Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  The challenge aroused the interest of the others on the veranda. There was a stout, middle-aged woman with a haughty look and a sleek-looking man of about forty.

  “I’d like to ask one of those questions,” cut in the sleek man. “If Danny Dale has no objections.”

  The youth shook his head. “No, go ahead, Mr. Cummings. You ask the first one. I want to think a moment about my two.”

  Mr. Cummings cleared his throat. “All right, when was the half-tone process of reproducing photographs for printing invented and who is generally conceded to be the inventor?”

  Quade’s eyes flashed. “You’re a publisher, Mr. Cummings? Well, that’s a question ninety percent of the newspaper and magazine men couldn’t answer. But I can. George Meisenbach, of Munich, patented, in 1882, the process by which the first practical half-tones were made, although in 1852 Fox Talbot, of England, suggested the breaking up of a photograph by means of a screen.”

  Cummings whistled. “Mr. Quade, you’re good! I’ll listen to Danny Dale’s questions.”

  The cock-sureness had left young Dale’s face. He tried, however, to look blasé. “I’ve got a couple of real ones for you. Number one, what is an astrolabe? Number two, what are the ingredients of gunpowder?”

  “The astrolabe,” Oliver Quade said, “is the oldest scientific instrument in the world. It was invented about 150 B.C. by Hipparchus. The mariner’s sextant is an off-shoot of it. Gunpowder—there are many formulas, but all have the same three basic ingredients: saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal. The most commonly used formula consists of seventy-five percent saltpeter, fifteen percent charcoal and ten percent sulphur. Do I win?”

  Danny Dale looked crestfallen. “Yes, I guess so.”

  Quade slapped his hands together. “Fine; then let’s get back to business. All the things I’ve told you are in this set of encyclopedias. And a hundred thousand more—”

  There was an interruption. Behind Quade, in the two-acre clearing, a girl came running, her short bobbed hair tossed to the winds, her lithe figure covering the ground in long strides. Behind her a few feet, running more easily, was a tall young man of about thirty.

  It was the girl’s cry that had interrupted Quade. “Mother! Mrs. Egan! Mr. Thompson—he’s dead!”

  The stout woman on the veranda let out a frightened “eek.” Cummings and Danny Dale rose from their seats and came quickly down the three-step flight of stairs.

  Quade was watching Mrs. Egan’s face and he saw her eyes blink behind her thick glasses. Then a shudder ran through her.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Thompson’s dead,” she said, sharply. “I saw him only fifteen minutes ago.”

  The young man who had been outdistanced by the running girl was within talking distance now. “He is dead,” he confirmed the girl’s hysterical announcement. “He’s been killed by a rattlesnake.”

  Quade stabbed a lean finger at the man. “He was alive fifteen minutes ago and now he’s dead from a rattlesnake bite?”

  The young man shrugged. “I know what you’re thinking. That a rattlesnake bite seldom kills inside of two or three hours. But you see, the fang marks were plain and Thompson killed the snake with a club before he succumbed himself.” He jerked his head in the direction of the roadway. “Down there.”

  Mrs. Mattie Egan dropped her triple chins upon her bosom. “Miss Judy,” she said to the girl, “you stay here with your mother. She looks kinda sick. The rest of you can come if you like.”

  She started determinedly across the clearing to the road leading down the mountain. The men followed her. They descended a hundred yards down the steep slope, then rounding a turn came abruptly on the body of a man. He lay at the side of the crushed rock road, his arms flung out on either side of him, his right hand clutching a thick stick. Five or six feet away, lay a dead rattlesnake, its back broken in three or four places. The deductions of the girl and the young man were sensible—but Quade shook his head.

  “This man didn’t kill that snake,” he said, “and the snake didn’t kill him.”

  Gasps went up around the circle. Martin Faraday, who with the girl, Judy Vickers, had discovered the body of Harold Thompson, challenged Quade’s statement. “How can you know?”

  Quade pointed down at the dead man. “The stick is in the right hand. But this man—Thompson you say his name was—was left-handed!”

  The amazing announcement resulted in a stunned silence. Quade broke it himself. “Mind you, I’ve never seen Thompson before. But I can see that his belt end is facing to the right; only a left-handed man would wear his belt like that. His tie also goes to the right, exactly opposite of the way an ordinary man ties it. And the thumb and forefinger of his left hand are ink-stained, proving that he was not only left-handed but that he wrote a great deal with pen and ink. My guess is that Mr. Thompson was a bookkeeper. No, he wouldn’t have been up here on a bookkeeper’s salary. Accountant, then.”

  “I’ll be damned,” swore Frederick Cummings. “He told me only yesterday that he was an accountant. Said he was from Buffalo. And I saw him writing left-handed.”

  Quade nodded. “Left-handed people are commoner than the average person suspects. In fact, one of every eight people is left-handed.”

  “Some more encyclopedia stuff,” scoffed Danny Dale.

  Quade ignored the jibe. “We’ve got to notify the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff?” cried Mrs. Egan. “What for?”

  “I just got through saying that this man was—murdered!”

  Mrs. Egan winced. The others took the startling announcement with more fortitude.

  Faraday said, “Then no one had better touch anything.”

  Quade turned to the proprietor of Eagle’s Crag. “Mrs. Egan, you’ve a phone at the lodge?”

  Mrs. Egan shook her head. “No, I ain’t. Young man, d’you realize we’re thirty-three miles from town by road, sixteen from the main highway, thirty-two hundred feet up on a mountain-top. The bloomin’ phone company wanted more to run a line out than Eagle’s Crag is worth.”

  “You can send someone to town though?”

  The owner of Eagle’s Crag frowned. “This is kinda early in the season and I ain’t got my full crew yet. Only McClosky, the cook. Him and me been runnin’ things. But I guess he can take the station wagon and run down to Hilltown.”

  They left the dead man where he lay and climbed back up the steep road to the lodge.

  “Mac!” yelled Mrs. Egan. “Where are you?”

  A bandy-legged man in bibless overalls and a patched flannel shirt came out of a shed near the lodge. “Here I am, Miz Egan,” he said meekly. His long, handlebar mustaches drooped down to the receding chin.

  Mrs. Egan looked suspiciously at him. “Mac, you’ve been drinking again!” she accused.

  McClosky wiped the right side of his mustache with the back of his hand, giving the lie to his denial. “No, I ain’t, Miz Egan, honest I ain’t. I was fixin’ up the autymobile in there, that’s what I was doin’.”

  “You’re a liar, Mac,” Mrs. Egan said. “But pull out the wagon and head for town. Tell the sheriff one of my guests had been bit by a rattlesnake—only some folks here,” she looked pointedly at Quade, “are tryin’ to make murder out of it.”

  “Murder?” yelped McClosky. “Mr. Thompson’s dead?”

  “How’d you know it was Thompson?” Quade cried.

  McClosky took a quick step back and his eyes rolled. “Why, he’s the on’y one ain’t here, so natcherly I figured …” his words trailed off.

  “That was quick work, McClosky,” said Oliver Quade.

  “So was yours,” cut in Cummings.

  “He’s right, Quade,” said Martin Faraday. “If it is murder as you claim, none of us here is above suspicion. Remember, Quade, you passed us on the road coming up ten minutes before we discovered Harold Thompson’s body.”


  “The man’s a perfect stranger to me,” said Quade. “He wasn’t a stranger to any of you though.”

  “A man doesn’t have to know a man to kill him,” Cummings looked down at his well manicured nails. “Robbery is sometimes a mighty good motive for murder.”

  Quade’s mouth became grim. He looked toward his battered flivver over near the lodge. “All right, I’m a suspect, too. But so is McClosky and everyone here. I don’t think anyone should leave here. Not singly, at least.”

  “I know Mac better’n any of you,” cut in Mrs. Egan. “Someone’s gotta go to town and I vote for Mac, suspect or no suspect. He’s too dumb to make a getaway anyway. G’wan, Mac, get out the wagon.”

  McClosky popped into the garage and backed out an ancient locking station wagon. He whirled it around the clearing, headed toward the descending road, then suddenly braked the car to a stop.

  “Car comin’ up, Miz Egan,” he called.

  Mrs. Egan frowned. “Why, I wasn’t expectin’ any more guests until next week. Wonder who it could be?”

  Quade could hear the automobile, coming up in second gear, grinding furiously for it was a long, steep ascent to Eagle’s Crag. A moment later it nosed up onto the plateau. It was a big black touring car with side curtains. The driver slewed into the path of the station wagon and stopped.

  Men began climbing out, four in all.

  “Oh-oh,” Quade said softly.

  The newcomers spread out in fan shape and leisurely approached the summer resort crowd. One of the men walked a little ahead of the others. He was of slight build, under middle height. He wore an unmatched coat and trousers and a vest that was open. He was hatless, his eyes oddly cold and calculating and he had a two days’ growth of black beard.

  He said in a toneless voice: “Who runs this shebang?”

  “I do, Mister,” Mrs. Egan snapped.

  The slight man continued to come forward. Quade could see his eyes then; they were the coldest he had ever seen in a human. They were a pale, washed-out blue, steady and unblinking under heavy, bushy eyebrows.

  “Me and the boys figure on stoppin’ here a while,” the man said.

  Mrs. Egan fidgeted. “Well, the lodge ain’t rightly open for another week yet and I don’t know as how I can accommodate you.”

  One of the other men, a giant who stood six feet five and weighed close to 250 pounds, sneered. “G’wan, chief, tell her. What the hell!”

  The slight man was unmoved by his friend’s urging. His voice was still toneless as he said, “You’ll put us up. And you better have your man run that buggy back in the garage.”

  Then Mrs. Egan flared up. “Say, listen, who are you to tell me what to do around here? I said I couldn’t accommodate you and I meant it.”

  “There’s a dead man down the road,” the leader of the four said. “Have you called in the law yet, or was this old coot just goin’ now?”

  “What’d you call me?” cried McClosky.

  The newcomer turned leisurely toward McClosky, who was climbing belligerently out of the station wagon. “I said you was an old coot,” he repeated. “And my name is Lou Bonniwell.”

  “Bonniwelll” cried Danny Dale. “You’re Lou Bonniwell?”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s him,” boasted the giant. “And me, I’m Jake Somers. Big Jake.”

  Quade took a deep breath. “Welcome to Eagle’s Crag, boys. Me, I’m a stranger here, too.”

  “Who’re you?” demanded Bonniwell.

  “Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. The man who knows the answers to all questions. I know—”

  “Do you know where the law is right now?” asked Bonniwell.

  Quade cocked his head to one side. “Far from here, or you wouldn’t be here. You came here to hide out, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Monk was raised hereabouts. He claims you can see seven States and six counties or something like that from this mountain-top.”

  A squat man with long arms grinned vacantly. “Three States and six counties, Lou. And you saw the road yourself. We could hold off an army.”

  Bonniwell nodded. “The layout’s all right, Monk. But they’ll get us sooner or later.”

  “Not me they won’t get,” boasted Big Jake Somers.

  Bonniwell looked bitterly at his big henchman. “You’re big, Jake, but if one forty-five slug doesn’t cut you down, two will.”

  “A twenty-two in the right place will do it,” Quade offered.

  Big Jake said savagely, “Who the hell asked you?”

  Quade grimaced. “Pay no attention to me. I talk too much.”

  “You do at that, pardner,” said Bonniwell. “Jake, take one of the guns and sit down over there by the road. Monk, you and Heinie look through things here. Gather up all the artillery.”

  Like a general Bonniwell dispatched his forces, and like obedient soldiers his men obeyed. Jake Somers brought a vicious looking submachine gun from the touring car. He walked with it to the head of the road leading down from Eagle’s Crag and seated himself upon a boulder. No one could now leave or enter Eagle’s Crag without his permission.

  Monk Moon, the squat man, and Heinie Krausmeyer, a roly-poly blank-faced man, frisked the Eagle’s Crag guests. Then the two disappeared into the lodge.

  Mrs. Egan, who had been quiet for a little while spoke then. “That Monk man,” she said. “I recognize him now. He’s Tim Moon’s boy, Alfred. He was raised down there in the valley.” She shook her head. “I never liked him even as a boy. Too sly and sneaky. I allus said he’d come to a bad end.”

  “Quite right, ma’am,” agreed Lou Bonniwell. “Monk’ll get hanged some day, if he don’t get shot first.”

  Danny Dale stepped forward brightly. “Say, Mr. Bonniwell, I was listening to the radio last night. That was some escape you made from the penitentiary.”

  Bonniwell looked at Danny. “Sonny, I was hopin’ there wouldn’t be no kids here. Always complicates things.”

  Danny Dale reddened. “I’m not a kid. I’m twenty and I’m a university graduate. I even have a master’s degree.”

  A fleeting smile crossed Bonniwell’s face. “Is that so, now? Well, bub, you just watch your p’s and q’s and you won’t get hurt. I never went to college myself, but I been around.”

  Danny Dale retreated. Quade looked around at the others. Besides himself there were Frederick Cummings, Marty Faraday, Judy Vickers and her mother, Mrs. Egan and McClosky. Plus four escaped convicts and killers. And one dead man down on the road—murdered by someone on Eagle’s Crag.

  “Just so there won’t be no mistake, folks,” Bonniwell said, “we killed two guards when we made the break yesterday morning. In the afternoon we knocked off a cop when we got the guns and stuff at the police station. You can imagine what the law’s gonna do to us if they catch up. Now, I got no quarrel with any of you here. I’m only here because this is a good hideout. We may be here a day or a week. Maybe, two. Until we leave you folks are gonna stay put. Understand?”

  After a while Monk Moon and Heinie Krausmeyer came out of the lodge, carrying three shotguns, two rifles and a small pistol. “We found ’em here and there, boss.”

  “My husband was a huntin’ man,” said Mrs. Egan. “Them shotguns and rifles was his’n. The pea-shooter, I dunno.”

  “That’s mine,” said Cummings. “I—I always carry it with me when I’m traveling.”

  “I’ll mind it for you, Mister,” said Bonniwell. “O.K., Monk, toss ’em in the car. Then git out the glasses and kinda look out over them six States and seven counties. The rest of you,” he turned to the Eagle’s Crag folk, “just go about your business. Only don’t get too close to Jake’s machine-gun there.”

  Monk Moon brought a big pair of military field glasses from the car. He started toward the rear of the lodge. Quade followed him leisurely. Monk chuckled as he fondled the glasses. “I n
ever had nothin’ like this when I was a kid. Boy, I bet I see four States.”

  Behind the lodge the mountain fell away in a sheer precipice. Quade approached it gingerly. “A drop of over two thousand feet,” he grimaced.

  “On practically three sides,” said Monk. “Only way up or down is by that road.”

  “Hey, you!” called Bonniwell, coming up.

  Quade turned. “I wasn’t intending shoving him over,” he said.

  “I know you wouldn’t commit suicide by a stunt like that,” Bonniwell said. “Couple of the folks back there say you said that bozo down on the road was murdered instead of bit by a snake. What’s that—a bit of malarkey? You got plenty of it.”

  “I have at that,” admitted Quade. “I wouldn’t be the book salesman I am if I didn’t have it. But I was telling the truth about that chap. He was murdered. Someone killed the rattlesnake with a club then put the club in this fellow’s hand after killing him—only he didn’t know the man was left-handed and put it in his right hand to make it look as if he’d killed the snake. Aside from that, take a look at the man’s calf, where the snake was supposed to have bitten him.”

  “I think I will,” said Bonniwell. “The thing kinda makes me curious. Come along.”

  They walked past Jake Somers sitting on the boulder with his machine-gun. Bonniwell casually dropped behind Quade then, keeping one hand near his waist-band in which was stuck an automatic. When they reached the body of the dead man Quade pointed to Thompson’s left leg. The trouser leg was pulled up part way and two angry red spots were plainly visible. Quade pointed at them. “See how far apart the punctures are? And how deep?”

  “No rattler ever did that,” Bonniwell laughed shortly. “There’s a murderer in your crowd. I’m kinda curious to know which of you gazabos had the nerve to pull a job like this. Offhand, I’d say it was you.”

  “Not me,” denied Quade. “I’m just a book salesman who happened to drift up here thinking I could make a couple of sales. I never saw any of these people before today.”

  “Hmm,” mused Bonniwell. “A while ago you were shooting off about how smart you was. You claimed to know just about everything.”