Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

Forced Landing

One moment the twin motors of the cabin plane were droning smoothly; the next there was a jerk and the motors were going, brr-bak, brr-bak!

“Gawd!” said the pilot.

The co-pilot’s face was taut and white. “What’s it sound like, Gene?” he asked.

The pilot’s eyes were agony-stricken. “Bad!” he replied. “I guess — I guess you better tell them. There’s a clearing. It’s covered with snow and looks awfully small, but I’ve got to try it.”

Swiftly the co-pilot rose. He opened the door and went back into the passenger compartment. He spoke, his voice smooth and almost matter-of-fact. “We’re going to make a forced landing. Please fasten your safety belts. There’s really no danger…”

But all of them could hear the motors. All could see the tree-studded whiteness hundreds of feet below. A woman shrieked.

Instantly the hostess’s voice spoke: “Everything’s all right, really! Just keep your seats.” Swiftly she went among the passengers, helped them adjust their safety belts, spoke cheeringly.

Morgan, the co-pilot, smiled wanly and wished he’d spoken his mind to Mona, the hostess, before they’d started on this flight.

He went back to the control room. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was circling the plane. It had lost five hundred feet. “It doesn’t look so good, Bill!” he said.

Bill Morgan had been a co-pilot of the line for three years. On an average of three times a year he had seen the headlines in the papers: “Air Liner Crashes!” Sometime it’ll be me, he had thought. This was the time.

However, he said, “You’ll make it, Gene!”

They were skimming the tree tops. “Hang on!” said Gene Stallings.

The snow rushed up to meet them. The ship struck, bounced up in the air, seemed to hover there for a full second, then settled again. Gene Stallings cut the ignition switch.

And then he died.

The nose of the plane went through the snow, sheared off a short poplar stump and buried itself in the frozen earth underneath. It quivered there for an instant, straight on end, then went over on to its back.

It was level ground here, the snow was fairly deep, and the fact that the plane had landed on its nose and taken the brunt of the collision saved most of the passengers.

A woman moaned, a man blubbered hysterically. Another swore softly. Everyone was trying to move about, most of them unable to do so because of the safety belts which had really saved them from being seriously injured.

Mona, the air hostess, had a cut on her cheek, a huge bruise on her shoulder and one side of her felt as if a couple of ribs had been caved in. But she crawled among the passengers, helping them. Through the broken windows the passengers crawled out to the whiteness of the snow.

Four of them. Mona came out, dabbing at her cut cheek with the back of her hand. She counted the passengers. “Two more,” she said.

“My ankle!” screamed one of the women. “My ankle, it’s broken!” It couldn’t really be broken for she was hopping about on it. It was probably only bruised. She was a flaxen-haired blonde. Her hair looked as if it had been dipped in molten paraffin. Her face was broad and very Swedish. A short, roly-poly man wobbled to her side.

“Olga!” he babbled. “Oh, no! Not your ankle!”

Mona got down on her knees, started to crawl back into the cabin of the plane, through one of the broken windows. A lean man in a gray topcoat put his hand on her shoulder, said, “Let me!”

Mona turned her head and looked at the man. “All right, Mr. McGregor.”

McGregor scuttled into the hole. After a moment, the bloody face of Bill Morgan showed in the opening. Mona exclaimed softly and dropped down. She gave him a hand out. “Gene, what about Gene?”

Bill Morgan shook his head. He crawled out, but did not get up from the snow. Then McGregor appeared in the opening. He came out, reached back into the hole, tugged at someone. Morgan crawled over and helped him.

It was a man, an unconscious man. McGregor got to his feet. “One more!” cried Mona.

McGregor shook his head. “No, the glass got the one left in there.”

Mona shuddered. Glass from the window had horribly mutilated the last passenger.

There had been eight in the plane. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was dead. So was one passenger. All of the others seemed to have injuries of some sort. How bad they were could not at the moment be determined. On the whole they had been fortunate.

“We’ve got to get doctors, a hospital!” someone cried.

They were all willing to admit that. But they were all hysterical now. Because they had survived an airplane crash.

It was several minutes before Morgan, the co-pilot, could tell them: “As near’s I can determine we’re a hundred and fifty miles from Duluth. There ought to be a town nearby somewhere. The map shows — I’ll get it from the cabin.”

He crawled back into the plane. He was gone a full three minutes. When he came out his face was gray.

Mona looked at him and knew that he had seen something inside. “What is it, Bill?” she asked.

He shook his head and walked to one side a few feet. She followed. “Gene!” he said. “He was killed — with a bullet!”

Mona gasped softly. “Bill! You?”

He shook his head miserably.

There were three inches of snow on the road, packed smooth and hard and very slick. It was cold and evening was coming on. Charlie Boston cursed dispassionately as he fought the wheel of the little car. He gunned the motor until the wheels went into a skid, then yelled and wrestled with the wheel. Regaining control, he put a heavy foot on the gas.

“Next town we come to,” he said savagely to Oliver Quade beside him, “we’ll trade the damn thing for a sled and some dogs.”

“Or a ham sandwich,” said Oliver Quade sardonically. He sprawled in the seat beside Charlie Boston. He did not seem concerned about the skidding. He did not seem concerned about anything. He knew there wasn’t more than a gallon of gas in the car; he knew they were thirty miles or more from the next town, and he knew that even if they reached the town, they didn’t have money enough to buy gas.

They were broke, stony; Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and Charlie Boston, his burly friend and assistant. Things had been good in summer, but they weren’t squirrels and had not stored any nuts for a long cold winter. Charlie Boston had pitted his wits against the race-track bookies and had lost. Oliver Quade had squandered his money on expensive hotels and fine living. And now it was mid-December and they were somewhere in northern Wisconsin, broke and cold and hungry and in a battered jalopy that threatened to expire at any skid.

“I’m a human being,” said Charlie Boston. “I eat, drink and I’m fond of the good things in life. I don’t know why I let you talk me into going up to the North Pole in Winter.”

Oliver Quade grinned. “I think the hotel manager in Chicago had something to do with that, Charlie. He didn’t like the idea of you hibernating in his steam-heated room, not without something to help pay for the steam.”

“Oh, we’ve been broke before,” retorted Charlie Boston. “But look, there are people south of Chicago, too. Why did we have to come north?”

“Because they don’t have ice carnivals in Florida. And because they have one in Duluth. Even if you cut their publicity agents’ bunk in half there’ll still be fifty thousand people there. And a lot of those fifty thousand people are going back to their farms with some mighty fine reading matter that we’re going to sell ’em. And you and me, Charlie, we’ll run the bus into a snow bank and grab us some Pullmans and fine living and keep going until we get to Florida and somewhere warm.”

The rear wheels of the car skidded to the left side of the road. Charlie Boston yelped and fought the wheel. It was only by a superhuman effort that he kept the car from going into the high banks of snow alongside the road.

“That was a close one!” he gasped. “Once we hit that deep snow, we’re stuck. You know we ain’t got no chains. Say! That’s the first time I ever saw a black rabbit. Look!”

Quade had already seen it — a small black animal crouched on the ridge of snow, some fifty yards ahead. “Rabbits don’t have long tails,” he said. “Look out, Charlie!”

Boston twisted the wheel and the car went into a terrific skid. There was a sharp yell of an animal in pain and then Boston got control of the car again.

“Stop the car, Charlie!” exclaimed Oliver Quade. His lethargy was suddenly gone.

The car skidded again as Boston put on the brakes. He managed to stop it beyond where the animal lay. Oliver Quade leaped out to the road. He shuddered as the cold wind bit through his thin overcoat. He jammed his hat far down on his head and ran, a lean, tall man, back toward the animal.

It was dead, of course. He picked it up by the tail and started back toward the car. Charlie Boston had rolled down the window at his side and stuck his head out. “What is it?” he asked. “A cat?”

Oliver Quade was grinning hugely. “Nope. This is a fox, a silver fox. Charlie, we’ve turned the corner, and run smack into Old Man Prosperity.”

“Silver fox!” yelped Charlie Boston. “Why, holy smokes! Ain’t silver fox skins worth about a thousand bucks each?”

Oliver Quade climbed into the coupe and placed the dead animal at his feet. “Not a thousand dollars, but it’s the most valuable fur to be found in all North America. Step on the gas, Charlie. I want to get to the town ahead as quickly as possible so we can pelt this beautiful, poor creature and kiss Mr. Recession so-long!”

Charlie stepped on the starter. It made a grinding, spitting, choking sound. That was all. He ground down on the button again.

Oliver Quade, who almost never lost his composure, said: “Damn it!”

Charlie Boston’s face was a study of mingled rage and despair. “The gas!” he groaned. “Gone. And we’re twenty miles from town in a howling wilderness.”

Oliver Quade, his nostrils flaring, hauled out a road map. He consulted it, then looked at the mileage gauge. “The map says sixty-six miles from Homburg and we’ve come thirty-five which leaves us thirty-one to go.”

“And it’ll be dark in an hour! It’s starting to snow now.”

It was. The sky had been overcast all day. Only a few flakes were coming down now but they were big.

“It’s a God-forsaken country!” said Quade. “We haven’t seen anyone for two hours, but there must be farmhouses around somewhere. It’s a cinch we can’t stay in the car all night. It’s getting colder. We’d freeze stiff.”

“Ollie,” said Charlie Boston, “I feel like a man on a desert island who finds a pot full of gold. I’ll trade my share of that silver fox for one bowl of hot chili. And for a warm bed I’d toss in my chances of heaven.”

“Well,” said Oliver Quade, “in a pinch we can move into the woods and build a fire. We’ve got matches.”

“Let’s try walking first.” Charlie put up the big collar of his overcoat, climbed out of the car. Oliver Quade’s tweed coat was lighter than Boston’s. He wore a light suit underneath. The prospect of a long walk was not cheering. He climbed out of the car on his side, then reached back and picked up the dead fox by the tail.

“I’m willing to desert the car, but not this,” he said. “And look, Charlie, the going may be rough, but, just in case, would you take the valise with the books. We might get an opportunity to make a few bucks. You can’t tell.”

Charlie Boston went around to the trunk, unlocked it and took out a small, heavy valise. He locked the trunk again. “I hate to leave the two hundred, but these twenty’ll get us on our feet. Let’s go.”

They started up the road. The snow was coming down thicker now. The flakes were cold and powdery, not wet which would have indicated warmer weather.

Stunted, snow-laden tamaracks grew to the edge of the road on each side. Interspersed, like sentinels, were white birch. On the higher spots a few lean, tall poplars stood like green sticks stuck into the snow.

“I still think we ought to have had dogs instead of the jalopy,” groused Charlie Boston.

“Nah,” said Quade. “The dogs would have scared away the fox. What’s a bit of snow when we’ve got meat for the pot?”

“Hey! You’re not figurin’ on eating that fox, are you?” There was genuine alarm in Boston’s tone.

Quade chuckled. “Only figuratively. This is a prime pelt and ought to bring us fifty or sixty dollars. We can buy a lot of beefsteaks for that amount. Charlie, do you see smoke over there to the right?”

Boston’s eager eyes followed Quade’s finger. “Umm, I’d almost swear I can smell it, too. Let’s cut over.”

“Looks like a small tote road up here, Charlie.”

It was. And it had been traveled recently. Quade and Boston started up it briskly. Before they had gone a hundred yards along the narrow road that wound in through the trees their steps quickened. They not only saw smoke now, but they saw a house, a large one. In a moment they saw several buildings, clustered around a five-acre clearing.

“Oh, boy!” exclaimed Charlie Boston.

Swiftly they approached the main house. It was built of logs, but it wasn’t just a big cabin. It was a lodge, reinforced with stone and lumber. Paths were shoveled in the snow all around, and a thick column of smoke was coming out of a stone chimney.

They pounded up to a veranda and stamped their feet. Quade rapped sharply on the door with his gloved knuckles. The door was opened almost instantly and a heavy-set man with a close-cropped beard was framed in the doorway.

“Hello,” Quade said, cheerfully. “Our car broke down up the road a piece. We wondered—”

“Sure, sure, come in!” said the man. His face broke into a smile. And then suddenly the smile gave way to a fierce scowl. “What have you got there?” he snapped.

Quade turned around and looked at Charlie Boston. He saw nothing out of the way. He turned back to the bearded man and saw his eyes fixed on the fox he was dangling in his own hands.

He held up the dead animal. “This? Why, it’s a fox we ran down. I thought we’d pelt it.”

“You ran down that fox! And you t’ought you’d pelt it?”

Charlie Boston cut in. “Sure, buddy, why not? We’re trappers, see? I’m Dan’l Boone and this is my pal, Kit Carson.”

“You!” choked the bearded man. “You t’iefs! You kill my fox, and you have the nerve to bring him here!”

“Your fox?”

“Of course, it’s my fox. All foxes around here are mine.”

“How about the wolves?” Charlie Boston shot in. “And the squirrels and the hummin’ birds — they yours too?”

“Wait, Charlie, I think I understand. You raise silver foxes, is that it?”

“Of course!” snapped the bearded man. “I’m Karl Becker.”

“Ah,” said Quade. “Of course, Becker, the silver fox breeder. I’ve read about you. Well, I’m afraid we owe you an apology, Mr. Becker, but, of course, we didn’t know. And couldn’t have helped it, if we had. The fox ran right in front of the car.”

Karl Becker seemed mollified by Quade’s confession. “Come in,” he invited.

Quade and Boston were quite willing. They almost leaped into the lodge, and the hot air was like California slapping them in their faces. They moved toward the roaring log fire in a huge fireplace.

“I’m awfully sorry about the fox,” Quade apologized again.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Karl Becker said. “I was a leedle sore at first, but I know they get through the wire now and then. Usually they come back when they’re hungry, but this time — well, let’s say, it couldn’t be helped, yah?”

Karl Becker took the dead animal from Quade and carried it back to the door. He opened the door and tossed it outside on the veranda. Charlie Boston scowled.

“And you said the Recession has receded, Ollie!”

Quade nodded significantly to the valise Boston had set down near the fireplace. Boston brightened.

“How far is it to the next town, Mr. Becker?” Quade asked.

“Spooner? About thirty-one miles. I don’t think you make it the way the snow’s coming down.”

“We’ve got to make it, Mr. Becker. But unfortunately, we ran out of gas. I was wondering if you had a couple of gallons around here?”

“Yeah, sure. I got lots of gas. I be glad to sell you a few gallons.”

Charlie blinked at Quade. Quade cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, we’d be glad to pay you for the gasoline. On the other hand, you really think we’d have trouble getting to Spooner?”

“Yes, the road isn’t so good. Maybe you better stay here, overnight. I got lots of room, and I’ll be glad to put you up. Reasonable, too.”

Charlie gasped. Quade’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Karl Becker through the slits, then let out a slow sigh. “That would be kind of you, Mr. Becker. By the way, I’m interested in your foxes. You raise quite a few here, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. I pelt three-four t’ousand every season. But the business. It’s lousy; not like it used to was.”

“So I’ve heard. Too many breeders raising silver foxes these days. Over-production. You take the hosiery business now…”

“You in that business?”

“No, but I know a little about it. Just like I do everything else.” Oliver Quade pursed up his lips and looked at Charlie Boston.

Boston was looking at Karl Becker and a little grin played around his mouth. Becker had risen to the bait. He was staring at Oliver Quade with his head cocked to one side.

“Ha, you know about everything, Mr. — ?”

“Quade, Oliver Quade. And this is Charlie Boston.”

“Please to meetcha. But, Mr. Quade, did you said you was a smart man, you know everything?”

“Yes, I know everything. I’m probably the smartest man in the entire state of Wisconsin.”

Becker cleared his throat noisily. “Is that so? You’re smart maybe about foxes too?”

“Oh, sure.” Quade attempted to look modest.

Charlie Boston began to rub his hands together, slowly. His grin was widening. He knew Oliver Quade. He knew how he worked. Quade had been annoyed by that bit about selling them a little gasoline and putting them up for the night reasonably. He was out to get the fox raiser now. And no man had ever matched wits with Oliver Quade, successfully. For Oliver Quade was the Human Encyclopedia.

Becker put both hands behind his rumble seat and walked up and down the living room. Then he stopped before Quade.

“Mr. Quade,” he said. “You have made a statement to me, two statements. You have said you know everything. Furthermore, you have said you know smart things about foxes. You will excuse me, but I do not believe you. I am not a book man. I do not know things about this — well, maybe this Einstein t’eory. But I know foxes. I will bet you, Mr. Quade, dot you cannot answer one question I ask you about foxes. I will bet you five dollars.”

“That, Mr. Becker,” said Quade, “is a bet.”

Karl Becker pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. He peeled off one and held it out before him. “Here is my money.”

Quade plunged his hand into his own pocket, fished around. He knew very well what it contained — a lone dime and two pennies. “Ask your question.”

“Very well. What three major diseases are foxes afflicted with?”

“Mr. Becker, those are really three questions. But it’s bargain day. I’ll give you the three for one. Foxes are greatly susceptible to worms — hook, lung and roundworms. They also get distemper and encephalitis. Encephalitis is sleeping sickness, or paralysis of the brain.”

Karl Becker’s face was comical to see. Bewilderment was intermingled with chagrin and greed. Karl Becker thought no more of losing his five dollars than he did his right arm. He clung to the five dollar bill until Quade, grinning, stepped forward and plucked it out of his hand.

Then he added insult to injury. “Mr. Becker, I’m a sporting man, myself. I’ll give you a chance to get even. I’ll bet this five dollars against a night’s lodging and three gallons of gasoline in the morning that I can correctly answer any question you can ask me on any subject!”

Becker’s eyes glinted. “You fooled me once, Mr. Quade. With that act about the fox. You carried it like a dunderhead when you came in here. All right, you know foxes, but you don’t know everything. I take that second bet. And I ask you a question, a good one. In one minute.”

He turned abruptly and went to a book-case. Charlie Boston yelped. “Hey, he’s lookin’ in an encyclopedia!”

Karl Becker took a large volume from the shelf. “So?” he said. “Mr. Quade is smart. He said so. He didn’t said not’ing about not looking in no book. So I look for a good question. Ah!”

He looked triumphantly at Oliver Quade. “So! What is… epicene?”

“Epicene is a term in Greek and Latin grammar denoting nouns possessing one gender only, used to describe animals of either sex. In English there are no true epicene nouns but the word is used when referring to the characteristics of men who are effeminate and women who are masculine.”

The book almost fell from Becker’s hands. “You!” he gasped. He slammed the book shut, sawed the warm air of the lodge with it.

Someone battered the door on the outside. Karl Becker recovered from his agitation. “What? More visitors? The help don’t knock!”

He strode to the door, opened it.

A snow-covered man almost fell into the hot room. Quade and Boston sprang forward. There was a bandage about the newcomer’s face.

“Airplane!” he gasped. “Crashed! Need help. Women — men hurt!”

Quade whistled.

“Pilot killed!” exclaimed the bandaged man.

“I t’ought I heard something a while ago!” exclaimed Becker. “The plane, it passed over here and then I t’ought I heard the bang. But I wasn’t sure. And the men was busy…”

“You’ve got employees here, Mr. Becker?” asked Oliver Quade tersely.

“Yah, sure, three men. They help mit the foxes. Wait!”

He went to the door, took hold of a cord dangling there and pulled on it twice. “They come. They go help!”

The snow was beginning to melt on the man who had just come in from the outside. Quade stepped up to him. “Better take off your coat. You don’t look so good!”

“I’m all right,” replied the hurt man. “I’m worried about the others, though. There’s six of us left alive. If there’s a sled or something around here—”

“I’m a stranger here myself,” said Quade. “But Mr. Becker…”

“Yah, we got sled. Soon’s Hugo comes. Here he is.”

The door opened and a cupid-faced, stocky German of about thirty came in. He wore high boots, overalls and a gaudy, red mackinaw.

“Hugo!” said Becker. “This man come from airplane what fell down near. You get the sled and Oscar and you go help, ja? Maybe Julius better go along, too.”

“Charlie and I’ll go,” said Quade.

Hugo ran out of the lodge. In a surprisingly short time Quade heard the tinkling of harness outside the door and caught up his thin topcoat. Boston grabbed up his own.

Morgan, the co-pilot of the wrecked airplane, staggered to his feet. Quade pushed him back again. “You won’t be necessary. Just tell us which direction to go.”

“Straight north, I think. I don’t really know. I better come along.”

“Your tracks be enough,” said Hugo.

“Let’s go!” Quade said.

They charged out of the warm lodge. In the yard stood a bob-sled with a box on it. Harnessed to it were two snapping, black geldings. A man in a shabby bearskin coat stood up in the sled.

Quade, Charlie and Hugo piled into the sled. Quade nodded with satisfaction when he saw the blankets in it. And the jug in the corner.

“In fact,” said Charlie Boston, who saw the jug, “I’m a victim of the snow myself.”

“Nix,” said Oliver Quade. “That’s a stimulant for medical purposes.”

“I feel sick!” said Boston. He picked up the jug, pulled the cork and with practiced movement tilted the jug. He swallowed lustily.

“Ah!” he said. “Rum. I’m a well man already.”

“Mr. Becker see you take that drink,” said Hugo, “He charge you for it.”

“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.

“You, you’re a hold-up man!” cried Karl Becker. “You want our money. I don’t keep none here. I only got six-seven dollars in the whole house.”

He looked sidewise at the others in the room, but his anxiety did not seem to lessen.

“I’ll bet you’re Karl Becker!” said the big gunman. “I heard about you. You’d sell the gold in your mother’s false teeth. Well, Becker, I’ll take your six-seven dollars for cigarette money, but that ain’t why I came up here to the North Pole. I guess you know that, don’t you, Becker?”

Karl Becker’s teeth chattered. “Uh — uh, I don’t know.”

“You got some foxes out there,” said the gunman. “Maybe you got some skins, too. I like fox skins. Louis, here, does too. We read about you in the newspaper a while ago; so we thought we would come and see you and maybe take along a few pelts.”

“Och Gott!” cried Becker.

Quade whistled. “This is going to be sad,” he said to Charlie Boston.

The gunman had sharp ears. He heard.

“Ain’t it though?” he said.

Olga Larsen contributed her silver fox vocabulary. “Silver foxes, Mr. Becker? You raise them? I have always meant to buy a beautiful silver fox coat.”

“If you’ve got the money to lay on the line,” said the gunman, “I’ll sell you a few pelts, Miss.”

The swarthy gunman nudged his bigger partner. “Hey, Willie, dat dame, I know her. I seen her somewhere.”

Willie looked hard at Olga Larsen. “Yeah, Louie, I have too. Sister, what’s your name?”

Ben Slade couldn’t contain his managerial pride. “This is Olga Larsen,” he announced.

“Olga Larsen!” gasped Louis. “The ice skater!”

“Movie star,” murmured Willie. He looked in awe at Olga Larsen. “Lady, I seen you in Queen of the Ice. You wasn’t bad, not bad at all.”

“Thank you,” said Olga frigidly.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Willie. “I don’t mind telling you you’re good. Me, I’m good in my own line, too. I always like to meet people who are tops in what they’re doing.”

“You’re Willie Scharnhorst, aren’t you?” Quade asked.

Willie inhaled. “Yeah, sure, but look, pal, I don’t like the Willie stuff from strangers. Call me Bill, and we’ll get along.”

“Willie Scharnhorst,” cut in Boston, “he’s the guy who snatched that butter and egg man down in St. Louis, ain’t he?”

“Now, now,” chided Scharnhorst, “you mustn’t believe all the papers say. They say I did it, and I ain’t saying I didn’t. I ain’t saying I did, either. Anyway, he didn’t shell out.”

“Aw, cut it!” groused Louie. “We didn’t come here to tell everyone our business. We came to do something; let’s do it and get out of here.”

“Yeah,” said Scharnhorst, “the fox pelts. Break them out, Becker.”

“Vot do you mean, break them out?” cried Becker. “They are out, out there on the foxes. It’ll take two weeks to get them off.”

“You wouldn’t fool me, Becker,” jeered Scharnhorst. “You finished pelting your animals two days ago, and somewhere around here you got three or four thousand skins all ready for me to load up into my truck outside.”

Becker groaned. “Thirty-two hundred pelts! A year’s income! Och, why did I ever go into this foolishness business!”

“To make money, you tight-fisted Dutchman!” said Scharnhorst.

Quade grinned. Scharnhorst was as much of a Dutchman as Becker. The newspapers’ pet term for him was “The Mad Dutchman.”

Becker threw up his hands. “The skins are out in the drying sheds.”

“You mean I got to go around and bale them up?” Scharnhorst frowned.

“Not if you don’t want to,” cut in Quade. “If you’ll leave your name and address, we’ll be glad to pack them up and ship them to you.”

“Wise guy!” said Scharnhorst. He turned to his pal, Louie. “Well, Louie, it’s going to be a little harder than we figured, but for a hundred and fifty grand, we don’t mind doing a little work, do we?”

“How much work?” asked Louie.

Scharnhorst grinned. “You heard him say the pelts are in the drying sheds. You take these boys and have them gather them up and load them into the truck. Me, I’ll stick here and see that none of these folks run to call a cop.”

“The police are miles away,” said Becker, “and I ain’t even got no telephone.”

“I know that,” said Scharnhorst. “You’re too stingy to have one put in. I know lots of things about you, Becker. I cased this joint for quite a while.”

“Look, Willie,” said Louie, “it’s snowing like hell outside; it’s cold. Why do I have to be the one to go outside?”

“’Cause I’m the boss,” replied Scharnhorst, “And the boss always takes it easy. Go on now. The sooner you get the pelts in the truck, the sooner we get out of here.”

Louie stabbed his gun at Oscar, then Julius. “All right, you fellows, come on. Let’s get busy! I’m warning you, I’m sore already. You fellows make any bad moves, and I’ll skin you too!”

The three of them left the room. Scharnhorst pulled up a chair near the door and dropped into it. He dangled his gun carelessly between his knees.

“Relax, folks. It’ll take Louie a while to get the skins baled together, and there’s no reason we can’t make ourselves comfortable…. Say, Miss Larsen, how about you giving us a song, that song maybe that you sang in ‘Queen of the Ice’?”

“I don’t want to sing,” said Olga Larsen coldly. “I don’t like you, and I am not used to having guns waved in my face. Please go away!”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Willie Scharnhorst. “So you don’t like me. Well, I don’t mind. I like you just the same.”

“Mr. Scharnhorst,” said Ben Slade suddenly, “we’ve been in an airplane accident. We’re nervous and excited. Please let us alone.”

“Who are you?” asked Scharnhorst.

“Slade’s my name. I’m Miss Larsen’s manager.”

Quade nudged Charlie Boston. “All right, Charlie, here we go.”

“Folks!” Quade announced in a sudden, dramatic voice. “I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. I’m probably the smartest man in the entire state of Wisconsin! I know the answers to all questions!”

His voice rose until it filled the entire room. It was an amazing voice, vibrant and clear. It would have done credit to the best political orator of a national convention. The entire group jerked to attention.

“I see doubt in your faces,” he cried. “You think I’m crazy! I’m not. I’m the Human Encyclopedia, and I know the answers to everything! I can answer any question any of you can ask me on any subject — history, mathematics, geography, business or sports! Try me out with a question, someone!”

Those in the room were staring at Quade in open-mouthed astonishment, all except Karl Becker. He had sampled Quade before.

“What’s this,” demanded Scharnhorst, “a new game?”

“Call it that,” Quade shot back at him, “and ask me something.”

Scharnhorst screwed up his mouth. You could almost hear him think. After a moment his face twisted into what Quade guessed was brilliance. “I got something!” exclaimed Scharnhorst. “Who was called the father of this country?”

Quade looked hard at Scharnhorst. “Is that your idea of a difficult question?”

“Why not?” demanded Scharnhorst. “When I applied for my citizenship papers four years ago, they asked me that. I got mixed up, too. I told ’em Congress.”

Charlie Boston guffawed.

“Oh, you’re another smart guy, huh?” snapped Willie Scharnhorst. “You know all the answers, huh? Well, I did too. The saloon-keeper on the corner told me they always ask first who makes the laws for this country and second, who’s called the father of this country. Well, the judge made a mistake and asked me the second question first and I give him the answer to the first. Was it my fault the judge didn’t know his stuff?”

Quade kept a straight face. “Well, we’ll just skip your question, Willie. Someone else, please, ask me something. Anything.”

“I’ll play,” said Bill Morgan. “I used to fly down in South America. Look, Quade, what’s the chief product exported from Chile?”

“Nitrate,” Quade replied laconically. “It constitutes more than half of all Chile’s exports. The total value of the Chilean nitrate exported every year is $100,000,000 of which the government through taxation gets approximately $20,000,000.”

Murmurs went around the room at that. “You’re dead right!” exclaimed Bill Morgan. “But I’ve got another question—”

“One to a customer,” said Quade. “Miss Lane, what about you?”

“I was just thinking,” smiled the air hostess. “I lived in England a while. So I’ll ask an English question. ‘What is a galee?’”

“A coal miner. A man who operates a coal mine under a government lease, which is called a gale.”

The saturnine, lean Alan McGregor threw in a question, then. “How far is it from St. Louis to Chicago?”

“Two hundred and eighty-five miles,” Quade replied quickly.

And now the game took on. Olga Larsen asked a question, then Ben Slade. Gustave Lund, too. He answered every question thrown at him, quickly and accurately. But suddenly he called a halt.

“And now I’m going to show you how you yourselves can learn the answers to all questions anyone can ask you! I’m going to give each one of you an opportunity to be a Human Encyclopedia!”

Charlie Boston was fumbling with the bag he had lugged with him earlier in the evening. He opened it and produced a thick volume. He handed it to Quade.

“Here it is, folks, The Compendium of Human Knowledge, the knowledge of the ages in one volume! Twelve hundred pages of facts and knowledge! The answers to any questions anyone can ever ask you! A complete education crammed into one volume! And folks,” Quade leaned forward and lowered his voice, “what do you think I am asking for this marvelous book, this complete college education? Twenty-five dollars? Twenty? No, not even fifteen, or ten, or five! Just a measly two dollars and ninety-five cents. Think of it, folks! Twelve hundred pages of education for only two dollars and ninety-five cents! Charlie, the gentleman over there.” He pointed at Willie Scharnhorst.

Charlie Boston had his hands full, his arms full of books. He strode briskly across the room.

“Here you are, Willie,” he said, “and worth its weight in silver fox skins!”

Willie Scharnhorst looked stupidly at the grinning Boston, and then he reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a fistfull of bills. Charlie whisked away three of the bills expertly and dropped the copy of The Compendium of Human Knowledge on Scharnhorst’s lap. He turned away abruptly and attacked the others in the room.

In the meantime Quade was continuing his exhortation. Boston sold more copies of the book, one to Bill Morgan, one to Alan McGregor. He passed up Mona Lane — because he liked her — and forced one upon Olga Larsen, who protested. Boston ignored her and collected from Ben Slade for two volumes. Charlie paused before Gustave Lund, but Lund wasn’t having any. Charlie grinned wickedly at Karl Becker and said:

“It wouldn’t do you any good. You couldn’t read English!”

“Phooie!” said Becker. “What’s this business anyway? What did I do, that all this should happen to me in one day? I don’t like it, I tell you.”

“Neither do I,” groaned Gustave Lund. “First the airplane, then a man murdered, and now this craziness!”

Willie Scharnhorst was fumbling around with his newly purchased copy of The Compendium of Human Knowledge. His ears heard the word “murder.”

“Someone get killed when the airplane fell?”

“Somebody got killed all right,” said Alan McGregor. “But it wasn’t by the crash. It was a bullet right smack in the back of his head!”

Quade, looking at Scharnhorst, saw the startled expression that leaped into his eyes.

“Why should anyone want to shoot someone in an airplane?” Willie asked.

“That’s a question we were talking about when you broke in with your pal,” replied Quade. “It’s the screwiest situation I ever heard of; the airplane crashes, and then we find that the pilot is dead with a bullet in his head.”

“Were you on the plane?” asked Scharnhorst.

“No, that’s one thing I can’t be blamed for. The person who murdered the pilot is one of these others.” He waved a hand about the room.

Willie Scharnhorst’s eyes went around the room. He passed over Morgan, the co-pilot, still with Mona, the hostess, looked long at Alan McGregor and passed on to the two ice skaters and their manager. His eyes went back to McGregor. After a moment he said:

“You, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

McGregor looked steadily at Scharnhorst. “I don’t know. Have you?”

“I’m asking you.”

“Were we ever in the same police line-up?” asked McGregor, a slight sneer in his tone.

“Yeah,” said Scharnhorst thoughtfully. “I think I remember now. Only it wasn’t in a police line-up that I saw you. It was in Duke Kennard’s place in Kansas City. Remember?”

“My memory’s very bad,” replied McGregor.

Willie Scharnhorst got up from his chair, laid the book on it and walked slowly toward McGregor. When he was three or four feet away, he made a swift movement which brought him behind McGregor. He stabbed his gun into the lean man’s spine and frisked him quickly. The result was a pearl-handled .32 automatic. He backed away.

“That was very careless of me,” he said. “I should have had Louie frisk everyone here.”

He looked around the room again. “Well, I guess that’s about all the artillery, except—” he nodded at Quade. “How about you?”

“Not me,” said Quade. “I never carried a gun in my life. I don’t have to.”

Willie examined the gun he had taken from McGregor. He dropped the clip into his hand and smelled the muzzle.

“Cleaned it, huh?” he said.

“Not for two weeks,” replied McGregor.

“Personally,” said Quade, “I think the pilot was killed with a .38. And I also think that the person who really killed the pilot had all sorts of chances to throw away the gun and probably did.”

“Eh?” said Scharnhorst. “You don’t think it was this fellow?”

“It could have been. He might have had another gun.”

“Well, who’s your candidate then? You’re a wise guy, you know everything.”

Quade grinned wryly and shook his head.

The door banged open and in came Oscar and Julius with Louie behind them. Louie was shivering from the cold.

“It’s forty below zero outside, maybe sixty or seventy even. I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay out there all night.”

Scharnhorst sighed. “Always complaining. How much more work have you got to do?”

“I just told you,” snarled Louie. “The pelts are strung up on lines. We got to take ’em down, tie ’em in bundles and load ’em in the truck. It’ll take us until morning to load all those skins.”

Scharnhorst scowled. “We should have waited until tomorrow night. Maybe all these guests wouldn’t have been here, and Becker might have had them baled for us. Well, you know how things are, Louie, the snow’ll keep people from coming here tonight, and we’ll have to make the most of it. Get yourself warmed up, and then give it another whack. Me, I’ve got my hands full right here.”

Louie and the two German workers went out again in a few minutes. Quade sat himself on the floor near the fireplace. It was going to be a long night, he knew. Charlie Boston sat down on the other side of the fireplace. In the middle of the room, Gustave Lund, Olga Larsen and Slade began a mild argument. Olga was bemoaning her fate, and Lund was berating Slade for their predicament. He insisted that Slade had no business booking them for a small city like Duluth in the first place.

After a while Bill Morgan and Mona Lane came across the room and stood before the fireplace.

“What do you think of it, Mr. Quade?” asked Morgan respectfully.

Quade shrugged. “We’ll stay here until morning and then they’ll go off. We’ll get to a town without any trouble.”

Morgan nodded. “They’ll be looking for the plane, of course, by morning. It should have been in Duluth by now, and when it’s late, they’ll start looking for it. I know we weren’t off our course much, and they ought to be able to locate it in a few hours. We’ll probably have a plane here before noon.”

“And until then, we might as well make ourselves comfortable,” said Mona.

Quade chuckled, and then the floor lamp flared brightly and went out, plunging the room into total darkness. Quade gasped and began raising himself from the floor. Before he regained his feet, someone in the room yelped sharply. There was a rushing movement and the sharp, terrific explosion of a gun.

Willie Scharnhorst’s voice cut the darkness: “Stand where you are, everyone! I’m at the door, and the first one comes close gets plugged!”

A woman screamed, hysterically. Quade knew it wasn’t Mona Lane. He was on his feet now, crouched and moving forward in the darkness, hands outstretched. He knew the location of the door, and if the darkness held for another thirty seconds, he knew also that he would be in complete command of the situation. A floor board creaked, and someone near the door, Scharnhorst no doubt, fired his gun into the ceiling.

“Stand still, I said!” Willie’s voice grated harshly.

Quade’s outstretched hand collided with a body. His fingers clawed it, and he was rewarded with a snarl and a sudden swish of air. He ducked instinctively. Something heavy and hard grazed the side of his face and thudded on his left shoulder. He almost went to his knees, but gritted his teeth and plunged forward. His hands encountered only darkness. There was a crashing of glass, and then a match sputtered into flame. It threw a ghostly half-light upon the scene.

“You, Quade,” snarled Scharnhorst. “Stand where you are, or I’ll plug you!”

Quade stood. At the other side of the room another match lit up a little spot, and then Hugo, Becker’s helper, came out of the kitchen with a kerosene lamp. It flooded the room with light.

Scharnhorst was standing just inside the door, his feet wide apart, his own gun and McGregor’s held before him, menacingly. McGregor himself was poised on his toes at the window facing Scharnhorst. He looked like a tiger about to spring upon his prey. Becker was lying flat on the floor near the kitchen. Near the fireplace Bill Morgan stood with his arm around Mona Lane. Charlie Boston was behind Quade.

The two skaters and their manager were sitting on the couch. Olga Larsen was blubbering hysterically. Ben Slade’s face was almost as white as the snow outside. Lund sat between him and Olga, his head hanging forward on his chest. Quade looked at him and inhaled softly.

“Lund,” he said.

Lund did not move. Ben Slade looked at the man beside him and bounded to his feet.

“He’s shot!” he cried. “He’s been shot!”

Cold air blew into the room from outside. One entire window pane was broken. Quade looked at it and shook his head. Scharnhorst came away from the door in a rush. He grasped his guns securely, and Quade knew that this was not the moment to attack him. The gunman looked into the face of Gustave Lund and Quade heard his teeth click together.

“Who did this?” he snapped. “You, Quade?”

“No, not me,” replied Quade. “I was sitting down beside the fireplace. I couldn’t have put out the light.”

Scharnhorst’s eyes rolled toward the fireplace, then dropped to the floor.

“The hell you couldn’t. The wire from the lamp runs along there.”

“That’s so,” Quade conceded, “but it isn’t broken there. The circuit could have been shorted almost anywhere — outside the house, in the kitchen, or you, Willie, you could have pulled the cord from the socket there just two feet from your chair.”

“Why the devil would I want to do that?” demanded Scharnhorst. “If I had wanted to bump him off, I’d have just done it without dousing the lights.”

There was truth in what Willie said. Quade felt sure that Scharnhorst hadn’t killed Lund. Besides, there was the matter of the broken window. Throughout the turmoil in the dark, Scharnhorst had advertised his exact position. He could not have thrown the gun out of the window without coming forward at least eight feet and then retreating back to the door. Quade knew he hadn’t done that. He knew too that Boston had been behind him and Charlie was not the sort of man who shot people in the dark. Besides, he was Quade’s friend.

Bill Morgan and Mona? They’d been at the fireplace, but had had a chance to move around. Conceivably, they could have reached the wire, but Quade didn’t think so. Alan McGregor? Yes, he was the logical suspect. He was near the window. But Scharnhorst had frisked him, had taken away his gun. Had the man had another gun concealed on his person or somewhere in the room? He was a member of the party who had been on the airplane. He could have been the one who had killed the pilot.

On the other hand, the skaters and their manager had ignored McGregor completely. If any of them had known McGregor, and they must have for him to want to kill one of them, they had concealed it well. Ben Slade? He was Lund’s manager, received a share of his earnings. Managers don’t kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.

Quade looked hard at Olga Larsen. She was a national figure, the world’s greatest skating star. He recalled something Lund had said earlier. The dead skater had been bitter toward Olga and Slade for some reason.

The door slammed open, and Louie came running in, gun held ready.

“Jeez!” he cried. “What’s all the shooting about?”

“Just a little rub-out, Louie,” Scharnhorst said. “That’s all.”

Louie did not seem greatly disconcerted. “Why did you knock him off?”

“I didn’t. Somebody else here did it.”

“Who?”

Scharnhorst shook his head. “Search me. You can see the electric light ain’t working. All of a sudden the light goes out, the window busts, and someone shoots this bozo.”

“No,” cut in Quade. “He was shot before the window was broken which means that someone in this room killed him. I’m willing to bet eight copies of The Compendium of Human Knowledge against a nickel that you’ll find a gun outside there in the snow.”

Scharnhorst’s eyes slid toward his pal. “O.K., Louie, get it.”

Louie shot an angry look at Oliver Quade and left the room. Quade stepped easily across the room to the window and peered out into the rectangle of light that shone through the window on the snow. He saw Louie come into the rectangle, move around, and then pick up something from the snow. A moment later he came into the room, wiping snow from an automatic.

“This is it!” he said. “Two shots fired!”

“Oh,” said Quade, “a .38. One shot for the pilot and one for Lund.”

“And someone had the gun all the time!” exclaimed Scharnhorst, looking blackly around the room.

When he had first entered with Louie and taken command of the lodge, he had been a good-natured gunman. The events of the past half-hour had changed his disposition. He looked sullen and mean. Quade didn’t like the change. He had read about The Mad Dutchman in the newspapers, knew that when Scharnhorst was enraged, he was a mad dog who would stop at nothing.

“How you coming along with the pelts, Louie?” asked Scharnhorst.

“All right,” growled Louie. “Take me three or four hours more, I guess if — say! I left those two Dutchmen out there. Do you suppose they would beat it?”

“You sap! Get out there! If they’ve ducked for help, we’ve got to scram, too.”

Louie slammed out the door. He returned two minutes later.

“They’ve beat it!”

Scharnhorst cursed roundly. Quade saw Mona Lane flinch. The big man strode across to Becker.

“Where did those men of yours go to?”

“I don’t know,” groaned Becker. “There ain’t no neighbor in ten miles from here, and you can see for yourself that it’s snowing like the devil. Spooner is thirty-one miles from here.”

“Lucky I had the key from the truck ignition,” said Louie. “They couldn’t take the truck. They got the horses, though.”

Scharnhorst pursed his lips thoughtfully. “The way it’s snowing, they’ll be lucky if they can make it to this neighbor in three hours and three hours back here.”

“Not exactly,” said Quade. “This neighbor may have a phone and call Spooner. They have cars and trucks there that can get through here.”

Scharnhorst stared at Becker. “How about it, Dutch? Has this neighbor of yours got a telephone?”

Becker nodded. “Yeah.”

Scharnhorst swore again. “That means if those two lugs get to this neighbor’s, they’ll telephone to Spooner, and they’ll come out here in autos in about an hour — four hours altogether — better make it three in case those bozos push their horses faster than I figure they will. Well, we’ll just have to finish up in three hours.”

His eyes darted around the room. “All right, you fellows! Becker, Quade, and that fat lug beside you! Morgan, you, McGregor and Slade, come on, we got work to do.”

“‘Fat lug’ huh?” Charlie Boston grunted, under his breath. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to him about that.”

“What do you want us to do?” demanded Ben Slade.

“Come on outside and help with the pelts, that’s what. We haven’t got much time. The women’ll stay in here. They ain’t foolish enough to try to get away in this weather.”

“It’s cold outside,” protested Ben Slade, “and I, honest, I wouldn’t be much good out there.”

Scharnhorst looked contemptuously at the little manager. He snorted.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t be much good out there anyway. Stay here with the women.”

“I don’t feel so good either,” said Quade. “And look, I only have this thin overcoat. You wouldn’t make me go out there in the cold, would you?”

“The hell I wouldn’t,” snarled Scharnhorst. “You can work hard and keep warm. C’mon.”

A long, low, snow-covered shed held the fox skins. Quade saw long wires stretched from end to end of the shed on which hung, on wire frames, hundreds upon hundreds of inverted silver fox skins.

“All right, fellows,” said Scharnhorst, hefting his gun, “get busy! Take them skins down from the frames, put them in bundles, and tie them up.”

“There’s another shed,” said Louie. “I better take half of these punks with me. You can stand here at the end and watch these fellows. There’s only one door.”

Quade managed to pair off with Charlie Boston and Karl Becker and follow Louie. That left Scharnhorst with Morgan, McGregor and Hugo.

Outside, Louie herded Quade and the others to a shed about fifty feet away. Inside the shed were row upon row of silver fox pelts.

“Boy! what a lot of fur coats!” exclaimed Charlie Boston. He smacked his gloved hands together, stretched wide his arms, and swooped up an armful of pelts.

“Och!” exclaimed Becker. “Such a business! The skins are still green!” He dropped down upon the pelts and almost reverently began taking out the individual wire frames upon which they were stretched.

Passing Charlie Boston, Quade nudged him. Boston followed him a few feet into the shed. They stood side by side gathering up armfuls of pelts.

“This is it, Charlie,” whispered Quade. “Watch me!”

“Hey, break it up, you two!” called Louie from the door.

Quade moved away with a tremendous armful of pelts. Approaching Becker, kneeling on the floor, he seemed to trip. He cried out and as he plunged forward he heaved the bundle of pelts into Louie’s face. The explosion of Louie’s gun filled the room, but no bullet struck Quade. And then his shoulders hit the gunman’s knees and Louie was falling backwards. Charlie Boston swarmed over Quade, and he heard the solid thump of Boston’s fist landing on Louie. That was all there was to it. Usually, when Boston hit them squarely they did not get up again, not for a while. Quade scooped up Louie’s lantern in his left hand, his gun with his right.

“All right, Ollie. Let’s go!” cried Boston.

Becker was babbling incoherently over his skins. Quade leaped out through the door of the skin-drying shed. At the same instant big Willie Scharnhorst sprang out of the other shed. The big .45 in his hand blasted fire and thunder. The bullet fanned Quade’s cheek. Scharnhorst was no mean shot. Quade fired, more with the intention of scaring Scharnhorst than trying to hit him. Scharnhorst jumped aside, but at that moment a gun somewhere else thundered and hot fire seared Quade’s left shoulder.

“Someone else is shooting at you!” cried Boston.

“I know it,” retorted Quade and made a huge leap around the corner of the shed. He dropped the lantern from his hand. It fell into some loose snow and sunk almost out of sight, but Quade didn’t pause for light. He kept going straight into the darkness. Someone behind him kept shooting and that only made Quade go faster. It was a minute or more before he was really aware that Boston wasn’t behind him. The big fellow couldn’t travel as fast as Quade, but Quade wasn’t worried about him. Boston was quite capable of taking care of himself.

When Quade stopped, there were trees around him. He stepped behind one and looked back in the direction he had come. He saw two or three winking lights moving about and he heard faint talk. But the lights were not approaching him, and he guessed that Scharnhorst realized the futility of trying to capture someone in a snowstorm in an unfamiliar forest.

Scharnhorst would proceed with the work of getting the fox skins together. It was cold out here, and Quade shivered. The prospect of staying out here three or four hours was not a cheerful one.

Furthermore, there were possibilities to this that he did not like. There was Olga Larsen, for example. Scharnhorst was a known kidnapper. Olga Larsen had money, a great deal of it. Furthermore, Scharnhorst was in a precarious situation himself. A truckload of silver fox skins was not easy to conceal even up here in the sparsely settled section of northern Wisconsin. Scharnhorst would have to go one hundred and fifty miles to reach the Canadian border. If he were smart, he would seize Olga Larsen or someone else to use as a hostage until he reached safety.

Quade was quite honest in admitting that he did not care a great deal for Olga Larsen, but on the other hand Scharnhorst might just possibly realize that Quade would be the most formidable pursuer and take along Charlie Boston. For Charlie Boston, Quade would go to very great lengths. He shook his head in the darkness.

“Got to do something before they get away.”

His eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, he made out rectangular spots of blackness to the right. Those, no doubt, were the live fox houses. He moved in the direction and hit meshed wire. He kept his hands on the wire and moved along it. It was a long pen, almost two hundred feet long. When he reached the end of it, he found himself before a long, low shed.

He listened but heard no sign of movement inside the shed. He did, however, hear little noises further away and guessed that the shed was split up into sections, foxes in sections beyond this first one could smell or hear his presence and were restless. Softly he unlatched the door. He opened it a crack and attempted to peer inside. His eyes could not penetrate the inky blackness.

He stood there for a moment and then closed the door. As he did an electric light bulb directly over the door sprang into light. Quade gasped, but his quick brain deduced instantly that the lights in the fox pens were operated by remote control and someone back at the house or wherever the switches were, had turned them on. That meant also that the short circuit in the house had been repaired. But he couldn’t stand here under this light. Neither did he want to risk running to the woods again. He would make too good a target now with lights in several spots.

There wasn’t anything he could do but tear open the door of the fox shed and spring inside. To his consternation, there was an electric light bulb inside. He saw in his first glance around the room that this wasn’t really a fox pen, but rather a room for supplies. He saw several sacks of commercial cereal, fox food, many cans of disinfectants and remedies, even a blow torch. There was a wooden latch on the inside of the door. Quade dropped it. No sooner had he done so when he heard the crunch of feet on snow outside the door.

Quade tensed. He expected any moment that a bullet would tear through the planking of the door, that the harsh voice of Willie Scharnhorst would blast at him. A voice did speak. But it was muffled, disguised.

“All right, Quade. Come on out!”

“I like it better in here,” Quade replied. The advantage was his. The man outside was the person who had killed the airplane pilot and Gustave Lund. Why would he disguise his voice? It was not Scharnhorst. This person, apparently, did not want to make noise and bring Scharnhorst down upon him. That was in Quade’s favor. Quade didn’t want Scharnhorst in on this either.

He moved away from the door to a corner of the room. He heard the crunching of snow outside. The murderer was moving alongside of the fox pens. Suddenly Quade heard the quick flurry of rubbery pads; the nervous squeaks of animals. And then he saw something. The door leading into the adjoining pen was open. The killer was letting the foxes in on Quade. Quade knew that foxes, although shy, could be exceedingly vicious when frightened. And the foxes next door were certainly frightened at the moment.

He started across the room to close the door. He had taken only a step when there was a soft thump on the other side of the door and it flew wide open. A small black animal sprang into the room, saw Quade, and made a frightened leap for the small wire-covered window. Quade stepped quickly back into the corner. He had a gun and could shoot the animal if necessary, but the shot would instantly bring upon him Willie Scharnhorst and Louie.

There was more squealing and rushing about in the pen next door. Two foxes hurtled into Quade’s room, made a simultaneous leap at the window and bounced back to the floor.

He made a quick movement with his hand. “Beat it, fellows!” he said.

The foxes rushed, but not toward the door. They sprang instead upon a bench on which were several tin dishes. They knocked them over. The clatter frightened them even more. Now they were absolutely terrified, so much so they were utterly blind. They squealed and dashed helter-skelter in all directions, bumping themselves against the walls.

Quade crouched in a corner. An animal hurtled against him. He struck at it and sharp teeth ripped the leg of his trousers and tore into his ankle. Giddy pain swept over him. For an instant, he thought he was seeing double. There were more than three foxes in the room. He blinked and tried to count them. Five. And if they had been excited before, they were doubly so now. Perhaps the smell of the blood was affecting them.

Another animal leaped at Quade. He struck down at it with the gun. The animal squealed and fell away. Quade knew that he was in one of the tightest spots he had ever been in in his life. You could fight a human being but you couldn’t fight a room full of maddened foxes. The animals moved so fast you couldn’t even strike them solid blows.

His desperate plight stimulated his nimble brain. It was then he saw the can of ether on the shelf beside him. Alongside of it lay a three foot length of broomstick. Attached to one end of the stick was a bundle of cotton. Quade exclaimed softly. He whipped down the can of ether, tore off the cover, and with a quick movement splashed a half cupful of the contents on the cotton ball attached to the stick. The sickish sweet odor of ether assailed his nostrils.

He jammed his revolver into an overcoat pocket, caught up the stick with the ether-soaked cotton in one hand. The foxes were still rushing around. An animal snapped at his ankles. Quade smashed down with the stick and rapped the animal on the snout. The result was astonishing. The fox yelped, leaped and thudded to the floor, gave a spasmodic kick and lay still.

Quade’s eyes glinted. Now he took the offensive. He advanced from his corner, lunged out at another animal and tapped it lightly on the nose with the ether-soaked cotton. That fox fell. Now there were only three animals left. One hurtled through the air toward Quade’s throat. He smashed it down with his left fist and with his right hand flicked it with the stick.

Two left. Quade sprang forward, lunged for one and missed. The animal rushed away blindly, hit the wall and bounced through the open door into the pen. The fifth animal made a lightning circuit of the room, sprang for the wire-covered window and fell to the floor.

Quade caught it there, and then it was all over. He fastened the pen door so the fox that had escaped could not return. He was dripping with perspiration, weak from his battle and narrow escape, and mad clear through. He dropped the ether-soaked stick, whipped out his gun, and unlatched the door leading to the outside.

He stepped through and almost collided with Louie, the gunman. Louie yelled hoarsely and a bullet from his gun tugged at Quade’s overcoat. Quade shot him. Louie screamed and plunged forward to the snow. Grimly, Quade stepped over him. He marched through the snow that crunched loudly under his feet with every step, straight toward the drying sheds.

There was grim determination in his step and there was fury in his eye.

He found an excited circle of figures there. Charlie Boston was the dominating one of the group. On the snow lay Willie Scharnhorst.

“Ollie!” cried Boston. “Where’ve you been?”

“With the foxes,” retorted Quade. “I see you got Willie.”

“Yeah, he took his eyes off me and I belted him. But Louie got away.”

“Those shots just now was me and Louie shooting it out.” Quade’s eyes darted around the group. “The show’s over, folks,” he said. “Let’s all go to the house.”

Electric lights were on in the big living room of Karl Becker’s lodge. Gathered around were Mona Lane and Olga, Ben Slade and Alan McGregor; Bill Morgan and Karl Becker. Louie, the gunman, was still stretched out in the snow. There was no use bringing him in. In the kitchen, Hugo was tying up Willie Scharnhorst.

“Mr. Quade,” chortled Karl Becker, “I like you. You’re a fine fellow. If it hadn’t been for you—”

Quade waved a hand. “Scharnhorst and Louie are out of it, but there’s still a murderer. He’s in this room. He’s the man who killed the pilot, and Gustave Lund. I might say he’s also the man responsible for the airplane coming down.”

“I thought there was something wrong with the motor,” cut in Ben Slade.

Quade looked at Bill Morgan. “How about it?”

“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.