He got to his feet and stood with his back pressed tightly to a wall. This seemed to ease the pain a little.
“Whoever fired the shots was trying to kill both of us!” said the girl.
Nace wiped a cold sweat of pain from his forehead with a jerky gesture that dislodged his steel skullcap of a wig. His eyes held a bleak suspicion.
“Suppose I choose to think the shots were part of that act you were putting on?” he grated.
Her hands tightened angrily on her blunderbuss. “The second shot was aimed at me! Couldn’t you see that?”
“I saw that it missed you! If the sniper out there was your pal, he might have planted the second shot to draw suspicion from you.”
The girl shrugged, rested her shotgun in the crook of an arm. “I was putting on an act, all right. But the shooting was not part of it. I was upstairs and saw you come prowling around. So I came down here and screamed and laid down on my gun. I thought I’d get a chance to hold you up when you came in. I wanted to get my hands on you.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got some questions I want to ask you!”
Nace stumbled to one window after another, peering through them, until he had surveyed all sides of the house. He could discover no one. He came back to the girl, saying, “Shoot your questions!”
She snapped angrily, “You doublecrossed me!”
“There’s where you’re all wet!”
“I wrote you letters telling you all about this trouble!”
“If you did, somebody’s been lifting ’em! I only got one! It enclosed a retainer fee!”
The girl cocked and uncocked her gun absently. “I mailed that last letter myself, from the post office. The others, I simply put in the rural box out in front.”
“You can see what happened!” Nace told her. “Now, give me the lowdown on this!”
The girl went into the pantry bedroom off the kitchen, came back carrying both Winchesters. She did not offer the rifles to Nace, but stood them against the wall, where he could easily reach them.
“You’ve heard of Mel Caroni?” she asked.
“Sure! Who hasn’t?” Nace snorted. “He was Chicago’s gang big shot. But he’s in Atlanta now — income tax. They say he’s broke.”
“You bet he’s broke!” the girl said grimly. “He converted everything he had into cash and jewels, and tried to skip the country. A coastguard cutter sank his boat out on the lake, not fifteen miles from here.”
Nace raised his eyebrows and lowered his mouth ends to register understanding. “And Caroni’s hoard sank with the boat?”
She nodded. “Caroni hired us to recover the stuff. You know, we own the Lake City Salvage Company.”
The girl took four shotgun shells from a pocket of her sports skirt and toyed with them. “The night after we located the wreck, there was an explosion which killed my father and two of the crew, and sank our salvage boat. My brother and the rest of the crew escaped.”
“Where do Tammany and Jeck hook in?”
“They’re two of Mel Caroni’s gangsters,” she explained. “After the explosion, we refused to have anything more to do with the salvage job. They seem to think we got Caroni’s treasure. They’ve been hanging around.”
Nace flexed his arms, bent his back a little, grimacing. He went to a window and started to lift the shade.
A bullet planked through pane and shade and thumped loudly into the wall.
Nace dodged back involuntarily, then bent forward again, plucked up the shade and stared out. He saw no one.
Broken glass emptied from between shade and window sill as if the fragments were coming out of a sack. Fully two minutes, Nace stood and stared.
“What about your brother?” he asked over his shoulder.
The red-head dropped shotgun and shells and splayed both hands over her face. “It was ghastly! Awful! We found him down by the lake shore! His eyes and tongue — they protruded! He was all swollen! I don’t think the Lake City doctors knew what had killed him. But they claimed he had been bitten by a snake!”
“What kind of a snake?”
“Water moccasin! Usually, you don’t find them this far north! But the shore here is infested with them.”
Nace did not take his eyes from the outdoors. He could discern no sign of the sniper.
“And Jud Ogel?” he prompted.
“We found him day before yesterday!” The girl picked up shotgun and shells. “Jud Ogel was in exactly the same condition as my brother. I immediately wrote you! Yesterday morning, I got word to bring the body to New York, where experienced chemists could be put to work to find the cause of death.”
“A stall!” Nace said. “You had Zeke rent a hearse and start the body for New York, huh?”
“That’s right!”
“Zeke gave a fake name when he hired the hearse!”
“Did he? I guess he didn’t want to connect me with the affair.”
“And Zeke’s story is that somebody stole the hearse?”
“Two masked men! One of them called the other by your name.”
Nace moved to another window and continued his staring outdoors. “Now maybe you can explain why Zeke tried to shoot me!”
“Zeke said he just kind of went crazy from thinking you were connected with the murders of my brother and Jud Ogel. He wasn’t responsible.”
“Who is Zeke?”
“One of the divers working for my father’s — my company. Jud Ogel was a diver, too!”
Nace tried a third window. “Where is Zeke now?”
“I don’t know. He came out here while I remained in Lake City to buy groceries. When I got here, there was no sign of him.”
Nace was perspiring. “Who do you think is the villain in this bit?”
“Tammany and Jeck!” she said promptly.
Chapter V
Corpse Under the Carpet
Nace moved over to the door, making faces as his back pained him. He looked out, shivered.
“You cover me with the shotgun,” he suggested. “I’m going out.”
“That’ll take nerve!” The girl eyed him, shrugged, took up a position with her shotgun. “I guess you’ve got it.”
Nace left the door at a headlong run, and lined for the nearest brush. The serpent was a blaze on his forehead. Each instant, he expected to be shot at. He was in a cold sweat when he plunged into the bushes. No shots had come.
He worked toward the lake, stopping often to listen. Trees grew thicker and larger. The ground sloped down sharply. Through the leafage, he caught the blue shimmer of Lake Erie.
Came a soft flutter in the ground plants. Nace sighted a slimy, writhing reptile. One of the moccasins! The venomous thing plopped into the lake. He heard two more of them as he worked toward the wharf. The place was alive with them.
Then he heard the girl cry out from the house. It was a single wail, full of blood-curdling horror. And it was very muffled.
Nace sprinted for the rambling old house, heedless of noise.
Someone shot at him with a rifle. He could not tell how far the bullet missed him — perhaps a yard. He sighted the steel snout of the rifle, waving about in the bushes. The sniper was beyond the house, a bit to the right of it. None of the fellow’s person was visible.
Nace angled over and got the house between himself and the gunner. No more bullets came.
He dived into the kitchen, crossed it, hit the hallway.
“Julia!” he yelled.
“Down here!” Her voice was in the basement.
Nace found the basement door open off the hall. He rattled his feet down rickety stairs.
The red-headed girl stood in one corner of the musty cellar, beside a pile of old carpets. She had pulled a carpet off an object. She looked at the thing that she had uncovered, and shrieked again, hysterically, in spite of herself.