Holocaust House | Page 9

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