Almost immediately came the reply—a hoarse, murmuring voice from outer space: “Go ahead SC-3 with your report.”
Again the faint ticking filled the tiny room.
“Orders carried out,” it spelled rapidly. “Engines disabled for the next twenty-four hours. CS-3.”
There was silence for a full minute. Then the voice in the radiophone breathed harshly: “The master is pleased. Stand by at midnight for further instructions. That is all.”
Below decks the Gatoon’s medical officer rose, white-faced, from his examination of the Chief Machinist’s Mate.
“This man is dead, though the body is still quite warm!” he stated. “I should say he had been strangled by a noose of thin wire, which became embedded in the flesh. Somebody removed the thing before we got here.”
Lieutenant Allen, catching the captain’s glance of query, shook his head.
“I didn’t touch Ahern, except to turn him over, sir,” he declared. “And there was no one else in the engine room when I arrived. Strange way to kill a man, with a wire noose!”
“The French call it 'La Garrote,’” observed Don Winslow, stooping to pick a peculiar metal object from a dark corner of the deck. “If I’m not mistaken, this thing is it! Looks as if the killer dropped it in his hurry to get away.”
At his words the others turned to stare in fascinated horror. The death instrument was a loop of extremely thin but tough steel wire, threaded through a small metal hand grip. A sharp pull on the latter tightened and locked the strangling noose in the same motion.