CHAPTER III. THE KING OF KILLERS.

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Nellie Gray knew now that she was beaten. Those small round objects were tear-gas bombs.

But she wasn't going to remain on the defensive, to let herself be smoked out of here like a hunted animal. She hurriedly moved toward the dresser. By dint of pushing and pulling at it she finally managed to jockey it over to the door. Just as she got it in place she heard the elevator door opening, then the voice of the man in the tan jacket.

"All right, let's not waste any more time. Lob one in!"

Nellie scrambled up on the dresser and got a clear view of the corridor. She saw two of the men, each with a tear-gas bomb, their arms raised to hurl.

Nellie's face was tense and set. She smashed out the pane and thrust the pistol's snout out. She pulled the trigger twice, swiftly, and both of those men went down as the little weapon barked spitefully. She hadn't had time to aim with too much care, but she got one of those men just over the heart, and the other in the shoulder. The tear-gas bombs rolled away down the corridor and exploded, one after the other. A dense cloud of acrid smoke rose from them.

The wounded man screamed out, "Get me out of here, Haggard! It's choking me—-"

And the voice of the man in the tan jacket cut sharply into that cry for help: "Shut up, you fool, I told you never to use that name!"

Standing on the dresser with her face back from the transom, Nellie Gray felt a sudden wild thrill course through her body. Haggard! She should have known it before! Only Royce Haggard could be so ruthless, so deadly swift in action. It was barely four months since Royce Haggard had brought off the most daring jail break in the history of the country. Together with nine other lifers, he had made a clean getaway from a Midwest penitentiary. They had shot their way across the country into hiding, leaving a pitiful trail of corpses behind. Huge rewards were posted. But the Haggard gang had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth. Here, then, was where they had turned up. But Nellie had seen pictures of Haggard. His face must have been changed by plastic surgery. That was why his expression was so wooden, so fishlike.

The acrid smoke spread in the corridor and some of it seeped in through the transom. Nellie's eyes began to smart. She stepped down from the dresser, pulled a blanket off the bed and climbed up again. She began to stuff it into the opening. She heard sounds of commotion in the corridor as guests came out of their rooms and Haggard's suave voice as he reassured them: "It's all right, folks, we're Federal agents. We have a dangerous criminal trapped in there. Get back in your rooms and lock your door and you'll be safe—"

Nellie yanked the blanket away from the transom and put her face close to the jagged hole in the glass. She kept it there in spite of the stinging gas and raised her voice as loud as possible: "He lies! They're not Federal agents. That's the Haggard gang! Call the police!"

But even as she shouted that warning she knew it was useless. Haggard's men controlled the switchboard. They'd not allow anyone to leave, or to phone till they had accomplished their purpose.

She drew her head in and just at that moment a third tear-gas bomb came lobbing up through the transom. It shattered the rest of the glass in the frame, struck the edge of the dresser on the way down, and exploded. Immediately, Nellie was engulfed in a cloud of pungent, choking gas. Her eyes began to burn and smart and fill with tears.

She closed them, held her breath, and jumped down off the dresser. Blindly she pawed her way to the bathroom, and pulled the door shut behind her, locking it. But the gas was already in there, and she got only a little relief.

She felt her way to the window and thrust her head out, but her eyes were so inflamed that the relief was negIigible. Behind her she heard a shattering crash as someone hurled himself against the door. They had broken in! Blindly, she fired at the sound, but she knew she had missed when she saw a huge, weird shape loom up in front of her. It was Haggard, and his face was covered by a gas mask. She thrust the pistol at him, her finger on the trigger, but her hand was struck down viciously, and the gun exploded into the floor. Then something struck her on the side of the head and she fell forward, semi-conscious. Her hands were twisted behind her back, and a pair of handcuffs was snapped on. In her ear was the voice of Haggard, muffled by his gas mask: "Where is that stuff?"

Nellie laughed, almost hysterically. "Kill me, Royce Haggard! Why don't you kill me?"

"Not yet. you'll talk first."

"Never! I'll never talk!"

"Never is a long time. Maybe too long for you!"

She felt herself lifted helplessly across his shoulder, like a sack of flour, and carried through the smoke. She must have lost consciousness for a few moments, because the next thing she knew, a gust of cold, clean air revived her, and she was being carried across the street to the green convertible. Half a dozen men with machine guns were posted around to guard against the arrival of the police. Haggard was leaving nothing to chance. The stakes were high and these men were desperate and resourceful criminals.

Nellie opened her mouth to shout, but a brutal hand thrust a wadded handkerchief between her teeth, effectively gagging her. She was roughly dumped on to the floor of the convertible and it was moving smoothly away, with Royce and another man sitting in the seat above her.

As they cleared the outskirts of the city Nellie writhed with helpless rage. Haggard stooped down and made sure the gag was tight in her mouth, so that she could not make a last appeal for help. And then they were out on the Tamiami Trail accelerating to a swift pace, racing away from Miami.

After a while Haggard took the handkerchief away from her mouth, sat up and lit a cigarette. He looked down at her, allowing the smoke to frickle from his nostrils.

"Well, miss," he said suavely, "are you thinking of talking? It might be better for you. We're going to have a long time to spend in coaxing you."

He bent down deliberately and placed the glowing tip of his cigarette against Nellie's forearm. With his free hand he gripped her handcuffed wrist so that she could not twist away.

The excruciating agony of that fiery burn was almost unbearable. But Nellie clamped her teeth hard and held herself rigid.

Haggard grunted and removed the cigarette tip from her arm. Nellie felt herself about to faint as the agony coursed through her body, but she fought it off. Haggard looked down at her and said softly, "You're very brave, my dear girl. But it won't help. Just think—will you be able to stand a continuous treatment like that? For hours on end? Perhaps for days? Believe me, you'll beg to tell me where the Zaharoff jewels are hidden. If you're wise you'll save yourself a good deal of torture and speak now."

Nellie's eyes opened wide. The Zaharoff jewels! She forgot the fiery agony which was almost numbing her arm. Of course! The Zaharoff jewels! It was Cornelius Zaharoff who had established a private empire fifty years ago on one of the islands of the East Indies. Trading in copra and rubber, he had amassed a gigantic fortune which he transmuted into costly jewels for the Armenian wife he had brought with him to share his empire. He had called her the queen of the island and bedecked her with jewels. For two generations the Zaharoffs had ruled their island with an iron hand, until the war had brought the swarming Japanese barbarians. Zaharoff's son had fled with the fortune in jewels, had brought them to the United States, only to have them stolen in a ruthless holdup by the Haggard gang. Haggard had locked the entire family, including their retainers, in the refrigerator to die. Haggard had been caught subsequently, but there had been no survivors of that crime who could identify him. Young Zaharoff had been away at the time. So Haggard had gotten a life sentence for another crime, and no one had ever been sure that it had been the Haggard gang which had perpetrated the Zaharoff atrocity.

Now here was the proof. But Nellie thought bitterly as she lay on the floor of the racing car that she, too, would never live to identify Royce Haggard.

The car swung off the highway and bumped along what must have been a dirt road, then came to a stop. Nellie was lifted out and carried over someone's shoulder into a shack of some sort and dumped on the floor in an inner room. A few minutes later Haggard entered with two men. At a curt order from him, Nellie was roughly lifted and seated in a rickety chair with her arms forced backward over the top, still handcuffed so that she could not move an inch.

Haggard stood over her, puffing a cigarette to glowing life. His eyes were small, veiled, fishlike; his face woodenly expressionless. He got the cigarette glowing and held it before her face. "Your eyes, my dear," he said softly. "They're beautiful eyes. I shall take the left one first." He moved the glowing end closer. "You'll naturally close your eye as the cigarette approaches, my dear. Consequently, it will burn through the eyelid."

Staring up at him, Nellie knew that this was the end. She knew that this man meant exactly what he said. He was going to do the thing that he threatened. He wasn't bluffing. There was nothing to stop him, not even a bit of human feeling. He wanted the Zaharoff treasure and he was going to get it.

Nellie could almost feel the searing agony that would come in a moment when the cigarette end touched her lid. Her eyes were still inflamed by the tear gas. But that had been nothing to this. She felt her knees trembling. She strained every muscle of her lithe body to break free—without avail. She stared in fascination at that glowing tip of fire inching closer with the expressionless face of Royce Haggard behind it.

"We waited five years in jail for this chance," Haggard was saying softly. "We had the Zaharoff treasure cached away and we planned carefully so as not to muff the prison break. We sent Procter—that's your plump friend on the bus—to get the stuff, but he thought he could cross us and make his getaway. You know what happened to him." Haggard's face moved closer with the cigarette. "Do you think we'll let anything stand in the way now? Not even your pretty eyes, my dear!"

In a desperate, frantic effort to gain time, Nellie exclaimed, "But you'll kill me anyway—even if I tell you!"

"That's right, my dear. But at least you'll look beautiful in your coffin. And the pain. It's better to die without pain, believe me."

He moved the cigarette up so close that Nellie involuntarily blinked. She thought her eyelids were being singed.

"Wait!" she gasped.

Haggard did not move the cigarette. "I'm waiting," he said impassively.

"I checked the stuff," Nellie lied swiftly. "In the hotel safe!"

"Ah!" said Haggard. He stood up to his full height, removing the cigarette. "The hotel safe! So simple! And I never thought of it!" He chuckled and spoke to one of the two men who had remained stonily silent throughout the ordeal. "You see, Corbey, how impossible it is to foresee everything? To think of everything? We were looking for clever tricks, and this girl used the simplest one of all. The hotel safe!"

Corbey said glumly, "We can't go for it now. The cops'll be swarming all over the place. By this time the hotel people will know we aren't F.B.I."

"Naturally," said Haggard. "We'll have to wait till just before dawn. We'll take five men. That'll be plenty. There'll be no more than one policeman on guard by then. We shouldn't have any trouble at all with one policeman, eh? And the clerk will be glad to oblige us by opening the safe!"

Corbey grinned. "You bet he will! Just show him the lighted butt!"

Haggard nodded. He turned to Nellie. "Maybe you're Iying. Maybe not. If you've lied about checking the stuff in the hotel safe, you've gained yourself five or six hours. You're welcome to them. But believe me, if the stuff isn't in the safe, you'll wish you hadn't talked at all!"