The red-head lost no time. The door opened a crack. A frock came sailing through, then underthings, shoes. Nace balled each garment as it arrived and relayed it outdoors with all his speed.
“That’s all,” called the red-head.
Nace eyed the door. “Anything in there you can put on?”
“Yes.”
Nace waited. He did not have the slightest proof that explosive was in the girl’s clothing. He was just playing safe. Perspiration crawled on his forehead. He wondered if the explosion, should one come from her clothing, would be sufficient to blow the log house down. He made no move to go out and carry her garments further away.
He shifted his feet nervously. His eyes roved, passed over the floor.
A small fold of paper lay at his feet. Obviously, it had fallen from the red-head’s garments.
He picked it up, read it.
MISS BENNA — I PUT IT IN THE REFRIGERATOR.
HASSER
He pocketed the paper hastily, for the girl was coming out of the other room.
She had put on one of the Indian suits she kept for sale to the summer resort trade. Buckskin blouse and trousers were beaded and fringed, as were the moccasins. It was a very nice fit. In the rig, she looked more entrancing than ever.
She stared at her discarded garments, visible in the light which slanted through the open front door.
“I make quite a few mistakes,” Nace told her dryly. “This may be one of them. Let’s get out of here — the back way.”
They entered the kitchen, crossed it.
Nace noted a large hotel-type electric refrigerator against one wall.
The night wrapped them with sultry gloom when they stepped out into it.
“My brother and Spencer — where did they go?” the red-head whispered anxiously. “Maybe we’d better call them.”
“No. That lunk, Coogan, may be hanging around. He’d love to cut down on me in the dark with a club. Take me to the cabin Rubinov occupied.”
The sepia sky blazed with electric fire at intervals of a minute or so. Far away, the hound still howled. Such sounds as their feet made seemed magnified a thousand times in volume.
“What a night!” Nace muttered.
“It’s horrible! Fighting and killing and attacks—”
“I meant the weather.”
“Oh, that. It’s just a thunderstorm. You don’t notice such things in the city. Out here, well, we get used to it.”
“You like the country?”
“So-so.”
“Rather live in the city, huh?”
“Why so curious?”
“Can’t I talk?” Nace demanded in a hurt tone. He had been wondering how she’d like his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. She ought to like it. The lease was costing him enough. He was just realizing what was wrong with the joint. It needed somebody like this red-head in it.
He’d better forget such thoughts — at least until he found out who she’d killed, or who she hadn’t.
Rubinov’s cabin was on the lake shore. It had a rear porch which extended out over the water.
“He liked to fish,” explained Benna Franks.
They entered. The place was fitted with electric lights. The girl clicked these on. Then she skidded a bearskin rug aside. Nace’s experienced eye did not detect the trapdoor until she lifted it, so cleverly was it made.
Below was a concrete box. This seemed solid. Benna pressed a hidden button and the entire box lifted steadily on a rusty piston until it was waist-high above the cabin floor. Below was visible the lid of a stout wooden chest.
Nace started to reach in. The girl grasped his arm.
“Wait!” she rapped. “Rubinov fixed a death trap! If you touch the chest lid without adjusting another concealed button, the concrete box will fall on you!”
Nace felt a pleasant warmth. She wasn’t trying to do him in. The note addressed to her and signed with Constable Hasser’s name seemed to become a red-hot iron in his pocket.
Benna made the button adjustment, lifted the chest lid and disclosed its empty interior.
“We’ll hunt fingerprints later,” Nace told her. “Where was the explosion which you think killed Rubinov?”
“Just outside this cabin.”
They closed the empty treasure vault, then went outdoors. Nace listened a while, trying to ascertain if anyone was near, then used his pen flash.
Signs of the explosion were profuse. The ground was torn, and swept bare of leaves, branches, even grass, for some feet around.
The red-head shuddered, pointed. “Throw your light on the cabin wall.”
Nace did so. Bloodstains were there, brown and dry.
The girl began to breathe jerkily and make faint noises in her throat. Nace, realizing the murder scene was undermining her nerve, escorted her back toward the two-story cabin.
The front room was as they had left it — no sign of Fred or Spencer, or even the red-necked railway detective, Coogan.
Nace turned out the lights. “Just to play safe. Now I’ll call the state police and have them watch for Coogan, in case he really left this neighborhood.”
He picked up the phone in careless fashion, then stiffened alertly. No line sing came from the instrument.
“Wires out,” he said dryly, and tossed the receiver onto its hook.
“Who could have done that?”
“Search me.” Nace planted his flash beam on her face. “Now let’s look at the refrigerator.”
He could detect no flicker of alarm in her features.
They entered the kitchen, moved to the refrigerator.
“Read this,” Nace said, and gave her the folded paper he had found on the floor.
She glanced over it. “I never saw this before.”
“It dropped out of your clothing.”
“So that was why you had me change—”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I was really afraid there was explosive in your garments. I was mistaken. I found this note by accident.”
“I don’t know — what to think of it!” She sounded scared.
“The bird who tied you up might have left it — trying to frame you,” Nace said, then wondered why he was suggesting alibis to her.
“That must have been it.” A shudder quavered in her voice. “The disappearance of that cinnamon can! Yes — that’s it! Somebody is trying to frame me.”
“Have you looked in the icebox recently?”
“No. We don’t use it until the summer guests come. It’s too big and expensive to run.”
Nace used his handkerchief to lift the refrigerator catch. He yanked the door open.
Benna Franks screamed shrilly, horribly. She whirled from the awful sight in the white refrigerator interior. Wildly, she stumbled from the door.
Nace overhauled her. She fought him in her hysterical horror, scratched his face. After ten or fifteen seconds, he succeeded in trapping her arms.
Then he went back and closed the refrigerator door. It took a lot to get under Nace’s skin. But even he didn’t care for the grisly sight of Rubinov’s remains piled in the refrigerator.
Chapter VI
Another Man-Blast
Nace searched and found a quart bottle of applejack in the kitchen cupboard. He administered a shot of the colorless liquid dynamite to the red-head. He was forced to hold her to do it.
Four or five minutes later, she was normal again, except for a nervous rasp in her breathing.
“I’m sorry — that I fought you,” she said huskily. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It seems like everything went to pieces for a minute.”
Nace tried to make his laugh hearty. “That’s all right, Benna.”
“Nace, everything depends on you. Any jury in the country would convict me of these murders on the evidence you’ve uncovered. You’ve got to find out who did it! You’ve simply got — oh, my—!” She was going haywire again.