The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

“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.

Suits of armor gleamed on either side of Culp’s desk. Arrayed behind it were express rifles and sidearms, bird guns, daggers, cutlasses, and swords. Bell spotted an empty space where a pistol was missing, and another, longer telltale space in a section of rifles with telescope sights. He sniffed the air but smelled no odor of the zoo, only leather, gun oil, and cigars.

When suddenly he felt a presence, he glided behind a panther and drew his pistol.

“Bell,” called J. B. Culp. “You keep turning up like a bad penny.”

The magnate was in the hall, one hand on the nailheaded door. In the other, he held a revolver. Bell recognized the highly accurate Colt Bisley Target Model by its flat top strap.

He braced his own gun barrel between the big cat’s ears. “Drop the gun and raise your hands.”

Culp turned sideways like a duelist and took deliberate aim.

Isaac Bell fired one shot at the only man who could tell him how Branco would attack the President. He hit the gun squarely. The Bisley glittered in the lights as it spun through the air. J. B. Culp clutched his hand and bellowed in pain.

Bell bounded toward him, commanding, “Elevate!”

Culp slammed the door in Bell’s face and drove the bolts home.

Bell raced the length of the room, weaving through the trophies. The only other door he had seen was in an alcove. It was smaller than the fortress door and was secured by a single bolt. He slid the bolt open. But the door was still locked, bolted like the fortress door, from outside as well. He threw his shoulder against it. It stood firm as masonry.

He ran to the telephone on the rosewood desk to call the Van Dorn detective who was tapping the line. It rang before he reached it. He picked it up and said, “Stop this while you still can, Culp.”

“Sit tight,” said Culp. “I’ll send the Sheriff when he’s done guarding the President’s speech and he’ll arrest you for trespassing again, stealing my 1903 Springfield rifle, and for shooting me when I caught you sneaking in to steal another.”

“Antonio Branco will squeal on you the second he’s arrested.”

“He won’t be arrested,” said Culp.

“The Van Dorn Agency won’t give up until he is. Never.”

“He won’t be arrested,” Culp repeated. “Guaranteed.”

The line went dead.

Bell’s eyes roamed the trophy room for a way out and fixed on the wall of weapons.

The suits of armor caught his eye.

One of them held a long jousting lance and it gave him an idea. He went back to the alcove door and inspected it closely. It was made of oak. A cold draft under it indicated it opened to the outside. All the better. He rapped it with his fist. Layers of oak, laminated crosswise to give the wood the strength of iron.