The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc. (14 page)

“We have been unable to get in touch with Mrs. Martineau, either,” Buell admitted. “Perhaps she has taken a trip without telling anyone. In any event, it’s none of our business.”

“You won’t tell me why she sold?”

“I can’t. We got ‘sell’ orders. That’s all I know. And if I did know more, I wouldn’t tell you or anybody else,” the broker snapped. “I’ve been questioned too much. Good day to you.”

It was about what Benson had expected, but it had been worth making a try, at least, for information from this source.

He went out—to a phone booth, where he dialed a number and placed a handful of change on the phone-booth counter for a long conversation.

Benson, as adventurer, had met thousands of men in positions ranging from that of water-front bum to governors of States. As rich man and business promoter, he had met more thousands, bankers, accountants, stock salesmen. Few men in the world had as varied and prodigious an acquaintanceship as his. He had lines of friendships leading into all sorts of places. And he utilized one of these lines now, as a short cut.

“Carter,” he said, when an important voice said “Hello” after the intervention of a switchboard girl and three secretaries, “this is Dick Benson talking.”

The man was Benjamin Carter, vice president of the Buffalo National Bank. He chuckled with delight.

“Dick! You old sawhorse! I didn’t know you were in this part of the world. We’ll have to get together—”

“Not just now,” said Benson. “I called for a little financial information. In rather a hurry—”

“Any financial information I can give
you,
you could put in your eye. You can beat the traders at their own game. But how are things? I heard you got married. Is the wife with you?”

“Yes,” said Benson steadily, eyes pale flames. “Yes. I got married. My wife . . . is not with me. I called about the stock of Buffalo Tap & Die, Carter. You probably have the last annual report lying around the bank. Dig it up and give me the dope, will you?”

There was a long pause. Benson dropped coins in the phone box. Carter came back on.

“I got one. Funny thing, though. There was no report in the regular files. I just happened to have this extra one in my desk. Finally remembered about it.”

He read down the sheet, and Benson listened with eyes intent but face dead and forever expressionless. Outstanding shares of stock, five hundred thousand, par one hundred. Plant and equipment—current debts—current liabilities—good will—

“Cash reserve on hand, fourteen million two hundred thousand dollars,” the banker finished.

“The size of the reserve,” said Benson, “puts the firm in a fine, sound spot, I’d say. Why is the stock so low, Carter?”

“It got started down with all the others listed on the board in the current recession,” the banker said. “No sense to it, any more than to the drop in other sound stocks. But it has been hammered down even lower by the French leave that seems to have been taken by some of the executives. I’d like to know something about that myself. Everybody in-money circles would.”

“There’s been a lot of the stock dumped at distress prices,” said Benson.

“Yes. But no one with sense should sell at the current quotations.”

“Mrs. Robert Martineau did.”

“Hysterical widow,” grunted Carter. “She probably got stampeded into selling by the continual dropping of the stock.”

“One more thing,” said Benson. “Could you tell me the names of the heaviest stockholders?”

“One of our customers’ men was with Carney & Buell for a while,” mused Carter. “I think he might know. Just a minute—”

Benson dropped more coins, and then Carter picked it up again:

“There are six, Dick. Lawrence Hickock, Mrs. Martineau, Stephen Vincent, John Lansing, Arnold Leon and Harry Andrews. But why all the curiosity? Have you some stock, too?”

“Just asking around,” said Benson expressionlessly.

“You fox! I’ll bet you plan to buy a lot low, and wait for a rise. If I had your money—When am I going to see you for a reunion?”

“Soon, I hope,” Benson said. “Thanks for the information, Carter. You’ll never know how much it has helped.”

He hung up. Six principal stockholders. Of the six, four were mysteriously missing—Hickock, Leon, Mrs. Martineau, and Vincent. That left two. A man named Harry Andrews—and John Lansing.

It was to Lansing’s home that Leon had been lured, just before his disappearance. It was to Lansing’s home that Hickock had gone, after a phone call from therein spite of the fact that Lansing was supposed to be in Florida at the moment.

Benson called the hotel. MacMurdie’s Scotch burr sounded.

“Mac, go to the home of Harry M. Andrews. See if he is there. I have reason to believe he’s on our mystery list, so he probably won’t be. But check and make sure.”

“Right,” said MacMurdie. “And then?”

“Report back to the hotel. I’m going there after I make a call myself.”

Benson’s call was at the Lansing home. Queer how that name had bobbed up so often. Benson had heard the name before ever this sinister mixed-up affair started. He had placed it now.

Lansing owned the Upstate Tool & Machinery Co., a company competing with Buffalo Tap & Die.

At the Lansing house, the repaired door told that the owner had gotten back home. And a moment later, in the vast library of the place, Lansing himself confirmed it.

“Wasn’t coming up from Florida all summer. I like the summers down there. But I had to come and see what all this silly business was about. Tap & Die? I own a lot of stock in that—but where do
you
come in on this?”

“You can just call me—a questioner,” Benson said evenly.

Lansing, a portly old gentleman with vague brown eyes, stared with a wary gaze.

“Investigator? Private detective?”

“You might call it that,” said Benson.

“You’re being confounded vague. Why should I answer any of your infernal questions?”

“Because it would look odd if you refused,” Benson rapped back. “Some queer things have happened at your house, Mr. Lansing. Are you thinking of selling your Tap & Die stock?”

Something—fear suspicion, alertness, what?—leaped into the man’s eyes.

“I may be,” he said evasively. “It’s down low, and seems to be going lower. No use losing more money than you have to.”

“What part of Florida were you in during the past six weeks?”

“West Palm Beach,” snapped Lansing. “You can check on that, if you like.”

There was a subtle wall going up between him and Benson. The gray-steel man with the pale-gray eyes knew he was done questioning. That is, he could keep on questioning, if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t get any more answers. At least, he had found out one thing.

Here was
one,
at least, of Tap & Die’s big stockholders who had not mysteriously vanished.

He went back to his hotel. At the entrance, an enterprising newsie was crying the latest edition. And this time a financial item had strayed from the rear of the paper to a small box on the front page.

Buffalo Tap & Die had dropped in the face of an otherwise rising market. Another large block of stock had been sold on the decline. It was rumored that Mr. John Lansing, just home from a sojourn in Florida, had sold.

Benson’s pale eyes glittered. Lansing had already disposed of his stock, at the very moment when he was telling him that he “might sell.”

The gray fox of a man went up to the suite—and the phone was ringing. A voice, in a whisper, greeted him.

“Thank Heaven, ye’re there.”

“Mac!” said Benson. “What’s wrong? Why are you talking so low? I can hardly hear you.”

“Trouble, mon,” whispered the Scot, over the miles of wire. “They’ve got me. Andrews’—”

The fine went dead, after Benson had heard a sort of gasp—and then a moan.

Andrews’ home was modest for a man of his means. It was a large shingle bungalow at the dead end of a residence street, and cost a third of the sums that must have been spent on the other big homes around. It had extensive grounds, though, and was hidden from the road by shrubbery.

Benson glided among the bushes and trees in his silent, jaguar fashion. Mac in there—in desperate trouble of some sort!

At a glance, the house seemed to be vacant. All the shades were down against the dying sun. Not a soul could be seen—

But then Benson did see someone, and his pale, deadly eyes narrowed. A man had stepped furtively from around a corner of the house. The sly look of him, and the way he kept glancing around, told he was a guard—and a crook. Something was going on in that house which was not supposed to be interrupted.

Benson got out Mike, the unique, specially designed little revolver. He took the half-second aim of the sure marksman. There was a soft
spat
as Mike spoke in his usual silenced whisper.

And the man dropped, out for at least an hour.

Benson stole to the house and around to the rear. There was a heavy, blank door. He tried the knob, softly, and the door opened a fraction of an inch.

Benson paused there, hand on the knob, face as dead as a mask of white wax, but eyes flaming like ice in a colorless sun. Whoever was inside seemed to have placed a great deal of confidence in the guard, to leave the door unlocked. Or else the man had just stepped out for a look around and had not bothered to lock the door for the short time he meant to be out.

Benson went in. He made absolutely no sound as he went across the bare kitchen floor. You’d have thought he wasn’t quite touching the boards, but was floating an inch above them. He got to a swinging door and, after listening, went through that.

He entered the room fast, for on first opening the door he had gotten a glimpse of a chair leg—with a man’s leg roped to it!

He was in a dining room. The table had been pushed against a far wall, leaving most of the room clear. In the center of it was a chair. And to it was roped MacMurdie.

The Scot was bound at arms and legs and waist to the heavy chair. He was gagged. At the sides of the cloth that went around his head to keep the gag in place, his large red ears stuck out like distress signals. Over the gag his frosty blue eyes blazed.

But there was more in them than fury or fear. There was in them some kind of terribly urgent message.

Benson stepped toward him—and two doors opened.

From one, at the side hall, came two men. From the other, opening into a front room, another stepped. And then, from the swing door he had just entered, a fourth appeared.

Each of the four had a gun. And in the eyes of each was murder. The whole thing had been a trap, and a devilishly perfect one.

Benson stood stone-still. To have done otherwise, with four guns pointing at his body at close range, would have been silly. But his eyes were pale flame; and each of the four gunmen, meeting that pallid, deadly glance, felt something like a shock strike him.

MacMurdie’s face—what you could see of it for the gag—was one bony, red picture of contrition at having got Benson into this jam. But Benson didn’t stare at it long. He looked at the four killers.

They closed in even more on him.

“Go over him,” said one, the tallest.

One of the other three stepped to Benson, and around him. Coming up warily from the back, so Benson couldn’t possibly grab him and use him as a shield, he ran his hands over Benson’s body from neck to knees.