The Bizarre Murders, page 22
“No. But—”
“You’re the detective,” said Miss Forrest with a rebirth of spirit. “I still maintain the whole argument is—is lunatic.”
The Inspector went to one of the windows and stepped out upon the terrace. After a moment Ellery followed.
“Well?” he said.
“I don’t like it.” The Inspector gnawed his mustache. “There’s a lot in what they say—not about the card business, but about that operation and all.” He groaned. “A hell of a lot. Why should one of those kids have bumped the doctor off? I tell you I don’t like it.”
“We discussed that, I believe, before we tackled them,” Ellery pointed out with a shrug.
“Yes, I know,” said the old man miserably, “but—Cripes, I don’t know what to think. The more I think the dizzier I get. Even if it’s true and one of the lads is a murderer, how the devil can we ever establish which one? If they refuse to talk—”
A gleam came into Ellery’s troubled eye. “The problem has its interesting points. Even if one of them confesses—we’ll suppose the most convenient theory—have you stopped to consider what a beautiful headache the case would give America’s prize legal talent?”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Well,” murmured Ellery, “let’s say young Francis is our man. He confesses on the stand, exonerating Julian who, it devolves, was under Francis’s thumb and was forced to stand by while Francis did the dirty work. Julian, we prove, was completely innocent in both intent and activity. So Francis is tried, convicted, and condemned to death.”
“Cripes,” groaned the Inspector.
“I see you envision the possibilities. Francis is tried, convicted, and condemned to death; and all the while poor Julian is forced to undergo extreme mental suffering, physical imprisonment, and finally the degradation of—what? Death? But he’s an innocent victim of circumstances. Surgery? Modern science—minus at least the voice of the late Dr. John S. Xavier—says that Siamese twins with a common major organ cannot be successfully disjoined; result, death to the innocent boy as well as to the guilty. So surgery is out. What then? The law says a person condemned to death shall be executed. Shall we execute? Clearly impossible without also executing an innocent individual. Shall we not execute? Clearly in defiance of the lex talionis. Ah, what a case! The irresistible force meeting the immovable barrier.” Ellery sighed. “I should really like to confront a group of smug lawyers with this problem—as neat a conflict of rights, I’ll wager, as the whole history of criminal law has to offer. … Well, Inspector, what do you think would happen in your precious case?”
“Let me alone, will you?” mumbled his father. “You’re always raising the most ridiculous questions. How do I know? Am I God? … Another week of this and we’ll all be in a bughouse!”
“Another week of this,” said Ellery gloomily, looking at the frightful sky and trying to draw a breath without soiling his lungs, “and it begins to look as if we’ll all be cold cinders.”
“It does seem silly to break our heads about a matter of individual crime and guilt when we’re one step from the last furnace ourselves,” muttered the Inspector. “Let’s go back inside. We’ll have to take stock, organize, and do what we—”
“What’s that?” said Ellery sharply.
“What’s what?”
Ellery bounded off the terrace. He was down the steps in one leap and standing on the drive to stare up at the ruddy night sky. “That noise,” he said slowly. “Don’t you hear it?”
It was a faint rumbling roar and it seemed to emanate from a region of the heavens a great distance away.
“By George,” cried the Inspector, scrambling to the ground, “I believe it’s thunder!”
“After all this horrible waiting, it doesn’t seem …” Ellery’s voice trailed off in a mutter. Their faces were raised to the skies nakedly, two white blurs of hope.
They did not turn at the pound and clatter of feet on the terrace.
“What is it?” screamed Mrs. Xavier. “We heard … Is it thunder?”
“Glo-o-ory!” shrieked Miss Forrest. “If it’s thunder it’s rain!”
The rumble was growing appreciably louder. It possessed a curiously living quality, and there was something metallic in its overtones. It rattled. …
“I’ve heard of such things before,” cried Dr. Holmes. “It’s an unusual meteorological phenomenon.”
“What is?” demanded Ellery, still craning at the sky.
“Under certain conditions of the atmosphere, clouds may very well form over the area of a widespread forest fire. Condensation of moisture in the updraft of air. I read somewhere that fires of this sort have actually been extinguished by the clouds they themselves generated!”
“Thank God,” quavered Mrs. Wheary.
Ellery turned suddenly. They were lined up at the rail of the terrace—a row of pale straining faces raised to the sky. On every face but one there was livid hope. Only on Mrs. Carreau’s delicate features sat horror, the horror of realization. If it were rain, if the fire were blotted out, if communication were re-established … Her grip tightened on the shoulders of her sons.
“Don’t thank Him yet, Mrs. Wheary,” said Ellery in a savage tone. “We were mistaken; it’s not thunder. Don’t you see that red light up there?”
“Not thunder? …”
“Red light?”
They squinted in the direction of his pointing arm. And they all caught sight of the rapidly moving, unwinking little pinprick of bright red against the dark wine of the heavens.
It was accompanied by the thunder, and it was headed for the summit of Arrow Mountain.
But the thunder was the sound of a motor, and the red pinprick was the night riding light of an airplane.
Chapter Eighteen
THE LAST REFUGE
THEY SIGHED EN MASSE, a horrible sigh that held the death of hope. Mrs. Wheary uttered a heart-rending moan and Bones’s voice startled them with a sudden vicious curse that hissed through the moist air like brimstone.
Then Miss Forrest cried: “It’s a plane! They’ve—they’ve come for us! They’ve news for us!”
Her cries roused them. The Inspector yelled: “Mrs. Wheary! Bones! Somebody! Put on every light in the house! The rest of you get things that’ll burn—anything—get busy! Well build a bonfire out here so he can see us!”
They tumbled over one another in their haste. Bones began to hurl the terrace chairs over the rail. Mrs. Wheary vanished through one of the French windows. The women clattered down the steps and began to carry the chairs over the gravel and rocks away from the house. Ellery scrambled into the house and emerged a few moments later with two armfuls of old newspapers, magazines, and loose papers. The twins, their personal predicament forgotten in the excitement of the present, staggered off the porch under the weight of an overstuffed chair from the now brilliantly illuminated living room. They looked like scurrying ants in the darkness. …
The Inspector squatted on his thin hams and struck a match with a hand that trembled slightly. The tall pile of inflammable miscellany dwarfed his slender figure. He applied the flame to the bed of paper beneath the pile and rose hastily. They crowded around, jealous of the hot breeze that was tearing at the tiny flame. And all the while they kept their staring eyes upon the heavens.
The flame licked hungrily at the papers and with a crackle caught the makeshift kindling they had piled at the bottom of the pyre. In an instant the bed of the pyre was ablaze, and they shielded their faces and retreated from the blast of heat.
They held their breaths as they watched the red light. It was very near now, and at their altitude the roar of the airplane was deafening. Difficult as it was to estimate how far above their heads the aviator was winging, they realized that he could not be more than a few hundred feet above the summit of the mountain. And the invisible craft with its single red eye swooped nearer and nearer.
Then suddenly it was thundering overhead and—past.
In that single instant they had caught sight dimly in the upward illumination of their bonfire against the crimson sky of a small monoplane with an open cockpit.
“Oh, he’s gone past!” moaned Miss Forrest.
But then the red light dipped and swerved to take a new direction, and it came swiftly back at them in a graceful arc.
“He’s seen the fire!” shrieked Mrs. Wheary. “Praise be, he’s seen us by the fire!”
The pilot’s maneuvers were baffling. He kept circling the crest of the mountain as if he were uncertain of the terrain, as if he did not quite know what to do. And then, incredibly, the red light began to recede.
“Good God,” said Dr. Holmes hoarsely, “isn’t he going to land? Is he leaving us?”
“Land? Nonsense!” snapped Ellery, straining aloft. “How could anything but a bird land on this tormented patch of rock? He’s leveling off for a straight swoop. What do you think he’s been doing up there—playing tag? He’s been studying the ground. I think—something is primed to happen.”
Before they could catch their breaths he was hurtling toward them with a scream of rushing wind and a thunder of propeller that made their eardrums ache. Down, down he came in a daring swoop that rooted them to the ground with horrified admiration. What was the madman attempting? All their numbed brains could imagine was that he was bent on suicide.
He was only a hundred feet away now, and so low that they unconsciously ducked. His landing gear barely cleared the tops of the trees at the margin of the summit. Then like lightning he was upon them—a rushing winged thing with belching vitals and hoarsely vibrating body—and past, away. Before they could recover he was past the summit, his wing tipped already as he climbed against the bloody moon in another spiral.
But now they understood that his madness had been cold sanity, and his foolhardiness courage.
A small white object had dropped like a plummet from the cockpit, hurled by a dark overhanging human arm, to fall with a crash not twenty feet from the fire.
The Inspector was over the treacherous ground like a monkey and clutching the fallen object in a twinkling. His fingers shook as he unwrapped several sheets of paper from the stone to which it had been bound.
They huddled about him, clawing at his coat.
“What is it, Inspector?”
“What does he say?”
“Is it—over?”
“For God’s sake, tell us!”
The Inspector squinted at the typewritten lines in the leaping light of the bonfire, reading feverishly. And as he read, the lines of his gray face lengthened, and his shoulders sagged, and all the glitter of hope and life went out of his eyes.
They read their doom in his face. Their grimy wet cheeks became flaccid, with the flaccidity of the dead.
The Inspector said slowly: “Here it is.” And he read in a low dull voice:
Temporary Headquarters
Osquewa
INSPECTOR RICHARD QUEEN:
I regret to have to inform you that the forest fire in Tomahawk Valley and this section of the Tepee range, and most particularly on Arrow Mountain where you are bottled up, is absolutely out of control. There is no longer any hope that we will be able to get it under control. It is climbing the Arrow very fast and unless a miracle happens will soon sweep the summit.
We have hundreds of people fighting it and the casualties have mounted day by day. Scores have been overcome by smoke or badly burned, and the whole hospital corps of this and surrounding counties is taxed to the limit. The list of dead is now twenty-one. We have tried everything, including blasting and cross fires. But now we have to admit we are licked.
There is no way out for you people at Dr. Xavier’s place on the Arrow. I suppose you know that already.
This message is being dropped by Ralph Kirby, the speed flyer. When you have read this note signal him and he will know you have got the message all right and will drop a load of medicines and foodstuffs for you in case you have run out. We know you have plenty of water. If there were any way to take you people off by plane we would do it, but it is impossible. I know the nature of the ground at the top of the Arrow and it is far too broken up to permit a landing without fatal damage to the machine and almost certain death to the pilot. Not even a gyroplane could make it, even if we had one, which we have not.
I have asked the advice of the forest rangers on your predicament and they suggest one of two things, or both. If the wind is right build a fire in unburned woods to fight the fire coming up. This is no good because the winds around the top are too tricky, always shifting. The other thing is to dig a wide trench at the edge of the timber on the summit in the hope that the fire will not be able to jump over it. You might also remove all the dry brush and vegetation around the house as an additional safety measure. Keep the house damped down. There is only one thing to do with the fire and that is to let it burn itself out. It has already devastated the timberland for miles and miles around.
Keep a stiff upper lip and make a real fight of it. I have taken the liberty of notifying Police Headquarters in New York City about where you are and the pickle you are in. They are keeping the wires hot. I am damn sorry, Inspector, I cannot do more. Good luck to all of you. I won’t say good-by.
(Signed) WINSLOWE REID,
Sheriff, Osquewa
“At least,” said Ellery with a wild and bitter laugh in the ghastly silence that followed, “he’s a newsy sort of chap, isn’t he? Oh, God.”
The Inspector, in a daze, stepped as close to the fire as he dared and waved his arms slowly, without energy. Instantly the airman still circling above straightened out again and repeated his former maneuvers. This time when he roared by above their heads a large round bundle dropped from the cockpit. He circled twice again, as if reluctant to leave, came close once more, waggled his wings in a grim salute, and then darted off into the night. None of them so much as stirred a finger until the red light vanished in the thickest darkness of the distance.
Then Mrs. Carreau sank to the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break. The twins cowered behind her, their teeth chattering.
“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” bellowed Smith suddenly, waving his huge arms like a windmill. His eyes were staring madly from his head and rivulets of perspiration poured down his gross cheeks. “You read what that damn Sheriff wrote! Build a fire! Dig a trench! For the love of God, let’s get busy!”
“No fire,” said Ellery quietly. “The wind’s crazy up here. It might set the house ablaze.”
“Smith’s right about the trench, anyway,” panted Dr. Holmes. “We can’t just stand here like—like cattle waiting for slaughter. Bones—get those spades and picks out of the garage.”
Bones cursed vilely and darted off into the darkness.
“I guess,” said the Inspector in a stiff, unnatural voice, “that it’s the only thing to do. Dig. Dig until we smother.” He drew a deep breath and something of the old martinet returned to his bearing. “All right!” he snapped. “We dig. Everybody. Get as much of your clothing off as you decently can. Women—the boys—everybody help. We start right now and we don’t finish till we’re finished.”
“How much time have we?” whispered Mrs. Xavier.
Smith threshed off into the darkness and disappeared in the smoky woods. Dr. Holmes stripped off his jacket and necktie and hurried after Bones. Mrs. Carreau rose, no longer sobbing. Mrs. Xavier did not stir; she continued to stare after Smith.
They were whirling dervishes in a nightmare that grew steadily more fantastic.
Smith blundered back, materializing out of the smoke. “It’s not far now!” he snarled. “The fire! Just a short way below! Where the hell are those tools?”
Then Bones and Dr. Holmes came staggering out of the darkness under a load of iron implements and the nightmare began in earnest.
To give them light Mrs. Wheary, physically the weakest, kept the fire burning with fresh fuel supplied by the twins, who dragged from the house all the portable furniture they could find. A high wind had risen and swept the sparks of the bonfire about with alarming abandon. Meanwhile the Inspector had marked off the three-quarter circle rimming the timberline which was to be dug. The women were set to uprooting the dry bushes from the crevices of the stony ground; these they added to the fire from time to time as additional fuel. The smoke rose from the summit like the signal-fire of a race of gigantic Indians. They coughed and cried and toiled and sweated, and their arms became lead weights that were torture to lift. Miss Forrest, impatient in her frenzy, soon stopped tearing out brush and ran to help with the digging.
The men labored silently, conserving their breath. Their arms rose and fell, rose and fell. …
When dawn broke—a turbulent smoky red dawn—they were still digging. Not fiercely now, but with the steadiness of inhuman desperation. Mrs. Wheary had collapsed by the dying fire; she lay limply on the rocks, moaning and ignored. All the men were stripped to the waist now, their bodies glistening with body oil where they were not coated with grime and soot.
No one had even cast a glance at the padded bag of food and medicines dropped by the aviator.
At two in the afternoon Mrs. Carreau collapsed. At three Mrs. Xavier. But Ann Forrest labored on, although she staggered with each feeble thrust of the spade.
Then at four-thirty the spade dropped from her nerveless fingers and she sank to the ground. “I—can’t—go on,” she gasped. “I—can’t.”
At five Smith fell and could not rise. The others toiled on.
At twenty minutes past six, after twenty hours of incredible labor, the trench was finished.
They dropped where they were, their streaming clotted skins pressed to the scarred earth in the last oblivious spasm of exhaustion. The Inspector, stretched groaning on the ground, looked like a felled dwarf, one of the toilers of Vulcan’s smithy. His eyes were sunken deep in his head and they were circled by purple rings. His mouth was open, gasping for air. His gray hair stuck wetly to his head. His fingers were bleeding.
The others were in scarcely better condition. Smith still lay where he had fallen, a mountain of quivering flesh. Ellery was a slim, long, sooty ghost. Bones was a dead man. The women were huddles of soiled, ripped garments. The twins sat on a rock, heads hanging. Dr. Holmes lay still, eyes closed, nostrils twitching; his white skin was a shambles.
