turned quickly as a slight shuffling noise caught his ear, but it was only one of the regular night watchmen making his rounds.
Jud Marks signaled the man and turned back to the window. He lighted a cigarette, smoked half of it leisurely, and suddenly dropped it to the floor, scrubbed it out with the toe of his shoe as his narrowed eyes stared down at the driveway below.
A long, black sedan, its headlights extinguished, was rolling to a stop beside the delivery entrance to the building. But nobody got out of the car immediately.
Marks watched the car a moment longer, then moved away from the window toward the stairway. There was, so far as he knew, no official of the Smithsonian Institute who had stayed in the building after it had been closed up for the night, no person here who would have a car call for him.
He started down to investigate, but flattened abruptly against the wall halfway down the staircase as two shadowy figures darted across the corridor below.
Jud Marks jerked out his gun, ran silently the rest of the way down the stairs, following those two fast-moving, furtive figures. He lost them among the glass cases of stuffed reptiles on exhibition in a room of the west wing.
Out in the big dark main foyer an electric flashlight in the hand of one of the regular night watchmen made a thin, yellowish shaft across the stone floor. A second later the light blinked out, clattered onto the flagging, and there was a quick, stifled moan, then the dull thud of a falling body.
Marks ran back into the foyer, his own torch shooting a shaft of light before him.
In the moving beam the watchman's body was a huddled heap on the floor, and a flow of blood coursed redly from a wound in the unconscious guard's back. The protruding black handle of a knife was visible.
This, the tall F.B.I. operative saw in a sliding glance as his torchlight jerked across and outlined for an instant a black-robed, black-hooded figure running through a doorway into the mineral exhibit room.
Marks bent down over the watchman on the floor, saw that he was dead, then plunged after the hooded killer. And as he swung through the open doorway a human catapult hit him.
A knife blade ripped his coat in a swift downward plunge. He whirled aside, slammed into a wall behind him, snapped on his flashlight to get a target for the automatic in his right hand. The light struck full against a corpse-grey mask covering a face hidden beneath a black, monklike hood. The Federal operative's gun fired low, purposely. The robed murderer would be more valuable alive than dead.
But in the split-second it took to change his aim, the grim target spun aside, leaped at him again with poised knife. Marks' slug chipped the stone wall harmlessly.
Then the killer was on him again, cursing with harsh, rasping oaths. The long-bladed knife slashed at Jud, ripped through his sleeve, burned paralyzingly through the flesh of his warding forearm, knocking the electric torch from his grip.
As the light dropped, its rays for a split-second swept down across two more robed and hooded men crouched over an open glass display case. They were lifting from its bed a silver-colored rough ball-like piece of metal the size of a small goldfish bowl—the meteoric fragment Dr. Hugo Junes had taken a chip from.
The torch cracked out against the stone flooring, blotting off the strange tableau. From somewhere off in the darkness another gun exploded and a scream of agony started and broke off. The powerful arms closed around Jud Marks' body, lifting him into the air.
He fought now like a wild man, his gun hand gripped in the viselike fist of his smothering opponent. The man in that weird hooded garb had the strength of a gorilla. Ju jitsu and judo were useless tricks in this swaying, gasping, silent battle.
Marks kicked back with his heels, tried to dislodge the footing of the man holding him off the floor. The grip about his waist only tightened.
He was vaguely aware of blurred movement across in the darkness. A torch gleamed in the doorway at the rear of the room, advanced toward them. The man he was struggling with shrieked out a curse, called for help.
The next moment a second hooded unknown ripped the gun from Marks' grip, cracked him in the jaw with a driving fist. Jud's senses rocked as the second and third blows crashed against him.
"He's not a watchman," an authoritative, icy voice stated. The torch shone blindingly in Marks, eyes. "Who is he?"
"I'll kill him and find out afterward!" The powerful arms took a fresh grip about the F.B.I. man's body.
Jud felt fingers jabbing into his pockets as the light blinked out. He stopped struggling, breathing hard, waiting for an opportunity to break free. He could feel the sharp point of the long knife against his ribs.
"Federal agent of the Bureau of Investigation," the first voice grated as the flashlight jabbed its beam at the badge that had been taken from Marks' vest pocket.
"All the more reason to use the knife on him," the growled voice of the man pinioning Marks' arm said ruthlessly.
"A damned good reason not to!" the man with the electric torch snapped. "Give him the pencil and we'll take him along. We've got what we want here. The chief wants one of these Federals for questioning. Wants to find out how much the bureau knows about him. Use the pencil on him and toss him in the car. We've got to get out of here!"
"I ain't got one of them pencils with me—"
"You're a damn fool!" The hooded, white-masked face in front of Jud Marks came closer, taking a thick black pencil from his pocket.
Marks' slitted eyes glared fearlessly, helplessly.
The hand holding the pencil thrust it close to Jud's face.
"Have a nice nap, copper!"
"I'll see you in hell!" Marks grated defiantly.
"Well—you'll get there eventually yourself," the black-robed man promised.
A cruel, sadistic chuckle sounded behind the Federal agent. A faintly bluish puff of odorless gas squirted suddenly from the pencil into Marks' face. The F. B. I. man gagged, coughed once, then went limp as unconsciousness swept over him.
"Tape him up and lock him in the luggage trunk on the sedan," the one with the electric flashlight directed as he put away his gas pencil. "Everything else is ready. Hurry up. We've got a long hard trip."
The unconscious Secret Service operative was picked up bodily, carried to the delivery entrance, dropped on the floor while adhesive tape was plastered over his eyes and lips and wrapped around his wrists and ankles.
As he was carried out and crammed into the trunk on the rack at the rear of the car, the rough ball of heavy metal the meteoric fragment taken from the glass case in the ore exhibition room, was being wrapped in a blanket and placed in the bottom of the car. Ten minutes later that long, black sedan was purring across the Potomac River into Virginia where it turned to the right and headed north in the night.
Chapter Six.
Torture Death
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