Coffin Ed went first, overcoat flapping, pistol in his hand. Grave Digger slipped as he was rounding the back of the car and hit the top of the luggage compartment with the butt of his pistol. Coffin Ed wheeled about to find Grave Digger rising from the gutter.

“You’re sending telegrams,” Coffin Ed accused.

“It ain’t my night,” Grave Digger said.

A prowl car rounded the distant corner, siren wide open and red eye blinking.

“Makes no difference now,” Coffin Ed said disgustedly, taking the dimly lit stairs two at a time.

They found a uniformed cop standing beside the door at the head of the staircase with a drawn pistol, another in the shadows of the stairs, leading to the upper floors.

“Where’s the car?” Coffin Ed asked.

“There wasn’t any car,” the cop said.

Grave Digger cursed. “What are you doing here?”

“Lieutenant said to seal up this joint and wait for you.”

“What’s going to stop them from going out the back?”

“Joe and Eddie got the back covered.”

Grave Digger couldn’t hear him over the screaming of the siren down below.

“How’s the back?” he shouted.

“Covered,” the cop shouted back.

“Well, let’s see what gives,” Grave Digger said.

The siren died to a whimper, and. his voice filled the narrow corridor like organ notes.

“Hold it!” a voice cried from below.

Two cops pounded up the stairs like the Russian Army.

“This beats vaudeville,” Coffin Ed said.

The cops came into sight with guns in their fists. They halted at sight of the assemblage, and both turned bright pink.

“We didn’t know anybody was here,” one of them said.

“You were making sure just in case,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger fingered the buzzer beside the door. From inside came the distant sound of a bell ringing.

“These doorbells always sound like they’re miles away,” he said.

The cops looked at him curiously.

No one came to the door.

“Let me shoot the lock off,” a cop said.

“You can’t shoot these locks off,” Grave Digger said. “Look at them; there are more locks on this door than on Fort Knox and there’re more inside.”

“There’s a chance that only one is locked,” Coffin Ed said. “If somebody left here who didn’t have a key—”

“Right,” Grave Digger agreed. “I’m too tired to think.”

A cop raised his eyebrows, but Grave Digger didn’t see it.

“Stand back,” Coffin Ed said.

Everyone backed off to one side.

He backed to the opposite wall, leveled his long-barreled .38 and put four bullets about the Yale snap lock. Sound shattered the front hall windows, and doors down at the back of the hall cracked open an inch. From all directions came the sound of a sudden scurrying like rats deserting a ship.

“Let’s hit it,” Coffin Ed said, coughing slightly from the cordite fumes filling the hall.

The sound of scurrying ceased.

He and Grave Digger hit the door with left shoulders, and reeled into a room.

It was a reception room. Decrepit kitchen chairs flanked opposite walls. A stained, dusty, dark-blue, threadbare carpet covered the floor. In the center, a round table-top seemed to be floating in the air. It was supported by four small steel cables, which, attached to the ceiling, were practically invisible in the dim light. On the table rested a gruesome-looking sepulcher made of dull-gray papier-mâché. Out of this sepulcher was coming the ghost of Jesus Christ.