“And... uh... I put cold compresses on the ankle, Mr. Padgett. Uh... I’ll see you later.” He thought he heard a faint giggle from Hazel Winters as he hurried out the door.
He breathed deeply on the street; he was sure now that Padgett was up to something. He yelled at a taxi, gave his home address. He’d phone Maggie’s mother, pet Maggie to come home. She’d think of something. She always did...
The house was still dark when he went back up the front walk. He considered taking a peep at the corpse in the basement, just to be sure that Padgett hadn’t bothered it. But rebellion was too strong in him. He wiped his forehead with the back of his trembling hand and went into the living room.
He snapped on the light, crossed the room to the phone, and found it. A note, terse, but utterly without sense. He read it over three times, panic and bewilderment growing in him. The third lime he read it softly aloud:
“Mr. Sneed.
“We’re really gentle folk, and mean no bodily harm to your spouse. She is quite safe, and will be returned to you tomorrow morning if you move the coal to the other side of your basement immediately, go downtown without a word to anyone, and rent a room in the Elite Hotel under the name of John Bragg. Stay in the room until eight thirty tomorrow morning. Disobey these orders and you may consider yourself responsible for your wife’s death.”
The word death kept leaping out at him. He felt the muscles in his thin, anemic-looking face harden, his five foot three body come alive. Inside be felt the same way he had the day the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor and he’d decided to May at Collins Hide and Metal.
He sat down, thrusting the note in his pocket, and called Walter Padgett. “Did you see my wife, Padgett?”
“No. The house was dark, and I could get no answer to my knock. You got away from the hotel here before I could tell you. What’s wrong?”
“My wife is gone.”
He heard a faint “ohhhh.” Then Padgett asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I...” But what if Padgett had done it? “I’m going up to the attic, get a smaller shovel. The big one in the basement breaks my back. Then I’m going to move the coal in my basement.”
“Attic? Coal?” Padgett’s voice sounded hard. “What the hell is this? You wait until I get there!” There was a slam of the receiver at the other end of the line.
Sylvester Sneed waited five intolerable, aching minutes. Padgett should have been here by now. He stalled up the stairs.
As he opened the flimsy door to the attic, he thought he heard a door closing down in the depths of the house. Hot fear shot through him, but he went on into the attic.
He clicked on the faint bulb, skirted an old trunk, and froze in his tracks as he heard a faint bump behind an old dresser. Some of his courage which had come a moment ago drained out of him and his teeth chattered.
But he went toward the dresser. After all, he didn’t have much more to lose.
He looked behind the dresser; then he was jerking it out of the way, kneeling over Maggie. She was bound hand and foot, and a dirty rag was about her mouth.
The rag made an effective gag and after swift consideration of the acid qualities of her tongue, he thought he’d leave it until last. But she made angry, muffled noises, and fearing future retribution, he took the gag off. He expected a storm of words, but she moaned, “Oh, Sylvester!” There was something about it that made his chest feel larger than thirty-four inches.
He reached toward her wrists just as the attic door slammed open. It was Padgett and there was a big, black automatic in his hand. It was pointed at Sneed and Maggie began to sob whimperingly.
Very slowly, Sneed got to his feet. “I get it. You got me to the hotel, knowing that Maggie was out. You’ve probably scouted the house earlier. Your girl friend kept me at the hotel while you came here, called Maggie, and brought her up here. You...”
At that moment a newcomer made his appearance. He was shooting and the house seemed to rock to its foundations with the blasting gunfire.
It was Todd Bassett, snarling hate and anger.
His first slug broke a windowpane. Maggie screamed and promptly fainted. It was somehow like a dash of steadying icewater to Sneed. He dropped flat.
Padgett, whirling, caught the second slug in the arm. His gun bounced crazily out of his hand. Sneed scooped it up.
Standing in the doorway, smoke curling from his gun, Bassett laughed throatily at the sight of Sneed gripping the gun.
While he was still laughing, Sylvester Sneed, using two hands, raised the gun, took aim and pulled the trigger.
The house was overflowing with people, blue-coated cops, plainclothes dicks, reporters, and photographers. Herbert Allenby’s corpse was laid out in the hall, waiting for the meat wagon, flash bulbs exploding over it.
In the living room, two internes in white coats were putting Todd Bassett on a stretcher. He was breathing heavily, but steadily, a slug in his chest. Padgett sat glumly on the sofa, gripping his injured arm. Maggie hovered at the side of the room, looking wide-eyed at the knot of people in the middle of the room. In the midst of the knot, smiling a little, two high spots of color on his lean cheeks, was Sylvester Sneed. “...And then,” he was saving, “I made Padgett lug Bassett down here. Maggie had recovered her faint, and we waited in the living room for the police.”
“But what’s it all about, Sneed?”
He looked down, kicked the carpet with the toe of his shoe, and said, “Well, I just happened to be an innocent bystander who got caught in the middle. I think when you finish moving that coal and dig a little you’ll find whatever is left of the Roland child and the ransom money.
“The house was vacant back then — at the time of the kidnapping. And Todd Bassett used the basement as a hiding place. That’s why he came back here. Ordinarily, you’d think that a man on the run would steer dear of his home town. But Todd had to have money, and he’d buried the ransom in the basement. When he prowled the basement, he found that I’d put cool over the hiding place. That’s why he laid for me tonight, to make sure I’d keep quiet until he could get the money.”
A reporter said, “So he kidnapped Mrs. Sneed?”
“No, Padgett did that. Padgett and Allenby were working together. They’d learned about the ransom and its hiding place. Allenby came here first, and he ran smack into the same trouble that Bassett later did. I had moved into the house and four tons of coal were lying over the fifty thousand dollars. He tried to buy the house, couldn’t, and when Bassett escaped from prison he knew that he and Padgett didn’t have much time. He called Padgett to come and help out. So you see it was Padgett and Allenby against Bassett, with a fifty-thousand-dollar stake, and that left me and Maggie right in the middle.”
“Then Padgett killed Allenby?” The faces pressed eagerly closer, and Sneed went crimson right up to the roots of his hair. But it was a pleasant embarrassment.
“No. This is one time where crooks are getting what’s coming to them. Allenby lost his life. Padgett and the girl will get nice long prison terms. And after killing four times before, Todd Bassett has finally put himself in the electric chair. Bassett killed Allenby.”
There was a ripple of gasps, and Sneed studied his toe, pecking at the carpet with it.
A detective asked, “How come you’re so sure?”
Sneed started to say, “Shucks, it’s simple.” But that might have been insulting, and he looked very studious and said, “It’s like this. Whoever wrote that kidnap note to me was not illiterate. That meant that Todd Bassett didn’t do it. I knew that Padgett had, and I wouldn’t have phoned him if I’d thought he had Maggie right in this house in the attic — which, after all, was about the safest place in the world. But — if Padgett had killed his partner and had left his body in the basement, he’d not have asked me to move the coal immediately. He’d want time to get the body out because he’d be afraid I’d see it, and with Maggie gone, would call the police, which might have upset things if he’d been the killer. So he didn’t even know his partner had been killed. Which meant that Bassett and Allenby both had been unlucky enough to be prowling the basement at the same time. Bassett shot him, then tried to get his hands on me to keep roe quiet until he could get the body and get the ransom money. He didn’t want me finding the body and calling the police either.