Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  He looked around the room again. “Well, I guess that’s about all the artillery, except—” he nodded at Quade. “How about you?”

  “Not me,” said Quade. “I never carried a gun in my life. I don’t have to.”

  Willie examined the gun he had taken from McGregor. He dropped the clip into his hand and smelled the muzzle.

  “Cleaned it, huh?” he said.

  “Not for two weeks,” replied McGregor.

  “Personally,” said Quade, “I think the pilot was killed with a .38. And I also think that the person who really killed the pilot had all sorts of chances to throw away the gun and probably did.”

  “Eh?” said Scharnhorst. “You don’t think it was this fellow?”

  “It could have been. He might have had another gun.”

  “Well, who’s your candidate then? You’re a wise guy, you know everything.”

  Quade grinned wryly and shook his head.

  The door banged open and in came Oscar and Julius with Louie behind them. Louie was shivering from the cold.

  “It’s forty below zero outside, maybe sixty or seventy even. I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay out there all night.”

  Scharnhorst sighed. “Always complaining. How much more work have you got to do?”

  “I just told you,” snarled Louie. “The pelts are strung up on lines. We got to take ’em down, tie ’em in bundles and load ’em in the truck. It’ll take us until morning to load all those skins.”

  Scharnhorst scowled. “We should have waited until tomorrow night. Maybe all these guests wouldn’t have been here, and Becker might have had them baled for us. Well, you know how things are, Louie, the snow’ll keep people from coming here tonight, and we’ll have to make the most of it. Get yourself warmed up, and then give it another whack. Me, I’ve got my hands full right here.”

  Louie and the two German workers went out again in a few minutes. Quade sat himself on the floor near the fireplace. It was going to be a long night, he knew. Charlie Boston sat down on the other side of the fireplace. In the middle of the room, Gustave Lund, Olga Larsen and Slade began a mild argument. Olga was bemoaning her fate, and Lund was berating Slade for their predicament. He insisted that Slade had no business booking them for a small city like Duluth in the first place.

  After a while Bill Morgan and Mona Lane came across the room and stood before the fireplace.

  “What do you think of it, Mr. Quade?” asked Morgan respectfully.

  Quade shrugged. “We’ll stay here until morning and then they’ll go off. We’ll get to a town without any trouble.”

  Morgan nodded. “They’ll be looking for the plane, of course, by morning. It should have been in Duluth by now, and when it’s late, they’ll start looking for it. I know we weren’t off our course much, and they ought to be able to locate it in a few hours. We’ll probably have a plane here before noon.”

  “And until then, we might as well make ourselves comfortable,” said Mona.

  Quade chuckled, and then the floor lamp flared brightly and went out, plunging the room into total darkness. Quade gasped and began raising himself from the floor. Before he regained his feet, someone in the room yelped sharply. There was a rushing movement and the sharp, terrific explosion of a gun.

  Willie Scharnhorst’s voice cut the darkness: “Stand where you are, everyone! I’m at the door, and the first one comes close gets plugged!”

  A woman screamed, hysterically. Quade knew it wasn’t Mona Lane. He was on his feet now, crouched and moving forward in the darkness, hands outstretched. He knew the location of the door, and if the darkness held for another thirty seconds, he knew also that he would be in complete command of the situation. A floor board creaked, and someone near the door, Scharnhorst no doubt, fired his gun into the ceiling.

  “Stand still, I said!” Willie’s voice grated harshly.

  Quade’s outstretched hand collided with a body. His fingers clawed it, and he was rewarded with a snarl and a sudden swish of air. He ducked instinctively. Something heavy and hard grazed the side of his face and thudded on his left shoulder. He almost went to his knees, but gritted his teeth and plunged forward. His hands encountered only darkness. There was a crashing of glass, and then a match sputtered into flame. It threw a ghostly half-light upon the scene.

  “You, Quade,” snarled Scharnhorst. “Stand where you are, or I’ll plug you!”

  Quade stood. At the other side of the room another match lit up a little spot, and then Hugo, Becker’s helper, came out of the kitchen with a kerosene lamp. It flooded the room with light.

  Scharnhorst was standing just inside the door, his feet wide apart, his own gun and McGregor’s held before him, menacingly. McGregor himself was poised on his toes at the window facing Scharnhorst. He looked like a tiger about to spring upon his prey. Becker was lying flat on the floor near the kitchen. Near the fireplace Bill Morgan stood with his arm around Mona Lane. Charlie Boston was behind Quade.

  The two skaters and their manager were sitting on the couch. Olga Larsen was blubbering hysterically. Ben Slade’s face was almost as white as the snow outside. Lund sat between him and Olga, his head hanging forward on his chest. Quade looked at him and inhaled softly.

  “Lund,” he said.

  Lund did not move. Ben Slade looked at the man beside him and bounded to his feet.

  “He’s shot!” he cried. “He’s been shot!”

  Cold air blew into the room from outside. One entire window pane was broken. Quade looked at it and shook his head. Scharnhorst came away from the door in a rush. He grasped his guns securely, and Quade knew that this was not the moment to attack him. The gunman looked into the face of Gustave Lund and Quade heard his teeth click together.

  “Who did this?” he snapped. “You, Quade?”

  “No, not me,” replied Quade. “I was sitting down beside the fireplace. I couldn’t have put out the light.”

  Scharnhorst’s eyes rolled toward the fireplace, then dropped to the floor.

  “The hell you couldn’t. The wire from the lamp runs along there.”

  “That’s so,” Quade conceded, “but it isn’t broken there. The circuit could have been shorted almost anywhere—outside the house, in the kitchen, or you, Willie, you could have pulled the cord from the socket there just two feet from your chair.”

  “Why the devil would I want to do that?” demanded Scharnhorst. “If I had wanted to bump him off, I’d have just done it without dousing the lights.”

  There was truth in what Willie said. Quade felt sure that Scharnhorst hadn’t killed Lund. Besides, there was the matter of the broken window. Throughout the turmoil in the dark, Scharnhorst had advertised his exact position. He could not have thrown the gun out of the window without coming forward at least eight feet and then retreating back to the door. Quade knew he hadn’t done that. He knew too that Boston had been behind him and Charlie was not the sort of man who shot people in the dark. Besides, he was Quade’s friend.

  Bill Morgan and Mona? They’d been at the fireplace, but had had a chance to move around. Conceivably, they could have reached the wire, but Quade didn’t think so. Alan McGregor? Yes, he was the logical suspect. He was near the window. But Scharnhorst had frisked him, had taken away his gun. Had the man had another gun concealed on his person or somewhere in the room? He was a member of the party who had been on the airplane. He could have been the one who had killed the pilot.

  On the other hand, the skaters and their manager had ignored McGregor completely. If any of them had known McGregor, and they must have for him to want to kill one of them, they had concealed it well. Ben Slade? He was Lund’s manager, received a share of his earnings. Managers don’t kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.

  Quade looked hard at Olga Larsen. She was a national figure, the world’s greatest skating star. He recalled something Lund had said earlier.
The dead skater had been bitter toward Olga and Slade for some reason.

  The door slammed open, and Louie came running in, gun held ready.

  “Jeez!” he cried. “What’s all the shooting about?”

  “Just a little rub-out, Louie,” Scharnhorst said. “That’s all.”

  Louie did not seem greatly disconcerted. “Why did you knock him off?”

  “I didn’t. Somebody else here did it.”

  “Who?”

  Scharnhorst shook his head. “Search me. You can see the electric light ain’t working. All of a sudden the light goes out, the window busts, and someone shoots this bozo.”

  “No,” cut in Quade. “He was shot before the window was broken which means that someone in this room killed him. I’m willing to bet eight copies of The Compendium of Human Knowledge against a nickel that you’ll find a gun outside there in the snow.”

  Scharnhorst’s eyes slid toward his pal. “O.K., Louie, get it.”

  Louie shot an angry look at Oliver Quade and left the room. Quade stepped easily across the room to the window and peered out into the rectangle of light that shone through the window on the snow. He saw Louie come into the rectangle, move around, and then pick up something from the snow. A moment later he came into the room, wiping snow from an automatic.

  “This is it!” he said. “Two shots fired!”

  “Oh,” said Quade, “a .38. One shot for the pilot and one for Lund.”

  “And someone had the gun all the time!” exclaimed Scharnhorst, looking blackly around the room.

  When he had first entered with Louie and taken command of the lodge, he had been a good-natured gunman. The events of the past half-hour had changed his disposition. He looked sullen and mean. Quade didn’t like the change. He had read about The Mad Dutchman in the newspapers, knew that when Scharnhorst was enraged, he was a mad dog who would stop at nothing.

  “How you coming along with the pelts, Louie?” asked Scharnhorst.

  “All right,” growled Louie. “Take me three or four hours more, I guess if—say! I left those two Dutchmen out there. Do you suppose they would beat it?”

  “You sap! Get out there! If they’ve ducked for help, we’ve got to scram, too.”

  Louie slammed out the door. He returned two minutes later.

  “They’ve beat it!”

  Scharnhorst cursed roundly. Quade saw Mona Lane flinch. The big man strode across to Becker.

  “Where did those men of yours go to?”

  “I don’t know,” groaned Becker. “There ain’t no neighbor in ten miles from here, and you can see for yourself that it’s snowing like the devil. Spooner is thirty-one miles from here.”

  “Lucky I had the key from the truck ignition,” said Louie. “They couldn’t take the truck. They got the horses, though.”

  Scharnhorst pursed his lips thoughtfully. “The way it’s snowing, they’ll be lucky if they can make it to this neighbor in three hours and three hours back here.”

  “Not exactly,” said Quade. “This neighbor may have a phone and call Spooner. They have cars and trucks there that can get through here.”

  Scharnhorst stared at Becker. “How about it, Dutch? Has this neighbor of yours got a telephone?”

  Becker nodded. “Yeah.”

  Scharnhorst swore again. “That means if those two lugs get to this neighbor’s, they’ll telephone to Spooner, and they’ll come out here in autos in about an hour—four hours altogether—better make it three in case those bozos push their horses faster than I figure they will. Well, we’ll just have to finish up in three hours.”

  His eyes darted around the room. “All right, you fellows! Becker, Quade, and that fat lug beside you! Morgan, you, McGregor and Slade, come on, we got work to do.”

  “‘Fat lug’ huh?” Charlie Boston grunted, under his breath. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to him about that.”

  “What do you want us to do?” demanded Ben Slade.

  “Come on outside and help with the pelts, that’s what. We haven’t got much time. The women’ll stay in here. They ain’t foolish enough to try to get away in this weather.”

  “It’s cold outside,” protested Ben Slade, “and I, honest, I wouldn’t be much good out there.”

  Scharnhorst looked contemptuously at the little manager. He snorted.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t be much good out there anyway. Stay here with the women.”

  “I don’t feel so good either,” said Quade. “And look, I only have this thin overcoat. You wouldn’t make me go out there in the cold, would you?”

  “The hell I wouldn’t,” snarled Scharnhorst. “You can work hard and keep warm. C’mon.”

  A long, low, snow-covered shed held the fox skins. Quade saw long wires stretched from end to end of the shed on which hung, on wire frames, hundreds upon hundreds of inverted silver fox skins.

  “All right, fellows,” said Scharnhorst, hefting his gun, “get busy! Take them skins down from the frames, put them in bundles, and tie them up.”

  “There’s another shed,” said Louie. “I better take half of these punks with me. You can stand here at the end and watch these fellows. There’s only one door.”

  Quade managed to pair off with Charlie Boston and Karl Becker and follow Louie. That left Scharnhorst with Morgan, McGregor and Hugo.

  Outside, Louie herded Quade and the others to a shed about fifty feet away. Inside the shed were row upon row of silver fox pelts.

  “Boy! what a lot of fur coats!” exclaimed Charlie Boston. He smacked his gloved hands together, stretched wide his arms, and swooped up an armful of pelts.

  “Och!” exclaimed Becker. “Such a business! The skins are still green!” He dropped down upon the pelts and almost reverently began taking out the individual wire frames upon which they were stretched.

  Passing Charlie Boston, Quade nudged him. Boston followed him a few feet into the shed. They stood side by side gathering up armfuls of pelts.

  “This is it, Charlie,” whispered Quade. “Watch me!”

  “Hey, break it up, you two!” called Louie from the door.

  Quade moved away with a tremendous armful of pelts. Approaching Becker, kneeling on the floor, he seemed to trip. He cried out and as he plunged forward he heaved the bundle of pelts into Louie’s face. The explosion of Louie’s gun filled the room, but no bullet struck Quade. And then his shoulders hit the gunman’s knees and Louie was falling backwards. Charlie Boston swarmed over Quade, and he heard the solid thump of Boston’s fist landing on Louie. That was all there was to it. Usually, when Boston hit them squarely they did not get up again, not for a while. Quade scooped up Louie’s lantern in his left hand, his gun with his right.

  “All right, Ollie. Let’s go!” cried Boston.

  Becker was babbling incoherently over his skins. Quade leaped out through the door of the skin-drying shed. At the same instant big Willie Scharnhorst sprang out of the other shed. The big .45 in his hand blasted fire and thunder. The bullet fanned Quade’s cheek. Scharnhorst was no mean shot. Quade fired, more with the intention of scaring Scharnhorst than trying to hit him. Scharnhorst jumped aside, but at that moment a gun somewhere else thundered and hot fire seared Quade’s left shoulder.

  “Someone else is shooting at you!” cried Boston.

  “I know it,” retorted Quade and made a huge leap around the corner of the shed. He dropped the lantern from his hand. It fell into some loose snow and sunk almost out of sight, but Quade didn’t pause for light. He kept going straight into the darkness. Someone behind him kept shooting and that only made Quade go faster. It was a minute or more before he was really aware that Boston wasn’t behind him. The big fellow couldn’t travel as fast as Quade, but Quade wasn’t worried about him. Boston was quite capable of taking care of himself.

  When Quade stopped, there were trees around him. He steppe
d behind one and looked back in the direction he had come. He saw two or three winking lights moving about and he heard faint talk. But the lights were not approaching him, and he guessed that Scharnhorst realized the futility of trying to capture someone in a snowstorm in an unfamiliar forest.

  Scharnhorst would proceed with the work of getting the fox skins together. It was cold out here, and Quade shivered. The prospect of staying out here three or four hours was not a cheerful one.

  Furthermore, there were possibilities to this that he did not like. There was Olga Larsen, for example. Scharnhorst was a known kidnapper. Olga Larsen had money, a great deal of it. Furthermore, Scharnhorst was in a precarious situation himself. A truckload of silver fox skins was not easy to conceal even up here in the sparsely settled section of northern Wisconsin. Scharnhorst would have to go one hundred and fifty miles to reach the Canadian border. If he were smart, he would seize Olga Larsen or someone else to use as a hostage until he reached safety.

  Quade was quite honest in admitting that he did not care a great deal for Olga Larsen, but on the other hand Scharnhorst might just possibly realize that Quade would be the most formidable pursuer and take along Charlie Boston. For Charlie Boston, Quade would go to very great lengths. He shook his head in the darkness.

  “Got to do something before they get away.”

  His eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, he made out rectangular spots of blackness to the right. Those, no doubt, were the live fox houses. He moved in the direction and hit meshed wire. He kept his hands on the wire and moved along it. It was a long pen, almost two hundred feet long. When he reached the end of it, he found himself before a long, low shed.

  He listened but heard no sign of movement inside the shed. He did, however, hear little noises further away and guessed that the shed was split up into sections, foxes in sections beyond this first one could smell or hear his presence and were restless. Softly he unlatched the door. He opened it a crack and attempted to peer inside. His eyes could not penetrate the inky blackness.

  He stood there for a moment and then closed the door. As he did an electric light bulb directly over the door sprang into light. Quade gasped, but his quick brain deduced instantly that the lights in the fox pens were operated by remote control and someone back at the house or wherever the switches were, had turned them on. That meant also that the short circuit in the house had been repaired. But he couldn’t stand here under this light. Neither did he want to risk running to the woods again. He would make too good a target now with lights in several spots.