The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death (13 page)

The Avenger’s eyes were terrible in their icy colorlessness. The rest stared at him almost in awe and waited for him to decide what was to be done next.

The affair was clearing, now, with a vengeance! Somehow, the purloined masterpieces smuggled out of Europe contained messages, all right, though it was still impossible to guess the manner of it. They were messages of death and destruction.

“The Dock,” here in this room, held such a hidden message. It was vital that the picture fall, for a little while, into the hands of the gang that lived on the heels of the picture racketeers. That was why the blond fellow, Harris, had taken such chances to get hold of it.

“The Princess,” hidden by Marsden, contained such a message. So the gang had been driven to the desperate expedient of kidnaping a multimillionaire to get hold of the picture and get hold of it fast.

“Diabolo,” also here in this room, spelled out foreign enemy instructions. And—here The Avenger’s face grew more terrible still—the “Diabolo” had been deciphered!

The gang had had it in its possession at Vaughan’s country home long enough to read it. Then they had left it. That was why they weren’t interested in possession. They didn’t care whether a picture was a fake or an original worth many thousands of dollars. A hundred thousand dollars was nothing compared to the stakes for which they played.

So they had carelessly left the “Diabolo” where it lay.

But first they had deciphered its message!

What would result from that? What catastrophe would grow out of it, and was there any way to stop it?

These thoughts were plain in the faces of the members of Justice, Inc., as they stared at their leader for a plan of action.

But it was Jessica Marsden who suggested it.

“This is all horrible,” she said diffidently. “And, of course, it comes before any personal considerations. But I . . . I hope you’re not forgetting that my father is in danger of his life. And I’m wondering if you can’t progress as fast in this mystery by trying to trace him and ‘The Princess’ as you could in any other line of action.”

The Avenger’s eyes turned their pale gaze her way. Then he nodded.

“Yes. As well that way as any other. Cole, you and Mac go with Miss Marsden to her home. It will be there that the gang will try to contact her, to arrange for trading her father’s life for the picture.”

The three went out. Dick Benson picked up one of the battery of phones on his vast desk. This one, Smitty knew, was a direct line, always open, to Washington.

Dick called an unlisted number in the state department. The name he called, after a few seconds’ wait, was one to command respect. Benson didn’t bother with underlings.

“Richard Addington,” he said. “Average height, a little more than average weight, very dark hair and eyes, sleek. He looks like a playboy and a rather weak one at that—except when he’s on a job. Then his face hardens till you realize that he is smart, ruthless, a powerful enemy. Do you have anything on this man?”

The reply was given in about eighty seconds.

“A naturalized citizen,” was the state department’s answer. “Roland Ardmore, alias Richard Addington, alias a dozen more names. Suspected of being a foreign espionage agent, but not once has any definite proof of it been found. He is watched constantly. His mail is inspected, and he is followed. Now and then, however, he has managed to shake off his trailers. He is very clever.”

“Associates?” said Benson.

“There is only one known, and that one has not been thoroughly checked. All we know is that his name is Teebo.”

The Avenger stared at the phone, his face and eyes without emotion. Then he said: “I would suggest that the watch on Addington, and on Teebo, too, if it is possible, be doubled.”

“Right,” came the voice from the state department.

Benson hung up, then called police headquarters on a regular phone.

“Richard Benson talking. On the murder of Frank Teebo at the Coyle Hotel.”

“Yes, sir,” was the response. “What can we tell you about that?”

“Two people in the foyer of the Pink Room saw Teebo at the open window, though neither saw him actually fall. At any rate, that’s their story.”

“That’s right. There was a woman in a white evening dress who gave her name as Emily Brace. A man in white tie and tails was with her. Name, Richard Addington.”

“Have you followed them up?”

“No, sir. They seemed innocent enough. Just witnesses—and not important ones, either.”

“Do you have their addresses?”

“We have the ones they gave. There seemed no reason to check them. If they’re people who ought to have been held, it’s possible the addresses are phonies. However, here they are—” He gave Dick the addresses.

“Thank you.”

“Did we slip, Mr. Benson?” asked the police voice. “Should we have hauled the pair in?”

“I don’t know, yet,” said Benson evenly. “I’d like a free hand on these two, if you don’t mind. I’ll report later, if I find anything.”

He turned from the phone and handed Smitty a slip of paper.

“Smitty, see if Richard Addington is at this address. If he is—”

“If he is,” said the giant, doubling his vast fists, “I’ll try to keep from breaking his back in my two hands. I’ll try to bring him in alive.” He went out.

Benson motioned to Nellie, and they went out, too, a few minutes later.

It was Mac who noticed the birdhouse as he and Cole and Jessica Marsden drove in the gateway of the Marsden estate and up to the house.

It was a mansion of a birdhouse; but it wasn’t open for tenants, it appeared.

From the front step, before Jessica had opened the big door, Mac pointed.

“That is cerrrtainly,” he burred, “a hotel of a bird-house.”

It sure was. It was as big as a wardrobe trunk.

Jessica smiled a little in spite of her distress at her father’s desperate danger.

“Dad made it himself,” she said. “We have kept some of the migrating birds here all winter by feeding them and letting them nest in the loft of the carriage house. Then they move out to that house in the spring.”

“But not this spring,” Mac pointed out. “Because it’s all closed up. Funny it wasn’t opened.”

The girl stared. “That is funny,” she said. “It was open two weeks ago. I remember distinctly. But now that it is pointed out, I don’t remember having seen birds around it for some days.”

She had the door open, now. And clearly, distinctly, the three could hear the hall phone ringing.

Jess turned a face that was white toward Cole Wilson. He nodded.

“That may be the gang, wanting to contact you about your father.”

The two of them ran down the hall to the phone.

Mac did not follow them. He went to the giant tree in whose branches was the large birdhouse. There was a lower limb which he could just reach with a full jump upward. He got his bony hands over the limb and drew himself up like a circus acrobat.

In the hall, Jess grasped the phone like a drowning girl clutching at a life preserver.

“J-Jessica Marsden speaking,” she said.

The hunch had been correct. This was the call they’d come here for.

“Where have you been?” snarled a man’s voice. “Don’t you care if your father lives or not?”

“I c-care very much!”

“All right, then listen. And get this straight. Your old man is O.K., now. He won’t be if you don’t do as we say. We want that picture called ‘The Princess.’ Bring us that, and we’ll let your father go home with you. We’ll even let him take the picture back with him. We don’t want the thing, we just want to look at it and see if it is really a Vernier.”

Jessica’s shoulders slumped. Cole put an arm around them, in a purely brotherly way of course, to give her support. This was what Jess had known would happen, and what she had feared.

“Believe me when I say this,” she declared. “I don’t know where that picture is. Dad never told me. I can’t get it for you.”

“You’re lying. Anyhow, you’d better be lying.”

“I tell you, I don’t know. Listen. Get my father to tell you where it is. Then you tell me. I’ll get it for you, I swear; and I’ll bring it wherever—”

“Yeah!” barked the man. “You think we haven’t tried to make your father talk?”

“What have you done to him?” screamed Jess.

“Now, now, calm down. We didn’t do much. But he . . . he’s kind of asleep now. And he won’t . . . er . . . wake up for maybe some hours. We can’t wait that long. You get that picture and bring it to Grayson Cemetery in exactly an hour and a half.”

“They’ve tortured him into unconsciousness,” Jessica moaned to Cole, with her hand over the transmitter so her voice wouldn’t carry. Then she spoke into the phone again. “I simply don’t know where the picture is.”

“O.K.,” said the man on the other end of the line with a cold finality. “Then it’s all up with your father. So long.”

MacMurdie came in at just this moment. He had a long metal cylinder in his hand. “Got it!” he said.

“Oh, thank Heaven!” Jess clutched the phone. “Wait, whoever you are. Please wait! I can get the picture. I’ll bring it to you.”

There was so long a silence that she thought the man had hung up before hearing. But then he said: “Right. Hour and a half, Grayson Cemetery. And no tricks!”

Then he did hang up, and Jess and Cole turned to Mac.

The thing he had found in the birdhouse was a metal map case, of the type that could be hermetically sealed to protect valuable charts against weather. It was perfect to protect something else against weather, out there in a birdhouse where rain couldn’t come in but dampness could.

The rolled canvas in the metal map case was the wanted picture, all right. “The Princess,” in all its glowing colors and beautiful lines.

They stared at it. A beautiful thing, yes; but it had more than beauty. Somehow, in its interrelation of lines and colors, there was a deadly message. If they took it, the real picture, to the cemetery to get Jessica’s father, and if the gang outwitted them and got hold of the painting, none knew what catastrophe would follow. And it would be their fault.

“We’ll have to risk it,” said Cole soberly.

Mac nodded. “You let me carry this case,” he said.

Cole didn’t reply. He had his little belt radio out and was trying to contact The Avenger. He wanted to report that the picture had been found and that contact was to be made in an hour and a half.