“Nice lad, that boss of yours,” said Charlie Boston, “but he’s not really a German, is he?”
“Yah, sure, he is, a plattdeutcher! He likes money. He is probably the stingiest man in the whole country.”
“I’ll give him more territory than that,” said Quade. He fingered the five-dollar bill in his pocket.
Oscar, the driver of the bob-sled, had turned the horses into a lane leading through a patch of poplars. The snow didn’t seem to be falling so heavily here. But it was cold. Quade looked longingly at the jug. But he knew if he touched it Boston would hit it again, and there were sick people out there in the snow.
A mile through the woods and they burst suddenly into a clearing. “There they are!” cried Hugo.
Quade saw the wrecked plane, the passengers. They had built a small fire in the snow and were huddled around it.
Mona, the air hostess, was the first to reach the sled. She ran alongside it back to the wreck. “Did Bill Morgan send you?”
Quade nodded. “Yes. He’s all right, too. There’s a lodge about two miles from here.”
He leaped out of the sleigh to the snow. Quickly he, Boston and the two Becker men loaded the survivors of the air crash into the sled. They wrapped them up in blankets, passed the jug of rum around to them. Then they laid the dead passenger on the sled, leaving, however, the pilot’s body in the plane.
“Hurry!” cried a flaxen-haired woman. “Or we’ll be late.”
“For supper?” asked Quade sharply.
She looked at him haughtily. A roly-poly man who was waiting on the flaxen-haired woman, bristled at Quade. “See here, my man, do you know who this is?”
“Florence Nightingale?” guessed Quade.
The little man sputtered. “This is Olga Larsen, the Olga Larsen, Queen of the Ice.”
Quade thought he’d seen her face. She was one of the most publicized women in America; but he would have expected to see her in the Madison Square Garden in New York, the Coliseum in Chicago, rather than up in the Wisconsin wilds. Yet, he was himself going to the ice carnival in Duluth. Olga Larsen was the star attraction there, the magnet that would bring thousands to the city.
There was a tall, pasty-faced man standing to one side of Olga Larsen. His face was familiar, too. He was Gustave Lund, Olga’s skating partner.
The lean passenger, McGregor, signaled to Oliver Quade. “Better take a look inside the plane,” the lean man murmured.
Quade looked sharply at the man, then walked to the plane. He dropped to his knees and scuttled through one of the broken windows. It was dark inside. He crawled a few feet in the litter of wreckage, put his hand on a sliver of glass, and grunted. He fumbled in his pocket for matches. He struck one and saw the open door leading to the cockpit. He went forward and then he saw the thing the lean survivor of the crash had hinted about. The murdered pilot…
The match scorched his glove, and he dropped it. He crawled back to the snow outside and found that the sleigh was moving away. He ran after it.
The survivors of the plane wreck hurried into the warm air of the lodge. Becker’s workman, Julius, had prepared hot coffee and for a few moments there was a bustle of excitement.
Quade drank his coffee and, while he did, sized up the others in the room. McGregor, the lean man, kept to one side, but Quade noticed that he did not miss anything that was going on. Olga Larsen had ensconced herself in the center of a sofa and was permitting her little manager, the roly-poly Slade, to fuss over her. Mona, the hostess, and the wounded co-pilot, Morgan, were off to one side sipping coffee and talking together in low tones.
Charlie Boston came over to Quade. “This Larsen dame,” he said, “she don’t look so good like she did in Queen of the Ice.”
Quade grinned. “None of them do, Charlie.” His eyes went to Becker. The fox raiser wasn’t at all disconcerted by the arrival of all the guests.
“Our friend Becker has counted the gate and seems quite pleased.”
“Yeah,” said Boston, “he’s figuring on charging everyone for room and board. Except us.”
“Oh, he won’t lose by that,” said Quade. “He’ll just charge the others a little more.”
McGregor, the saturnine passenger, moved over to Quade. “Did you see in the plane?” he asked.
Quade nodded. “Who did it?”
McGregor shrugged. “We were going along smooth, see. Then all of a sudden the motor began missing. Everybody got excited and then, boom, we hit. First thing I knew, we were all out on the snow.”
“But didn’t you hear the shot?” Quade persisted.
“Me, all I could hear was Gabriel’s horn.”
Gustave Lund, the skater’s partner, said: “What do you mean, shot?”
Quade looked at him. “Don’t you know?”
“I don’t know anything!” Lund said bitterly. “I’m not supposed to know anything. I’m just a stooge. Olga, she’s the smart one, and Slade.”
Slade bounced up from the sofa. “Now lookit, Lund, don’t start in on Olga again! I’ve warned you about that! You’re just paid to skate with her!”
“Slade,” Lund said coldly. “I don’t like you!”
“Boys! Boys!” Olga said placatingly. “Don’t start fighting! I won’t have it! I’ve had enough for one day!”
“Folks,” Quade announced, “it seems that some of you don’t know all that’s happened. The pilot of your plane wasn’t killed by the crash. He died because some one of you put a bullet in his head!”
Quade’s statement stunned the entire room. Only for a moment, however. Then Olga Larsen screamed. Bill Morgan strode angrily across the room.
“Why did you have to spill that?” he demanded.
“Oh,” said Quade, “you knew?”
“Of course I knew, but I wasn’t telling them.”
“Why not?” asked Quade bluntly. “Because you were in the cockpit with him?”
Morgan’s eyes gleamed. “I was with him when we crashed but I didn’t shoot him.”
“But who did?” cried Slade. “You were the only one up front. All of us were fastened in our seats with the belts.”
“That isn’t so, Mr. Slade,” said Mona, the hostess. “If you’ll think back calmly, you’ll know that everyone started jumping around. As far as I am concerned, I helped only Miss Larsen.”
Morgan smiled gratefully at Mona. “Thanks, Mona. Then someone could have opened the door and stuck in a gun!”
“But why would anyone do that?” exclaimed Gustave Lund. “It seems that someone wanted to make sure the pilot was killed!”
“Julius!” That was Karl Becker.
Quade looked at the German fox breeder. His face was white. Julius came hurrying out of the kitchen.
“Julius!” the German said. “Someone’s been murdered around here. I don’t like it. I want you should go tell Oscar and Hugo. Make sure the t’ief alarms are set, and,” he jabbed a stubby finger at Julius, “you know, the guns, too.”
Julius bowed his head and started for the door. He didn’t reach it, however. The door was opened from the outside, and two men stepped into the heated room.
“Hello, folks,” one of them said.
There was a huge gun in his fist. It was a .45 automatic, and it was pointed carelessly in the general direction of the occupants of the lodge.
“Eeek!” screamed Olga Larsen.
“Oh, oh!” said Quade.
Beside him Charlie Boston’s teeth clicked. Karl Becker almost fainted when he saw the gun in the newcomer’s hand.
“Who,” he faltered, “who are you? Vot you vant?”
“Guess,” grinned the gun wielder. He was a square-built man, standing about five feet ten, but so heavily built that he weighed over two hundred pounds. He wore a heavy camel’s hair coat which made him seem more burly even than he actually was. The man with him was short and slight. Swarthy. There was a gun in his hand too.