He brought the little truck to a sliding stop in front of the house where the girl had come out. His steps crackled across the growing sheet of ice from the sidewalk to the door. There were still lights on inside, and he punched the bell impatiently. He waited only an instant before ringing again, hearing a deep-toned chime from within — confident that no one could sleep through it, and determined that no one should.
It was a man who answered the door — a timid-appearing young man with a wispy moustache and white eyebrows. He wore a smoking jacket belted tightly around his waist, and was yawning hugely as the door opened, although there was no great sleepiness in his pale blue eyes.
“Light company,” Bassler said.
The man said: “What about it?”
“What’s your trouble here?”
“Trouble? What trouble?”
“I got no time to guess with you,” said Lee. “I got a call from the company to come here. They tell me you need a trouble man.”
“We didn’t call anybody.”
Lee Bassler tried to be patient, remembering the frightened face of the girl. “You don’t always have to call,” he explained. “Sometimes the trouble shows on a transformer, or on the area drain at the substation, and then the company sends me out. So I’ll have a look at your house wiring.”
The pretense of sleepiness was gone now, and the man’s eyes were sharp and a little wary. “No dice,” he said shortly. “I ain’t lettin’ anybody in this time of night. We got lights enough to do us.”
“Sure, and your house’ll probably burn down before morning,” Lee said. “Mister, the company sent me out to check your wiring. You wanna get me canned?”
“How do I know they sent you?”
“Here’s my identification,” Lee said. He showed the company folder with his photograph and thumbprint. “Or hell, call the company if you want.”
For one breathless moment the man acted as if were going to act on that suggestion. He turned, and then came back to the door. “Oh, what the hell,” he said. “Only make it snappy, will ya?”
“Won’t take a minute,” Lee promised.
He found the fuse box in the back entryway, and flashed his light on it. Several of the fuses, he saw, were a new type that would accommodate a big overload and not blow out. They were O.K. in some districts, but outlawed in this one. The company was used to that — if a service man got to keep all the, pennies he found screwed in behind fuse plugs, it’d buy him a good many cigars in the course of a year.
“Nothing here,” he said.
He reached for a door and pulled it open. Steps slanted down into darkness, and the soft hum of a furnace came from somewhere below. A three-switch panel was on the wall, and Lee kicked up the center toggle at a guess. Lights came on in the basement.
“New furnace?” Lee asked. Sometimes new furnaces proved too great a load for old wiring. Better to look for the common things first.
“Put in when the house was built,” the man said. “You’re wasting time going down there—”
His voice trailed off, for Lee Bassler was going on down the stairs, making surprisingly little noise on the steps, busy eyes picking up all the details of the house wiring.
The house was modern as most, but there were a few unshielded wires overhead. At first glance nothing was wrong with them. Lee picked out the heavier lines that would be carrying 220 volts for the range and the automatic water heater. Then he saw the severed wire with its bunchy, unprofessional taping job.
“Haywire,” he muttered.
From above, the man said sharply: “Find anything?”
Without answering, Lee went to a door beneath the stairs and shoved it open. The room beyond was dark, but he could see the dim outline of a car. For an instant only his mind played with the idea of reaching, groping for a light switch. Then instead, he pressed the stud of his flashlight. The beam showed him an enclosed basement garage. The car parked in it was quietly expensive, its doors closed and motor off. But there was no time to look at that.
Huddled almost at Bassler’s feet was the dark-clad body of L a man. As Lee bent over, he could catch the faint sickening odor of scorched flesh. He spun the light beam upward, and knew how the man had died.
It was beautifully, dreadfully contrived. One end of the 220-volt line had been cut and brought back so that a shining finger of copper lay across the switch. It was impossible to reach for the toggle without bringing a hand against the bared wire. Lee looked down at the floor. Whether by custom or by plan, a steel drip pan was there, so that anyone reaching for the switch would be reaching for 220 volts of death.
Bassler caught the wire in insulated pliers and bent it up and out of reach. He backed out of the garage and bounded up the basement stairs. He took the lapels of the young man’s smoking jacket in his fist.
“Who is it?” he said. “Who killed him?”
The man’s eyes rolled. His mouth opened convulsively, and his weight sagged against Lee’s arm. Lee shoved him into a chair and was reaching for the phone when the door chime boomed softly.
It was the chubby man from next door, the man named Phillips who stood revealed in the back entryway. Phillips said: “I came over to—” Then he recognized Lee Bassler, and his heavy jaw dropped.
“What are you doing here?” he said suspiciously.
“Man electrocuted in the basement,” Lee said. “Come in and help me with this guy while I call the police.”
“Good Lord,” Phillips said. He came into the kitchen and stopped when he saw the young man. “Connor!” he said. “Then it must be McCready who was—”
“Middle-aged guy, dark overcoat.”
“That’s John McCready, all right,” Phillips said. “I’ve warned him a time or two about monkeying with the wiring. You suppose that’s what burned out the lights a few hours ago?”
Lee Bassler did not answer. He was busy at the phone, turned so that he could watch the man Phillips had called Connor. Rule one for a service man who ran into big trouble, was to call somebody to handle it. If you found a pole down or a transformer burned out, you called a big truck to help. If you found somebody who refused to pay charges, you called the credit office. If you found murder — but that wasn’t on the list! Where in a lineman’s job would you find murder?
You might find an element burned out of a range, or a water heater acting up, or a fuse box scorched, or a pipe conduit smoking. But murder— Well, Bassler, there it was in the basement below you. A death trap that a man who handled hot wire couldn’t miss. And a dead man caught in it. And — take it easy now — a scared girl who’d run out in an ice storm earlier to get away from something in this house!
He said to the phone: “Homicide.”
He said: “Send somebody to 1012 Barton. We got what looks like a murder out here. Me? The power man. Sure, I’ll stick around.”
He replaced the phone, and leaving Phillips with Connor, he began prowling through the house. Lights were on in the most improbable places: closets and halls, the typical trail of someone going through a dark house trying to find a light that worked. He came finally to a door behind which was darkness, but a light came on as soon as he pushed the door open.
“Uncle John? Ray?” said the girl’s voice.
“Ray for what?” asked Bassler.
There was a stifled gasp and she sat up in bed staring at him. Lee had a moment to decide that his judgment about her looks had been O.K., before she clutched the down comforter up around her.
“What are you doing here?” she said angrily.
“Who’s the dead guy in the basement?”
She screamed, then. It was soundless, but if ever a woman screamed with her eyes, with the back of her hand muting her mouth, this one did. Then, like an automaton, she got out of the bed. found a robe and slippers, and came stiffly toward Lee Bassler in the bedroom door. Something about her made Lee suddenly conscious of his heavy jacket, his furred cap, the heavy, dangling tools at his belt.