Quade pointed toward the promontory on the far side of the river. “If we could get this wire there we could rig up a sort of breeches buoy and I think we could all get away.”
“Yeah, but how you going to get the wire there?” demanded Lynn Crosby.
Quade said with more confidence than he felt: “If the rest of you will get the wire I’ll get it across the river.”
“How? You said no one could swim that current,” exclaimed Clarence, the mousy one.
“Get the wire,” said Quade. “I promise to get it over there.”
There was some grumbling but finally the men went out to get the wire from the telegraph poles.
Quade trotted down to the ruins of the Olcott house. He began pulling at some beams and two-by-fours. He dragged out several sizable timbers that had not been burned too much.
“Just what are you going to build?” asked Martha Olcott after watching him for some time.
Quade wiped the excess moisture from one of the saws on his trousers. He grinned, the first grin that had been seen on the little island since the night before.
“I’m going to make a catapult,” he said.
Martha Olcott looked at him as if he had suddenly gone insane. “A catapult?” she repeated. “What—what for?”
“To throw that wire over to the mainland. You remember your history?”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that the Ancients used catapults in their warfare. They threw stones and things with them. But—”
“They threw stones big enough to batter down walls distances of twelve to fifteen hundred feet,” said Quade. “So why can’t we throw a wire that far?”
“Have you ever built a catapult before?”
He shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen one.”
She drew in her breath. “Then how do you know you can build one?”
He grinned at her. “You forget I’m the Human Encyclopedia.”
She grimaced impatiently. “Yes, yes, I heard you arguing with the men last night. I’ll admit that you seem to know an amazing number of things. But is building a catapult one of those things?”
“I know everything, Miss Olcott. Everything that man has ever known … or that got into print. I’ve read the Encyclopedia from cover to cover four times.”
She gasped. “You’re joking!”
“No. I sell encyclopedias because I believe in them. I practice what I preach. Fifteen years ago I started reading the set I sold and I’ve been reading it ever since. The Encyclopedia contains all the knowledge of the ages. That stuff I pulled last night was on the level. I’ve an unusual memory. I remember everything I read and therefore I know everything that’s in the encyclopedia. And there’s a very fine drawing of a catapult the Crusaders used at the siege of Acre. They battered down the best fortifications of Saladin with it. I’m going to build a catapult like it.”
She looked strangely at him for a moment. Then she said, “Mr. Quade, I really believe you can do it. Let me help you.”
“Fine,” he said. “Go down there then and poke around in those ruins. Find the spears that were hanging on the walls of the living room last night. The heads, I mean. The shafts are burned, I imagine.”
Quade sawed and hammered. After an hour the men began trooping back with long lengths of dead telephone wire they had cut from the telephone poles. They complained of exhaustion, but after resting a while and seeing Quade working without stopping, they went back for more wire.
They had fourteen hundred feet of wire by noon. That was all that was obtainable. The poles beyond that distance were too close to the raging river.
By that time Quade had the framework of the catapult built. It was a massive structure, resting on solid eight-inch beams.
At two o’clock they had twisted the rope hawser into place, and the other men had spliced the wire and coiled it in a neat pile beside the makeshift catapult.
Martha Olcott had found two spear heads and Quade spent a half-hour fashioning shafts for them and attaching the end of one to the telephone wire.
At last everything was finished. The rain was a mere drizzle then, but the water had risen a couple of inches more.
The recent college graduates, Clarence Olcott and Lynn Crosby, examined the catapult with extreme skepticism. “It won’t work,” Clarence declared. “You need some sort of spring attachment to throw that thing.”
“My friend,” said Quade, “did the ancient Greeks have springs? They did not. This rope twisted in here is all the spring that’s necessary. Here, we’ll try it out with a stone first.”
There was a narrow slot running down the back of the catapult. Quade adjusted things and dropped the stone into the slot. Everyone on the tiny island gathered around.
Quade took a deep breath. Up to now he’d bolstered up his confidence. He remembered the details of the plans in the encyclopedia, accurately, but suppose—suppose the artist who had drawn them had made an error?
“All right,” he said. He touched a wooden lever with his foot. The lever released the trigger and there was a swish and twang and the stone was hurtled out of the catapult. It sailed up in a swift arc, so fast that the eye could hardly follow it. Then it disappeared out of sight. But Quade watched the water and saw no splash. He knew that the stone had gone beyond the water.
Exclamations of awe went up all around Quade. “It worked!” Lynn Crosby cried.
Quade was adjusting the spear which was attached to the wire when Clarence, the scoffer, voiced another doubt. “How you going to make the spear stick over there?”
That was the thing that had worried Quade most. “There are plenty of thick trees over there. I’m hoping it will hit one of them squarely.”
“Suppose it does. Will it have enough force to stick hard enough for the wire to hold up a person?”
“If the spear hits a twelve-inch tree there’s sufficient force to drive it clear through the tree!”
Quade dropped to the soggy ground and looked out along the slot of the catapult. He had aimed the thing high to give the spear a trajectory but still it shouldn’t go too high or too low.
The ropes were twisted tight again. The threaded spear was laid in the slot. Quade shot the trigger.
The spear hurtled out of the slot, drawing the wire with it. It sailed high in the air, went far out and then began dropping. Quade held his breath as the spear began falling—and his spirits fell with the spear.
“It didn’t make it!” cried Lynn Crosby.
It was true. The spear had fallen a hundred feet short. The disappointment of all was heavy. Quade began hauling in the wire.
“What are you going to do now?” scoffed Sheriff Starkey.
“Try again.”
It took a half hour to haul in the wire, coil it carefully and get the catapult ready for another trial. Quade moved the machine back a few inches and elevated it slightly and twisted the rope hawsers until they couldn’t be twisted another sixty-fourth of an inch.
He was as taut as the twisted rope, when he placed the spear into the slot for the second trial. He knew if the catapult didn’t have enough power now, there was no use trying any more. The fault lay in the hawser; it wasn’t thick enough.
“If it doesn’t go this time,” he said grimly to those around him, “figure on spending a week or so here; without food or shelter.”
A couple of the women servants began sobbing and two or three of the men on the island cleared their throats.
“He knows,” said the schizophrenic to himself. “He knows I’m the killer. The man’s smart. If this thing works he must stay here … dead!”
Twang!
The spear was catapulted out again. It seemed to those around that it left the slot with increased force. Quade knew it had. He watched the flight of the spear with a prayer on his lips and his jaws crunched.
The spear began falling …
It disappeared into the woods on the far side of the wide river and the wire suddenly stopped playing out.
“It made it!” cried Lynn Crosby.
Quade gripped the wire. “Now, let’s hope that it landed true.”
He pulled up the slack of the wire, tugged hard. It refused to give.
“I think it’s stuck,” he said grimly. “Here, help me pull, Crosby.”
Crosby stepped up beside Quade and pulled with him. The two of them could not pull the wire more than a couple of inches.
Perspiration broke out on Quade’s forehead. “We’re safe!” he exclaimed.
Cheers and sobs of joy went up.
The breeches buoy was fixed on to the wire and the wire securely lashed around a telephone pole some distance behind the catapult.
“The women will go first,” Quade said.
Lynn Crosby stepped up behind Sheriff Starkey and jerked the sheriff’s gun out of his holster. “No,” he said. “I’m going first!”
“Lynn!” That was Martha Olcott. Her face showed terrible anguish. Quade, looking at her, knew that she’d been guessing the truth, but hadn’t wanted to believe it before.
He cursed himself silently. He should have been alert at the critical moment for just some such move on Crosby’s part. He’d known since the night before that Lynn Crosby was the schizophrenic, the killer who had brutally murdered Martha’s uncle and set fire to the big house and put them all in this predicament. But Quade’s mind had been too filled with the bigger problem. Even if they had subdued the murderer, they would still have to face the problem of getting off the island. Now Crosby had suddenly revealed himself.
“Stand back, everyone!” he commanded, steadying the gun on them.
Deputy Lou Higginbotham, who until then had been a nonentity, reached for a piece of glory. He went for his gun. He got his hand on it, had it half out of the holster and then Lynn Crosby shot him through the face. Higginbotham pitched to the ground.
“I’ll kill every one of you if you try to stop me,” Crosby snarled. His face revealed the soul behind it. He had a split personality no longer. He was absolutely and completely insane now. No more moments of sanity, no more fighting between the two personalities. Lynn Crosby was completely mad.
“Do as he says,” Quade ordered, knowing what Crosby would do if someone crossed him.
Crosby scooped up Higginbotham’s gun and stuck it into the waistband of his trousers. He brandished the sheriff’s gun and his face broke into a huge grin as the group of men and women retreated before him. He laughed raucously. “The flood! Ha-ha! The flood got all of you poor people. All except me. My story will be you wanted me to go over first to test the wire and I did. Then it broke. Too bad. Too bad.” He laughed again, uproariously.
“Lynn!” said Ferdinand Olcott, “you’re insane!”
Lynn Crosby cursed in sudden frenzy. “You—you’re the cause of all this! You thought I wasn’t good enough for your daughter. You told me to get a job and make a name for myself and then you’d think about letting me marry her. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? Well, ask Martha—did we wait for you?”
Ferdinand Olcott staggered back. “Martha—did you—”
Martha could hardly raise her head. “We—were married two weeks ago.”
“Secretly,” sneered Lynn Crosby. “You forced us to get married secretly.”
“But we never lived together,” said Martha Olcott. “That—I am glad of that, anyway.”
Crosby showed his fangs. “You get satisfaction out of that, do you? Well, then think over this: I never loved you at all. I married you for your money, your uncle’s money. He told me he was leaving everything to you. That’s why I killed him. To get his money, through you. And now, as your husband, I’ll get your father’s too.”
Crosby turned toward Quade. “How did you know it was me?”
“The salt,” said Quade. “You went down into the cellar and started that oil fire. You’d heard somewhere that salt killed the odor of oil so you washed your hands with it after setting the fire. I didn’t smell oil on your hands, but you got salt over your clothes. That’s how I knew.”
Crosby nodded. “You’re a smart guy, Quade. Much too smart to stay alive. You might figure out some other way of getting across. So—”
The gun in his hand thundered. Almost at the instant Crosby squeezed the trigger Quade started to throw himself to one side. The bullet went through his left shoulder. He fell limply to the ground. He was fully conscious but to show that he wasn’t mortally hit would only invite another bullet. His face fell into three inches of water and he kept it there.
He held his breath as long as he could, then slowly turned his head sidewise and brought his mouth out of the water. He drew in air sharply and looked toward the catapult.
Lynn Crosby was already in the crude breeches buoy, working his way out over the water, hand over hand.
Quade watched him for a moment, then rose to his knees.
“Mr. Quade!” cried Martha Olcott. “You’re not—” then she saw the blood mixing with the water on his shoulder and sprang to his side.
“It’s all right,” Quade cried out grimly.
The others gathered around. “He’ll cut the wire when he gets almost there,” said Clarence Olcott. “He can pull himself to the other side with what’s left but we—the wire’ll be too short then.”
Quade said to Martha Olcott, “Take the women back a way and don’t look. We’ve got only one chance, but it won’t be pretty to see.”
She understood him immediately. Her face tightened but she quickly herded the maids to the rear.
Quade picked up the spear. Lynn Crosby was out two hundred feet and moving at the rate of fifty feet a minute, out of revolver range. There was only one spear—it had to kill—to save twelve lives.
Quade placed the spear in the slot of the catapult and then the others understood. “You’re going to kill him!” gasped Clarence.
Quade did not reply. He adjusted the catapult quickly, depressing it in front. He dropped down beside the slot, sighted through it, then made some more adjustments.
“All right,” he said then. “He’s three hundred feet out. We’ve got one shot. If it misses, we stay here.”
He kicked the trigger.
Twang!
The spear whanged out of the slot, shot out through space in a low arc—and landed in flesh.
The schizophrenic lived two seconds. In those two seconds the part of him that had been suppressed since the day before screamed: “You were wrong! Wrong!”
And then it, too, died. Finally and definitely.
Death on Eagle’s Crag
Mrs. Mattie Egan, proprietor of Eagle’s Crag, was the toughest prospect Oliver Quade had worked on in many months. For ten minutes he had extolled the merits of the set of encyclopedias. He had painted glorious pictures for Mrs. Egan, had told her of marvelous benefits she would derive from owning the books. He had told her all those things in a voice that could be heard half-way down the mountain.
But Mrs. Egan was unmoved by it all. Her resistance was summed up in the stubborn, unyielding statement: “I’m fifty-six years old, come next January, and I ain’t never owned no books of my own and I don’t intend to start buying none now.”
The word “quit” was not in Oliver Quade’s lexicon. He was the best book salesman in the country. He admitted it himself; his rivals conceded it. Mrs. Egan may never have bought books from any other salesman, but she was going to buy from Oliver Quade.
He told her: “Mrs. Egan, I’m not trying to sell you books. I’m trying to sell you knowledge. In these twenty-four volumes is the knowledge of the ages; everything that the human race has learned since the dawn of time. Everything, Mrs. Egan. Do you know how far the sun is from the earth? Do you know that a certa
in condiment in your kitchen is a better fire extinguisher than any chemical?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Egan. “I don’t know them things but I’ve lived fifty-six years without knowin’ ’em and I guess I can struggle along a little longer without any encyclepeedies.”
Behind Mrs. Egan, on the broad porch of the lodge which was the main building on Eagle’s Crag, several people were listening with various expressions of interest. Oliver Quade appealed to them. “Folks, I’m asking you, haven’t I made all of you want to own these marvelous books of knowledge?”
It was a trick on Oliver Quade’s part. He’d made his sales talk to the proprietor, Mrs. Egan. The summer guests had heard it merely incidentally. Not being canvassed directly, they were wide open. They didn’t know that the moment they expressed their interest Quade would shift the weight of his sales attack to them, and then carry Mrs. Egan along on the buying tide.
A bespectacled youth of nineteen or twenty made an opening sally. “I wouldn’t want your books, Mister. I already know all the things you’ve asked. The mean average distance-to the sun is 92,900,000 miles. And baking soda is the fire extinguisher you referred to.”
Quade pretended to be disconcerted. Actually, he was delighted. He hadn’t counted on the good fortune of having an intellectual in his audience. The youth would be a perfect stooge.
“Ah,” he chuckled. “We have a student with us. Tell me, sir, who was the first American born president?”
The boy’s forehead wrinkled. He thought quickly, then replied, “James Buchanan.”
Quade shook his head. “It was Martin Van Buren. All presidents previous to him were born English subjects. Here’s another: Of which are there more in this country—telephones or automobiles?”
The student scowled. “You’re asking trick questions. I can ask you questions you can’t answer.”
Oliver Quade pulled a thick roll of bills from his pocket. He peeled off two ten-dollar notes. “Mister, you’ve bought yourself something. They call me the Human Encyclopedia because I know the answers to all questions. I’ve read all the encyclopedias four times and I remember all I’ve read. This twenty dollars is yours if you can ask me three questions I can’t answer.”
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 8
