by Lester Dent
Rubinov’s cabin was on the lake shore. It had a rear porch which extended out over the water.
“He liked to fish,” explained Benna Franks.
They entered. The place was fitted with electric lights. The girl clicked these on. Then she skidded a bearskin rug aside. Nace’s experienced eye did not detect the trapdoor until she lifted it, so cleverly was it made.
Below was a concrete box. This seemed solid. Benna pressed a hidden button and the entire box lifted steadily on a rusty piston until it was waist-high above the cabin floor. Below was visible the lid of a stout wooden chest.
Nace started to reach in. The girl grasped his arm.
“Wait!” she rapped. “Rubinov fixed a death trap! If you touch the chest lid without adjusting another concealed button, the concrete box will fall on you!”
Nace felt a pleasant warmth. She wasn’t trying to do him in. The note addressed to her and signed with Constable Hasser’s name seemed to become a red-hot iron in his pocket.
Benna made the button adjustment, lifted the chest lid and disclosed its empty interior.
“We’ll hunt fingerprints later,” Nace told her. “Where was the explosion which you think killed Rubinov?”
“Just outside this cabin.”
They closed the empty treasure vault, then went outdoors. Nace listened a while, trying to ascertain if anyone was near, then used his pen flash.
Signs of the explosion were profuse. The ground was torn, and swept bare of leaves, branches, even grass, for some feet around.
The red-head shuddered, pointed. “Throw your light on the cabin wall.”
Nace did so. Bloodstains were there, brown and dry.
THE girl began to breathe jerkily and make faint noises in her throat. Nace, realizing the murder scene was undermining her nerve, escorted her back toward the two-story cabin.
The front room was as they had left it—no sign of Fred or Spencer, or even the red-necked railway detective, Coogan.
Nace turned out the lights. “Just to play safe. Now I’ll call the state police and have them watch for Coogan, in case he really left this neighborhood.”
He picked up the phone in careless fashion, then stiffened alertly. No line sing came from the instrument.
“Wires out,” he said dryly, and tossed the receiver onto its hook.
“Who could have done that?”
“Search me.” Nace planted his flash beam on her face. “Now let’s look at the refrigerator.”
He could detect no flicker of alarm in her features.
They entered the kitchen, moved to the refrigerator.
“Read this,” Nace said, and gave her the folded paper he had found on the floor.
She glanced over it. “I never saw this before.”
“It dropped out of your clothing.”
“So that was why you had me change—”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I was really afraid there was explosive in your garments. I was mistaken. I found this note by accident.”
“I don’t know—what to think of it!” She sounded scared.
“The bird who tied you up might have left it—trying to frame you,” Nace said, then wondered why he was suggesting alibis to her.
“That must have been it.” A shudder quavered in her voice. “The disappearance of that cinnamon can! Yes—that’s it! Somebody is trying to frame me.”
“Have you looked in the icebox recently?”
“No. We don’t use it until the summer guests come. It’s too big and expensive to run.”
Nace used his handkerchief to lift the refrigerator catch. He yanked the door open.
Benna Franks screamed shrilly, horribly. She whirled from the awful sight in the white refrigerator interior. Wildly, she stumbled from the door.
Nace overhauled her. She fought him in her hysterical horror, scratched his face. After ten or fifteen seconds, he succeeded in trapping her arms.
Then he went back and closed the refrigerator door. It took a lot to get under Nace’s skin. But even he didn’t care for the grisly sight of Rubinov’s remains piled in the refrigerator.
Chapter VI
Another Man-Blast
NACE searched and found a quart bottle of applejack in the kitchen cupboard. He administered a shot of the colorless liquid dynamite to the red-head. He was forced to hold her to do it.
Four or five minutes later, she was normal again, except for a nervous rasp in her breathing.
“I’m sorry—that I fought you,” she said huskily. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It seems like everything went to pieces for a minute.”
Nace tried to make his laugh hearty. “That’s all right, Benna.”
“Nace, everything depends on you. Any jury in the country would convict me of these murders on the evidence you’ve uncovered. You’ve got to find out who did it! You’ve simply got—oh, my—!” She was going haywire again.
“Cut it out!” Nace said grumpily, and reached for the applejack bottle.
The lightning flamed outside, and Nace’s eyes instinctively sought the front door. The sky fire danced and flickered several seconds—long enough to let Nace get a good look at blond Spencer.
The man was laboriously hopping toward the log house. His pitted hands were bound before him, his ankles tied, and a handkerchief stoppered his mouth.
Nace played his flashlight outdoors, wary of a trap. Then he ran out, dragged Spencer in, and untied him.
“I was struck down!” Spencer moaned. “I ran out when I heard that shot down by the lake! Then somebody jumped me.”
“Where’s Fred?” Benna shrilled.
“I don’t know,” grunted Spencer.
Nace became hard-eyed. “Did Fred run out of this room ahead of you or behind you when the shot sounded?”
“I went first. I don’t know whether Fred went out at all or not.”
The red-head cried angrily, “Listen, you! Fred is not involved in these killings—”
“Dry up, Benna,” Nace snapped.
She spun on him in a frightened rage. “You’ve got more evidence against me than against my brother! Fred didn’t—”
Nace held up the applejack bottle. “I guess you need more of this to make you see straight.”
She subsided. “I’m sorry.”
Spencer grabbed the applejack, lowered its level an inch and a half and immediately seemed to feel better.
“You can go to the nearest phone and call the coroner and the state police,” Nace told him. “The state troopers especially. I can stand some help around here.”
“Shall I use your car?”
“Use your feet. I may need that car.”
Spencer peered out into the thunder-and-lightning infested night, shivered as though he didn’t like the prospects, then glided out. He made remarkably little noise.
Nace turned the pen light on his face so the red-head could see his amiable grin. “I wish you’d quit throwing fits around here. The tantrums don’t do anybody any good, not even you. They’re hard on your nerves—”
He swallowed the rest. Someone had stepped into the room. Nace slid the knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and pointed it at the spot where he judged the newcomer stood.
Fred Franks’ voice, hoarse with emotion, cried, “Benna! Nace! You here?”
“Present,” Nace admitted.
“Fred!” Benna’s one word was a relieved sob.
Her brother ignored her. “Nace! I’ve got the whole thing solved! I followed the devil to your hotel when he went there to kill you. That’s how I happened to be there.
“A few minutes ago, I saw him tie up Benna and blindfold her and thrust a note in the fold of her dress. Then I followed him and he got the parts of Rubinov’s body and put them in the refrigerator in the kitchen. I saw him throw something in the lake—I think it was that cinnamon box he lifted out of the kitchen!”
“Who is it?” Nace snapped.
“Wait until I tell you the rest! I think I know where old Rubinov’s h
oard of money is—”
Flame, blue, sheeting, sprayed in the doorway. In the midst of the horrible blaze, Fred’s body seemed to fall apart. Then the blue glare extinguished and the explosion cracked.
So tremendous was the blast that Nace suddenly stopped hearing things. He was slapped backward as if by a great fist. The floor jumped up, split. The logs of the front wall fell outward, carrying the porch crashing down. The ceiling of the room above fell in.
Nace found a quivering form with his hands—the girl. He rushed her back into the kitchen, then outdoors, thinking the whole house was coming down.
But the building stood.
He cradled the girl in his arms. “You hurt?”
“Fred!” she screamed. “Fred! Fred!”
Nace carried her and ran around to the front of the house. He was afraid she would dash in and be hit by falling logs.
“Quiet!” he hissed in her ear. “The killer is around here somewhere!”
He lowered her to the ground. She lay there, stiffly inert, not even sobbing. She understood the need of silence.
Nace moved a dozen paces to one side and used his flashlight recklessly. The thin beam spiked right, left, straight ahead, behind him. It disclosed no one.
A log fell noisily in the wrecked part of the house. A nail pulled out of a board with a shrill squawling noise. Overhead, thunder chased lightning flashes across the sky.
Nace ran swiftly back to the girl, scooped her up, raced her to his rented roadster and deposited her on the cushions. The starter clashed, the motor gave a surprised moan under his madly stamping feet. The car jumped ahead as though a giant had kicked it.
“Fred!” Benna Franks moaned. “We can’t leave him—!”
Nace replied nothing. They could not help Fred. His body probably reposed in a hundred places in the wreckage.
The roadster tires threw gravel all the way to the concrete road, then rubber shrieked in a skid as Nace straightened out on the highway. The speedometer needle climbed past thirty, forty and fifty. The headlights bloomed brilliantly ahead.
The girl sat white, trembling and wordless in the deep leather seat.
They wheeled into Mountain Town. The windows of Nace’s hotel appeared.
“We’ll look through your brother’s car, first thing,” Nace said.
He braked to a stop before the hotel, then looked around narrowly.
Fred Franks’ coupe was in sight.
THEY entered the hotel. The dapper clerk grinned at Nace, came forward. He seemed to have something to say. But he didn’t have time.
“Wait here,” Nace told Benna Franks.
He boxed himself in a phone booth, got long-distance to New York City. He talked at length with the man in charge of the identification bureau. The conversation ran ten minutes, fifteen. Phone operators broke in on them twice.
Nace left the booth bright-eyed with satisfaction.
“It was a good hunch,” he told the red-head. “The New York police had his picture and his record. He got out of Sing Sing in a prison break four years ago.”
“You mean the—”
“The murderer. All I’ve got to do now is grab him, and find the money they stole from Rubinov.” Nace said the last wryly, conveying by his tone that quite a bit still lay ahead.
“Mister Nace,” said the hotel clerk tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“I hired a taxi driver to pull Fred Franks’ car around behind the hotel. I thought you might want to look it over, seein’ as how you left here in such a hurry.”
“Great!” Nace told him briskly. “Show me to it!”
The clerk didn’t stir. He looked uncomfortable. “I tried to do a little detective work myself. I hope it won’t make you mad.”
“Moving the car was swell stuff. It kept people from crawling around over it.”
“I done more than move the car. The rumble seat was locked, but I pried it open. Here’s what I found.”
Reaching under the desk, the clerk produced a pair of black-and-white sport shoes. The toes were smeared with brown powder from a matured puffball mushroom.
“I hope you ain’t mad that I done this.”
“Mad!” Nace grinned. “Kid, those are the murderer’s shoes. The New York police just told me there’s a thousand dollars reward for the guy. Consider the thousand your own.”
The clerk appeared relieved. “I’m glad it’s all right, because I found some other stuff that kinda had me worried.”
With that, he pulled four canvas bags from under the desk. They clanked loudly when he deposited them on the desk top.
“Take a look,” he said. “There’s money enough in there to stock a mint.”
Nace jerked the drawstring of one bag, got it loose. He dipped a hand in and ladled up a palm full of silver and gold coins. Some few were of U.S. mintage. The majority were Russian coins of the old Imperial days.
Nace saw dozens minted from platinum.
The clerk scraped sweat off his brow. “There must be a hundred grand in them bags—if those funny looking shekels ain’t phony.”
“I’m betting a million will come closer to it,” Nace muttered. “This is Rubinov’s hoard, all right.”
Thunder laughed noisily over the hotel.
“But how did the money and the shoes get in my brother’s car?” Benna Franks asked hoarsely.
“Remember when you first met me tonight, and we had the merry-go-round outside the hotel?” Nace countered.
“Of course.”
“You drove straight home to Camp Lakeside, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The murderer borrowed your car right after that, got the coin hoard from where they had hidden it after stealing it, and set out to systematically kill the rest of his gang, so he wouldn’t have to divvy. After he did for Constable Hasser and Fatty Dell, he left the car at your place, because he was afraid I’d seen it. He found the puffball dust on his shoes and left them in the machine.”
“It was Spencer who borrowed the car!” the red-head gasped.
“SPENCER isn’t his only name,” Nace said dryly. “He’s got a string of aliases that read like the telephone directory. The New York police recognized his description, especially the part about his pitted hands. He got those pocks on his hands when powerful acids splashed on them. He was once a chemist—a chemist specializing in explosives. He later became one of the most efficient safe blowers in the business. He was caught and escaped from Sing Sing four years ago and—!”
“He has been right here in Mountain Town every time since!” cracked a harsh voice.
Nace made a mental note that whatever happened to him, he had it coming for his carelessness—he could have kept a closer watch. Then he turned around.
Spencer stood just inside the door, a pistol in each pocked hand.
The red-necked railroad detective was a little back of him, with a revolver.
Chapter VII
Death Shoe
THE street outside was vacated. No one else was in the hotel lobby. The hour was long past midnight. Mountain Town went to sleep with the chickens—which was one reason why it was so popular as a summer resort. The urban tranquility was good for city jitters.
Thunder bounced across the hotel roof, rumbled in the street, and when the clashing echoes subsided, Spencer snarled, “Don’t move, anybody! How’d you get wise to me, shamus? I didn’t make no slips.”
“Just one,” Nace said mildly.
“What?”
“You didn’t wear gloves to cover those hands. The scars suggested acid, and that got me to thinking about how it must have taken an explosive chemist to make up those bombs—”
“I don’t want to hear about it!” gritted Spencer. “Frisk ’em, Beef!”
Beef, the red-necked railroad detective, came forward. He knew how a search should be made. He missed little. He even tore off Nace’s coat, ripped his shirt down the back and got the packet stuck to his back with adhesive tape.
“W
hat’s in that?” Spencer wanted to know.
“Knife, file, dooflicker to pick locks with, some yaller stuff that looks like sulphur,” Beef enumerated the packet contents.
“The last must be stuff that makes tear gas when burned,” Spencer grunted. “Throw it away! Finish friskin’ ’em!”
Beef completed the search.
“I’ll eat anything they got left on ’em!” he grinned.
“Tie ’em! Use this!” Spencer flung Beef a roll of wire—the same sort of wire with which Nace had been tripped earlier in the night. “Just tie their hands for the time being.”
Beef did the tying, showing gusto for the job.
Spencer nodded at the money on the desk. “Take it to the car!”
Beef carried the four bags outdoors, making two trips to complete the job. The bags were extremely heavy.
“Now you go out!” Spencer pointed his guns successively at Nace, the red-head, the hotel clerk.
“What are you gonna do?” the hotel clerk demanded.
“Can the chatter!” rapped Spencer.
“Yeah—can it,” Nace said dryly. “Do you want to start the crackpot shooting in here?”
Spencer snarled and kicked Nace in the leg. “Call me a crackpot, will you!”
They all moved outdoors, where the lightning spurted gory luminance upon them.
A sedan was parked at the curb. It had a very long wheelbase. Nace, the girl, the clerk, all sat on the rear cushions. Spencer watched Beef tie their feet with wire, then occupied the drop-seat in front of them.
“To the circus, James,” he told Beef. Both he and Beef laughed at their joke.
THE sedan rode rough on over-pressured tires, out of town and past where the explosion had killed Constable Hasser. The headlamps whitened the sign of Lakeside Camp. Several cars and a few people were there, evidently drawn by the blast noise. They were working in the log house wreckage, a grimly silent group, assembling the remnants of Fred Franks’ body.
The red-head began to sob steadily.
The sedan pitched ahead at increased speed. The hard tires sucked noisily at the pavement. Tools banged together under the front seat every time they went over a bump.
Spencer smiled sardonically and watched the sobbing girl.
