“Is that gasoline?” He peered closer. “Yes, I can see that it is, and smell that it is. Keeping cans of it like that in a place like that is a fire hazard, especially when one of the cans is leaking. Just look at the floor, will you? Wet with it.”
Checkered Suit yanked at his arm. Mr. Smith gave ground, still protesting. “A wooden floor, too! In all the houses I’ve examined when I’ve issued fire policies, I’ve never seen—
“Joe,” said Checkered Suit, “I’ll kill him if I sock him, and the boss’ll get mad. Got your sap?”
“Sap?” asked the little man. “That’s a new term, isn’t it?
What is a—?” Joe’s blackjack punctuated the sentence.
It was very dark when Mr. Smith opened his eyes. At first, it was a swirling, confused, and thunderous darkness.
But after a while it resolved itself into the everyday damp darkness of a cellar, and there was a little square of moonlight coming in at a window over his head. The thunder, too, resolved itself into nothing more startling than the sound of footsteps on the floor above.
His head ached badly, and Mr. Smith tried to raise his hands to it. One of them moved only an inch or two before there was a metallic clank, and the hand couldn’t be moved any farther. He explored with the hand that was free and found that his right hand was cuffed to the side of the metal cot with a heavy handcuff.
He found, too, that there was no mattress on the bed and that the bare metal springs were cold as well as uncomfortable.
Slowly and painfully at first, Mr. Smith raised himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and began to examine the possibilities of his situation.
His eyes were by now accustomed to the dimness. The metal cot was a very heavy one. Another one just like it stood on end against the wall at the head of the cot to which Mr. Smith was handcuffed. At first glance it appeared ready to crash down on Mr. Smith’s head, but he reached out his left hand and found that it stood there quite solidly.
He heard the cellar door open and footsteps starting down. A light flashed on back by the steps and another at a work bench on the opposite side of the cellar. Checkered Suit appeared, and crossed to the work bench. He glanced over toward the dark corner where Mr. Smith was, but Mr. Smith was lying quietly on the cot.
After a moment at the bench he went back up the stairs.
The two lights remained on.
Mr. Smith rose to a sitting position again, this time slowly so the springs of the cot would make no noise. Once erect, however, he went to work rapidly. What he was about to attempt was, he knew, a long-shot chance, but he had nothing to lose.
With his free hand he pushed and pulled at the iron cot leaning against the wall, first grasping the frame as high as he could reach, then as low. It was heavy and hard to shift, but finally he got it off balance, ready to topple over on his head if he had not held it back. Then he got it back on balance again, by a hair. He moved his hand away experimentally.
The cot stood, a sword of Damocles over his head.
Then lifting a foot up to the edge of the cot on which he sat, he took out the lace of one of his shoes. It wasn’t easy, with one hand, to tie an end of the shoelace to the frame of the upended cot, but he managed. Holding the other end of the shoelace, he lay down again.
He had worked more rapidly than had been necessary. It was a full ten minutes before Checkered Suit returned to the cellar.
Through slitted eyes, the insurance agent saw that he carried several objects — a cigar box, a clock, dry-cell batteries. He put them down on the bench and started to work.
“Making a bomb?” Mr. Smith asked pleasantly.
Checkered Suit turned around and glowered. “You talking again? Keep your lip buttoned, or I’ll—”
Mr. Smith did not seem to hear. “I take it you intend to plant the bomb near that pile of gasoline cans tomorrow?” he asked. “Yes, I can sec now that I was hasty in criticizing it as a fire hazard. It’s all in the point of view, of course. You want it to be a fire hazard. Seeing things from the point of view of an insurance man, I can hardly approve. But from your point of view, I can quite appreciate—”
“Shut up!” Checkered Suit’s voice was exasperated.
“I take it you intend to wait until you have collected the ransom money for Mr. Kessler, and then, leaving him and me in the house — probably already dead — you will set the little bomb and take your departure.”
“That sock Joe gave you should have lasted longer,” said Checkered Suit. “Want another?”
“Not particularly,” Mr. Smith replied. “In fact, my head still aches from the last one I had from that — did you call it a ‘sap’?” He sighed. “I fear my knowledge of the slang of the underworld to which you gentlemen belong is sadly lacking—”
Checkered Suit slammed the cigar box back on the bench and took the automatic from his pocket. Holding it by the barrel, he stalked across the cellar toward Mr. Smith.
The little man’s eyes appeared to be closed, but he rambled on, “It is rather a coincidence, isn’t it, that I should call here to sell insurance — life and fire — and that you should be so sadly ill-qualified to receive either one? Your occupation is definitely hazardous. And—”
Checkered Suit had reached the bed. He bent over and raised the clubbed pistol. But apparently the little man’s eyes hadn’t been closed. He jerked up his free hand to ward off the threatened blow, and the hand held the shoestring. The heavy metal cot, balanced on end, toppled and fell.
It had gained momentum by the time a corner of it struck the head of Checkered Suit. Quite sufficient momentum. Mr. Smith’s long-shot chance had come off. He said “Oof” as Checkered Suit fell across him and the cot came on down atop Checkered Suit.
But his left hand caught the automatic and kept it from clattering to the floor. As soon as he caught his breath, he wormed his hand, not without difficulty, between his own body and that of the gangster. In a vest pocket, he found a key that unlocked the handcuff.
He wriggled his way out, trying to do so quietly. But the upper of the two cots slipped and there was a clang of metal against metal.
There were footsteps overhead and Mr. Smith darted around behind the furnace as the cellar door opened. A voice— it seemed to be the voice of the man they had called Joe-called out, “Larry!” Then the footsteps started down the stairs.
Mr. Smith leaned around the furnace and pointed Checkered Suit’s automatic at the descending gangster. “You will please raise your hands,” he said. Then he noticed that smoke curled upward from a lighted cigarette in Joe’s right hand. “And be very careful of that—”
With an oath, the cadaverous-faced man reached for a shoulder holster. As he did so, the cigarette dropped from his hand.
Mr. Smith’s eyes didn’t follow the cigarette to the floor, for Joe’s revolver had leaped from its holster almost as though by magic and was spitting noise and fire at him. A bullet nicked the furnace near Mr. Smith’s head.
Mr. Smith pulled at the trigger of the automatic, but nothing happened. Desperately, he pulled harder. Still nothing—
At the foot of the staircase a sheet of bright flame, started by Joe’s dropped cigarette, flared upward from the wooden floor, saturated with gasoline from the leaky can.
The sheet of flame leaped for the stack of cans, found the hole in the leaky one. Mr. Smith had barely time to jerk his head back behind the furnace before the explosion came.
Even though he was shielded from its force, the concussion sent him sprawling back against the steps that led to the outer door of the cellar. Behind him, as he got to his feet, half the cellar was an inferno of flames. He couldn’t see Joe — or Checkered Suit.