“I don’t think so, sir,” McCarty demurred gravely. “Perhaps the men didn’t see him, but—we’d better lose no time!”
They sprang up the stairs and passed the two great steel doors swinging idly on twisted hinges, into a long, low room, looking very much as Jean had described it. The closed cupboards below the shelving were too small to have held a human body and there was no other hiding place nor any way of egress save the door by which they had entered.
“We’ve been done, Mac!” the inspector exclaimed again, ruefully. “Unless the boys outside caught him, we’ll have a long chase on our hands!”
“No.” McCarty stood looking up meditatively at the huge circular vat which occupied the center of the floor and rose for six or seven feet like a miniature gas tank. “Give me that step-ladder, will you, Denny? I want to see is this empty.”
“By the smell of it, it’s not!” Dennis commented. “’Tis worse than asafœtida!”
He brought the ladder and McCarty ascended cautiously and peered over the top. The vat appeared to be almost filled with some thick, murky liquid with an oily film floating on the surface. When he had stared down into it for some minutes he descended, his ruddy face pale and tinged with greenish shadows.
“Mac!” Dennis caught him solicitously as he reeled. “It’s sick you are! Come away out of this! Orbit’s not here!”
“If I’m sick it’s from my own thoughts, Denny!” McCarty replied shakily. “Where does that pipe lead to from the bottom of the vat?”
“To that huge receptacle over there.” It was the detective lieutenant who answered, pointing. “It’s to draw off whatever might be in there, I guess.”
“Turn the cock, then, will you?” McCarty sat down suddenly and held his head in his hands. “I want to see the bottom of that vat!”