Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Issue 01 (1936-01).djvu/54

32 Keane only looked at him. And at something in his stare, though the detective did not know him from Adam, he wilted a little.

"Stick out your hands while I handcuff you," he tried to bluster.

Then the manager of the building ran in.

"Did you get him?" he called to the detective. "Was he in here?" He saw the man the detective proposed to handcuff. "Keane! What has happened?"

"Doctor Satan has escaped," said Keane. "That’s what has happened. I had him"—he held his hand out and slowly closed it—"like that! Then these well-intentioned blunderers broke in, and"

His voice broke. His shoulders sagged. He stared at the door through which the red-robed figure had gone. Then his body straightened and his eyes grew calm again—though they were bleak with a weariness going far beyond physical fatigue.

"Gone," he said, more to himself than to anyone in the red-lit room. "But I'll find him again. And next time I’ll fight him in some place where no outside interference can save him."