The Man They Couldn't Arrest

His deep-voiced command rumble through the silent room, but Dain did not move. To the casual eye he was far away in the dream realms of exhausted sleep..

Lyall waited a moment or two and then poke him gently in the ribs with the gun-barrel.

"Valmon Dain----wake up!" he said again, and his voice held something of the relentlessness of the killer in it.

Dain stirred uneasily and mumbled something drowsily. Lyall prodded him again, and he raised his head blinking. He started to yawn and peered round, seeming surprised to find himself in the ferocity of the laboratory lights.

Then his eyes encountered Lyall. He seemed to see him suddenly and with comic unexpectedness. His yawn stopped slowly. For a moment, his puzzlement increased. a deep wrinkle cutting a black furrow across his forehead. Then he relaxed with a smile half sheepish , half amused.

"Oh!, it's you, is it?" he said. "Lord, how you did startle me! And how the D.i.c.kens did you get in?"

"Through the scullery window." Lyall's voice was almost toneless. There was an utter absence of expression in it ; it was as though the flat nothingness on the face of the Sphinx had been transmuted into words.

Dain passed a worried hand across his forehead. He blinked again and looked oddly at Lyall.

"Through the scullery window?" he echoed. "But----but what an odd idea!"

"Was it?" Lyall smiled sourly. "You just keep your hands on the table, Mr. Dain-----or you'll be making a sudden readjustment of all your ideas----odd or otherwise." He indicated the gun with a significant glance of the eyes.

Dain looked at it hard. He appeared to have only just noticed it's presence in Lyall's unwavering hand. It was pointing on a perfect slant, dead with the four-inch square that covered his heart.

"What-----what on earth is the matter?" The words left Dain's lips with a queer little husky tremor. "'Not---not taken leave of your senses, have you?"

Lyall clicked his tongue.

"Better cut all that kind of stuff right out, Dain," he growled.

"Your little game is up. The bigger fool me for not having seen through it before. I'm here to shoot you. I'm going to kill you before I leave this house. one of us goes out of this room feet first-----and that one will be you. That, Mr. Dain, is a blunt statement of fact. On the reckoning, I don't think there is any room for bluff do you?"

Dain sat back stiffly.

"No I don't," he said. They looked into each other's eyes for a nerve pricking moment or two.

"Except this," added Dain, as a sort of precautionary warning. "You will need to study your every action in this room with the greatest care. it has been a lifelong habit of mine never to trade on bluff."

"Oh yes? You're very frank about yourself."

"Why not? it's no use beating about the bush, I was expecting you tonight."

"You were?"

"Of course I was. I knew the exact words you used to Tansy the jeweller. I knew the moment he began talking to you that my game was up so far as you were concerned. I hadn't bargain on being overlooked in a Tube train, which was where the estimable Tansy gleaned his information, I believe?"

Lyall looked at this man through half closed eyes.

"You've got pluck," he said slowly.

"Not pluck, Mr. Lyall, just brains and the confidence of my own knowledge. I am asking you to put that gun down and go home. You haven't one chance in a hundred thousands of killing me. I will even go as far as to say that it is impossible for you to kill me in this room. There are certain safeguards of my own Invention within these four walls that would make any attempt on my life a particularly hazardous adventure."

He pushed the paper off the little tell-tale on the desk.

"There---you see that? That is only one. A contactometer. I knew the moment you arrived outside my door. In that same second, I could have electrocuted you had I wished. The outside of that door is not wood at all. It is a mass of thin steel plates. A pressure of a button, here under my desk----a!-----and the touch of your fingers on that door would have pitch-forked you into eternity. Don't you think you had better forget all about what you were going to do to me and go home?"

"Just keep your hands above that desk, Dain. I'm not the type to be scared by that sort of bosh. Electric doors---pish! I've a few questions I want to put to you. You can answer them or not, according to your taste. but I assure you I shall shoot you like the murderous dog you are at the moment I've got the information i require."

"Let me put it to you from another angle," said Dain imperturbably. Apparently he had not taken the slightest notice of Lyall's last speech. His own thought process proceeded gently along from the point at which it was interrupted. "Your original intention was I believe to first stifle me with a preparation known as Z.H.9. a German war gas produced to its ultimate perfection. You propose to administer it by breaking a capsule of it under my nose and then cracking my skull with something picked up in the room. Your aim was to disguise a coldly premeditated murder by a highly skilled criminal as the act of sudden panic by some twopenny-halfpenny area sneak-thief. That's right?"

Lyall nodded and licked his lips. His eyes were glittering uncannily from behind his darkly lowering brows, and the fingers of his left hand were fidgeting spasmodically with the buttons of his coat.

"I have no doubt," went on Dain calmly, "That Z.H.9 properly applied would be a most effective compound. you have brought capsules of it with you. Three I should think would be sufficient to cause death. However, you jettisoned those plans the moment you looked in through that window. When I---er--dozed off, that window was closed. it is now open four inches. am I right in presuming that your revised plan included getting away through that window, closing it gently behind you and leaving no trace of your visit? I think it highly probable. in that case I would point out to you that you would never have got through that window alive. That window is fitted with a patent adjustment of my own. By that I mean to say that you can open it with every safety, open it as high as you wish, leave it open as long as you wish. But I certainly wouldn't recommend any foolish person trying to get out through it. The moment your weight comes on that sill, that window comes down with a crash and, Mr. Lyall, it keeps on coming down! it's hydraulic works on the jack principle. That frame would cut steadily through a man's body in, say five minutes. not a nice death.'"

"What are you telling me all these for?" asked Lyall jerkily. There was a nasty looking patch of white round his mouth, and his lower lip had begun twitching.

"Simply to persuade you off the utter futility of going forward with your insane intentions regarding me. I assure you that you are in the workshop of a man who lives on brain alone, and whose safety us not dependent on the whim of mere chance. From the moment I first embarked on this campaign against such cultured law breakers as yourself, I have been surrounding myself with an impregnable wall of safety. Do you know that you could not get out of this house after twelve o'clock either by foot or by window without setting thirty-six bells into violent commotion? and eight of them would be outside. and there are always police in this road. You got in before midnight. You were lucky. you think I am trying to frighten you off. I am not. shoot by all means. that gun is loaded, and I assure you it functions with amazing precision. I am simply appealing to yiur own common sense. aren't you convinced?"

"No!" said Lyall thickly. "Either you'll answer my questions or I'll shoot. you've got just one minute of life left to you."

Dain regarded the other coldly and critically much as might a vivisectionist when scalpel in hand. he looks to see if his subject is in every way ready for the experiment.

"Lyall, you're more of a fool than I took you for," he said with just a touch of asperity. "Do you honestly think after all I've told you, you could kill me?"

"Just by pulling at this trigger!" said Lyall grimly.

"But you couldn't get out of this house alive!" returned Dain patiently remonstrative. "Surely you're not such a lunatic as to put your own head into a noose. it passes my comprehension that a man such as you, cultured, intellectual with an undoubted taste for the finer things of life, should stoop to such depths of infamy as you have done. Quite apart from murderous intentions towards me, I-----"