Then, drawing a deep breath, he tilted the vessel and let the acid slosh to the floor. It splashed against his trouser leg, stung through to his legs. There’d be burns there; the acid would eat away the cloth, but that would take hours. And Quade didn’t have hours.
By the weight of the vessel Quade guessed when there was about a half pint or pint left in it. He gripped the thing securely and began hopping. It was quite a feat. Once or twice he almost lost his balance.
He hopped twenty feet or more, then crouched slowly and set the copper vessel on the concrete floor. He straightened, with one hand groped for a water faucet. He found it and hesitated a moment. This was the crucial moment. It might work—and it might not work. If it worked, Quade would suffer intense physical agony. If it didn’t work—a horrible death.
He turned the water faucet. Only for an instant, then turned it back again.
There was a roar behind him. The water hitting the acid in the copper kettle ignited it. Water acts that way on sulphuric acid. You can mix sulphuric acid with water by pouring the acid into the water slowly, and stirring constantly. But you can’t dash a quantity of water into the acid—not without a terrific conflagration.
Flames leaped from the kettle, scorched Quade’s legs. Grimly he held his bound wrists into the flame. Fire seared his hands; perspiration came out on his forehead, but Quade stood, with his teeth gritted together.
The chances were even that he would burn to death, be mutilated so badly he would be physically incapacitated. But he had to take the gamble.
And he won. A strand of rope gave; another. Then Quade jerked his wrists apart. He cried out from the pain as the burning rope bit into the already seared flesh—but the rope gave.
He fell to the floor, away from the fire. His clothing was burning but he smothered it quickly. He burned the rope from around his ankles. Then he leaped to his feet. The clock said three minutes to four!
Running out of the foundry Quade pounded through the machine shops. He burst into the recreation room, noted with apprehension that it was entirely empty, then started for the door which led to the stairs and the office. That was as far as he got.
A terrific explosion rocked the building. Quade wheeled sharply to the door leading out to the side of the building. He burst out into a milling, wild-eyed hysterical crowd of men.
The stampede of them almost knocked Quade off his feet. He smashed a man furiously in the face, bowled another off his feet, then seeing a vantage spot, leaped through and made the front of the crowd.
The sight that met his eyes made him sick. Just inside the fence, almost directly under the office windows, was a deep hole in the ground. All around it milled men in uniforms. Officers were shouting commands, the men were forming ranks.
But on the ground lay two huddled bodies. And Quade saw blood on the face of another uniformed man being led away by two of his comrades.
He saw all that. And then a solid rank of Guardsmen formed. Quade heard the sharp commands of an officer.
“Fix bayonets!”
Quade pivoted frantically. The sit-down strikers were no longer milling. They saw the threat of the khaki formation but they were not retreating!
“Clear the grounds and the plant!” came the National Guard officer’s terse command. “Squads, wedge!”
With smooth precision, the men formed a wedge of each squad, one man in the front, three flanking him diagonally on each side and an eighth closing up the rear. Bayonets glistened.
Then the three hundred disorganized, massed sit-down strikers began rumbling; shouts of defiance went up.
Quade knew that there would be slaughter here. He was between the strikers and the Guardsmen. He would be swept out of the way, probably bayoneted. But he held his ground. He threw up his hands, cried out to the National Guard officer.
“Wait a minute! The man responsible for that bomb—he’s up there in the window. He’s not one of these men!”
In the second floor office windows were several white faces, that of Bob Olinger—Peter Walsh, Murphy, Ford Smith—and Henry Jackson. Olinger and Jackson were crowded into one window, the others into another. Quade pointed at the window containing Olinger and Jackson.
“Olinger!” he cried at the top of his voice. “Grab Jackson! Bring him down here!”
“Get out of the way, you!” roared the National Guard officer at Quade.
Quade took a step forward, half turned. Jackson’s head disappeared from the window. Olinger lunged backwards, disappeared, and then Jackson appeared again. In his hands was the thirty-thirty repeating rifle.
“Here it is, Quade!” Jackson yelled. The rifle snapped to his shoulder—crashed! But no bullet struck Quade; none even kicked up dirt around him.
Jackson was still framed in the window, but the rifle was dropping from his numbed hands … and Jackson’s face was a horror of blood.
He fell forward, hung half in the window and half out.
“The gun back-fired!” someone said hoarsely, in the sudden stillness.
Quade took the opportunity to spring up to the National Guard officer. “Hold your men. There won’t be any fight now. That was the man responsible for all the trouble! He shot Sheriff Spiess this morning, killed two people in the plant, and buried that time bomb here in the yard!”
The officer looked at Quade in astonishment. Then his eyes snapped. “Lieutenant, take over. Keep the men as they are!” He caught hold of Quade’s arm. “Lead me inside!”
The sit-down strikers were still massed to the side of the building. They were silent now, though. Quade and the Guard officer rushed to the door and began pounding up the stairs to the office.
When they reached the second-floor office Jackson lay in the room. Around him were Olinger and the surviving strike captains. Jackson wasn’t dead—yet. His eyes were staring glassily up at the circle of faces. His jaws were working horribly.
“Quade!” he choked. “Oliver Quade, where is he?”
“Here I am,” said Quade, pushing into the circle.
For a second Jackson’s eyes lost their glassiness. “Quade—wish—you were going with me!” And then a bubble of blood formed on his lips, burst, and Jackson was dead.
Quade looked around the circle of faces. “I fixed that gun this morning. Figuring the killer might have other cartridges around. I was afraid he might try shooting at the troops like he did at the sheriff this morning. I fixed the breech so that when the cartridge exploded, it burst in his face. Messy job …”
“Not as messy as that bomb,” said Bob Olinger. “It was Jackson all along then!”
Quade nodded. “Jackson—or Samuel Sharp. Yes, the inactive member of the Bartlett Corporation. He wasn’t known around here, I guess. He had a deal with another cash register company to bankrupt this firm so they could buy it for almost nothing. He lost!”
“And so have we!” said Bob Olinger wearily. “The sit-down strike is broken.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the National Guard officer. “I heard only fifteen minutes ago that Bartlett’s ready to arbitrate. I guess when he learns about this man’s scheme, he’ll be willing to meet you folks half-way …”
Oliver Quade smiled, walked away. He went to the recreation room for his valise full of books—the books he had started out to sell. It was empty. His sales talk had been so convincing the strikers had helped themselves.
On the way downstairs he bumped into Ruth Bartlett and Bob Olinger, folded in each other’s arms.
“If you need help,” Quade quipped, “remember, I’m the Human Encyclopedia.”
“I think he knows all the answers,” Ruth Bartlett said.
Forced Landing
One moment the twin motors of the cabin plane were droning smoothly; the next there was a jerk and the motors were going, brr-bak, brr-bak!
“Gawd!” said the pilot.
&
nbsp; The co-pilot’s face was taut and white. “What’s it sound like, Gene?” he asked.
The pilot’s eyes were agony-stricken. “Bad!” he replied. “I guess—I guess you better tell them. There’s a clearing. It’s covered with snow and looks awfully small, but I’ve got to try it.”
Swiftly the co-pilot rose. He opened the door and went back into the passenger compartment. He spoke, his voice smooth and almost matter-of-fact. “We’re going to make a forced landing. Please fasten your safety belts. There’s really no danger …”
But all of them could hear the motors. All could see the tree-studded whiteness hundreds of feet below. A woman shrieked.
Instantly the hostess’s voice spoke: “Everything’s all right, really! Just keep your seats.” Swiftly she went among the passengers, helped them adjust their safety belts, spoke cheeringly.
Morgan, the co-pilot, smiled wanly and wished he’d spoken his mind to Mona, the hostess, before they’d started on this flight.
He went back to the control room. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was circling the plane. It had lost five hundred feet. “It doesn’t look so good, Bill!” he said.
Bill Morgan had been a co-pilot of the line for three years. On an average of three times a year he had seen the headlines in the papers: “Air Liner Crashes!” Sometime it’ll be me, he had thought. This was the time.
However, he said, “You’ll make it, Gene!”
They were skimming the tree tops. “Hang on!” said Gene Stallings.
The snow rushed up to meet them. The ship struck, bounced up in the air, seemed to hover there for a full second, then settled again. Gene Stallings cut the ignition switch.
And then he died.
The nose of the plane went through the snow, sheared off a short poplar stump and buried itself in the frozen earth underneath. It quivered there for an instant, straight on end, then went over on to its back.
It was level ground here, the snow was fairly deep, and the fact that the plane had landed on its nose and taken the brunt of the collision saved most of the passengers.
A woman moaned, a man blubbered hysterically. Another swore softly. Everyone was trying to move about, most of them unable to do so because of the safety belts which had really saved them from being seriously injured.
Mona, the air hostess, had a cut on her cheek, a huge bruise on her shoulder and one side of her felt as if a couple of ribs had been caved in. But she crawled among the passengers, helping them. Through the broken windows the passengers crawled out to the whiteness of the snow.
Four of them. Mona came out, dabbing at her cut cheek with the back of her hand. She counted the passengers. “Two more,” she said.
“My ankle!” screamed one of the women. “My ankle, it’s broken!” It couldn’t really be broken for she was hopping about on it. It was probably only bruised. She was a flaxen-haired blonde. Her hair looked as if it had been dipped in molten paraffin. Her face was broad and very Swedish. A short, roly-poly man wobbled to her side.
“Olga!” he babbled. “Oh, no! Not your ankle!”
Mona got down on her knees, started to crawl back into the cabin of the plane, through one of the broken windows. A lean man in a gray topcoat put his hand on her shoulder, said, “Let me!”
Mona turned her head and looked at the man. “All right, Mr. McGregor.”
McGregor scuttled into the hole. After a moment, the bloody face of Bill Morgan showed in the opening. Mona exclaimed softly and dropped down. She gave him a hand out. “Gene, what about Gene?”
Bill Morgan shook his head. He crawled out, but did not get up from the snow. Then McGregor appeared in the opening. He came out, reached back into the hole, tugged at someone. Morgan crawled over and helped him.
It was a man, an unconscious man. McGregor got to his feet. “One more!” cried Mona.
McGregor shook his head. “No, the glass got the one left in there.”
Mona shuddered. Glass from the window had horribly mutilated the last passenger.
There had been eight in the plane. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was dead. So was one passenger. All of the others seemed to have injuries of some sort. How bad they were could not at the moment be determined. On the whole they had been fortunate.
“We’ve got to get doctors, a hospital!” someone cried.
They were all willing to admit that. But they were all hysterical now. Because they had survived an airplane crash.
It was several minutes before Morgan, the co-pilot, could tell them: “As near’s I can determine we’re a hundred and fifty miles from Duluth. There ought to be a town nearby somewhere. The map shows—I’ll get it from the cabin.”
He crawled back into the plane. He was gone a full three minutes. When he came out his face was gray.
Mona looked at him and knew that he had seen something inside. “What is it, Bill?” she asked.
He shook his head and walked to one side a few feet. She followed. “Gene!” he said. “He was killed—with a bullet!”
Mona gasped softly. “Bill! You?”
He shook his head miserably.
There were three inches of snow on the road, packed smooth and hard and very slick. It was cold and evening was coming on. Charlie Boston cursed dispassionately as he fought the wheel of the little car. He gunned the motor until the wheels went into a skid, then yelled and wrestled with the wheel. Regaining control, he put a heavy foot on the gas.
“Next town we come to,” he said savagely to Oliver Quade beside him, “we’ll trade the damn thing for a sled and some dogs.”
“Or a ham sandwich,” said Oliver Quade sardonically. He sprawled in the seat beside Charlie Boston. He did not seem concerned about the skidding. He did not seem concerned about anything. He knew there wasn’t more than a gallon of gas in the car; he knew they were thirty miles or more from the next town, and he knew that even if they reached the town, they didn’t have money enough to buy gas.
They were broke, stony; Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and Charlie Boston, his burly friend and assistant. Things had been good in summer, but they weren’t squirrels and had not stored any nuts for a long cold winter. Charlie Boston had pitted his wits against the race-track bookies and had lost. Oliver Quade had squandered his money on expensive hotels and fine living. And now it was mid-December and they were somewhere in northern Wisconsin, broke and cold and hungry and in a battered jalopy that threatened to expire at any skid.
“I’m a human being,” said Charlie Boston. “I eat, drink and I’m fond of the good things in life. I don’t know why I let you talk me into going up to the North Pole in Winter.”
Oliver Quade grinned. “I think the hotel manager in Chicago had something to do with that, Charlie. He didn’t like the idea of you hibernating in his steam-heated room, not without something to help pay for the steam.”
“Oh, we’ve been broke before,” retorted Charlie Boston. “But look, there are people south of Chicago, too. Why did we have to come north?”
“Because they don’t have ice carnivals in Florida. And because they have one in Duluth. Even if you cut their publicity agents’ bunk in half there’ll still be fifty thousand people there. And a lot of those fifty thousand people are going back to their farms with some mighty fine reading matter that we’re going to sell ’em. And you and me, Charlie, we’ll run the bus into a snow bank and grab us some Pullmans and fine living and keep going until we get to Florida and somewhere warm.”
The rear wheels of the car skidded to the left side of the road. Charlie Boston yelped and fought the wheel. It was only by a superhuman effort that he kept the car from going into the high banks of snow alongside the road.
“That was a close one!” he gasped. “Once we hit that deep snow, we’re stuck. You know we ain’t got no chains. Say! That’s the first time I ever saw a black rabbit. Look!”
Quade had al
ready seen it—a small black animal crouched on the ridge of snow, some fifty yards ahead. “Rabbits don’t have long tails,” he said. “Look out, Charlie!”
Boston twisted the wheel and the car went into a terrific skid. There was a sharp yell of an animal in pain and then Boston got control of the car again.
“Stop the car, Charlie!” exclaimed Oliver Quade. His lethargy was suddenly gone.
The car skidded again as Boston put on the brakes. He managed to stop it beyond where the animal lay. Oliver Quade leaped out to the road. He shuddered as the cold wind bit through his thin overcoat. He jammed his hat far down on his head and ran, a lean, tall man, back toward the animal.
It was dead, of course. He picked it up by the tail and started back toward the car. Charlie Boston had rolled down the window at his side and stuck his head out. “What is it?” he asked. “A cat?”
Oliver Quade was grinning hugely. “Nope. This is a fox, a silver fox. Charlie, we’ve turned the corner, and run smack into Old Man Prosperity.”
“Silver fox!” yelped Charlie Boston. “Why, holy smokes! Ain’t silver fox skins worth about a thousand bucks each?”
Oliver Quade climbed into the coupe and placed the dead animal at his feet. “Not a thousand dollars, but it’s the most valuable fur to be found in all North America. Step on the gas, Charlie. I want to get to the town ahead as quickly as possible so we can pelt this beautiful, poor creature and kiss Mr. Recession so-long!”
Charlie stepped on the starter. It made a grinding, spitting, choking sound. That was all. He ground down on the button again.
Oliver Quade, who almost never lost his composure, said: “Damn it!”
Charlie Boston’s face was a study of mingled rage and despair. “The gas!” he groaned. “Gone. And we’re twenty miles from town in a howling wilderness.”
Oliver Quade, his nostrils flaring, hauled out a road map. He consulted it, then looked at the mileage gauge. “The map says sixty-six miles from Homburg and we’ve come thirty-five which leaves us thirty-one to go.”
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 21
