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

coat, a red hatchet-like face with fiercely glaring eyes, and a stained duck-hunter’s cap with the ear flaps pulled down. The man stood as tall and stiff as some weird statue with his shadow stretched jagged and menacing beside him.

“I’m the station master. This here’s company property. What you doin’ on it?”

“Trying to get off it,” said Doan.

“Where’d you come from?”

“The train, stupid. You think I’m a parachute trooper?”

“Oh,” said the tall man. “Oh. Was you a passenger?”

“Well, certainly.”

“Oh. I thought you were a bum or something. Nobody ever comes up here this time of year.”

“I’ll remember that. Come closer with the light. Keep the dogs back.”

The tall man came slowly closer. Doan saw now that he had only one arm—the left—the one that was holding the lantern. His right sleeve was empty.

“Who’s our friend here?” Doan asked, indicating the stiff frozen figure against the wall.

The tall man said casually: “Him? Oh, that’s Boley, the regular station master. I’m his relief.”

“He looks a little on the dead side to me.”

The tall man had a lean gash of a mouth, and the thin lips moved now to show jagged yellow teeth. “Dead as a smoked herring.”

“What happened to him?”

“Got drunk and lay out in the snow all night and froze stiff as a board.”

“Planning on just leaving him here permanently?”

“I can’t move him alone, mister.” The tall man indicated his empty right sleeve with a jerk of his head. “I told ‘em to stop and pick him up tonight, but they musta forgot to do it. I’ll call ‘em again. It ain’t gonna hurt him to stay here. He won’t spoil in this weather.”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

“Dead ones don’t hurt nobody, mister. I’ve piled ‘em on trench parapets and shot over ‘em. They’re as good as sandbags for stop-pin’ bullets.”

“That’s a nice thought too. Where’s this station you’re master of?”

“Right ahead a piece.”

“Start heading for it. Keep the dogs away. I don’t like the way they look at me.”

The light lowered. The tall man sidled past Doan, and his thin legs moved shadowy and stick-like in the lantern gleam, going away.

Doan followed cautiously, carrying the grip in one hand and the cocked revolver in the other. He looked back every third step, but the yellow eyes were gone now.

The shed ended abruptly, and the station was around the curve from it, a yellow box-like structure squashed in against the bare rock of the canyon face with light coming very dimly through small, snow-smeared windows.

The tall man opened the door, and Doan followed him into a small square room lighted with one unshaded bulb hanging behind the shining grillwork of the oval ticket window. Yellow varnished benches ran along two walls, and a stove gleamed dully red in the corner between them.

Doan kicked the door shut behind him and dropped his grip on the floor. He still held his revolver casually in his right hand.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jannen,” said the tall man. He had taken off his duck-hunter’s cap. He was bald, and his head was long and queerly narrow. He stood still, watching Doan, his eyes gleaming with slyly malevolent humor. “You come up here for somethin’ special? There ain’t no place to stay. There’s a couple of hotels down-canyon, but they ain’t open except for the snow sports.”

Doan jerked his head to indicate the storm outside. “Isn’t that snow?”

“This here is just an early storm. It’ll melt off mostly on the flats. In the winter season she gets eight-ten feet deep here on the level, and they bring excursion trains up—sometimes four-five hundred people to once—and park ‘em on the sidings over weekends.”

There was a whine and then a scratching sound on the door behind Doan.

The tall man jerked his head. “Can I let my dogs inside, mister?”

Doan moved over and sat down on the bench. “Go ahead.”

Jannen opened the door, and three shadowy gray forms slunk through it. They were enormous beasts, thick-furred, with blunt wedge-shaped heads. They circled the room and sat down in a silent motionless row against the far wall, watching Doan unblinkingly with eyes that were like yellow, cruel jewels.

“Nice friendly pets,” Doan observed.

“Them’s sled dogs, mister.”

“What dogs?” Doan asked.

“Sled dogs—huskies. See, sometimes them tourists that come up here, they get tired of skiin’ and snow-shoein’ and then I pick me up a little side money haulin’ ‘em around on a dog sled with the dogs. Lot of ‘em ain’t never rid behind dogs before, and they get a big kick out of it. Them are good dogs, mister.”

“You can have them. Do you know where the Alden lodge is from here?”

Jannen’s lips moved back from the jagged teeth. “You a friend of that girl’s?” His voice was low and tight.

“Not yet. Are you?”

Jannen’s eyes were gleaming, reddish slits. “Oh, yeah. Oh, sure I am. I got a good reason to be.” With his left hand he reached over and tapped his empty right sleeve. “That’s a present from her old man.”

Doan was watching him speculatively. “So? How did it happen?”

“Grenade. I was fightin’ over in China. It blew up in my hand. Tore my arm off. Old man Alden’s factory sold the Chinks that grenade. It had a defective fuse.”

“That’s not the girl’s fault.”

Jannen’s lips curled. “Oh, sure not. Nobody’s fault. An accident. Didn’t amount to nothin’—just a man’s right arm tore off, that’s all. Just made me a cripple and stuck me up in this hell-hole at this lousy job. Yeah. I love that Alden girl. Every time I hear that name I laugh fit to bust with joy.”

His voice cracked, and his face twisted into a fiendish grimace. The dogs stirred against the wall uneasily, and one of them whimpered a little.

“Yeah,” Jannen said hoarsely. “Sure. I like her. Her old man skimped on that grenade job, and skimped on it so he could leave that girl another million. You’d like her too, mister, if an Alden grenade blew your right arm off, wouldn’t you? You’d like her every time you fumbled around one-handed like a crippled bug, wouldn’t you?

“You’d like her every time the pain started to bite in that arm stump so you couldn’t sleep at night, wouldn’t you? You’d feel real kind toward her while you was sleepin’ in flop houses and she was spendin’ the blood money her old man left her, wouldn’t you, mister?”

The man was not sane. He stood there swaying, and then he laughed a little in a choking rasp that shook his thin body.

“You want me to show you the way to the lodge? Sure, mister. Glad to. Glad to do a favor for an Alden any old time.”

Doan stood up. “Let’s start,” he said soberly.

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CHAPTER V. MISS MILLION-BUCKS

DOAN SMELLED THE smoke first, coming thin and pungent down-wind, and then Jannen stopped short in front of him and said:

“There it is.”

The wind whipped the snow away for a second, and Doan saw the house at the mouth of a ravine that widened out into a flat below them. The walls were black against the white drifts, and the windows stared with dull yellow eyes.

“Thanks,” said Doan. “I can make it from here. If I could offer some slight compensation for your time and trouble…”

Jannen was hunched up against the wind like some gaunt beast of prey, staring down at the house, wrapped up in darkly bitter thoughts of his own. His voice came thickly.

“I don’t want none of your money.”

“So long,” said Doan.

“Eh?” said Jannen, looking around.

Doan pointed back the way they had come. “Goodbye, now.”

Jannen turned clumsily. “Oh, I’m goin’. But I ain’t forgettin’ nothin’, mister.” His mittened left hand touched his empty right sleeve. “Nothin’ at all. You tell her that for me.”

“I’ll try to remember,” said Doan.

He stood with his head tilted against the wind, watching Jannen until he disappeared back along the trail, his three huskies slinking along like stunted shadows at his heels. Then he shrugged uneasily and went down the steep slant of the ridge to the flat below. The wind had blown the snow clear of the ground in places, and he followed the faint marks of a path across the stretch of frozen rocky ground.

Close to it, the house looked larger—dark and ugly with the smoke from the chimney drifting in a jaunty plume across the white-plastered roof. The path ended at a small half-enclosed porch, and Doan climbed the log steps up to it and banged hard with his fist against the heavy door.

He waited, shivering. The cold had gotten through his light clothes. His feet tingled numbly, and the skin on his face felt drawn and stiff.

The door swung open, and a man stared out at him unbelievingly. “What—who’re you? Where’d you come from?”

“Doan—Severn Agency.”

“The detective! But man alive! Come in, come in!”

Doan stepped into a narrow shadowed hall, and the warmth swept over him like a soft grateful wave.

“Good Lord!” said the other man. “I didn’t expect you’d come tonight—in this storm!”

“That’s Severn service,” Doan told him. “When duty calls, we answer. And besides, I’m overdrawn on my salary.”

“But you’re not dressed for—Why, you must be frozen stiff!”

He was a tall man, very thin, with a sharp dramatically haggard face. His hair was jet-black with a peculiarly distinctive swathe of pure white running back slantwise from his high forehead. He talked in nervous spurts, and he had a way of making quick little half-gestures that had no meaning, as though he were impatiently jittery.

“A trifle rigid in spots,” Doan admitted. “Have you got some concentrated heat around the premises?”

“Yes! Yes, surely! Come in here! My name is Brill, by the way. I’m in charge of Miss Alden’s account with the National Trust. Taking care of the legal end. But of course you know all about that. In here.”

It was a long living room with a high ceiling that matched the peak of the roof. At the far end there was an immense natural stone fireplace with the flame hooking eager little blue fingers around the log that almost filled it.

“But you should have telephoned from the station,” Brill was saying. “No need to come out tonight in this.”

“Have you a telephone here?” Doan asked.

“Certainly, certainly. Telephone, electricity, central heating, all that… . Miss Alden, this is Mr. Doan, the detective from the Severn Agency. You know, I told you—”

“Yes, of course,” said Sheila Alden. She was sitting on the long, low divan in front of the fire. She was a small, thin girl with prim features, and she looked disapprovingly at Doan and then down at the snow he had tracked across the floor. She had lusterless stringy brown hair and teeth that protruded a little bit, and she wore thick horn-rimmed glasses.

“Hello,” said Doan. He didn’t think he was going to like her very well.

“This seems all very melodramatic and very unnecessary,” said Sheila Alden. “A detective to guard me! It’s so absurd.”

“Now, not at all, not at all,” said Brill in a harassed tone. “It’s the thing to do—the only thing. I’m responsible, you know. The National people hold me directly responsible for your well-being. We must take every reasonable precaution. We really must. I’m doing the best I know how.”

“I know,” said Sheila Alden, faintly contemptuous. “Pull up that chair, Mr. Doan, and get close to the fire. By the way, this is Mr. Crowley.”

“Hello, there,” said Crowley cheerfully. “You’re hardly dressed for the weather, old chap. If you plan to stay around here I’ll have to lend you some