“Yes. He had a police record. He was the what-do-you-call-it? — the contact man. It was through him that Grandfather bought the Gettysburg Address. He told Grandfather he’d been approached by some man he’d known in prison.”
O’Hanna pondered. “Lucas Kuhn. Where’d he fit in?”
“He had no motive for trying to kill Grandfather. He was only Grandpa’s secretary at the time — that was before he married my sister Belle.”
“And Oscar Mullet?”
“Mullet was our gardener then. I’m sure Grandfather never suspected him, either. Why, he named Mullet in his will.”
“As the cat’s caretaker. Why was that?”
Eva Taine said: “Because the kitten belonged to Mullet before Grandfather adopted it. And I suppose because Lochinvar would get the best of care so long as it paid Mullet about five thousand dollars a year to keep the cat alive.”
O’Hanna shrugged. “The best of care won’t keep a cat alive forever. Mullet was playing for bigger stakes, and playing for keeps—”
Chimes concealed in the hall closet went tra-la-la. The caller didn’t wait for an answer. He threw the door open. It was Endicott, wild-eyed and quivering. The manager panted: “Mike, for God’s sake, the ghoul’s come back! I saw it myself! It tried to strangle me!”
Chapter Three
The Ghoul Rush
“Pull yourself together, man!” O’Hanna commanded the trembling, ashen-faced manager. “Where’d you see it?”
“In that chalet, you know, Mr. Kuhn’s...”
The house dick stared. “What were you doing in Kuhn’s chalet?”
“I got to thinking, Mike. You see, if there happened to be some bloodspots there, it’d prove Raymond was wrong about the time—”
“Playing detective. Butting into my department.”
Shaken up and humbled, Endicott gestured helplessly. “Mike, I’m trying to tell you! The lights suddenly went out, and the thing came at me! It was ghastly — that white beard and those cold hands closing around my throat.”
“Go on. What else?”
“I... I tore myself loose. I got to the window and fell — jumped out. I ran for my life.”
O’Hanna said: “Come on.” He led the way to Lucas Kuhn’s chalet. Reaching the darkened building, the detective detoured to look under the bedroom window. An outline in the heavily dewed grass showed where Endicott had measured himself flat, footprints showed how he’d lit out a-running. There weren’t any other footprints. The ghoul had left by the front door and the path, or he was still inside.
O’Hanna swung around, and Endicott was ahead as they climbed the chalet steps. A lifetime of hotel training — never open a paying guest’s door without knocking — made the manager automatically thumb the doorbell button.
Tra-la-la, the chimes inside pealed.
O’Hanna scoffed, “Hell, we don’t have to be polite about—” and grunted as the memory and meaning hit him hard. “Hell’s fire! It only chimed twice before!”
He punched the front door open, and felt for the inner wall switch. O’Hanna took two long steps, tugged at a doorknob.
Endicott said: “No, that’s the coat closet. I was in the bedroom looking for a clue.”
O’Hanna aimed his flashlight up, ringed it onto the triple-tubed door chime screwed high upon the wall. He intoned: “You looked in the wrong place, then. See here.”
The arrangement was the usual one. Pressure on the outside button juiced a coil magnet. Magnetism lifted three small hammers, the lifted hammers broke the circuit, and then in series they fell. The first chime said tra when its hammer hit, the second said la a split second later, and the third had said nothing because something had been in the way. It was something that had left a dark, discolored streak along eight inches of the wall.
O’Hanna aimed the flashlight down, spread its beam over the floor. He crouched, wet the tip of his finger, picked up a particle of charred pasteboard.
Endicott gaped: “What on earth?”
“It’s E C,” vouchsafed O’Hanna.
“Easy?” Endicott blinked.
“Yeah. Easy if you know how, if you’ve ever dabbled in explosives.” Then, abruptly: “Come on!”
He made for the main building and the front desk, Endicott trotting at heel. “Mrs. Kuhn’s room number?” O’Hanna demanded of the room clerk. “K-u-h-n.”
The clerk looked it up, or tried to. “I’m sorry, but we have no Mrs. Kuhn registered. There’s a Mr. Kuhn in one of—”
“Wait. She’s divorced, maybe she’s using the name Belle Taine,” the house dick said on second-thought.
This time he got it, number 434. She’d said a room across the hall from 431, but he had to be sure. He fed a passkey into the lock, turned it and the knob gently.
The red-haired woman had company. The visitor’s voice flowed out as O’Hanna opened the door a slow inch.
“You killed him,” the voice accused, “but you didn’t kill him quite dead enough! He was still alive, and half an hour later he regained consciousness. He got to his feet and staggered out into the hall where I found him. He had breath enough left to sob out a name — and the name was Belle!”
The house dick tugged the door shut “Let’s pay the professor a call while he’s away from home,” he said to Endicott.
But there was nothing in 218 — nothing, anyway, O’Hanna could turn up in five minutes’ searching.
He shrugged. “The corpse, then.”
The passkey fitted 207 the same as any other. The knob turned like any other knob. The difference was that this door still wouldn’t open because it was night-locked on the inside. O’Hanna piled his shoulder against the panel. It hurt his shoulder but it didn’t bother the door.
He cursed, tugged Lucas Kuhn’s .38 up out of his coat pocket.
Endicott moaned: “Mike you mustn’t! You’ll wake up the whole hotel!”
O’Hanna said, “He’s killed dead enough. Mullet sure as hell didn’t lock himself in here,” and jammed the muzzle to the panel. San Alpa’s night-lock bars were six inches above the key-lock, and he crashed two shots in there before he drew back and baled his shoulder against the panel again. The door gave.
Endicott blurted: “The window, look!”
A rope fed from the bedpost out over the window sill. It sagged so O’Hanna knew there was no weight sliding down the rope.
A false Santa Claus beard and another T-shaped flashgun lay spilled on the floor. O’Hanna dived past these objects to the bathroom door. He gulped, “Don’t look,” to Endicott.
Endicott had to look, of course, but he didn’t look long. The manager jumped back, squeezed his eyelids shut, and put his hand over his closed eyes. He gagged: “Mike, that’s horrible!”
O’Hanna said: “Yeah. Somebody performed a premature autopsy. The sheriff’s gonna be mad!”
Sheriff Ed Gleeson was mad, hornet-stinging mad. He’d been a sergeant in World War I, and his sergeant’s bellow filled Endicott’s office as he glowered at the suspects gathered there. “It wasn’t enough to just kill the guy — you had to turn him inside out, huh?”
Lucas Kuhn said, “It’s his fault,” pointing a forefinger at O’Hanna. “I told him the killer had a rope. I told him I was lassoed, and he wouldn’t believe me!”
O’Hanna said sadly: “That’s right, Ed. He told me, and I wouldn’t believe it. But I think I know why the rope was used.”
Endicott supplied: “Certainly. The ghoul slid down it while we were breaking in the door.”
“It was used before that. Mullet wasn’t killed in 207 — the killer couldn’t risk the shot being overheard. Mullet was taken for a walk, he was killed outside, but the murderer couldn’t carry a corpse back through the lobby. That body was hauled up through 207’s window on the end of the rope.” O’Hanna leveled In Irish-gray stare at Professor Alexander Janathan. “It was a corpse, too, not a living man. I’ll prove Mullet never revived, never stumbled into the hall looking for help. He’d have rubbed the grass clippings off the soles of his shoes, had he gone stumbling around.”