The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death (12 page)

“Yes,” said Nellie.

“Could Addington have pushed the fat man out of that window?”

“I don’t see how,” said Nellie. “They were twenty feet apart.”

Mac approached them. The Scotchman had been examining the “Diabolo” with X-rays and other testing devices as the fake picture, “The Dock,” had been tested. But Mac looked perplexed instead of satisfied.

“This painting,” he said, “is no fake.”

“What?” said Smitty.

The others stared. They’d all taken it for granted that it would be a phony, just as the supposed Gauguin was a phony.

“It’s the real thing,” said Mac. “It has been touched up in just one spot—this lavender shadow in the background—but that’s all. It’s a genuine Dubois.”

“Then why didn’t that crowd that trapped Nellie and me in the barn take the picture with them?” demanded Smitty.

“It’s as if all they wanted was a look at it,” said Nellie. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it does.” The Avenger said quietly. They looked at him, but he didn’t trouble to explain. He summed up:

“There are definitely two separate gangs mixed up in this business. They are enemies—not connected with one another.

“A fat man named Teebo apparently fell to his death, and yet is seen shortly after with the rival gang.

“This second gang appears to trail the first, trying to get back the pictures that the first sells. Yet, in the case of ‘Diabolo,’ at least, having got to the picture, the second gang doesn’t take it after all. The leader of the second gang, Addington, or Addfield, was present at the supposed death of Teebo.

“Sometimes the paintings dealt in by the first gang are fakes; sometimes they are genuine. It doesn’t seem to matter to the second crowd. They go after the fakes as desperately as they go after the originals.

“One of the second gang, killed by his own man, carried a queer ruler calibrated in uneven spaces, with a single mark on the back of it.

“In one picture we’ve seen, ‘The Dock,’ the color of the fisher lad’s nose was different from the original. In this other, ‘Diabolo,’ a spot of color in the background has been deepened. Both variations are color variations.”

They waited for The Avenger to go on; but he didn’t go on. He tossed these fragments of facts forth, and then stopped, his pale eyes like colorless holes in his expressionless face as he arranged the pieces in his quick brain.

Perhaps the arrangement meant something to him; it didn’t to Mac or Nellie or Smitty.

Then they forgot deductions for a moment because Cole Wilson returned. And in tow he had a girl so pretty that Smitty’s eyes made Nellie kick him covertly in the shins.

Cole introduced her as Miss Jessica Marsden. Then, coloring sheepishly while the girl looked apologetic, he told of his embarrassing capture at the Marsden home, followed by the attack of the gang under the leadership of the fat man.

“They took Miss Marsden and her father away in one car, and me in another,” said Cole. “The car I was in dropped quite a distance behind the first; I guess they didn’t want it to be apparent that they were trailing each other. I pressed my arm hard against my side and smashed one of Mac’s handy little anaesthetic pellets, got clear of the telephone wire they’d tied me up with, and that was that. I dove out just as they were coming around again, and I started walking to the nearest town where I could rent a car. In a couple of miles I overtook Miss Marsden.”

The Avenger’s pale eyes swung to the girl’s face.

“The men who’d taken Dad and me, deliberately set me loose,” explained Jessica Marsden. “They shoved me out of the car and told me they’d get in touch with me later.”

“That means they intend to hold your father in exchange for something they want,” Benson said. “It is a picture?”

“Yes. ‘The Princess,’ by Vernier.”

“Then they’ll make you give up the picture in exchange for your father’s life.”

“I know,” said Jessica, looking desperate. “And I don’t know where the picture is.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I haven’t any idea where it is. All I know is that Dad hid it somewhere. So I won’t be able to save him by giving up the picture. That’s why I came here. For help.”

She looked at Wilson. “I’m so sorry I mistook you for one of the gang and didn’t let you try to help us. I was stupid.”

“Just a minute,” said Smitty, looking bewildered. “You say this fat boy led the gang that attacked the Marsden house. We saw him about that time up in Connecticut.”

“You saw him just afterward,” said Cole. “He had on radio earphones when I busted Mac’s sleeping pill. I heard him say, ‘We’re to go to the Connecticut place on the double and join the others.’ Then I let them have it.”

“They joined the others, all right,” said Nellie grimly. The fiery trap that had almost closed over them was still in her mind.

Then she remembered something.

“Say! The fellow Smitty knocked out—the one we lugged here from the barn. Why don’t we see what he has to say for himself?”

The Avenger nodded. “Yes. Get him, Smitty. He’s on the second floor.”

There were beautifully furnished living quarters on the second floor. Also, there was a room with barred windows and a special door guaranteed to hold anyone a prisoner. Smitty went to this room and came back to the top-floor headquarters with their captive.

They all looked at him with a feeling of disappointment.

The man was an ordinary crook, defiant, not too intelligent-looking, tough.

“What a yegg!” murmured Nellie.

“Yeah?” snarled the man. “Well, lemme tell you, lady—”

Smitty had one vast hand on the nape of the man’s neck. He squeezed just a little, and the man squawked and became silent.

The Avenger hypnotized the fellow.

Few pairs of eyes had such effect as the pale, glacial orbs of Richard Benson. It was a rare person who did not succumb to The Avenger’s will after a few minutes of staring reluctantly into their cold, clear depths and listening to a quiet flow of words spoken in a soft monotone by the even, dominant voice.

This man did not have a strong will. He went under in record time.

“What is your name?” said Benson, when the man was completely in a trance.

“Charles Minz,” said the man in a dull, mechanical tone.

“For whom are you working?”

“A couple guys by the name of Teebo and Zara.”

“Teebo is dead. Didn’t you know that?”

“That’s what we heard. But Zara came around, all burned up, and said Teebo wasn’t dead but had just double-crossed us and left. So I dunno.”

“You’re in a fake-picture racket, aren’t you?”

“Some are phonies, some are the real stuff.”

“How do you get them?”

“Teebo and Zara have a pipeline out of France.”

“You sold a painting to Durban Vaughan.”

“Yeah. Teebo did.”

“Then your gang killed Vaughan to try to get it back. Why was that?”

“We didn’t knock him off. That was the other gang.”

“What other gang?”

“We don’t just know,” said the man in his dull voice. “All we know is that we sell a picture; then this other gang tries to get their mitts on it. Highjackers, I guess.”

“Maybe you didn’t try to get Vaughan’s picture back, at his gallery; but you certainly tried to get it at the Connecticut place.”

“Yeah. By then, we had it doped out that this stuff we’d been handling must be worth a lot more than we knew; worth so much that these other mugs killed Vaughan to get his picture away from him. So we thought we’d get it ourselves and see who offered how much for it. But before we’d found it, the other gang got there. We thought it was the cops, at first, and lammed. Later we caught on, but we’d have beat it anyway because they had us about three to one.”

“Then you have no idea why they want these pictures?”

“Nope!”

“Who else have you sold pictures to besides Marsden and Vaughan?”

“A rich guy named Ellsworth, is the only other one I know. There’ve been a lot more, but I wasn’t in on ’em.”

The Avenger decided that this was all he could get from the fellow. His tone changed, and his eyes relaxed their almost physical grip on the man, as he said: “All right. Smitty, I think the police might be interested in our friend, Charles Minz. Turn him over to them.”

The man’s ratlike eyes blinked a couple of times; then he glared around him. He didn’t know just what had happened, but he sensed that something had. Something that shouldn’t have.

“Hey! What’d you do to me? You—”

Smitty dragged him out to wait in the private Justice, Inc., cooler, till the police could come for him.

“We got one slight bit of information, anyway,” Benson said. “Winton Ellsworth, the Wall Street man, was also sold a painting. We can follow that lead.”

But it developed that they’d have had this lead anyhow, because, just then, Josh and Rosabel came in with a report on their long and laborious news sifting. The glints in their eyes told that something tremendously significant had come out of the search.

“Well, we sure found something,” said Josh. “Man, what we got!”

They listened to an account of happenings that were too pat to be just coincidental, and which had such grim undertones that all found themselves almost holding their breaths.

Josh unfolded a sheet of note paper. The Negro’s hands showed whitish highlights because he clutched the paper so hard.

“Three art collectors have reported attempted burglaries in the past ten weeks,” said Josh. “They are Alfred Swazey, Winton Ellsworth and James Gates. As far as I could tell from reading the accounts, no one of them voluntarily reported to the police. It was a servant who reported in each case. It was as if the master didn’t want the police to know.”

“Which makes it at least possible,” Rosabel added, “that perhaps many more collectors have been attacked and have said nothing.”

Josh nodded and went on.

“Swazey said the thieves undoubtedly were after an ermine coat his wife had just bought. Ellsworth thought they were after cash in his bedroom wall safe. Gates said they were probably trying to steal his wife’s jewels. But in each case”—Josh paused and stared at The Avenger—“in each case the entry was through a window in whatever room or hall the owner kept his choice paintings.”

“Of course,” said Mac. “After the pictures. We knew that before.”

Josh didn’t even look at the Scot.

“And in each case,” he said, “nothing was missing!”

The Avenger’s eyes were like glacial ice.

“They broke in, stayed for no one knows how long and went out again without taking the pictures,” said Josh.

“Wait a minute,” Nellie protested. “Remember these paintings are stolen goods and the collectors know it. They couldn’t report their loss to the police, even if they had been taken. So we don’t know—”

“We do know,” said Josh. “In each case, a servant reported the burglary. In each case, the servant would surely have noticed if a picture—either a camouflaged masterpiece or one hanging openly—was gone from the wall. Such was never reported. So such never happened.”

“They broke in and examined the paintings, but they did not take them,” Dick mused. “It was about what I expected.”

“Mon, ye might have expected it, but to the rest of us ’tis without meanin’ whateverrr—”

“Go on, Josh, there is more, isn’t there?” Dick said.

“I’ll say there’s more! Something tremendous. Something terrific!”

Josh’s hand trembled a little so that the sheet of paper rattled.

“The gang broke into Winton Ellsworth’s place July 8th. On July 10th, the King Dam and its powerhouse, in Tennessee, were blown up.”

“Aluminum,” said Smitty, eyes hard.

“Yes. A new aluminum plant had just been completed. It was just about to go into production when the explosion occurred. It will take months to rebuild the dam and the power plant. That’s one coincidence. It might not mean anything by itself, but it isn’t by itself.

“Swazey’s house was entered on July 19th. On July 22nd, the Lorenville, Indiana, powder plant went up with a burst that smashed windows eight miles away. That was our second largest new powder plant.”

They were all silent now. There wasn’t any need to comment; this spoke for itself.

“Gates’ place was burglarized—with nothing taken—on August 1st. On August 2nd four ships loaded with wheat sank at their Hoboken docks. The ships are already almost reconditioned, but the wheat is a thing of the past.”