“One of them went dead altogether. The other was missing. There was something wrong with them all right, but I don’t know what.”
“Maybe the pilot knew. Maybe he was responsible for it. What did you know about him, Morgan?”
The co-pilot shrugged. “He was one of the best pilots on the line. Outside of that I didn’t know a great deal about him. He did have one weakness, women — expensive ones.”
“That would tie in, although we’ll probably never know. My conjecture is that he was paid to bring the plane down near this place.”
“But why would he want to do that?” asked Alan McGregor.
“Isn’t it obvious to you that Willie Scharnhorst didn’t have the brains to figure out a set-up like this one? Scharnhorst is just an ignorant hoodlum. He kidnapped that man in St. Louis and didn’t even have brains enough to collect the ransom. He had to let him go.”
Quade shifted suddenly to the flaxen-haired ice skater. “Miss Larsen, why were Gustave Lund and Slade always quarreling?”
“That’s none of your business,” cut in Slade.
“It is,” retorted Quade. “You tried to kill me out there a little while ago, and anything pertaining to you is my business.”
“What?” cried Slade. “I tried to kill you?”
“Yes. You’re the man I’ve been talking about. You shot at me and turned the foxes on me. How many rods do you pack?”
“You’re crazy!”
“I’ll draw a picture,” Quade turned to Mona. “Miss Lane, all of us left this room except you and Miss Larsen and Slade. What happened here after we left?”
“Why, I don’t know exactly. We sat around here in the dark and then Mr. Slade said he was going to try to fix the lights. He went out and a couple of minutes later the lights went on. And after a little while, he came back and said he had fixed them. That’s all I knew until all of you came back in here.”
Quade nodded. “How did you fix the lights, Slade?”
“I didn’t,” replied the little manager. “I just went outside and I heard a lot of shooting and running around and I didn’t go anywhere. I just stayed in back of the house while doing nothing. Then after the lights went on I came back in here.”
“You never left the vicinity of the house?”
“No.”
“Is that so? Then how did you get those silver fox hairs on your overcoat?”
Quade stepped forward as if to touch Slade’s coat. The little man yelled hoarsely and sprang back, tugging at his pocket.
Smack! Charlie Boston’s fist lifted Slade clear off his feet and hurled him back upon the sofa. He tumbled from it to the floor and lay still.
“That’s that,” said Quade. “Maybe he didn’t turn off or fix the lights — I think one of Becker’s workmen did that, thinking he was helping. But Slade is your killer.”
“I think you’re right,” Olga Larsen said suddenly. “Lund claimed Slade had stolen my money. He was stalling for a couple of weeks now. Lund was trying to get me to ask Ben for an accounting. But I thought Slade was honest. I suppose he just took advantage of the darkness to kill Lund.”
“I’ll bet you’ll find that Mr. Ben Slade is short twenty-five or fifty thousand dollars, or whatever you call big money,” Quade said. “Slade may never admit it, but I maintain he booked you for the Ice Carnival just to get you landed up here. Becker, it was that newspaper story about your foxes that was responsible. I read it myself only a week ago. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of fox skins was quite an inducement to them.”
“You mean dem two was working together?”
“Sure. Scharnhorst came along here with a truck. Slade brought down the airplane and the famous Olga Larsen. He’d paid the pilot to make a forced landing then, and just to play safe, and keep him from talking, he killed the pilot. Scharnhorst’s job was to take the furs, but a big truckful of furs is a hard thing to hide. That’s why they needed Olga Larsen. She’s a national figure. Slade brought her here so Scharnhorst could kidnap her. Hold her as a hostage, rather. With her life in danger, the police and G-men wouldn’t go after Scharnhorst. Then in a week or two, when the furs were safely cached or sold, Willie would have turned Olga loose to make more money for Slade. He killed Lund to keep his account shortage quiet.
“Mr. Becker, in the morning there are four animals in one of your sheds to pelt. I killed them,” Quade finished.
Karl Becker frowned. “You shot them? You put holes in their skins? That cuts down their value!”
Charlie Boston looked down at his huge fist. “Just once, Ollie,” he pleaded.
Quade grinned. “No — Mr. Becker, I didn’t put holes in your precious pelts. If I wasn’t so tired it would cost you money to know how I killed them, but I’ll just tell you. I killed them the same way you do, by tapping them on the nose with ether-soaked cotton.”
“Is dat so? You really do know about foxes then?”
“Only what I read in books. Mr. Becker, I like you. I’m going to give you a copy of The Compendium of Human Knowledge.”
Karl Becker was genuinely touched by Quade’s generosity. “Dot’s fine, Mr. Quade. You know I like you, too, and I tell you what I do. You have safed me from these low-life t’ieves. You have safed my thirty-two hundred beautiful skins. I reward you. One minute!”
He stepped outside the door and returned with a limp, black animal. “Dis fox, Mr. Quade, the one you run over in your automobile. I am going to make you a present of him — because you are such a fine fellow.” He extended the dead fox to Quade and said, as an afterthought: “De fox got out of the wire and maybe I never see him again, anyway.”
Charlie Boston gnashed his teeth. He stepped toward Karl Becker. Oliver Quade looked away.
State Fair Murder
He was here again. He saw the bright new banners: Minnesota State Fair, and a wave of nostalgia swept through him. There was sunshine and the clacking of turnstiles. Along the Midway he saw the same faces, heard familiar voices; the Kewpie dolls the suckers never won, gleamed from their shelves. He saw all of this and was glad that he was again a part of it.
And so he turned into the Education Building and found a bench and, mounting it, began talking in a voice that was louder than the noises of the huge building, that drowned even the clamor of the Midway and the yells of fifty thousand throats at the nearby speedway.
“I am Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia!” he thundered. “I know the answers to all questions. I can answer anything anyone can ask, on any subject…”
A man rushed up and, grabbing Oliver Quade’s coat, tugged furiously.
“You can’t start that stuff in here!” he cried, in a thin, high voice. “I told you you had to work outside!”
A look of utter weariness came upon Oliver Quade’s face. “Mr. Campbell,” he said, “I do not think more of twenty-five dollars than you do of your right arm. Yet that is the sum I paid you and I insist therefore, that I be allowed to work wherever I choose. And I choose this building.”
“Quade,” gritted Campbell, who was secretary of the Fair, “I dislike grease joints because they sell bad food and clutter up the grounds, yet I do not detest them one-hundredth as much as sheet-writers. And I would rather sleep in bed with a sheet-writer than live on the same street with a pitchman. And you, sir, are a pitchman. Do I make myself clear?”
So Oliver Quade took his case of books and went outside the Education Building. The noises of the Midway, the eighteen racing cars on the speedway, the fifty thousand persons in the grandstand could have been equalled only by eight tornadoes, three earthquakes and a 21-gun salute from the Pacific Fleet.