Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 310 - Death on Ice

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2024-11-24 0 0 116.8KB 48 页 5.9玖币
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DEATH ON ICE
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," December, 1946.
Violent death, set high in the wintry mountains where vacationers revel,
confronts The Shadow - as the weird fool killer stalks his helpless victims.
CHAPTER I
IT was as close as a human can come to really flying. Body bent forward,
the man's figure split through the air like some huge prehistoric bird. His
wings were on his feet.
His arms bent behind him were as carefully placed as a tight rope
walker's
pole. The extensions of his arms trailed him. The eyes that followed his
flight
were fixed. It didn't seem possible that he could land safely.
It was the last jump of the afternoon and by far the best and longest.
Peter Gohan was living up to his international reputation as a ski expert.
The platform from which he had taken off made a backdrop behind him. His
black figure jet-like in contrast to the snow, flew forward. He was fifty feet
from the ground when it happened.
The clear crisp air magnified the sound till it reverberated like a
cannon
shot. Almost magically the flying form of a man crumpled in mid-air.
Such a short time before the scene had all been frivolous and gay.
Brightly clad spectators, lining the sides of the ski jump, gay with
excitement
and with joy of the crisp clean air washing out their city bred lungs, had
been
laughing and exclaiming.
Then, the excitement had mounted as jumper succeeded jumper. Each jump
seemed a little longer, a little better. Finally when all the amateurs had had
their innings, the pros, the ski instructors, had taken over and then the
jumps
really became magical. It did not seem possible that a human being could glide
through the air defying gravity with nothing but some slats of wood.
Jim Thompson, one of the instructors at Chez de Silbis, a resort, had
made
the longest jump of the afternoon. There was only ore man who could possibly
beat him and that was his best friend, Peter Gohan.
It was Peter who had taken off just now. It was Peter who had looked as
if
he were setting a new record as he took off from the inclined plane and flew,
swifter and swifter and further and further through the air.
But now, all that was ended and like a bird, shot down from the sky by a
random hunter, the flight was over. The man was no longer one with the sky. He
was now of the earth, earthy!
His forward momentum carried him along although his body was lifeless.
His
hands relaxed their grasp on the poles. They dangled from the wrist straps.
All grace gone, the broken black thing smashed down onto the concrete
hard
snow. The white particles flew up around his body as the skis snapped under
the
impact. The wooden crack served to reanimate the statue-still spectators. It
had come like a bolt from the blue and had left them as defenseless as would a
lightning flash.
The shot had come from the close packed blue-green firs that made an
avenue next to the ski jump. The trees made it impossible to see who had
fired.
The people exchanged frightened glances. You could see that they were mentally
tabulating who was in sight and who not.
Tight-fitting ski suit making it impossible to determine her sex,
Patricia
Stone made her way to the fallen flyer. She looked down at him. She had been a
nurse for too many years to even bother feeling for a pulse. She knew death
when she saw it. Who had done this? Why? Peter had been so likable... so
unlike
that old harridan he worked for, and the husband. What a pair the de Silbis
made!
Peter had been so nice to her when he was teaching her the elements of
skiing. He almost made her feel young again. Never by a flicker of his mobile
face had he made her know that it was an impossible task she was setting him.
Her muscles were too old, too tired to ever learn any new tricks. That sort of
kindness had been rare in her old maid existence.
Looking down at his tanned good looking young old face, she promised
herself that the matter would not end in a coroner's report of death at the
hands of some unknown person or persons.
She knew the power that the de Silbis couple held in this small town
winter resort. She had seen it in operation. She knew too that they would do
their best to keep this quiet just as they had the unexpected "suicide" of
that
nice girl two weeks earlier.
The people she was thinking about came up to her then. She watched Mrs.
de
Silbis' face. It was so pleasant, so red, so rosy cheeked. She looked so much
the middle-class good woman that it was difficult to think of her in any other
way.
Her husband, lean as she was stout, razor thin mouth drawn over
protruding, badly-fitted false teeth, was furious. His sallow cheeks were
drawn
in. He looked from the body of his ski instructor up to the nurse and glared
at
her as if she had something to do with the death.
Anger tightened in the nurse like a real live thing. She could feel
nausea
in the pit of her stomach as she tried to restrain her feelings. Aloud she
said,
"Well?"
"Well?" He glared at her again. "What's well? This is terrible! Terrible
I
tell you! Think of my hotel... the resort!"
"If you don't mind, I'd rather think of this poor boy here, dead so far
away from home and from all his friends..."
"Tcha! Let the dead bury the dead!" He turned on his heel and ambled off
in his deceptive slouch. He seemed to barely move his feet but he made good
time over the hard snow.
Mrs. de Silbis said, "Now, now... you shouldn't upset him. He has so many
worries, Miss Stone!"
This time the nurse managed to control her anger. She made no answer but
instead turned away. She was so grimly trying for control that she almost
knocked over the tall thin wisp that was Steven Haight.
"Oh," she gasped, "I'm sorry, Steve."
"It's all right. Think nothing of it." Haight looked worried. "What
happened? I was up at the lodge."
With unseeing eyes they looked right through some posters which screamed
in many colors, "Monster Ice Carnival! Come One! Come All! Come Dressed as the
Historical Character You Would Most Like to Be!" Almost hidden by all the
lettering was a very badly drawn scene of what the artist obviously imagined a
Roman orgy would look like on ice.
"It is quite obvious, is it not? Peter was shot. Killed by someone who is
trying to ruin my poor husband and me!" Mrs. de Silbis ran her hand over her
beet red face and muttered under her breath. "Someone is jealous of the little
success that we have... jealousy, that's what!"
Haight put his arm around the nurse. "Hey, take it easy kid. You're
shaking." He led her away from the scene.
Once in the darkness that was the beauty and the majesty of the towering
trees she managed to shake herself back into some semblance of normalcy. "I'm
sorry. Didn't mean to carry on like a two year old."
"I'm afraid," said Haight, "that twenty years investigation into
Americana
and folksay has not equipped me as much as I would like with experience in
violence."
She looked up at him and managed a smile. "Wipe your head off. It has
snow
on it."
With unquestioning obedience he twitched his hand through his hair and
was
not surprised to see snow descend like a veil around him.
"Hmm... wonder how long I've been going around looking like a snowman."
"Probably for days. You'd better have your wife come back again to take
care of you."
"Wish she could. But she has too much to do back in New York."
"Steve," the nurse's voice was serious, "what are we going to do? You
know
Sheriff Bradley. He's a fat oaf."
"I don't know. He can be unexpectedly shrewd despite his bumbling ways."
"Tut. You know as well as I do that the de Silbis elected him. They run
this place."
"What would you suggest?"
"I'd suggest some investigator who the de Silbis can't bribe to take it
easy and just hush the whole thing up."
He thought a moment and then said, "If you were to ask me whom to call on
to find out what town the legend of the Fool Killer emanated from, or if you
wanted to know how many brothers Jesse James had, I could either find out
myself or know precisely whom to call on. But now... with a situation like
this..." He held his hands out in a helpless gesture.
She snapped her fingers. "I've got it. When I was in training I had a
supervisor who knew a man who specialized in crime detection. What was his
name?"
Brow furrowed in thought, she walked beside the little man through the
cathedral of trees. "Cranley... no... Cranston! Something Cranston. That's
who!
Let's see... I'll call her and ask her to call on him!"
Head held straight now, narrow back firm as a queen's, she walked beside
the man. Once she had come to a decision there was little that could deter
her,
or make her turn aside.
So it was that on a day when Lamont Cranston had made a vow to himself
that nothing would get him out of the warm comfort of his home into the drab
grey misery of the New York streets, the phone rang.
He eyed it for a moment as the bell sent out its clarion call. He sat in
front of an open fire with his feet up in the air propped comfortably on some
andirons of which he was inordinately proud.
Perhaps if he didn't answer it immediately it would stop its clamor. But
no. The bell rang on and on. He sighed and getting to his feet slipped the
phone off the base.
It was not Burbank. Burbank, the man who got most of the tips that set
Cranston on the trail of crime. Burbank was really his good right arm. But who
could also be a nuisance on a day like this?
Perhaps, thought Cranston when he heard a woman's voice say hello,
perhaps
it's just a social call. The voice said, "Lamont?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"Mrs. Harris."
"Good grief... it's been ages. Are you in New York?"
"Nope, unfortunately. Still out on Long Island and still on duty for that
matter."
"Oh?"
"Yes, Lamont. You see this isn't a polite call. I'm going to have to ask
you for help."
"Oh."
"Now, please, don't sound that way. One of the girls... well it's
stretching it a bit to call Patty a girl, but she trained under me and they'll
always be girls to me, is in trouble... or thinks she is..."
"Who? Take it easy and let's start from scratch. What's happened?"
"Patty has a job up in Lake Violent. You know the winter resort... It's
in
the Adirondacks."
"Umm... yes, I've been there."
"Well, there's been a murder there and Patty's afraid that justice in
this
little town is not only blindfolded, but her ears are plugged up too."
"I see. What would you like me to do?"
"If you could meander up there and see what's in the wind... Patty is no
spring chicken to get all tied up in knots about nothing at all. If she says
it's bad, I believe her."
Cranston tried to tell himself that he had been needing some vacation at
that, but looking around the comfort of his room he could not lie to himself.
He could not kid himself. He was tired and that was unusual for the
inexhaustible man who was known as Lamont Cranston. He picked himself up and
not even wondering what was behind this hurried call for help from Lake
Violent, he made his way into the bedroom and threw some odds and ends into
his
suitcases.
Packed, he looked around the comfortable rooms that were his refuge from
the world of crime and picked up his inevitable briefcase. In it, as always,
were the cape and hat of that sombre color that so well symbolized the other
side of Cranston's nature. For these were the accoutrements of The Shadow.
He tucked it under his arm and picked up his suitcases. He cast a last,
almost wistful look around the warmth and comfort of his rooms and locked the
door behind him.
The elevator boy was surprised to see him. "Going away again, Mr.
Cranston?"
"Mmm. Going up to Lake Violent for some winter sports. Figure it'll tone
up my system."
Pretty soft, thought the boy, pretty soft, to be rich enough to wander
off
to the swankiest winter resort in the country just to "tone up his system."
The
boy watched Cranston's long, lean, fit looking, broad shouldered body make its
way out through the door to the grey, grim muck that is New York after a snow
fall.
Cranston lingered under the canopy for a moment hoping against hope that
a
cab would come along. But he wasn't too surprised to find his hope blasted.
The
doorman was not in sight. Neither was a free cab.
Picking up his burden, he walked across the slushy street. The slush was
almost black already.
Ice somehow insinuated itself up over Cranston's shoe tops as he made his
way across the dirty black muck that was all that New York had left of a snow
storm. Almost coal black in spots it was no blacker than the devious scheme
which was coming to slow and evil fruition up in the mountains.
Cranston sighed as he shook his feet and stepped up on the curb. Shrevvie
was out of town visiting a sick relative so there was nothing to do but take a
chance and try to hail a cab.
Ten minutes later and with train time a matter of minutes away, Cranston
thought that this made him really appreciate Shrevvie.
Almost hopelessly he flagged a cab that looked empty. It was. He fell
back
into the seat and gave the driver directions.
"Wassamatter, ya think I'm a hick or someting?" The driver was irate. "I
know where the station is, see!"
All the way to the railroad Cranston was forced to endure a mumbled
soliloquy about the "noive" of some passengers. The cab made it through the
congested New York traffic with but seconds to spare. The tall figure of
Cranston looked like a broken field runner as he made his way through the
people who ambled along seemingly aimlessly.
Once on the train, tired, annoyed and almost regretting having answered
the phone, Cranston leaned back and looked out the window. Now, surely he
would
have a chance to get his thoughts in order. But it was not to be.
The man sitting next to him folded up his paper and leaning forward
looked
inquisitively into Cranston's face. "Sleepy?"
Cranston sighed. There were days like this. But did they have to come so
often?
He grunted sleepily in answer to the man; but it did no good. The man
said, "Glad you're not sleepy. I hate to take long trips with no one to talk
to."
Cranston gave up. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath and said, "What
business you in?"
But he was wrong. The man was not a salesman anxious to talk about his
wares and his troubles. As it turned out, the man was named Crispin and he was
going to the same winter lodge that Cranston was at Lake Violent.
"So you see, I couldn't let him get away with that, and yet I didn't want
to expose him to shame in the printed page..."
Cranston, by a super-human effort managed to decipher what the man was
talking about. It seemed he had a twenty-year-long feud on with another
Americana expert. A man named Stephen Haight.
"I know Haight's hypothesis is wrong and yet I can't be so small as to
rush into print without giving him a chance to retract."
More to be polite than anything else, Cranston asked, "Retract what?"
"Why, you must know about it, his idiotic idea that the origin of the
Fool
Killer legend goes back to ancient Aramaic times."
Like most specialists, the man assumed that everyone else in the world
was
interested in what he was. Cranston turned his head a trifle and looked at the
man in the reflection in the window. Thin, wispy-bearded, high foreheaded, he
might have posed for the standard caricature of the absent-minded professor.
"The Fool Killer? I'm afraid I don't know anything about the gentleman."
The little man said, "Oh, the Fool Killer was no gentleman. In a way he
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