“I’ll be damned,” swore Frederick Cummings. “He told me only yesterday that he was an accountant. Said he was from Buffalo. And I saw him writing left-handed.”
Quade nodded. “Left-handed people are commoner than the average person suspects. In fact, one of every eight people is left-handed.”
“Some more encyclopedia stuff,” scoffed Danny Dale.
Quade ignored the jibe. “We’ve got to notify the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” cried Mrs. Egan. “What for?”
“I just got through saying that this man was — murdered!”
Mrs. Egan winced. The others took the startling announcement with more fortitude.
Faraday said, “Then no one had better touch anything.”
Quade turned to the proprietor of Eagle’s Crag. “Mrs. Egan, you’ve a phone at the lodge?”
Mrs. Egan shook her head. “No, I ain’t. Young man, d’you realize we’re thirty-three miles from town by road, sixteen from the main highway, thirty-two hundred feet up on a mountain-top. The bloomin’ phone company wanted more to run a line out than Eagle’s Crag is worth.”
“You can send someone to town though?”
The owner of Eagle’s Crag frowned. “This is kinda early in the season and I ain’t got my full crew yet. Only McClosky, the cook. Him and me been runnin’ things. But I guess he can take the station wagon and run down to Hilltown.”
They left the dead man where he lay and climbed back up the steep road to the lodge.
“Mac!” yelled Mrs. Egan. “Where are you?”
A bandy-legged man in bibless overalls and a patched flannel shirt came out of a shed near the lodge. “Here I am, Miz Egan,” he said meekly. His long, handlebar mustaches drooped down to the receding chin.
Mrs. Egan looked suspiciously at him. “Mac, you’ve been drinking again!” she accused.
McClosky wiped the right side of his mustache with the back of his hand, giving the lie to his denial. “No, I ain’t, Miz Egan, honest I ain’t. I was fixin’ up the autymobile in there, that’s what I was doin’.”
“You’re a liar, Mac,” Mrs. Egan said. “But pull out the wagon and head for town. Tell the sheriff one of my guests had been bit by a rattlesnake — only some folks here,” she looked pointedly at Quade, “are tryin’ to make murder out of it.”
“Murder?” yelped McClosky. “Mr. Thompson’s dead?”
“How’d you know it was Thompson?” Quade cried.
McClosky took a quick step back and his eyes rolled. “Why, he’s the on’y one ain’t here, so natcherly I figured…” his words trailed off.
“That was quick work, McClosky,” said Oliver Quade.
“So was yours,” cut in Cummings.
“He’s right, Quade,” said Martin Faraday. “If it is murder as you claim, none of us here is above suspicion. Remember, Quade, you passed us on the road coming up ten minutes before we discovered Harold Thompson’s body.”
“The man’s a perfect stranger to me,” said Quade. “He wasn’t a stranger to any of you though.”
“A man doesn’t have to know a man to kill him,” Cummings looked down at his well manicured nails. “Robbery is sometimes a mighty good motive for murder.”
Quade’s mouth became grim. He looked toward his battered flivver over near the lodge. “All right, I’m a suspect, too. But so is McClosky and everyone here. I don’t think anyone should leave here. Not singly, at least.”
“I know Mac better’n any of you,” cut in Mrs. Egan. “Someone’s gotta go to town and I vote for Mac, suspect or no suspect. He’s too dumb to make a getaway anyway. G’wan, Mac, get out the wagon.”
McClosky popped into the garage and backed out an ancient locking station wagon. He whirled it around the clearing, headed toward the descending road, then suddenly braked the car to a stop.
“Car comin’ up, Miz Egan,” he called.
Mrs. Egan frowned. “Why, I wasn’t expectin’ any more guests until next week. Wonder who it could be?”
Quade could hear the automobile, coming up in second gear, grinding furiously for it was a long, steep ascent to Eagle’s Crag. A moment later it nosed up onto the plateau. It was a big black touring car with side curtains. The driver slewed into the path of the station wagon and stopped.
Men began climbing out, four in all.
“Oh-oh,” Quade said softly.
The newcomers spread out in fan shape and leisurely approached the summer resort crowd. One of the men walked a little ahead of the others. He was of slight build, under middle height. He wore an unmatched coat and trousers and a vest that was open. He was hatless, his eyes oddly cold and calculating and he had a two days’ growth of black beard.
He said in a toneless voice: “Who runs this shebang?”
“I do, Mister,” Mrs. Egan snapped.
The slight man continued to come forward. Quade could see his eyes then; they were the coldest he had ever seen in a human. They were a pale, washed-out blue, steady and unblinking under heavy, bushy eyebrows.
“Me and the boys figure on stoppin’ here a while,” the man said.
Mrs. Egan fidgeted. “Well, the lodge ain’t rightly open for another week yet and I don’t know as how I can accommodate you.”
One of the other men, a giant who stood six feet five and weighed close to 250 pounds, sneered. “G’wan, chief, tell her. What the hell!”
The slight man was unmoved by his friend’s urging. His voice was still toneless as he said, “You’ll put us up. And you better have your man run that buggy back in the garage.”
Then Mrs. Egan flared up. “Say, listen, who are you to tell me what to do around here? I said I couldn’t accommodate you and I meant it.”
“There’s a dead man down the road,” the leader of the four said. “Have you called in the law yet, or was this old coot just goin’ now?”
“What’d you call me?” cried McClosky.
The newcomer turned leisurely toward McClosky, who was climbing belligerently out of the station wagon. “I said you was an old coot,” he repeated. “And my name is Lou Bonniwell.”
“Bonniwelll” cried Danny Dale. “You’re Lou Bonniwell?”
“Yeah, sure, that’s him,” boasted the giant. “And me, I’m Jake Somers. Big Jake.”
Quade took a deep breath. “Welcome to Eagle’s Crag, boys. Me, I’m a stranger here, too.”
“Who’re you?” demanded Bonniwell.
“Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. The man who knows the answers to all questions. I know—”
“Do you know where the law is right now?” asked Bonniwell.
Quade cocked his head to one side. “Far from here, or you wouldn’t be here. You came here to hide out, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Monk was raised hereabouts. He claims you can see seven States and six counties or something like that from this mountain-top.”
A squat man with long arms grinned vacantly. “Three States and six counties, Lou. And you saw the road yourself. We could hold off an army.”
Bonniwell nodded. “The layout’s all right, Monk. But they’ll get us sooner or later.”
“Not me they won’t get,” boasted Big Jake Somers.
Bonniwell looked bitterly at his big henchman. “You’re big, Jake, but if one forty-five slug doesn’t cut you down, two will.”
“A twenty-two in the right place will do it,” Quade offered.
Big Jake said savagely, “Who the hell asked you?”
Quade grimaced. “Pay no attention to me. I talk too much.”
“You do at that, pardner,” said Bonniwell. “Jake, take one of the guns and sit down over there by the road. Monk, you and Heinie look through things here. Gather up all the artillery.”