MIZZENTOP
Again that horrid shriek. This time there was no mistake from whence it
came. Half breathless from their sprint, Bill and the detective reached
the lodge and looked about for a means of entrance.
“Somebody,” whispered the secret service man, “is torturing Osceola!”
“Sounds like it, all right,” panted Bill, “but I’d have thought you
could cut that Seminole into little pieces and never get a peep out of
him! They must be monsters—There’s a light—window in the rear—come on!”
Bill in the lead, they dashed round the house, then stopped short.
Through the kitchen screen door they caught a glimpse of a stranger
lying on the floor, and Osceola’s figure bending over him. Careful as
had been their movements, Osceola’s keen ears detected them, for he
reached up quickly and switched off the hanging bulb.
“Speak or I’ll fire!” His order came like a shot.
Bill laughed shakily. “It’s only me, you wild Seminole—me and a pal of
ours—we’ve come to _rescue_ you from your torturers—and by gosh!—here we
find you, in reverse! What’s the idea, boy?”
“Wait a sec—I’m coming out.”
They saw the Chief’s tall form loom up beside them, although his
approach had been made without a sound.
“What’s going on, anyway?” Sanborn’s nerves were badly shaken and his
relief on seeing Osceola free and sound in body sharpened his tone.
“Yes, what’re you tryin’ to do—scalp the man?” added Bill.
Osceola chuckled. “My gosh, did you think that yell came from me? Why,
no, Bill, I’m trying something a little harder than that. I was just
about to learn something of interest to all of us, when you butted in.”
“But what on earth were you doing to the man?” asked Sanborn.
“Oh, the old match trick. But what have you chaps been doing to
yourselves? You look like a pair of nigger roustabouts!”
“Roosting in a chimney—a nice sooty one, too.” Bill turned to the
detective. “Those keen eyes of his have found us out. And the match
trick, I believe, consists of placing a lighted match between the
victim’s toes.”
“But we can’t have that—it’s torture!” exploded Sanborn heatedly.
Bill laughed.
“Shut up, this isn’t funny,” growled Osceola. “Do you want that guy in
there to hear and spoil everything?” He leaned close to Sanborn. “It’s
hardly ever necessary to let a low-class white feel the flame. This
fellow screamed when I lit the match, and again when I put the
_unlighted end_ between his toes. You see? You just make a lengthy
explanation of what is going to happen to him before you start. His
imagination does the rest.”
“But Osceola—there is a possibility of burning—and I don’t like it.”
“All right, sir. I’ll light one match and stick another, an unlighted
one, between his tootsies! He’ll bleat just the same. You see, when I
was tied up I heard this man and his wife talking about a laboratory or
factory that the Professor runs up at a place called Mizzentop. And I
heard just enough to make me curious—I—”
“Go ahead, then. Find out what goes on in that laboratory, and we’ll
know the answer to the winged cartwheels. But don’t you think you’re
taking chances in a lighted room with nothing between you and the night
but a screen door?”
“Huh—” grunted Osceola, “that fellow hasn’t had a bath in months—it’s a
warm night, Mr. Sanborn. I prefer taking chances with bullets to being
asphyxiated!”
Sanborn chuckled. “Go to it, Chief—but no rough stuff, remember. Turn on
the light again if you wish. Bill and I will keep watch outside. The
people up at the big house have gone to bed, but it’s just as well to
take precautions. And we can hear anything your friend may have to say
from the shadow of the porch.”
They walked up to the porch and Osceola went inside the house. Then the
light went on in the kitchen and the young Seminole started speaking.
“Well, Mr. Skunk! Some friends of mine are out back. They are also
interested in hearing about Mizzentop. So, that being that, I’m going to
light another match—”
“No, no! I’ll tell—I’ll tell!”
“Good enough. But calm yourself, bozo—there’s no need to shout the glad
tidings all over Connecticut!”
“But the Professor, sir—he will—”
“The Professor is having his own troubles, my friend. Anyway, for some
time to come, you and your amiable wife in the other room will be
occupying nice little cells in a big, safe jail! Out with it now—or I
shall become impatient.”
“Very well, sir, I’ll tell.” Still thoroughly frightened, the man spoke
submissively. “Just what was it you wanted to know?”
“Everything that _you_ know about this silver dollar business, and the
place up at Mizzentop. Make it snappy, though! I don’t want to hang
around here all night.”
“Yes, sir. Professor Fanely is crazy—crazy on one subject. I noticed it
coming on last year, and this spring, he got worse. ’Twas then he
started this token bunk. Him and that big secretary of his, Lambert.
Every one of us was handed out one of them stamped dollars, and we was
all sworn to secrecy and given a number. Mine’s thirteen, and it’s brung
me nuthin’ but bad luck.”
“—So you’re the guy that broke into the Boltons!”
“I was, sir—got in by a winder. But I didn’t get nuthin’—and I lost my
token into the bargain. Professor raised the roof about it, and docked
my pay, too.”
“That was just too bad,” declared Osceola sarcastically. “Now go ahead
with the rest of it—this organization, and old Fanely’s crazy fancy.”
“It weren’t no fancy, sir. Professor Fanely, for all his friendliness
with the big bugs down in Washington, hates the whole bunch of ’em like
poison. He wanted to be President, but they wouldn’t let him run—too old
to be considered, I guess. It’s been preyin’ on his mind ever since the
last election, but the old boy was foxy, he kept it pretty much to
himself. Lambert told me, though, he used to blow up to him. Well, last
spring he made up his mind to get even with the government. Nobody but a
crazy man would have thought up the plan. Me and some of the others that
worked for him didn’t want to go into it. It wa’nt no use, though; we
knew what we’d get in the end if we welshed. And he raised our pay then,
you see—”
“I see. But what was this crazy plan?”
“He hired a lot of thugs and dope runners in the big city, sir. And he’s
been importing big lots of cocaine from Europe. The old hotel up to
Mizzentop was bought and fitted up as a kind of laboratory-factory, and
the dope was stored up there. That house he blew up was where the
factory super and some of his head men stayed. Professor Fanely, of
course you know, is terrible wealthy. For years he’s been what they call
a great phil—philan—”
“You mean philanthropist, I take it?”
“That’s it—couldn’t think of it for a minute, sir. Well,—his speciality
is canned goods. He spends millions every year on ’em. Has ’em
distributed to the poor and the near poor all over the United States.
Even his friends get big cases of canned goods from him at Christmas
time. It’s his hobby—he’s known the country over for it.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about it,” said Osceola, “I remember his yen for giving
away canned goods. He even sent down a large shipment to my Seminoles in
Florida last winter. I ate some of the stuff myself, and wrote him a
letter of thanks. But what do his canned goods have to do with the
cocaine smuggling?”
“Why, the Professor has made a solution of the stuff, that he says is
impossible to detect.”
“Detect—in what?”
Unconsciously Ashton Sanborn and Bill moved to a position just outside
the screen door.
“Detect in the canned goods,” Number 13 explained. “That stuff is
concentrated at Mizzentop. Every can has a very small hole bored in the
top, and the solution is squirted into the soup or fruit or whatever’s
in the can, by a small syringe. This little bit of a hole—it’s just big
enough to push the needle through—is closed up again. It’s all done by
machinery that’s been installed in the old hotel at Mizzentop.”
“_Great guns!_” ejaculated the young Chief in horror. “Why, that will
make dope fiends of thousands, perhaps millions of men, women and
children!”
“That’s the Professor’s idea, sir. They’ll get the cocaine habit and
never know how they done it. Professor Fanely says it’s the best way he
knows of for getting even with a country that won’t have him for
President. When I was up there yesterday, I seen a case of goods
addressed to the White House. If he’s given enough time, he boasts he’ll
have everybody in the United States, from the chief executive in
Washington down, eating his free canned goods.”
Ashton Sanborn swung open the screen door and strode into the kitchen.
“Look here!” he thundered. “How long have these shipments been leaving
Mizzentop?”
“Oh—but the Professor has had such a job perfectin’ his cocaine solution
that only the first boxes of the goods is ready to leave the factory.”
Sanborn mopped his brow. “Thank God for that! Then none of it has gone
out yet?”
“That’s so, sir. I believe Mike intends to take the first truck loads
down to the Pawling railroad station in the morning.”
“Well, now that we know, what are we going to do about it?” asked
Osceola.
“Raid the place with State Police, of course. We’ll pile this man and
his wife into the car with us, and light out for the Greenwich Police
Station. I’ve got to get Captain Simmonds on the telephone at once. You
fellows grab the woman. I’ll take care of this chap.” He swung the
trussed figure over his shoulders and tramped out of the house.
“This couple tied you up, did they?” Bill asked the chief as they made
their way toward the front room.
“They sure did. And chucked me into an empty coal bin down cellar. The
idiots tied my hands in front of me, though. Gosh, how I hate the taste
of hemp!”
“Gnawed through the rope, eh?”
“Yep, and found a hatchet in the cellar. When I came up here, Number 13
and his spouse were playing cards at the kitchen table. I guess they
thought the whole Seminole Nation had arrived when I hurled the young ax
and pinned 13’s coat sleeve to the table! Well, that’s that.”
“It is,” said Bill. “And what a prize you pulled! You know, it’s a
gruesome ending. Funny thing—”
“It’s about the most awful thing you and I have ever been mixed up in,
Bill. This canned food business is horrible!”
“I’ll say it is! Makes my bones feel like water just to think of it. But
that isn’t what I meant—”
“What then?”
“Why, in every mystery book or detective story I’ve read, the tale ends
when the mystery is solved.”
“And what’s that got to do with the price of doped canned goods?”
“Well, this mystery is solved, isn’t it? And yet we’ve got the hardest
part of the whole thing ahead of us.”
“Catching old Fanely and pinning the cans to him?”
“That’s it.”
“This,” remarked Osceola, “is not a book, Bill. It’s a racket. Come
along and give me a hand with the old woman.”