Holocaust House by Norbert Davis (best e books to read txt) 📕

on Turk Street called the Glasgow Limited. Know where it is?”

“I can find it,” the driver said gloomily. “That’ll be as far as you’re ridin’ with me, ain’t it—I hope?”

The Glasgow Limited was battered and dilapidated, and it sagged forlornly in the middle. Even the tin stack-vent from its cooking range was tilted drunkenly forward. It was fitted in tightly slantwise on the very corner of a lot, and as if to emphasize its down-at-the-heels appearance an enormous, shining office building towered austere and dignified beside it, putting the Glasgow Limited always in the shadow of its imposing presence.

The taxi stopped at the curb in front of it. This was the city’s financial district, and on Sunday it was deserted. A lone street car, clanging its way emptily along looked like a visitor from some other age. The meter on the taxi showed a dollar and fifty cents, and Doan asked the driver:

“Can you trip that meter up to show two dollars?”

“No,” said the driver. “You think the company’s crazy?”

“You’ve got some change-over slips, haven’t you?”

“Say!” said the driver indignantly. “Are you accusing me of gypping—”

“No,” said Doan. “But you aren’t going to get a tip, so you might as well pull it off a charge slip. Have you got one that shows two dollars?”

The driver scowled at him for a moment. He tripped the meter and pocketed the slip. Then he took a pad of the same kind of slips from his vest pocket and thumbed through them. He handed Doan one that showed a charge of a dollar and ninety cents.

“Now blow your horn,” Doan instructed. “Lots of times.”

The driver tooted his horn repeatedly. After he had done it about ten times, the door of the Glasgow Limited opened and a man came out and glared at them.

“Come, come, MacTavish,” said Doan. “Bail me out.”

MacTavish came down the steps and across the sidewalk. He was a tall gaunt man with bony stooped shoulders. He was bald, and he had a long draggling red mustache and eyes that were a tired, blood-shot blue. He wore a white jacket that had sleeves too short for him and a stained white apron.

Doan handed him the meter charge slip. “There’s my ransom, MacTavish. Pay the man and put it on my account.”

MacTavish looked sourly at the slip. “I have no doubt that there’s collusion and fraud hidden somewhere hereabouts. No doubt at all.”

“Why, no,” said Doan. “You can see the charge printed right on the slip. This driver is an honest and upright citizen, and he’s been very considerate. I think you ought to give him a big tip.”

“That I will not!” said MacTavish emphatically. “He’ll get his fee and no more—not a penny!” He put a ragged dollar bill in the driver’s hand and carefully counted out nine dimes on top of it. “There! And it’s bare-faced robbery!”

He glared at the driver, but the driver looked blandly innocent. Doan got out and dragged Carstairs after him.

“And that ugly beastie!” said MacTavish. “I’ll feed him no more, you hear? Account or no account, I’ll not have him gobbling my good meat down his ugly gullet!”

Doan dragged Carstairs across the sidewalk and pushed him up the stairs and into the dining car. MacTavish came in after them, went behind the counter and slammed the flap down emphatically.

Doan sat down on a stool and said cheerfully: “Good morning, MacTavish, my friend. It’s a fine bonny morning full of the smell of heather and mountain dew, isn’t it? Fix up a pound of round for Carstairs, and be sure it’s none of that watery gruel you feed your unsuspecting customers. Carstairs is particular, and he has a delicate stomach. I’ll take ham and eggs and toast and coffee—a double order.”

MacTavish leaned on the counter. “And what’ll you pay for it with, may I ask?”

“Well, it’s true that I find myself temporarily short on ready cash, but I have a fine Swiss watch—”

“No, you haven’t,” said MacTavish, “because I’ve got it in the cash register right now.”

“Good,” said Doan. “That watch is worth at least fifty—”

“You lie in your teeth,” said MacTavish. “You paid five dollars for it in a pawn shop. I’ll have no more to do with such a loafer and a no-good. I’ve no doubt that if you had your just deserts you’d be in prison this moment. I’ll feed you this morning, but this is the last time. The very last time, you hear?”

“I’m desolated,” said Doan. “Hurry up with the ham and eggs, will you, MacTavish? And don’t forget Carstairs’ ground round.”

MacTavish went to the gas range, grumbling under his breath balefully, and meat made a pleasantly sizzling spatter. Carstairs put his head over the counter and drooled in eager anticipation.

“MacTavish,” said Doan, raising his voice to speak over the sizzle of the meat, “am I correct in assuming I visited your establishment last night?”

“You are.”

“Was I—ah—slightly intoxicated?”

“You were blind, stinking, pig-drunk.”

“You have such a pleasant way of putting things,” Doan observed. “I was alone, no doubt, bearing up bravely in solitary sadness?”

“You were not. You had one of your drunken, bawdy, criminal companions with you.”

MacTavish set a platter of meat on the counter, and Doan put it on top of one of the stools so that Carstairs could get at it more handily. Carstairs gobbled politely, making little grunting sounds of appreciation.

Doan said casually: “This—ah—friend I had with me. Did you know him?”

“I never saw him before, and if my luck lasts I’ll never see him again. I liked his looks even less than I do yours.”

“You’re in rare form this morning, MacTavish. Did you hear me mention my friend’s name?”

“It was Smith,” said MacTavish, coming up with a platter of ham and eggs and a cup of coffee.

“Smith,” said Doan, chewing reflectively. “Well, it’s a nice name. Don’t happen to know where I picked him up, do you?”

“I know where you said you picked him up. You said he was a stray soul lost in the wilderness of this great metropolis and that you had rescued him. You said you’d found him in front of your apartment building wasting away in the last stages of starvation, so I knew you were blind drunk, because the man had a belly like a balloon.”

“In front of my apartment,” Doan repeated thoughtfully. “This is all news to me. Could you give me a short and colorful description of this gentleman by the name of Smith?”

“He was tall and pot-bellied, and he had black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars and a mustache the rats had been nesting in, and he wore dark glasses and kept his hat on and his overcoat collar turned up. I mind particularly the mustache, because you kept asking him if you could tweak it.”

“Ah,” said Doan quietly. He knew now where he had gotten the instinctive warning about the metal case. Drunk as Doan had been, he had retained enough powers of observation to realize that the mysterious Smith’s mustache had been false—that the man was disguised.

Doan nodded to himself. That disposed of some of the mystery of the metal case, but there still remained the puzzle of Smith’s identity and what his grudge against Doan was.

CHAPTER III. THE TEMPESTUOUS TOGGERY

AT THAT MOMENT the front door slammed violently open, and J. S. Toggery came in with his head down and his arms swinging belligerently. He was short and stocky and bandy-legged. He had an apoplectically red face and fiercely glistening false teeth.

“A fine thing,” he said savagely. “A fine thing, I say! Doan, you bum! Where have you been for the last three days?”

Doan pushed his empty coffee cup toward MacTavish. “Another cup, my friend. I wish you’d tell the more ill-bred of your customers to keep their voices down. It disturbs my digestion. How are you, Mr. Toggery? I have a serious question to ask you.”

“What?” Toggery asked suspiciously.

“Do you know a man whose name isn’t Smith and who doesn’t wear dark glasses and doesn’t have black eyebrows or a black mustache or a pot-belly and who isn’t a friend of mine?”

Toggery sat down weakly on one of the stools. “Doan, now be reasonable. Haven’t you any regard for my health and well-being? Do you want to turn me into a nervous wreck? I have a very important job for you, and I’ve been hunting you high and low for three days, and when I find you I’m greeted with insolence, evasion and double-talk. Do you know how to ski?”

“Pardon me,” said Doan. “I thought you asked me if I knew how to ski.”

“I did. Can you use skis or snow-shoes or ice skates?”

“No,” said Doan.

“Then you have a half-hour to learn. Here’s your railroad ticket. Your train leaves from the Union Station at two-thirty. Get your heavy underwear and your woolen socks and be on it.”

“Why?” Doan asked.

“Because I told you to, you fool!” Toggery roared. “And I’m the man who’s crazy enough to be paying you a salary! Now, will you listen to me without interposing those crackpot comments of yours?”

“I’ll try,” Doan promised.

Toggery drew a deep breath. “All right. A girl by the name of Sheila Alden is spending the first of the mountain winter season at a place in the Desolation Lake country. You’re going up there to see that nothing happens to her for the next three or four weeks.”

“Why?” Doan said.

“Because she hired the agency to do it! Or rather, the bank that is her guardian did. Now listen carefully. Sheila Alden’s mother died when she was born. Her father died five years ago, and he left a trust fund for her that amounts to almost fifty million dollars. She turns twenty-one in two days, and she gets the whole works when she does.

“There’s been a lot of comment in the papers about a young girl getting handed all that money, and she’s gotten a lot of threats from crackpots of all varieties. That Desolation Lake country is as deserted as a tomb this time of year. The season don’t start up there for another month. The bank wants her to have some protection until the publicity incident to her receiving that enormous amount of money dies down.”

Doan nodded. “Fair enough. Where did her old man get all this dough to leave her?”

“He invented things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Powder and explosives.”

“Oh,” said Doan, thinking of the deep yellow gouge the metal case had left in the hillside. “What kind of explosives?”

“All kinds. He specialized in the highly concentrated variety like they use in hand grenades and bombs. That’s why the trust he left increased so rapidly. It’s all in munitions stock of one kind and another.”

“Ummm,” said Doan. “Did you tell anyone you were planning on sending me up to look after her?”

“Of course. Everybody I could find who would listen to me. Have you forgotten that I’ve been looking high and low for you for three days, you numb-wit?”

“I see,” said Doan vaguely. “What’s the girl doing up there in the mountains?”

“She’s a shy kid, and she’s been bedeviled persistently by cranks and fortune hunters and every other kind of chiseler.” J. S. Toggery sighed and looked dreamily sentimental. “It’s a shame when you think of it. That poor lonely kid—she hasn’t a relative in the world—all alone up there in that damned barren mountain country. Hurt and bewildered because of the unthinking attitude of the public. No one to love her and protect her and sympathize with her. If I weren’t so busy I’d go up there with you. She needs someone older—some steadying influence.”

“And fifty