The Gangster

A branch broke from a tree with a loud crack. The heavy widow-maker scythed down through the snow and crashed to the ground beside him. More cracking noises sent him diving for cover under an overhang in the rocks. Broken branches rained down on the space Bell had vacated. Moments later, the squall raced away, the wind abated, and the sun filtered down through the treetops.

Bell peered among the dark stones that had sheltered him. He lit a match. The orange flame penetrated the dark, and Bell saw that the overhang was the mouth of a cave. He opened his jacket to free up his pistol and crawled inside.

41

Isaac Bell’s second match revealed a masonry ceiling that arched over a narrow passageway. He moved in deeper, and before he needed to strike a third, daylight illuminated an opening. He emerged to find himself among the hemlocks inside J. B. Culp’s wall. A mere dusting of snow had penetrated the trees, and the footsteps were easy to trace up the slope.

The trees began to thin out. Lawns, lightly snow-covered, spread ahead and to the left for two hundred yards up to the pillared main mansion. The trees continued thinning to the right, toward the immense, barnlike building that housed the gymnasium. Bell saw the tracks veer toward it. Employing what little cover the remaining trees provided, he moved up the hill until he reached the ground floor side entrance to the servants’ quarters, where the boxers Lee and Barry had lived when he was here last.

He tried the door. The knob turned freely.

Two narrow beds were draped with muslin dust cloths. The steam radiator was shut off, and it felt almost as cold inside the room as outdoors. A rank odor hung in the air. The scent puzzled Bell. It was not quite a gymnasium locker room aroma. Sharper than the stale stink of sweating boxers, it smelled more like a kennel than a locker room, but even ranker than a kennel. A decomposing body? he wondered fleetingly. But there was no body in the room. And, besides, it reeked of life, not death.

A recollection of something totally different flashed through his mind. It was so odd that he wondered was it a lingering effect of his long asphyxiation sleep. He did not smell shoe polish, but for some reason he suddenly had a vivid memory of blacking his hair to masquerade as a Hebrew needlework contractor in Little Italy.

Footsteps sounded directly overhead.

Out the interior door in an instant, Bell found stairs and vaulted up them silently.

He drew his pistol, held it at his side, muzzle pointed at the floor, and stepped through an open door. Another empty room, but considerably larger and more finely appointed, with a fur coverlet on an enormous bed, an easy chair, a carved writing desk, and a matching case full of books. A fire burned low in the hearth. A black kettle hung in the corner of the fireplace, and a pot for brewing coffee stood beside silver cream and sugar service. Pot, pitcher, and bowl were almost empty. If this was where Culp housed Antonio Branco, out of sight of the servants in the main house and near the Underground Railroad passage, the gangster had been here within the hour.

“Oh!”

A middle-aged housemaid had just stepped from the bathroom with an armload of towels. “You gave me a fright.”

Bell holstered his weapon as she squinted nearsightedly across the room. “It’s Mr. Bell, isn’t it? I’m Rachel. You stayed at the main house when Mrs. Culp was still here.”

“Who stayed in this room?”

“I have no idea, sir. They just sent me down this morning to clean up. Most everyone’s gone to New York City.”

“When did the man staying here leave?”

“I guess this morning. The fire’s still burning.”

“Where could I find Mr. Culp?”

“I don’t know, sir… I’ve got to get back to the house. Is there anything else you need, sir?”

“Wait one moment, please. What is that smell?” He smelled it here, too, but fainter.

Still holding the towels, she sniffed the air. “What smell? The coffee?”

“No. Something else. Like a zoo.”

“There’s a zoo next door.”

“A zoo?”

“A dead zoo. Where he keeps the creatures he shoots.”

“The trophy room?”

“Lions, tigers, and bears. Maybe you smell a new one, just stuffed.”

She pointed Bell down the hall and rushed off.

Bell hurried past a secretarial cubby hole, which was equipped with a typewriter, telephone, and telegraph key. A fortress door blocked the end of the hall, studded with hand-forged nailheads and secured high and low by iron bolts. Bell slid them open and pulled the door toward him. It swung heavily on concealed hinges, and the tall detective walked under an arch of elephant tusks into a two-story, windowless room lighted brightly by electricity.

Culp’s big game kills were preserved, stuffed, and mounted as if they were alive.

Lions roamed the floor. Panthers crouched on tree limbs and boulders. An elephant charged, ears spread wide, trunk upraised. Horned heads loomed from three walls. A taxidermied grizzly bear reared.