Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

Rain, the Killer

Rain padded on the roof with sodden, maddening intensity; it swished on the leaf-barren trees outside the window and pelted the water-gorged earth with deadly monotony. It had rained for three days. Inside the bedroom it had seeped into the soul of the schizophrenic, the man with the dual personality; had filled him with sadistic despair until there was only one outlet for him.

Murder.

The schizophrenic rose from the bed on which he had been lying, went to the desk beside the rain-swept window and took from a drawer a long, pointed paper-knife. This was later to be called The Murder Weapon.

At the door of his room he halted. He had never killed a human being before and the all but vanquished normal half of his split personality made one last struggle. It screamed to the soul of the schizophrenic not to pass through this door, for once it did, it was damned forever.

The face of the man twisted from the struggle within him; a sob was torn from his racked body… and then he opened the door. The victory, temporarily at least, was won by the destructive personality that had been nurtured to full strength by the three-day downpour from the heavens.

The man with the paper-knife walked to another door in the corridor, opened it and stepped into the room.

A man lay on the bed, his form a darker shadow in the semi-dark of the room. The schizophrenic moved to the side of the bed. He stood there looking down at the sleeping man.

The intensity of his thoughts may have transmitted themselves to the subconscious brain of the sleeper, for suddenly he stirred and his eyes opened.

“Hello,” he said, startled. “What is it?”

“I am going to kill you,” said the standing man and raised his right hand over his head.

The man in the bed, shocked awake, saw death in the killer’s eyes. He gasped:

“Don’t! Don’t! Please, I’ll—”

The slender paper-knife came down with terrific force. It struck the throat of the man on the bed, went clear through as if it had been soft butter.

The man on the bed choked horribly and his body thrashed about for a moment. It made a wrestler’s arch and the killer stepped back in alarm. Then the body collapsed.

The killer came forward again. In the semi-gloom he groped for the knife handle, found it and pulled it out of the dead man’s throat. The blood, rushing out, made a soft, gurgling sound.

Methodically, the murderer took hold of the edge of the bedspread. He wrapped the knife in it and wiped it thoroughly, removing from it blood as well as finger prints. Then he let the knife drop to the floor and walked out of the room. He went to his own room, closed the door and entered the bathroom.

He switched on the light above the wash-bowl and washed his hands. He dried them on a towel, hung the towel up neatly on the rack, then looked at his reflection in the mirror over the medicine chest.

The face that looked back at him did not look like the face of a killer.

Rain splashed against the bathroom window. Slowly the monotonous wet sound of it penetrated the consciousness of the killer. A frown creased his forehead. He spoke to the face in the mirror; a half whisper with a trace of returning doubt in it:

“You are a murderer.”

Schizophrenics are unhappy persons. Their dual personalities are constantly at war with one another. In moments of depression, stress or mental anguish, the element without inhibitions gains the ascendancy and the schizophrenic will do things for which he will later suffer untold remorse. But having won once, the uninhibited element wins again… and again… and in time will rule.

Remorse was already wrapping its cold fingers around the heart of the man in the bathroom. The merciless rain beat against the window.

The rain was the real murderer.

Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, had debated with himself about taking the detour and after he’d gone a mile on it he wished he’d decided against it. The only thing that kept him on the narrow, winding road now was that the road shoulders were too soft and muddy for him to risk turning around.

The road was graveled, but wherever there was a depression in the gravel there was a muddy pond. The ditches on each side of the road were miniature torrents. And the rain still came down in sheets. Jupiter Pluvius had a real mad against the world.

It was six o’clock in the afternoon and dark as the inside of an inkwell. Quade cursed dispassionately and wished he’d been content to remain in drowsy idleness back there in the city. He’d come too far, though, to turn back; it would be easier to continue to the next town. There had to be one soon, despite the detour.

The headlights of his little coupe picked out a car on the road ahead. It was a touring car with side curtains, a large machine but not too comfortable for such sodden weather. Its headlights were silhouetting a framework ahead of it. It wasn’t until Quade had come up within fifty feet that he could make out that the framework was a bridge.

Quade braked his car to a stop a few yards behind the touring car and then he saw something else; water was rushing over the flooring of the bridge.

He rolled down the window at his left elbow, stuck his head out into the downpour and yelled, “Bridge go out?”

A man wearing a glistening raincoat sloshed up to Quade’s car. “Naw,” he said. “She ain’t out yet, but she’s creaking and won’t stand much more.”

“You going to cross?” Quade asked.

The man shrugged. “We gotta make it across, but we’re scared to take a chance. The current’s pretty swift. We’d be carried right away.”

Another man in a dripping slicker came up. “Mister, your car’s a lot lighter than ours,” he said. “You might make it.” Quade pursed his lips. “Well, the road’s too narrow to turn around and go back so I guess I’ll have to chance it.”

The man who had come up first, said, “Mind if we ride across with you? We got to get over there.”

“Hop in,” Quade invited. “Three hundred and fifty pounds more won’t make enough difference.”

He opened the door on the far side of him and the two men trudged around. They squeezed into the front seat, the closest man’s slicker wetting Quade clear through to the skin.

He gunned the motor and the wheels swished on the soaked gravel. For a moment Quade thought his car was already stuck, but then the little motor jerked the car out of the rut and it went back. Quade stopped it fifty yards from the bridge.

“Hang on,” he said, grimly. “I’m going to take it full speed.”

“In high?” asked the man beside him.

“No, the water’s too deep for that and if I should kill the motor I doubt whether I could start it again. I’ll take it in low, but I’m not stopping for anything.”

“I thought I heard the bridge creak,” said the second man. “Think we ought to try it?”

Quade thought that he saw the bridge skeleton move. The car was insured and could be replaced. His life wasn’t insured and couldn’t be replaced. He asked:

“How important is it for you to get across?”

The man beside Quade sighed. “Very important. I’m Dave Starkey, the sheriff of this county. And this is Lou Higginbotham, my deputy. A murder has been committed over on that island. That’s why we want to get over.”

“Then,” said Quade, “Hold tight… and pray!”

He shifted into low, kept his foot on the clutch and raced the motor. Then suddenly he let out the clutch. The car leaped forward and Quade pushed the gas throttle to the floorboards. He gripped the steering wheel firmly and missed the lawmen’s car by inches. The coupe hit the water covering the bridge floor and splashed it mightily.

Quade felt the wheels grip the bridge planking. Water splashed up through the floor-boards, soaked his trousers to his knees, but he kept his foot down on the throttle.

Half-way across! The bridge creaked ominously and for a giddy moment Quade thought it was going out. He heard the sheriff beside him gasp.

Three-quarters across and the bridge swayed so that Quade had to fight the wheel. Higginbotham, the deputy, whimpered.

And then, miraculously, the coupe leaped clear of the water and climbed the steep, graveled road on the other side. Quade continued to the crest of the ridge before he lifted his foot from the throttle. He stopped the car then, and a tremor ran through him. He knew that there was a fine film of perspiration on his forehead.

“We made it,” the sheriff said and there was a catch in his voice.

“Do you think your own car can make it?” Quade asked.

The sheriff shook his head. “No, not a chance in the world. That bridge is going out of its own accord inside of a half hour.”

“Then perhaps you’d better not walk back after it. I’ll drive you to where you’re going.”

The sheriff nodded. “Thanks. It’s the Olcott place. ’Bout a quarter mile ahead, then a driveway to the left.”

There was a stone arch over the driveway leading into the Olcott place. That told Quade that he was entering the grounds of a rich man’s estate.

The house, two hundred yards from the highway, was built on a hilltop. It was ablaze with lights and had, Quade estimated, at least twenty rooms. A smaller house nearby was evidently the servants’ quarters.

Quade braked the coupe to a stop before the big house. The raincoated officers climbed out.

“Thanks a lot, mister,” the sheriff said. “If you ever get arrested in Spurling I’ll see that you get treated better than usual.”

Quade said, “That’s very generous of you. But how the devil am I going to get away from here? You said this was an island?”

“Yeah, I’d forgot.” The sheriff frowned. “There’s another bridge a quarter-mile beyond, but I’ve a notion that it’s gone out already. It was lower than the one we crossed.”

“Fine,” said Quade. “I was just looking for an excuse not to drive any more tonight. And I’ve always wanted to spend a day or two on a swell estate like this.”

“You forget why we’re here,” said the sheriff. “A murder—”

“Dead ones don’t scare me,” Quade replied. “Only live ones. I don’t imagine Mr. Murderer hung around here to wait for the cops. Let’s go inside.”

Someone inside the big house must have heard the car stop for before the three men reached the front door it was thrown wide open. A butler in livery peered out. He asked:

“Are you the police?”

“We are,” said the sheriff. “And we had one sweet time getting here.”

Quade and the officers entered the house and began taking off their dripping coats. The butler took them.

A white-haired man came out of the living room on the right.

“Sheriff Starkey!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad you made it. I — well, you know why we sent for you.”

“Yes, Mr. Olcott. You said your brother was killed.”

The man called Olcott shook his head. “It — it was frightful. Allison went to call him for dinner and there — there he was.”

“Lead the way, Mr. Olcott,” the sheriff said.

The white-haired man grimaced and turned to a staircase. The sheriff, the deputy and Quade followed.

A wide corridor split the second floor. On the side where the staircase was, five doors opened onto the corridor; on the unbroken side, six doors. All the doors except the last one to the left of the stairs were open. Ferdinand Olcott led the way to the closed door.

The sheriff pushed open the door. The light was on in the bedroom.

“Ah,” said the sheriff. The deputy cleared his throat hoarsely.

The dead man was about fifty; in life he had been an athletic, heavy-set man. His hair was iron-gray and his face tanned as if he had lived in the open.

There was much blood on the bed. Quade felt his insides tighten and wished that he had stayed in the city, back there fifty miles or so.

The sheriff drew a breath and approached the bed. He examined the body, then said, “It’s just a little hole. He must have bled to death.”

“No,” said Quade. “He died almost instantly. The blade went through the spinal cord at the back of his neck. If he hadn’t died instantly, he would have screamed.”

The sheriff looked sharply at Quade. “Maybe he did scream; what makes you think he didn’t?”

“Mr. Olcott said the butler came to call him for dinner. If he’d screamed, someone in the house would have heard him.”

“Mmm.” The sheriff looked suspiciously at Oliver Quade. “What about the knife hitting his spinal cord? How’d you figure that? Are you a doctor?”

“No, not at all. I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia.”

Sheriff Starkey’s eyes widened. “The Human what?”

“Human Encyclopedia.”

“I don’t get you. Why should you be a Human Encyclopedia?”

“Well, because I sell encyclopedias.”

“You’re a book agent? I’ll be damned.”

Mr. Olcott, standing just inside the door, said anxiously: “He — he was killed? It’s not suicide?”

The sheriff looked at the paper-knife lying on the floor, near the foot of the bed, then at the edge of the sheet where the killer had wiped off the blade.

“It couldn’t have been suicide,” he said. “The blade was obviously wiped off and a man killing himself wouldn’t do that.”

“He was your brother?” Quade asked, turning to Olcott.

Olcott nodded. “Yes, but I hadn’t seen him in six years until he came to visit here last week.”

The sheriff looked disapprovingly at Quade. Then he said to the old man, “Then you don’t know very much about your brother?”

“As much as anyone, I guess. He wrote me often. He owns a tremendously large cattle ranch down in the Argentine.”

Quade saw the sheriff’s eyes light up and knew the question of inheritance had popped into his mind. But the sheriff didn’t ask it. Instead he examined his finger nails.

“I’d like to use your phone now, Mr. Olcott,” he said.

“Of course. Downstairs.”

“Yes. I’m through here, for the time being.”

The upper corridor was strangely devoid of servants. The dead man in the end bedroom had frightened them downstairs, Quade reasoned.

He and the lawmen and Ferdinand Olcott descended to the entrance hall. There the sheriff picked up a phone from a stand. He jiggled the hook, then replaced the receiver on it.

“It’s dead. I’ve been expecting that.” He looked at his deputy. Higginbotham was a big man, standing over six feet, and weighing close to two hundred pounds. He was a young fellow, not over twenty-five. His forehead wrinkled as soon as the sheriff looked at him.

“Lou,” the sheriff said. “You’d better go and see if either of the bridges are still in. With the telephone wire down…” He left the sentence unfinished.

The deputy coughed awkwardly. “You mean I should walk?”

The sheriff looked at Quade, then at Olcott. He said, “Isn’t your chauffeur here, Mr. Olcott?”

“Yes, of course, he’s in the kitchen with the rest of the servants. I’ll have him get out one of the small cars and drive your man.”

Allison, the butler, came out of a door. “Allison,” said Mr. Olcott, “tell Charles to take this deputy where he wants to go. In the smallest car.”

The butler and the deputy went through a door at the end of the hall. Olcott turned to the sheriff then. “I suppose you will want to talk to the family — and the guests?”

“Yes, of course.”

Ferdinand Olcott led the way into a living room that ran the width of the house, more than forty feet. There were seven or eight people in it. Quade wondered that none had been curious enough to come out into the hallway when he and the police officers had arrived.

There was one woman. She was young, beautiful; a rather tall, blonde girl with a boyish figure and classic features. Oliver Quade liked her intelligent expression. She was Martha Olcott, the daughter of the house.

The men interested Quade most. His sharp eyes studied them carefully. Movie-goers would instantly have picked the swarthy man as the villain of the play. He was of middle height, slightly stout, used pomade on his hair, and had a pointed, waxed mustache. This was Arturo Nogales and he was, Ferdinand Olcott explained, the dead man’s business manager.

The second man, from the way he kept his eyes on Martha Olcott, was her sweetheart. He was a well-built, dark young man of about twenty-five or twenty-six. He had probably played football at college and played it well, Quade thought. His name was Lynn Crosby.

The last man came rightly last. He was that sort of man; he was probably five feet six, had sandy hair, wore tortoise-shell rimmed glasses and would have walked around an impudent cat on the sidewalk, rather than dispute the right-of-way. He was Clarence Olcott, Ferdinand Olcott’s son.

The introductions over, Sheriff Starkey got down to business.

“As sorry as I am about everything, I’m still the sheriff of this county and it’s my duty to make an investigation. I must determine first of all where everyone was in the house at the time the murder was committed.”

His bluntness drew a couple of gasps. Ferdinand Olcott protested. “Why, Sheriff, you talk as if you suspect someone in this house killed my brother.”

The sheriff’s eyes popped wide open. “Isn’t that what you think?”

“Of course not,” replied Olcott, indignantly. “The thought never occurred to me that it was done by anyone but an intruder, some second-story man who entered the house for nefarious purposes.”

The sheriff gulped. “In daylight, during the kind of weather we had today? Oh, come now, Mr. Olcott, does it sound reasonable that a sneak thief or burglar would try to come into a house during a rainstorm when he knows that more than a dozen people are in it?”

Olcott frowned and shook his head. “But it’s preposterous to think that anyone in this house committed the — crime. The servants have all been with us for years and surely you don’t think—”

“He means just that,” the mousy Clarence surprised everyone by saying. “And I believe he’s justified in that contention. I’ve been giving some thought to the matter and I can see only one logical explanation: Someone in this house killed Uncle Walter.”

There was some rumbling about that. Quade decided then that he had been silent long enough. He said, “Mr. Olcott’s right. No outsider would have used a paper-knife as a weapon for killing someone in this house. A pocket knife or blackjack would have been a more likely weapon for an outsider. Sheriff, I know you intended to do it, but don’t you think it’s time to find out from whose room the murder weapon came?”

The sheriff glared at Quade. At that moment the outer door slammed and Higginbotham, the deputy, came into the big living room. “Both bridges are out and the river’s gone up more than six feet.”

“Six feet!” cried the sheriff. “It couldn’t go up that much in such a little time.”

“It could if the dam went out up the river,” said Lynn Crosby with his eyes still on Martha.

Ferdinand Olcott exclaimed in consternation. “Fourteen years ago, before that dam was built, we had a flood here and the water came up almost to the spot where this house is built. I never thought that dam would go out.”

“You mean, Father,” interposed Martha Olcott, “that there’s actual danger from the flood?”

Olcott looked frankly worried. “Why, I–I’d hate to think that, but if the dam’s broken, the water’s going to get pretty high. I don’t think it’ll quite reach the house, but, with the bridges out and the telephone wires down, we may be isolated for several days.”

“There’s enough food in the house for a month,” said Martha Olcott.

Nogales, the Argentinian, showed white teeth. “Good! Then there is nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing,” said Quade, “except that a man has been murdered in this house, that the murderer is still here, and that we’re on an island, cut off from the rest of the world. There’s going to be a flood out there and people are going to be too busy for a while to think about this little group here. We may be here a week… with a dead man in the house.”

The sheriff took a deep breath. “Then we may as well get some things straight. I’m the law here and I’m conducting a murder investigation. Mr. Human Encyclopedia, you did a good job in getting us over here, but, just to avoid trouble in the future, keep in mind that I’m running things here. Understand?”

Quade looked sardonically at the sheriff. “It so happens that I’m one of the three people here not under suspicion. I’ve violated no laws and I’m probably the most intelligent person here.”

Clarence Olcott took up the challenge. “I’m a Harvard man, mister,” he said. “I’ve got an A.B. and M.A. and I’m working for an LL.D. I think my educational qualifications are the equal of anyone here.”

“I guess I spoke out of turn,” said Quade. “But, Mr. Olcott, can you tell me in what direction Reno, Nevada, is from San Diego, California?”

Clarence Olcott looked superciliously at Quade. “Any schoolboy could tell you that. Reno is northeast of San Diego.”

“I’m afraid the schoolboy who’d say that would flunk,” Quade replied. “It so happens that Reno is northwest of San Diego. Look it up on the map.”

Clarence strode to a bookcase and took out an atlas. After a moment he grunted. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. But that was a trick question. All right, it’s my turn. I’ll ask you something. Hmm. Who invented the principle of the door lock?”

Clarence Olcott had evidently asked the first question to come to his mind, without realizing the magnitude of it. Quade screwed up his mouth. “That,” he said, “is a very good question. Only about six persons in this country could answer it. I’m one of the six. The ancient Egyptians invented the door lock. The principle of it died with the decline of Egypt, and in medieval days an inferior lock was evolved by Europeans. The first real lock of modern times was invented by Robert Barron in 1774. In 1848 Linus Yale invented the modern tumbler lock, using the principle of the ancient Egyptian lock, patterned after one found in the ruins of Nineveh.”

Almost everyone in the room was staring at Quade by this time. He chuckled and went on: “With the Yale lock and key, 32,768 combinations are possible…. Do you want to ask me another question, Mr. Olcott?”

Sheriff Starkey interrupted: “This is no time for games, Quade. A murder has been committed here and there’s work to be done.”

“Quite so,” said Quade. “Well, what about the paper-knife?”

The sheriff turned to his deputy. “Lou, run upstairs and bring down that knife with which Walter Olcott was killed.”

The big deputy’s eyes rolled as he left the room. Quade heard him take the stairs two at a time. He was in the upper corridor less than a half-minute, then came tearing down the stairs.

He brought the knife into the room, holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. The sheriff took it from him and held it aloft. “This paper-knife belonged to someone in this room, didn’t it?”

“It’s mine,” said Martha Olcott.

Her father gasped. “Martha!”

“There’s no point in denying it,” said Martha. “It’s from that desk set you got me for my birthday two years ago. The shears to match are in my desk right now. But this — haven’t seen it for a couple of days.”

“It’s yours, though, you’re sure of that?” persisted the sheriff.

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing,” cut in Lynn Crosby. “Any of the servants here could have taken it from Martha’s room. Or, for that matter, anyone else here.”

“As a matter of fact,” cut in Clarence Olcott, “I saw that paper-knife on the hall table only this morning.”

Allison, the butler, cleared his throat. “Beg pardon, but Mr. Clarence is right. I found it in this room and meant to take it back to Miss Martha’s room. Then the mail came and I used it to open some of the house mail. I’m sorry; I forgot all about it after that.”

“And no finger prints on it,” murmured Quade. “There goes your only clue, Sheriff.”

“Perhaps,” said the sheriff sarcastically, “you could conduct this investigation better.”

“Yes, I believe I could.”

The sheriff showed his teeth. “And just what would you do?”

“Well, first of all, I’d establish a motive for the killing. There’s always a motive for murder, you know. Usually it’s for financial gain, although sometimes it’s for jealousy or hate. Establish your motive and you may point the finger at the murderer.”

The glare went out of Starkey’s eyes. “I was about to start along those lines…. Mr. Olcott, you said upstairs that your brother was a very wealthy man.”

“Arturo can tell you more about that,” said Olcott Senior.

“Quite so,” said the swarthy dandy. “I was associated with Mr. Walter Olcott for eight years. He was, in my country, a very important man and, I am happy to say, one of the wealthiest men in Argentina.”

“How wealthy?” asked Starkey.

Nogales shrugged. “How wealthy is a man who owns two million acres of land, more than a hundred thousand cattle, several mines, a few factories and a railroad or two?”

Sheriff Starkey looked intently at Ferdinand Olcott. “Mr. Olcott,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual. “Do you happen to know to whom your brother was leaving his money?”

“Of course I don’t,” snapped the old man. “My brother was here on a brief visit. He was a comparatively young man. No reason at all for me to ask him about his will. I’m not exactly a pauper myself, you know.”

The sheriff was thwarted on that line of questioning. But he persisted for another hour. He even summoned all the servants and put them through a verbal third degree. He learned nothing.

The schizophrenic looked at the people in the room around him. He saw in their faces doubt of one another… and fear. And it filled him with gloating. “They’re afraid of me; they don’t know which one of them I’ll kill next.”

But then he looked at Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and he was not so sure of himself. “He’s the most dangerous man here. He has brains! He is almost as smart as I am. Almost! Well, if he guesses too much I’ll give him what I gave Walter Olcott!”

The sheriff declared that he and Deputy Higginbotham would remain down in the living room for the night. He advised the others to go to sleep.

Quade was shown to the room directly opposite the one in which lay the dead body of Walter Olcott. He grimaced as he looked at the closed door. “I’m the one who wasn’t afraid of dead ones,” he reminded himself.

After locking his bedroom door, Quade threw himself on the bed and smoked a cigarette. He was tired, but the monotonous patter of the rain on the window kept him awake. That, and thinking about the events of the evening. Somewhere in this house was a murderer and Quade had an uneasy feeling that he was not yet through.

The knowledge that a flood had cut the island off from the rest of the world, that the people on the island could not escape, could not appeal for help from the outside, would give the murderer a feeling of security. The killer had plenty of time to figure things out.

Quade dozed after a while. Something woke him. Voices. Loud voices; some of them outside the house and a bellowing one inside, downstairs. Quade stepped quickly to the window and raised the lower half. Rain beat in on him.

He saw moving figures down in the gloom and then a light went on downstairs and shed its rays out into the yard. Quade gasped. The yard was full of water!

The figures were servants, splashing in the water to the main house which was on higher ground.

Quade unlocked the door of his room and stepped out into the hallway. He almost collided with Martha Olcott, clad in a dressing gown.

“Something’s happened!” Martha Olcott cried out when she saw Quade.

He nodded. “The servants are coming to the house. The water’s risen and driven them out of their place.”

“Do you think,” Martha asked, “the water’ll come — here?”

Quade shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the topography of this country in the day time. But the way it’s been raining and the condition of the river and all, I’m afraid…”

While they talked, they descended the stairs. The servants, dripping from the rain and their wading, were streaming into the house. Sheriff Starkey and Higginbotham were dashing about.

Inside of a minute everyone on the island was gathered in the big living room. The place was a bedlam of noise. A couple of the maids were wailing and the men were chattering excitedly.

In the midst of it all, Oliver Quade sniffed the close air in the room and a sudden chill struck at his vitals. He edged away and stepped out into the kitchen.

Black smoke was puffing through the cracks of a door. Quade sprang to the door, tore it open and a huge cloud of smoke gushed out into his face. He retreated before it, then advanced again and looked through the smoke, down the staircase, into the cellar.

Flames flickered through the black smoke. Quade sprang back into the living room. “The place is on fire!” he announced.

Pandemonium broke loose. Everyone yelled and cried out at the same time and for a moment people rushed about bumping and jostling one another. Then Quade took command of the situation. “The fire’s beyond control. The best thing we can do is get out of the house.”

Smoke was coming into the living room now. With it came the roar and crackle of flames. “We’ve got to fight the fire!” thundered Lynn Crosby. He dashed toward the kitchen. Arturo Nogales and Sheriff Starkey dashed after him.

“It’s no use,” said Quade. “A couple of hundred gallons of oil have been spilled down there. That’s what makes the smoke so black. And you can smell the oil. Let’s get out.”

There was a sudden explosion in the cellar and the men from the kitchen came reeling back. “It’s too late!” cried Sheriff Starkey. “The house is a goner!”

Then there was a stampede for the doors. By the time they got outside, flames were shooting through the windows of the kitchen.

“Where can we go?” someone cried in the semidark.

“The other house,” directed Quade. “The floors will be wet but it’s the best there is!”

There were two feet of water on the main floor of the servants’ quarters. Only half of the handful of survivors on Olcott’s Island were in the servants’ house when the electric light went out. Ferdinand Olcott cried out in agony: “That was the light plant. Now what?”

Now what, indeed! The water was rising. The big house was burning. The servants’ quarters weren’t much protection. The water was swirling around in it.

Quade stood by a window watching the roaring holocaust that had been the Olcott mansion. In the room behind him, people were talking, some sobbing, some whimpering. All were restless and afraid.

Then the small-town sheriff, Starkey, voiced the thing that had been in Oliver Quade’s mind the past ten minutes and which he hadn’t wanted to express aloud.

“That fire seemed to me as if someone’d set it,” the sheriff said. “It makes a crematory for the dead one. A regular funeral pyre. If the flood hadn’t wakened the servants, it would have been one for us all.”

Then there was near panic. It took the combined efforts of Oliver Quade, Lynn Crosby, Arturo Nogales and Ferdinand Olcott to soothe the others. And by that time the water had risen two inches. A creak and groan of straining timbers suddenly shook the house.

“I think,” Quade suggested then, “we had better leave this house.”

“Leave the house!” cried Clarence Olcott. “Why, it’s raining cats and dogs outside.”

There was a terrific wrench and the house joggled heavily. “The foundations are going,” said Quade. “The water’s loosened them. In a few minutes this house will wash away.”

Again there was a mad rush for the door and again the servants and family charged out into the torrent of water.

The big Olcott mansion was a glowing skeleton of fire. Quade sloshed ahead of the others, the water above his knees. He circled the house to the right, found himself going up. “The ground’s higher back here,” he called out.

“Of course it is!” cried Ferdinand Olcott. “There’s a ridge behind the house. Ten feet or more. We’ll be safe there. It’ll never reach that high.”

Quade wasn’t so sure of that, but he led the way to the ridge. And there they huddled, thirteen wet, cold, and miserable people.

One of them was a murderer.

“I burned the house down,” the schizophrenic said to himself. “I’m going to die… but it’s fun watching these weaklings. They’ll die a thousand deaths each. They’re afraid to die.”

He was afraid, too, but his egotism refused to admit the fear.

It was a nightmare, there on the promontory behind the ruined house. The fire sputtered and hissed for several hours. It gave some light and a small amount of heat to those crouching on the wet ground. It was a blessing to them; without it, some of them would have gone into hysterics. Some of the women folk were already near it.

The butler and a couple of the maids knelt on the wet ground and prayed. None of the others joined, but neither did they scoff. And perhaps they would join in the praying when the water rose higher.

Quade sat on the muddy side of the promontory. Twice in three hours he moved higher as the water came up and licked at his feet. Around midnight he gave his coat to Martha Olcott.

“Thanks!” she shivered. Lynn Crosby scowled for not having thought of the chivalrous gesture himself. He came down and sat beside Quade then.

“How high do you think the water’ll get?” he asked.

“It can’t go much higher,” Quade replied. “Wouldn’t have come this high if the dam hadn’t gone out. The water doesn’t worry me.”

“What does?”

“Exposure. Everybody soaked to the skin, sitting on this wet ground. All of us will have colds by morning and some — worse. We can’t stay here like this. Not long.”

“But we can’t leave. I know this island. The river’ll be a quarter-mile wide and too strong to swim. I’d try it now if I thought it’d be any use.”

“You couldn’t swim fifty feet in it,” said Quade. “There’s got to be some other way.”

“Maybe we can build a raft?” suggested Crosby eagerly.

“We’ll see when morning comes… There goes the servants’ house!”

It went with a violent wrenching and screeching. The rush of water tore it bodily from its moorings, swept it to the burning mansion and then carried it down into the valley below, turning it over and over like a toy.

It was the longest night anyone had ever gone through. No one slept. When the black sky turned to gray Quade waded down in the water, closer to the smoldering ruins of the mansion.

He found a branch of a tree and poked around for a while. Deputy Higginbotham joined him. His teeth chattered. “Gawd, if I only had a stiff drink of gin,” he muttered. “The water’s got into my bones.”

“A drink or two apiece wouldn’t hurt any of us,” said Quade. He continued poking in the debris.

Sheriff Starkey joined them, cursing under his breath. “Who’s your idea of the killer?” he asked.

“There are things more important right now than arresting a murderer.”

“You mean you know who the killer is?” exclaimed the sheriff.

“Of course,” replied Quade. “I knew last night after he set fire to the house.”

“Who is it?” asked the sheriff hoarsely. “The South American?”

“I’m more interested right now in saving the lives of thirteen people than arresting one murderer,” said Quade. “Martha Olcott already has a cold. She can’t stand another night here. A couple of the maids are coughing pretty hard too.”

The sheriff muttered under his breath. “We’re stuck here until the water goes down.”

“It won’t go down for a week. The rain’s letting up now, but even so, we can’t stay here a week. We’ve got to get away — today!”

“How?”

Quade shrugged. “Go away and let me think!”

The sheriff cursed under his breath, but retreated. Higginbotham went with him.

The rain lessened considerably in the next fifteen minutes and dawn broke grudgingly over the island. Quade’s vision was lengthened then and what he saw disheartened him. A sea of water stretched out as far as he could see. The tops of trees stuck out of the water, like lonely sentinels. The water moved south and west in a steady sweep. It was another quarter-hour before Quade could see the river and then his spirits dropped even lower. The river was a raging torrent, a visible swift current in the sea of water sweeping over the island.

The entire island except the promontory on which the refugees crouched was under water. There was land on the other side of the river, quite a bit, and most of it high out of the water. But it was a half-mile away, too far for anyone to swim in the rushing water.

But there lay safety. If someone over there saw them on the island here and if they had a powerful boat…

Quade turned to the others. “Anyone live over there?” he asked, pointing.

Ferdinand Olcott shook his head sadly. “No one lives within five miles of this island.”

“And I imagine those out there are having their own troubles.”

“If someone could get over there and get help…” Quade thought aloud.

Arturo Nogales, the swarthy South American, began peeling off his soggy coat. “I am a strong swimmer,” he said.

“If you were the strongest swimmer in the world you couldn’t swim across that current out there. There’s a low valley to the south and you’d be swept out before you could reach the high land.”

Martha Olcott came up. “Are we — finished?” she asked.

Quade looked bleakly at her. “All my life I’ve been a resourceful person, but somehow I can’t think of anything to do now.”

She bit her lip. “If we could only build a fire here…”

“Everything’s water-logged,” said Quade. “Perhaps if the rain stops we can gather some wood and get it dried. Or — I’ll be damned! Look at that garage there. It’s still on its foundations.”

“Yes, it’s built on concrete. But there’s nothing there except some tools and things.”

“Tools?” Quade’s eyes flashed. He turned around and called to Lynn Crosby. “Crosby, mind coming with me to the garage?”

Crosby came over. “What good’ll that do? The cars are under water.”

“I know,” said Quade. “I wasn’t counting on them. But there are tools over there, I understand. Perhaps we can do something with them.”

“You said last night a raft couldn’t make it.”

“Chances are almost negligible, but we might figure out something else.”

Higginbotham and the chauffeur, a stocky man named McCarthy, joined Quade and Crosby. They waded in water to their armpits to the garage.

“Look for saws, hammers and nails,” Quade instructed.

They found a keg of thirty-penny spikes, a couple of saws and several hammers, as well as a hand-ax. Quade himself discovered something that filled him with glee. It was about fifty feet of two-inch rope hawser. He carried it to the promontory.

“What’s the rope for?” asked Clarence Olcott, when the four men deposited their spoils on the wet ground.

Quade did not reply. He looked at the telephone poles which stuck out above the water. He bit his lips and scowled for several moments. The others had by this time conceded Quade the leadership and they waited anxiously for him to arrive at some decision.

“That telephone wire,” Quade said after a while. “There are two strands of it. If we could get a thousand yards, I think — I think we would have a chance. The wires are broken somewhere along the line because the phone was dead. I could put that wire to work for us, I believe. Will you get it?”

Sheriff Starkey snorted. “What good would wire do you?”

Quade pointed toward the promontory on the far side of the river. “If we could get this wire there we could rig up a sort of breeches buoy and I think we could all get away.”

“Yeah, but how you going to get the wire there?” demanded Lynn Crosby.

Quade said with more confidence than he felt: “If the rest of you will get the wire I’ll get it across the river.”

“How? You said no one could swim that current,” exclaimed Clarence, the mousy one.

“Get the wire,” said Quade. “I promise to get it over there.”

There was some grumbling but finally the men went out to get the wire from the telegraph poles.

Quade trotted down to the ruins of the Olcott house. He began pulling at some beams and two-by-fours. He dragged out several sizable timbers that had not been burned too much.

“Just what are you going to build?” asked Martha Olcott after watching him for some time.

Quade wiped the excess moisture from one of the saws on his trousers. He grinned, the first grin that had been seen on the little island since the night before.

“I’m going to make a catapult,” he said.

Martha Olcott looked at him as if he had suddenly gone insane. “A catapult?” she repeated. “What — what for?”

“To throw that wire over to the mainland. You remember your history?”

She nodded. “Yes, I know that the Ancients used catapults in their warfare. They threw stones and things with them. But—”

“They threw stones big enough to batter down walls distances of twelve to fifteen hundred feet,” said Quade. “So why can’t we throw a wire that far?”

“Have you ever built a catapult before?”

He shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen one.”

She drew in her breath. “Then how do you know you can build one?”

He grinned at her. “You forget I’m the Human Encyclopedia.”

She grimaced impatiently. “Yes, yes, I heard you arguing with the men last night. I’ll admit that you seem to know an amazing number of things. But is building a catapult one of those things?”

“I know everything, Miss Olcott. Everything that man has ever known… or that got into print. I’ve read the Encyclopedia from cover to cover four times.”

She gasped. “You’re joking!”

“No. I sell encyclopedias because I believe in them. I practice what I preach. Fifteen years ago I started reading the set I sold and I’ve been reading it ever since. The Encyclopedia contains all the knowledge of the ages. That stuff I pulled last night was on the level. I’ve an unusual memory. I remember everything I read and therefore I know everything that’s in the encyclopedia. And there’s a very fine drawing of a catapult the Crusaders used at the siege of Acre. They battered down the best fortifications of Saladin with it. I’m going to build a catapult like it.”

She looked strangely at him for a moment. Then she said, “Mr. Quade, I really believe you can do it. Let me help you.”

“Fine,” he said. “Go down there then and poke around in those ruins. Find the spears that were hanging on the walls of the living room last night. The heads, I mean. The shafts are burned, I imagine.”

Quade sawed and hammered. After an hour the men began trooping back with long lengths of dead telephone wire they had cut from the telephone poles. They complained of exhaustion, but after resting a while and seeing Quade working without stopping, they went back for more wire.

They had fourteen hundred feet of wire by noon. That was all that was obtainable. The poles beyond that distance were too close to the raging river.

By that time Quade had the framework of the catapult built. It was a massive structure, resting on solid eight-inch beams.

At two o’clock they had twisted the rope hawser into place, and the other men had spliced the wire and coiled it in a neat pile beside the makeshift catapult.

Martha Olcott had found two spear heads and Quade spent a half-hour fashioning shafts for them and attaching the end of one to the telephone wire.

At last everything was finished. The rain was a mere drizzle then, but the water had risen a couple of inches more.

The recent college graduates, Clarence Olcott and Lynn Crosby, examined the catapult with extreme skepticism. “It won’t work,” Clarence declared. “You need some sort of spring attachment to throw that thing.”

“My friend,” said Quade, “did the ancient Greeks have springs? They did not. This rope twisted in here is all the spring that’s necessary. Here, we’ll try it out with a stone first.”

There was a narrow slot running down the back of the catapult. Quade adjusted things and dropped the stone into the slot. Everyone on the tiny island gathered around.

Quade took a deep breath. Up to now he’d bolstered up his confidence. He remembered the details of the plans in the encyclopedia, accurately, but suppose — suppose the artist who had drawn them had made an error?

“All right,” he said. He touched a wooden lever with his foot. The lever released the trigger and there was a swish and twang and the stone was hurtled out of the catapult. It sailed up in a swift arc, so fast that the eye could hardly follow it. Then it disappeared out of sight. But Quade watched the water and saw no splash. He knew that the stone had gone beyond the water.

Exclamations of awe went up all around Quade. “It worked!” Lynn Crosby cried.

Quade was adjusting the spear which was attached to the wire when Clarence, the scoffer, voiced another doubt. “How you going to make the spear stick over there?”

That was the thing that had worried Quade most. “There are plenty of thick trees over there. I’m hoping it will hit one of them squarely.”

“Suppose it does. Will it have enough force to stick hard enough for the wire to hold up a person?”

“If the spear hits a twelve-inch tree there’s sufficient force to drive it clear through the tree!”

Quade dropped to the soggy ground and looked out along the slot of the catapult. He had aimed the thing high to give the spear a trajectory but still it shouldn’t go too high or too low.

The ropes were twisted tight again. The threaded spear was laid in the slot. Quade shot the trigger.

The spear hurtled out of the slot, drawing the wire with it. It sailed high in the air, went far out and then began dropping. Quade held his breath as the spear began falling — and his spirits fell with the spear.

“It didn’t make it!” cried Lynn Crosby.

It was true. The spear had fallen a hundred feet short. The disappointment of all was heavy. Quade began hauling in the wire.

“What are you going to do now?” scoffed Sheriff Starkey.

“Try again.”

It took a half hour to haul in the wire, coil it carefully and get the catapult ready for another trial. Quade moved the machine back a few inches and elevated it slightly and twisted the rope hawsers until they couldn’t be twisted another sixty-fourth of an inch.

He was as taut as the twisted rope, when he placed the spear into the slot for the second trial. He knew if the catapult didn’t have enough power now, there was no use trying any more. The fault lay in the hawser; it wasn’t thick enough.

“If it doesn’t go this time,” he said grimly to those around him, “figure on spending a week or so here; without food or shelter.”

A couple of the women servants began sobbing and two or three of the men on the island cleared their throats.

“He knows,” said the schizophrenic to himself. “He knows I’m the killer. The man’s smart. If this thing works he must stay here… dead!”

Twang!

The spear was catapulted out again. It seemed to those around that it left the slot with increased force. Quade knew it had. He watched the flight of the spear with a prayer on his lips and his jaws crunched.

The spear began falling…

It disappeared into the woods on the far side of the wide river and the wire suddenly stopped playing out.

“It made it!” cried Lynn Crosby.

Quade gripped the wire. “Now, let’s hope that it landed true.”

He pulled up the slack of the wire, tugged hard. It refused to give.

“I think it’s stuck,” he said grimly. “Here, help me pull, Crosby.”

Crosby stepped up beside Quade and pulled with him. The two of them could not pull the wire more than a couple of inches.

Perspiration broke out on Quade’s forehead. “We’re safe!” he exclaimed.

Cheers and sobs of joy went up.

The breeches buoy was fixed on to the wire and the wire securely lashed around a telephone pole some distance behind the catapult.

“The women will go first,” Quade said.

Lynn Crosby stepped up behind Sheriff Starkey and jerked the sheriff’s gun out of his holster. “No,” he said. “I’m going first!”

“Lynn!” That was Martha Olcott. Her face showed terrible anguish. Quade, looking at her, knew that she’d been guessing the truth, but hadn’t wanted to believe it before.

He cursed himself silently. He should have been alert at the critical moment for just some such move on Crosby’s part. He’d known since the night before that Lynn Crosby was the schizophrenic, the killer who had brutally murdered Martha’s uncle and set fire to the big house and put them all in this predicament. But Quade’s mind had been too filled with the bigger problem. Even if they had subdued the murderer, they would still have to face the problem of getting off the island. Now Crosby had suddenly revealed himself.

“Stand back, everyone!” he commanded, steadying the gun on them.

Deputy Lou Higginbotham, who until then had been a nonentity, reached for a piece of glory. He went for his gun. He got his hand on it, had it half out of the holster and then Lynn Crosby shot him through the face. Higginbotham pitched to the ground.

“I’ll kill every one of you if you try to stop me,” Crosby snarled. His face revealed the soul behind it. He had a split personality no longer. He was absolutely and completely insane now. No more moments of sanity, no more fighting between the two personalities. Lynn Crosby was completely mad.

“Do as he says,” Quade ordered, knowing what Crosby would do if someone crossed him.

Crosby scooped up Higginbotham’s gun and stuck it into the waistband of his trousers. He brandished the sheriff’s gun and his face broke into a huge grin as the group of men and women retreated before him. He laughed raucously. “The flood! Ha-ha! The flood got all of you poor people. All except me. My story will be you wanted me to go over first to test the wire and I did. Then it broke. Too bad. Too bad.” He laughed again, uproariously.

“Lynn!” said Ferdinand Olcott, “you’re insane!”

Lynn Crosby cursed in sudden frenzy. “You — you’re the cause of all this! You thought I wasn’t good enough for your daughter. You told me to get a job and make a name for myself and then you’d think about letting me marry her. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? Well, ask Martha — did we wait for you?”

Ferdinand Olcott staggered back. “Martha — did you—”

Martha could hardly raise her head. “We — were married two weeks ago.”

“Secretly,” sneered Lynn Crosby. “You forced us to get married secretly.”

“But we never lived together,” said Martha Olcott. “That — I am glad of that, anyway.”

Crosby showed his fangs. “You get satisfaction out of that, do you? Well, then think over this: I never loved you at all. I married you for your money, your uncle’s money. He told me he was leaving everything to you. That’s why I killed him. To get his money, through you. And now, as your husband, I’ll get your father’s too.”

Crosby turned toward Quade. “How did you know it was me?”

“The salt,” said Quade. “You went down into the cellar and started that oil fire. You’d heard somewhere that salt killed the odor of oil so you washed your hands with it after setting the fire. I didn’t smell oil on your hands, but you got salt over your clothes. That’s how I knew.”

Crosby nodded. “You’re a smart guy, Quade. Much too smart to stay alive. You might figure out some other way of getting across. So—”

The gun in his hand thundered. Almost at the instant Crosby squeezed the trigger Quade started to throw himself to one side. The bullet went through his left shoulder. He fell limply to the ground. He was fully conscious but to show that he wasn’t mortally hit would only invite another bullet. His face fell into three inches of water and he kept it there.

He held his breath as long as he could, then slowly turned his head sidewise and brought his mouth out of the water. He drew in air sharply and looked toward the catapult.

Lynn Crosby was already in the crude breeches buoy, working his way out over the water, hand over hand.

Quade watched him for a moment, then rose to his knees.

“Mr. Quade!” cried Martha Olcott. “You’re not—” then she saw the blood mixing with the water on his shoulder and sprang to his side.

“It’s all right,” Quade cried out grimly.

The others gathered around. “He’ll cut the wire when he gets almost there,” said Clarence Olcott. “He can pull himself to the other side with what’s left but we — the wire’ll be too short then.”

Quade said to Martha Olcott, “Take the women back a way and don’t look. We’ve got only one chance, but it won’t be pretty to see.”

She understood him immediately. Her face tightened but she quickly herded the maids to the rear.

Quade picked up the spear. Lynn Crosby was out two hundred feet and moving at the rate of fifty feet a minute, out of revolver range. There was only one spear — it had to kill — to save twelve lives.

Quade placed the spear in the slot of the catapult and then the others understood. “You’re going to kill him!” gasped Clarence.

Quade did not reply. He adjusted the catapult quickly, depressing it in front. He dropped down beside the slot, sighted through it, then made some more adjustments.

“All right,” he said then. “He’s three hundred feet out. We’ve got one shot. If it misses, we stay here.”

He kicked the trigger.

Twang!

The spear whanged out of the slot, shot out through space in a low arc — and landed in flesh.

The schizophrenic lived two seconds. In those two seconds the part of him that had been suppressed since the day before screamed: “You were wrong! Wrong!”

And then it, too, died. Finally and definitely.