Yet while Krausman seemed to be basking in the security of his own wealth, his impassiveness was a mere pose. Every nerve fiber within his body tingled in anticipation of action. His heart throbbed with slow, steady strokes; his mighty brain dwelt upon but one problem—a problem only remotely related to the jewelry business.
Through the glass window of his office door, he watched a pleasant-faced, redheaded man who was trying, clumsily enough, to sell a fine jade bracelet to a strange, dark-complexioned man with a pinpoint moustache and a long, stringy goatee. The dark man was famous throughout the city. He was Dr. Jules Planchard, a skilled plastic surgeon. Other clerks, more experienced, looked askance at the redheaded man. Obviously, the snap judgment of Krausman had failed for once. The redhead was certainly no salesman. Would he allow so valuable a customer as Jules Planchard to go out empty handed?
Planchard, however, seemed to have made up his mind as to what he wanted. He glanced at his wristwatch, waved toward the jade bracelet and ordered the redhead to wrap it up. He paid for the bracelet, thrust it into his pocket and left the store.
The redheaded clerk turned his attention to a pretty young girl who had just asked to look at wristwatches. In the office, Peter Krausman chuckled grimly. The redhead was much less interested in his attractive customer than he was in keeping half an eye on the front door.
Suddenly, the humor vanished from the swarthy face of Peter Krausman. He was watching the right hand of the redheaded clerk. It had been resting on the glass top of the counter. Suddenly, it snapped upward, and drummed twice on the counter. Krausman sprang to his feet, started toward the door of the office. Beyond, he could see the flashing body of a beautifully appointed sedan that had come to a stop in front of the store. The redheaded clerk shot a glance at the office, seized the young woman who had been contemplating the purchase of a wristwatch. In spite of her vehement protestations, he pushed her back behind the counter, and through a small door in the wall.
A fellow clerk, inclined toward gallantry, stepped in front of the redhead. The redheaded man gave the intruder a vigorous push.
“Watch your step, everybody!” his voice rang out imperatively. “It’s a stickup!”
At the same moment that Peter Krausman catapulted through the door of his office, four men barged through the front door. They were men whose right hands were thrust deeply into coat pockets that failed entirely to disguise the shape of the automatics that they held. They were men whose unmasked faces were sharp with ratlike cunning. Deathly pallid faces they were, faces out of the past, faces of men who had figured prominently in old police records until death had chalked them from the list of public enemies.
Even the alert mind of Krausman who had been prepared for something of the sort, was for a moment stunned by the appearance of these gunmen. He recognized them to a man. Every one a hardened criminal, but every face the face of a corpse.
“Everybody back against the wall,” the raucous voice of the foremost member of the gang commanded. By the livid welt on his left cheek, Krausman recognized him as “Scar” Fassler, a criminal who five years ago had been pronounced dead by the prison officials who had removed his body from the electric chair.
* * * *
Outside the store, a police whistle sounded. A stalwart, blue-coated figure sprang through the door. Scar Fassler wheeled about. His automatic nosed from his pocket. The policeman dared not fire, for the scar-faced gunman had taken a strategic position directly in front of the group of clerks which the gunman had herded back against the wall. He had the policeman entirely at his mercy, and for a moment he paused, enjoying his advantage.
Suddenly, Krausman, who had been covered by criminal guns as soon as he entered the room, displayed remarkable courage and agility. He sprang straight toward the gunman who threatened him. The gun in the criminal’s pocket coughed, but Krausman was unchecked. His gnarled right fist drove straight into the face of the surprised criminal. The blow fairly lifted the man from his feet, but even before he had struck the floor, Krausman had hurled himself upon Scar Fassler. Fassler sent one hurried shot at the policeman in the doorway, turned, and fired point-blank at Krausman.
The shot struck Krausman, and for an instant he tottered. But it was only a ruse. In seeming to fall forward, Krausman’s legs shot out like two springs of steel, launching him in a flying tackle. His broad shoulder struck Fassler’s knees. The corpse-faced gunman tried to spring backward out of the way of Krausman’s clawing fingers. But the jeweler seized Fassler by the ankle.
The gunman crashed to the floor, twisted over, and kicked Krausman in the head with his hard left shoe. For a moment the hold on the gunman’s ankle relaxed. Fassler sprang to his feet with an oath. His gun swung around, this time aimed at the jeweler’s head.
Though on the floor, groggy from Fassler’s cruel kick, Krausman must have realized the peril of his position. The two shots that had already stuck him had been rendered ineffectual by the bulletproof vest he wore. Fassler knew this. This time, he would shoot for the jeweler’s head.
A shot rang out. But it was not from Fassler’s gun. Krausman’s redheaded clerk, who had been engaged in a hand to hand conflict with one of the mobsters, had discovered his employer’s peril. The redhead had suddenly drawn a gun from his pocket, and tried a snap shot that struck the barrel of Fassler’s automatic. The gun was knocked from the mobster’s hand. Deprived of his weapon, Scar Fassler’s small piggish eyes filled with terror.
“It’s a trap, boys!” he shouted. He sprang toward the redhead whose well-placed shot had saved Krausman’s life. Fassler’s was the courage of a cornered rat. He ignored the sudden threatening forward thrust of the redhead’s gun.
“No, Jim! Don’t shoot!”
It was Mr. Krausman who had shouted this warning to the redheaded man. Krausman knew that panic possessed Fassler, that the mere sight of a gun would not halt him. But he must be taken alive, if a man who had died in the electric chair could ever again be called alive.
The redhead heard his employer’s warning, and held his fire. Fassler swung with his left, a long fast blow that the redhead failed to duck. The man called Jim staggered back against a counter. Krausman had pulled himself to his feet, and was coming toward Fassler with a gun in his hand. Fassler shot a glance toward the door. His companions had beat a hasty retreat as soon as he had uttered his warning. Instead of making toward the front door as Krausman evidently expected him to, the scar-faced gunman sprang back toward the office.
Krausman had recovered his agility. He ran in the same direction that Fassler had taken. The criminal sprang through the door of the office, slammed it, and twisted the key in the lock. Krausman backstepped, hunched his shoulder, and drove like a battering-ram at the door. Tenons of the door squawled apart under the power behind Krausman’s heavy shoulder, but the door held. Krausman’s right shoe came up in a kick that shattered the door glass. Disregarding the cutting fragments of glass that still adhered to the frame, Krausman straddled the frame and in another moment was in the office.
But a second door had opened and closed behind Fassler—the door into Mr. Krausman’s shower and lavatory. Krausman believed that Fassler was trapped. A heave from his powerful shoulder burst open the bolt of the door. The door sprang open, and Krausman, gun in hand, stood in the room, looking bewilderedly about him.
Fassler, the scar-faced gunman, who for five years had been officially dead, had apparently vanished like a ghost.
His swarthy brow deeply furrowed, Krausman stared about the room. He walked over and opened the frosted glass door of the shower. Empty. He turned to a small linen-closet and opened it. Again he had drawn blank. But no—What was that square of blackness at one end of the closet? Krausman took a small fountain-pen flashlight from his pocket and switched on its needlelike ray. The light showed a large square hole that had been cut in the wall. It revealed the water pipes that led to the shower bath. Had this hole been left open in order to make the shower pipes accessible for repairs?
The alert mind behind the swarthy face of Peter Krausman had suggested a double purpose in this opening. He reached out his hand and touched the pipes