by Lester Dent
“Get out!” she hissed.
“In my coat pocket is a telegram,” Nace told her. “It’s the one you sent to me in New York. It was forwarded here, and because I had registered at the hotel under a fake name, I didn’t get it until less than an hour ago.”
The red-head eyed him steadily, considering this. She looked like a flame-haired Madonna with the lights playing on her features.
Thunder bawled over the log house roof. Blond Spencer twisted and moaned on the floor.
The girl said jerkily, “I wonder—if—if I’ve had you all wrong?”
“I hope so.” Nace pointed at Spencer. “Who’s this?”
“Spencer—Jim Spencer. He is athletic director here at Camp Lakeside.”
Fred Franks came over and gingerly extracted the telegram from Nace’s coat pocket. He eyed it.
“Forwarded back here from New York City, all right,” he admitted.
Nace picked the suffering Spencer up, dumped him in a chair. Then he seated himself with a flourish, took out his pipe, gorged it with tobacco and applied a match.
“Let’s get to the bottom of this!” he said briskly. “Who’s Sol Rubinov?”
“He is—was the caretaker and man-of-all-work here at Camp Lakeside,” said the girl.
“It was in answer to a telegram signed by Sol Rubinov that I came here. As I told you, I didn’t get your wire until tonight.”
“Oh! Then Rubinov sent for you! That explains it!”
Nace looked at blond Spencer’s shoes. They were plain black.
“GET Rubinov,” Nace suggested. “He may want to be in on this.”
The red-head became pale, somewhat rigid. “I can’t. I don’t know where he is. I think—he has been murdered.”
Fred Franks gave his sister a dramatic stare.
“I know he was murdered, sis!” he rapped. “I saw something on my way to town tonight which makes me sure of it. There was an explosion, just like we heard here night before last, and afterward, at the scene of the blast, the mangled body of Constable Jan Hasser was found.”
The girl shuddered and sank into a chair made out of branches with the bark still attached.
“There was a terrific blast here at Camp Lakeside night before last,” she told Nace swiftly. “Fred and I hunted around several minutes before we found the exact spot. There we discovered—!” Her mouth closed so tightly little muscles bunched around it, and her face looked as if it had been whitewashed.
“We found pieces of flesh and blood scattered around,” finished Fred. “But we couldn’t tell whether it was human. There wasn’t no sign of a body.”
“This happened the night after Rubinov sent me the telegram,” Nace pointed out.
“Constable Hasser chanced to be passing and he laughed at our idea of calling in the state police,” the girl said, voice strained.
“He would!” A fog of pipe smoke was growing in the sultry air over Nace’s head.
Blond Spencer pushed himself out of his chair. He rolled his eyes at Nace, keeping both hands over his middle.
“I’m goin’ to the kitchen an’ wash my face!” he said hoarsely. “Maybe cold water will make me feel better.”
He staggered into the kitchen, leaving the door open. Nace, looking through the gaping door, could see a second door across the kitchen, evidently leading outdoors.
“There just the one kitchen door going outside?” he asked.
The red-head nodded.
Nace sat where he was. Spencer turned on a water faucet in the kitchen. The splashing, mingling as it did with the thunder outdoors, made it seem as though it had started to rain. Nace kept his ears cocked, just on the chance Spencer might try to get out of the kitchen by a window.
“What’s behind all this?” he questioned.
“To make you understand, I’ll have to tell you Sol Rubinov’s history,” Benna Franks said, plainly glad to get away from the explosion subject. “He was born in Russia. His father was a successful shopkeeper, but rather ignorant. He trusted no one. He would not put his money in the banks, but hoarded it always in metal coins. He had a large hoard of coins when he died.
“Sol Rubinov, his son, had the same mania for hoarding. When he came to America, he brought a small fortune in coins gathered by his father. He never made a large salary here, but he saved nearly all of it. And every dollar of it, he changed into gold or silver and added to his secret hoard.”
“He was sure inviting trouble,” grunted Nace. He could hear Spencer splashing in the kitchen.
“Two days ago—the same day he wired you—Rubinov came to me and told me where his hoard was hidden,” continued the girl. “He told me, that in the event of his death, I was to have his money.”
Nace shut his eyes tightly and thought of the shrill voice in the night-ridden woods, of the brown powder on the girl’s sport shoes. He thought also of what a jury would say when they heard Rubinov’s death meant the girl was to have the old Russian’s gold hoard. His forehead felt clammy.
“We looked for the hoarded money, Fred and I,” said the girl. “It was gone, except for one coin wedged in a crack.”
SPENCER came weaving out of the kitchen, blond hair touseled, wiping his hands in a towel. The washing had made the strange little pits on his hands stand out more noticeably.
“The hoard was supposed to be in a box under the floor of Rubinov’s cabin,” Benna Franks continued. “This is the single coin we found.”
She arose, extracted a coin from a brown leather bag, passed it over.
At first glance, it looked like silver. But it bore an unusual face design. Nace bounced it on the table. He bit it. He eyed it closely.
“Bless us!” he ejaculated.
“What is it?” questioned the red-head.
“This one coin is worth a small fortune,” he explained. “In the old days, Russia made a little money out of platinum. That was in the days before platinum became so valuable. This is one of those coins. But it has a worth greatly beyond the platinum content as a collector’s piece.”
Nace clattered dottle out of his pipe in a hammered iron stand, reloaded it, asked, “Did Rubinov seem worried when he told you where his hoard was hidden?”
The red-head nodded. “He did.”
Nace blew smoke and followed the squirming gray cloud with his eyes. “How about two or three months ago—when the U.S. government began raising cain with gold hoarders? You know—when the banks all closed for a while.”
The girl gave a slight start. “Why—Rubinov was worried by that! I remember now. He came to me several times and wanted to know all about what it meant. If a man had been getting gold coins and keeping them, could the government take them away from him? That was his question.”
“And you told him?”
“I gave him to understand the government might confiscate his gold as a penalty. That, you recall, was the talk at the time.”
Nace frowned through his smoke fog. “Want to hear me do some guessing?”
They all three nodded.
“Here is what I think happened,” Nace said briskly. “Rubinov got scared and decided to turn his hoarded money into the bank. He wanted a guard while he did it, so he went to Constable Hasser and Deputy Constable Fatty Dell. But Hasser and Dell persuaded him not to turn it in, probably lying to him and telling him it was all right to keep the money.
“Hasser and Dell got someone else to help them—somebody who kills with that infernal explosive. They watched Rubinov and found out where the hoard was hidden. But Rubinov got wise and sent for me. Then they killed Rubinov and stole his hoard.
“The third person, the real murderer, killed Hasser and Dell so as to have the loot for himself. Now he’s trying to kill me so I can’t do any investigating.”
The girl stood up. “Do you want to see the spot where the hoard was hidden?”
“Yeah.” Nace looked at her shoes. “But first, I’d like to see where you spilled that cinnamon on your shoes.”
She turned t
oward the kitchen. “I can show you the partly emptied box.” Her voice was shrill.
She entered the kitchen, looked at a shelf.
“The cinnamon box is gone!” she gasped.
Chapter V
Prowler
THE red-headed girl pressed hands tightly to her cheeks. Her eyes acquired a sheen of moisture. She looked very scared.
“Does this—throw suspicion on me?” she choked.
Nace swung over, put a long arm about her shoulders. This seemed to be the thing he most wanted to do at the moment.
“Somebody may be trying to frame you, Benna,” he said.
He felt her shiver, could feel her heart trip-hammering.
The blond Spencer, walking in a half crouch because of the agony in his middle, shuffled into the kitchen. He eyed the shelf at which Benna Franks pointed, then squinted at the window.
The window was near the shelf—an easy arm reach. The sash was up.
“That window was closed when I washed my face a few moments ago!” Spencer barked. “Somebody has opened it since then!”
Nace grunted, herded them all back in the big room, and swung grimly for the door.
“Stay here!” he commanded. “I’m going to browse a little!”
The night outside had turned several degrees blacker. It was hotter. The breeze had died. The world was like the inside of a gigantic bomb, the only disturbance the less frequent bark of thunder and the crackling blaze of lightning.
Nace prowled. He did not use his pen flashlight. And after each gory burst of lightning, he made a wild jump eight or ten feet in the most convenient direction. He was taking no chances of a skulker pot-shooting him.
Camp Lakeside consisted of long lines of attractive three- and four-room log cabins, connected by graveled drives. Boathouses, bathhouses and a sanded beach were down on the lake shore.
Nace weaved among the cabins, covering a few yards, then stopping to listen. He worked down toward the lake. The air here had a faint tang of fish. It wasn’t unpleasant.
At some farmhouse in the distance, a dog howled. The animal was some breed of hound—its howl was long and quavering and eerie, like the wail of an ogre spawned out of the rumbling, flaming night.
Nace wrinkled his sensitive nostrils. He had caught an alien odor, very vague. He advanced a few silent paces. The odor became stronger. He identified it.
Whiskey!
The lightning gushed a white-hot blaze.
Nace jumped a foot—a hulking figure of a man stood almost against his nose. His back was to Nace.
Nace smacked a fist into the fellow’s back. The skulker barked hoarsely in surprise and pain. He folded forward on his knees. Nace pounced on him, fists bludgeoning. He hit the man in the nape, the temple. He reached around to slug him in the jaw—and got kicked in the back of the head.
Nace felt for a moment as if he were a big comet smashing through a galaxy of stars. The kick had been a complete surprise. He was half stunned.
The other man was bigger, heavier. He crawled atop Nace. If the fellow had used his fists then, Nace would have been finished. Instead, he tore at a revolver in his coat pocket.
Nace got his knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and kissed the top of his opponent’s head with it. The man shrieked. The revolver he was getting out of his pocket exploded under his convulsive fingers.
The bullet clouted harmlessly into the ground; the cloth of the coat pocket began to glow and smoke.
Nace hit him again. The man fell over senseless.
Arising, Nace used his flashlight.
It was the beefy, red-necked drunk who had menaced Nace with the nickeled revolver in front of the hotel.
NACE hauled him down to the lake, threw him in, then pulled him out again. That revived the fellow.
The man began snarling, “What the hell do you mean by—?”
“Going to pull an injured innocence act, huh?” gritted Nace. He stung his knuckles on the man’s jaw, and the beefy hulk lay stupefied for half a minute.
During that interval, Nace searched him. He found money, cigarettes, a silver flask entirely empty, and letters addressed to Alva Coogan, railroad detective, in Mountain Town.
“Why were you nosing around here, Coogan?” Nace demanded, after making sure the letters were nothing but advertisements.
Coogan started cursing. A close look at Nace’s knobby fist shut him up.
“Aw—I came up to get even with you for knockin’ me down!” he growled.
“How’d you know where to come?”
Coogan slapped a moist tongue over puffy lips. “They told me downtown that you had come up to Camp Lakeside.”
“You’re a black-faced liar, Coogan. Nobody knew I was headed for this place.”
“I ain’t a liar!” rumbled Coogan. “To hell with what you think!”
Nace laughed nastily and kicked the man to his feet. “A pal of Constable Hasser and Fatty Dell, aren’t you?”
“Quit kickin’ me!”
Nace booted him again. “Pal of Hasser and Dell, huh?”
“What if I was? They were a couple of all-right guys.”
“Were! Were! How’d you know Fatty Dell is dead? I don’t think anybody has found his body yet.”
Coogan shut up.
Nace propelled him toward the house, growling, “You’re in this over your ears, my friend!”
To the unholy tune of bumping thunder and jagging lightning, they strode the graveled walks. The two-story log main building hove in sight.
Nace rapped out a violent grunt. The structure was now dark!
Running the stubborn Coogan ahead of him, Nace clattered onto the porch. Coogan was seized with a shaking as they came near the door. He knew any bullets from inside would hit him. He tried to break away.
Nace struck him, and the man fell.
Letting him lay, Nace reached in, found the light switch and tweaked it. The room glared.
The red-head was tied to a chair. A cloth was tied between her jaws, another over her eyes.
Fred Franks and Spencer were nowhere to be seen.
COOGAN had been feigning a knockout. He leaped to his feet suddenly and ran.
Nace yelled at him. Coogan only ran the faster. Nace shot past the man’s head. Coogan put on still more speed. Nace aimed at the runner’s back, but reconsidered. He holstered the gun in his sleeve with an angry growl.
He flung to the girl. She was tied with tent ropes. He wrenched them off and plucked the cloth from her jaws and her eyes.
“I didn’t see who it was,” she begun. “I was struck and stunned a minute after Fred and Spencer heard a shot down by the lake and ran out. Then—”
“Was anything shoved down your throat?”
“Why—what—?”
“Your throat—could they have pushed anything down it?”
“No—I don’t think so!”
He shoved her to the nearest door. “Get in there! Take off your clothes! Every stitch! Throw them out to me!”
“What—?”
“Damnation!” he bellowed. “Strip, or I’ll take ’em off for you! Quick!”
She ran into another room, closed the door.
“Hurry!” Nace rasped through the door. “They may have planted their infernal explosive somewhere in your clothing! Throw the stuff out here.”
The red-head lost no time. The door opened a crack. A frock came sailing through, then underthings, shoes. Nace balled each garment as it arrived and relayed it outdoors with all his speed.
“That’s all,” called the red-head.
Nace eyed the door. “Anything in there you can put on?”
“Yes.”
Nace waited. He did not have the slightest proof that explosive was in the girl’s clothing. He was just playing safe. Perspiration crawled on his forehead. He wondered if the explosion, should one come from her clothing, would be sufficient to blow the log house down. He made no move to go out and carry her garments further away.
He shifted his
feet nervously. His eyes roved, passed over the floor.
A small fold of paper lay at his feet. Obviously, it had fallen from the red-head’s garments.
He picked it up, read it.
MISS BENNA—I PUT IT IN THE REFRIGERATOR.
HASSER
He pocketed the paper hastily, for the girl was coming out of the other room.
She had put on one of the Indian suits she kept for sale to the summer resort trade. Buckskin blouse and trousers were beaded and fringed, as were the moccasins. It was a very nice fit. In the rig, she looked more entrancing than ever.
She stared at her discarded garments, visible in the light which slanted through the open front door.
“I make quite a few mistakes,” Nace told her dryly. “This may be one of them. Let’s get out of here—the back way.”
They entered the kitchen, crossed it.
Nace noted a large hotel-type electric refrigerator against one wall.
The night wrapped them with sultry gloom when they stepped out into it.
“My brother and Spencer—where did they go?” the red-head whispered anxiously. “Maybe we’d better call them.”
“No. That lunk, Coogan, may be hanging around. He’d love to cut down on me in the dark with a club. Take me to the cabin Rubinov occupied.”
THE sepia sky blazed with electric fire at intervals of a minute or so. Far away, the hound still howled. Such sounds as their feet made seemed magnified a thousand times in volume.
“What a night!” Nace muttered.
“It’s horrible! Fighting and killing and attacks—”
“I meant the weather.”
“Oh, that. It’s just a thunderstorm. You don’t notice such things in the city. Out here, well, we get used to it.”
“You like the country?”
“So-so.”
“Rather live in the city, huh?”
“Why so curious?”
“Can’t I talk?” Nace demanded in a hurt tone. He had been wondering how she’d like his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. She ought to like it. The lease was costing him enough. He was just realizing what was wrong with the joint. It needed somebody like this red-head in it.
He’d better forget such thoughts—at least until he found out who she’d killed, or who she hadn’t.