ices outside now. The burp gun had brought the
hotel people. In a moment there was a hammering on the door.

Bradley walked to the window. "You can let them in after I've gone. Any
questions? Quickly!"

"What's the Nansen bottle for?" Zircon demanded.

"I don't know. I only know that Long Shadow bought five of them."
Bradley threw a leg over the window sill and grinned at them. "Leave me
out of any story you tell. I need a free hand for the next few days. And
the less the police know about me the better for all of us." He
hesitated as the pounding on the door grew louder, then a key grated in
the lock. "I can tell you this," he said softly. "You can forget about
an industrial plant. This is something else we're up against."

Then he was gone.

"Open the door," Zircon said. For the first time, Rick saw that the big
scientist gripped his right arm just below the elbow, a red, sodden
handkerchief balled in his left hand.

"You're wounded!" He jumped to the scientist's side.

"A scratch," Zircon said. "But it saved our lives. Tell you about it
later. Open up, Scotty."

Scotty threw the door open and the English night clerk, three Chinese
policemen, and half a dozen coolies piled in.

"What's going on here?" the clerk demanded. "What happened?"

"Nothing serious," Zircon said calmly. "There was evidently a bandit in
our room. We opened the door and he fired with his submachine gun. Then,
when he saw he hadn't killed us, he fled."

It wasn't a very convincing story. Rick saw suspicion in the faces of
the hotel people. He threw in his nickel's worth. "What kept you so
long? We've been trying to phone." He had a hunch the switchboard coolie
was one of those in the room. Probably everyone on duty had raced up.

"We heard nothing downstairs," the night clerk said. "The floor coolie
came down to get us. He took his time about it. Why was your door
locked?"

Zircon tried hard to look sheepish. "I guess we must have bolted it in
the confusion. Then, when you knocked, we tried to open it. It was a few
seconds before we realized the bolt had been thrown and the door
couldn't be opened unless the bolt was withdrawn. And the confounded
thing stuck."

"Why didn't you yell?" one of the policemen demanded.

"Possibly you were yelling so loud yourselves you didn't hear us,"
Zircon said mildly. "You were making considerable noise."

The clerk frowned. "The manager will have to hear about this," he
stated. "I doubt that he