“Oh, yeah?”
There would be a way to tell whether Potts was aware of the gas.
“Easy to prove you’re innocent. Let’s go in and search.”
Briefly, not entirely, he stated the case, omitting the gas.
Potts drew back. “We ain’t—armed. I see through your scheme, with your hand in that empty pocket. Nix. I go in when we get a cop or somebody.”
He might know about the gas and that would account for his lame excuse. It was not like Potiphar, Roger thought, to shirk danger.
“All right. But I’ve got to get in and shut off that gas.”
He had to let Potts go, just in case there was any other inside the fume-filled lab. Roger, running to the drug store, where an ex-service man was on duty as he remembered, begged him to find an old gas-mask. The man hunted through some things in a back room, and gave Roger the proprietor’s old war trophy, which Roger, with his aid, adjusted.
Thus protected, and aware that Tip still waited, he ran in with no fear of setting off electrified alarms, dashed up to the second floor by aid of a flashlamp picked up in the office, seeing no one.
The gas he shut off hurriedly and then he set the thermostat lever back in case the tanks held more unexpelled fumes.