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 passed 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.
“Lively now,” the Black Star commanded. “Only four men at the bottom, remember, and there are three of us. I’ll hurl a vapor bomb as soon as we get to the bottom, and you be ready with your guns. I’ll take one of those suit cases. Number Ten, you take the other. And you, Number Six, make sure of at least two of the men at the bottom, if you can.”
They got into the box and started it downward, leaving the chief and his two men in the halfway room. They mumbled a conversation so that the men below would hear it and think nothing was wrong.
Foot by foot they drew nearer the bottom of the shaft. Finally the box jarred and stopped.
A bomb crashed at the feet of the four men standing less than half a dozen paces away; the cloud of vapor surged at them as the Black Star and his three men sprang out. Vapor guns flashed—and the four criminals rushed through the narrow corridor toward the rear stairs.