"That's not a nice thing to accuse a chap--"
"Murder's not nice, either. You've been living off Joan Greg. You haven't any more got a place on Flint Flat than I have. Have you?"
"Well..."
"No, you haven't. Joan Greg told you that she had gotten a job as secretary to Sheila Alden and was coming up here. You knew who Sheila Alden was, and you thought that was a swell chance for you to chisel in and charm the young lady with your entrancing personality.
"You must have let Joan Greg in on it--told her you'd make a killing and split with her probably. But when it came right down to seeing you make passes at Sheila Alden, Joan Greg couldn't take it."
"Fantastic," Crowley said in a stiff unnatural voice. "Utter--rot."
"You!" said Brill, and the blood made a thick red flush in his shallow cheeks. "You rat! I'll see you hung! I'll--I'll--Doan! Hold him until I get my gun!" He blundered wildly out of the room, and his feet made a wild pattering rush down the hall.
Crowley had recovered his poise now. His eyes were cold and alert and hard, watching Doan. Brill's bedroom door slammed, and then his voice shrilled out fiercely.
"Get up! Get up, damn you! I know you're faking! I saw your eyes open!"
There was a scuffling sound from the hall, and Joan Greg cried out breathlessly. Crowley moved against the wall.
"No," said Doan.
Confused footsteps came closer, and Brill pushed Joan Greg roughly into the bedroom.
"There!" Brill raged. "Look at her! Look at your handiwork, damn you, you shameless little tramp!"
Joan Greg gave a stifled cry of terror. She held her shaking, blood-smeared hands out in front of her helplessly, and then she turned and ran to Crowley and hid her face against his chest.
"There they are!" Brill shouted. He was holding a .45 Colt automatic in his hand and he waved it wildly in the air. "Look at them!
A fine pair of crooks and murderers! But they'll pay! You hear me, do you? You'll pay!"
Doan was looking at the radiator in the corner. He was frowning a little bit and whistling softly and soundlessly to himself.
"Why is it so hot?" he asked.
"Eh?" Brill said. "What?"
"Why is it so hot in the bedrooms?"
"The windows have storm shutters on them," Brill said impatiently. "They can't be opened in a wind like this."
"But why are the radiators so hot? The water in that one is boiling. You can hear it."
"What damned nonsense!" Brill yelled. "Are you going to stand there and ask silly questions about radiators when Sheila Alden has been murdered and these two stand here caught in the very act--"
"No," said Doan. "I'm going to find out about the matter of the temperature around here. You watch these two."
"Doan, you fool!" Brill shouted. "Come back here! You're in my employ and I demand--"
"Watch them," said Doan. "I'll be back in a minute or so."
CHAPTER VIII.
HI, KOKOMO
HE WENT DOWN the hall, down the steep stairs, and across the living room. The log fireplace was dull, glowing red embers now. The wind had blown some of the smoke back down the chimney, and it made a thick murky blue haze. Doan went on across the room through the archway on the other side.
Ahead of him light showed dimly around the edge of the swinging door that led into the kitchen. The hinges squeaked as Doan pushed it back.
Kokomo was sitting in the corner beside the gleaming white and chromium of an electric range. He was still wearing his big apron, and the tall chefs hat was tilted down rakishly over his left eye. He had what looked like the same toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and it moved up and down jerkily as he said:
"What can I do for you, sonny?"
"Don't you ever go to bed at night?" Doan asked.
"Naw. I'm an owl."
"It's awfully hot upstairs," said Doan.
"Too bad."
"I notice you have a central hot water heating system here. What does the furnace burn--coal or oil?"
"Coal."
"Who takes care of it?"
"Me."
"Where is it?"
Kokomo jerked a thick thumb at a door in the back wall of the kitchen. "Down cellar."
"I think I'll take a look at it."
Kokomo took the toothpick out of his mouth and snapped it into the far corner of the room. "Run along and roll your hoop, sonny, before I lose my patience and lay you out like a rug. This here end of the premises is my bailiwick and I don't go for any mush-faced snoopers prowlin' around in it. I told the rest that. Now I'm tellin' it to you."
"On the other hand," said Doan cheerfully, "I think I'll have a look at the furnace."
Kokomo got up out of his chair. "Sonny, you're gettin' me irritated. Put that popgun away before I shove it down you throat."
Doan dropped the gun in his coat pocket, smiling. "Aw, you wouldn't do a mean thing like that, would you?"
Kokomo came for him with quick little shuffling steps, his head lowered and tucked between the hunched bulk of his thick shoulders.
Doan was still smiling. He made a fork out of the first two fingers of his left hand and poked them at Kokomo's eyes. Kokomo knew that trick and, instead of ducking, he merely tilted his head back and let Doan's stiffened fingers slide off his low forehead. But when he put his head back, he exposed his thickly muscular throat.
Doan hit him squarely on the adam's apple with a short right jab. It was a wickedly effective blow, and Kokomo made a queer strangling noise and grasped his throat with both hands, rolling his head back and forth in agony. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes bulged horribly.
Doan hit him again, a full roundhouse swing with all his compact weight behind it. His fist smacked on the hinge of Kokomo's jaw. Kokomo went back one step and then another, shaking his head helplessly, still trying to draw a breath.
"I should break my hands on you, cement-head," Doan said casually. He took the revolver out of his coat pocket and slammed Kokomo on the top of the head with the butt of it.
The blow smashed the tall chefs hat into a weirdly lopsided pancake. Kokomo dropped to his knees, sagging loosely. With cold-blooded efficiency Doan hit him again in the same place. Kokomo flopped forward on his face and lay there on the shiny linoleum without moving.
It had happened very fast, and Doan was standing there now, looking down at Kokomo, still smiling in his casually amused way. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"These tough guys," he said, shrugging.
He dropped the revolver in his coat pocket again and stepped over Kokomo. The cellar door was fastened with a patent bolt. Doan unlatched it and peered down a flight of steep wooden stairs that were lighted dimly from the kitchen behind him. He felt around the door and found a light switch and clicked it. Nothing happened. The light down in the cellar, if there was one, didn't work.
Doan went down the steps, feeling his way cautiously as he got beyond the path of the light from the kitchen door. The cellar was a warm, dark cavern thick with the smell of coal dust. Feeling overhead, Doan located the warmth of a fat asbestos-wrapped pipe and judged from the direction it ran that the furnace was over in the far corner.
He started that way, sliding his feet cautiously along the cement floor. He was somewhere in the middle of it, out of reach of either wall, when something made a quick silent breath going past in front of his face.
He stopped with a jerk, reaching for his revolver. The thing that had gone past his face hit the wall behind him with a dull ominous thud and dropped to the floor. Doan stayed rigidly still, his revolver poised. He was afraid to move for fear of stumbling over something. He listened tensely, his head tilted.
A voice whispered out of the darkness ahead of him. "Don't--don't you dare come any closer. I've got a shovel here. I'll--hit you with it."
Doan was a hard man to surprise, but he was as startled now as he ever had been in his life. He stared in the direction of the voice, his mouth open.
The voice said
shakily: "You get out."
"Whoa," Doan said. "Wait a minute. I'm not coming any closer. Just listen to me before you heave any more of that coal."
"Who--who are you?"
"Name's Doan."
"The detective! Oh!"
"That's what I say. And who're you?"
"Sheila Alden."
"Ah," said Doan blankly. He drew a deep breath. "Well, I know I'm not drunk, so this must be happening. If you're Sheila Alden down here in the cellar, who's the Sheila Alden up in the bedroom?"
"That's my secretary, Leila Adams. She's been impersonating me."
"Oh. Sort of a game, huh?"
"No!"
"Well, I was just asking. What's the matter with the light down here?"
"I screwed the bulb out of the socket."
"Well, where is it? I'll screw it back in again. I need some light on the subject."
"Oh, no! No! Don't!"
"Why not?"
"I--I haven't any clothes on."
"You haven't any clothes on," Doan repeated. He shook his head violently. "Maybe I'm a little sleepy or something. I don't seem to be getting this. Suppose you just start and tell me all about it."
"Well, Leila and I came up here alone. Kokomo had come ahead to open up the place. Kokomo and Leila are in this together. When we got here they held me up and locked me in the cellar--in the back room beyond this one. Leila told me she was going to pretend she was me."
"Is Brill crazy? Didn't he know Leila Adams wasn't you?"
"No. Mr. Dibben in the law firm always handled all my business. I don't know Mr. Brill. He's never seen me."
"Well, well," said Doan. "Then what?"
"They just locked me in that cellar room. There's one window, and they didn't want to put bars over it, so they took all my clothes away from me. They knew I wouldn't get out the window then. If I did I'd freeze.
"It's two miles to the station and I didn't know which way. And Kokomo said if I screamed he'd..." Her voice trailed off into a little gasping sob. "He told me what he'd do."
"Yeah," said Doan. "I can imagine."
"Where is he now?"
"Kokomo? He's slightly indisposed at the moment. Go on. Tell me the rest."
"I broke a little piece of metal off the window, and I picked the lock on the door and got out here. I know how the heating system works. The valves are down here. I turned off the ones that controlled the downstairs radiators and opened the ones that control the upstairs radiators wide.
"Then I kept putting coal in the furnace with the drafts wide open. I thought if I made it hot enough in the upstairs bedrooms someone besides Kokomo would come down and look."
"Sure," said Doan. "Smart stuff. If I'd had any brains I'd have been down here hours ago. You stay right here and I'll bring you something to wear. Don't be afraid any more."
"I haven't been afraid--not very much. Only--only of Kokomo coming down here and--"
"He won't be coming down. Stay right here. I'll be right back." Doan ran back up the steps. All his cheerful casual air was gone now. His lips were thinned across his teeth, and he moved with a cat-like, lithe efficiency.
Kokomo was still lying flat on his face in the center of the kitchen floor. Doan, moving with the same quiet quickness, opened the cupboard door and located an aluminum kettle.
He filled it with water at the sink. Carrying it carefully, he walked over to Kokomo and, using the toe of one shoe, expertly flipped the big man over on his back.
He dumped the kettle of water in Kokomo's blankly upturned face. For a second there was no reaction, then Kokomo's pulpy lips moved, and he sputtered wetly. His eyes opened and he saw Doan looking thoughtfully down at him.
"Hi, Kokomo," Doan said softly. "Hi, baby."
Kokomo made noises in his throat and heaved himself up on his elbows. Doan took one short step forward and kicked him under the jaw so hard that Kokomo's whole lolling body lifted clear of the floor and rolled half under the stove. He didn't move any more.
"I'll have another present for you later," Doan said.
CHAPTER IX.
BLACK SNOW
HE WENT IN through the living room to the front hall. He had opened the door of the closet and located his snow-damp topcoat when he heard a little shuffling noise at the top of the stairs. He turned around to look.
It was Brill. The light behind him made him look grotesquely thin, sagging in the middle like a broken pencil.
"Doan!" he gasped.
He got hold of the railing with both hands, and then he came down the stairs in a crazily shuffling dance, his skinny legs wavering and twisting weirdly. He tripped and fell headlong down the last ten steps before Doan could catch him.
The skin on his face was yellowish, the cheekbones bulging out in ugly lumps. Blood was streaked in a long smear across his forehead. Doan straightened him out on the steps.
"Doan!" he said desperately. "That damned scoundrel, Crowley. Tricked me. Hit me--hit me--chair." He heaved himself up on his elbows, eyes glaring. "Doan! I'll hold you responsible! Got away! Your fault!"
"They didn't hit me with a chair," Doan pointed out.
"You!" Brill gasped. "Leaving me with them. While you wander off... They'll get away! They'll get to the station! Jannen will help them! Flat-car there--go down the grade..."
"We'll telephone ahead and stop them."
Brill rolled his head back and forth helplessly. "No telephone. Tried it upstairs. Line cut. You've got to go after them! They've got only a few minutes start! You can catch them! That girl--she can't go fast."
Doan said: "You mean you want me to go out in that storm again?"
"Oh, damn you!" Brill swore. "Don't you understand that my whole career is at stake? I hired your agency, and you failed me! I'll have you black-listed. I'll sue!"
"All right, all right," Doan said. "I'll go bring them back. Take another coat and give it to the girl you find down cellar."
He went to the front door and opened it. The wind whooped in triumphantly, driving a fine mist of snow ahead of it.
"Light," said Brill weakly. "They've got an electric lantern. You can see--"
Doan slammed the door shut. The wind came whipping down out of the black mouth of the ravine with a fierce howling intensity. Doan was struggling to get into his topcoat, and the wind billowed the coat out like a clumsy sail and blew Doan with it down the steps and across the black, rock-strewn ground.
He stumbled into a drift waist-deep before he caught himself. He stood still for a moment, one arm crooked up to shield his eyes from the cutting whip of the snow. The wind blasted at him, and then he caught the flicker of a light on the path that led up out of the flat.
Doan began to run. He was half-blinded with the snow, and the wind pulled and tugged at him, pushed him in staggering crazy spurts. He stumbled and half-fell, and then the gravel on the steep path grated under his shoes.
The light was high above him, much closer now, and as he watched, it flicked over the edge of the ravine and disappeared.
Doan fumbled under his coat and found the revolver. He went up the path at a lurching run. His breath burned icily in his throat. The air was thin and fine, with no weight to it, and his heart began to drum in a sickening cadence.
He was breathing in sobbing gasps when he hit the top of the ravine, sweat crawling in cold rivulets under his clothes. He paused there swaying, looking for the light, and found it off to his left.
He turned and plowed stubbornly in that direction, and there was no path here, nothing but thick drifts of snow piled against stunted brush that tore at his clothes with myriad clutching fingers.
The light tossed up high ahead of him, very close now, and showed stunted trees lined up in a ghostly gallery, leaning forward in the push of the wind as they watched.
Doan tripped over a snow-hidden log and went down flat on his face in powdery whiteness. He heaved himself stubbornly up on hands and knees, dabbed at his smeared face with his coatsleeve--and he stayed that way, half kn
eeling, rigid, staring into savagely cruel greenish yellow eyes on a level with his own and not a yard away.
"Hah!" Doan said, grunting with the exhalation of his breath.
The eyes came for him with the sudden slashing gleam of teeth under them. Doan poked the revolver straight out and fired, wondering as he pulled the trigger whether his fall had packed snow in the barrel and whether the gun would blow back at him.
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 5
