Swishing, sliding sounds above and not far away: stealthy footfalls in the wet grass.
In the next second the light steadied. He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to be pointed off to his left.
He moved just enough to draw the Navy again. The sounds above continued, the light holding steady; it was difficult to tell in the darkness, but Schneider seemed to be moving at an angle to his left. Quickly, then, Quincannon eeled his body the rest of the way up, left hand clinging to the ivy and knees digging into the soft earth.
As soon as his head cleared the top edge, he spied Schneider less than fifteen feet away, creeping forward now in a half crouch, the shape of the weapon extended in his right hand visible in the lantern’s glow. Not heading in Quincannon’s direction but straight ahead to the cutbank, which meant he was looking that way, too.
Quincannon braced himself, took a firm grip on his right wrist with his left, and drew a bead. And when Schneider paused near the bank, he squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession.
Shooting in the dark was tricky business, even at relatively close range and with the lantern outlining his quarry, but he prided himself on his marksmanship even under such adverse conditions as these. One and possibly two bullets struck Schneider, brought forth a surprised outcry and knocked him off his pins. The lantern, popped loose from his grasp, had bounced to one side and remained burning at an angle that revealed Schneider where he lay.
The wound was not a mortal one — Quincannon could see him thrashing around in the grass, hear him moaning — but it was incapacitating enough to keep him down with no attempt to rise up and return fire. Long seconds passed before Quincannon was sure that Schneider wasn’t shamming, then he levered himself up over the rim and onto his feet. The Navy at arm’s length, he cautiously approached the fallen man.
Schneider lay on his back, still thrashing, though more feebly now. His moans ceased when Quincannon snapped out, “Raise up with your weapon, Schneider, and you’re a dead man.”
“I ain’t got it no more, I dropped it.” The gruff Teutonic voice was thick with pain.
“That better not be a lie. Where are you hit?”
“Arm, hip. Shattered a bone, damn you, I can’t feel my leg.”
Quincannon moved close enough to determine that both hands were visible and empty. Then he sidestepped to where the lantern lay, picked it up, shined the beam on Schneider. He was a big one, to be sure, at least fifty pounds over two hundred. His bearded face contorted into a squinting grimace and long straggly hair glistened blackly in the light.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Home. I come down here alone.”
“Why, at this hour?”
No response.
“Worried about the gold, is that it? Arrived just in time to see me breaking into the icehouse.”
“Goddamn flycop. How’d you know Bodo and me stole it, where we had it hid?”
“Never mind that. You’ll find out soon enough.”
A grunt, another moan. “Gott im Himmel, man, get me the doctor before I bleed to death.”
Quincannon hunted around until he found Schneider’s dropped sidearm, a large-caliber Colt. He slid it into the pocket of his mud-caked Chesterfield. He had no qualms about leaving the wounded man here in the wet grass; criminals, especially those who would have had no qualms about putting a lethal bullet in him, deserved to suffer for their sins.
With the lantern guiding him, he hurried to the road and back to town — to fetch Constable Teague, first, and then Dr. Amos Goodfellow.
8
Quincannon
At a few minutes past nine on Wednesday morning, in C. W. Cromarty’s private car, Quincannon prepared to hold court.
Once the wounded Schneider, Jakob by given name, had been tended to and removed to a cell in the Tuttletown jail, Teague had deputized a group of citizens that included the express agent, Booker, and thence proceeded to the brothers’ Table Mountain cabin. Bodo Schneider had been arrested without incident, and was now ensconsed in a cell adjoining Jakob’s. Quincannon, meanwhile, had awakened Cromarty and his chief engineer to report the good news. The gold subsequently had been removed from the icehouse and turned over to Booker for safekeeping.
Over the objections of Teague, Cromarty, and Newell, Quincannon had withheld explanation of how the burglarproof safe had been successfully burgled until all these worthies could be assembled together. He admitted to a dramatic streak in his nature; if he hadn’t become a detective, he might have gone on the stage and become a notable dramatic actor. “Ham, you mean,” Sabina had said when he mentioned this to her once, but he’d forgiven her.
Cromarty had been effusive in his praise initially, but he had grown impatient in the interim. Now he said, “You’ve done a splendid job, Mr. Quincannon, and there’s no gainsaying that you’re something of a wizard to have solved the riddle in less than twenty-four hours, but—”
“I prefer the term ‘artist,’” Quincannon interrupted. Humility was not one of his virtues, if in fact it was a virtue. “You might even say I am the Rembrandt of crime solvers.”
Teague said, “Who’s Rembrandt?” but no one answered him.
“Be that as it may,” Cromarty said, “there is no need to keep us in suspense any longer. How did you deduce the identity of the thieves and the location of the gold?”
“Yes, and how did they get the safe open? That’s what I’d most like to know.”
The two railroad men nodded emphatic agreement.
Quincannon took his time loading and lighting his briar. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction, he fluffed his beard and said, “Very well, gentlemen, I’ll begin by noting the clues that led me to the solution. When I examined the abandoned safe I found several items of interest. To begin with, the bloodstains. Obviously one of the thieves had suffered a wound that bled copiously during the robbery, one severe enough to bleed again when the empty safe was transported the following day. Naturally such a wound would require medical attention. Amos Goodfellow being the only doctor in Tuttletown, I consulted with him and learned that he had treated Bodo Schneider for a deep cut on his hand and wrist. That, and the doctor’s description of the two brothers as brawny fellows, pointed me in their direction.”
Newell asked, “And the other items of interest in the abandoned safe?”
“The fact that the interior was cold and damp, too cold and damp for the night and morning air to have been responsible. A hard residue of putty where the chisel marks were located on the door. And a piece of straw caught on one of the bolts. Straw, as of course you all know, is used to pack blocks and chunks of ice to preserve them by slowing the melting process.”
“Seems like pretty flimsy evidence,” Teague observed. “And what’s putty got to do with it?”
Quincannon addressed the constable’s statement, ignoring his question for the moment. “On the contrary, the evidence was not at all flimsy when taken in toto and combined with the location of the discarded safe — less than a mile from the icehouse. The thieves saw no need and had no desire, given Bodo Schneider’s wounded hand and the cumbersome weight of the safe, to transport it any further than that meadow. They were foolishly certain no one would suspect them of the crime.”
“How did you know the gold was hidden in the icehouse?” Cromarty asked. “The Schneiders might just as well have secreted it elsewhere.”
“Might have, yes, but it would have required additional risk. The weight of the gold and the necessity of finding a different hiding place also argued against it having been moved any appreciable distance. As far as they were concerned, it was perfectly secure inside the icehouse until it could be disposed of piecemeal.”