Page 27 - Demo

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Station K-1-L-L 25
many a baffiing case in the past. horror. She stared at Tracy numbly.
Luckily Fitz was still at headquarters. Tracy told him the news and Fitz said quietly, "O.K. Stay where you are. I'll be up there in a hurry.' !
"Better sit up and take it easy," Tracy said tonelessly. "We'll just for- get about this little episode. Inspector
Fitzgerald will be here in a few minutes. I'll tell him I found the gun."
She sank down on the sofa. Tracy stared grimly at the gun he had laid on
Fitzgerald hung up at the other end,
but Jerry continued to talk. In picking
up the phone he had turned about, so
that his back was toward the uncon- Hilliard's desk.
scious figure of Alice Hilliard. He caught a sudden glimpse of her pale face in the square, gilt-framed mirror on the wall behind Hilliard's desk.
It was the sight of Alice's eyelids that made Jerry continue to talk calmly into a dead wire. He crowded close to the desk, so that his left hand that depressed the phone's cross-bar was invisible to the girl lying on the floor in front of the sofa.
Alice was faking that swoon of hers! Her eyelids were quivering. She was so intent on watching the back of Tracy's head that she failed to notice the mirror.
She was lying closer to the sofa's edge than she had been when Tracy had left her. One of her arms was under the sofa, moving slowly. She became rigid as Tracy cradled the .phone and walked casually toward her.
He was still holding his handker- chief. He stood staring down at her limp body, aware of a quick feeling of pity. A loyal girl in love with a rogue could learn trickery swiftly I
She screamed as Tracy clutched sud- denly at her gloved hand and j7rked it into view. She was still holding the gun she had tried to push out of sight.
There was a quick, sharp strugg le, then Tracy 's handkerchief-swathed hand closed on the barrel and he wrenched the revolver from Alice's grasp.
The gun was an English model, A Webley. Two of the chambers had been exploded. There was a strong acid reek of burned powder at the muzz_le.
Tracy said gently to the sobbing girl: "Do you love Bert Lord that much?" "He didn't do it! H e couldn't have!"
Her face lifted and it was white with
He was turning away to examine the rest of the study when he heard a sud- den faint squeak. Someone was lifting a window in the adjoining reception room!
Before Tracy could move there was a quick thud of feet beyond the cur- tained doorway. A man's hand thrust fiercely past the edge of the curtain and jabbed at the light switch. The study
was plunged into darkness.
The murder gun was the first thing
Tracy thought of. He snatched it up by the barrel, throwing out a blindly de- fensive arm as the unseen figure of his assailant raced through the blackness toward Hilliard's desk.
A fist crashed against Tracy 's arm, numbing it from shoulder to elbow. The blow toppled him against a high-backed chair . He managed to re el a side and to overturn the chair between himself and his foe. It gave him only a second's respite, but that was all the time he
needed. He remembered a high-topp ed cabinet in a corner of the room. He threw the Webley revolver upward, hoping it would land out of sight.
The clatter of the ·overturn ed chair drowned out the thud of the gun is it landed among piled books and papers on the top of the cabinet. Somewhere in the dark Alice Hilliard was screaming
with terror.
Tracy dived to the floor, clutching at
the legs of his foe. A knee banged against his forehead, filling his brain with dancing stars. Then he was knocked flat. Fingers clutched swiftly at .him in a search for the murder gun. His pockets were probed, his coat was ripped open.
He heard a fiercely muttered oath in \