead.
The body slid to the floor and lay there crumpled up. The glasses fell from the staring eyes; a bit of white powder lay on the sneering lips.
“As quick as that,” said the Major bitterly. “I never thought he would try that!”
“He—he’s dead!” gasped Bill, shuddering as he looked at death, death that is meant to be peaceful and lovely, lying there in its most unlovely form, a man dead by his own hand.
“Yes, he is dead,” said the Captain. “He will wait for us now, I reckon. Where is the other one, do you suppose?”
“Zip?” asked Bill. “Upstairs probably.”
The three walked out into the hall and turned toward the stairs just as a door above opened, and Zip appeared at the head of the flight. He took one glance at three faces below and instantly a flash of flame leaped at them; he had fired from his hip. An answering flame from the Major’s revolver, and Zip’s right arm hung useless.
“It is all up!” said the Major. “Come down here and take your medicine!”
Groaning, Zip descended the stairs, holding his uninjured hand above his head. The detectives shoved him into a chair, shackled his ankles and handcuffed the well arm to the back of the chair. He was unable to move if he had wished to do so, and sat shivering a little as he stared at the form of his former employer on the floor.
“You will get the electric chair, I suppose,” said the Major, “and the man on the floor, who deserves it as much or more than you do, has escaped it.”
Zip quite suddenly and horribly commenced to cry.
“Stop that snivelling,” finally commanded the Major.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the prisoner. “I shall not go to the electric chair! I shall turn state’s evidence. I shall tell all!”
“You can commence right off then,” said the detective, and turning to Bill, asked, “Where is your brother?”
“Here!” said Frank from the hall, where he too had been a witness to the encounter.
“You know shorthand, don’t you? Take down whatever he says.”
Frank whipped out a notebook and pencil, and Zip, staring at his captor, asked with chattering teeth, “What do you want me to say?”
“Tell all about everything!”
“Then shall I go free?” begged the man.
“I will do all I can for you,” the Major promised. “Go on!”
“We made it here ... the dynamite .. and those infernal machines that went through the mails. They were an invention of Mr. De Lorme’s.” He glanced shudderingly at the dead man. “They were very powerful. One would blow a house up easily. We made them all. The cases were cylinders of brass, and the top was screwed on. They never failed unless they were wet. Water spoiled them. We could never invent a top that could be screwed on easily enough not to send the blast off and that yet was tight enough so water would not enter. Otherwise they were perfect.
“Mr. De Lorme stored the infernal machines and the dynamite in small cases in a cave out at the Camp at Knox. No one would think to look for anything of that sort right in the bounds of a military camp. We had friends, members of our Order, who came in and took the stuff out there.
“They are preparing for a great dynamite plot on the thirteenth. All the material out there will be taken away and distributed, and all the public buildings in many cities will be destroyed. But you will let me go, and I will tell you where it is.”
“You needn’t trouble about that,” said the detective. “We know. What did you use that wireless for?”
“We did all our communicating by means of wireless,” said Zip. “We have a network of plants all over the city and throughout the country so we can use one short circuit after another, and communicate from sea to sea.
“It was too dangerous ever to write, and still more so to telephone. No one knew that our wireless was anything more than a lot of boys talking. A great many boys have little wireless plants.”
“What about this boy Marion that De Lorme has been calling his son? And what about his blindness?”
“The blindness was his safeguard. Everyone who saw him thought him half helpless. It was for that reason that he made Marion make friends all over the neighborhood. The ladies around here sent him jellies and good things, because they like the boy, and are sorry for his father. Not a soul suspected us. I don’t see how you got on.”
The detective smiled, but said nothing. Zip went on.
“About Marion; he is Mr. De Lorme’s stepson. Mr. De Lorme married Marion’s mother when he was only a baby. She died soon, and the boy has been a care and a drag, and yet a great safeguard. We have travelled widely, and everywhere the boy has made friends, and people have pitied him because of his half blind father and his apparent loneliness. The boy was never abused, although Mr. De Lorme hated him. And he was getting beyond us. He did not tell what his pursuits were, or where he spent his time. Then all at once he heard the hidden wireless in my room, and answered it. And Mr. De Lorme put him up in the attic, and told me to get rid of him.”
“How?” asked the detective, his steely eyes hypnotizing the man into the truth.
“He ordered me to kill him,” said Zip. “I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t harm anyone.”
“Why, you fool!” exclaimed the Major. “Wouldn’t harm anyone? What do you think happened when your infernal machines exploded in San Francisco, in Detroit, in Newark, and Syracuse and New York?”
“That is different,” said Zip. “That is part of our creed. It must be for the good of humanity.”
“Of course!” said the Captain bitterly. “Well, go on! Did you finally accept the boy as part of your creed, and kill him?”
“No,” said Zip. “He escaped. A fellow up the street here saw him going into the L. & N. Station. I suppose he found out the address of a relative in the Blue Grass country and has gone down there.”
“If he is not up in an airplane headed for Louisville,” said the Major, “he is now sitting on or near a pile of dynamite in a cave out at Camp Knox.”
Zip paled. “So he—why—how—” he said and stuttering, stopped.
“What about the plot for the thirteenth?” the detective demanded.
Zip turned sullen. “I have said enough,” he muttered.
“Enough to electrocute you all right,” the detective agreed. “But not enough to save your life.”
It galvanized the man into speech. “I will tell you!” he babbled. “Be sure to put it all down!
“We have been preparing for a great stand here in America. The time is ripe for the overthrow of the Government and all in power. Sixty thousand anarchists have come to this conclusion.”
“Do tell!” murmured the detective.
“These men and women, devoted to their Cause, are stationed all over the United States, and from several stations like ours explosives are to be distributed. Then, at a busy hour, eleven A.M. on the thirteenth, as though struck by a single blow, these bombs and delicate infernal machines will explode.”
“Aunt Merriar!” whispered Frank as his pencil flew over the paper. “I would like to see about sixty thousand electrocutions done Dutch.”
The Captain looked at him questioningly. He did not understand; but Zip was speaking.
“Mr. De Lorme was the greatest chemist of them all; and aside from the fact that we could never manage to make the infernal machines waterproof, he invented a number of ingenious and deadly toys. They were all to be used on the thirteenth. He used to send prescriptions all over; formulas for the lesser men to pattern after.”
“I want the names of all these men, their workshops, and also a list of as many anarchists as you have,” said the Major.
“Not that,” Zip said. “I can’t be a traitor!”
“You’re one already!” and the detective shoved his revolver hard into Zip’s meager stomach.
“Take that away!” he gasped. “Let me say what you want, and for mercy’s sake get me a doctor! My arm is killing me. The lists, complete to date, with names of the inner circles, and the addresses of the men who were to handle and distribute the bombs, are on a typewritten memorandum under the marble top of the stand in my room.”
The detective turned. “Go up and see if he is telling the truth, Bill,” he ordered.
Keeping as far away from the dead man on the floor as he could, Bill left the room and hurried up the stairs. There was only one room with a marble top table and, lifting the slab, Bill found several typewritten sheets fastened together. These he carried to the detective, who glanced at them, placed them carefully in his pocket and asked, “Is there a telephone here in the house?”
“No,” said Zip.
“You know the people next door,” said the detective, smiling meaningly at Bill. “Perhaps the young lady will allow you to call up the police station. Tell them S. S. Detective Harris wants a patrol and six officers sent here. And the ambulance. Say there is a dead man here.”
Elizabeth still sat on the porch rocking. She rose when Bill came leaping up the steps.
“What is going on, Bill?” she demanded. “I heard a pistol. What has happened?”
“Lots of things!” said Bill, tantalizingly. And then he added hastily, if importantly, “Tell you all about it soon as I can! A Government affair we are mixed up in. Let me use your telephone, will you?”
While he was getting central, Elizabeth murmured, “Government affair indeed! Well, I reckon you will tell all about it, Bill Wolfe!”
The ambulance arrived first, and the dead man, decently covered and laid on a stretcher, was carried through the crowd that had assembled about the door and hurried away.
Then the patrol thundered up, and Zip, still shackled, was carried out and placed in it. Stationing a policeman at the front and another at the back of the house and calling, “See you later!” to Bill, the detectives and Frank got into the patrol and went rattling down the street.
Bill heard a voice; a determined, quiet voice at his elbow. “Now, Bill Wolfe, what is it all about?” said Elizabeth.