The absurd grilling — absurd to Nellie and Mac, at least — went on for an hour. Then they were returned to their cells, each with a pair of nickel-steel bracelets on.
The cells were adjoining — there were only four cells in the place — so they could talk if they each stood close to the cell door.
“This is it!” Nellie said suddenly.
“This is what?” snapped Mac, sore at the crazy twist that had thrown them into the local jail.
“The trap,” said Nellie.
“Huh?”
“This arrest — this jail.
Mac still didn’t get her and said so.
“The explosive at gate and door were all very well,” Nellie said. “If we got killed by either of them, fine. Lila Morel and one of The Avenger’s aides were out of the way. That’s the way the gang figured it. But if we escaped the explosive, then this was the real trap. This arrest for the murder of Morel.”
“That doesn’t make sense. There’s nothin’ to worry about here.”
“I wonder,” said Nellie.
“But look! There isn’t a chance of proving we’re murderers. We’ll be out of here by morning, with Muster Benson’s help. The worst that can happen is a night in a cell.”
Nellie was shaking her blond head, though Mac couldn’t see that; he could only hear her.
“This is the trap, I tell you,” she repeated. “I’ve got a hunch on it.”
The sheriff and a deputy came in, then.
The four cells were on one side, and taking up the other half of the front of the building was the sheriff’s office, a desk and chair in otherwise vacant space.
“You take over for the night, Lem,” said the sheriff. “This jail ain’t as modern as some. These two are slick customers and might just think of a way out. So you’ll stand guard in here till morning. Here’re the keys.”
“O K,” said the deputy, a burly youth with a grin.
The sheriff went out; the deputy grinned at his two prisoners and sat down in the chair.
There was silence. The deputy looked sleepy and closed his eyes for a minute. It was getting on toward midnight. And then it happened!
It didn’t seem like much at first.
A rat nosed in from somewhere in the rear, and scuttled toward the deputy’s chair. The first thing Mac and Nellie noticed, looking through the bars of their doors, was that the rat was singularly fearless. It ran right up to the chair.
Then they both held their breaths as the rodent circled the chair once.
He jumped to his feet. The rat’s teeth had viciously slashed at his ankle.
The deputy roared with anger and pain and snapped out his gun. The youngster was a good shot. The revolver lanced flame, and the rat became a kind of fringe of red flesh.
But then two more rats scuttled in, and then a dozen, and then—
“Mac!”
There were, seemingly, hundreds of rats. They swarmed up the now horrified deputy’s body and seeped into the cells between the bars.
The deputy was yelling and shooting. And Mac and Nellie were kicking frantically at the crazed rodents. They’d had the presence of mind to leap to the windows, which were set high in the walls, and jump up and catch the bars.
They hung there with their feet drawn up a yard from the floor. But rats can climb a seemingly impossible steep wall; so they were kept busy kicking.
The deputy hadn’t thought to do any such thing. And now he couldn’t. He lunged blindly around the room, like a person whose clothes are in flames and hasn’t wit enough to lie down and roll.
And then the man was down, and it was frightful! Mac and Nellie shuddered as the squeaking, slashing mass waved over him.
This was something out of an inferno! An attack by rats! There were many such attacks on record, but always the rodents had been maddened by starvation into attacking humans.
And these rats weren’t starving. They were fat and healthy-looking.
Mac had finally gotten something out of an inner pocket. Fortunately for the sheriffs deputy, the sheriff hadn’t found the thing when he searched Mac.
It was a little glass gas bomb, about the size of a plum.
“Watch it, Nellie!” Mac yelled.
Then he threw the little bomb between the bars of the cell door and into the space beyond.
It plopped on the floor and a pale-greenish cloud spread instantly. And almost as instantly, the rats began dropping like flies sprayed with insecticide.
The gas was not a death-dealer. It produced deep unconsciousness. That is, it did to humans. Whether it would produce death to smaller animals, Mac didn’t know. He hoped it would.
The luckless deputy, a dreadful sight but at least still alive, lay in grateful unconsciousness. The gas had spread to the cells, now, and the rats in there were out of it, too.
Mac took another instrument from an inside pocket. It was a small clip with a kind of tiny sponge at the curve of it.
“Nellie!” said Mac, at the door, exhaling as he called so that he wouldn’t get any of the gas.
