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

her face against his chest.

“There they are!” Brill shouted. He was holding a .45 Colt automatic in his hand and he waved it wildly in the air. “Look at them!

A fine pair of crooks and murderers! But they’ll pay! You hear me, do you? You’ll pay!”

Doan was looking at the radiator in the corner. He was frowning a little bit and whistling softly and soundlessly to himself.

“Why is it so hot?” he asked.

“Eh?” Brill said. “What?”

“Why is it so hot in the bedrooms?”

“The windows have storm shutters on them,” Brill said impatiently. “They can’t be opened in a wind like this.”

“But why are the radiators so hot? The water in that one is boiling. You can hear it.”

“What damned nonsense!” Brill yelled. “Are you going to stand there and ask silly questions about radiators when Sheila Alden has been murdered and these two stand here caught in the very act—”

“No,” said Doan. “I’m going to find out about the matter of the temperature around here. You watch these two.”

“Doan, you fool!” Brill shouted. “Come back here! You’re in my employ and I demand—”

“Watch them,” said Doan. “I’ll be back in a minute or so.”

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CHAPTER VIII. HI, KOKOMO

HE WENT DOWN the hall, down the steep stairs, and across the living room. The log fireplace was dull, glowing red embers now. The wind had blown some of the smoke back down the chimney, and it made a thick murky blue haze. Doan went on across the room through the archway on the other side.

Ahead of him light showed dimly around the edge of the swinging door that led into the kitchen. The hinges squeaked as Doan pushed it back.

Kokomo was sitting in the corner beside the gleaming white and chromium of an electric range. He was still wearing his big apron, and the tall chefs hat was tilted down rakishly over his left eye. He had what looked like the same toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and it moved up and down jerkily as he said:

“What can I do for you, sonny?”

“Don’t you ever go to bed at night?” Doan asked.

“Naw. I’m an owl.”

“It’s awfully hot upstairs,” said Doan.

“Too bad.”

“I notice you have a central hot water heating system here. What does the furnace burn—coal or oil?”

“Coal.”

“Who takes care of it?”

“Me.”

“Where is it?”

Kokomo jerked a thick thumb at a door in the back wall of the kitchen. “Down cellar.”

“I think I’ll take a look at it.”

Kokomo took the toothpick out of his mouth and snapped it into the far corner of the room. “Run along and roll your hoop, sonny, before I lose my patience and lay you out like a rug. This here end of the premises is my bailiwick and I don’t go for any mush-faced snoopers prowlin’ around in it. I told the rest that. Now I’m tellin’ it to you.”

“On the other hand,” said Doan cheerfully, “I think I’ll have a look at the furnace.”

Kokomo got up out of his chair. “Sonny, you’re gettin’ me irritated. Put that popgun away before I shove it down you throat.”

Doan dropped the gun in his coat pocket, smiling. “Aw, you wouldn’t do a mean thing like that, would you?”

Kokomo came for him with quick little shuffling steps, his head lowered and tucked between the hunched bulk of his thick shoulders.

Doan was still smiling. He made a fork out of the first two fingers of his left hand and poked them at Kokomo’s eyes. Kokomo knew that trick and, instead of ducking, he merely tilted his head back and let Doan’s stiffened fingers slide off his low forehead. But when he put his head back, he exposed his thickly muscular throat.

Doan hit him squarely on the adam’s apple with a short right jab. It was a wickedly effective blow, and Kokomo made a queer strangling noise and grasped his throat with both hands, rolling his head back and forth in agony. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes bulged horribly.

Doan hit him again, a full roundhouse swing with all his compact weight behind it. His fist smacked on the hinge of Kokomo’s jaw. Kokomo went back one step and then another, shaking his head helplessly, still trying to draw a breath.

“I should break my hands on you, cement-head,” Doan said casually. He took the revolver out of his coat pocket and slammed Kokomo on the top of the head with the butt of it.

The blow smashed the tall chefs hat into a weirdly lopsided pancake. Kokomo dropped to his knees, sagging loosely. With cold-blooded efficiency Doan hit him again in the same place. Kokomo flopped forward on his face and lay there on the shiny linoleum without moving.

It had happened very fast, and Doan was standing there now, looking down at Kokomo, still smiling in his casually amused way. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“These tough guys,” he said, shrugging.

He dropped the revolver in his coat pocket again and stepped over Kokomo. The cellar door was fastened with a patent bolt. Doan unlatched it and peered down a flight of steep wooden stairs that were lighted dimly from the kitchen behind him. He felt around the door and found a light switch and clicked it. Nothing happened. The light down in the cellar, if there was one, didn’t work.

Doan went down the steps, feeling his way cautiously as he got beyond the path of the light from the kitchen door. The cellar was a warm, dark cavern thick with the smell of coal dust. Feeling overhead, Doan located the warmth of a fat asbestos-wrapped pipe and judged from the direction it ran that the furnace was over in the far corner.

He started that way, sliding his feet cautiously along the cement floor. He was somewhere in the middle of it, out of reach of either wall, when something made a quick silent breath going past in front of his face.

He stopped with a jerk, reaching for his revolver. The thing that had gone past his face hit the wall behind him with a dull ominous thud and dropped to the floor. Doan stayed rigidly still, his revolver poised. He was afraid to move for fear of stumbling over something. He listened tensely, his head tilted.

A voice whispered out of the darkness ahead of him. “Don’t—don’t you dare come any closer. I’ve got a shovel here. I’ll—hit you with it.”

Doan was a hard man to surprise, but he was as startled now as he ever had been in his life. He stared in the direction of the voice, his mouth open.

The voice said shakily: “You get out.”

“Whoa,” Doan said. “Wait a minute. I’m not coming any closer. Just listen to me before you heave any more of that coal.”

“Who—who are you?”

“Name’s Doan.”

“The detective! Oh!”

“That’s what I say. And who’re you?”

“Sheila Alden.”

“Ah,” said Doan blankly. He drew a deep breath. “Well, I know I’m not drunk, so this must be happening. If you’re Sheila Alden down here in the cellar, who’s the Sheila Alden up in the bedroom?”

“That’s my secretary, Leila Adams. She’s been impersonating me.”

“Oh. Sort of a game, huh?”

“No!”

“Well, I was just asking. What’s the matter with the light down here?”

“I screwed the bulb out of the socket.”

“Well, where is it? I’ll screw it back in again. I need some light on the subject.”

“Oh, no! No! Don’t!”

“Why not?”

“I—I haven’t any clothes on.”

“You haven’t any clothes on,” Doan repeated. He shook his head violently. “Maybe I’m a little sleepy or something. I don’t seem to be getting this. Suppose you just start and tell me all about it.”

“Well, Leila and I came up here alone. Kokomo had come ahead to open up the place. Kokomo and Leila are in this together. When we got here they held me up and locked me in the cellar—in the back room beyond this one. Leila told me she was going to pretend she was me.”

“Is Brill crazy? Didn’t he know Leila Adams wasn’t you?”

“No. Mr. Dibben in the law firm always handled all my business. I don’t know Mr. Brill. He’s never seen me.”

“Well, well,” said Doan. “Then what?”

“They just locked me in that cellar room. There’s one window, and they didn’t want to put bars over it, so they took all my clothes away from me. They knew I wouldn’t get out the window then. If I did I’d freeze.

“It’s two miles to the station and I didn’t know which way. And Kokomo said if I screamed he’d…” Her voice trailed off into a little gasping sob. “He told me what he’d do.”

“Yeah,” said Doan. “I can imagine.”

“Where is he now?”

“Kokomo? He’s slightly indisposed at the moment. Go on. Tell me the rest.”

“I broke a little piece of metal off the window, and I picked the lock on the door and got out here. I know how the heating system works. The valves are down here. I turned off the ones that controlled the downstairs radiators and opened the ones that control the upstairs radiators wide.

“Then I kept putting coal in the furnace with the drafts wide open. I thought if I made it hot enough in the upstairs bedrooms someone besides Kokomo would come down and look.”

“Sure,” said Doan. “Smart stuff. If I’d had any brains I’d have been down here hours ago. You stay right here and I’ll bring you something to wear. Don’t be afraid any more.”

“I haven’t been afraid—not very much. Only—only of Kokomo coming down here and—”

“He won’t be coming down. Stay right here. I’ll be right back.” Doan ran back up the steps. All his cheerful casual air was gone now. His lips were thinned across his teeth, and he moved with a cat-like, lithe efficiency.

Kokomo was still lying flat on his face in the center of the kitchen floor. Doan, moving with the same quiet quickness, opened the cupboard door and located an aluminum kettle.

He filled it with water at the sink. Carrying it carefully, he walked over to Kokomo and, using the toe of one shoe, expertly flipped the big man over on his back.

He dumped the kettle of water in Kokomo’s blankly upturned face. For a second there was no reaction, then Kokomo’s pulpy lips moved, and he sputtered wetly. His eyes opened and he saw Doan looking thoughtfully down at him.

“Hi, Kokomo,” Doan said softly. “Hi, baby.”

Kokomo made noises in his throat and heaved himself up on his elbows. Doan took one short step forward and kicked him under the jaw so hard that Kokomo’s whole lolling body lifted clear of the floor and rolled half under the stove. He didn’t move any more.

“I’ll have another present for you later,” Doan said.

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CHAPTER IX. BLACK SNOW

HE WENT IN through the living room to the front hall. He had opened the door of the closet and located his snow-damp topcoat when he heard a little shuffling noise at the top of the stairs. He turned around to look.

It was Brill. The light behind him made him look grotesquely thin, sagging in the middle like a broken pencil.

“Doan!” he gasped.

He got hold of the railing with both hands, and then he came down the stairs in a crazily shuffling dance, his skinny legs wavering and twisting weirdly. He tripped and fell headlong down the last ten steps before Doan could catch him.

The skin on his face was yellowish, the cheekbones bulging out in ugly lumps. Blood was streaked in a long smear across his forehead. Doan straightened him out on the steps.

“Doan!” he