Steve was nonplussed. For the moment he did not disturb the heavily breathing man, Instead, he rapidly cased the room. He found nothing until he came to a series of chiffonier drawers. In the bottom of it was a human hair wig of white, a white mustache and a white goatee. Also, a theatrical make-up box.

  “Cripes!” muttered Steve.

  Swiftly he hurried to the bed. He tweaked the hair, the mustache, the goatee.

  No doubt of it, these were not affixed with glue.

  His experiment brought only one result. Sir Zerby turned over, moaned horribly and continued to sleep. Steve did not disturb him again.

  This time he ransacked the house from attic to cellar. And he made only two discoveries—the house was locked up as soundly as a bank safe, and there was a hospital-size, empty can of ethyl-chloride in the chamber that housed the air conditioning unit.

  The anesthetic had been poured into the intake manifold, blown throughout the house and then gradually sucked out as new air was taken in.

  “And that’s a hell of a lot of help at a time like this,” muttered Steve with a grimace. He wondered wildly if Base had rigged this scheme to get away with Susan.

  But Steve remembered the masked man who had socked him. Whoever the man in the gas mask was, he was not Basel Quintaro.

  Steve went back to Sir Zerby. He got a pitcher of water from the bathroom. He tossed this on the gun salesman and began to shake and pummel him.

  Five minutes of this brought a groan.

  As Sir Zerby sat up, Steve looked at him grimly. “You’ve been doped, and so have the rest of us, and Susan and Basel are gone. Did you plant this?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Sir Zerby groaned,

  Steve gave him all the details. “These,” he concluded, pointing to the wig and fake mustache and goatee, “made me think you did it.”

  “No, no,” cried Sir Zerby with a semblance of his usual arrogance, “I have a phobia about assassination. For a while I had a bodyguard wear those and sleep in my bed. That has nothing to do with this.”

  “What has?” asked Steve.

  “Roland Biester, my cursed secretary.”

  “Biester, the guy that slammed with the money? Why should he do it?”

  “He hates me and he’d do anything for revenge.”

  “Well,” said Steve, “while you were out cold he could have cut your throat.”

  “And gained nothing. This way he hopes to force me to pay—I say, what is this?”

  ***

  IN MOVING around Sir Zerby had upset his pillows. And now there fell from between them a folded note. Steve snatched it up and read:

  Sir Zerby—If you wish to see your son alive, you will come alone to the Red Kasbah tonight at eleven, and bring two hundred thousand pounds. If you tell the military, I will know it and you will only find your son and the girl dead. Tell Steve Hilary to stay out of this and he will get Susan Darrel back unharmed. If he tries anything, she will die. Wait in the Kasbah for the sound of the thrush.

  There was no signature.

  “Who does that sound like?” demanded Steve.

  “Who else but Biester?” growled Sir Zerby. “The devil is cleverer than I thought. Two hundred thousand pounds! Why, that’s nearly a million dollars.”

  “I wouldn’t argue for the difference,” muttered Steve.

  “And, good God, that devil will kill them if I go to the military. He’s made friends around here and he’d know.”

  Steve looked thoughtfully at the banker.

  “He certainly gets news quickly. He knew all about me.”

  “Of course,” shrugged the banker. “He probably has a spy here who let him in and permitted him to gas us and make the abduction.”

  “It seems queer, though ...” began Steve, but he broke off quickly, because from below stairs there came a terrific thumping and shouting.

  “M’sieur le Baron!” screamed the voice. “A moi!”

  “It’s that fool gateman, Pierre,” Sir Zerby groaned.

  “M’sieur le Baron, the summer house!” Pierre called. “It burns to the ground and there is a man burning inside.”

  Steve muttered an oath and raced for the stairway. As he reached the porch where the gateman stood dancing up and down in excitement, Steve saw the summer house beyond the marble swimming pool blazing furiously. He ran to it as fast as he

  could.

  The heat of the flames forced him to stand yards back. But even so he could see, at intervals, the body of a man lying right in the heart of the flames. Already it was so burned as to be unrecognizable, and long since dead.

  Steve commandeered Pierre and two buckets, and for an hour he and the gateman heaved water on the body. Because of this, when finally the flames subsided so that Steve could dash in and jerk the corpse out, he had more than just blackened bones,

  But not too much. The head was only a charred skull. There was some flesh on the hand and a gold signet ring with a queer crest. There were a few fragments of buttons, charred tweed cloth, some odd pieces of shoes. But to Steve they gave no clue to the dead man’s identity.

  All he knew definitely was that the fire had not killed the man. A bullet hole through the skull, squarely between the eyes, was mute witness to this fact.

  Examining this burned debris, Steve heard a noise and turned swiftly. Sir Zerby Quintaro stood there, his face gray and twisted into such malevolent hate as to shock Steve.

  “You know him?” asked Steve.

  “Aye,” growled Sir Zerby fiercely, “it’s that dirty thief, Roland Biester.”

  “Biester!” exclaimed Steve.

  “Aye! Look at that ring. I’ve seen it on him many's the time. And that suit, those shoes. It’s he all right, the thief!”

  Steve Hilary stared up at the munitions baron.

  “If this is Biester,” he said quietly, “then he couldn’t very well have kidnaped Susan and Basel.”

  “No,” said Sir Zerby. “Unless—unless he tried and ran into someone else who killed him and went on with the abduction.”

  “Someone,” repeated Steve very thoughtfully, thinking of the airplane he had heard in the night. “Eastman, for example?”

  Sir Zerby swore a mighty oath. “That dirty swine of an American, Buck Eastman! That’s who it was.”

  CHAPTER V

  CASH AT THE BANK

  BENDING down, Steve was examining the rather thickish bones of the dead man’s knees. The flesh had been burned absolutely off, so that he could study the formations clearly. They were, he realized, unusually thick, as were the bones of the ribs. He prodded and poked delicately with his fingers.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked Quintaro. “See the military about this?”

  “My God, no!” cried Quintaro. “Don’t you realize Eastman is dangerous? He hates me. He'd kill Basel.”

  “So you'll pay out nearly a million dollars?”

  “What is a million dollars alongside my son’s life? Besides, to me a million dollars represents a month’s income.”

  Steve whistled softly. He couldn’t even imagine a million dollars, let alone that sum as a month’s income.

  “How old a man was this Roland Biester?” he asked suddenly.

  “Thirty-six, I believe. Why do you ask?”

  “Was he sick recently? Did he have arthritis, perhaps?”

  Sir Zerby stared at him hard “Good God, no. He was in perfect health as far as I know.”

  Steve stood up, frowning. He was sore, baffled and worried.

  “You'd better count me in on that pay-off,” he said. “I don’t like this.”

  Sir Zerby scowled. “I shall do nothing of the kind. I will handle this in my own way. I want no interference from you or anyone else.”

  He turned. Down the walk from the main house were two of his bodyguards. He turned back to Steve.

  “Don’t get in my way, Hilary,” he growled, “or you'll regret it.”

  He spoke to the leading Greek. The man moaned but turned obediently to the garage.

  “Nikolas will drive you to your hotel,” continued Sir Zerby. “Stay there.”

  “And Susan?”

  “If she is unharmed I'll return her to you, and you shall take her away at once.”

  Steve knew the baronet was lying. As soon as the man had achieved the ransom of his son, he would continue to oppose the marriage of his son by any means. But to say this now, would, Steve realized, get him nothing. So he pretended to acquiesce.

  “I’Il wait,” he said, “and you...”

  Sir Zerby gave an exclamation of horror and jumped back convulsively.

  “Look!” he shouted.

  The sand asp had apparently lived under the summer house and the flames had driven it out. Now it wriggled along the ground, going directly for the baronet on its way to safety. The man got a chunk of charred wood. Viciously he pounded at the writhing asp until it was merely horribly mashed flesh. Steve turned away in disgust.

  “Remember,” Sir Zerby growled, as Steve entered the car, “get in my way at this crisis and I’ll...”

  “Save your threats,” said Steve, “they bore me.”

  The car drove on.

  As he passed the main gate Steve saw the gateman, his head bandaged, repairing the copper wires of the electrified system. Steve ordered the car to stop.

  “What has happened?” he asked the man.

  “Monsieur, all is madness. Last night came someone who cut the wires. When the alarm bell awaked me I was struck on the head. When I regain my senses the summer house burns with Monsieur Biester in it and my electric system is temporarily smashed.”

  Steve scowled. That sounded like Buck Eastman all right, but if Buck had smashed through the electrified fence, then why had the airplane landed and who came in it?

  “This,” he thought, “is the honey of honey.”

  ***

  THE British Bank of Morocco is one street removed from the main place, Dima El Fna, and it is one of the more substantial business buildings of the town. At noon a Rolls Royce sedan rolled up and discharged the erect figure of Sir Zerby Quintaro.

  As he entered the door the two guards suddenly stiffened to obsequious attention. Cuthbert Rayburn, the boss of the bank, also saw the famous figure of the munitions king and literally ran to greet him

  Sir Zerby Quintaro nodded coldly to the greeting.

  “I want two hundred one-thousand pound notes at once,” he said. “Never mind keeping the serial numbers.”

  “Ah Sir Zerby, we must keep the numbers of such sized bills,” said Rayburn, leading the way to his own desk. “The Bank of England requires it.”

  Sir Zerby shrugged it aside as of no moment,

  “But for me,” he ordered, “you will ignore that regulation, too.”

  He took out the small checkbook with his name embossed on it in gold, filled in a check and carelessly rolled his thumb across the place where the signature should have been.

  Rayburn took the check, reached across his desk for a small tin of iodinenized water. He dipped the signature of Sir Zerby into the water. Immediately the thumbprint became plainly visible.

  From a file in his desk Rayburn took another enlarged print, and this he compared. But the gesture was almost perfunctory. He knew what he would find. Hehad done this for over fee and for larger amounts than this.

  He disappeared into the main part of the bank and came back a few moments later with two hundred one-thousand pound notes which he counted into Sir Zerby’s hand.

  “You have hurt yourself, sir?” he said, pointing to the bandages on Sir Zerby’s forehead.

  “It is nothing,” growled the baronet. “Call General Delage. Tell him I wish for a military permit for my plane to fly from here to London via Paris.”

  “I shall gladly do so,” bowed Rayburn.

  Sir Zerby went out to his Rolls Royce, climbed in and was driven off. As his car vanished around the corner of the Pasha of Marrakech’s vast estate, Steve Hilary emerged into the blinding sunlight and headed into the bank. He inquired for the manager and was finally brought to Rayburn.

  He showed his credentials, countersigned by Scotland Yard and the Sureté Générale of Paris.

  “Your bank is a client of ours, and I want information. How much money did Sir Zerby draw?”

  “It’s against our rules to divulge such information.”

  Steve’s eyes narrowed.

  “If you want a court order—” he began, waving his credentials. Hastily, Rayburn shook his head. He knew the Intercontinental Investigation Bureau and its strange international power,

  “Two hundred thousand pounds,” he said reluctantly.

  “By check?”

  “Yes.” Rayburn reached across his large desk and brought out the now dry check. Steve saw the amazing signature. As his eyebrows went up in astonishment Rayburn explained. “All of Quintaro’s checks are signed like that. He gives and takes money all over the world. There can be no chance of forgery this way, and no chance of not knowing his signature.”

  “You saw him sign this one?” Steve asked,

  “Yes, print in front of witnesses, signature cannot be forged.”

  Steve brushed his hand across the check. He picked off a flake of wax. He asked how Sir Zerby had taken the money and Rayburn told him.

  “He once drew a million pounds and I paid it,” Rayburn added proudly.

  It was a ten minutes walk from there to Buck Eastman’s room in the Hotel Continental et Orient. Buck was not upstairs. He was in the small bar off the lobby, drinking with the blond barmaid. Steve walked in and ordered a big beer.

  At sight of Steve, Eastman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously,

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “I'm just going down to buy a cobra.”

  “A cobra?”

  “Yeah,” said Steve, drinking half the huge mug of beer, “a black cobra.”

  Eastman scowled. “Don’t crib about snakes. I hate ’em. I saw a pal of mine die of a bushmaster bite once and the sight haunted me for years.”

  Steve smiled slightly. “What I wanted to see you about was this— you made a proposition yesterday about me going in with you against Quintaro. I’m ready to talk about it now.”

  Eastman stared, then roared with laughter, his eyes flashing triumphantly.

  “That was yesterday, guy.”

  “You mean it’s off now?”

  “You said it, it’s off.”

  Steve knew then that Quintaro’s hunch was right. Eastman had Basel Quintaro and Susan Darrel. His eyes narrowed.

  “Okay!” he spoke indifferently.

  “You should have known that you couldn’t crash Quintaro’s joint alone,” Eastman said. “I’m playing it by myself now.”

  For one brief instant Steve Hilary’s eyes blinked wide in utter astonishment, and then they masked again. He forced a smile.

  “Go ahead. I’ll bust into Quintaro’s and get Susan. Wait and see. And I pack a big gun, Buck, and if she’s been hurt I’m going looking for the guy that hurt her.”

  Without waiting to see how Buck took this threat, he swung out to the dusty red street and back to the Place Djma El Fna.

  But he went with a new motive now. Unknowingly Buck Eastman had given him a vital clue to this puzzle. A clue, Steve realized, that didn’t explain everything but one which told Steve what he must do.

  He stopped at the snake charmer’s pitch.

  The snake charmer was still howling and jumping around while his assistant beat a drum with calloused hands. The snake charmer recognized Steve, grinned toothlessly and permitted a sand asp to bite him in the ankle, after which he screamed and flopped awkwardly to the intense amusement of his Berber audience.

  Steve gestured and took out a ten franc note. A ten franc note in Morocco is vast riches and the snake charmer literally fawned on Steve.

  Steve spoke in Arabic. “Thou has permitted the sand asp to bite thee, because in thy youth thou hath eaten of the sand asp venom and thus came to feel it not. But now, Allah willing, I will give thee ten francs to permit the black cobra to bite thee.”

  ***

  FOR an instant the snake-charmer’s tiny beady eyes stared at Steve. Then he yelled, “Wallah! In the name of Allah the Magnificent, the All- knowing, I will do it.”

  He went to a burlap sack, untied the throat of it and then he got a box, opened it, and held the box to the sack. Silence had come momentarily and Steve heard the slithering sound as the snake passed from the sack to the box.

  “I mean the cobra in this box,” Steve protested. He pointed to one that the snake charmer had been using all day. Steve could see venom on the corners of this snake’s mouth.

  “That one is tired,” said the snake charmer, “All day he has been struck and his venom sack is exhausted. In the name of the Prophet let me use a strong one.”

  With that he jumped and shouted, boasting of what he was about to do in such a screeching voice that the crowded square hugged close to watch him. He opened the box. Instantly there rose a ropelike body, two inches thick, black as jet, and the hood fanned out like a huge spoon.

  As the snake charmer danced around, the cobra turned, never for an instant taking its gaze from the tormentor. And then suddenly the snake charmer bent over, put out his shaved skull toward the snake. Closer, closer, closer! A cold hush fell. All watched breathlessly.

  The cobra was utterly motionless, but its beady eyes were watching that brown skull, weighing the speed of its own strike, the speed of the charmer’s withdrawal. The snake had been fooled many times.

  Now the cobra rose a little higher. A foot of its black body was above the box.

  “Ayah, ayah, ayah!” the snake charmer cried.

  His head was within a foot.

  Then like a blinding flash the snake struck.

  The snake charmer drew back, but not fast enough. On his forehead two tiny spots appeared, and two tiny holes leaked blood. Steve, watching, knew that this man had been bitten by a black cobra, the most poisonous snake known to man.

  “Ooah, ooah!” the snake charmer cried. He ran to him, holding out his hand. Steve gave him the ten francs, in American money the equivalent of forty cents.

 

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