by Lester Dent
The girl whirled and ran. Nace grabbed, got her arm. He pulled her back hard enough to slam her against his chest. She opened her mouth to shriek. He cupped a hand over it. She bit his palm, but he stopped that by crowding a thumb hard against her nose.
He carried her down the street a few yards, so no one in the hotel would see them. She hissed, struggled, kicked. The perfume she used eddied faintly in his nostrils.
When she showed no sign of ceasing her exertions, he growled, “Lay off, Benna, or I’ll have to smack you down!”
The girl went on scuffling. Nace, watching her eyes, discovered she was looking behind him. He twisted hurriedly. He was just a fraction too late.
A man had glided up behind Nace and the girl. He gripped a wrench. It was all of iron, the sort of wrench which comes as factory equipment with most moderate-priced cars. He slammed it on top of Nace’s head.
Nace dropped.
The girl recoiled, unconsciously straightening her hair, saying hoarsely, “Fred! Fred! You didn’t hit hard enough to kill him?”
“Small loss if I did!” grated Fred.
Fred was almost as tall as Nace. He was thick in shoulders and neck. His face was handsome in a jaw-heavy sort of way.
“Go get in the car, honey,” Fred said. “I’ll bring this bum.”
He stopped to pick Nace up. He was entirely off guard.
Nace hung a beautiful right-hand jab on the point of Fred’s ample jaw. Stunned, Fred piled down on the detective. But he must have done some boxing in his time—he had sense enough to hold Nace’s arms.
Nace banged the top of his head against Fred’s head.
A strange wig of a contraption Nace wore was dislodged and fell off his head. The interesting part of this consisted of a steel skullcap, thin and light, but very stout. It bore thick blond hair and fitted over Nace’s close-cropped natural hair, which was the same color. This had kept the wrench blow on the head from harming Nace to any degree.
The red-headed girl had started for a coupe parked nearby. She came running back and hunted frantically for the wrench, which Fred had dropped.
Nace rolled Fred over, hit him again, then a second time. Fred sighed loudly, became limp.
Nace leaped to his feet. He saw the girl pick up the wrench, and started for her.
Fifty feet distant, a man stepped from behind a building and began firing a revolver at Nace as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.
THE rapidity of the man’s shooting made his aim erratic. The first bullet passed Nace’s head with a sucking smack of a sound. The second broke glass somewhere up the Mountain Town street.
Nace leaped sidewise, landed flat in the street gutter. He pulled himself along the gutter. A four-foot-wide park of grass lay between sidewalk and street pavement; a large maple tree grew out of this. Nace stood up behind this, drew the girl’s gun, got a bead on the man trying to kill him and pulled the trigger.
The gun hammer slapped down with an empty click. Nace tried again. The cylinder made a complete revolution to the accompaniment of more clicks.
The girl had been using an empty gun to menace him.
The man shooting at Nace reloaded his revolver. He resumed his barrage. Bark flew off the tree. Glancing bullets squawled. More windows broke. The powder thunder rolled and boomed in the Mountain Town street.
The gunman ran forward a little to shoot better, and Nace got a good look at him.
The fellow was short, extremely fat. He wore a long tan topcoat, a black-banded black hat. A white handkerchief was tied over his face.
The red-headed girl had seized the unconscious Fred. She dragged him to the coupe. She tried to get him into the seat, but it was too much for her strength. She dumped him on the floorboards, climbed over him, took the wheel.
The coupe sped away with Fred’s legs protruding from the door.
The masked gunman had made no effort to prevent her escape. He emptied his revolver again, and once more started to reload.
Nace flung the red-head’s empty pistol. The gunman, busy reloading, failed to see it coming. It hit him in the face, knocked him down.
The man got up and ran, still reloading the revolver.
Nace ran the opposite direction, across the street. He dived between two buildings, circled around the block and joined some excited natives who were racing to the sound of the shots.
No one, it developed, had more than a hazy idea of what had happened.
“I seen ’em from my window!” excitedly shouted a man who lived up the street. “There was a whole gang of ’em! They drove off in a couple of big touring cars! They was city gangsters, I’m bettin’!”
“Where’s Jan Hasser, the town constable?” somebody demanded.
“Here he comes.”
Constable Hasser galloped up. He was a thin, wrinkled man. His age was probably forty, but a stringy white moustache made him look sixty. He wore a shiny blue coat. He chewed black, sweet tobacco which he took from a yellow paper package.
“Dern city gunsters shootin’ each other up,” was his verdict.
Nace picked up his pipe without being noticed. He loaded the bowl, put a match flame to it, and went into the hotel trailing fragrant smoke.
“You just missed the excitement, Mister Leeds,” the sleek clerk told Lee Nace.
Nace had registered under the name of Jules Leeds.
“Yeah,” Nace agreed without interest. “Say, who was the eyeful waitin’ in here when I went out? The red-head.”
“That one? Her name is Benna Franks. She runs a summer camp on the lake—Camp Lakeside.”
“On the make?”
“Not her! She’s principal of the Sunday school.”
“Yeah,” said Nace, and went up to his room.
NACE opened his bag, took out a pair of black oxfords which were rather worn. He exchanged them for the low-cuts he was wearing. To his left arm, just below the elbow, he strapped a sheath which held a hammerless .38 revolver. The grip had been machined off the gun, and a wooden knob fitted directly back of the cylinder. The weapon fitted nicely up his sleeve.
The hotel room had a stone fireplace. In this, Nace burned a magazine which contained an article on criminology, written by himself. He tore the leaves off a few at a time, so they would burn thoroughly.
From a coat pocket, Nace produced a telegram. It was addressed to his New York office. It read:
GOT BIG JOB FOR YOU AND WILL MEET YOU AT SOUTH END OF MOUNTAIN TOWN LAKE AT TEN WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND YOU BETTER BE CAREFUL.
SOL RUBINOV
The message was sent Monday; Nace had received it on Tuesday. This was Wednesday. Nace eyed his watch.
The hands said twenty minutes until ten.
Nace folded the telegram and put it in a small, flat silk pack. The pack held other articles. It was half an inch thick, four wide, six long, and it tapered toward the edges. He stuck it on his back, just above the belt line, with adhesive tape.
He left the hotel and swung off across town, drawing briskly on his pipe. He watched his back trail. But no one followed him.
Nace thought a little about the telegram. He had never heard of the sender, Sol Rubinov. Judging from the composition of the message, Rubinov was a foreigner. Nace knew nothing more than the wire divulged.
A faint smile tickled Nace’s solemn mouth. Ordinarily, he didn’t take a case without knowing more about it than this. But he had intended coming up here for a short vacation, anyway.
Houses became scattering about Nace. Sidewalks gave out. He strode a path paralleling the paved road. The way dipped sharply.
Moist air off the lake pushed gently against his face.
The night was sultry. The moonbeams had a bilious yellow cast. Clouds were piled like black sponges around the horizon. Heat lightning jumped about in the clouds. Occasional thunder groaned and boomed.
Half a mile or so distant, a train clamored through the night. It began whistling for a crossing, and whistled perhaps twenty seconds. Then the train must have di
ved behind a hill, for its sound abruptly became fainter.
It was then that Nace heard a man gurgling and screaming faintly and crashing about in bushes near the lake shore.
Chapter II
The Man Who Blew Up
NACE halted. He cupped both hands back of his ears.
The noises continued. The screams were stifled, as though the one who uttered them had a finger in his mouth. The brush fluttered; branches broke. It was as if a drunk was repeatedly falling down and getting up.
Nace slid a fountain-pen flashlight out of his vest and advanced. But he did not have to use the light. The man making the noises staggered out on the beach, where moonbeams bathed him.
It was the fat man who had tried to shoot Nace outside the hotel. His forehead bore a cut the exact shape of the trigger guard of the automatic with which Nace had hit him.
The man now wore a bathing suit, and nothing else. The suit was wet.
A wad of cloth was embedded between the fellow’s pudgy jaws. A wire, tied tightly behind his head, held it there.
He was fighting wildly, desperately, to undo the wire. The effort had torn his fingertips until they were stringing scarlet.
“I’ll take it off, buddy,” Nace said, and stepped out into the moonlight.
The fat man ran toward Nace, still tearing at the wire.
Then he exploded.
Nothing else quite described what happened. The fat man simply blew up. A sheet of blue-hot flame burst open his bathing suit. His head and waving arms sprang fifteen feet in the air. What was left of his lower body slammed into the sand.
Nace reeled back. He clapped hands over his ears. The terrific report of the explosion had deafened him.
The upper portion of the fat man’s body thudded into the sand. Gory fragments strewed about.
Nace shuddered, turned the pen light on himself. His clothing had not been soiled.
He stepped into the brush and crouched down, nursing his aching ears. He had never before heard such a sharp, deafening blast. It had been worse than a pistol discharge alongside his ears. The ringing in his head subsided. Hearing returned until he could detect the flutter of leaves in the faint breeze.
Waves made moist sucking sounds on the lake shore. Far away, thunder clapped and rumbled; lightning splattered the clouds with fitful red.
Running feet came clap-clapping down the paved road. One man! He turned off the road, came toward the lake.
“What’re you doin’?” he yelled. “Dynamitin’ fish in that lake, I’ll bet! By crackey, that’s agin the law!”
It was the Mountain Town constable, Jan Hasser. He came up, a big pistol in hand, his left cheek wadded out with chewing tobacco.
He saw the head and shoulders of the fat man. His mouth fell open. Tobacco juice spilled down his chin, unnoticed.
“Jumpin’ snakes!” he gulped. “That’s my deputy constable, Fatty Dell!”
NACE reached inside his coat.
“No you don’t, by crackey!” yelled Constable Hasser. He leveled his big pistol at Nace. “Stand still, sonny!”
Nace scowled. “I wanted to show you my credentials. Get them—my inside pocket.”
Hasser came over, making a hard mouth under his stringy white moustache. Gingerly, he withdrew Nace’s papers. He read them, peered closely at Nace’s face.
“Lee Nace, huh,” he grunted. “Reckon that’s right. I’ve seen yer picture in the New York papers. Well, what happened to Fatty?”
“He blew up.”
“He what?”
Nace used his pen light. His solemn, puritanical face registered no horror at the scene.
“I don’t see any sign of what caused it,” he said. “The man simply exploded.”
Hasser cleaned off his chin with his sleeve. “Poor Fatty! Who stuffed that rag in his mouth and tied the wire around his head?”
“Search me, Hasser. It was there when I saw him.”
“What were you doin’ around here?”
“I was out walking.”
“That all?”
“It’s enough for the time being, Hasser.” Nace went over and played his thin flash beam along the water edge.
“Fatty Dell swam to this point,” he said. “Here are his tracks leaving the water. Somebody met him. Whoever it was had his shoes wrapped in cloth so as not to leave a distinct footprint. Here are that fellow’s tracks, too. It looks like they wrestled around in the sand some.”
“Who was the other feller?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Nace raced his flash beam out over the water. He waded in, continued out until nearly waist deep. He dipped up a soggy bundle which had been floating on the surface.
“Here’s the rags the other man had wrapped around his shoes. The piece between Fatty Dell’s jaws was torn off these.”
Nace studied the sodden cloth carefully.
“That ain’t liable to help us much,” mumbled Constable Hasser. “Or will it?”
“It’s part of an old shirt,” Nace said dryly. “Size seventeen. That means the wearer was husky. There’s several laundry marks, all the same. That makes it simple to trace the owner.”
“By crackey!” grunted Hasser.
“The owner is not necessarily the man who seized Fatty Dell,” Nace went on. “The fellow who had the rag tied around his feet wore black and white sport shoes. Some of the shoe polish and the white cleaner rubbed off on the cloth.”
“Gimme,” said Hasser, extending a hand. “That thing is a clue.”
Nace passed it over. “Want me to call the medical examiner?”
“Yeah—sure. You’ll find a house with a phone up the road about half a mile.”
Nace swung off. But he didn’t go far. When he judged Constable Hasser could no longer hear his footsteps, he wheeled and ran back silently.
CREEPING through the brush, Nace stared at the moonbathed lake shore.
Nace was of the opinion Constable Hasser had appeared on the explosion scene a bit too early. Therefore, he was not greatly surprised at what he saw.
Constable Hasser stood knee deep in the lake. He was industriously washing the fragment of shirt—obviously to remove traces of the white and black shoe polish.
Hasser wrung the shirt out, then scrutinized it.
“That oughta put a crimp in the dang city feller!” His surly mutter reached Nace’s ears.
Coming out of the water, Hasser stared at the fragments of Fatty Dell’s body. He seemed extremely puzzled.
“But why kill Fatty?” he grumbled. “Fatty was goin’ to croak this dang Nace. By crackey, maybe Nace done Fatty in!”
Hasser bit off a segment of plug tobacco, growled, “I gotta find out about this! Better spread a warnin’ about them black and white sport shoes in case it wasn’t Nace—!”
He moved off beyond earshot.
Nace trailed in grim silence. Hasser went to the road, followed it a short distance, then turned off on a path. The path was well made. It crossed gullies via rustic bridges, and was graveled in the low places.
The gravel prevented Nace getting close enough to Hasser to hear what he said, in case the man talked to himself again.
Trees interlaced above the path, making it a black tunnel. But the distant lightning reddened the tunnel occasionally, furnishing another reason for Nace remaining well to the rear.
A wooden bridge boomed under Hasser’s feet. Far-off thunder rumbled a louder echo.
Nace listened carefully, heard Hasser crunching through gravel a hundred feet ahead, and thus relieved, ran lightly across the bridge.
At the farther end, he sprawled headlong over a taut wire.
A man hurtled from the darkness and landed upon him.
NACE twisted quickly upon his back, spun half around and kicked with both legs. His feet hit the attacker squarely. The assailant squawked surprise and pain. He was propelled backward. He made a loud crash in the trailside brush.
Then the man cut loose with a gun. The weapon made a n
asty chung-chung-chung series of reports. It was silenced. The silencer swallowed nearly all the muzzle flame.
Nace was burned on the leg slightly. He got to his feet with a rolling convulsion. He jumped the direction which came handiest. It happened to be toward the bridge.
He jumped up and down on the planks, then swung over the rail and hung by his hands, as far under the bridge as he could get. Holding with one hand and a foot, he dug his gun out of the sleeve sheath.
Constable Hasser came charging back along the path, bellowing, “Hey! What the devil—?”
“Shut up!” barked Nace’s attacker. “That damn New York detective followed you!”
The shrillness of the man’s voice, its strained quality, told Nace it was disguised.
Hasser began, “Oh, it’s you, Mister—!”
“Hell!” ripped the other. “Don’t speak my name! The dick is on the bridge somewhere. I tripped him with a wire, but he got away—!”
“Well, we’ll get the gol-dinged—!”
“Nix. Come on!”
The two ran off rapidly. Before they were out of earshot, the shrill, disguised voice of Nace’s assailant drifted back.
“My car is on the road. We’ll leave Mister Detective a present there.”
Nace swung back onto the bridge, wondering about that last remark. He ran to the end of the bridge, stopped there to yank the wire loose. He splashed his flashlight on it for a short instant.
The wire was the same type as the length which had been tied between unfortunate Fatty Dell’s jaws. Nace felt certain that piece had been cut from this one.
Nace left the trail, then moved along a few yards from it. He was wary of another ambush. The remark about leaving a present at the road was still in his thoughts. He wondered what it meant.
He knew an instant later.
A jarring, smashing roar of sound caromed across the woods. A bluish flash, brief, brilliant, splashed on the treetops. Then a procession of echoes boomed from the surrounding hills.
The explosion had come from the left.
Nace discarded caution, sprinted for the spot. He could guess, now, what the present would be. Tree trunks and branches smashed his head, shoulders, arms. Brambles dug at his hide and picked small holes in his clothing. He sprawled into a gulch. After that, he used his flashlight.