Sheriff Starkey interrupted: “This is no time for games, Quade. A murder has been committed here and there’s work to be done.”
“Quite so,” said Quade. “Well, what about the paper-knife?”
The sheriff turned to his deputy. “Lou, run upstairs and bring down that knife with which Walter Olcott was killed.”
The big deputy’s eyes rolled as he left the room. Quade heard him take the stairs two at a time. He was in the upper corridor less than a half-minute, then came tearing down the stairs.
He brought the knife into the room, holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. The sheriff took it from him and held it aloft. “This paper-knife belonged to someone in this room, didn’t it?”
“It’s mine,” said Martha Olcott.
Her father gasped. “Martha!”
“There’s no point in denying it,” said Martha. “It’s from that desk set you got me for my birthday two years ago. The shears to match are in my desk right now. But this—haven’t seen it for a couple of days.”
“It’s yours, though, you’re sure of that?” persisted the sheriff.
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t prove a thing,” cut in Lynn Crosby. “Any of the servants here could have taken it from Martha’s room. Or, for that matter, anyone else here.”
“As a matter of fact,” cut in Clarence Olcott, “I saw that paper-knife on the hall table only this morning.”
Allison, the butler, cleared his throat. “Beg pardon, but Mr. Clarence is right. I found it in this room and meant to take it back to Miss Martha’s room. Then the mail came and I used it to open some of the house mail. I’m sorry; I forgot all about it after that.”
“And no finger prints on it,” murmured Quade. “There goes your only clue, Sheriff.”
“Perhaps,” said the sheriff sarcastically, “you could conduct this investigation better.”
“Yes, I believe I could.”
The sheriff showed his teeth. “And just what would you do?”
“Well, first of all, I’d establish a motive for the killing. There’s always a motive for murder, you know. Usually it’s for financial gain, although sometimes it’s for jealousy or hate. Establish your motive and you may point the finger at the murderer.”
The glare went out of Starkey’s eyes. “I was about to start along those lines…. Mr. Olcott, you said upstairs that your brother was a very wealthy man.”
“Arturo can tell you more about that,” said Olcott Senior.
“Quite so,” said the swarthy dandy. “I was associated with Mr. Walter Olcott for eight years. He was, in my country, a very important man and, I am happy to say, one of the wealthiest men in Argentina.”
“How wealthy?” asked Starkey.
Nogales shrugged. “How wealthy is a man who owns two million acres of land, more than a hundred thousand cattle, several mines, a few factories and a railroad or two?”
Sheriff Starkey looked intently at Ferdinand Olcott. “Mr. Olcott,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual. “Do you happen to know to whom your brother was leaving his money?”
“Of course I don’t,” snapped the old man. “My brother was here on a brief visit. He was a comparatively young man. No reason at all for me to ask him about his will. I’m not exactly a pauper myself, you know.”
The sheriff was thwarted on that line of questioning. But he persisted for another hour. He even summoned all the servants and put them through a verbal third degree. He learned nothing.
The schizophrenic looked at the people in the room around him. He saw in their faces doubt of one another … and fear. And it filled him with gloating. “They’re afraid of me; they don’t know which one of them I’ll kill next.”
But then he looked at Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and he was not so sure of himself. “He’s the most dangerous man here. He has brains! He is almost as smart as I am. Almost! Well, if he guesses too much I’ll give him what I gave Walter Olcott!”
The sheriff declared that he and Deputy Higginbotham would remain down in the living room for the night. He advised the others to go to sleep.
Quade was shown to the room directly opposite the one in which lay the dead body of Walter Olcott. He grimaced as he looked at the closed door. “I’m the one who wasn’t afraid of dead ones,” he reminded himself.
After locking his bedroom door, Quade threw himself on the bed and smoked a cigarette. He was tired, but the monotonous patter of the rain on the window kept him awake. That, and thinking about the events of the evening. Somewhere in this house was a murderer and Quade had an uneasy feeling that he was not yet through.
The knowledge that a flood had cut the island off from the rest of the world, that the people on the island could not escape, could not appeal for help from the outside, would give the murderer a feeling of security. The killer had plenty of time to figure things out.
Quade dozed after a while. Something woke him. Voices. Loud voices; some of them outside the house and a bellowing one inside, downstairs. Quade stepped quickly to the window and raised the lower half. Rain beat in on him.
He saw moving figures down in the gloom and then a light went on downstairs and shed its rays out into the yard. Quade gasped. The yard was full of water!
The figures were servants, splashing in the water to the main house which was on higher ground.
Quade unlocked the door of his room and stepped out into the hallway. He almost collided with Martha Olcott, clad in a dressing gown.
“Something’s happened!” Martha Olcott cried out when she saw Quade.
He nodded. “The servants are coming to the house. The water’s risen and driven them out of their place.”
“Do you think,” Martha asked, “the water’ll come—here?”
Quade shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the topography of this country in the day time. But the way it’s been raining and the condition of the river and all, I’m afraid …”
While they talked, they descended the stairs. The servants, dripping from the rain and their wading, were streaming into the house. Sheriff Starkey and Higginbotham were dashing about.
Inside of a minute everyone on the island was gathered in the big living room. The place was a bedlam of noise. A couple of the maids were wailing and the men were chattering excitedly.
In the midst of it all, Oliver Quade sniffed the close air in the room and a sudden chill struck at his vitals. He edged away and stepped out into the kitchen.
Black smoke was puffing through the cracks of a door. Quade sprang to the door, tore it open and a huge cloud of smoke gushed out into his face. He retreated before it, then advanced again and looked through the smoke, down the staircase, into the cellar.
Flames flickered through the black smoke. Quade sprang back into the living room. “The place is on fire!” he announced.
Pandemonium broke loose. Everyone yelled and cried out at the same time and for a moment people rushed about bumping and jostling one another. Then Quade took command of the situation. “The fire’s beyond control. The best thing we can do is get out of the house.”
Smoke was coming into the living room now. With it came the roar and crackle of flames. “We’ve got to fight the fire!” thundered Lynn Crosby. He dashed toward the kitchen. Arturo Nogales and Sheriff Starkey dashed after him.
“It’s no use,” said Quade. “A couple of hundred gallons of oil have been spilled down there. That’s what makes the smoke so black. And you can smell the oil. Let’s get out.”
There was a sudden explosion in the cellar and the men from the kitchen came reeling back. “It’s too late!” cried Sheriff Starkey. “The house is a goner!”
Then there was a stampede for the doors. By the time they got outside, flames were shooting through the windows of the kitchen.
“Where can we go?” someo
ne cried in the semidark.
“The other house,” directed Quade. “The floors will be wet but it’s the best there is!”
There were two feet of water on the main floor of the servants’ quarters. Only half of the handful of survivors on Olcott’s Island were in the servants’ house when the electric light went out. Ferdinand Olcott cried out in agony: “That was the light plant. Now what?”
Now what, indeed! The water was rising. The big house was burning. The servants’ quarters weren’t much protection. The water was swirling around in it.
Quade stood by a window watching the roaring holocaust that had been the Olcott mansion. In the room behind him, people were talking, some sobbing, some whimpering. All were restless and afraid.
Then the small-town sheriff, Starkey, voiced the thing that had been in Oliver Quade’s mind the past ten minutes and which he hadn’t wanted to express aloud.
“That fire seemed to me as if someone’d set it,” the sheriff said. “It makes a crematory for the dead one. A regular funeral pyre. If the flood hadn’t wakened the servants, it would have been one for us all.”
Then there was near panic. It took the combined efforts of Oliver Quade, Lynn Crosby, Arturo Nogales and Ferdinand Olcott to soothe the others. And by that time the water had risen two inches. A creak and groan of straining timbers suddenly shook the house.
“I think,” Quade suggested then, “we had better leave this house.”
“Leave the house!” cried Clarence Olcott. “Why, it’s raining cats and dogs outside.”
There was a terrific wrench and the house joggled heavily. “The foundations are going,” said Quade. “The water’s loosened them. In a few minutes this house will wash away.”
Again there was a mad rush for the door and again the servants and family charged out into the torrent of water.
The big Olcott mansion was a glowing skeleton of fire. Quade sloshed ahead of the others, the water above his knees. He circled the house to the right, found himself going up. “The ground’s higher back here,” he called out.
“Of course it is!” cried Ferdinand Olcott. “There’s a ridge behind the house. Ten feet or more. We’ll be safe there. It’ll never reach that high.”
Quade wasn’t so sure of that, but he led the way to the ridge. And there they huddled, thirteen wet, cold, and miserable people.
One of them was a murderer.
“I burned the house down,” the schizophrenic said to himself. “I’m going to die … but it’s fun watching these weaklings. They’ll die a thousand deaths each. They’re afraid to die.”
He was afraid, too, but his egotism refused to admit the fear.
It was a nightmare, there on the promontory behind the ruined house. The fire sputtered and hissed for several hours. It gave some light and a small amount of heat to those crouching on the wet ground. It was a blessing to them; without it, some of them would have gone into hysterics. Some of the women folk were already near it.
The butler and a couple of the maids knelt on the wet ground and prayed. None of the others joined, but neither did they scoff. And perhaps they would join in the praying when the water rose higher.
Quade sat on the muddy side of the promontory. Twice in three hours he moved higher as the water came up and licked at his feet. Around midnight he gave his coat to Martha Olcott.
“Thanks!” she shivered. Lynn Crosby scowled for not having thought of the chivalrous gesture himself. He came down and sat beside Quade then.
“How high do you think the water’ll get?” he asked.
“It can’t go much higher,” Quade replied. “Wouldn’t have come this high if the dam hadn’t gone out. The water doesn’t worry me.”
“What does?”
“Exposure. Everybody soaked to the skin, sitting on this wet ground. All of us will have colds by morning and some—worse. We can’t stay here like this. Not long.”
“But we can’t leave. I know this island. The river’ll be a quarter-mile wide and too strong to swim. I’d try it now if I thought it’d be any use.”
“You couldn’t swim fifty feet in it,” said Quade. “There’s got to be some other way.”
“Maybe we can build a raft?” suggested Crosby eagerly.
“We’ll see when morning comes … There goes the servants’ house!”
It went with a violent wrenching and screeching. The rush of water tore it bodily from its moorings, swept it to the burning mansion and then carried it down into the valley below, turning it over and over like a toy.
It was the longest night anyone had ever gone through. No one slept. When the black sky turned to gray Quade waded down in the water, closer to the smoldering ruins of the mansion.
He found a branch of a tree and poked around for a while. Deputy Higginbotham joined him. His teeth chattered. “Gawd, if I only had a stiff drink of gin,” he muttered. “The water’s got into my bones.”
“A drink or two apiece wouldn’t hurt any of us,” said Quade. He continued poking in the debris.
Sheriff Starkey joined them, cursing under his breath. “Who’s your idea of the killer?” he asked.
“There are things more important right now than arresting a murderer.”
“You mean you know who the killer is?” exclaimed the sheriff.
“Of course,” replied Quade. “I knew last night after he set fire to the house.”
“Who is it?” asked the sheriff hoarsely. “The South American?”
“I’m more interested right now in saving the lives of thirteen people than arresting one murderer,” said Quade. “Martha Olcott already has a cold. She can’t stand another night here. A couple of the maids are coughing pretty hard too.”
The sheriff muttered under his breath. “We’re stuck here until the water goes down.”
“It won’t go down for a week. The rain’s letting up now, but even so, we can’t stay here a week. We’ve got to get away—today!”
“How?”
Quade shrugged. “Go away and let me think!”
The sheriff cursed under his breath, but retreated. Higginbotham went with him.
The rain lessened considerably in the next fifteen minutes and dawn broke grudgingly over the island. Quade’s vision was lengthened then and what he saw disheartened him. A sea of water stretched out as far as he could see. The tops of trees stuck out of the water, like lonely sentinels. The water moved south and west in a steady sweep. It was another quarter-hour before Quade could see the river and then his spirits dropped even lower. The river was a raging torrent, a visible swift current in the sea of water sweeping over the island.
The entire island except the promontory on which the refugees crouched was under water. There was land on the other side of the river, quite a bit, and most of it high out of the water. But it was a half-mile away, too far for anyone to swim in the rushing water.
But there lay safety. If someone over there saw them on the island here and if they had a powerful boat …
Quade turned to the others. “Anyone live over there?” he asked, pointing.
Ferdinand Olcott shook his head sadly. “No one lives within five miles of this island.”
“And I imagine those out there are having their own troubles.”
“If someone could get over there and get help …” Quade thought aloud.
Arturo Nogales, the swarthy South American, began peeling off his soggy coat. “I am a strong swimmer,” he said.
“If you were the strongest swimmer in the world you couldn’t swim across that current out there. There’s a low valley to the south and you’d be swept out before you could reach the high land.”
Martha Olcott came up. “Are we—finished?” she asked.
Quade looked bleakly at her. “All my life I’ve been a resourceful person, but somehow I can’t think of anything to do now.”
She bit her lip. “If we could only build a fire here …”
“Everything’s water-logged,” said Quade. “Perhaps if the rain stops we can gather some wood and get it dried. Or—I’ll be damned! Look at that garage there. It’s still on its foundations.”
“Yes, it’s built on concrete. But there’s nothing there except some tools and things.”
“Tools?” Quade’s eyes flashed. He turned around and called to Lynn Crosby. “Crosby, mind coming with me to the garage?”
Crosby came over. “What good’ll that do? The cars are under water.”
“I know,” said Quade. “I wasn’t counting on them. But there are tools over there, I understand. Perhaps we can do something with them.”
“You said last night a raft couldn’t make it.”
“Chances are almost negligible, but we might figure out something else.”
Higginbotham and the chauffeur, a stocky man named McCarthy, joined Quade and Crosby. They waded in water to their armpits to the garage.
“Look for saws, hammers and nails,” Quade instructed.
They found a keg of thirty-penny spikes, a couple of saws and several hammers, as well as a hand-ax. Quade himself discovered something that filled him with glee. It was about fifty feet of two-inch rope hawser. He carried it to the promontory.
“What’s the rope for?” asked Clarence Olcott, when the four men deposited their spoils on the wet ground.
Quade did not reply. He looked at the telephone poles which stuck out above the water. He bit his lips and scowled for several moments. The others had by this time conceded Quade the leadership and they waited anxiously for him to arrive at some decision.
“That telephone wire,” Quade said after a while. “There are two strands of it. If we could get a thousand yards, I think—I think we would have a chance. The wires are broken somewhere along the line because the phone was dead. I could put that wire to work for us, I believe. Will you get it?”
Sheriff Starkey snorted. “What good would wire do you?”
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 7
