From then on it was a losing battle for the Scorpion forces. The tear gas, now filling the entire room, effectively blinded everyone but the masked raiders. One after another the furious councilmen gave up the struggle to nurse their swollen eyes.

Don Winslow sensed the turn of the tide. Turning back, he leaped onto the stage which was still clear of the fumes, and raised his mask.

“Give up, you dupes of Scorpia!” he shouted. “All those who have had enough, come this way!”

There was an instant rush toward the platform. With streaming, smarting eyes, the men and women of Cho-San’s erstwhile audience fought their way toward the sound of Don’s voice, glad to surrender. The only ones who stayed back were the twenty or more who had run into a hard-swung gun butt, and lay snoring where they had dropped.

Of Hammond’s deputies, however, ten men were wounded by knives or bullets, and three had given their lives. Don Winslow and Red each bled from knife slashes received in the melee. The old lion, Michael Splendor, had taken a bullet through the throat, but he still lived by a miracle. Mercedes, with Lotus’ help, had just finished bandaging the veteran’s wound when Don located them back stage. Count Borg lay near by, conscious but unable to rise.

The problem now was to evacuate safely both walking persons and wounded. Don himself had just turned back to take charge when the little French maid, Suzette, appeared suddenly out of the shadows.

“Come with me, Monsieur,—you and two others!” she cried, seizing the young Commander’s arm. “I have locate Cho-San and Scorpion himself in their secret chamber. They are prepare now the getaway with their treasure and secret papers. In a few moments they will be gone!”

Red Pennington and Mercedes were near enough to overhear. Their response was instantaneous.

“We’re with you, Don!” they said, almost together.

From the other side of the platform a big man was approaching, his tommy-gun held across an arm. As the newcomer raised his gas mask, Don hailed him.

“Hammond! Take charge of clearing out prisoners and wounded!” he ordered. “Get Mr. Splendor out first. We’ll see you topside.”

Before the Bureau Chief could answer Don turned, heading into the stage wing at Suzette’s heels. Mercedes and Red followed, stowing away their gas masks as they ran. If more fighting were ahead of them, they would need free hands and clear eyesight.

Suzette led them through a rapid succession of passageways and sliding panels, without stopping for explanations. Not until all four of them had crowded into a tiny elevator and shut the door, did she answer any of the questions in the others’ minds.

“We are now descending to the basement of Cho-San’s big house,” she whispered. “This is the way he escaped a few minutes ago. I guess where he have gone, and follow him by a roundabout way. I listen and hear him talk with the Scorpion in the secret chamber. Now if we are quick....”

The elevator stopped with scarcely a bump. As the door slid open, Don stepped out, his rifle at the ready. The others piled out after him, into a large, magnificently furnished room.

“This is the Scorpion’s study,” hissed Suzette. “The hidden chamber is beyond that tall mirror. Come, and keep your weapons ready.”

Once across the big room, the Frenchwoman motioned the others to take up positions on each side of the long cheval glass. The moment they had done so, she pressed a hidden spring.

Without a sound the mirror tilted outward from the top to show a small, lighted room beyond. A glimpse of two men in overcoats standing beside an open safe was enough for Don. His rifle swung up to cover them, just as the door mechanism stopped halfway open with a click.

At the sound both men spun around, their hands too full to reach for a weapon. Cho-San’s right arm held a bundle of black bound ledgers, his left hand a heavy satchel. His leer of fury was devilish. The other man’s face was masked by a purple cloth. Beneath the sleeves of the black overcoat, his gloved hands gripped a pair of suitcases.

For ten seconds the tableau held, in an atmosphere charged with menace. Strangely enough, it was Suzette’s half sobbing cry that broke the tension.

“HÉlas, Monsieur!” wailed the little Frenchwoman. “I cannot make the door open more!”

“Never mind, Suzette,” came Don’s calm reply. “I’ve got the Scorpion covered. Cho-San, if you can lower that door from the inside, better do it and give up peaceably. You can’t dodge the rifle Pennington has aimed at you.”

“Very well, Winslow,” the big Chinese growled, letting fall his armful of ledgers. “I’ll have to use a key to release the mechanism.”

Coolly Cho-San slipped a hand into his overcoat pocket. As he withdrew it, Don caught the light of a small, shiny object. Without warning it flicked from the yellow fingers, straight toward the half-open door.

Smoke puffed in a sudden cloud, obscuring the whole opening. From behind it came a harsh mocking laugh.

Before the sound died out, Don Winslow slammed his rifle barrel into the crack of the closing mirror, jamming its machinery. At the same time there came the clang of a steel door somewhere inside the secret room.

“They’re gone!” yelped Red Pennington. “Quick, Suzette! Which way can we follow ’em?”

“Back! Get back, Monsieur!” cried the little French maid, tugging at his sleeve. “That smoke is deadly poison. Quick, everyone—put on the gas masks and come away!”

“She’s right, Red!” clipped Don Winslow, whipping out his own mask. “Clear out of here before something worse happens! I’ll be with you as soon as I get my gun loose.”

The smoke had spread out some distance from the jammed doorway, making objects near it indistinct. As his friends moved back, Don Winslow plunged straight into it. For a few moments his figure vanished completely.

Just as Red was about to go back for him he reappeared, carrying not only his rifle but a bundle of black leather-covered books. Without lifting his mask, he motioned the others on, away from the spreading smoke.

For Suzette, their retreat was barely in time. Unprotected by a gas mask, the courageous French girl had refused to leave the room before Don appeared. Now, reeling from a slight dose of the poison, she led them through a panel in the farther wall.

In the clean air of an adjoining room she motioned her companions to remove their masks.

“It is over now, my friends,” she said faintly, as Red steadied her in the grip of a muscular arm. “We have lost the Scorpion and his so evil lieutenant, but we have failed in nothing else, I think. Thanks to Commander Winslow, we have the evidence which will convict many of our enemies of their hidden crimes!”

Following her eloquent look, Mercedes let out a muffled cry.

“So that’s what you went back for, Don?” she gasped. “You—you went into that gas filled room just for those black ledgers? Oh, why did you do it?”

“Cho-San seemed to value them, and I knew he couldn’t have stopped to pick them up,” the young commander answered. “If they do contain the evidence Suzette claims, they’re worth a bigger risk than I took. And, speaking of risks, we’re none of us out of here yet. For all we know the next room to this may be filled with hachet men waiting to jump us.”

“Mais non,” cried Suzette, catching Mercedes’ startled look. “I think Cho-San sent all the hachet men and bodyguards ahead to help them with their getaway. When they leave that secret chamber, they go by some other passage to the outside. No doubt the cars were waiting to take them and their men. Jus’ now this house is safe as any church.”

Mercedes Colby slipped an arm around the little maid’s waist.

“Perhaps you’re right, Suzette,” she smiled, “but even that doesn’t make me anxious to stay here. Lean your weight on me and let’s get going. Fresh air is what we need more than anything, except news from our friends.”

The news that reached them at the local Intelligence Office was better than Don Winslow or any of his three companions had dared to expect. The bullet which had passed through Michael Splendor’s throat had missed the large blood vessels, though coming dangerously near to the spinal cord. The doctors’ first report gave him more than a fighting chance to live.

Count Borg’s wrenched limbs would be useless for the next month, but his agony on the rack had somehow torn the veil obscuring his memory. His first words on regaining consciousness had been an anxious question about Lotus. The girl herself was at the same hospital, suffering from shock, but happier than she had been in her life before.

Red Pennington refused point-blank to be doctored at the hospital. He insisted that Don with a first aid kit could fix up his torn thumbs and bruised head as well as any sawbones. He’d go to the hospital next day, he declared, but as a visitor, not a patient.

Actually it was two days before the doctors permitted the two young officers and Mercedes Colby to visit the crippled veteran. By that time the danger of wound fever was past, and the “Old Lion” of the Navy Intelligence Service was loudly demanding a sight of his friends.

“Ahoy, Commander!” he greeted, as Don stepped into the white hospital room. “They showed me your note about the evidence in those black ledger books. Is it true that it clinches the guilt of all them we took in the raid?”

“It does more than that, sir!” smiled Don, taking the older man’s hand. “But I’m not going to tell you another thing till you calm down and quit trying to sit up. A man with a bullet hole in his vertebrae ...”

“Whisht, now!” complained the dauntless cripple. “Is that a respectful way to talk to your elders? Mercedes, child! Tell me what’s on Commander Winslow’s mind. Suspense is not good for a sick man, ye know that!”

“Lie down and I’ll tell you!” laughed the girl, taking the chair Red had moved over to the bedside. “It’s just that those ledgers contain a record of every order carried out by Scorpion agents in the past two years. The evidence incriminates hundreds more besides those we captured two nights ago.”

“Yeah!” put in Red Pennington with a fighting grin. “With this evidence as a weapon, the United States Navy is going to make a thorough clean-up on the Scorpion! Am I right, Skipper?”

“I hope so, Red!” replied Don Winslow soberly. “At least we’ll make the Americas and their two oceans an unlucky harbor for the enemies of peace. With the aid of all our loyal shipmates, not forgetting Suzette and Count Borg and Lotus, too, we’ll work, we’ll live, and if need be we’ll die to make this old world a better place!”

“Amen!” responded Michael Splendor from his sickbed. “Already ye have the Scorpion and his warmongers on the run, but perilous waters lie before ye. Commander. The enemy is desperate. He’ll use every fiendish trick to wreck ye, and there’ll be a bitter fight when ye overhaul him—perhaps in some far corner of the earth. Me one regret is that I must lie here safe and helpless for the next two months while me young shipmates are riskin’ their necks on land or sea or in the air!”

Impulsively Don gripped Splendor’s big hand with both his own.

“You old fire-eater!” he exclaimed. “You’ll be back with us inside of two months, if my guess is right! Not even a bullet nicked spine is going to keep you out of our country’s fight to wipe war—and the threat of war—from the face of the earth.”

“May your words come true!” replied the crippled veteran earnestly. “And may victory crown your every venture, Don Winslow of the Navy!”

Watch for the next Don Winslow story!