The Gold Coffin Murder Case
A Gillian Hazeltine Courtroom Mystery
By
George F. Worts

A Deerstalker Classic – Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine
Copyright © 1934 – reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-031-X
All rights reserved
Special Contents Copyright © 2001 by Jean Marie Stine
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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CAUTION MAY CONTAIN OFFENSIVE MATERIAL:  This book is presented for the entertainment of contemporary readers.  The text is reproduced as originally published and written.  It contains material that may be offensive to some.  Like all books, it reflects the cultural, racial and gender assumptions of its time.  Thus, while it can be read for entertainment, it can also be read as cultural text and a window on the worldview of a vanished era.  The editors are convinced that the author was not personally bigoted and did not intend disrespect to any group or ideology.  Such views do not in any represent the views or beliefs of the current editors or publisher.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 - IN DISGUISE
CHAPTER 2 - THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD
CHAPTER 3 - MUNCHHAUSEN
CHAPTER 4 - THE GOLD HOARDER
CHAPTER 5 - THE SEVERED HAND
CHAPTER 6 - THE GOLD BILLIT
CHAPTER 7 - THE PAY-OFF
CHAPTER 8 - SCORCHED EMERALD
CHAPTER 9 - IN THE HEADLINES
CHAPTER 10 - THE FIRST ROUND
CHAPTER11 - CHAIN OF FACTS
CHAPTER 12 - A DANGEROUS WITNESS
CHAPTER 13 - A TRAP IS SPRUNG
CHAPTER 14 - THE DAWN OF LOVE

INTRODUCTION

Here is a courtroom mystery redolent of its era – the 1930s – which some hail as the Golden Age of Detective fiction.  In those bygone days, US dollars were still minted in silver and gold.  But the Depression had sent the price of gold skyrocketing, and by 1934 (when The Gold Coffin Murder Case was written) the gold in the average coin was worth sixty percent more than its face value.  Many people began to hoard gold coins, hoping the price per ounce would climb even higher – so that soon only paper money was left in wide circulation.  Others began to melt their gold coins down, and tried to sell the gold back to the government for its current value.  Both practices put further strain on the already fragile US economy, and in a bold stroke, then president Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed stringent laws against defacing American money, and called in all gold coins from circulation.
This circumstance that inspired George F. Worts to write one of his celebrated Gillian Hazeltine courtroom murder mysteries around it.  Gillian Hazeltine was the most popular legal eagle, plucking innocent clients from the shadow of the electric chair, in the decades before the creation of Perry Mason.  Many literary historians even see the Hazeltine series as the direct inspiration for Earl Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries, since Gardner was an apprentice writer for the same publications that featured the highly-acclaimed Hazeltine stories.
Hazeltine's creator, George F. Worts was as popular a writer as the lawyer sleuth was a character.  In addition to Gillian Hazeltine, Worts created two other characters who proved to be equal reader favorites: Singapore Sammie Shay and Peter the Brazen.  Both series were set in the China seas, an area Worts knew well, from his days as a wireless operator on the ocean liners that plowed those latitudes.  Singapore Sammie was an Irish adventurer searching for the stepfather who had stolen his inheritance.  Typical Sammie tales include Murder's Paradise, The Python Pit, Isle of the Meteor and Monster of the Lagoon.  Peter the Brazen was a wireless operator whose intimate knowledge of the Orient was always plunging him into danger.  His adventures included The Sapphire Smile, The Golden Cat, That Cargo of Opium and Man in the Jade Mask.
As for Worts himself, here is what he had to say in a short biographical sketch written for a 1930s magazine:
"The decision to become a writer of fiction was made for me by fate.  In 1914 in Panama, where I spent a week when I was a wireless operator on a little steamer that creaked up and down the Central American coast, I met an author who painted the joys of free-lancing so vividly that I could not resist the call.  We were drunk.  I was twenty.  Since then, I have been trying to catch up with all of those joys he mentioned.
"Starting to write stories in 1914 and, four years later selling my first.  One marks up, I suppose, a very poor batting average.  But in those years I was getting experience, seeing the world, and acquiring knowledge.  I 'punched brass' as a wireless operator all over the Pacific.  I entered Columbia University in 1915, and one year later left because I didn't believe in higher learning.  I still don't believe in it.  I became a newspaper reporter, later a magazine editor.
"Then came the war, which I won practically single-handed by writing high-pressure publicity to induce patriotic Americans to send books to Washington for camp libraries for soldiers and gobs.  Books came by the carload, by the ton: McGuffy's readers, old almanacs, spellers, arithmetics, out-dated novels and just trash.  The soldiers and sailors who read those books soon hated the war so bitterly that they promptly got busy and ended it.  That's how I won the war.
"After the war, I wanted another look at China, and was sent to the Far East by Collier's to write articles on China, the Philippines, India and Malaya.
"The first story I sold was written while I was editing a motion picture trade paper.  It was bought by the Argosy, and it was about a wolf named Murg.  Don't ask me why.  In the intervening years I have written millions of words.  Perhaps it is Murg who sits so patiently at my door!
"I started writing fiction under the pen name of Loring Brent, because it would have annoyed the owner of the motion picture magazine to learn that I was writing fiction out of hours.  He thought I fell asleep at my desk because I was working so hard for him!  When my income from fiction exceeded my salary, I quit the job.  Since then I have been free-lancing exclusively, except for a two-year period when I lived in a Florida swamp town and added to my writing the duties of postmaster game warden and deputy sheriff.  Out of that experience came a long series of stories about a Florida town I called Vingo.
"I have enjoyed most writing stories about certain established characters.  Apparently the most popular of these have been the Peter the Brazen, the Vingo and the Gillian Hazeltine stories.  I stopped writing about Peter the Brazen (a swashbuckling wireless operator on ships in the China run) about ten years ago.  He was, incidentally, the subject of the only novel I have had published in America.  I am now starting a new series about him.
"When I am not traveling I live in Westport, Connecticut.  My interests are horses, sailing and flying.  I took up flying about a year ago to write some articles on how it feels to learn to fly, and was badly bitten by the bug.  I can make a three-point landing about five times out of ten.
"I like New York, but would prefer to live in Honolulu.  I smoke sixty cigarettes a day.  I like murder trials.  I have never mastered the noble game of poker, although I once wrote a book about it.  In my spare time I study law and medicine.  I have two young sons and a still younger daughter; an able crew for my sailboat – except that there is usually mutiny aboard the lugger!"
The Gold Coffin Murder Case finds Gillian Hazeltine up against his long-time opponent, corrupt District Attorney Mark Storm (first introduced in The Decoy Murder Case).  For dishonest civic officials were as prevalent then as they are now, and District Attorneys often prosecuted unpopular people in order to distract public attention from their own peccadilloes.  The Hazeltine-Storm feud will continue unabated until it reaches its climax in the final book of the series, The Accused: Mr. Hazeltine Murder Case.
In this story, Hazeltine has to juggle a Hollywood he-man famed for squashing grapefruit in his co-stars' faces, a socialite famed for decking amorous European royalty, a man who is prosecuting the woman he loves, and a multimillion dollar gold scam.  It's an explosive mixture that comes to a head in a courtroom scene that would have nonplused even Perry Mason.  But, be warned, don't read this book until you have time to finish it – because you won't be able to put it down once you start!

Jean Marie Stine
August 2, 2001

Watch for the next Deerstalker Gillian Hazeltine release, and be sure to visit the Deerstalker Classics Home Page for free stories, articles, interviews, movie stills, rare book and magazine covers, and news of our forthcoming classic mysteries in e-book format.  URL: http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/DEERSTALKER.html/ 

CHAPTER 1
IN DISGUISE

"HE REFUSES to state his business," Miss Walsh said.  "He's the weirdest looking old fellow you ever saw, Mr. Hazeltine.  He has green glasses, and a white beard, braided at the end with matches stuck in it.  He says his name's Pompernickle.  But he doesn't look crazy.  And there's something awfully curious about his voice."
Gillian Hazeltine looked inquiringly at his brisk and pretty private secretary as she hesitated.  Her brows were puckered.
"What's curious about it?" he  asked.
"I'd swear I've heard that man's voice before.  But I can't place it.  There's really something very baffling about him.  He refuses to see any one of your assistants.  He says it's horribly important – that it concerns a man's soul, a man's future, and a man's life."
"He sounds like a nut," Gillian Hazeltine said.  "But send him in."
Miss Walsh was a barrier between the busy lawyer and the many cranks who stormed his office.  It was her custom to admit no one to the sacred precincts of Mr. Hazeltine's private office unless she was sure the caller deserved the privilege.
When the lawyer's door opened again, a half-minute later, Gillian Hazeltine readily understood his secretary's doubt.  The man who came in was one of the strangest figures Gillian had ever seen; a regular Rip Van Winkle.  Shaggy white hair protruded in tangled wisps from beneath the brim of his ancient black felt hat.  His black suit fitted him like a bag.  He wore Congress gaiters, and black cotton gloves.  Gillian hadn't seen a pair of Congress gaiters in upwards of twenty years.
And it was only years ago that beggars had worn green glasses like these.  The lenses were square, the frame was of silver or steel.  His beard, like his hair, was white and shaggy; it reached almost to his waist.  The end of it was braided, and in this braided part the old fellow had inserted not only matches but toothpicks and pins.
The old man closed the door.  He must have been, in earlier life, a tall man – at least six feet tall.  The corruption of the years had bent his back and pushed his once wide shoulders forward.
He shuffled away from the door, as he entered, peered at Gillian through the green lenses and said in a thin, quavering voice:
"I want to make sure, first of all, that you are Gillian Hazeltine.  Are you Gillian Hazeltine, the lawyer?"
Gillian gravely nodded.
"That's fine!" the old man said with that senile quaver.  "Now, I want you to take a good look at me.  They tell me you've got a wonderful memory.  Have you ever seen me before?"
Gillian looked the old man over again from head to foot.  He shook his head.
"I'm afraid you've got me," he said.  "I don't place you."
The old fellow laughed.  It was a senile cackle.  His bent shoulders jiggled as he laughed, as old men's shoulders do.
"I'm here to make you a proposition," the ancient stranger said.  "I'm here to ask you to save a man's soul – his future – his very life!"
He stopped dramatically.  The blackgloved hands tremulously grasped the edge of the desk.
"I'm that man!" he cried shrilly.
Gillian hastily reached into his humidor for a cigar.  The old man's intensity made him uncomfortable.  Gillian gripped the cigar between his teeth, but he did not light it.  Over the top of it he stared a little uneasily at his queer caller.
The old man made his mouth writhe.  Under the white beard, his face was distorted with the grimaces of agitated old age.
"Ask me who I am!" he shrilled.
Gillian was beginning to wonder if he had been wise, after all, in letting Miss Walsh send the old duffer in.
"Very well," he said.  "Who are you?"
The old man bent closer, peering at him.  "You haven't guessed!" he cried.
"No.  I haven't guessed.  I'm afraid you baffle me completely."
Swiftly, the old man pushed himself away from the desk.  With one sweeping gesture of his left hand – the most amazing gesture Gillian Hazeltine had ever beheld – his caller snatched off the beard, the glasses, the hat and the thatched white hair.  In the same split second, he straightened up; and by those lightning gestures he became a tall young man of twenty-five!
Gillian found himself staring bewilderedly at one of the most famously handsome young men on earth – at a face quite as familiar to the civilized world as, say, the wrapper on Ivory soap, or the hood of a Ford automobile.
"Dale Torrent!" Gillian gasped, and in his astonishment he rose with such haste from the chair that it went over backward.

CHAPTER 2
THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD

AT THE sound of the crash, the door flew open and Miss Walsh peered in.
She stared at the transformed old man and faintly screamed, "Dale Torrent!"
The youthful celebrity gave her a quick, amused grin.  "In the flesh," he confirmed amiably.  "Not a motion picture!"
If President Roosevelt, disguised, had walked into his office, Gillian could have been no more flabbergasted.  For Dale Torrent was the cinematic man of the hour – the "It Man" of the season – the gifted young actor – the current Boy Friend of Hollywood – over whom all the woman stars were quarreling.  He shared, with one or two other film actors, the distinction of having popularized a new type of screen hero; the man who treats 'em rough – who loves them, slaps them, and leaves them with a jeer.
Gillian, an ardent movie fan, had been amused, puzzled and even baffled by the popularity of Dale Torrent and his kind.  Gillian modestly professed to know nothing about the workings of the feminine mind.  Actually, however, he thought he knew it very well indeed.  And upon several occasions he had been baffled by the cooings and the little shrieks of feminine appreciation and approval in picture houses when on the screen Dale Torrent roughly slapped a lovely young thing's cheek, or punched her in the jaw, or pushed her face into half a watermelon.  He had always believed that girls did not care for that type of man; but he had been forced to conclude that many girls like their men rough, and that fundamentally they adore the cave man type.  Certainly, the Dale Torrents of Hollywood proved something or other.
Yes, looking at Miss Walsh's face, he was sure that the Dale Torrents of Hollywood proved something.  Her eyes were like stars seen through a faint mist.  Her smile was that of a dazzled girl.  She seemed on the point of twittering.  Knowing her for the crisp and efficient young woman that she was during office hours, this glimpse of the other side of Miss Walsh was startling.  He had never suspected that she was the kind of girl to whom a slap – or half a watermelon – in the face would be romantic.  Evidently, however, Miss Walsh was just another girl who would worship a man who punched her in the jaw and jeered.  It proved again how little he knew about women.
Behind Miss Walsh were now gathered, in eager battalion, practically all of Gillian's feminine employees; all jammed in the little hallway, all gazing with shining eyes and enraptured smiles at the woman-handling expert, the face-slapping sheik, the lad who knocked them down and jeered!  Never had he seen his office force so completely demoralized.
He said, "Miss Walsh, perhaps you'd better finish typing that brief in the O'Connor case."
Miss Walsh came out of Never-Never Land with a snap.  She blushed.  She gave her head a little shake.  She was herself again.  
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine," she said crisply, and closed the door.
Gillian looked at Dale Torrent.  He was still more than a little dazzled himself, at seeing this popular young man at close range and in the flesh; at hearing his familiar rich, vibrant voice.
Dale Torrent was elegant, even in that shapeless black suit.
"Sit down, Mr. Torrent," Gillian said cordially.
He wondered what this youthful celebrity was doing here in Greenfield, thousands of miles from his native Hollywood.  He was, in fact, consumed with curiosity.
Mr. Torrent seated himself in the chair beside the desk.
"I really owe you an apology," he said, in that fine, virile, vibrant voice over which feminine audiences had so often cooed.  "You must think I'm a lunatic, to come barging in here in this get-up."
Still more than a little bewildered by it all, Gillian reached for a match and lit his cigar.
"Not at all," he said politely.
"Was I convincing?" the young man asked.
"Amazingly so," Gillian uttered into a cloud of fragrant smoke.  "Absolutely."
"I wear some kind of disguise most of the time," the young man confessed.  "If I didn't, I'd be mobbed.  Only last week, I came out of my tailor's, in Beverley Hills, wearing a brand new two-hundred-dollar suit.  Before I could reach my roadster, parked at the curb, a mob of women jumped me.  They tore my coat to shreds.  Some of them even carried scissors.  Souvenir hunters!  Can you beat it?"
Gillian couldn't beat it.  In the presence of such sheer, unadulterated popularity, he was dazed.
"Of course," Dale Torrent went on.  "I don't have to go around in a crazy get-up like this one.  I did this for a purpose.  My self-respect demanded it.  I am, after all, an actor.  My father and grandfather were actors.  And of course you've heard of my grandmother – Grace Wimberley?"
Gillian had, of course, heard of that famous beauty of another day – a vision of divine loveliness at the feet of whom kings were said to have thrown their crowns, wealthy Americans their hearts and their fortunes.
"I wanted to make sure, in spite of what they said, that I was still an actor.  And of course it was absolutely necessary for me to disappear instantly from Hollywood.  What other course was left to me?"
Gillian, behind a smoke screen, sagely nodded.  Just why Dale Torrent had had to disappear instantly from Hollywood would, he hoped, be made clear in due time.
"I had to startle them!" the young man cried.  "I had to make them wonder and worry."  He bent earnestly forward.  "So I dug up this old outfit at the make-up department, and I took the first train east!  I had made up my mind to bring my problems to you."
"Why?" Gillian said dryly.
"Isn't it obvious?  Aren't you the most celebrated criminal lawyer in the country?  Aren't you noted for your masterly showmanship?  Haven't you the reputation of resorting to almost any sort of trickery to get a man a square deal?"
Gillian squirmed a little in his chair.  His reputation, as this young man presented it, sounded very much like Frankenstein's monster.  But he was amused and interested.
"Perhaps you'd better let me have the details," he said.  "Have you killed somebody?"
Dale Torrent's large, handsome hazel eyes stared at him incredulously.
Certainly you've heard," he cried, "about the scrap I've had with my producers – with Sam Fishbein and Ike Nussbaum!"
Gillian had heard nothing of it, but his eyes remained shrewd and alert.
"You'd better tell me everything," he said.
Dale Torrent's classic face had turned mahogany.  His eyes blazed.  He banged on the desk.
"For eight months," he said hotly, "I've been the big drawing card at Superart.  The fan mail proved it; the box office reports proved it.  For eight months, they've worked me like a slave, day and night – working me sometimes in three pictures at once.  Please don't misunderstand me.  I didn't mind the work.  I was making good.  I was getting my chance.  I saw my pictures pulling Superart out of the red.  Fishbein and Nussbaum were on the verge of bankruptcy when my pictures suddenly began to click.  In these past eight months, my pictures have pulled them not only out of' the red, but have put them into one of the strongest financial positions in the business.  I'm not boasting.  Mr. Hazeltine.  I'm giving you facts, and I can also give you figures.  For instance, my fan mail is now running close to ten thousand letters a day.  That beats Garbo!"
"I see," Gillian murmured.  "But you finally got mad–"
"You bet your life I finally got mad!  Do you know how much those two bloodsuckers have been paying me?"
"It seems to me," Gillian said, "I read that you were getting six thousand a week."
Dale Torrent stared at him a moment, then uttered a harsh bark of laughter.
"Yes," he said, "that was the story the Superart press department sent out.  Six thousand a week.  Actually Mr. Hazeltine, I have been getting four hundred dollars a week!"
He stopped and gazed at Gillian expectantly.
"That's what I went to the mat about.  Four hundred a week – when I'm every bit as big box office as Gable or Crawford!  When my fan mail runs bigger than Garbo's!  And when they're not working me seven days a week, often from eight A.M. until midnight, they're renting me out to other studios for six thousand a week!  And out of that six thousand I get only four hundred!  That's why I quit!  That's why I'm here!"
Gillian said, "Was it your idea that I bring suit against Superart?"
"Not at all!" the young man exclaimed.  "I haven't told you everything.  Did you see me in Trial by Jury?"
"Yes."
Dale Torrent bent forward again.  His eyes were gleaming; his lips parted.  "Let's have it on the chin.  How was I?"
"Excellent.  Of course, there were certain inaccuracies, from a lawyer's point of view, in the courtroom scene.  But they weren't your fault."
"No.  I had nothing to do with the script.  My point is, did I make a convincing lawyer, or didn't I?"
"I thought you were excellent.  Your address to the jury was–"
" – Was as good a job, almost, as you could have done yourself?" Dale Torrent finished for him.  "Four days ago I walked into Sam Fishbein's office.  I gave him his choice.  Either pay me what I was earning – or tear up our contract!  He refused to do either.  He called me a conceited puppy.  He said he had made me what I am to-day.  He said Superart had a right to cash in on its gamble.  He positively refused to raise the ante.  He positively refused to tear up our contract.  In short, I could keep on working for him at four hundred a week – or quit the pictures!  Because of that contract, I couldn't go to another company.  If I were free, one of the other big outfits would sign me up to-morrow, for eight thousand a week!  Sam Fishbein knew he had me.  He knew I'd have to finish out my contract – eleven months – at four hundred.  So I quit.  I punched him in the nose; and I quit!"
Panting, blazing eyed, Dale Torrent glared at Gillian.
"I told him I was going to go back into law!  You know, I did once study law, and I was admitted to the bar."
"But do you want to become a lawyer?"
"No.  Of course not.  I'm an actor.  I've been an actor since I was six.  I'll never be anything but an actor.  I happened to say that because, when Trial by Jury was released the Bar Association of your state sent me an honorary membership.  So that actually I know law, and am entitled to practice it, even though I never have done so."
"What did Fishbein say?"
"Well, this nose was bleeding.  He was having a spasm.  He was going to call the police.  He told me to go to hell.  He said, ' Go and become a lawyer – and become the bum you were when I fished you out of the gutter!'  I was on the stage, as it happens, drawing down two hundred a week.  I could go back to the stage, of course, but that would be bad policy.  By playing my cards carefully – if you will help me – I can get back into the pictures at the salary I'm entitled to.  I came to you because you're the smartest lawyer in America."
Somewhat carried away by the young man's impetuosity and his vehemence, Gillian murmured:
"You mean, you came here directly from Hollywood – deliberately to see me?"
"Yes, sir!"
"But what can I do for you?"
"Help me carry out that threat!  Give out a story to the newspapers that you've taken me on as your junior partner!  Tell the newspapers you're convinced that I'll make a wonderful lawyer!  That's the first step."
"And what," Gillian quietly asked, "is the next step?"
"Let me in on some big sensational case.  Then let me get some of the credit for it.  I'm not a dumbbell.  I don't know law, but I'm not afraid of any judge or jury on earth!  I'll promise faithfully to follow orders.  I won't spoil your case.  I won't gum the works.
"All I want is some good publicity that will get back to Sam Fishbein and Ike Nussbaum – to call their bluff.  If they see me make a spectacular success in the law, they'll have me back at my own terms.  Oh, I know it doesn't sound rational, but it's the Hollywood way of doing things.  Let me have an office here, with my name on the door.  The newspapers will give it a big play.  It isn't as if you were a conservative corporation lawyer.  It won't hurt you.  You specialize in sensations.  What do you say?"
"I don't like it," Gillian answered.  "It's phony."
He got up and went to the window which overlooked the winding blue Sangamo.  He knew that Dale Torrent's proposal was preposterous.  It was Hollywood; and Hollywood wasn't Greenfield.  Good publicity for Torrent might be bad publicity for Hazeltine.  Gillian used publicity as a carpenter uses a saw, plane and hammer.  His favorite maxim was that most cases are tried before they even go into the courtroom.  Publicity was a useful tool, but when it was turned against you, it was often a steam roller.  A criminal lawyer in the wrong limelight could be laughed out of existence.
Offsetting these objections was Gillian's liking for sensational cases.  They were the spice of life.  And he was intrigued by this amazing young man's problem.
Dale Torrent was now pacing up and down the office, giving the dramatic details of that fight with Sam Fishbein.  He brandished his fists.  His handsome eyes blazed.  His nostrils quivered.  He thumped himself on the chest.
Amused, excited, and not a little delighted by the show, Gillian watched and listened.  Dale Torrent was dramatizing his bitterness with all the fervor he had ever displayed to a camera or a microphone.  Sam Fishbein became a Roman emperor, Dale Torrent a Christian slave tossed to the lions.
"Ah, yes!" he said, with flashing eyes, as he banged his chest.  "I walked the streets of Hollywood that night – trying – trying to think.  Racking my brains for a solution."
His shoulders slumped; his head sagged.  Bitter frustration was now expressed by every line of his body.  "I said to myself, this is the end.  I went to my house in Beverley Hills.  I went to my study.  I opened my desk; took out my  automatic pistol; loaded it!"
He paused.  Gillian was breathing more rapidly now.  He was being swept away. It was all good acting; it was wonderful acting.  Gillian could fairly see that loaded pistol in the young man's hand.
"I pressed it to my temple.  Then I asked myself – why?  Why, why, why?  What is the answer to this riddle?  Out of the black mists of that stark and horrible night, your name came floating, at that moment, and I put the pistol away.  I was saved!"
It was real.  It was genuine.  It was convincing.  Gillian understood perfectly.  He had often worked himself up to this same exalted pitch before juries; had swept away their prejudices on waves of emotional excitement.  He wondered if Dale Torrent was as sincere when he punched a heroine in the nose or threw a bucket of water at her.  Was he always playing a part; or was he, under the skin, the kind of man who really believed in punching women in the nose?  Did he punch their noses on principle, or because he was paid to punch their noses, or because he liked to punch their noses, or because he believed that their noses deserved to be punched?  Or had he merely discovered that a punch in the nose or the jaw was the master key to all women's hearts?
Arms folded on his chest, the famous young actor was staring intently at him.
"We understand each other," Dale Torrent said in his rich, deep voice.  "We are cut from the same cloth.  I knew you would understand!  Here!  I forgot this – this sordid detail!"
He forked a folded slip of pink paper out of a pocket of the ill-fitting black vest.  He strode toward Gillian, unfolding it.  He held it out to Gillian.
With his hands in his pockets, his teeth sunk in his cigar, Gillian looked at the check but did not take it.  It was a cashier's draft, on the Hollywood branch of the Bank of America, for $9,112.42, made payable to Gillian Hazeltine.
Gillian lifted his eyes to the flushed face of Hollywood's boy friend.  "All you've got?" Gillian asked.
"Except for living expenses for a few months.  I sold my car, my equity in my Beverley Hills house, my jewelry, including the platinum wrist watch my mother gave me – everything of value I owned went into this check."
When Gillian failed to withdraw his hands from his pockets, the young man cried:
"Do you refuse it?"
"I've got to think this over," Gillian said.
"But what is there to think over?  It's either this gesture – or oblivion.  Hours count!  Sam Fishbein is as stubborn as a mule.  But he's show folks.  He'll get over being sore about his broken jawbone."
"I thought you punched his nose."
"I also punched him in the jaw.  If I put this over, he'll be tickled to death.  And so will the whole industry."
Gillian understood, and he didn't.  His mind was a playground for a strange mixture of emotions.  He walked to his desk and pressed one of a row of pearl buttons.         
The door popped open, and Miss Walsh, pale and agitated, hurried in, notebook and pencil in hand.  She slid into a chair, notebook on knee, pencil poised.
"This is to be telephoned at once," Gillian said, "to all city editors.  Mr. Dale Torrent, the motion picture star, has forsaken his screen career to become Gillian Hazeltine's junior partner.  Messrs. Hazeltine and Torrent will be accessible to reporters and press photographers between one and two this afternoon, in the Hazeltine offices.  Phone that immediately."
"Y-yes, s-sir," Miss Walsh stuttered.
She flew to the door.
"Mr. Torrent will use Mr. Remsen's office temporarily," Gillian said crisply.  "Have a sign painter come in at once and paint Mr. Torrent's name on the door.  Also, call up Biltmeyer's and have them rush out a thousand letterheads with Mr. Torrent's name printed the same size as mine, as junior partner.  Will you show Mr. Torrent his office?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Hazeltine," breathed his bedazzled secretary.
When the delightedly grinning young actor had followed Miss Walsh out of the room, Gillian phoned his house.  His beautiful red-headed wife answered.
"Anything on for dinner to-night?" Gillian asked her.
"No, dear."
"I'd like to bring a guest.  It's – uh – Dale Torrent."
There was a long hesitation at the other end, to which Gillian listened intently.
"Not the – not the one who punches girls in the nose?" Vee said in a shaky voice.
"Yes.  The king of treat-'em-rough."
"Darling!" his wife squealed.
And Gillian wondered what it was about Dale Torrent that made women coo, shriek, squeal and scream.  If only he knew, he reflected, he would have the answer to one of life's greatest riddles.

CHAPTER 3
MUNCHHAUSEN

AT DINNER that evening, he watched Vee more attentively than usual.  Even in his immaculate, perfectly fitting dress suit, Date Torrent was no handsomer than a great many young men who had sat at this table.  Yet Vee was as dreamy-eyed, as dazzled, as Miss Walsh had been.  There was no logical excuse, Gillian reasoned, for either Vee or Miss Walsh to get that way about Dale Torrent.  Celebrities were no novelty to either of them.  Celebrities were familiar sights in his office – familiar guests in his home.
Well, then, what was it?  Did Vee the most level-headed, rational young woman Gillian had ever known, feel same primitive response to Hollywood's most popular girl-puncher?  Did she, in her secret heart of hearts, yearn to have the half of a grapefruit or a honeydew melon pushed into her face, or to have her jaw fractured by a man who jeered?
For the first time in their married life, Gillian wondered if Vee would love him more if occasionally he walloped her in the jaw.  Looking at her beautiful, slim little chin, he sighed.
They were having coffee and brandy before a cheery log fire in the living room when Toro, Gillian's Japanese house man, came pit-patting in on felt soles with a telegram for Dale Torrent.  The young man read the telegram and grinned.
"Gabriel over Hollywood!" he exclaimed, and passed along the yellow blank to Gillian.  "Exhibit A for the defense."
The message was somewhat wistful.

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS LEGAL TOMFOOLERY STOP IF YOU WISH TO RETURN UNDER NEW CONTRACT AT ONE THOUSAND PER WEEK ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN AND FORGOTTEN STOP WIRE
S.  LINCOLN FISHBEIN

Gillian looked up.  "What's the answer?"
"It was Sam who laid the egg.  So let him sit on it till it hatches!"
Gillian scribbled on the back of the telegraph blank:

S.  LINCOLN FISHBEIN, HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.
ON ADVICE OF SENIOR PARTNER CANNOT ACCEPT YOUR ABSURD OFFER STOP AM VERY SERIOUS ABOUR LEGAL CAREER STOP
DALE TORRENT

Then he gave the telegram to Toro to take out to the messenger boy.
Toro returned a few minutes later to announce that Mr. Hazeltine had, a caller.  In his impeccable English, Toro said:
"Mr. Waldo Chine wishes me to convey his felicitations and to say that he would like very much to see you on a most urgent matter."
With a groan, Gillian said, "Oh, all right.  Send him in."
Vee made a little grimace and excused herself.  Gillian explained to Dale Torrent:  "This fellow is my richest client, and the world's biggest nuisance.  He is one of America's few remaining millionaires – and a complete old rogue.  He spends his time figuring out ways to beat the government on his income tax.  He is always up to some kind of skullduggery.  Every time he goes abroad, he gets into a jam with the customs, trying to smuggle in precious stones and French perfume.  Even though he has no need to.  He is Peck's Bad Boy, grown old and senile.  His idea of a lawyer is a man who will help him to bribe his way out of one hopeless jam after another.  He pays me forty thousand a year just to keep him out of jails, workhouses and prisons.  He made his money in mining and smelting, and probably he is the world's most detestable old man.  Notice his left hand.  He has a cleft thumb.  He says he's going to be buried, when his time comes, in a solid gold coffin."
Toro ushered Waldo Chine into the living room.  One glimpse of him was enough to confirm all of the things Gillian had said.  He was a small, skinny old man; he wouldn't have tipped the scales at more than one hundred and twenty pounds.  His gray hair, thin and greasy, was slicked back from a sloping forehead which, with the rest of his face, had an oily sheen.  His eyes were of the popping type, and of an oystery color.  He had a large, wet, rubbery mouth.
Most millionaires are disappointing, however; and Waldo Chine looked like a card sharp.  There was something offensive even in the way he came gliding into the room.
He gave Gillian a foxy smile, and glared at the motion picture star.
"Who is this?" he snapped.
Gillian answered calmly, "This is Mr. Dale Torrent, my new assistant."
"His face," the old man barked, "is vaguely familiar."
"He has been in public life," Gillian said.  "What's on your mind, Waldo?  Sit down."
The millionaire extended his claws to the fire.  The thumb of his left hand had no nail; and its pale pinkflesh was queerly indented for perhaps a half inch, so that the thumb had two ends, like little stumps of fingers.  On the forefinger of his other hand he wore a steel horseshoe nail fashioned into a ring.  His hands were trembling.  He was pale, and he looked agitated.
"I can't sit down!" he snarled.  "A most horrible thing has happened.  I've just come back from a week's fishing trip in Canada, and an hour ago I went to my house.  The butler refused to let me in!"
Gillian murmured, "That's odd.  Why?"
"I haven't the slightest idea!" Waldo Chine cried.  "I rang the doorbell.  Rufus opened the door, and just stared at me.  I said, 'What's the matter with you, Rufus?'  And he said, 'Who are you?'  'Are you crazy, Rufus?' I said.  'I am Mr., Chine.'  And what do you suppose he said then?  He said, 'You are not Mr. Waldo Chine at all.  You must be an impostor!''
Gillian said, "Very strange.  Then what happened?"
"I went around the house, trying all the doors and windows.  All locked!  At the kitchen door, the cook met me with a meat cleaver.  'Get out of here, you impostor!'" she yelled.  So I went back to the front door and tried my pass-key.  It wouldn't work – the lock had been changed!  So I rang and rang, and finally Rufus opened the door again.  By this time I knew who was back of it all.  'My niece!' I said, 'Rufus, tell Brenda I want a word with her.'
"I think Brenda had been hovering in the hall.  She came and stared at me and said, 'Rufus, who is this creature?'  And Rufus said, 'I'm sure I don't know, Miss Chine.'  I yelled at her, 'This farce has gone far enough, Brenda.  I am your uncle, and you know it.  Let me in this house!'  And what do you suppose that she-devil said?"
Mr. Chine looked imploringly at Gillian.  The old man's oystery eyes were watery with self-pity.
Gillian shook his head.  "What did she say, Waldo?"
"She said, 'Rufus,' she said, 'this man doesn't even look like my Uncle Waldo.  If he is a beggar, give him something to eat at the back door.'  I said, 'Brenda, you haven't seen me in two years.  Let me in.  Let me explain.'"
"Explain what?" Gillian broke in.
"That I was her Uncle Waldo!  What did she do, Gillian?"
The millionaire was wringing his hands, and Gillian thought whimsically that if a hawk could have wrung its claws the gesture would have looked very much the same.
"She slammed the door in my face," Chine went on.  "So I came directly here.  Now, is that a pretty situation, or isn't it?  What does it mean?  What's back of it?  Is it some diabolical plot – or what?"
Gillian looked over the tip of his tilted cigar at the embers in the fireplace.  Dreamily, Gillian said: "you've heard what this old rascal has just said.  What do you make of it?"
The actor shot a startled glance at the millionaire.  Waldo Chine seemed unaware that he had been referred to as an old rascal.
"It seems mighty mysterious to me," Dale Torrent answered.
"There are apt to be several sides to it," Gillian went on.  "To begin with, this fellow is one of the most preposterous old liars on earth.  He would rather lie than tell the truth."
Dale Torrent shot another alarmed glance at the millionaire.  But it was evident that Gillian knew his client very well.  The old man did not appear to be in the least offended.  He seemed, on the contrary, to be amused – even pleased.  He was smiling, preening himself like a degenerate old turkey gobbler.
Waldo Chine chortled.
"Well," he said, "maybe I was lying – just a little."
Gillian blew a smoke ring at the ceiling.  "You haven't really just come back from a fishing trip in Canada, have you?"
"As a matter of fact, no," the old man admitted.
"As a matter of fact, you haven't been away at all?" Gillian pursued.
"That's right.  I haven't been away at all."  The oily old man shot a glance at Dale Torrent.  "Gillian's smart," he said.  "Smart as a whip!"
Gillian took the compliment in stride.  "Why did Brenda refuse to let you into the house?"
"Women are strange," the old man muttered.
"Don't you know, Waldo?"
"I do not."
"When did Brenda get back from Paris?"
"Only this afternoon."
"Ah, yes!  She saw, then, what you've done to that beautiful old house.  And naturally, she was furious.  Being a girl of spirit, she simply kicked you out.  Didn't she?"
"As a matter of fact, she did.  Well, I locked myself in my room.  She wouldn't send me up any dinner.  She – she starved me out.  And you know how important food is to me."
Gillian knew, for Waldo Chine was an old gourmand.  
"When I came out, she had Rufus throw me out of the house," Chine continued.
"And the cook didn't threaten you with a cleaver?"
"As a matter of fact, she didn't.  I just made that up."
"Well, what do you want me to do?" Gillian demanded.
"Bring suit against her!  Wasn't it felonious assault?"
"Did she strike you with a fist, or with any object; did she kick you in any part of your anatomy, or in any other way visit violence upon your person?"
As a matter of fact, she didn't.  She told Rufus to put me out; and Rufus took me by my collar and the slack of my pants and ran me out of the house.  You can imagine my embarrassment!  Isn't there some law making it a crime to run a man out of his own house?"
"There certainly is.  But as it happens, it isn't your house.  It's her house."
What of it?" the millionaire cried.  "Anyway, I'm going to get revenge on that girl for humiliating me.  You're my lawyer.  Drag her into court on any charge!  I don't care how much it costs!"
"Wait a minute," Gillian said.  "Let me think."
He puffed reflectively at his cigar, and studied the glowing embers.  Since he had undertaken to help Dale Torrent, he had been wondering how he could manage to give the young man some sensational publicity – the kind that would impress movie magnates like Sam Fishbein and Ike Nussbaum.  This might be the answer.  The amazing private life of a millionaire and his internationally celebrated niece, aired in the courtroom!  A family row between this notorious old rascal and the much talked about, written about, and photographed Brenda Chine!
Brenda, Gillian reasoned, was the sort of girl who did not mind publicity.  At least, she didn't seem to.  She had made headlines in Paris by throwing a bowl of champagne punch over the Duc de Bergeron; he, the dispatches said, had accused her of the same money madness that afflicted all Americans.  It was broadly hinted that she had previously rejected the proposal of marriage of the penniless Duc de Bergeron.
She had afterward given out fiery interviews, telling what she thought of the French nation in general, and of the Duc de Bergeron in particular.
No, Gillian reflected, a girl like Brenda Chine would not mind the publicity of a courtroom fight with her uncle.  It should be a front page story for days – the beautiful and spirited Brenda versus her notorious old uncle, with the celebrated Hollywood girlslapper, guided by Gillian, representing the plaintiff!
"Very well," Gillian said, "we'll being suit against Brenda.  We will charge her with malicious persecution.  She is sure to lick us, but I don't suppose you care about that."
"First of all," the millionaire said anxiously, "you've got to arrange to let me get my things out of that house.  There are certain things of mine which no one must disturb."
"We'll drive out right now and have a talk with Brenda," Gillian answered.  "Have you your car, Waldo?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Torrent and I will follow you."
Gillian suffered a qualm of doubt.  He wondered just how a young man who specialized in punching girls' noses would hit it off with a girl who threw punches at men who displeased her.

CHAPTER 4
THE GOLD HOARDER

ON THE drive out to the Chine estate, Gillian gave Dale Torrent a thumbnail sketch of the situation.
"Brenda Chine is beautiful, rich, clever and impulsive.  She once rode a horse into Denver's largest department store – on a bet.  Another time, she exchanged every stitch of clothing she had on with a shabby girl whom she saw crying on the street – then went on to a reception being given for the Queen of Romania, and introduced herself as Raggedy Ann.  That happened here in Greenfield, and it was a nine days' scandal.  I only wanted to warn you that it is very difficult to predict what she will do next."
"Oh, I've read about her in the papers," Hollywood's boy friend said.  "She sounds like a spoiled brat."
Gillian said quickly, "At all events, her father and uncle were partners in one of the biggest mining and smelting combines in the West.  They sold out to other big interests about ten years ago.  At her father's death, Brenda inherited his fortune – a whopper.  I don't know how much is left.  Waldo is easily worth thirty million.  He has called practically every turn of the stock market, in the past four years, and he'd sell his pet horse to a glue factory if the price was right.
Here's the nub of the present ruckus: After her father's death, Brenda transformed the Chine mansion into one of the handsomest places in this section.  It had been an eyesore.  She remodeled it along Virginia colonial lines – slender white pillars, a snow white house of beautiful design, emerald-green shutters.  She had fine old shade trees planted all about the house.  When she'd finished with it, it was the most restful, most beautiful place you ever saw.
"About three years ago, Waldo came from Utah to live there.  Why, God knows.  And shortly after that, she suddenly packed up and went abroad, where she's been ever since.  And since she's been in Europe, Waldo's done some remodeling along his own lines.  Wait till you see it!  This house, incidentally, will figure importantly in Waldo's suit against Brenda.  We will lose the case against her, but you will get ten million dollars' worth of good Hollywood publicity."
"How old is this woman?" the actor asked.
"About twenty-three."
Gillian sent him an anxious glance, but Dale's classic countenance was in repose.
A few minutes later, they followed Waldo's tail-light into a driveway of crushed bluestone.  A sharp turn brought the house into view.
"Good Lord!" Dale Torrent said.
He saw the house in the light of a crescent moon.  It stood on a knoll, and it resembled a brooding buzzard.  The knoll was bare of trees.  All the beautiful shade trees had been removed.  The building itself had been painted a dull, sooty black.  The columns were slate-gray.  There was something stark and sinister about this architectural monster – something ugly and obscene; something that sent shivers of distaste and apprehension along your spine.
"Did that old fox do this?" Dale demanded.
"All of it."
"Why?"
"Spite, perhaps.  But the chances are that he likes this kind of house."
The old fox had parked his Rolls Royce coupe near the slate-gray steps, behind a maroon Cadillac roadster.  He was waiting in the shadow for Gillian, and whispered to him:
"You do the talking.  But whatever happens, get me inside that house!"
"I'll do my best," Gillian promised, and pressed the door button.
The door was presently opened by a tall, cadaverous butler with a hawk's nose and hawk-like eyes.  He stared suspiciously at Gillian, at Dale, but when he saw Waldo Chine lurking there, grinning at him, his crack of a mouth vanished entirely.
"Tell Miss Chine," Gillian said briskly, "that Gillian Hazeltine is here – waving a white flag for all he's worth."
"Very good, sir," the butler said stiffly, and firmly closed the door upon the trio.
"Remember!" the millionaire whispered hoarsely.  "Don't take no for an answer!"
"And you remember this," Gillian answered.  "You are to behave yourself.  No tricks!"
The door was reopened.  The butler had a displeased look.
"Miss Chine will see Mr. Hazeltine," he said with dignity.  He held the door open.  Waldo, chuckling, scuttled in and started rapidly down the hall.
"Wait!" Gillian said.
"Wait!" the butler echoed.  "Miss Chine has given express orders that Mr. Chine is not to go down to the cellar."
With a peevish look, the old rascal returned.  Dale Torrent was looking about the hall, making gasping sounds.  Gillian had grown somewhat accustomed to the horror of it.  The floor was of cement, laid in blocks, like a sidewalk.  The walls were slate gray.  The woodwork was dull black.  There were no rugs; no hangings of any description.  That hall was as dismal as the entrance to a warehouse or a mausoleum.
The three men followed the butler to a closed gray door.  He opened it upon a large drawing room, with a cement block floor, dismal gray walls, black woodwork.
Candles set about on tables and logs burning in a huge fireplace did little to soften the cheerless air of this great, grim, dismal room.  A man and a girl were seated on a long, low, black bench close to the fire.  The man was holding the girl's hand in his.  The look he was giving her was one of lovesick longing.  As Gillian approached, the man released her hand and frowned a little at the interruption.
Both man and girl stood up.  Gillian only glanced at the man, who was tall, blond and blue-eyed.  Brenda Chine was one of the most beautiful young women he had ever seen.  And she was beautiful in a way that belied her reputation.  She wasn't tall and dashing, as one might have expected.  She was a little thing, slim and soft, and as feminine as a powderpuff.  Her eyes were as large, and as dark and gentle, as a gazelle's.  Only her dark red hair gave any hint of her famous temperament.
The firelight glowed and softly glistened on her hair, on her slim white arms, on her lovely shoulders.  She was like a little princess, in her evening gown of jade-green.  She wore no jewelry except a string of small, square emeralds.
The smile which she gave Gillian was sweet and charming.  He would have been deceived if he hadn't known her so well; if he hadn't seen the storm warnings in her large, beautiful dark eyes.  She gave Gillian her little white hand and said:
"Gillian, I hope you don't intend to argue with me about this old rogue."
"No," Gillian said.
She looked past the lawyer at the tall, distinguished young man who stared at her with cool speculation.  It was apparent that Dale Torrent wasn't carried away by her loveliness.
"Who is this?" Miss Chine asked.
Gillian smiled.  "My new junior partner.  You perhaps read about him in tonight's papers."
"I never read the papers."
"But you recognize him, of course."
Miss Chine was staring with large, puzzled eyes at Hollywood's boy friend.  She shook her lovely little head.
"I'm afraid I don't, Gillian."
"He is–" Gillian said, and paused dramatically "Dale Torrent!"
He watched her beautiful, sensitive little face as he said it, but it did not change.  It remained puzzled.
"I'm afraid the name means nothing to me."
"The motion picture Star!" Gillian cried.
"Oh," she said.  "I detest the movies!  I never go to them."
"Really?" Dale Torrent drawled.
"Yes, really – I'm so sorry!"
But she didn't look sorry.  She looked impish.  And Gillian was thankful that no halved melons or grapefruits were handy.  He knew that Dale was a gentleman, but he didn't know how far Dale was to be trusted with any girl who might possibly need a slight punch in the nose.  And he was sure that Brenda was deliberately high-hatting the young man.
Sweetly, she was now introducing her companion, the blond man.  His hair was crisply golden.  His eyes were sapphire blue.  He was handsome in an aristocratic way.
"This is Stewart Noon, Gillian."
Shaking hands, Gillian said, "I've heard about you.  You're the new assistant district attorney."
"Your worst enemy's right-hand man," Mr. Noon affirmed, with an engaging grin.  "I've been looking forward to this.  My first free moment, I was going to call."
"Have lunch with me to-morrow?" Gillian said.
"Thanks.  I'd be delighted to."
Brenda Chine made an impatient little gesture.  "Will you gentlemen sit down?  You can sit down, too, Uncle Waldo," she added, indifferently.
"I'm no gentleman," Uncle Waldo chortled.  "And I'm proud of it!"
Miss Chine, seating herself on the stool, looked up seriously at Gillian.  "Now, just what has this dreadful old man been telling you?"
"That you kicked him out of this house, for no apparent reason."
"That's, as usual, a lie, Gillian.  I kicked him out when I saw what he'd done to my house.  Do you blame me?"
"Not at all, Brenda."
"He ripped up my lovely oak floors and poured concrete ones.  He covered my beautiful old mahogany woodwork with this hellish black paint.  He chopped down all my grand old trees.  Heaven only knows what he's done with my rugs, hangings and canvases.  Would you blame me if I had shot him instead?"
"Not in the least," Gillian murmured.
"Three years ago," the girl said, "in her crisp, sweet voice, "he came here and admired this house.  He begged me to let him come and live here.  Because it was so homelike.  I didn't remember him well enough, or I wouldn't have consented.  So I let him move in.  We did nothing but quarrel, after that.  I got so fed up that I went to Paris and stayed there.  I came back today, intending to order him to move out.  And when I saw what he'd done to this lovely place, I had him thrown out.  I haven't told you the worst of it.  He has built some devilish contraption or other in the basement.  Under the Western half of the house he's blocked off a huge space with steel walls.  There's a door at each end, like a door on a bank vault.  He refuses to tell me what's going on inside that steel room."
Gillian looked at the old rascal.  Waldo was smiling foxily.
"I may as well come clean," the old man said.  "I've built a little still in there.  I wanted to make some good old Utah corn licker.  I hate this bootleg stuff!  Bah!  Hogwash!  So I built myself this little old still down there–"
"He's lying again," Brenda said with a weary little sigh.  "I've snooped around down there, Gillian.  I've smelled strange smells – very hot metal smells, and the smell of nitric acid.  He can't fool me, Gillian.  You know, I practically grew up in a Colorado smelter."
"She's being ridiculous again," the old man snorted.
"And who is that horrible little human spider who spends all his time down there?" Brenda demanded of Waldo Chine.
"A moonshine expert from Utah," the old rascal answered.  "He used to make mountain dew for me out there.  I brought him here, and I built this still exactly the way those good old Utah stills are built."
Brenda sighed.  "Why did you put a great firebrick chimney up through the house, right up through the middle of my bedroom?"
"Did he do that?" Gillian gasped.
"He did!"
Again Gillian turned accusing eyes on Waldo.
"You old liar!" he said.  "What's going on down there in–?"
He stopped.  The old rogue looked scared.  He had lost all his color.  His face had changed to the appearance of a fish's belly, shiny and wet and white.
"I'll move everything out to-morrow," he said eagerly.  That's a promise."
"Every stick and stitch and scrap," Brenda said firmly.
"Yes, yes!  And I'll do more than that.  I'll pay to have this house restored in every particular to the way it was when you went abroad.  Gladly!"
Gillian, looking at the man's shiny white face, his rubbery, frightened old mouth, said sternly:
"Waldo, I want a little chat with you in private.  Excuse us, Brenda."
Reluctantly, with rolling, oystery eyes, the old rascal accompanied Gillian into the hall.
The lawyer was afraid Waldo was going to collapse.  Closing the door, Gillian said sternly: "Come clean.  What's going on in that steel room downstairs?"
"I positively told you the truth!"
"You old liar!  You're up to more of your deviltry!"
"No, Gillian!"
"Do I have to call in a safe-blower and find out?"
"No!" cried Waldo Chine, then hesitated, giving Gillian a foxy smile.  "Well – I may need your help on it later, anyway.  So I'll show you.  Come along."
Gillian followed him out through the kitchen, to a door which gave upon a flight of steps.  Down they went into a spacious modern basement.  It must have been an acre in area.  It was divided into two long, wide corridors; and perhaps a hundred feet away, the corridor on the right was blocked by a shining steel wall.  Gillian saw the heads of rivets; saw the steel door which Brenda had likened to the door of a vault.
As they approached the door, Gillian detected those odors which Brenda had mentioned – the odors of hot metal and acid.
Waldo took, out a large steel key.  It was of a strange pattern, with a diamond-shaped head, a long, tapering steel shank with notches filed in both edges of the shank.  Gillian had never seen a key quite like it.  The old rascal fitted the key into the lock.  He was chortling.
"You're going to get a big surprise, Gillian!  You're going to say I'm the foxiest old rascal you ever met!  This makes anything I've ever done before look pretty pale!"
He turned the key, dramatically swung the door open.
A blast of intensely dry air, with a burned smell, smote Gillian's nostrils.  It was like opening the door of an oven.
His eyes were momentarily dazzled by the terrific pink glare of a miniature sun.  The air fairly writhed with heat and the stench of acid.  Gillian caught a bewildering impression of electric cables, crawling about like great serpents; of an enormous firebrick ventilator above the miniature pink sun; of ingot molds.
Along one wall were five huge vats of thick clear glass, out of which an evil white mist rose in clouds, to be drawn off up another ventilator.  A grayish-yellow mound in the bottom of each vat sent a cloud of fine bubbles up into the liquid.
A queer looking figure, like a gnome, was just dumping the yellowish contents of a canvas bag into one of the vats.  As he tossed the bag to a pile in a bushel basket, he saw Waldo and Gillian.  He came springing toward them, a grotesque creature.
In the pink glare of the miniature sun, he looked evil and dangerous.  He looked, indeed, like an enormous spider.  He was naked to the waist.  His arms and legs were curved and black with tangled hair.  On his thick chest was a mat of hair like a bear's pelt.  Black hair grew out of his ears and nostrils.  His eyebrows were bristling black tufts.  The hair on his head was blue-black, like the hair of a gorilla.  His eyes were small, beady and black, like a spider's.
Gillian would not have been surprised if this creature had suddenly dropped to all fours and come scuttling toward him with horrible snarls.
The spider man did, in fact, pick up a bar of steel and start toward him.  But Waldo said hastily: 
"It's all right, Fowler!  It's quite all right.  This is Gillian Hazeltine, my lawyer.  Gillian, this is Fowler Shank, the greatest molder in America!"
The greatest molder in America said in a thin, nasal voice, "Why'd you bring him down here?"
"I couldn't avoid it.  Besides, we may need him.  Go right on with your work, Fowler."
The old rascal looked up at Gillian and grinned, "Do you get it, Gillian?" he chuckled.  "Do you get it?"
Gillian nodded.  He had got it.  He watched the spider man pick up another canvas bag.  This time, when the greatest molder in America decanted the contents of the bag into one of the vats, Gillian was aware of what the contents were.  They went spilling in a shining, thick stream into the vat – gold pieces!  Ten and twenty dollar gold pieces!
"That's a nitric acid solution," the old rogue was saying.  "It eats the alloy out of the gold, leaving the pure metal.  You can't sell alloyed gold to the treasury.  I mean, they'd catch you at it, if the alloy was in the ingots.  You've got to sell it pretty pure.  Do you get the idea?"
"Yes," Gillian said quietly.  "I get the idea.  I suppose you're aware that it's a mighty serious offense to destroy United States coinage?"
"What of it?  How can they catch me?  I saw the present gold situation coming, long before most people did, and was smart!  I bought gold, gold, gold."
"You mean, you hoarded gold!"
"You bet I did!  And never was caught at it, either.  I turned stocks and bonds and bank balances into gold coin.  When the Government called in all the gold, I had – well, I had pretty near a half-million dollars in gold coin!  Figure it out for yourself.  A half-million, when gold was only worth $20.67 an ounce.  And now gold is tip about sixty per cent.  That half-million is worth close to eight hundred thousand!
"Oh, of course there's some shrinkage.  There isn't quite twenty dollars' worth of gold, at the old price, in a twenty-dollar gold piece.  But that doesn't cut into my profits much– 
"Here's how we work it.  First, we dump the gold coins into these vats.  When the acid stops working, we dump the gold into that electric furnace, melt it down and cast it into small ingots.  But damn it, of course, Brenda had to come back and spoil things, just when I was ready to make the first shipment!"
"To the mint?" Gillian asked.
"Oh, no!" the old rogue chortled.  "I'm smarter than that.  It goes to my smelter in Utah.  That's one of my old properties, near a petered-out gold mine.  There isn't any gold in the mine, but what do I care?  The idea is, I ship it there – and from there it's shipped to the mint in San Francisco."
Gillian was looking at a large iron or steel mold near the electric furnace.  It would cast a billet nearly six feet long, by two and a half feet wide, by a foot thick.  Nearby was a platform scale of a two-ton capacity.
Waldo said quickly, "We once thought of casting billets that size – so heavy that they couldn't be handily stolen.  But we gave it up; we never used that mold."
Yet Gillian could see evidences of heat in the mold – the blue look of scorched metal.  He knew that the old rogue was, as usual, lying.
He made a quick estimate.  A golden billet cast in that mold must weigh close to a ton.  And a ton of gold at the new price was worth a more fabulous sum.  Where was this billet?
"How much gold," he asked, "does this furnace melt down at a run?"
"Oh, not much.  Maybe ten thousand dollars' worth."
Gillian knew better.  It would be closer to a million judging from the size of that billet.  Waldo was lying again.  Gillian wondered just how far from the truth was Waldo's stated half-million dollar hoard.
The old rascal was rubbing his hands together, chuckling.  The pink glare from the furnace glistened greasily on his flushed face; glittered in his popping oystery eyes.  He looked like an evil old ogre.
"I ask you," he chortled, "where could a man invest a half-million dollars in these days, and get so much in interest?  Isn't it a wonderful business proposition?  Did you ever hear of a smarter one, Gillian?  Isn't it the smartest business proposition you ever heard of, since gold was first made into coins?  Eh?  Am I clever?"
Gillian's face had become pale.  His jaws were clamped together.  His lips and eyes held a menacing look.
"Waldo," he said, in a quiet, sinister voice, "did you ever check up on your ancestry, to see if you're descended from Nero – the millionaire who played a fiddle while Rome burned?  Or possibly King Midas?"
"No, Gillian," Uncle Waldo vaguely answered.  "But now you see why you've got to fix it up with Brenda to give me enough time to smuggle all this gold and apparatus out of here."
"You old scoundrel!" Gillian exploded.  "I've stood by while you've cheated and chiseled the Government in every way you could think of.  I've spent sleepless nights, figuring out ways to get you out of jams; to keep you from behind bars.  Damn your hide, Waldo!  It would be a waste of breath to mention the word patriotism to you.  You'd only chortle.  All this country means to you – and ever has meant – is a liberal chance to plunder and chisel.  You're too selfish and greedy to realize that this country is in its most difficult financial crisis.
"Why do you suppose President Roosevelt called in all the gold?  To give sneak-thieves like you a chance to do more plundering?  Don't you realize, you damned old thief, that what you're doing here is downright treason?  It isn't chiseling.  What you're doing here is nothing less than kicking your country when she's down!  But you can't understand that, damn you!  To you, your country's misfortune and distress is nothing but a chance to make an enormous profit!  You ought to be hung!"
The look in Uncle Waldo's eyes sickened him; it was such a slimy look.  Gillian snapped his jaws shut and started for the door.
The old man squawked, "Hey, what are you goin' to do?"
Gillian snarled, "I haven't decided.  Get out of my way!"
"Going to squeal on me?"
Gillian stopped in his tracks.  He wheeled about.
"By God, I think I will!  Turn you in to the treasury department!  Put you where you belong!"
At that, the spider man dropped a bag of gold which fell with a muffled clank to the concrete floor.  He picked up the steel bar.
"If you squeal," Waldo shrieked, "I'll kill you!"

CHAPTER 5
THE SEVERED HAND

GILLIAN walked rapidly out of that atmosphere of nitric acid fumes and withering electric heat.  The millionaire yelled after him:
"I mean it!  I'll kill you if you squeal!"
Behind him, Gillian heard the spider man begin to curse.  Then the millionaire and the spider man were cursing each other.  There would be trouble back there.  But Gillian didn't care.  Let them kill each other, for all of him!
Striding to the stairs which led up to the kitchen, Gillian tried to put his thoughts in order.  In the course of his career, he had been accused of many things, but he had never been accused of injustice, and he had never been accused of a lack of patriotism.  He had seen enough in that steel room in the basement of Brenda Chine's house to realize that her rascally old uncle must have more than a million in gold in hoarding.  Perhaps two million!  Perhaps much more!
Gillian realized that no more cunning an attack could be made deliberately on the weak economic condition of the country than this one of Waldo Chine's.  Greedy, selfish, wholly detestable, the sly old man did not care.  He was without the slightest affection for his country.
Reporting him to the authorities was another matter, however.  Like most men, Gillian detested a tattle-tale.  Yet he felt very strongly that he should report to the Treasury Department what he had seen in that steel room.  And it occurred to him, as he reached the kitchen, that the disclosure would be a national sensation.  Waldo Chine, one of the country's few remaining millionaires, would be revealed as not only hoarding gold for gold's sake, but preparing to fatten his riches by selling his hoard to the United States mint at an enormous profit!  Yes, it would be a national scandal, a national sensation.
It now occurred to Gillian that he might kill two birds with one stone.  He might let Dale Torrent have the credit for uncovering this gigantic piece of crookedness!  Why not?  Gillian decided that he would, at all events, discuss it with Hollywood's boy friend.
He went on into the great, gloomy drawing room.  Dale Torrent was not there.  Nor was Brenda Chine.  Sitting alone on the low bench before the log fire was Stewart Noon, the new assistant district attorney, and he looked more lovelorn than ever.  He was facing the fire, with his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees.
Gillian glanced from the sad-looking young man to two chairs and a table which had been overturned on the floor behind him.  One of the chairs was smashed.
Gillian said sharply, "What's been going on here?"
The young man before the fireplace slowly turned his head.  At first Gillian believed that Stewart Noon's left eye was in shadow.  Then Gillian saw, with amazement, that that left eye was purple and black!
He looked closer.  There was no doubt about it.  The blond man, since Gillian had been in the basement, had somehow mysteriously acquired a black eye.  A beauty!
"Where is Brenda?" Gillian cried.
"Upstairs," the new assistant district attorney said, peevishly.  "In her room.  Oh, I don't know where she is.  Maybe she's chinning herself on a tree.  Maybe she's somewhere trying to stop a nosebleed!"
"A nosebleed!" Gillian gasped.  "Where is Dale Torrent?"
"Out there," Mr. Noon answered, jabbing with his thumb.  "Pacing up and down that terrace.  Gazing at the moon.  Counting the stars.  Dreaming thoughts of Hollywood, maybe.  Why the hell don't you ask him?" he asked with sudden savageness.
"Did Brenda give you that mouse?" Gillian gently inquired.
"Certainly not!"
"My dear fellow," Gillian said, I'm naturally curious to know what's been happening here.  In fact, I've got to know."
The blond man grunted.  "He punched Brenda in the nose."
"What!" Gillian cried.  "You're joking.  He couldn't have punched Brenda in the nose!"
"Why in hell couldn't he?  That's his profession, isn't it – punching girls in the nose?"
"Then what happened?" Gillian panted.
"Then I took a pass at him – naturally."
"Naturally," Gillian agreed.  "You couldn't stand by and see the girl you love punched in the nose."
"I took a pass at him," the blond man growled, "and he socked me in the eye.  I fell over two chairs and a table.  He told me to come ahead and get the rest of it.  Then Brenda threw the fire tongs at him – and they both vanished in different directions, she out that door, and he out that one."
"Who started this shambles?" Gillian sternly interrupted.
"Oh, Brenda was riding him.  She was panning the movies.  She said that an actor was nothing but a sissy.  And before I could stop him, he popped her one in the nose.  I could hardly believe my eyes."
"Did she hit him with the fire tongs?"
"Yes.  On the back of the neck.  But it was only a glancing blow.  He only jeered at her, and they both went in opposite directions.  He called her a spoiled brat.  She called him a ham."
Gillian had managed not to laugh.  He had even suppressed an almost insuppressible smile.
He took out a cigar and offered another to Mr. Noon.  The assistant district attorney accepted it with a shaking hand.
"It's been a pretty tough day for Brenda," Stewart Noon said.  "As if finding what her uncle had done to this house wasn't enough, she's also learned that she's lost her fortune."
"All of it?" Gillian was incredulous.
"I believe so.  When you came in this evening, I was telling her she'd better be nicer to her Uncle Waldo.  In spite of their enmity, he's willed her everything he has."
The blond man stopped.  In the silence, Gillian heard the distant, muffled voice of anger.  In fact, two voices.  Listening, he identified Uncle Waldo's shrill, furious voice, then the spider man's.  They were shrieking at each other.
Stewart Noon gasped, "Good Lord!  What's going on?  They're in the cellar, aren't they?"
"Yes."
"They must be killing each other.  I'd better see what I can do."
The blond man jumped up and walked rapidly to the door, letting himself out.  Gillian, listening, heard the sound of his rapid footsteps.  Stewart Noon was running.  Gillian was beginning to suspect that there were more sides to this strange situation than greeted the eye.
Gillian went to the door through which the blond man had said Dale Torrent had gone.  He opened it, emerging upon a long, narrow flagstone terrace which was in darkness.  The moon was behind clouds.  He saw a ruby spark float to the end of the terrace, describe a sharp arc, and come floating toward him.  A cigarette left an invisible mouth and became a miniature red meteor.
"Dale!" Gillian called.
"Yes, sir."
Sternly, "What is there about a woman's nose that you can't resist?"
The young man cried, "Good God, I couldn't help myself!  I don't say the movies are noble, or real art, or any of that rot, but they're as good as any other business.  And I'll be damned if any woman is going to call me a sissy!"
"Or a bully?"
"I'm sorry I punched her, Mr. Hazeltine.  But I never had such a razzing in my life.  She called me a ham and a sissy.  She did it very sweetly, too.  And she dared me to punch her in the nose!"
"In so many words?"
"'Yes, sir,' she said.  'I'd like to see you or any man punch my nose.' So I, gave it a good brisk tap."
"I don't know what I'm going to do about you, Dale," Gillian said wearily.  "If you're going to go around punching girls' noses, you're going to be too much for me to handle.  You must restrain yourself."
"I'll try to, sir.  But that girl–"
"Stop being a caveman. Try to be more subtle."
"Yes, sir."
"We have run into a real scandal here."
Gillian told him about the gold refinery and the smelter in the basement.  "I was thinking of letting you spring the trap," Gillian said.
"I thought it would be a good thing to let you notify the Federal authorities.  But there's a chance that Stewart Noon already knows all about it – has found out what's going on in that steel room, and will grab the credit himself."
Dale said, "Let him have it.  I don't think it would be good business for me to figure in that kind of sensation.  The fact would remain that I'd be a tattle tale.  I'd rather wait for something else to pop up.  How about this case the old scoundrel wants to bring against Miss Chine?  I'd like nothing better than to grill her on the witness stand."
They discussed the possibilities of that case.  But it was Gillian's belief that Uncle Waldo would be too busy defending himself against Federal indictments to appear in a civil case against his niece.
The drawing room door opened silently, and Stewart Noon's voice called, "Mr. Hazeltine, may I have a word with you in private?"
"I'll wait for you in the drawing room," Dale said.
When he had gone, the assistant district attorney said, in an agitated voice:
"There's something pretty important I've wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Hazeltine."
"I know," Gillian said.  "I saw it, too."
"What?" the blond man asked.
"That steel room."
"I didn't get in there.  The door was locked.  They were yelling at each other, inside, but they wouldn't open the door.  It wasn't about that.  It's about Mark Storm."
Gillian held his breath for several seconds.  Mark Storm, the district attorney, was Gillian's worst enemy.
"Mark Storm," the young man went on," ruined my father – disgraced him.  And as a result of it, my father committed suicide."
"When did this happen?" Gillian said quickly.
"About ten years ago, in Detroit.  That was before Storm came to Greenfield.  I swore I'd get him; if it took me the rest of my life.  I was studying law.  About a year ago I came here and took a job in judge Foster's office.  It was judge Foster who slipped me into this job with Mark Storm."
"Does Judge Foster know the circumstances?"
"No, sir.  I've never breathed it to a soul – until now.  I'm telling you for obvious reasons.  I wanted you to know that I'll do anything under heaven to get that man!  It shouldn't be impossible.  He's a crook, a grafter, a racketeer–"
"But smoother than an old dime," Gillian broke in, "and smarter than a gold-digger."
"I don't underestimate him," Stewart Noon said.  "But I know that you would have nailed him before this, if there'd been some one like me in his office.  Please understand me.  I'm not proud of the way I've had to go about it.  But I don't care how I get him, as long as, I do get him.  I wanted you to understand that you can count on me at any time."
He paused.  At that instant, somewhere in the depths of the great house, a woman screamed.  Shrill with horror!
Gillian and Stewart Noon made a rush for the door.  Gillian, reaching it first, threw it open; ran into the great, dismal drawing room.  Dale Torrent was standing near the hearth, with his hands upraised in a frozen gesture of alarm.  Gillian panted:
"What was that?"
The actor gasped, "Downstairs!  It came from down there!"
He was jabbing a forefinger at the floor.
"The steel room!" the blond man cried.
The three men ran out into the hall, with Gillian leading the way.  He went down the basement stairs three at a bound.
The heavy steel door was closed.  Gillian ran up to it; listened a moment, then rapped on it with his knuckles.  No response came from the other side.  But farther away, the scream occurred again.  Then, "Here!  Here!"
Gillian left the door and ran back to the stairs, followed by the two young men.  They hurried down the other wide corridor.  There was, he knew, another of those steel doors.
Panting, he rounded a massive concrete pillar.  Lights gleamed and glistened on another steel wall, another steel door, likewise closed.  Brenda was standing in front of this door, one hand clutching a handful of her jade green gown, lifting the hem of it high on her slim, beautiful ankles.  Her attitude was that of a woman recoiling with revulsion or horror.  She was as white as death.  And Gillian could see that the hand grasping the jade green silk was shaking.
He cried, "What's happened, Brenda?"
"Look!" she shrieked.  "Look!"
Gillian stared at the floor where she was pointing.  On the concrete, about five inches from the closed steel door, there lay a human hand, palm down.  It had been severed at the wrist-bone.  The thumb had no nail, and the tip of it was cleft.  It was, unmistakably, Uncle Waldo's left hand!

CHAPTER 6
THE GOLD BILLIT

GILLIAN Hazeltine stared at Uncle Waldo's hand, lying there on the concrete floor near the door of the steel room, and tried to control the sickness that rose up in him like a wave.  Death – anything to do with death – always sickened him.
Brenda Chine was swaying and making little gulping sounds.  She looked as if she might faint at any moment.  On either side of Gillian, the two young men were staring down with speechless horror at Uncle Waldo's severed left hand.
Hollywood's most famous young actor of the season groaned, "God!  How horrible!"
Stewart Noon, the new assistant district attorney, was more articulate.  He was, after all, a criminologist.  He said sharply:
"Don't touch that hand!  Leave it for the police.  I was here, at the other door less than an hour ago," he said.  "They were fighting in there like a couple of tomcats, shrieking and cursing.  I pounded on the door, but they wouldn't stop shrieking; wouldn't let me in."
He went over to the door now, carefully avoiding the grisly dead hand lying there.  There was a gasp and the quick scuffling of feet beside Gillian.  He looked around, to see Brenda lying limply in the cradle of Dale Torrent's arms.
"Take her upstairs," Gillian panted.  "Get her some brandy – smelling salts – spirits of ammonia – do something!"
The girl breathed, "No.  I'll be all right.  I must see what's happened."
Stewart Noon merely glared at the actor, and continued banging on the door.  Within was ominous silence.
Brenda, regaining strength, weakly gasped, "He may be dying.  Get that door open!  Put-put me down, you ham!"
"You aren't strong enough to stand up," Hollywood's boy friend said, grimly.
Gillian looked away.
At that instant there occurred the sound of a hand, sharply slapping a face.  Gillian looked again, to see an area on Dale's left cheek turning angrily red.  And Gillian, for the first time, observed that the tip of Brenda's dainty little nose was pink and somewhat swollen.  Gillian had not seen Brenda for upwards of half an hour; since Hollywood's most popular caveman had, by his own admission, given her aristocratic little nose "a good brisk tap."
This slap which she had just administered to the actor's face was possibly repayment.  Perhaps, on the other hand, it was a matter of principle.  Perhaps she really didn't like Dale Torrent.
Brenda was standing resolutely on her own feet again.  She was pale, but grimly determined to call no more upon Dale's strong arms.  He was nursing his flaming cheek with his fingertips, staring at Brenda with hot bright eyes.
Stewart Noon stopped banging on the door.  "They're both probably dead," he panted.
"We'll have to smash this door in," Gillian said urgently.  "Waldo may be bleeding to death."
"Here!" Dale said.
Against a near-by wall was a steel I-beam, twelve or fifteen feet long.  Presumably it had been left over from the construction of the steel room.  The three men picked it up and carried it to the door, using the I-beam as a battering ram for possibly twenty minutes before the inner supports gave way and the door suddenly burst open.  A wave of hot, parched air, rancid with acid fumes, puffed over them.
Brenda shrieked, "Heavens!  What's this?"
The assistant district attorney gasped, "A small smelting plant!  Gold!  Good Lord, look at it!  He's been melting down gold coin!"
With a shiver, Gillian stepped over the dead hand.  His eyes flitted from the glass vats to the furnace.  He saw a man lying limp on the floor, near one of the vats – the Spider Man – either unconscious or dead.  Then, with sudden excitement, Gillian saw that the great steel mold near the electric furnace was giving off heat in rosy waves.  The mold now contained a gold billet, still hot!
Brenda Chine cried, "Where's Uncle Waldo?"
The three men, finishing their quick inspection of the room, looked at her, then looked at each other.
"Gone!" Gillian cried.
"But that hand–" Brenda began hysterically.
"Yes," Stewart Noon panted "That hand!  A man with a hand severed can't live long without surgical attention."
Gillian kneeled beside Fowler Shank.  The Spider Man's eyes were partly open, but they were somewhat glassy.  There was life in him, however.  He closed the lids, opened them partly again, then opened them widely.
"Can you talk?" Gillian asked him.
In a hoarse whisper the hairy man answered, "Yes.  What's happened?"
"Where's Waldo Chine?"
The Spider Man looked at him vaguely.  Gillian said:
"Brenda – or Noon.  Get this man a drink of something.  Brandy or whisky."
The girl ran out.
Gillian continued, "Mr. Chine has disappeared.  Do you know where he went?"
"No," said the Spider Man.
"What happened to you?"
"I was liftin' a bag of coins.  Something struck me from behind."
That, Gillian knew, was a lie.  People knocked unconscious from behind do not know that they are struck.
"Did you cast that billet?"
"No.  Was there one cast?"  He sat up and stared at the billet mold.  "The old man must have done it."
Stewart Noon said sharply, "Did you see him do it?"
Fowler Shank looked at him resentfully.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"I am from the district attorney's office.  And I'd advise you to tell the truth.  Where is Mr. Chine?"
"How do I know?  I been layin' here – out like a light."
Brenda returned with a decanter of whisky and a glass.  While Stewart Noon poured a drink for the Spider Man, Gillian examined the door which they had battered in.  About four feet from the floor, on the edge of the door and the steel jamb, he found a small smear of blood and some shreds of damp skin.
He said, "Brenda, I think your Uncle Waldo lost his hand when that steel door was slammed on it.  The sharp edges, meeting, are like a pair of giant shears.  My suspicion is that he tried to escape from this room, that some one grabbed him, and at the same time gave this door a mighty shove, closing it on his wrist – severing it.  If that's the case, he never left this room."
The Spider Man growled, "Why couldn't he have gone out that other door?"
Gillian glanced at the hot billet, then at Fowler Shank, and finally at Stewart Noon.
Brenda cried, "Gillian!  He may be wandering about outside, or somewhere in the house, bleeding to death!"
"No," Gillian said firmly.  "He never left this room.  Mr. Noon, what happened when you came down here, an hour or so ago?"
The assistant district attorney answered, "I came to that door."  He indicated the closed door.  "I heard this fellow and Mr. Chine cursing and shrieking at each other.  I yelled at them to let me in.  Whether or not they heard me, they wouldn't let me in.  I'm going to call the police, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Call Captain Morgan, of the Detective Bureau," Gillian said.  "I'm afraid you'll have to prepare yourself for a shock, Brenda.  I'm afraid your Uncle Waldo is inside that gold billet!"

CHAPTER 7
THE PAY-OFF

THE GIRL in the jade green gown repeated, in a horrified voice, "Inside that gold billet?"
You'll notice," Gillian said, "a splash of blood on the wall near the door.  You'll notice, here, a broken trail of blood.  It doesn't go to that other door.  It doesn't go farther than the middle of this room.  In other words, we can safely assume that your Uncle Waldo did not leave this room.  Why was the billet cast at, or after, the time his wrist was severed?"
The Spider Man growled, "You're nuts!"
"Are you sure?" Gillian snapped.
The beady black eyes glared at him, then shifted and became bored.
Stewart Noon said, "Wouldn't there be a smell of burning flesh in the air, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Not necessarily.  Those ventilators carry off all fumes, even the heat.  Dale, you'll find a coil of garden hose outside that door.  Bring it in here, fasten one end to that faucet and spray that billet.  We're going to chisel it open."  He turned to the Spider Man.  "Where's the other billet?"
The beady black eyes stared at him with contempt.  There ain't any other billet."
Brenda said,    Gillian, I can't stand any more of this.  I'll wait in the drawing room.
"Better go with her," Gillian told the assistant district attorney, "and telephone Captain Morgan."
When they were gone, Dale Torrent connected the garden hose to the tap and began to spray the golden billet.  The water, striking the hot metal, turned hissingly into steam which rose in clouds into the ventilator.  Gillian also began a search of the room; and the Spider Man sat in a chair, following Gillian with beady, scornful eyes.
Dale Torrent said, "Isn't this a waste of time, Mr. Hazeltine?  If Mr. Chine was killed and put in this mold, wouldn't he have gone up, literally, in smoke when the gold was poured in?  Even if we had a cross-section of this billet, would it tell anything?"
You're right, kid," Fowler Shank growled.  "A guy with gold poured on him would go up in a puff of smoke."
Gillian, going over every square inch of the cement floor with vigilant eyes, glanced up at him.
"I'm not so sure," he said.
The Spider Man sneered.  "No?  You're one of these wise guys.  I know all about you.  Hazeltine – the wise guy.  Well, you won't find no other billet under this floor, and you won't find anything but gold in that billet."
"You were taking a pretty sharp interest in things, weren't you," Gillian said dryly, "while you were unconscious?"
The beady eyes glared at him a moment; shifted.  The Spider Man made no comment.
Gillian suddenly found what he had been hunting for – an infinitesimal difference in the coloring of one part of the cement floor.  He had seen a sledge hammer standing over in one corner.  He secured it and with it began to batter the newer looking area of floor.  He battered an oblong area into chunks, and picked them out.  The earth in the opening was so loose that he could scoop it out with his hands.
Excitedly, Gillian scooped out several handfuls of earth.  Then the edge of his hand encountered a smooth, hard, cold surface.  He scraped away more earth, and suddenly he saw the yellow glow of gold!  The missing billet!
With crowbars and steel rolls, Gillian and Dale transferred the billet from the hole to the platform scales.  The billet weighed 1988 pounds – 12 pounds less than a short ton – and worth, at the new price of gold, approximately $750,000.
The billet in the mold was now cool enough to handle.  The two men dumped it out of the mold and measured it, then compared these measurements with those of the other billet.  Since the mold had been filled to the brim, each time, the measurements were identical.
"And each," Gillian said, "should weigh precisely the same."
They removed the cold billet from the scales, and weighed the warm one.  It weighed 1947 pounds – 41 pounds less than the other!  Gillian shot a glance at the – Spider Man, who had been sitting there in scornful silence, watching these proceedings.
"How much does a puff of smoke weigh?" Gillian asked.
Fowler Shank's mouth twisted into its familiar sneer.
"How much does a laugh weigh?" he retorted.
Gillian gave him a curious smile.  If Fowler Shank had had previous experience with that smile, he might have lost considerable color.
"As much," Gillian answered, "as the current that passes through a man strapped into an electric chair!"
"Try and strap me in!" Fowler Shank jeered.
This spirited byplay was interrupted by voices.  A man stepped over the dead hand in the doorway – an iron-jawed, gray-haired man of fifty.  His ears indicated that in earlier years he had followed the profession of pugilism.  Behind him was a tall young policeman who remained outside, staring at the hand.
Gillian said, "Good evening, captain.  We seem to have here a first-rate puzzle."
Captain Morgan was the chief of detectives of the Greenfield Police Department, and the one member of the department who Gillian was certain was not under the political thumb of Mark Storm.
The detective looked slowly about the room.  His cold gray eyes paused on Fowler Shank, who stared back at him defiantly.  They traveled on past the glass vats and the electric furnace, and came to rest on the two golden billets.
He said quietly, "Solid gold?"
"Worth about three-quarters of a million apiece," Gillian said.
"If I owned all that," said Captain Morgan wistfully, "I could leave off wearing rubber heels and a derby hat.  I could have that farm."  Then, respectfully, "What seems to be the lay, Mr. Hazeltine?"
Gillian saw Stewart Noon and Brenda Chine in the doorway, and asked, "Have you talked to Miss Chine?"
"She told me that you believe the old man's inside a gold billet.  It came as quite a shock.  I knew the old devil was crazy about gold, but I never thought he'd climb inside a gold billet.  Which one?"
"The measurements of both are the same," Gillian answered.  "But this one – still warm – weighs forty-one pounds less than the other,"
Captain Morgan shook his head.  The old man must have shrunk some.  Have you any theories?"
No ripe ones," Gillian said.  He saw a look of impatience in Stewart Noon's face.  But Gillian wasn't impatient with the detective's dry, drawling humor.  He knew that Captain Morgan was a man who took his time; who looked before he leaped.  He had respect for Captain Morgan's ability.
The detective was looking with apparently idle eyes about the steel room.  His eyes returned again to the golden billets.
"Maybe," he said quietly, "it was suicide."
"That's how I figure it," the assistant district attorney said acidly.  "He killed himself, climbed into that mold, turned on the gold and quietly cremated himself!"
Captain Morgan's cold gray eyes slowly moved until they rested on Stewart Noon.  The detective gravely nodded.
"Why not, Mr. Noon?" he drawled.  "Didn't the old man always boast he was going to be buried in a solid gold coffin?  If he's in that billet, didn't he make his boast good?"
The assistant district attorney snorted impatiently.  But Captain Morgan was now looking at the Spider Man.  He drawled:
"Mr. Hazeltine, when did they let it out of the zoo?"  His eyes were as dull as pewter.  "Who is this ape?"
"Uncle Waldo's helper," Gillian said.
Briefly he explained Uncle Waldo's unpatriotic scheme for making an easy fortune out of government gold.
Captain Morgan went to the doorway, inspected Uncle Waldo's severed hand, then said:
"If it was lopped off by this door, somebody must have grabbed that handle.  And a murderer's hands are apt to be hot, even if it's cold-blooded murder."
The others had been using the door at the other end of the room, the door they had smashed in.  The captain took a little bottle from his vest pocket, poured powder on the handle, delicately blew it off.  Then he asked the tall young policeman to strike a match; and in the light of the match Captain Morgan examined the handle.
"No fingerprints always mean a cool murderer.  The handle's been wiped off."  To the cop he said, "Thanks, Mike," and walked over to the derisively sneering Spider Man.
"What do you know about this?"
"Just what I told this other wise guy I was havin' a talk with Mr. Chine, in here, when somebody socks me on the back of the head.  When I come to, the old man has scrammed and the billet is cast."
"That's all you know?"
"You heard me, big shot."
Captain Morgan looked at him coldly.  
"Well," he said, "we've got you anyway on Federal charges of complicity in a coin-destroying and gold-hoarding scheme.  What have these other people to say, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Mr. Noon came down here when he heard sounds of quarreling between this fellow and Uncle Waldo.  They were shrieking and cursing at each other and they wouldn't let him in.  Have you told Captain Morgan about finding the hand, Brenda?"
The pale girl nodded.
"Yes.  But I didn't mention why I was here.  I came down to tell my uncle to pack up and get out of this house immediately."
"What was the trouble, Miss Chine?" the detective 'asked.
"He ruined my house while I was abroad."
"Did you tell him what you started out to tell him?"
"No.  I didn't hear their voices.  I saw the hand – and I screamed."
Captain Morgan was now studying the handsome, pale face of Dale Torrent.
"I read about you in to-night's papers," he said.  "You're the lad who punches girls in the nose.  I have a daughter I'd like to have you meet, Mr. Torrent.  Any time you run out of noses, just give me a ring."
Brenda made a strange, strangled little sound in her throat.  Captain Morgan glanced quickly at her nose, and one of his black eyebrows went up.  He drawled:
"Whatever it was that happened, it took place behind locked steel doors, between this gorilla and Uncle Waldo.  Where do you figure we go from here, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"First," Gillian said, "we'll find out what makes this billet so much lighter than the other."
It took them the better part of two hours, with cold chisels and machinist's hammers, to discover why one of the billets was 41 pounds lighter than the other.  But at last they had it.  Lengthwise, down the middle of the billet, was a small core partly filled with ashes – the ashes, presumably, of Uncle Waldo.  And among these ashes three objects of importance were found.  One was Uncle Waldo's steel horseshoe nail ring.  Another was his keys, welded into a metallic wad.  The other was a cold chisel, similar to the ones they were using.  That, possibly, was the instrument with which the old man's death was accomplished.
It was Gillian who found the only item which could be described as a clue.  He did not find it in the ashes, but embedded in the gold surface of the core – a tiny cube of what appeared to be green glass, darkened and somewhat fused by the intense heat to which it had been subjected.
He glanced quickly at Brenda, who was whispering with Stewart Noon.  And for the first time was aware that she was no longer wearing her string of emeralds.
He called her over; asked her why she had removed her emeralds.
"I broke the string in the drawing room, while you were down here with Uncle Waldo."
"At the time Mr. Torrent punched you in the nose?"
"Yes, Gillian."
"Where are they?"
"In the safe in my dressing room."
"All of them?"
"I believe so.  Why?"
Gillian felt a little ill.  This was very apt to be a clueless crime.  And he was sure that the darkened, green, glasslike cube which he had found embedded in the billet was one of those emeralds.  How had it got there?
"How many emeralds were in that string?"
"Thirty-eight."
"Will you go upstairs and count them?  You might bring them down."
"Certainly.  But why, Gillian?"
Captain Morgan and Stewart Noon had come over.  The detective said:
"What's this about emeralds?"
Then he, too, saw the little cube of darkened greenish glass-like stuff in the wall of the core.  He said quietly, "Is that an emerald?"
"I don't know," Gillian said.  "It might be glass."
"No," the detective argued.  "Glass would have melted into a blob.  An emerald is hard stuff."
"It can't be one of my emeralds," Brenda said huskily.  I'll get them."
She returned, white-faced, with alarm in her eyes.  The emeralds were clutched in her hand.
"There's one missing, Gillian," she said.
"And this is it," said Captain Morgan.
"But how did it get in there?" the girl wailed.
"Just when did that string break?" Gillian asked.
"Let me think.  Stewart tried to punch this – this actor.  And the actor punched back."
"Why were they so busy punching each other?" Captain Morgan interrupted.
"Because this – this ham had just punched my nose!"
"I see.  He was paying a professional call.  And when did the string break?"
"When I picked up the fire tongs and threw them at him!"
"Dale, did you see them break, or hear them fall?" asked Gillian.
"No, sir.  I was dodging the fire tongs at the time, she says.  But they hit me anyway."
"Noon, how about you?" said Gillian, turning to the other man.  "Did you see them break?"
"No, sir.  At that time, I was sprawled out there on the floor.  I had just been punched in the eye, and it was some time before I could see anything with the other eye."
"It's kind of strange," Captain Morgan said.
"What the hell's strange about it?" the Spider Man suddenly jeered.  "It's the pay-off, ain't it?"
Gillian walked slowly toward him, with an air of grimness.
"Is it?" he asked.
"Sure!  I'll talk now.  But you've got to make sure that dame ain't packin' a rod.  My life's valuable."
Grimly, Gillian said, "just what do you mean by that?"
"I don't want what her uncle got, that's all!"
"Stop inventing puzzles," Captain Morgan barked, "and get down to brass tacks!"
"All right!  I saw her kill the old man with that cold chisel!  I saw her put him in that mold!  I saw her turn the gold into the mold!  Is that enough brass tacks!"

CHAPTER 8
SCORCHED EMERALD

BRENDA Chine was staring at the Spider Man with horrified incredulity.  She cried: "What lies!  I wasn't in this room at all!  Gillian, I'd never been in this room until the moment you smashed that door down!  Make him say he's lying!"
"Sure," Fowler Shank jeered.  "Go ahead and make me."
"Let's have some details," Gillian said, in a menacing voice.
"Sure – plenty of 'em!  Like I told you, I was standin' by that vat, gettin' ready to dump in a bag of coins.  I'd just been havin' an argument with the old, man about him bringin' you down here.  The door was open, and this dame comes in.  I was just liftin' the bag, when I saw, her pick up that long cold chisel.  She came over toward me, and the first thing I knew, she was swingin' it on me!"
"You liar, you liar!" Brenda cried.  "Stewart, make him admit he's lying!"
"Sure!" the Spider Man growled.  "Make me!  Here I am!  Come on, Stewart!" he mocked.
The assistant district attorney evidently did not hear him.  He was staring at the girl in the jade green gown.  His face was pasty.  His eves were like lead.  His mouth hung open.
"It struck me a glancing blow," Fowler Shank amiably continued.  "I went down, but I wasn't out.  Then she yelled, 'Damn you!' at her uncle.  He started to run.  He got to the door.  I says to myself, 'This dame has gone nuts.'  I never saw strength like that in' no woman.  She slammed that door on his hand, and he let out a scream.  And when he turned, with his hand lopped off, she drove that cold chisel square into his left eye!  It went right on into the brain, I guess."
Brenda!" the blond man gasped faintly.
The girl panted, "Good God, Stewart!  Are you going to let him make a murderess out of me?"
But the assistant district attorney did nothing but stare at her, horrified.
"Then," Captain Morgan purred, "what did she do, ape?"
"She picked him up like a gunnysack and tossed him into the billet mold.  It was ready to be poured, anyhow.  Then she knocked out the plug with a hammer, and out come the gold!  And if I live to be a thousand, I'll never forget the sound of that hot gold hittin' that cold man!  She kept talkin' to herself.  'Gold!' she says.  'Go ahead Uncle Waldo!  Drink it!  Eat it!  Wallow in it!  Have all the gold you want!  You've always boasted about the solid gold coffin you were goin' to have.  Here's your coffin, Uncle Waldo!"
"You filthy beast!" Brenda cried.
The Spider Man sprang up.  "Who says I'm a filthy beast?"
"I do!" Dale Torrent snapped.
He drove his left fist smackingly into the Spider Man's mouth, and Fowler Shank went down in a heap.  From the floor he glared up with spidery eyes.
"What the hell?" he snarled.  "Do I get protection, or don't I get protection?"
"Don't worry," Dale said to Brenda.  
She said, huskily, "Thank you, Mr. Torrent.  Gillian, what am I going to do?  Will you – stand by me?"
"Certainly," Gillian said.
But the lawyer was worried.  He knew that Fowler Shank had built a towering structure of lies.  But he was convincing.  What Gillian saw was a jury box full of men – twelve good men and true, listening to these lies.  Dressed, shaved, and with a haircut, Fowler Shank would not be a Spider Man, he would be an honest working man.  And he would make a damning witness.  It was doubtful that a normal jury would hold his complicity in Uncle Waldo's coin-destroying, gold-hoarding plot against him.
Brenda was whimpering, "Stewart!  What's the matter?  Do you believe him?"
Gillian had wondered if she was in love with the handsome blond man.  He still wondered.  The look of tragic hurt in her eyes would have been there in any case.  So might she have looked at any trusted friend who turned against her.
It was evident that the lovelorn young man, at any rate, had fully recovered from his attack.  His eyes, staring at her, were glazed with bewilderment.  His mouth was slack with uncertainty.  His expression was that of a man horribly upset and agitated.
"Brenda," he began in a shaken voice, "if you had anything to do with this–"
"Stewart!" she wailed.  "You don't mean that!"
"I'll black his other eye if he does!" Hollywood's most prominent caveman said passionately.
"It's that emerald," the blond man said feebly.  "If it weren't for that emerald–"
"Yeah," Captain Morgan gloomily affirmed.  "If it wasn't for that emerald!"
"A plant!" Gillian snapped.
The detective looked at him, and lifted his two hands in a hopeless shrug.
"Yeah?  Well, you can't deny it sort of hangs together.  Anyway, this young fellow is from the D.A.'s office.  He tops me.  What do we do, Mr. Noon?"
"I don't know what to say," the assistant district attorney groaned.  "Brenda–"
"Don't bother," Brenda said contemptuously.  She held out her small, beautiful hands.  "Do you want to handcuff me, captain?"
"Certainly not, Miss Chine," the embarrassed officer protested.
"This is ridiculous," Gillian said angrily.  "You can't arrest this girl on such slight evidence.  This old fellow is lying."
A determined glint came into the detective's eyes.
"Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.  You can't deny that what he says checks with the only clue we've found.  Sure I'm sympathetic for the young lady.  If she killed that old rascal, I don't blame her.  But it's up to the court to decide whether she killed him, and whether she had a right to kill him.  I guess we'll have to go along, Miss Chine.  But don't worry.  The best lawyer in the world is going to the front for you."
"Take this fellow Shank along, too," Gillian said, "before I forget myself and knock his teeth down his lying throat.  A few days in solitary wouldn't do him any harm."
"I'll attend to that," Captain Morgan promised.  "Will you phone for the medical examiner, Mr. Hazeltine?  There isn't much for him to go on, but he's got to look things over."
Gillian said, "I want Harry Zarrow over here, too."
When he returned to the steel room, Captain Morgan, Brenda and the Spider Man were gone.
The policeman remained on guard at the door.  Dale Torrent and the blond man were glaring at each other across the golden billet which contained the ashes of Uncle Waldo.
"I was just saying,"' the actor said, "that if I was in love with a girl, I'd at least go through the motions of standing by her when she got into a jam.  I was just inviting him to go out on the lawn."
"He's versatile," the blond man said with mock admiration.  "He also punches men's noses."
Dale Torrent started round the billet with bared teeth.
"I'm going to take off your coat, your shirt and your undershirt," he said grimly, "and I'm going to carve my initials in the yellow streak that's down your back!"
"And meanwhile let the real murderer get away with it!" Gillian said dryly.  "Noon, do you honestly believe that Brenda committed this crime?"
The blond man hesitated.  "If it weren't for that emerald, I'd say Shank was lying.  But how did that emerald get there, unless her necklace broke and the stone dropped in while she was casting the billet?"
"Plants," Gillian answered, "are no problem to a clever killer.  But Shank wasn't clever enough.  He'll go to the chair for this.  No jury in the world would convict Brenda on his testimony.  Besides, he's the murderer type."
"If it weren't for that emerald," Noon groaned.
"We're going to get busy," Gillian said briskly, "and find some other evidence here.  We're handicapped, of course, by the fact that Shank had all the time in the world to destroy whatever clues there might have been.  Take each end of the room, you two.  I'll take the middle."
If he had used a microscope, Gillian could not have gone over the middle section of the room more thoroughly.  But he found nothing of the slightest value.  Nor did either of the young men searching the ends of the room.  At the end of more than an hour of careful investigation, no clue of any description had been found.  Only one clue existed – that scorched emerald.
Harry Zarrow, the city chemist, arrived.  He chiseled the darkened, green, glassy cube out of the billet and subjected it to chemical tests.  He pronounced with finality, "It's an emerald."
When the medical examiner came and probed through the ashes, and when he had taken his departure, Gillian, the blond man and the movie actor went upstairs.  The two young men exchanged glares and sarcasm.  But there were no further blows.
They went out to their cars, the assistant district attorney to the maroon Cadillac roadster and Gillian to his Lincoln coupe.  Gillian saw several policemen with sub-machine guns standing about.  The house seemed to be surrounded.  Captain Morgan was evidently taking no chances with those immensely valuable golden billets.
Gillian was about to start his car when the blond man called out, "My car won't start.  The battery seems to be dead.  Will you give me a lift?"
"Certainly."
And during the rest of the ride, the two young men exchanged insults.
Gillian dropped the blond man off at his apartment, then drove on toward his house above the Sangamo.
Dale Torrent suddenly burst out, "You know damned well that girl's innocent, Mr. Hazeltine!"
"Of course I do."
"Did you see the look in her eyes, Mr. Hazeltine, when that blond snake turned against her?  Do you suppose she could really be in love with that rat?"
"I don't know anything about women," Gillian answered.
"I hate to think that a girl with her intelligence – her fineness–" Dale said, "could fall for such a human eggplant.  Down there, in that fantastic place, something happened to me that's never happened to me before in my life.  That girl has more courage, more spirit, than any girl I ever met.  She's wonderful!  You should have seen her when I punched her in the nose!  You should have seen the look in her eyes!  Believe me, I've made a careful study of girls.  Most girls, when you punch their noses, get a goofy look in their eyes.  But not that girl!  Her eves turned to fire.  Oh, it was something to see!  And you should have seen her snatch up those fire tongs.  Such grace!  Such sureness!  Wham!  Right in the neck!  That's spirit!"
Gillian stared at the road ahead.
The young man burst out again.  "She's innocent, too – or I'm damned!  We'll take her case, of course?"
"Yes," Gillian said.
"I'll help!  I'll do anything – I'd crawl through hell in cellophane for that girl.  One thing is absolutely certain, of course; no jury will take that ape's word against Brenda's."
"I wish I were as sure as you, are," Gillian said.  "How did the emerald get into that billet?  Did it fly through the steel wall and inside that room?  Did it drop through the floor?  Did it have wings?  Did Brenda give it to, her uncle?  Did he steal it from her?  Did it get into Shank's hands by black magic?"
"Shank had the run of the house didn't he?  Days, weeks ago he might have opened the wall safe in her room and taken one emerald off the string, as part of a plant to fix suspicion on her.
"If it was a deliberate murder," Gillian asked, "what was his object?"
"Some plot in connection with that gold?" Dale asked.
"Yes."  Gillian agreed.
"He intended to kill old Waldo cremate him in the billet–" Dale went on, "and let people suppose the old man had disappeared.  Some emergency upset his plans.  He was pretty careful, but he overlooked that severed hand!"
"If we could prove all that," Gillian said, "we'd have a fine, strong defense for Brenda.  I suspect you're making the mistake of underestimating our Hairy Ape's smartness."

CHAPTER 9
IN THE HEADLINES

THE NEWSPAPERS, on the following morning, were full of the amazing Chine case.  Not only was the fantastic death of Waldo Chine, the multi-millionaire, a sensation in itself; the imprisonment of the beautiful, internationally famous Brenda Chine, her defense by Gillian Hazeltine and his assistant, the most popular movie actor of the season, supplied inspiration for countless news columns.
The newspapers, which in cases of that kind are little less than detective bureaus, established a number of damaging points.  Brenda Chine was broke.  She had gone through her huge inheritance.  She was the sole beneficiary, under her Uncle Waldo's will.
Photographs were reproduced, showing the striking difference between the house as she had remodeled it and the house as Uncle Waldo had seen fit to remodel it a second time.  A bitter family row between uncle and niece was reported in detail, giving Gillian a chance to suspect Assistant District Attorney Stewart Noon of talking indiscreetly – or at least unfairly.  And it was even hinted that this was the motive behind the old man's murder.
Then came the bombshell.
Because of Stewart Noon's familiarity with the case, Mark Storm, the prosecuting attorney, had given the blond man full charge of the prosecution!
This was real newspaper drama.  It was broadly hinted that Stewart Noon was, or had been, desperately in love with the beautiful Brenda.  There were flagrant details.  He had met Miss Chine, it was revealed, on the steamer on which she had returned from Europe.  Acquaintance had become friendship; friendship had swiftly ripened into a tenderer emotion.
It was hot stuff for the sensational tabloids.  One headline screamed:

TO PROSECUTE HIS BELOVED!

And under that was a synthetic, composite photograph, showing the small, dainty, lovely Miss Chine, looking up adoringly into the stern, hardened countenance of Stewart Noon.
Dale Torrent came into Gillian's office that morning, and with a snarl of rage, slapped the tabloid down on the desk.
"Look at that!" he shouted.  "It's a lie!  The photograph is a lie.  She never loved him!  She never had anything but scorn and contempt for him!  How is the case coming?"
"We are making some progress," Gillian said.
The lawyer looked tired.  He had been working day and night.  But his pet maxim – "Most cases are tried before they ever reach the courtroom" –  was being thrown in his teeth.
The newspapers were trying Brenda, and were daily finding her guilty.  Gillian's investigation department, a thoroughly organized detective bureau in itself, with correspondents in all American key cities, was turning in reams of the familiar blue flimsy, with detailed life histories of all the principals in the case.  Sifting these reports for vital facts was slow, tedious, and disappointing.
Gillian had appointed Dale as contact man with the prisoner.  Every day, Hollywood's boy friend marched into the city jail, laden with flowers, candy and tidbits for his "client."  How the affair was progressing Gillian did not know.  But he guessed that it was not galloping.  Dale did not have the look of a successful lover; looked gaunt and weary.
On the morning when he slapped the offending tabloid on Gillian's desk,  Dale made something of a confession.
"She doesn't love anybody – let alone that rat!" he proclaimed.  "She's spirited.  She's spunky.  But we'll save her, Gillian!  I'm going to marry her, if she'll have me, and take her to Hollywood.  She'll love Hollywood – the color, the excitement, the glamour!"
"I hope so," Gillian said.
He had doubts.  The case was going to be a tough one.  It was hardly possible that, even if a jury found Brenda guilty, they would let her go to the chair.  But life imprisonment was as bad, as far as she and her nose-punching lover were concerned.
Gillian was also feeling a little dubious of Dale's triumphal return to Hollywood.  The papers had shrieked with Dale's name, and this was precisely the sensation that would do him the most good.  Yet, to date, there had been no imploring telegrams, with flattering offers, from those movie magnates, Sam Fishbein or Ike Nussbaum.  And Gillian knew that it didn't take long for movie magnates to forget their favorites.
The public, however, seemed to have no inclination to forget Dale Torrent.  Several times, venturing on the street with the young man, Gillian had nearly been trampled to death.  Women fought for close-ups of their hero.  Men fought for close-ups, too.  But their intentions were hardly worshipful.  Most men seemed to want to take a punch at this offensive cinematic idol of the hour.
Dale's fan mail had been diverted from Hollywood to the Hazeltine offices; and it was like diverting Niagara Falls.  Mail came in post office trucks which backed up to the service entrance of the building and disgorged sacks and sacks of letters addressed to Dale Torrent from all parts of the world.
The two golden billets, over the heated protests of the district attorney's office, were confiscated by the Treasury Department of the United States government, and held pending the outcome of the litigation.
Uncle Waldo's ashes had been carefully dusted out of the core of the billet and were now reposing in a tin can in the Federal Marshal's office, pending God knew what.  A ferret-nosed newspaper reporter found this out, and made a front page story out of it, with the headline:

WANTED GOLD COFFIN – GOT TIN CAN

It was a richly ironical account.  One of America's few remaining multimillionaires had boasted for years that some day his remains would repose in a casket of solid gold.  But there the remains were, in a tin can on a dusty shelf in the Federal Marshal's office, together with a box of blank cartridges, a dog-eared copy of a magazine called Sexy Stories, a set of somebody's discarded false teeth, a broken corncob pipe, and a bottle of dyspepsia medicine.
The irony became burlesque when the reporter mentioned, as a climax capper, that the tin can had once contained sauerkraut, and that it bore a printed boast: "The contents of this Can Are as Fresh and Fragrant as the Day They Were Made."  And the newspaper article ended: "Poor Uncle Waldo!"
Gillian read the article – and went back to the blue flimsies from the investigation department.  The truth was, his case for the defense was not progressing as it should.  Had it not been for that emerald embedded in the gold billet, he would have had no trouble.  It would have been a walk away.
Dale Torrent was a growing problem, too.  The young man insisted on being helpful.  He was willing to do anything – anything to save Brenda!  Gillian had publicly announced that Dale would help him; that he would be co-counsel for the defense.  This had originally been his plan to let Dale handle the less important parts of the case solely to give the young man publicity.  But when Gillian had given out that statement, he had not realized that the case would be so difficult.  And Dale, of course, had never actually practiced law.
He told the young man, one evening shortly before the trial, that he believed it would be necessary to recall that promise.
"It's going to be a very tough case.  So much depends on delicate points.  It's the sort of case that can be won or lost by the shading of a word.  I can't see how you fit in, Dale.  If the issue were less vital, there would be no question.  But it's a girl's life – her liberty at least.  It looks as if it will be necessary for me to hog the works.  In a case like this, I can't take chances.  I must be on my feet every minute of the trial, with my fingers on the pulse of the jury."
Dale stared at him with sudden sick disappointment.  He was pale.  His lips trembled.  There was a stricken look in his eyes.
"Please get this straight, Gillian," he said.  "You know it's gone past the point where I want to go into that courtroom for publicity purposes."
"Yes, I know that, Dale."
"I've got to fight for that girl!  I can't sit idly by and see that yellow-livered rat charge her with murder and attempt to prove it!  I've got to help in the fight.  It isn't as if I hadn't some actual experience.  You yourself admitted that I was convincing – powerful, even – in 'Trial By Jury.'  I'm not an ordinary layman.  I've been studying law, and I've been admitted to the bar, even though I've never actually practiced.  I'm saturated with this case.  And I've got a memory like a phonograph record.  You could suggest and I could memorize every possible question and answer, every possible objection and legal ruling–"
"It's impossible to anticipate such things."
"Is it?  Go ahead!  Try me out!  Give me a rehearsal."
Gillian said hesitantly, "How can I?"
The actor cried, "Suppose this is the courtroom!  Let Mrs. Hazeltine play the judge, and you play prosecuting attorney.  I'll play attorney for the defense.  Get Toro in here, and let him play the witness – their star witness, that hairy ape!"
Gillian said, "All right, we'll try it."
They tried it, with Vee Hazeltine as judge, Gillian as prosecutor,
Toro as the hairy ape, Dale was counsel for the defense.
Dale began questioning Toro.  Toro, having read the newspapers diligently for weeks, fell readily into the part, and made an admirable hairy ape.  He was shrewd; he was sullen; he sneered.
"Did you or did you not–?" Dale would begin in his rich, fine voice.
Toro, making grimaces like some mythical Oriental villain, would sneeringly answer.  Vee, who knew her law, rendered solemn decisions to Gillian's shrewd objections.  And before the end of an hour Gillian realized that the young man's knowledge of delicate legal points was admirable; and Gillian was quite carried away by his sincerity and force.
"All right," he said finally.  "You win, Dale.  I'll coach you.  I'll try to make you letter-perfect."
"I never forget a line," the actor said.
"Try," Vee said dryly, "to fill your jury box with women – women with noses."
But Gillian, as far as he had the power, would select the jury, and he wanted no women, if he could prevent it.  Women jurors were undependable.  You could never guess their minds.  He wanted men of a type – the easy-going, broad-minded type.  Not the narrow-faced, sharp-nosed puritanical type.  Gillian knew that it would be dangerous to turn Dale Torrent loose in the courtroom.  Many people were prejudiced against movie actors.  Despite Dale's legal background, many people would suspect it was a cheaply sensational stunt.  Gillian, a master of courtroom showmanship, knew how delicately balanced are the so-called scales of justice.  He knew that the weight of a smile, or a certain grimace or gesture at the wrong moment, could drag a case down to defeat.

CHAPTER 10
THE FIRST ROUND

IN THE morning when the much-publicized case of the People versus Brenda Chine was called, Gillian entered the courtroom with the uneasiness of a man about to undertake a very risky experiment.
With him, alert and unafraid, walked Dale Torrent, at whom every eye in the courtroom stared with avid interest.  He looked as if he fully realized the weight of his responsibility.  Public interest in him had been heightened by the startling disclosure by one of the newspapers the evening previous, that he was going into court not only to fight for a girl he believed innocent, but for a girl with whom he was frankly in love and hoped to marry.
He had a romantic look.  His handsome face was pale.  He looked wan.  There were circles under his eyes.  But he carried himself with a dauntless air.
But as they went down the aisle toward the counsel table, as heads turned and necks craned, as a tide of whispers followed them, Gillian was aware only of the distinguished, handsome, dark haired man who already sat down at the counsel table – Mark Storm,
The prosecuting attorney was, as usual, perfectly groomed.  A commanding figure, Mark Storm had never failed to make Gillian feel ill at ease; to make him aware of his hands and his feet, to make him clumsy and awkward.
As usual, Mark Storm wore a white carnation in his lapel buttonhole.  And as usual, the prosecuting attorney arose with his charming, gracious smile as Gillian approached.  He was taller than Gillian.  His poise was always perfect.
As Storm's rich voice boomed out, like a chorus of bugles, "It's Mr. Hazeltine!" and as Storm came striding toward Gillian with outstretched hand, Gillian tried not to feel embarrassed or gawky or thumb-fingered.  But as usual, he failed.
Furiously, he blushed.  He even stammered a little.  He was still more than a little flustered when the judge came in and took his seat on the bench and the business of impaneling a jury began.
The eyes of Stewart Noon and Dale Torrent clashed from opposite ends of the long counsel table.  The blond young man, handsome, debonair, poised, beautifully groomed, was like a youthful copy of his professional superior, the D.A.  There was resolution in his sapphire eyes, grimness about his mouth.  He was here to fight.
Dale, glaring at him, somewhat pale, moved his lips without sound.  They weren't pleasant sentiments, those unvoiced phrases.  He, too, was here to fight.
It was evident that Storm intended to permit his new assistant to carry the brunt of the battle.  He sat back, even while the jury was being drawn.  But Gillian would not delegate this vital task to Dale, and he fought most of that day for a jury to his liking.  He wanted, in particular, a type of man who looked as if his emotions might be swayed by an appealingly beautiful young woman.
Under Gillian's directions, Brenda entered the courtroom that morning in black.  A smart little black hat was perched on the side of her shining head.  A black dress brought out the whiteness of her beautiful face and emphasized the slenderness of her slim, perfect little figure.  Under Gillian's direction, she gazed at the filling jury box with sad and appealing eyes.
After one look at her eyes, he had said, "Let them see your eyes – and keep on letting them see your eyes."
For in Brenda's large, dark, lovely eyes was all the tragedy and hurt in the world.  They were the eyes of a suffering young madonna.
When Gillian had entered a plea of not guilty, Judge Carlyle directed the State to present its case.  Stewart Noon made the address to the jury.  He stated that it was his painful duty to prove, beyond peradventure of doubt, that the defendant had had sufficient motive to kill her uncle, that she had more than once threatened to kill her uncle, and that she had with deliberation killed her uncle and attempted to dispose of his remains by cremating them in a billet of gold.
"I ask you, gentlemen, to disregard the fact that the prisoner is a young and beautiful woman.  I ask you to remember that the law makes no distinctions between ugliness and beauty, between youth and age.  I ask you to bear in mind that this defendant, despite her youth and beauty, comes into this courtroom with the blood of a murder on her fair white hands.  Beauty is only skin deep.  You have heard it said that a wine cannot be judged by the label on the bottle.  It is equally true that the living soul of a man or a woman cannot be judged by external appearance.
"I sincerely believe that this woman, however young and beautiful, is guilty of the crime with which she has been charged.  Bear in mind that I do not bring this charge.  I am nothing but an humble employee of the State doing my duty.  Sufficient facts have been gathered and given to me to convince me beyond question that this, tragic woman is guilty of the crime of murder.  I am here not to prosecute an innocent girl, selected at random, but to prove with honesty and sincerity that this particular young woman is a murderess.  I am here to present to you, gentlemen, facts – material facts and statements from dependable, sincere witnesses – which will, if I do my simple duty, incline you to share my convictions.
"You have doubtless heard that I once loved this woman – wished her to be my wife.  It would be indelicate for me to make comments on that topic.  Yet you must realize what a painful ordeal this is for me – and to what depths my convictions must reach when I stand here before her and present the shocking facts which prove her to be a murderess!
"We are not gathered here to persecute this beautiful woman, but to see that justice is done.  We are here simply to enforce the Mosaic law, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.'  If you adjudge this woman innocent, set her free and cleared of all stain.  But if you adjudge her guilty, you must then enforce that old law of Moses.  For the life she took, you must take her life.  You must not be swayed by her youth or her beauty.  You must send this woman to the electric chair!"
Dale Torrent made a growling sound deep in his throat.  The blond prosecutor sent him a scornful glance and called his first witness.
There was time for only the one witness before the court recessed until the next morning.  This one witness was the medical examiner who had come to view the ashes in the golden billet on that fateful night in the old Chine mansion.  For it was necessary, under the law, to prove beyond doubt that the ashes were those of Uncle Waldo.  Ordinarily a routine task, this aspect of the case was complicated by the fact that Uncle Waldo's ashes bore no physical resemblance to Uncle Waldo.
Gillian had discarded a plan whereby he would have the case thrown out of court by showing the impossibility of proving, without doubt, that the ashes were Uncle Waldo's.  If he could establish that no corpus delicti had been positively identified as Uncle Waldo's, the case might be kicked out.  But for obvious reasons he had abandoned that project.
The court ruled as conclusive that the horseshoe nail ring and the molten wad of keys proved that the ashes were definitely Uncle Waldo's.  When the court recessed that evening, Uncle Waldo's ashes were a legally acknowledged fact.  The sauerkraut can which had contained them later was not, however, introduced as material evidence!  The ashes were no longer, in fact, in the sauerkraut can.  Gillian had attended to that.  It was bad business for a niece to permit her uncle's ashes to remain in a sauerkraut can, and so he had had Brenda order a charming little golden casket for them, thereby giving the newspapers a chance to report that she had carried out her beloved uncle's wishes and placed his remains in a gold container.
On the following morning, servants in the Chine household were called to establish "beyond peradventure of doubt" that the accused woman had, on sundry occasions, made direful threats against the person – against the very life, of the deceased.
Rufus, the butler, testified to having heard Miss Chine on sundry occasions threaten to poison her Uncle Waldo, as if he were a dog with rabies, or to carve his wicked old heart out; to take him up in her airplane and throw him overboard, without benefit of parachute.  The butler also described how, on the evening of the murder, Miss Chine had ordered him to throw Uncle Waldo out of the house.
Dale Torrent ably cross-examined Rufus.  Such threats, he succeeded in pointing out to the jury, were in the class with that empty, common threat of a person angered.  "I could kill you!" or "I'll kill you if you do that!"  Purely rhetorical.
It was the same, he declared, with the testimony of Marie Lavoissier, Miss Chine's personal maid.  Mlle. Lavoissier, a charming, plump little creature with roguish black eyes and a pretty mouth, testified that frequently, in her presence, Miss Chine had expressed a willingness – nay, an eagerness – to "carve that old rascal's heart out."
These statements and the statements of a footman and a gardener, were entitled to the most indulgent view, said Dale.
Stewart Noon produced witnesses who had seen the Chine mansion as it was when Miss Chine left for Europe; and as it was on the day of her return.
A taxi driver who had taken her from the station to her house quoted her remarks when she saw what had been done to her house.  She had called her uncle a beast, a malicious old man, a brutal old fool, a curse to mankind.
"Did she use profanity?"
"She sure did!" said the witness, grinning delightedly.
"Did she make any remarks to the effect that she had intentions of committing violence upon his person?" Noon asked.
"I hope to tell you she did!  She said she was going to scratch his eyes out, kick him around the yard like a football, and then tear him limb from limb."
"Were those her exact words?"
"Except for the cusswords, yes, sir."
"That will be all."
After Dale's cross-examination, the State sprang a surprise.  It was a surprise to the courtroom, but not to Gillian.
"Mr. Hazeltine will take the stand."
Gillian obliged, was duly sworn.
Stewart Noon came close to him.  Gazing down from the witness chair into the assistant prosecuting attorney's eyes, Gillian smiled amiably.  He loved a courtroom duel.
"Mr. Hazeltine, will you kindly tell the jury under what circumstances the deceased called at your house on the night of June fourteenth?"
Gillian did so.  "Mr. Chine called at my house to consult me as his lawyer, because the accused had ordered him out of her house.  He–"
"Just a moment, Mr. Hazeltine!  Isn't it true that he told you that Miss Chine had had him forcibly ejected from that house?"
Gillian gravely answered.  "He told me he had just returned from a fishing trip to Canada; that the butler and the accused had refused him admittance; that, on applying to the kitchen door, the cook had waved a meat cleaver at him."
"But that wasn't true!" the blond man blurted.
"Naturally not.  Mr. Chine seldom told the truth, when he could lie.  He was the most prodigious liar on earth."
There was some giggling in the courtroom at this.  A bailiff banged with a gavel.  The blond man flushed and became thin-lipped.  Gillian smiled.
"Isn't it true that you escorted Mr. Chine to the Chine mansion for the purpose of persuading Brenda Chine to permit him to enter that house?"
"That's true.  And there I found you, Mr. Noon – holding the accused's hand!"
Gillian had been biding his time to drop this in.  He knew it would anger the blond man.
The courtroom laughed, of course.  The judge asked Noon if he wished to enter an objection to Mr. Hazeltine's answer.  But the assistant prosecuting attorney waved his hand.
"No, your honor.  Your witness, Mr. Torrent."
Dale said, "I could question Mr. Hazeltine for hours, but it is obvious that he is prejudiced in our client's favor.  No questions."
Stewart Noon looked a little disappointed, as if the wind had been taken out of his sails.  "Next witness for the State – Captain Morgan!"
Here was a witness of a peculiarly dangerous order – an honest man with a firm belief in the rightness of a wrong attitude.

CHAPTER 11
CHAIN OF FACTS

CAPTAIN Morgan, chief of the Greenfield police department detective bureau, came forward.  Lantern-jawed, cold-eyed, calm as Buddha, Captain Morgan took the stand.  He would be a dangerous witness.  He was an honest detective, and not under the influence of the prosecuting attorney's office.  But he firmly believed that Brenda had committed the murder.  Gillian had had many talks with him, since the fateful night of June 14th.  Captain Morgan had had numerous "talks" with Fowler Shank, the Spider Man – who would be the State's star witness.  It was Captain Morgan's unalterable opinion that Fowler Shank was a rat, but it was also his unalterable opinion that Fowler Shank was telling the truth – that he actually was an eye witness to Brenda's killing of her Uncle Waldo.
Heavily, stolidly, the detective took the stand.  Duly sworn, be stated that on the night of June 14th, at about midnight, he had been called to the Chine mansion on River Boulevard to investigate the report of a murder.
"When I got there, I found Miss Chine and you, Mr. Noon, in the drawing room.  I went down into the cellar, and there I found what was left of Mr. Chine – just some ashes inside a gold billet."
The assistant prosecuting attorney asked Captain Morgan to describe the scene of the murder.  Captain Morgan described, in careful, plodding detail the room – a room with which every man and woman in the courtroom had been made familiar by numerous newspaper photographs and sketches, with "X "marking the spot where the billet containing the ashes was.
"I looked the evidence over very carefully – what there was of it.  I dusted the handle of the door for fingerprints.  I looked over every square inch of the room.  The only clue found was a partly burned emerald, embedded inside the billet – that is, in the wall of a sort of core in the gold billet where the ashes were."
"Did you question Miss Chine about the emerald?"
"Yes, Sir.  Mr. Hazeltine and I questioned her.  She said she had broken the chain in a sort of playful scrimmage which she had had upstairs with Mr. Torrent and you, Mr. Noon.  But both of you told me you had not seen the chain break up there.  I only know that one of the stones was missing.  I took the string to Britton and Etting's, the jewelers, where the emeralds had been bought.  They identified it and said there had been thirty-eight stones.  Miss Chine could account for only thirty-seven."
"Did you examine the green, glassy cube which was embedded in the gold?"
"I did."
Noon picked up a small white box from the table, opened it and handed a small object to Captain Morgan.
"Do you identify this as the glassy green cube you saw in the gold?"
"I do."
Noon requested permission of the court to introduce the scorched green cube as material evidence.  The cube was passed to the jury.
"Did you arrive at any conclusion regarding the manner in which Mr. Chine had met his death?"
"I did.  In the ashes, inside the billet we found a cold chisel.  There was no use examining it for fingerprints, as the heat would have burned them off."
Stewart Noon picked up a blackened cold chisel from the table.
"Do you identify this as the cold chisel?" he asked.
"Yes.  That's it.  We found it near one end of the core.  Judged by the position of the horseshoe nail ring and the keys, my guess was that the cold chisel had been where the head was."
"You have no means of knowing how that cold chisel was used in bringing about Mr. Chine's death?"
"I have only the word of another witness."
"Did you question every one on the scene of the murder?"
"I did."
"Then what did you do?"
"I placed Miss Chine under arrest."  
"Why?"
"Because of the emerald and because of the statements of a man who said he saw her kill Mr. Chine."
"You had no reasons for suspecting any one else?"
"Not with that emerald!"
"Did you try to secure a statement from the accused?"
"I did.  She refused to make a statement."
"That will be all.  Your witness, Mr. Torrent."
Dale was already on his feet, walking toward the witness.  
"Captain, aside from that emerald, did you find any kind of evidence – the slightest clue – pointing to Miss Chine?"
"No, sir."
"Did it occur to you, in the course of your investigation of the murder scene, that the murder – the manner in which it had been committed – the cutting off of Mr. Chine's hand at the wrist – and his subsequent cremation were completely non-feminine?"
"It certainly did," the detective answered.  "I figured that it took a good deal of strength to slam the door on the old man's hand hard enough to cut the wrist off.  I figured it took strength to drive that cold chisel into his brain, or however it was used.  And I figured it took strength to lift him into that mold."
"I want you to look at the defendant, captain.  Miss Chine, will you please stand up?"
Brenda stood up, and the captain looked at her.
"Now, captain," Dale said, "do you honestly believe that this girl is strong enough to have slammed that door with sufficient force to chop off a man's hand at the wrist; that she has sufficient strength to drive a cold chisel into his brain, and sufficient strength to pick him up and place him in that billet mold?"
The captain hesitated.  "I think so," he said.  "If a girl is as athletic as Miss Chine is – and if she's mad enough."
"You're excused," Dale said, thin-lipped.
"Just a moment," Noon said, as the captain started to leave the stand.  "In the course of your career as a detective, captain, have you investigated any murders committed by women?"
"Yes.  A good many."
"Have you ever investigated a murder in which a woman, in homicidal fury, performed acts of strength equal to a man?"
"Yes, sir.  I investigated the scene of one murder where the woman who did the job had tilted a grand piano on end."
"Was she a large powerful woman?"
"No.  She was about the same size as Miss Chine."
"Thank you, captain.  That will be all."
The State called for its next witness, Harry Zarrow, the city chemist.  Mr. Zarrow was asked to identify the small, green, glassy cube which had been introduced as Material Exhibit C for the State.  He did so.  Then, under brief questioning, he gave a somewhat technical explanation of how, after extracting the glassy cube from the billet, he had determined that it was an emerald.
A gem expert from the jeweler's where Brenda had purchased the string of emeralds was now called to the stand to testify that the scorched green cube had been a member of that particular chain.  He mentioned that every gem has a personality of its own; that no two diamonds or emeralds are ever identical.
The next witness was a leather-skinned individual with keen gray eyes and a Western drawl, who testified that he was a smelter foreman from Colorado; that he knew the accused well, and had known her since she was a small child.
Noon, "Were you at any time in the employ of Miss Chine's father?"
"Yes, sir.  I worked for him until he sold the smelter."
"Was it Miss Chine's custom to visit the smelter?"
"Yes, sir.  She played around the smelter every day.  We called her Goldie, because she was so interested in it."
"Would you say that, in this period, Miss Chine acquired any great knowledge of smelters and smelting methods?"
"I sure would!" the Westerner answered.  "By the time she was fourteen, she knew as much about refining and smelting methods as a good many engineers."
"Do you think she could operate a smelter – that is, a smelting furnace?"
"Yes, sir.  She was as good as any man."
"Would you say, as an expert, and from your knowledge of the smelting experience of the accused, that she was capable of tapping or unplugging an electric furnace and running out enough gold to fill a ton billet mold so that it was a perfect billet, I mean, without slopping the gold over and without pouring in too little to make the mold full?"
"Yes, sir – unless she's forgotten all she ever learned about baffles in Colorado!"
"What is a baffle?"
"A furnace for melting down bullion."
"That will be all.  Your witness, Mr. Torrent."
"I have no questions," Dale said.
A voice in the rear of the courtroom piped up: "I got a question!  Ask the big punk why he didn't stay out West!"
There was some applause, some laughter.  The Westerner had been subpoenaed; had told his story truthfully and possibly with reluctance.  But the public sentiment was strongly in favor of the beautiful, spirited Brenda.
When the rebellious spirit in the rear of the courtroom had been found and ejected by bailiffs, and when order was restored, the assistant prosecuting attorney said crisply:
"Next witness for the State, Fowler Shank!  Mr. Shank will kindly come to the stand."
There was a ripple of excitement among the spectators.  Even the jurors looked expectant.  Fowler Shank was the State's star witness!  He was the man who had melted the gold coins to cheat Uncle Sam!  He was the man who had seen Brenda the Beautiful strike a cold chisel into her uncle's eye; had seen her, like some mythical woman of the middle ages, cremate her uncle in a river of molten gold!
Judge Carlyle said, "There is no time this morning for the hearing of further evidence.  Court will be recessed until two o'clock this afternoon."
Everyone one stood up as the judge left the bench.  Reporters from the press table came crowding about Gillian, Dale and Brenda.
A sharp-nosed woman reporter said; shrilly, "Miss Chine!  Oh, Miss Chine!  Is it true that you intend to marry Mr. Torrent if he gets you off?"
Brenda, now handcuffed to a bailiff on either side, looked at the woman with angry eyes.
"It is not true!"
"But there's a rumor, Miss Chine, that he has been paying you very devoted attention.  Do – do you mean that you don't love Mr. Torrent?"
"I do not!"
"Is the story true that Mr. Torrent punched you in the nose on the evening of your poor uncle's sad death?"
"I refuse to discuss it!"
"Well," the woman reporter cried, "you don't have to snap my head off!"
Gillian glanced at Dale.  There was suffering in the eyes of the popular caveman.  He pushed his way through the reporters.  Gillian accompanied him with dread.  It was always the same.  Outside the courtroom, in the halls, a mob of the eagerly curious was waiting to pounce on the celebrities.  Autograph hunters yelled at Dale.  Some one snatched at his hat.  A man kicked him in the shin.  An hysterical woman tried to kiss him.
And outside, the mob was even worse.  More reporters waylaid the two storm-tossed men.  They fought their way past newspaper photographers and motion picture cameras; reached a restaurant that was almost empty the moment they entered it, but became packed with a mob waiting for tables forty seconds after they sat down.
And it was necessary for them to return to court, after lunch, behind a flying wedge of policemen.
Gillian was worried.  The State was building up a powerful case.  Information which his investigation department had been trying for weeks to secure was still unavailable.  If the information was not forthcoming before this evening, he would have to make a night airplane trip to Pennsylvania and Ohio.  The fate of Brenda the Beautiful was suspended by the finest of chains – a chain of facts relating to the, past of the Spider Man.

CHAPTER 12
A DANGEROUS WITNESS

FOWLER Shank was ordered to the stand immediately after court convened that afternoon.  As Gillian had suspected, the Spider Man was an entirely different person from the insolent, unshaved ogre of the night of the murder.  He had since been groomed with great care, under the prosecuting attorney's directions; he had been drilled and coached.
Fowler Shank was a different man.  He looked, as Gillian had suspected he would look, like an honest working man.  He wore a plain blue suit, a blue denim workman's shirt with a black tie, workman's shoes.  He was shaved.  His hair was cut.  He carried himself with a modest, almost apologetic air.  And an apologetic, modest witness is one of the most dangerous.
He took the stand as if he were doing so reluctantly.  And he gazed timidly about him; gazed at the expectant faces of the jurors, gazed at the judge, the court stenographer, at Brenda, at Stewart Noon.
The assistant prosecuting attorney walked slowly toward him, with arms folded on chest, jaw slightly outthrust.  By his very manner he admitted that the climax of the play had been reached.
"Mr. Shank," he said, "I want you to tell the jury in your own words just what was your relationship with Waldo Chine.  Take your time.  Omit nothing."
"Yes, sir," the Spider Man said meekly.  "About two months ago, I came to the back door of his house, lookin' for a job.  I was out of work.  I was hungry – hadn't had a square meal in two days.  This Mr. Chine was just gettin' out of his Rolls-Royce, and he came up and asked me what I wanted.  So I told him.  Then he asked me what my trade was, and I told him I was a master molder by trade, but was out of work.
"He asked me a lot more questions – about where had I worked, and about what experience had I had around smelters and foundries and metal work generally.  Then he gave me a five-case note–"
"What's a five-case note?" the State interrupted.
"A five-dollar bill," the Spider Man explained.  "He said to go out and buy myself some food and cigarettes and to come back.  And when I come back, we had a long talk about smeltin'.  He finally asked me did I want to make a nice big piece of jack; and I says yes, if it was honest work.
"Then he explained what his proposition was.  He said the President of the United States had ordered all gold coin and bullion to be turned in for paper money.  He said it was an outrage to American rights and liberty.  He said it violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution – and he said a lot of other things.  He said no president nor nobody had a right to take a man's property away from him.  Then he explained what this was all about.  He said he had about two million dollars in gold coin and ear-marked treasury bars, and he wanted to get the copper out of the coins and smelt it down into ingots to sell as new gold to the United States Treasury.  He said there was a big profit in it, and that if I would come in with him, he would give me five thousand dollars when the job was finished.
"He said it would have to be done very secretly.  I said it sounded unlawful.  But there I was, out of a job with starvation starin' me in the face.  So I puts up this steel room in the cellar, gets all the necessary equipment and starts to acid – treat the coins, to eat the copper out.  And I rigs up this special furnace to melt down the gold."
The witness paused.
Dale Torrent was staring at him with gloomy eyes.  The actor's face still wore a startled expression, induced by the startling change in the Spider Man's appearance and manner since he had last seen him.
"Kindly tell the jury," Noon said crisply, "what happened in that steel room on the night of June fourteenth."
"Yes, sir.  A good many things happened that night.  I was down there alone, around nine o'clock, when first of all Mr. Chine unlocked the west door of the room and came in with Mr. Hazeltine."
"The distinguished looking gentleman sitting there?"
"Yes, sir.  That's him.  It seems that Mr. Hazeltine had found out what the old man – excuse me, I mean Mr. Chine – was up to.  Well, he came down there with him; and Mr. Hazeltine, he raised – he raised–"
"He raised hell?"
"He sure did!  He called the old man a slacker and a traitor.  And he said he was goin' to turn him into the Feds for breakin' the President's gold laws.  Then when Mr. Hazeltine walked out, as mad as a hornet, I asked Mr. Chine why he had brought Mr. Hazeltine down there, anyway.  The beans will be spilled now, I said.  I knew what would happen.  I knew there was a fine of ten thousand dollars and a ten-year sentence for any one caught hoarding gold, let alone destroyin' United States coins."
"Just a moment, Mr. Shank," the prosecutor interrupted.  "You are under a Federal indictment now, are you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're aware that you will probably receive a penitentiary sentence for your work in destroying those coins, and in conniving with Mr. Chine to sell the Government's old gold for new?"
"Yes, sir.  I guess I've got to serve time, all right."
"Kindly proceed with your account of that evening."
The witness: "I and Mr. Chine was talkin', there, and wonderin' what was to be done about Mr. Hazeltine, when Miss Chine comes runnin' into the room.  You see, Mr. Hazeltine had left the door open when he went out."
Mr. Shank hesitated.  His eyes rolled.  Then he began to repeat, as if by rote, the story he had told Gillian and Captain Morgan on the fateful night of June fourteenth.
"I was standin' there by one o' the vats, gettin' ready to dump in a bag of coins.  I was just liftin' the bag.  Miss Chine–"
"Just a moment, Mr. Shank," Noon interrupted.  "For purposes of record, could you identify the woman who, you say, came running into the room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is she in this room?"
"Yes, sir.  She's settin' right there beside Mr. Hazeltine."
"Very well.  Go on."
"She came runnin' in, and she picked up a long cold chisel that was lyin' on the work bench."
Noon interrupted.  "One moment!  Could you identify that cold chisel?"
"Cold chisels look a lot alike, but I might."
Noon secured the blackened cold chisel, previously admitted as Material Exhibit A for the State, and handed it to the witness.  Mr. Shank turned it over in his stubby, workman's fingers.
"This is her, all right," he said.  
"How do you identify it?" 
"By these two nicks right here.  I happen to remember those nicks."
"Proceed, Mr. Shank."
"She picked up this chisel," the witness said, hefting the murder weapon in his hand, "and she come toward me.  First thing I know, she's swingin' it at my head!  Then–"
"Hold on!" the prosecutor cried.  You say you saw her pick up the chisel as she came running into the room and she lifted it as if to strike you on the head with it.  Kindly describe her appearance when this took place."
"Well," Mr. Shank said hesitantly, "she had a mighty queer look to her, all right.  Her eyes looked black, and you could see the whites all around them.  And her face was a kind of gray color.  She had her lips skinned back from her teeth, and she was lettin' out these hissing sounds.  I took one look at her and decided she must be nuts."
"You mean crazy?"
"Yes – nuts!"
"Continue."
"I didn't have time to duck, as she swung on me with this cold chisel; but I sort of twisted, so that it struck me a kind of glancing blow.  I saw plenty stars, but it didn't knock me kicking."
"Just a moment.  What was Mr. Chine doing while this happened?"
"I didn't notice.  I was too busy gettin' out of the way o' that chisel or tryin' to!  When the chisel smacked me, I went down, but not out.  Then I shook my head, to clear out the stars, and I heard her yell, ' Damn you!' at her uncle.  I never heard such an awful screech out of a woman.
"The old man, he started for the door, right now.  I said to myself, ' This dame has gone nuts!' She ran after him and grabbed him, just as he had the door open and started out.  She grabbed him by one hand, the handle with the other.  I never saw strength like that in any woman.  She slammed that door on his hand, and the old man let out a scream.  When he turned, I seen that his hand was lopped clean off.  And then she drove that cold chisel into his eye!"
"Which eye?"
"The left one.  It went right in.  I guess it went right on into the brain.  The eye plopped out, anyway, and the chisel went in.  She was makin' funny sounds under her breath, like an animal runnin' too hard.  She picked up the old man like an old gunnysack and tossed him into the billet mold.  Right then it was that she broke her emerald necklace.  It fell on the edge of the mold, and dropped down onto the floor.  The gold was hot enough to pour, by then.  She knocked out the plug with a hammer – and out come the gold!  And if I live to be a million years old, I'll never forget the sound of that hot gold hittin' that cold man!"
Gillian shivered a little.  The word picture the Spider Man was painting was so real, so convincing, that Gillian could hear the sizzling of the still warm flesh as the molten gold flowed over it.
He glanced at Dale.  The actor was pale as death.  His teeth were sunk in his lower lip.  A fine thread of blood was trickling down from the corner of his mouth.
The witness was saying, in that timid, apologetic way, "She kept talkin' to herself.  'Gold!' she says.  'Go ahead, Uncle Waldo!  Drink it!  Eat it!  Wallow in it!' she says – in that funny, animal voice.  ' Have all the gold you want!  You've always boasted about the solid gold coffin you're goin to have.  Here's your coffin, Uncle Waldo!'"
He paused.  Every eye in the courtroom was glistening at him.  The jurors were leaning forward, as if not to miss a word he uttered.  Even judge Carlyle appeared to be fascinated by this sensational testimony.
Dale Torrent's lips were moving soundlessly, and there was a profane writhe to them.  Brenda was staring with hot, horrified eyes at the witness.  Gillian was listening to his heart.  It was going slowly, like a dirge-thump-thump-thump!
Stewart Noon said, "Did she fill the billet mold to the brim, Mr. Shank?"
"Yes, sir – right up to the brim.  Then she knocked the plug back in.  It was neat work.  She knew her stuff, all right.  And then she turned away with this terrible smile on her face, and she saw me, settin' there on the floor, lookin' at her.  I started to scramble to my feet, but she said, very quiet, 'Wait!  Just a moment.  You've seen what just happened.  You know what it means.' 
"'No, ma'am,' I says, 'I don't know.  It's got me all confused.' 
"'Look here, my man,' she says, 'don't pretend with me.  This is a most serious situation,' she says.  'It means a murder has been committed.  It means that if I am found out, I will more than likely be sent to the electric chair – unless my beauty gets me off.  I had to do it,' she says.  'I am dead broke.  I am to inherit my uncle's money.  I have done this very deliberately, because I need that money badly.'"
Brenda made a little whimpering sound, and the twelve members of the jury stared at her with cold disapproval.
It was working.  Gillian had known it would work, but he had not anticipated that the story would be told quite so convincingly.  It was fairly carrying the courtroom away.  Not since the trial started had there been such quiet.  There was no sound, in the pauses, except the faint scratching of reporters' and artists' pencils and crayons.
The witness, seeming almost to gauge his listeners, went on in that timid, apologetic voice:
"'You are the kind of a man a girl can trust,' she says to me.  'I know you will never squeal.  We will simply agree that my uncle has disappeared.  He is very eccentric; he often goes away at odd hours and odd times.  We will agree that he has vanished completely.  No one will ever know.  Nothing of him remains.  He has been entirely cremated.  He went up that ventilator in the form of smoke – even the ashes have floated away,' she says.  But I knew she had forgotten that hand, what with her hysterics, and all, and I knew they'd catch her.
"'Now look here, Mr. Shank,' she says.  'Mr. Hazeltine has found out what my uncle and you were doing down here.  He will almost certainly notify the authorities.  You will be indicted, under President Roosevelt's Hoarding Act.  But if you have a good lawyer, you will get off.  Play ball with me,' she says, 'and I will hire you the best lawyer in the country.  When you are acquitted – as you will be – I'll be waitin' with fifty thousand dollars in cash for you, for keepin' all this a secret.  Will you, Mr. Shank'' she says, 'or won't you?'"
The world's best witness hesitated again.  Gillian marveled at him.  And he saw definitely in Brenda's tragic dark eyes the shadow of the electric chair.
Horsely, Stewart Noon broke the silence.
"What did you say, Mr. Shank?"
"I said, 'Sure!'  Of course I said sure.  There I was, settin' on the floor, with her standin' over me.  If I hadn't said sure, I would have been the next."
"What did she do then?"
"She gave me a little smile and said, 'You are a very sensible man.' And she went to the door and took out a handkerchief and wiped off the handle.  She saw her emerald necklace on the floor, and picked it up.  Then she looked around the room, to make sure she hadn't left anything behind, and she went out the door where the hand was.  She slammed the door.  Then she began to bang on the door and to let out these screams.  But I wouldn't open the door."
"Why did she want to come back in?"
"That hand!  She'd just seen it, and she'd forgotten about it.  She just went all to pieces at that, and screamed and screamed."
"What did you do?"
"I just sat there.  Too scared to move."
"When did you make up your mind that you would not accept her offer of hush money?"
"Long before that.  I'd rather starve than touch money with blood all over it!"
There came a faint hiss from the rear of the courtroom.  And for the fraction of a second, the Spider Man slipped out of his role His face grew distorted.  His spidery black eyes glared with murderous resentment.  Then he recovered himself; became the shy, apologetic witness.
Gillian glanced sharply at the jury, wondering if they had observed that transformation.  If they had they didn't show it.  As one man, they stared with fascination at Fowler Shank.
Bailiffs were unsuccessful in their search for the hisser, and the examination was resumed.
"Kindly tell the jury about the events subsequent to the screams."
"Pretty soon there was a smashing sound at the door."
"Which door?
"The one where the old man's hand was lopped off.  The one where Miss Chine was screaming"
"Then what happened?" 
"They busted the door down."  
"Who?"
"Mr. Hazeltine, and that movie actor and you, Mr. Noon.  You smashed the door in with an I-beam, and you all came in."
"With Miss Chine?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where were you?"
"I was layin' there, playin' dead."
"Why?"
"I was afraid of what she might do"
"When did you tell this story that you have just told to the jury?"
"Not right then.  I waited until Captain Morgan got there."
"Why did you delay?"
"I wanted police protection!"
"I see.  Now, let's check back over a few of these points.  There are some that I wish to clear up."
Gillian settled back in his chair with a grunt.  Stewart Noon was doing a good job; a clever, workmanlike job.  And his witness was perfect.  Gillian listened to them now – questions and answers.  Driving in the rivets.
Noon was not finished with his examination of the witness until it was time for court to recess until the following morning.  But they had put it over.  Brenda Chine had been strapped into the electric chair!

CHAPTER 13
A TRAP IS SPRUNG

GILLIAN and Dale were among the first to leave the courtroom.
They fought their way through the mobs to the Hazeltine offices.  And there they went into a conference which lasted until well after dark.
Gillian said, among other things, "You have done remarkably well – so well, in fact, that I wish that you actually were my junior partner.  The fact remains that we are now out on thin ice – ice so thin that it's cracking under us.  I shall have to handle the cross-examination of Shank.  Our success or failure hinges on that, and several delicate points of law may be involved.  You can see for yourself that the jury has swung far off in the wrong direction.  They must be swung back.  I don't know when I have faced a more hostile jury than I'll be up against tomorrow.
"I shall leave immediately for Chelsington, Pennsylvania.  From there, I'll hop to Ohio.  I don't like night flying, but there's no alternative.  I'll be back here, I hope, in time for opening of court.  In case I'm not here, postpone cross-examination of Shank, but have him held for recall.  Put Brenda on the stand.  Be careful with her.  She's  nearly ready to crack under the strain.  I'll come directly to the courtroom from the airport.
"This step ought not to be necessary, but the investigation department has left too many loopholes.  I want to warn you that if I cannot secure the rest of this information on Fowler Shank, we're fighting a lost cause.  I've got to get him going, but I must have the final facts to set him off."
Leaving his office, Gillian drove directly to the Greenfield Municipal Airport.  A cabin plane was waiting, warming up on the line when he arrived.  He reached Chelsington, Pennsylvania, shortly before eleven o'clock. He spent one hour in session with the president of the Chelsington Foundry.
Shortly after midnight, he flew out of Chelsington; and a little after two-thirty in the morning he landed in Vinegarone, Ohio.  Here he spent better than an hour with the superintendent of the Vinegarone Foundry, going over old records.
It was well after sunup when Gillian returned to the Greenfield Municipal Airport.  He was worn out.  More than that, he was voiceless.  He had caught a bad cold, and his voice had turned to a husky whisper which tore at his throat like heated knives whenever he talked.
He drove home.  Vee made him gargle his throat well, but his voice did not return.  In desperation, he drove to the Polyclinic Hospital.  A nose and throat surgeon sprayed his throat, swabbed it out, and gave it a baking.  But the nose and throat surgeon did not restore his voice.
Then he drove to the courthouse, entering the courtroom to see Brenda, white and forlorn, on the witness stand, with Dale Torrent asking questions.
She was finishing her recital of the events of that dreadful night in June, telling her story as Gillian knew it.
"I went to the steel door.  I saw the hand.  I screamed."
Then she told, in a low voice, of the scene inside the steel room.
Gillian slipped down the aisle and took his seat at the counsel table.  Dale was remarkable.  Poised, sure, unafraid, he was making the witness tell that story as convincingly as Fowler Shank had told his.  At length, with a bow, he gave her to Stewart Noon for cross-examination.
The assistant prosecuting attorney began that cross-examination as gently, as smoothly, as Dale had conducted the direct examination.  Gillian watched Mark Storm.  So far, Storm had not participated in the trial; he had merely sat there, watching, listening.  Gillian, watching him now, saw his head incline slightly now and then.  He knew from that that Storm had coached Noon as thoroughly as Gillian had coached Dale.
A firmer note crept into Noon's rich, deep voice.
"Isn't it true that you made repeated threats against your uncle's life?"
"Not seriously," the girl answered.
Her eyes were resentful, her voice unsteady.  She was on the verge of anger.
"But you made them?" Noon persisted.
"I think that was fully explained earlier in this trial," Brenda answered.  "I think it was established that these threats, so-called, were purely rhetorical."
"But you made them?" Noon drove into her.
She was pale.  She bit her upper lip.  Her eyes smoldered.  .  "I made empty threats, such as people, in anger, often make," Brenda said.
"But still, you threatened to kill him?" he cried.
Brenda's breast rose and became rigid.  Her hands, on the arms of the witness chair, were clenched into tight little fists.  She was trying hard to control her temper.
"I made no serious threats!" she said angrily.
"Oh, Lord!" Gillian groaned.
"Isn't it true," Noon said, suddenly shouting, "that on the afternoon of your return from Paris you told your uncle you were going to kill him?  Isn't it true?"
"Yes!" Brenda shrieked.  "It is true I But I didn't kill him!  You blackguard!  You coward!"  She had risen from the chair.
A police matron moved grimly toward her.
"You liar!  You hypocrite!" the girl screamed.
Stewart Noon stepped back.  He looked helplessly at the judge.  He looked significantly at the jury He lifted his shoulders and let them fall, as if to say, "You see, gentlemen?  What did I tell you?"  And the heads of at least five of the jurors bobbed in sympathetic agreement.
Aloud, he said, when order was restored, "That is all."
Dale, seated beside Gillian, whispered, "What the hell shall I do?  I can't build her up again.  She's all in."
Gillian whispered, "Recall Shank.  You'll have to handle this after all.  I've got laryngitis.  I can't speak above a whisper."
"Fowler Shank," Dale said in a clear voice, is on a recall."  He whispered to Gillian, "What am I to do?"
"Listen," Gillian said.  "You know the preliminaries.  Go through with them."
Then Gillian whispered to his partner steadily for a full minute, during which Dale, frowning, concentrating, nodded with understanding, and during which the Spider Man returned to the stand.
"Look for trouble," Gillian concluded.  "Be prepared for anything."
He gave to Dale a small metallic object which tinkled faintly as the young man dropped it into his pocket.
Dale arose slowly.  His fists were clenched.  His eyes were fired with determination.  He glanced slowly at Brenda, who had returned to her chair beside Gillian.  Dropping her lovely little head to her arm on the table, she shook with silent, convulsive sobs.  He paused, as if about to speak to her.  Then, grimly, he approached the witness.
Mr. Shank," he said crisply, "you stated yesterday, under examination, that your occupation is that of a molder.  You stated in fact, that you are a master molder."
"Yes, sir."
"That is a foundry term, is it not?"
"Yes, sir."  The witness still bore himself with the misleading shyness of the previous day.  He looked at Dale with greatest respect, as if he did not wish to miss a word of golden wisdom that might fall from the young man's lips.
"You've worked in many foundries, Mr. Shank?"
"Yes, sir."
"I would like to let the jury have an understanding of just what a molder does, Mr. Shank," Dale said gently.  "A master molder.  A molder makes castings in a foundry, doesn't he?"
"Yes, sir.  That's right."
"He supervises the making of the mold into which molten metal is poured – iron, brass, bronze or whatever it may be.  This mold may be designed to cast objects of almost any size and almost any nature, from a toy lead soldier to a great bronze bell.  Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"When a mold is ready to pour, a molder generally has an assistant, does he not?"
"Yes, sir.  He almost always has an assistant."
"And even in the making of a large casting, a molder requires no other help than that of his assistant.  Is that right?"
The spidery eyes narrowed a little.
"Yes, sir.  That's right."
"In fact," Dale went on, "many molders are temperamental – they often prefer to do their casting with no one else but their assistant around.  Is that correct?"
"Well, not exactly.  You see–"
"Let me correct myself," Dale said.  "When a mold is ready to pour, there is no necessity for any one else to be around except the assistant.  Is that more like it?"
Again the Spider Man hesitated.  There was a tight look about his mouth. He shot a quick glance at Stewart Noon, but the assistant prosecuting attorney appeared to be completely baffled by these new developments.  To him this was evidently an uncharted sea.
"Is that more like it?" Dale repeated sharply.
"Yes.  Yes, sir.  That's more like it."
Dale moved a little closer to him.
"Mr. Shank," he said, "did you have anything to do with the casting of that golden billet in which the body of Waldo Chine was cremated?"
The Spider Man looked as if he were on easier ground now.
"Oh, no, sir," he said, guilelessly.
"You said you watched Miss Chine pour that gold into the billet mold, and over the body of her dead uncle?"
"Yes, sir.  I did."
Dale did not ask him why he had not interfered with the pouring.  Stewart Noon had nicely blocked all approaches to that question in his direct examination.
"You sat there on the floor," Dale said, "and watched her pour that casting?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you had absolutely nothing to do with cremating that old man in that flood of molten gold?"
"No, sir.  Nothing."
Stewart Noon was on his feet and Mark Storm, seated beside him, was whispering behind his hand.  The assistant prosecuting attorney looked anxious.  This line of cross-examination seemed to be leading nowhere in particular, yet it was, evident that he suspected some sort of trap.
Dale went on with his preparations for springing that trap.
"Mr. Shank, did you ever work in the Chelsington Foundry, in Chelsington, Pennsylvania?"
The witness's eyes became narrower still.
"Seems to me I did," he answered vaguely.
"Didn't you work there as a master molder from August ninth, 1921, to October fourth of the same year?"
"I don't remember the exact dates."  
"Do you remember the date on which you cast the monument to the Unknown Soldier'?"
"No!" the witness said harshly.
His face was suddenly falling into its old familiar lines, losing its shyness, its, apologetic aspect.
"Does the date September tenth refresh your memory?"
"I don't remember that date!"
Date said, "What was the name of your assistant?"
"I don't remember."
"Wasn't he a young fellow by the name of Lawrence Mockett?"
"I don't remember that far back."
"Don't you remember," Dale said harshly, "that on the afternoon of September tenth, when you poured that big casting, your assistant, Lawrence Mockett, mysteriously vanished and was never seen again?"
The Spider Man's face was pale.  His lips moved in agitation.  A murmur ran through the courtroom.  A bailiff banged a gavel.
"I don't know anything about it," the Spider Man said hoarsely.
"Very well.  Let's pass on to the Vinegarone Foundry, in Vinegarone, Ohio.  Do you remember working there?"
Gillian could now hear the hiss of whispers being exchanged by Stewart Noon and Mark Storm.
"No.  Yes.  Yes.  I worked there!' Mr. Shank said in his old familiar voice.
The sneer had come back to his lips, the beadiness to his eyes.  Once again, mysteriously, magically, he was the ogre of the steel room.
"We'll skip the unimportant dates," Dale said rapidly.  "We're only interested in the date March eighth, 1927.  What happened in the Vinegarone Foundry on that date?  I'm sure the jury would like to know."
The witness snarled,     I don't remember!"
"Didn't you, on that date, pour a big steel casting – the superstructure of a marine steam engine?"
"I forget."
"Who was your assistant at that time?"
The witness snarled, "I forget!"
Gillian was watching the jury.  Dale was doing well, but his timing was too fast.  He should be taking more time; letting these insinuations sink in slowly; letting the jury catch up with him.  Gillian felt as if he  wanted to leap up and handle the witness himself, but he couldn't talk.  He was in a sweat of suspense.
"Wasn't his name Jerry Toole?"
"How do I know?" the witness snapped.
His eyes were wilder, and his mouth was making strange convulsive grimaces.  He was cracking.  But could Dale Torrent, Gillian anxiously wondered, drive him on to the cracking point?
Dale seemed a little uncertain himself.  He was backing toward the counsel table, toward Gillian.  He wanted help.
Reaching Gillian's side, Dale stopped.  Apparently he had not taken his eyes from his witness for a moment.  He said sharply: "On the afternoon of March eighth, 1927, you poured that marine engine casting, with the assistance of Jerry Toole, did you not?"
"I don't remember!"
"Don't you remember that at the time no one else was there but Jerry Toole?"
"No.  I don't remember!" the witness snarled.
"Do you know," Dale barked at him, "that on that afternoon Jerry Toole disappeared and has never been seen since?"
Hoarse whispers and excitement rose from the spectators.  The jurors were leaning forward tensely.
Mr. Shank was gripping the chair arms, straining forward, his lips working, his eyes slits of insane glitter.  But he wasn't cracking yet.
"No!" he roared.  "I don't know anything about it!  You're tryin' to hang something on me!"
His face was a greenish white.  His lips were wet.
Dale drove in his next punch.
"If you don't know he disappeared, how did it happen that on the following morning you left Vinegarone – with Jerry Toole's wife!"
The witness seemed to be gathering himself to spring.
"Who the hell says I did?" he' snarled.
And that was the point where, according to Gillian's understanding of human nature, Fowler Shank should have cracked – should have cut loose and babbled.  It was like trying to make a balky horse take a hurdle.  Mr. Shank wouldn't take the hurdle.
The courtroom was in an uproar.  Bailiffs were trying to restore order.  Dale was whispering to Gillian:
"My God, what shall I do?"  And Gillian whispered in answer: "Direct accusation!  Smash it into him!"
Dale swiftly straightened.  "I say you killed both Lawrence Mockett and Jerry Toole!  I say you destroyed all evidence of these murders by dropping the bodies into the molds and pouring molten metal in upon the corpses, cremating them – just as you placed the body of Waldo Chine in that billet mold and poured gold into the mold!" 
"You're a damned liar!" the witness shrieked, and burst into a torrent of vile oaths.
"You murdered him and cremated him in that mold!" Dale shouted.
Gillian was gripping the edge of the table.  The question was, had Dale delivered this charge dramatically enough?  Staring at the white, grimacing, wild-eyed witness, Gillian felt his heart thumping in an agony of suspense.
The Spider Man suddenly uttered a harsh, strangled roar like that of a trapped animal.  He sprang up from the witness chair.
It's a damned lie!" he shrieked.  "I didn't kill the old man.  He did it!  He drove that cold chisel into his eye and killed him!  All I did was to put the body into the mold and flow the gold onto it!"
"Then this girl did not do it?" Dale shouted.
"He did it!" Fowler Shank shrieked.
He was shaking a hairy fist at Stewart Noon.
"He came in there and did it!  The old man went out of the room.  Noon came in and started talking to me.  Then the old man came sneakin' back.  He had heard what we was sayin'."  The witness's voice was still a shriek.  "Noon rushed him.  The old man tried to get away!  He slammed the door on the old man's hand.  He drove the chisel into his eye!"
Stewart Noon had backed against the table.  As pale as the witness, he looked stunned, horrified.
Before he could speak, Date cried, "Why did he do it?  Why did he kill the old man?"
"Because the old man heard us talkin'!  Noon said our scheme was all off, now that Hazeltine knew about the gold–"
"This is absurd!" Stewart Noon finally managed to get out.  "This man has lost his reason!  He's gone mad!"
Dale cried, "Noon, do you deny that you were in that steel room when the old man was killed?"
"I was never in that room till we bashed in the door with that I-beam!"
"You never had access to it, previously?"
"No!  No!"
"Then how, does it happen that among the keys on your key ring, which was found on the cellar stairs on the night of the murder, there is one which opens that steel door?"
Dramatically enough now, Dale whipped out of his pocket the bunch of keys which Gillian had handed him earlier.
The blond man was staring with stricken eyes at the keys.
"Do you deny that you lost these keys that night?" Dale cried.  "Why wouldn't your car start that night?  Go ahead!  Answer those questions!  Do you deny that this long steel key is the key to that steel door; that you had it made by Titus Zachery, the keymaker on Front Street?"
There was a sudden commotion in the rear of the courtroom.  A woman screamed.  One of the court attendants started running toward a window.
A woman shrieked, "Let me out!"
Then a man yelled, "Gas!  Tear gas!"

CHAPTER 14
THE DAWN OF LOVE

THERE was sudden confusion.  Gillian had Brenda by the arm.
He had heard no explosion, and he wondered where the gas had originated.  The next moment the fiery stuff was in his throat, his lungs.  He was gasping, almost blinded.
His intention was to hurry Brenda to the jury room, but he was being carried along up the aisle by a surging crowd of reporters, jurors and court attendants.  Dale was beside him.
Above the screams of women and the shouts of men, he heard a muffled shot.  He was not surprised.  He looked quickly, through streaming tears, in the direction where he had last seen Fowler Shank.  But Fowler Shank had not fallen.
Not until he was free of the stinging fumes and well out into the corridor did he learn who had received that bullet.  Stewart Noon, some one shouted, had been shot through the brain – killed instantly by some unknown assassin!
A pair of bailiffs seized Brenda and led her off to her cell.
Outside, the street was in an uproar.
Dale, beside Gillian, was gasping and coughing.  He finally got out, "Was that what you meant by trouble?"
"I didn't know what to expect," Gillian said.  "But I knew there'd be trouble.  Mark Storm must have given a signal for it.  But I wasn't watching him.  He was prepared for some kind of surprise.  When we sprang the surprise, he smothered it with tear gas.  But he wasn't fast enough."
"Did I put it over?" Dale asked.
"It was a great performance," Gillian huskily whispered.  "Greater, even, than your performance in 'Trial by Jury.'"
"Have I saved her?"
"We'll see what Judge Carlyle and the jury have to say."
Word spread presently that the courtroom was clear of gas.  When Gillian and Dale reentered it, the jury was back in the box and the judge was back on the bench.  Brenda was brought in once again.
Wet-eyed, the judge said in a shaking voice, "This has been the most deplorable occurrence in a courtroom in my twenty-seven years on the bench.  How can justice be meted out in the face of such acts of hoodlumism?  Can any one in this courtroom furnish me with information bearing on the tear gas or the shocking assassination of Mr. Noon?"
There was no answer.
The Court: "Mr. Hazeltine, what is your view of this?"
Mr. Hazeltine: "I have nothing but an opinion, which I cannot substantiate, your honor."
The Court: "Mr. Storm, can you help us?"
Mr. Storm: "I am completely in the dark, your honor.  It was a shocking occurrence."
The Court: "Gentlemen of the jury, I extend to you the apologies of the people of this State for the painful experience to which yon have been subjected.  This court will arbitrarily, in view of the sensational evidence introduced, dispense with arguments of opposing counsel.  If any lingering doubts of the accused's innocence are in your minds, you are to dismiss them.  This is known as a directed verdict, gentlemen.  This court will accept no other verdict than not guilty."
The jury did not leave the box.  They whispered among themselves a moment.  Then came the ancient formula of the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
The clerk chanted, "The defendant will arise and face the jury."
Brenda stood up,
"Gentlemen of the jury," the clerk intoned, "have you arrived at a verdict for Brenda Chine?"
"We have."
"What say you?"
The thin, squeaky voice of the bookkeeper foreman quavered, "Not guilty!"
Dale Torrent pulled Brenda toward him and tried to take her into his arms.  The courtroom roared with approval.  She evaded him; she was laughing and crying.
Gillian slipped out ahead of the mob.  He had a luncheon appointment with his wife at Greenfield's most modern most fashionable restaurant, the Mirador.  He called up Miss Walsh to tell her where he could be found if any emergency arose, and fought his way through the crowd packing the street in front of the courthouse.  Then he walked down Cloverdale Boulevard to the Mirador, where he found Vee waiting.
He was exultant over the outcome of the trial, but bitterly disappointed at its inconclusiveness.  Over their luncheon table, he expostulated to Vee:
"I had Storm in the palm of my hand!  Stewart Noon would have squealed!  He would have spilled the whole plot!"
Vee, glancing brightly about the restaurant, saw Dale Torrent and Brenda Chine coming in.  People at tables all about were standing up, cheering and clapping their hands.  Grinning to left and right, Hollywood's boy friend followed Brenda to a table.  He saw Vee and Gillian and waved his hand.  She waved in return.
When the uproar had quieted, Vee said, "You neglected to tell me about the plot."
But Gillian knew he didn't have her attention.  She was watching Dale and Brenda with enraptured eyes.
"They're in love," she announced.  "Isn't it thrilling?"
"The plot," Gillian whispered hoarsely, "was Storm's – to get that gold.  Noon was his deputy – his dummy."
Vee gave him her undivided attention.  "How did Storm find out about the gold?"
"Our Spider Man undoubtedly went to him, knowing Storm's reputation as a promoter of unscrupulous enterprises.  He wanted Storm's expert help and offered him a split.  Storm knew that Brenda was returning, and he sent Noon – his lieutenant – abroad to meet her.  He was to return with her, and therefore have entree to the house; and he was to plot out the safest and simplest way of grabbing the gold.  They intended to kill the old man.  The gold was to be Storm's share, when Uncle Waldo was killed.  Noon's share was to be marriage to the girl, who would then have inherited the old man's millions.  That was their plan."
"What actually spoiled it?"
"My discovery of Uncle Waldo's scheme to sell the Government old gold for new."
"Why did they cremate him in that billet, though?"
"Our Spider Man did that.  Partly psychological – force of habit.  Partly because it was a clever idea."
"You mean," Vee interrupted, "to make it appear that the old man had disappeared."
"Not at all.  Otherwise, why would they have left the old man's hand outside the door?  No.  Noon picked up that emerald when he was alone in the drawing room after Dale had punched Brenda on the nose and Noon in the eye.  Noon dropped the emerald into the billet as a clue.  He knew we would discover the murder.  If we hadn't guessed that the old man had been cremated in that billet, he would have called it to our attention – also the emerald clue.  Noon overlooked nothing."
"When did you first suspect him?"
"In the steel room, when be turned so suddenly against Brenda.  It was too quick a turnabout.  All along he had professed to love her, and it wasn't human to turn so quickly."
"Didn't he ever love her, I wonder?" Vee said.
"He was the type who loves no one but himself.  Besides, he was carrying out Storm's orders.  Storm even had Noon tell me that whopping lie."
"What lie?"
"That he had become Storm's assistant in order to 'get' Storm.  Back of it all – back of every phase of the scheme – was Storm!  He had that teargas set off in the courtroom at the psychological moment, to cover Noon's killing.  He knew Noon, if cornered, would squeal on him.  I should have anticipated that.  I thought Shank was the one they'd get.  I expected it.  But Storm outsmarted me.  Damn him, he's covered his tracks perfectly!  I can't get him!  He's licked me again!"
Vee fixed sparkling emerald green eves on her famous husband.  She made a little grimace of vexation.
"Darling, you make me furious!  Storm hasn't licked you – he's never licked you.  Somehow, you've managed to upset every scheme he has hatched since he came to Greenfield.  His political power is slipping.  His personal fortune is almost gone.  In case after case you've whipped him in court.  Time and again, you've proved you're smarter and cleverer than he is.  He has never won a single victory over you.  Some day you'll smash him completely.  And when you do, you'll be sorry, Gillian; because you get more fun out of fighting with him than out of anything else you do!  Oh, Gillian, look at them!  Isn't it wonderful?"
Gillian looked at the nearby table, where Dale and Brenda sat.  They were engaged in an animated discussion.  Dale was gesturing.  So was Brenda.
"Grapefruit!" Gillian gasped.
For the half of a grapefruit in a nest of crushed ice sat on the table before Dale.
"Gillian!" Vee said in a throaty little voice.  "He's proposing to her!  Oh, I think this is too romantic for words!"
"He isn't proposing," Gillian disagreed.  "They're having a scrap."
"Don't be absurd!" Vee laughed.  "That was just the way you looked when you proposed to me!"
"Like Jack Dempsey coming out of his corner for the first round?"
"Yes.  You looked furious.  It was wonderful!"
Vee's reminiscent tender smile vanished.  She uttered a little shriek.  Oh!"
Dale had sprung up.  He grabbed the half grapefruit, and with a lunging gesture reached across the table.  He twisted the fruit against Brenda's face, very much as if her face were a juice-extractor!
Brenda leaped up.  She struck the grapefruit away.  She reached across the table and punched Dale's nose.
Gillian began to laugh hoarsely.  "The dawn of love!" he jeered.
"It is!" Vee cried with shimmering eyes.  "Don't you understand?"
"What?" Gillian asked.
"It was inevitable!"
"The grapefruit meant, 'Will you marry me?' And the punch in the nose means 'Yes!'  Is that what you're implying?"
"Absolutely inevitable!  You don't know anything about love!"
"Ignorance is safer."
"What did I tell you?" Vee cried triumphantly.  "Look!"
Dale was moving around the table to where Brenda was waiting.  He seized her in his arms.  He kissed her.  And she clung to him.
"Can you tie it!" Gillian marveled.
Dale and Brenda were coming over to their table now.  Dale was smiling jubilantly; Brenda was radiant – blushing and laughing, clinging to his arm.
"Oh, yes, darling," Gillian heard her say, grapefruit juice sparkling on her eyelashes.
"It's all settled!" Dale cried to Vee and Gillian.  "We're engaged!"
But before Gillian could grasp his hand, Miss Walsh came trotting to the table.
"Mr. Torrent!" she said breathlessly.  "It just came.  I thought it might be important."
Dale tore open the yellow envelope and read the telegram aloud.

WE APPRECIATE THAT YOU ARE LAUNCHED ON A BRILLIANT LEGAL CAREER AND WE HAVE HEARTILY ADMIRED YOUR WONDERFUL DEFENSE OF BRENDA CHINE BUT IS THERE NO POSSIBILITY THAT YOU CAN BE TEMPTED TO RETURN TO US UNDER A BRAND NEW CONTRACT AT SEVENTY FIVE HUNDRED A WEEK STOP WIRE AT ONCE AND CHARTER A PLANE AT OUR EXPENSE SAM FISHBEIN AND IKE NUSSBAUM YOUR PALS.

Dale crumpled the telegram in his hand, threw his other arm about Brenda's shoulders and yelled, "Hoopla!  Hot-cha!  Hey-hey!  Hollywood!"

The End

THE GILLIAN HAZELTINE NOVELS BY GEORGE F. WORTS

The Lies at any Price Murder Case
The  Love Bandit Murder Case
The Ezra Klagg Murder Case
The Screen of Ice Murder Case
The Crime Circus Murder Case
The Haunted Yacht Club Murder Case
The Reptile Named Robard Murder Case
The Lost Punch  Murder Case
The Murder Most Foul Murder Case
The Jungle Murder Case
The High Seas Murder Case
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case*
The Grapevine Murder Case
The Black Ice Murder Case
The Magpie Murder Case
The Michigan Murder Case
The Decoy Murder Case
The Missing Will Murder Case
The Gold Coffin Murder Case*
The Honest Forger Murder Case
The Five Bald Men Murder Case
The Reluctant Witness Murder Case
The Murder in Some Degree Murder Case
The Girl Rebel Murder Case
The Accused: Mr. Hazeltine Murder Case

Available in electronic form from Deerstalker Classics and Renaissance E Books' PageTurner imprint.