Maclain tensed suddenly.
If arrangements had been made to intercept Bunny’s car and abduct Babs Tredwill, the fake kidnaping might leave the killer in the clear in the event anything went wrong.
The Captain sat up in bed more than satisfied. It fitted all the way through. Babs would be left alive. Gil was working on the final steps of his bombing sight, and, alive, his sister might be used in extorting information from him.
Maclain left his bed with the smoothness of a materializing apparition, found trousers, heavy shirt, and soft-soled shoes, and put them on. Schnucke came up beside him to receive her brace and harness, which the Captain took from a chair. His flat automatic in the shoulder rig was still in the drawer. He strapped it on, covered it with a dark overcoat, and with a slowness which would have been impossible for an ordinary man opened the bedroom door.
Something which had puzzled him badly was finally clear: how his own abductors had known exactly the time and place to stop Cheli’s car.
4
The granite of resolution and the marble of anger had driven out every lovable quality in Duncan Maclain. As he stepped into the hall he was as impersonal as a piece of metal come under a powerful magnet’s sway, and forced by the immutable laws of physics to answer its imperious command. He had no eyes, but he could shoot with the devastating accuracy of lightning at the most infinitesimal sound. He was blind, but it was the implacable blindness of Justice. Duncan Maclain and his dog, pitted against a world full of fools; no more a man, but a killer out to destroy the God of War’s machine.
He found the stair top and went on down. Not a tick of the grandfather’s clock was lost in the sound of any movement he made. As though the keen mind of the dog beside him felt his need, Schnucke became part of his stealthiness.
At the bottom of the stairs, his thumb found the light switch, felt the smoothness of the pearl knob sticking out and the roughness of the black knob, in. He knew from that that the lights were out in the downstairs hall. He crossed it with counted steps, opened the phone-booth door, and touched Arnold Cameron’s shoulder. His hand moved on to the knife hilt in Cameron’s back. The F. B. I. man was still breathing, but he’d never had a chance to phone.
Duncan Maclain had no time now to help him. Indeed, he had no time at all, yet he went back up the front stairs slowly, and slowly walked to the other end of the hall. There, in the servant’s wing, another flight led down. He took it, and, knowing that avoiding squeaks meant life, he kept his feet pressed close on each step to the angle of tread and wall.
At the bottom he stopped again and the grandfather’s clock ticked off six hundred seconds as he opened another door. His hand went through before him to find another switch and tell him that the lights were out in the armory hall. He crossed it in the darkness, found the other door he was seeking, and descended the basement stairs.
A chain clanked in a corner. Maclain spat out a single word, and Dreist was silent without a warning growl.
When he came back up the stairs again, he was on his own, for Dreist, wearing Schnucke’s brace, was beside him; and Dreist could not guide him. In his other hand, the Captain held a ball of heavy twine. Step by step he ascended, paying out cord behind him. He had attached the other end of the cord to the handle of the main light switch at the foot of the stairs, so that every light in The Crags could be put out with a single pull.
At the top, with Dreist leading, he stepped into the hall. With the basement door almost closed behind him, he reached through with one arm, pulled the slack cord tight, and deftly tied it around the knob on the basement side of the door. He put the remainder of the ball down on the floor so that it held the door ajar.
Cold air struck against his face as he stepped inside Thad’s theater. He stood at the back with Dreist’s powerful body shivering beside him. He had intended to go outside through the back of the stage and put Dreist on that trail wiped out of the snow by the dragging Christmas tree—the trail of Thaddeus Tredwill’s girl; but someone had been in the theater before him and opened that backstage door. Someone was in there now.
“Steady, Dreist,” the Captain whispered, but his words were lost, for Dreist had gone, obeying the training so carefully instilled in him, to attack without warning when an adversary of Duncan Maclain showed a gun.
The Captain heard the rush of feet down the aisle, followed by Dreist’s snarl, and saved his life by dropping to the floor. The sound of the report which would normally have served him as a target proved confusing, for caught up in the acoustics of the theater it echoed hollowly.
Thinking with split-second speed, the Captain judged that whoever had fired the shot must be standing in the center aisle. Lying full length behind the last row of seats, he reached around and shot upward down the center aisle three times, resting his gun on the floor. Someone fell with a groan.
Maclain said, “The dog will tear you to pieces if you try to shoot again. You’d better stay where you are. Guard!” he ordered Dreist, and, standing up, felt his way toward the stage by the seat backs until his foot encountered clothing.
Bending over, he touched closed eyes, a straight nose, and a close-clipped mustache.
“Al Rutgers,” he muttered. “At least you feel that way from the description I’ve had of you. Come, Dreist,” he said aloud, “that’s one more out of the way, thanks to you.”
He slipped the gun into his overcoat pocket, and holding tight to the police dog’s brace turned to the rear of the theater and stepped through the door into the armory hall.
Upstairs he could hear someone pounding vigorously on a door.
“Pierce!” Maclain called.
An almost muffled voice answered him some distance down the armory hall. “He’s locked in, Captain Maclain. There isn’t much use in calling.”
The Captain went after his gun and swung himself aside, saving his life by inches for the second time within ten minutes. The ancient battleax hurtling toward him, instead of crushing his chest, struck a glancing blow on his arm. He staggered back under the impact and his gun dropped to the floor, irretrievably gone. The light ax swished on by to crash behind him against the wall.
Near him, Dreist whimpered. The dog had the bravest heart in the canine world, but something was approaching which he had never met before, something inhuman; a faceless being, neither man nor woman—a terrible machine.
“Get it, Dreist!”
The Captain’s words had the sting of a whiplash, and their heat fused anger into the dog’s quick fear. Dreist seldom barked, but when he did his bark spelled murder. With a three-foot leap he left his place beside Maclain and drove in sideways for the kill.
“I can’t control him,” the Captain said quietly, “if you don’t lie down and stay still.”
A laugh, metallic and hollow, was followed by the clank of teeth on metal and the scrape of Dreist’s claws. The Captain realized that the lights had been turned on while he was in the theater; no ax hurled at him in the dark could have come so near. At the same time, he recognized that he must have darkness to defeat the death approaching him down the hall. To reach the switch meant walking into the swing of a halberd or a broadax similar to the one which had beheaded Bella. He was facing a new kind of foe; one who had watched him come up from the cellar with Dreist and refrained from shooting him then because of the knowledge that Dreist would attack without warning at the sight of a gun; a clever foe who had taken steps that would insure safety against the vicious police dog’s skill. The Captain had stepped from the theater to meet an enemy who had cunningly figured that without Schnucke to guide him Maclain could not run; an enemy prepared in a most unorthodox fashion to murder not only the Captain, but Dreist too, in a good old medieval way.
“Schnucke!” the Captain called loudly. “Come here. Schnucke!”
He heard the curdling scrape of Dreist’s claws on burnished steel as the big dog leaped again. Then Dreist whimpered and his powerful body thudded to the floor.
“If you’ve kil
led my dog,” said Duncan Maclain, “you’ll never live to reach the electric chair.”
“You’ll never live to put me there,” the reverberating voice declared. The terrible clumping started again, drawing very near.
The patter of Schnucke’s running feet sounded on the basement stairs. The Captain gave an agonized call when he heard her stop at the partly open basement door. She hesitated only a second before she thrust her muzzle in the crack and forced her body through, darkening The Crags as she pulled the light switch off at the foot of the basement stairs.
The muffled voice gave a gasp.
Maclain said, “I think the honors are even, now that there’s darkness.”
He dropped to the floor and began to roll. Metal swished down above him as a madly swung halberd buried its blade in the floor. His powerful arms circled chain-clad knees, and tackled. The dull clang of a fall echoed through the vaulted hall.
Maclain found a steel-clad arm, twisted it into a hammer lock, and said in a voice that dripped like water on stone, “A suit of mail armor has one great disadvantage. It slips on like pants and sweater, but it’s clumsy. You’re under arrest for treason and murder, Cheli Scott, or should I call you Madame Bonnée!”
CHAPTER XXVI
I DISLIKE ax-killers. It’s a method of murder accompanied by a certain amount of unavoidable messiness which I find deplorable,” announced Duncan Maclain.
“In other words, you want your murders clean.” Spud Savage gave the nurse who was arranging his pillows an approving smile and waved her away. “If you’ll just run along, sweetheart, and eat yourself some Christmas dinner, I promise I won’t die.”
“Also shooters from the rear, and stabbers in the back,” the Captain continued when the nurse had shut the door behind her.
“And I dislike friends and relatives who sit around my hospital room and swill highballs without mixing me a second one on Christmas Day,” Spud declared.
“They’ll move you to the alcoholic ward.” Rena smiled and filled his glass. “You’ve already lost count.”
“It’s a trick I learned in the army.” Spud turned his head and winked at Colonel Gray.
“—And kidnapers and spies,” Maclain went on. “They lack the primary traits of humanity.”
“It’s a pity you haven’t a notebook, Rena,” Spud broke in. “Dunc’s about to hold forth on the Joan of Arc who put Dreist into the dog infirmary. Properly deleted, his remarks might be collected for the benefit of posterity. Tell the Colonel how you tackled her, Dunc, and threw her for a ten-yard loss on her cuirass.”
“Spud!” exclaimed Rena. “I’m going to take your drink away!”
“It’s French, and my pronunciation is flawless,” Spud protested with indignant scorn.
“Perhaps,” Maclain suggested, “you’d like me to go into details about blondes and their methods of purveying perfume.”
“That’s right, strike me in an open wound.” Spud found a cigarette, lit it, and held his empty glass out to Rena with an appealing smile.
She tried to look grim.
“I hear the plaintive tinkle of ice in an empty glass,” said Maclain. “Instinct tells me that the glass is in Spud’s outstretched hand. Give him another, Rena. I’ve never known a man who could bleed Haig and Haig from an open wound. The idea interests me.” He turned toward Colonel Gray. “Have you had further news of Cameron today?”
“I talked with Hartford Hospital an hour ago. They’ve operated and collapsed one of his lungs. He’ll be on the sick list for many a day.”
“He’s a brave man—and a good one,” said Maclain.
“And so are you.” The Colonel took a rose from a vase by the bed and absently smelled it. “That code you phoned me last night enabled us to locate every time bomb in the country today. We dug them out of a mailing list of customers in the House of Bonnée. We also found another flock of agents provocateurs scattered from California east to New London.”
“I’ve encountered my share of fanatics.” The Captain was thoughtful. “Frankly, I’ve never been so close to failure as I was with that Scott girl, or whatever her name may be.”
Colonel Gray replaced the rose he was holding in the vase, and asked: “What about her using Bunny Carter’s car?”
“He’s innocent as you are, Colonel. Just as Cheli fooled the Tredwills, Bunny was taken in by his chauffeur. The Crags was filled with false leads, too—Gilbert Tredwill’s monetary difficulties, and his foreign-born wife, didn’t make things any easier for me. Here’s the information we got from Babs Tredwill today.”
The Colonel sighed. “I’m glad that they spared that girl.”
“Only because they thought they might use her.” Resentment marked the Captain’s tone. “Babs admitted herself to Gerente’s apartment with a key. He was already dead. Babs turned around to leave and faced Cheli Scott standing in the door. Cheli said: ‘My God, you’ve killed him, Babs!’ and the distraught girl broke down and began to cry. It never entered her head that Cheli could have been there before her and murdered Paul.”
“It never entered mine,” said Colonel Gray.
“Babs said this morning that she thought Norma had put Cheli up to following her into New York to persuade her from seeing Gerente.”
“You’d have thought Babs would have insisted on giving an alarm,” Rena ventured.
Maclain nodded. “That she didn’t was one of many circumstances I put together last night to form the answer: Cheli. I’ve said before that this Scott lady is infernally quick-witted. She told Babs: ‘It doesn’t matter who killed this man. Nobody must know you’ve been here. Get your things from the Ritters’, and I’ll be waiting for you to come out. Walk a few blocks up Park Avenue and I’ll pick you up and drive you back to Hartford in Bunny’s car.’ ”
“The use of that car still has me puzzled,” the Colonel admitted.
“I’m coming to it,” said Maclain. “I reasoned things out this way. Norma Tredwill thought there was someone in Gerente’s apartment. Babs must have encountered that person, too.”
“Was there anyone there when Norma was there?” Spud inquired.
“Certainly,” said Maclain. “Cheli. She was in a quandary, too. If Norma hadn’t left as she did, there would have been another job of killing to do. She’d taken care of Babs through fear. Norma might not prove so easy; but Norma left in a panic, leaving Cheli to ransack the place at her leisure, find the Braille instructions in Gerente’s drawer, scent them with violet—”
“Why?” Spud broke in again.
The Captain answered by questioning Colonel Gray. “Did you by any chance, Colonel, round up a blind man in this ring?”
“A Russian Communist cobbler,” the Colonel supplied, “with a place on Third Avenue.”
“I thought so!” Maclain displayed his pleasure by a triumphant smile. “Cheli gave those instructions to Madoc, who had driven to New York with her and Al Rutgers in Bunny’s car. Bunny was away—and using his car was far safer than using her own. She had a happy faculty of shifting blame onto others. Even communications sent her from headquarters were addressed to Norma, as you know.”
“And the blind man?”
“Translated the Braille, Colonel Gray. Cheli scented the instructions so the blind man would know they came from the House of Bonnée. When he heard the translation, Madoc realized he had important information, if he could trick the defense plans of New York’s vulnerable points out of me. Cheli had already left for Hartford with Rutgers and Babs. Madoc took a long chance and impersonated Gerente—”
“A chance that proved too long,” muttered Colonel Gray. “If you hadn’t recognized that fellow’s speech at International, I hate to think what we might have faced today.”
“But I did,” said Duncan Maclain. “Now let’s follow Cheli. She picked up Babs and drove her back to Hartford. She had made previous arrangements by telephone—as she did with my abduction night before last—to have the car intercepted on the way. I wondered at the time I was ab
ducted how that truck knew exactly the time and place to stop Cheli’s car.
“Babs’s abductors drove her around while Rutgers took Cheli back to The Crags and rejoined them. Babs was put in a vacant room over Bunny’s garage—set far apart from the house on the side of the hill. They left her there, doped, and paralyzed with fear. At The Crags, Cheli decided to do a little more investigating while the family was away.”
“And nearly added Mrs. Tredwill to her victims,” put in Colonel Gray.
“She was cornered in the workshop.” The Captain snapped his fingers irritably. “She was the only one in the house besides Norma and the servants. It was infernally dense of me not to suspect her right away.”
“I like it when you’re dense,” said Spud, grinning. “It bolsters my failing ego tremendously.”
Maclain began to tick off points with his fingers. “Don’t forget that the previous afternoon Cheli had sent all the servants away except Bella, who she thought was working with her. She knew that Norma had been in Paul’s apartment, for she saw her there. She took a look at the parcel Norma had brought home, and knew that Mrs. Tredwill had rescued Babs’s galoshes from Gerente’s hall. That suited her fine, for Norma must have thought, as everyone else would think, that Babs had run away.”
Colonel Gray said thoughtfully: “She must have been on to Bella. Why did she pick such a brutal way?”
“On to her?” Maclain repeated. “What did this clever lady think of a co-worker who had vouched for a member of the F. B. I.? Bella knew her peril and was watching Cheli closely. The day I got to The Crags we were down in Gil’s workshop. I wanted to see if there were lingering traces of perfume on Gil’s plans, indicating that they’d been traced. I’d just put it over by pretending that I was smelling the plans for gasoline—”
“Gasoline?” asked Rena.
“I’d wiped my hands with it,” explained Maclain. “It was lucky I did so, for Cheli was with us. If she’d suspected that I was tracing down an odor of violets I’d have gone out with Bella in some similar pleasant way.”
Odor of Violets Page 21
