“The third person, the real murderer, killed Hasser and Dell so as to have the loot for himself. Now he’s trying to kill me so I can’t do any investigating.”
The girl stood up. “Do you want to see the spot where the hoard was hidden?”
“Yeah.” Nace looked at her shoes. “But first, I’d like to see where you spilled that cinnamon on your shoes.”
She turned toward the kitchen. “I can show you the partly emptied box.” Her voice was shrill.
She entered the kitchen, looked at a shelf.
“The cinnamon box is gone!” she gasped.
Chapter V
Prowler
The red-headed girl pressed hands tightly to her cheeks. Her eyes acquired a sheen of moisture. She looked very scared.
“Does this — throw suspicion on me?” she choked.
Nace swung over, put a long arm about her shoulders. This seemed to be the thing he most wanted to do at the moment.
“Somebody may be trying to frame you, Benna,” he said.
He felt her shiver, could feel her heart trip-hammering.
The blond Spencer, walking in a half crouch because of the agony in his middle, shuffled into the kitchen. He eyed the shelf at which Benna Franks pointed, then squinted at the window.
The window was near the shelf — an easy arm reach. The sash was up.
“That window was closed when I washed my face a few moments ago!” Spencer barked. “Somebody has opened it since then!”
Nace grunted, herded them all back in the big room, and swung grimly for the door.
“Stay here!” he commanded. “I’m going to browse a little!”
The night outside had turned several degrees blacker. It was hotter. The breeze had died. The world was like the inside of a gigantic bomb, the only disturbance the less frequent bark of thunder and the crackling blaze of lightning.
Nace prowled. He did not use his pen flashlight. And after each gory burst of lightning, he made a wild jump eight or ten feet in the most convenient direction. He was taking no chances of a skulker pot-shooting him.
Camp Lakeside consisted of long lines of attractive three- and four-room log cabins, connected by graveled drives. Boathouses, bathhouses and a sanded beach were down on the lake shore.
Nace weaved among the cabins, covering a few yards, then stopping to listen. He worked down toward the lake. The air here had a faint tang of fish. It wasn’t unpleasant.
At some farmhouse in the distance, a dog howled. The animal was some breed of hound — its howl was long and quavering and eerie, like the wail of an ogre spawned out of the rumbling, flaming night.
Nace wrinkled his sensitive nostrils. He had caught an alien odor, very vague. He advanced a few silent paces. The odor became stronger. He identified it.
Whiskey!
The lightning gushed a white-hot blaze.
Nace jumped a foot — a hulking figure of a man stood almost against his nose. His back was to Nace.
Nace smacked a fist into the fellow’s back. The skulker barked hoarsely in surprise and pain. He folded forward on his knees. Nace pounced on him, fists bludgeoning. He hit the man in the nape, the temple. He reached around to slug him in the jaw — and got kicked in the back of the head.
Nace felt for a moment as if he were a big comet smashing through a galaxy of stars. The kick had been a complete surprise. He was half stunned.
The other man was bigger, heavier. He crawled atop Nace. If the fellow had used his fists then, Nace would have been finished. Instead, he tore at a revolver in his coat pocket.
Nace got his knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and kissed the top of his opponent’s head with it. The man shrieked. The revolver he was getting out of his pocket exploded under his convulsive fingers.
The bullet clouted harmlessly into the ground; the cloth of the coat pocket began to glow and smoke.
Nace hit him again. The man fell over senseless.
Arising, Nace used his flashlight.
It was the beefy, red-necked drunk who had menaced Nace with the nickeled revolver in front of the hotel.
Nace hauled him down to the lake, threw him in, then pulled him out again. That revived the fellow.
The man began snarling, “What the hell do you mean by—?”
“Going to pull an injured innocence act, huh?” gritted Nace. He stung his knuckles on the man’s jaw, and the beefy hulk lay stupefied for half a minute.
During that interval, Nace searched him. He found money, cigarettes, a silver flask entirely empty, and letters addressed to Alva Coogan, railroad detective, in Mountain Town.
“Why were you nosing around here, Coogan?” Nace demanded, after making sure the letters were nothing but advertisements.
Coogan started cursing. A close look at Nace’s knobby fist shut him up.
“Aw — I came up to get even with you for knockin’ me down!” he growled.
“How’d you know where to come?”
Coogan slapped a moist tongue over puffy lips. “They told me downtown that you had come up to Camp Lakeside.”
“You’re a black-faced liar, Coogan. Nobody knew I was headed for this place.”
“I ain’t a liar!” rumbled Coogan. “To hell with what you think!”
Nace laughed nastily and kicked the man to his feet. “A pal of Constable Hasser and Fatty Dell, aren’t you?”
“Quit kickin’ me!”
Nace booted him again. “Pal of Hasser and Dell, huh?”
“What if I was? They were a couple of all-right guys.”
“Were! Were! How’d you know Fatty Dell is dead? I don’t think anybody has found his body yet.”
Coogan shut up.
Nace propelled him toward the house, growling, “You’re in this over your ears, my friend!”
To the unholy tune of bumping thunder and jagging lightning, they strode the graveled walks. The two-story log main building hove in sight.
Nace rapped out a violent grunt. The structure was now dark!
Running the stubborn Coogan ahead of him, Nace clattered onto the porch. Coogan was seized with a shaking as they came near the door. He knew any bullets from inside would hit him. He tried to break away.
Nace struck him, and the man fell.
Letting him lay, Nace reached in, found the light switch and tweaked it. The room glared.
The red-head was tied to a chair. A cloth was tied between her jaws, another over her eyes.
Fred Franks and Spencer were nowhere to be seen.
Coogan had been feigning a knockout. He leaped to his feet suddenly and ran.
Nace yelled at him. Coogan only ran the faster. Nace shot past the man’s head. Coogan put on still more speed. Nace aimed at the runner’s back, but reconsidered. He holstered the gun in his sleeve with an angry growl.
He flung to the girl. She was tied with tent ropes. He wrenched them off and plucked the cloth from her jaws and her eyes.
“I didn’t see who it was,” she begun. “I was struck and stunned a minute after Fred and Spencer heard a shot down by the lake and ran out. Then—”
“Was anything shoved down your throat?”
“Why — what—?”
“Your throat — could they have pushed anything down it?”
“No — I don’t think so!”
He shoved her to the nearest door. “Get in there! Take off your clothes! Every stitch! Throw them out to me!”
“What—?”
“Damnation!” he bellowed. “Strip, or I’ll take ’em off for you! Quick!”
She ran into another room, closed the door.
“Hurry!” Nace rasped through the door. “They may have planted their infernal explosive somewhere in your clothing! Throw the stuff out here.”