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followed and the elevator sped upward. Wentworth said, wearily, "I suppose I'll have to put up with these suspicions of yours, Kirk, but I warn you they're wearing hard on my liking for you. After all, friendship is based on mutual respect, and really—"

    "I'll ask you to account for your movements, Dick," Kirkpatrick interrupted sharply, "from seven o'clock tonight onward!"

    "Under the circumstances, perhaps I'd better call my lawyer first," Wentworth snapped, "though I fail to see why I should fall under suspicion for having killed a burglar in my own home! A burglar I tried to capture, and who fired on me twice before I returned a shot!"

    "So that's what happened, is it?" Kirkpatrick asked. His voice was utterly without expression.

    "Would it be asking too much?" Wentworth went on bitterly, "to demand the reason for your presence, since you would hardly bring your secretary and other officers on a friendly call?"

     

    The elevator sighed to a halt, and Kirkpatrick strode out of the cage without reply, jabbed hard at the bell beside Wentworth's door. Wentworth stood idly aside. He had done what he could to delay the police. If Jackson were not ready now, he would have to make a break for it! He peered covertly toward the two men who accompanied Kirkpatrick. Sergeant Reams, the officer in uniform, was not a man who needed orders, otherwise he would not have been Kirkpatrick's bodyguard. He stood by the elevator with a revolver ready in his fist!

    The door of Wentworth's penthouse opened on the safety chain, and through the opening Wentworth saw the dark bearded face and turbaned head of his other confidential servitor, Ram Singh.

    "Open the door," Kirkpatrick ordered brusquely.

    Ram Singh's dark eyes regarded Kirkpatrick impassively. "Pardon, Kirkpatrick sahib ," he said in the deep rumble of his voice, "but do you come in friendship or as the police? If you come as the police . . ."

    Kirkpatrick's anger flushed into his cheekbones, but he checked the angry retort that sprang to his lips. "Confound it, Dick!" he snapped, "there is a reason for these delays!"

    "Quite," Wentworth murmured, and his smooth black eyebrows arched in mockery. "The reason lies in your own anger and impatience, for as the Hindus say . . ." he lapsed into the Hindustani which Ram Singh understood. " If all is well, open the door, my comrade. Otherwise, have trouble with the lock. Which means, Kirk, that the angry man maketh his own impediments."

    "Will you order this stubborn Sikh—" Kirkpatrick began, but cut off as the door swung smoothly open.

    Ram Singh bowed low, and hid the mockery in his dark gaze. "A thousand pardons, Kirkpatrick sahib ," he rumbled. "My turban is in the dust! I did not know that my master accompanied his friend!"

    Kirkpatrick strode past him with an oath, and from inside the apartment, Jackson's voice called out calmly, "You came quickly, sir! The body is in here!"

    Wentworth followed the angry strides of Kirkpatrick across the drawing room toward the arch that gave into the music chamber beyond, and his quick eyes flashed over the chaste simplicity of the furnishings. He smothered an oath. The body was stretched out as he had ordered upon the floor, and there were bullet scars obviously from the gun in the man's hand . . . but Wentworth's eyes were fixed on a number of objects placed about the room. They were cleverly disposed, so that they seemed a part of the furnishings, yet Wentworth knew that they were stolen property!

    On the grand piano, there was an exquisitely carved Ming vase of moonlight jade, and on the mantel a small antique clock of French fame caught glittering lights with the swing of a pendulum encrusted with precious stones! Surely, the Iron Man, or whoever directed the robot's movements, did not stint for money when he planned a frame-up! Those articles had a value in hundreds of thousands, and their possession might well tempt even a Richard Wentworth to robbery!

    Kirkpatrick was