“Cut it out!” Nace said grumpily, and reached for the applejack bottle.
The lightning flamed outside, and Nace’s eyes instinctively sought the front door. The sky fire danced and flickered several seconds — long enough to let Nace get a good look at blond Spencer.
The man was laboriously hopping toward the log house. His pitted hands were bound before him, his ankles tied, and a handkerchief stoppered his mouth.
Nace played his flashlight outdoors, wary of a trap. Then he ran out, dragged Spencer in, and untied him.
“I was struck down!” Spencer moaned. “I ran out when I heard that shot down by the lake! Then somebody jumped me.”
“Where’s Fred?” Benna shrilled.
“I don’t know,” grunted Spencer.
Nace became hard-eyed. “Did Fred run out of this room ahead of you or behind you when the shot sounded?”
“I went first. I don’t know whether Fred went out at all or not.”
The red-head cried angrily, “Listen, you! Fred is not involved in these killings—”
“Dry up, Benna,” Nace snapped.
She spun on him in a frightened rage. “You’ve got more evidence against me than against my brother! Fred didn’t—”
Nace held up the applejack bottle. “I guess you need more of this to make you see straight.”
She subsided. “I’m sorry.”
Spencer grabbed the applejack, lowered its level an inch and a half and immediately seemed to feel better.
“You can go to the nearest phone and call the coroner and the state police,” Nace told him. “The state troopers especially. I can stand some help around here.”
“Shall I use your car?”
“Use your feet. I may need that car.”
Spencer peered out into the thunder-and-lightning infested night, shivered as though he didn’t like the prospects, then glided out. He made remarkably little noise.
Nace turned the pen light on his face so the red-head could see his amiable grin. “I wish you’d quit throwing fits around here. The tantrums don’t do anybody any good, not even you. They’re hard on your nerves—”
He swallowed the rest. Someone had stepped into the room. Nace slid the knob-gripped gun out of his sleeve and pointed it at the spot where he judged the newcomer stood.
Fred Franks’ voice, hoarse with emotion, cried, “Benna! Nace! You here?”
“Present,” Nace admitted.
“Fred!” Benna’s one word was a relieved sob.
Her brother ignored her. “Nace! I’ve got the whole thing solved! I followed the devil to your hotel when he went there to kill you. That’s how I happened to be there.
“A few minutes ago, I saw him tie up Benna and blindfold her and thrust a note in the fold of her dress. Then I followed him and he got the parts of Rubinov’s body and put them in the refrigerator in the kitchen. I saw him throw something in the lake — I think it was that cinnamon box he lifted out of the kitchen!”
“Who is it?” Nace snapped.
“Wait until I tell you the rest! I think I know where old Rubinov’s hoard of money is—”
Flame, blue, sheeting, sprayed in the doorway. In the midst of the horrible blaze, Fred’s body seemed to fall apart. Then the blue glare extinguished and the explosion cracked.
So tremendous was the blast that Nace suddenly stopped hearing things. He was slapped backward as if by a great fist. The floor jumped up, split. The logs of the front wall fell outward, carrying the porch crashing down. The ceiling of the room above fell in.
Nace found a quivering form with his hands — the girl. He rushed her back into the kitchen, then outdoors, thinking the whole house was coming down.
But the building stood.
He cradled the girl in his arms. “You hurt?”
“Fred!” she screamed. “Fred! Fred!”
Nace carried her and ran around to the front of the house. He was afraid she would dash in and be hit by falling logs.
“Quiet!” he hissed in her ear. “The killer is around here somewhere!”
He lowered her to the ground. She lay there, stiffly inert, not even sobbing. She understood the need of silence.
Nace moved a dozen paces to one side and used his flashlight recklessly. The thin beam spiked right, left, straight ahead, behind him. It disclosed no one.
A log fell noisily in the wrecked part of the house. A nail pulled out of a board with a shrill squawling noise. Overhead, thunder chased lightning flashes across the sky.
Nace ran swiftly back to the girl, scooped her up, raced her to his rented roadster and deposited her on the cushions. The starter clashed, the motor gave a surprised moan under his madly stamping feet. The car jumped ahead as though a giant had kicked it.
“Fred!” Benna Franks moaned. “We can’t leave him—!”
Nace replied nothing. They could not help Fred. His body probably reposed in a hundred places in the wreckage.
The roadster tires threw gravel all the way to the concrete road, then rubber shrieked in a skid as Nace straightened out on the highway. The speedometer needle climbed past thirty, forty and fifty. The headlights bloomed brilliantly ahead.
The girl sat white, trembling and wordless in the deep leather seat.
They wheeled into Mountain Town. The windows of Nace’s hotel appeared.
“We’ll look through your brother’s car, first thing,” Nace said.
He braked to a stop before the hotel, then looked around narrowly.
Fred Franks’ coupe was in sight.
They entered the hotel. The dapper clerk grinned at Nace, came forward. He seemed to have something to say. But he didn’t have time.
“Wait here,” Nace told Benna Franks.
He boxed himself in a phone booth, got long-distance to New York City. He talked at length with the man in charge of the identification bureau. The conversation ran ten minutes, fifteen. Phone operators broke in on them twice.
Nace left the booth bright-eyed with satisfaction.
“It was a good hunch,” he told the red-head. “The New York police had his picture and his record. He got out of Sing Sing in a prison break four years ago.”
“You mean the—”
“The murderer. All I’ve got to do now is grab him, and find the money they stole from Rubinov.” Nace said the last wryly, conveying by his tone that quite a bit still lay ahead.
“Mister Nace,” said the hotel clerk tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“I hired a taxi driver to pull Fred Franks’ car around behind the hotel. I thought you might want to look it over, seein’ as how you left here in such a hurry.”
“Great!” Nace told him briskly. “Show me to it!”
The clerk didn’t stir. He looked uncomfortable. “I tried to do a little detective work myself. I hope it won’t make you mad.”
“Moving the car was swell stuff. It kept people from crawling around over it.”
“I done more than move the car. The rumble seat was locked, but I pried it open. Here’s what I found.”
Reaching under the desk, the clerk produced a pair of black-and-white sport shoes. The toes were smeared with brown powder from a matured puffball mushroom.
“I hope you ain’t mad that I done this.”
“Mad!” Nace grinned. “Kid, those are the murderer’s shoes. The New York police just told me there’s a thousand dollars reward for the guy. Consider the thousand your own.”
The clerk appeared relieved. “I’m glad it’s all right, because I found some other stuff that kinda had me worried.”
With that, he pulled four canvas bags from under the desk. They clanked loudly when he deposited them on the desk top.
“Take a look,” he said. “There’s money enough in there to stock a mint.”