There wasn’t anything he could do but tear open the door of the fox shed and spring inside. To his consternation, there was an electric light bulb inside. He saw in his first glance around the room that this wasn’t really a fox pen, but rather a room for supplies. He saw several sacks of commercial cereal, fox food, many cans of disinfectants and remedies, even a blow torch. There was a wooden latch on the inside of the door. Quade dropped it. No sooner had he done so when he heard the crunch of feet on snow outside the door.
Quade tensed. He expected any moment that a bullet would tear through the planking of the door, that the harsh voice of Willie Scharnhorst would blast at him. A voice did speak. But it was muffled, disguised.
“All right, Quade. Come on out!”
“I like it better in here,” Quade replied. The advantage was his. The man outside was the person who had killed the airplane pilot and Gustave Lund. Why would he disguise his voice? It was not Scharnhorst. This person, apparently, did not want to make noise and bring Scharnhorst down upon him. That was in Quade’s favor. Quade didn’t want Scharnhorst in on this either.
He moved away from the door to a corner of the room. He heard the crunching of snow outside. The murderer was moving alongside of the fox pens. Suddenly Quade heard the quick flurry of rubbery pads; the nervous squeaks of animals. And then he saw something. The door leading into the adjoining pen was open. The killer was letting the foxes in on Quade. Quade knew that foxes, although shy, could be exceedingly vicious when frightened. And the foxes next door were certainly frightened at the moment.
He started across the room to close the door. He had taken only a step when there was a soft thump on the other side of the door and it flew wide open. A small black animal sprang into the room, saw Quade, and made a frightened leap for the small wire-covered window. Quade stepped quickly back into the corner. He had a gun and could shoot the animal if necessary, but the shot would instantly bring upon him Willie Scharnhorst and Louie.
There was more squealing and rushing about in the pen next door. Two foxes hurtled into Quade’s room, made a simultaneous leap at the window and bounced back to the floor.
He made a quick movement with his hand. “Beat it, fellows!” he said.
The foxes rushed, but not toward the door. They sprang instead upon a bench on which were several tin dishes. They knocked them over. The clatter frightened them even more. Now they were absolutely terrified, so much so they were utterly blind. They squealed and dashed helter-skelter in all directions, bumping themselves against the walls.
Quade crouched in a corner. An animal hurtled against him. He struck at it and sharp teeth ripped the leg of his trousers and tore into his ankle. Giddy pain swept over him. For an instant, he thought he was seeing double. There were more than three foxes in the room. He blinked and tried to count them. Five. And if they had been excited before, they were doubly so now. Perhaps the smell of the blood was affecting them.
Another animal leaped at Quade. He struck down at it with the gun. The animal squealed and fell away. Quade knew that he was in one of the tightest spots he had ever been in in his life. You could fight a human being but you couldn’t fight a room full of maddened foxes. The animals moved so fast you couldn’t even strike them solid blows.
His desperate plight stimulated his nimble brain. It was then he saw the can of ether on the shelf beside him. Alongside of it lay a three foot length of broomstick. Attached to one end of the stick was a bundle of cotton. Quade exclaimed softly. He whipped down the can of ether, tore off the cover, and with a quick movement splashed a half cupful of the contents on the cotton ball attached to the stick. The sickish sweet odor of ether assailed his nostrils.
He jammed his revolver into an overcoat pocket, caught up the stick with the ether-soaked cotton in one hand. The foxes were still rushing around. An animal snapped at his ankles. Quade smashed down with the stick and rapped the animal on the snout. The result was astonishing. The fox yelped, leaped and thudded to the floor, gave a spasmodic kick and lay still.
Quade’s eyes glinted. Now he took the offensive. He advanced from his corner, lunged out at another animal and tapped it lightly on the nose with the ether-soaked cotton. That fox fell. Now there were only three animals left. One hurtled through the air toward Quade’s throat. He smashed it down with his left fist and with his right hand flicked it with the stick.
Two left. Quade sprang forward, lunged for one and missed. The animal rushed away blindly, hit the wall and bounced through the open door into the pen. The fifth animal made a lightning circuit of the room, sprang for the wire-covered window and fell to the floor.
Quade caught it there, and then it was all over. He fastened the pen door so the fox that had escaped could not return. He was dripping with perspiration, weak from his battle and narrow escape, and mad clear through. He dropped the ether-soaked stick, whipped out his gun, and unlatched the door leading to the outside.
He stepped through and almost collided with Louie, the gunman. Louie yelled hoarsely and a bullet from his gun tugged at Quade’s overcoat. Quade shot him. Louie screamed and plunged forward to the snow. Grimly, Quade stepped over him. He marched through the snow that crunched loudly under his feet with every step, straight toward the drying sheds.
There was grim determination in his step and there was fury in his eye.
He found an excited circle of figures there. Charlie Boston was the dominating one of the group. On the snow lay Willie Scharnhorst.
“Ollie!” cried Boston. “Where’ve you been?”
“With the foxes,” retorted Quade. “I see you got Willie.”
“Yeah, he took his eyes off me and I belted him. But Louie got away.”
“Those shots just now was me and Louie shooting it out.” Quade’s eyes darted around the group. “The show’s over, folks,” he said. “Let’s all go to the house.”
Electric lights were on in the big living room of Karl Becker’s lodge. Gathered around were Mona Lane and Olga, Ben Slade and Alan McGregor; Bill Morgan and Karl Becker. Louie, the gunman, was still stretched out in the snow. There was no use bringing him in. In the kitchen, Hugo was tying up Willie Scharnhorst.
“Mr. Quade,” chortled Karl Becker, “I like you. You’re a fine fellow. If it hadn’t been for you—”
Quade waved a hand. “Scharnhorst and Louie are out of it, but there’s still a murderer. He’s in this room. He’s the man who killed the pilot, and Gustave Lund. I might say he’s also the man responsible for the airplane coming down.”
“I thought there was something wrong with the motor,” cut in Ben Slade.
Quade looked at Bill Morgan. “How about it?”
“One of them went dead altogether. The other was missing. There was something wrong with them all right, but I don’t know what.”
“Maybe the pilot knew. Maybe he was responsible for it. What did you know about him, Morgan?”
The co-pilot shrugged. “He was one of the best pilots on the line. Outside of that I didn’t know a great deal about him. He did have one weakness, women—expensive ones.”
“That would tie in, although we’ll probably never know. My conjecture is that he was paid to bring the plane down near this place.”
“But why would he want to do that?” asked Alan McGregor.
“Isn’t it obvious to you that Willie Scharnhorst didn’t have the brains to figure out a set-up like this one? Scharnhorst is just an ignorant hoodlum. He kidnapped that man in St. Louis and didn’t even have brains enough to collect the ransom. He had to let him go.”
Quade shifted suddenly to the flaxen-haired ice skater. “Miss Larsen, why were Gustave Lund and Slade always quarreling?”
“That’s none of your business,” cut in Slade.
“It is,” retorted Quade. “You tried to kill me out there a little while ago, and anything pertaining to you is my business.”
“What?” cried Slade. “I tried to kill you?”
“Yes. You’re the man I’ve been talking about. You shot at me and turned the foxes on me. How many rods do you pack?”
“You’re crazy!”
“I’ll draw a picture,” Quade turned to Mona. “Miss Lane, all of us left this room except you and Miss Larsen and Slade. What happened here after we left?”
“Why, I don’t know exactly. We sat around here in the dark and then Mr. Slade said he was going to try to fix the lights. He went out and a couple of minutes later the lights went on. And after a little while, he came back and said he had fixed them. That’s all I knew until all of you came back in here.”
Quade nodded. “How did you fix the lights, Slade?”
“I didn’t,” replied the little manager. “I just went outside and I heard a lot of shooting and running around and I didn’t go anywhere. I just stayed in back of the house while doing nothing. Then after the lights went on I came back in here.”
“You never left the vicinity of the house?”
“No.”
“Is that so? Then how did you get those silver fox hairs on your overcoat?”
Quade stepped forward as if to touch Slade’s coat. The little man yelled hoarsely and sprang back, tugging at his pocket.
Smack! Charlie Boston’s fist lifted Slade clear off his feet and hurled him back upon the sofa. He tumbled from it to the floor and lay still.
“That’s that,” said Quade. “Maybe he didn’t turn off or fix the lights—I think one of Becker’s workmen did that, thinking he was helping. But Slade is your killer.”
“I think you’re right,” Olga Larsen said suddenly. “Lund claimed Slade had stolen my money. He was stalling for a couple of weeks now. Lund was trying to get me to ask Ben for an accounting. But I thought Slade was honest. I suppose he just took advantage of the darkness to kill Lund.”
“I’ll bet you’ll find that Mr. Ben Slade is short twenty-five or fifty thousand dollars, or whatever you call big money,” Quade said. “Slade may never admit it, but I maintain he booked you for the Ice Carnival just to get you landed up here. Becker, it was that newspaper story about your foxes that was responsible. I read it myself only a week ago. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of fox skins was quite an inducement to them.”
“You mean dem two was working together?”
“Sure. Scharnhorst came along here with a truck. Slade brought down the airplane and the famous Olga Larsen. He’d paid the pilot to make a forced landing then, and just to play safe, and keep him from talking, he killed the pilot. Scharnhorst’s job was to take the furs, but a big truckful of furs is a hard thing to hide. That’s why they needed Olga Larsen. She’s a national figure. Slade brought her here so Scharnhorst could kidnap her. Hold her as a hostage, rather. With her life in danger, the police and G-men wouldn’t go after Scharnhorst. Then in a week or two, when the furs were safely cached or sold, Willie would have turned Olga loose to make more money for Slade. He killed Lund to keep his account shortage quiet.
“Mr. Becker, in the morning there are four animals in one of your sheds to pelt. I killed them,” Quade finished.
Karl Becker frowned. “You shot them? You put holes in their skins? That cuts down their value!”
Charlie Boston looked down at his huge fist. “Just once, Ollie,” he pleaded.
Quade grinned. “No—Mr. Becker, I didn’t put holes in your precious pelts. If I wasn’t so tired it would cost you money to know how I killed them, but I’ll just tell you. I killed them the same way you do, by tapping them on the nose with ether-soaked cotton.”
“Is dat so? You really do know about foxes then?”
“Only what I read in books. Mr. Becker, I like you. I’m going to give you a copy of The Compendium of Human Knowledge.”
Karl Becker was genuinely touched by Quade’s generosity. “Dot’s fine, Mr. Quade. You know I like you, too, and I tell you what I do. You have safed me from these low-life t’ieves. You have safed my thirty-two hundred beautiful skins. I reward you. One minute!”
He stepped outside the door and returned with a limp, black animal. “Dis fox, Mr. Quade, the one you run over in your automobile. I am going to make you a present of him—because you are such a fine fellow.” He extended the dead fox to Quade and said, as an afterthought: “De fox got out of the wire and maybe I never see him again, anyway.”
Charlie Boston gnashed his teeth. He stepped toward Karl Becker. Oliver Quade looked away.
State Fair Murder
He was here again. He saw the bright new banners: Minnesota State Fair, and a wave of nostalgia swept through him. There was sunshine and the clacking of turnstiles. Along the Midway he saw the same faces, heard familiar voices; the Kewpie dolls the suckers never won, gleamed from their shelves. He saw all of this and was glad that he was again a part of it.
And so he turned into the Education Building and found a bench and, mounting it, began talking in a voice that was louder than the noises of the huge building, that drowned even the clamor of the Midway and the yells of fifty thousand throats at the nearby speedway.
“I am Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia!” he thundered. “I know the answers to all questions. I can answer anything anyone can ask, on any subject …”
A man rushed up and, grabbing Oliver Quade’s coat, tugged furiously.
“You can’t start that stuff in here!” he cried, in a thin, high voice. “I told you you had to work outside!”
A look of utter weariness came upon Oliver Quade’s face. “Mr. Campbell,” he said, “I do not think more of twenty-five dollars than you do of your right arm. Yet that is the sum I paid you and I insist therefore, that I be allowed to work wherever I choose. And I choose this building.”
“Quade,” gritted Campbell, who was secretary of the Fair, “I dislike grease joints because they sell bad food and clutter up the grounds, yet I do not detest them one-hundredth as much as sheet-writers. And I would rather sleep in bed with a sheet-writer than live on the same street with a pitchman. And you, sir, are a pitchman. Do I make myself clear?”
So Oliver Quade took his case of books and went outside the Education Building. The noises of the Midway, the eighteen racing cars on the speedway, the fifty thousand persons in the grandstand could have been equalled only by eight tornadoes, three earthquakes and a 21-gun salute from the Pacific Fleet.
Yet Quade went into competition with it all—and held his own.
“I am Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,” he roared again. “I know the answers to all questions. I can answer anything anyone can ask me, on any subject—history, science, mathematics …”
An angry-looking man waved a book at Oliver Quade and yelled: “Who was the Republican nominee for president in 1848?”
“Ha,” said Quade, “you jest. The Republican Party did not come into existence until 1860. Abraham Lincoln was its first nominee.” He waved his arms dramatically and yelled at the throng that was gathering around him. “Now, try me on something else. Any subject, history, science, mathematics, sports—”
It was a hell of a time for murder.
The man who had asked the question about the Republican Party cried: “Ohmygawd!” and fell against Quade—dead.
Quade lowered the man to the ground and saw a little dart sticking in the small of his back. He picked up the book the man had dropped and noted the title: “Arnold’s American History.”
“A ringer,” he said.
And then—confusion.
For fifteen minutes the chief attraction of the fair was the corpse lying between the race-track and the Education Building. A couple hundred of the Fair’s special police made a solid, semi-circular fence.
Inside the circle twenty or thirty police from St. Paul milled about. Scattered among them were a half dozen private citizens. Oliver Quade was one of the unfortuna
tes. A Lieutenant Johnson had him up against the Education Building and was giving him some law.
“I don’t like your story,” Lieutenant Johnson said for the fifth time.
“You don’t, eh? All right. I’ll give you a better one. A pink-eyed guy eight feet tall came along, riding a female zebra, with a six-shooter in each hand—”
“Wise guy, huh!” snarled the police lieutenant. “Wasn’t there an audience around I’d paste you a couple.”
“What’d you expect?” demanded Quade. “I’m a total stranger here. I was making a pitch to five hundred people and one of them got killed. I never saw the man before in my life. I’m just an innocent bystander.”
The lieutenant knew that very well, but he hated to give up on Quade. He was the only tangible connection with a man who had been killed. He was the only one of all the persons who had been in the crowd who had remained to be grabbed by a policeman. Crowds are that way.
A sergeant came up with an open notebook. “Here’s what we’ve got, Lieutenant. His name was L. B. Arnold and he was president of the Arnold Publishing Company, of Anoka. There was $36.53 in his pockets, besides some letters and papers. The dart, well, the doc says there was some strange poison on it, but he won’t be able to say what it is until he makes a chemical analysis.”
The lieutenant sawed the air impatiently. “All right, we’ll go into that later.” He turned back to Quade, glowering. “I could take you to Headquarters.”
“What good’d it do you?”
“None, I guess. Where you staying?”
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 25