by Lester Dent
Nace tried a third window. “Where is Zeke now?”
“I don’t know. He came out here while I remained in Lake City to buy groceries. When I got here, there was no sign of him.”
Nace was perspiring. “Who do you think is the villain in this bit?”
“Tammany and Jeck!” she said promptly.
Chapter V
Corpse Under the Carpet
NACE moved over to the door, making faces as his back pained him. He looked out, shivered.
“You cover me with the shotgun,” he suggested. “I’m going out.”
“That’ll take nerve!” The girl eyed him, shrugged, took up a position with her shotgun. “I guess you’ve got it.”
Nace left the door at a headlong run, and lined for the nearest brush. The serpent was a blaze on his forehead. Each instant, he expected to be shot at. He was in a cold sweat when he plunged into the bushes. No shots had come.
He worked toward the lake, stopping often to listen. Trees grew thicker and larger. The ground sloped down sharply. Through the leafage, he caught the blue shimmer of Lake Erie.
Came a soft flutter in the ground plants. Nace sighted a slimy, writhing reptile. One of the moccasins! The venomous thing plopped into the lake. He heard two more of them as he worked toward the wharf. The place was alive with them.
Then he heard the girl cry out from the house. It was a single wail, full of blood-curdling horror. And it was very muffled.
Nace sprinted for the rambling old house, heedless of noise.
Someone shot at him with a rifle. He could not tell how far the bullet missed him—perhaps a yard. He sighted the steel snout of the rifle, waving about in the bushes. The sniper was beyond the house, a bit to the right of it. None of the fellow’s person was visible.
Nace angled over and got the house between himself and the gunner. No more bullets came.
He dived into the kitchen, crossed it, hit the hallway.
“Julia!” he yelled.
“Down here!” Her voice was in the basement.
Nace found the basement door open off the hall. He rattled his feet down rickety stairs.
The red-headed girl stood in one corner of the musty cellar, beside a pile of old carpets. She had pulled a carpet off an object. She looked at the thing that she had uncovered, and shrieked again, hysterically, in spite of herself.
Nace went over and stared. Then shoved the girl away, saying, “Quit looking at it, dammit!”
THE body of Tom Tammany had been under the carpet. The man’s eyes and tongue protruded. All over, he was swollen and purple.
Nace ran for the cellar stairs, gritting, “This thing is getting damn bad!”
He gained the hallway, veered into the sitting-room, and got one of the Winchesters. Ordinarily, he did not use a firearm. But this was going to be an exception.
The red-head came up from the cellar, choking, “While you were out, I thought I would search the house for Zeke—”
Replying nothing, Nace began a careful scouting, first from one window, then another. The girl got the other Winchester and also began peering from windows.
Five minutes later, the girl cried from the front door, “Look who’s coming!”
Detective Sergeant Gooch came stamping from the direction of the road. He held a blue service revolver in each hand. Before him, he herded Jeck and Zeke.
Coming near, Sergeant Gooch stepped to one side, so that he could cover Nace and the girl, as well as Jeck and Zeke.
“Drop that artillery!” he snapped.
“Be yourself!” Nace growled. “You’re out of your bailiwick!”
Gooch cocked both his revolvers. “Bailiwick, hell! Something’s happened to Honest John, and I ain’t fooling! Drop ’em!”
Nace told the girl, “This crazy cop has shot more people than he’s got fingers and toes! We’d better do as he says!”
“Where’s Honest John?” Gooch demanded savagely. “He left me to go on a lone-handed scout, and he ain’t come back!”
“How should I know?” Nace asked. “I didn’t even know you two were in this neck of the woods!”
“Somebody reported your car at the New York airport,” Gooch explained grudgingly. “We learned you and the rest of the gang had chartered planes for Lake City. So we followed. Officially, we’re investigating the murder of that taxi driver. We beat you here. Our police plane was fast!”
Nace gestured at Jeck and Zeke. “Where did you tie into these two?”
Gooch glared at Jeck. “I caught this monkey running down the road with a rifle. A minute later, the other guy came out of the brush of his own accord.”
Big Zeke wrinkled his purple nose and spoke up in a harsh rumble. “I was followin’ Jeck. I been followin’ him for the last hour!”
Nace snapped at Jeck, “So it was you who shot at me!”
“No, it wasn’t!” Jeck disclaimed.
“That’s right! It wasn’t him! I been watchin’ him!” Zeke made the statement vehemently.
The girl roved bewildered eyes. “Then who was it?”
Nace scowled blackly at Sergeant Gooch. “It strikes me as damn funny—you two guys showing up here. Are you sure you’re not doing anything but upholding the law?”
Blood sheeted under Gooch’s blue beard stubble. “For a little bit, I’d knock you into the middle of next week!”
“Any time you feel lucky, old son!” Nace leered. “Was it a man or a woman who telephoned you that wild story about a body being in my office?”
“Man.”
“Okay.” Nace took out his pipe and yellow silk pouch. He dunked the pipe in the pouch, making the act a small gesture at Jeck. “I don’t suppose you know anything about who killed that filling station attendant, shot at me in that New York alley, or murdered the taxi driver?”
Except for the black gloves, Jeck still wore his crowlike garments. “Listen, wise guy, all I did was grab that hearse because I thought Caroni’s treasure was in it. There wasn’t nothing in it, not even a body—”
“He’s a liar!” Zeke yelled.
“There wasn’t nothin’ in the hearse!” Jeck repeated sullenly. “I went to get you, Nace. I thought you might know where the swag was, and I could make you cough up! After you put me and Tammany to sleep and damned if I know yet how you done it—we woke up on stretchers. We was scared, and got right out of town. We didn’t shoot nobody.”
Nace ran plumes of smoke from his nostrils. “Why were you prowling around out here?”
“I was lookin’ for Tammany. We separated just after we got to Lake City. Tammany disappeared.”
Sergeant Gooch waved his guns as if they were pennants, and shouted, “Pipe down! Pipe down! We can go into this later! What we’re gonna do now is find Honest John!”
Nace, raising his voice angrily, shouted, “Let’s find out where we’re going first! Somebody around here has got his hands on that Caroni treasure! He knows he’s got to keep it secret, because Caroni’s gangsters would take it away from him. So he’s been killing everybody who finds out he has it. I think I know how he’s been pulling the murders so as to leave his victims looking like they were about to explode, but I’ve got to get some proof.”
Sergeant Gooch roared, “If you know anything about them killings, you’ve got to tell me—”
“In a horse’s neck!” Nace told him. “Let’s go hunt Honest John!”
They trooped out of the house.
“I think Honest John went toward the warehouse and wharf!” offered Sergeant Gooch.
AS they made for the warehouse, Nace observed each of the others in turn. They were all glancing about nervously as if expecting more shots.
The red-headed girl came close to Nace, shivering, “Do you suppose the person behind this is someone we haven’t even seen?”
“I’m not going to risk a laugh by saying what I think!” Nace told her.
The warehouse was big, heavily timbered. It extended out over the water. The wharf itself was only a continuati
on of the warehouse floor.
The massive door was unlocked. Nace shoved it in. There was a passage the length of the structure, with stall-like storerooms on each side.
Just inside the door, they found Honest John’s hat, shoes, trousers and coat. The latter two garments were almost as large as small tents.
Nace scrutinized one of the stalls. It held parts of marine engines. He tried the next storeroom. It held great piles of well-greased chain hawsers. This was all equipment for salvaging operations.
In the third cubicle were stored coils of one-, two- and three-inch manilla rope. Some of the coils were new, still in burlap coverings.
Honest John MacGill sat on one of the rope coils, clad only in his underwear. He was dead and swollen and his eyes and tongue almost hung out of his head.
“Stick right here, every one of you!” Sergeant Gooch rapped. “Nace—you watch ’em!”
He ran down the passage, popping his head into stalls, searching.
Black clad Jeck spun, tried to pull a gun from a shoulder holster. Nace took four quick jumps and swung a bony mallet of a fist. Jeck folded down and flopped end over end, like a crow shot on the wing.
He squirmed, dazed, but not unconscious. “I ain’t had nothin’ to do with this!” he whimpered.
Nace kicked the gun into a corner, blew on his fist. The adder on his forehead was a pale salmon. “You picked a swell way to show it!”
Sergeant Gooch came back. His face was like dough, stuck full of short blue pins. He was almost crying with baffled rage.
“There ain’t nobody else here,” he said thickly.
Nace turned on the red-headed girl. “Were your brother and Jud Ogel in their underwear when you found them dead?”
“Yes, they were!” she replied, then turned swiftly and walked out.
“Hey, you! Come back here!” Gooch ripped.
Nace gave the police officer a scathing eye. “I hope you don’t expect her to stay here and look at that body!” He followed the girl outdoors.
IN a moment, Gooch followed, covering Jeck and Zeke with his revolvers.
“We’ll go to the house!” Gooch snapped. “I’m gonna ask some questions! I’m gonna get to the bottom of this, I am!”
They moved to the house. Nace, hanging back, let the others enter first.
“The telephone is out of order,” he said shortly. “I’m going after the local coroner and sheriff.”
Sergeant Gooch sniffed, half from anger, half from grief. “Now listen, Nace! We won’t get anywhere by ringin’ these hick cops—”
“The old copper spirit!” Nace answered. “Nobody can do anything quite as well as a New York flatfoot!”
He heeled around and strode across the lawn to the road, thence along the pike in the direction of Lake City.
Once out of sight of the house, however, he slipped silently into the brush. Working through it, he reached the lake shore, then turned left. He used only enough caution so that those in the house did not hear him. He ducked into the warehouse.
Chapter VI
Murder By Suction
IN one of the stall-like storerooms nearest the wharf end, he found an assortment of diving suits. These ranged from light metal head rigs—nothing but a helmet and short shoulder mantle to ponderous, all-metal suits for deep-water work.
The fact that Honest John was in his underwear indicated that he had been planning to use a diving suit. The detective would naturally have removed his outer clothing so that he would not be soaked in case the diving garb leaked.
But none of the diving suits had been used within the last hour or so—not one was wet. Bending low, Nace scrutinized the place, catching the light from various angles.
There was a faint deposit of dust on the floor. It was scuffed with many tracks—tracks of men in bare feet, and prints of men in shoes. And in two spots, lack of dust marked where two diving suits had recently lain.
After these discoveries, Nace took great care not to mutilate the tracks in the dust.
He lifted one all-metal suit, complete with helmet, and carried it out into the passage, thence toward the dock. He lowered it, reentered the warehouse. In an end stall in the structure, he found a powerful air pump, already set up. No doubt it was there for the purpose of testing diving suits. There was plenty of air hose.
The compressor was operated from an electric motor. It made some little noise when he switched it on. It might be heard at the house. He found an electric lantern, waterproofed for diving use.
He began donning the diving suit. This proved to be something of a task. The rig had not been tailored for a man of Nace’s unnatural height. It was of ample girth, however, permitting him to assume a crouching position.
Nace was basing his procedure on a well-grounded suspicion. Honest John had been in a diving suit, or about to get in one, which meant he had been preparing to enter the water for some purpose. That purpose could hardly have been anything except the securing of the Caroni treasure.
Honest John must have discovered the possessor of the treasure making a dive to see that the hoard was safe, and had been murdered for his pains. No doubt Tammany had been slain for the same reason. The killer, knowing the wet suits would betray the loot hiding place, had gotten rid of them, probably dumping them off the dock.
The Caroni swag, unless Nace’s guess was far wide, was concealed somewhere around the dock, under water.
Nace adjusted the air valves on the suit. The air pump was fitted with automatic controls. It would need no attendant for the short dive that he expected to make.
He closed the thick glass window of his helmet, clumped to a ladder, and laboriously let himself into the water.
The sun was low. The wharf shadow lay over the water where he was descending. This made the depths gloomy. With foresight, he had switched on the electric lantern before starting down. It diffused a pale luminance.
The water was much deeper than he expected. He settled on the mud bottom, began to play his light. Almost at once, he picked up footprints in the mud. They had been made recently—fine mud was suspended in the water in and around each print. Nace followed them.
The trail angled in toward the wharf piling. Nace tugged the air hose carefully behind him. He saw one of the moccasins, swimming under water. Farther in among the pilings, he discerned another. The writhing, repulsive things made him shudder.
A few feet within the forest of piles he found what he had expected.
Several rubberized bags were stacked close together. He grasped one of them with the claw-like pincers which served as hands on the metal diving suit.
Treading slowly, feeling his way back through the fog of mud he had stirred up, he returned to the stair-ladder. He climbed laboriously, the sack clinging to one claw. Reaching the wharf finally, he dropped the bag and began to work upon it with his iron claws.
The rubber-coated fabric was tough. He wrenched at it, tore it.
Pieces of jewelry, many neat bundles of currency, cascaded out. It was beyond a doubt, Caroni’s treasure. The rest would be easy to get. It could await capture of the murderer.
Nace suddenly sensed a faint jarring against the wharf planks. He tried to spin. He knew the jarring was from the slam of feet as men leaped toward him.
Before he got around, a stout manilla rope looped over his shoulders. It snugged. Nace, as clumsy as a pile of scrap iron in the ponderous metal suit, was jerked off his feet. He slammed down with a great rattling and banging.
It was then that he saw his assailants numbered two. Jeck and Zeke! They piled fiercely upon him.
Nace rolled, seeking to get slack in the rope, so he could free his arms. The armored diving suit was a protection against the blow of any fist or club. Jeck and Zeke apparently did not have guns. At least, they were not flourishing any.
Nace lifted a great metal blob of a weighted shoe and crashed it down on Jeck’s foot. The foot flattened out as if it were a meatball that had been stepped on. Jeck screeched, fell, and almo
st succeeded in tying himself in a knot around his injured foot.
Zeke jumped upon Nace’s steel back, like a gigantic, rusty bullfrog upon a small turtle. He was a bigger man than Nace, possibly stronger. That, coupled with the unwieldiness of the diving suit, kept Nace from arising. He was, in fact, held helpless.
Zeke got hold of the rope and succeeded in securing the awkward metal arms of the diving suit.
“Quit yer whinin’!” he snarled at Jeck. “C’mon and hold this bird in his tin nest! I got somethin’ to try!”
Jeck wailed, “That girl! She got away from us at the house—”
“Never mind her! She ran toward town for help, and it’s more’n a half mile to the nearest house! We got time!”
Zeke left Nace, ran along the wharf, and disappeared in the warehouse. Jeck got up on one foot, hopped over, and sat on Nace. When Nace yelled, Jeck unscrewed the glass window and opened it so he could hear the words.
“You would have done better to keep out of this!” Nace told him. “I was sure you didn’t pull those murders!”
Jeck showed surprise through his pain. “How’d you know that?”
“It was all Zeke, right from the first. There was nobody in the hearse when you grabbed it. That made it pretty certain that Zeke had already ditched the body, killing the filling station attendant while he was doing it. Then he tried to kill me in my office. That showed he was scared of me.
“He telephoned the police that lie about the body, so as to get me in trouble so I couldn’t help the girl. Probably he intended to plant Jud Ogel’s body in my office. I have no proof of that, of course. Neither can I prove that he shot at me and murdered the taxi driver, but he wasn’t with the girl, and he could have done it.
“When he came back here, the first thing he did was to look and see if his treasure was safe. Honest John and Tom Tammany saw him doing that, and he killed them both. Then he tried to potshoot me and the girl. He probably threw the rifle he had used into the lake. And he claimed he had been following you so as to draw suspicion from himself. You’d better be wise, Jeck, and let me go!”
BEFORE Nace’s argument could get results, Zeke reappeared. He carried a great, writhing, poisonous water moccasin, gripping it just back of the head.
