The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns (3 page)

“As a practical politician, I had to shut my eyes to a lot that even I didn’t feel like stomaching. But quite a few times I’ve stepped in and made the chiseling just a little less outrageous than it might othewise have been. There have been some things I wouldn’t tolerate. I say this just to show that my present attitude is not a complete reversal of my career—that I’ve had it in the back of my mind for a long time.”

The Avenger’s eyes were colorless diamond drills. But he kept his silence.

“I’m old, and sick,” said Groman. “The driver’s seat isn’t mine any more. I’m out of it. And now is a good time to do what I’ve had a mind to try for a long while. That is, to clean up Ashton City.”

The cigar clamped harder in the thin old lips.

“I’ve reformed, if you want to put it that way. Never liked the word much, myself. I want the crooks run out of my city, and the rats driven from the seats of power. I’ll help all I can, even if the men I want eliminated are men I once worked with.” His eyes flashed. “Hell, they’re after me, now, so I might as well turn
them
up by the toes.”

Benson spoke out of a profound knowledge of men and things.

“People seldom reform,” he said, lips barely moving in his white, dead face.

Groman’s one-sided smile appeared.

“Hawley!” he called.

In a moment the side door of the big room Groman had fitted as an office opened. A young man with sleek brown hair and mild brown eyes and a submissive, patient face, appeared.

“My secretary, Hawley, Mr. Benson,” Groman said.

Benson nodded. Groman ordered:

“Ask Miss Groman and Mr. Ted to come here, please.”

The secretary withdrew and in another moment a girl came through the hall door. She was about twenty-two, slim and lovely, with violet eyes and dark-brown hair. She looked questioningly at Groman with eyes holding a very curious expression.

“My daughter, Terry, short for Theresa,” Groman said. “This is Mr. Benson, my dear. You know about him.”

She gave Benson a slim hand. And the door opened again to admit a dark, tall, narrow-faced man of thirty with something of Groman in the set of his jaw.

“My son, Theodore,” said Groman to Benson. Then he looked at the two with a softening of his hard old eyes.

“That’s all, you two. Just wanted you to meet a man the like of which you’ll never meet again.”

The two murmured polite exchanges and went out. Groman waved his right hand to Benson.

“There are two of my reasons for wanting to end my career differently than I’ve lived it. Terry’s a fine girl just out of the best finishing school in the country. Ted’s a lad who’ll make his mark as a lawyer—has already started to make it. For the sake of those two I don’t want to die a crook even though I’ve lived somewhat like one.

“There are other reasons. Call them contemptible, if you like. You can say I’ve got enough loot to live my life out, so I don’t have to loot anymore and can afford to be honest now. You can say that as long as I’m no longer a leader in Ashton City, I’m making no sacrifice by wanting to clean up the town. Take it any way you like, the result is that rare thing, a man who really wants to reform.”

Benson’s pale, icy eyes dwelt on the shaggy, iron-gray mane of the aged and infirm lion.

“It’s a good job—that of cleaning up a whole town,” Groman said persuasively. “I know quite a little about you—the things you like to do, and why you like to do them. I know about your wife and child”—Benson’s eyes blazed brighter, then dulled again—“and I know that you’ve devoted your life since your personal tragedy to fighting crime. Well, here’s a chance to fight it on a grand scale. There are a quarter of a million people in Ashton City. They’d all be eternally grateful, even if they never knew just who had turned their town from a crooks’ nest into a decent, clean place to live in.”

Still Benson was silent.

“Fortunately you’re a rich man,” Groman said. “I say fortunately, because I couldn’t afford to hire a man of your ability if you didn’t fight crime for idealistic reasons.”

“You couldn’t afford it?” The Avenger repeated, pale eyes steady on the old lion’s mane.

“No! I’ve taken a few million out of this town—about a tenth as much as the public thinks—but I’m a sucker in another man’s game, just as all the other smart guys are. Lost most of it in stocks. I own this building, worth half a million—if a buyer could be found for it. And I have a couple of hundred thousand dollars in bonds. That’s all— Well, will you take the job?”

“Yes!” said Benson.

Groman leaned back with a deep sigh.

“That’s fine. But it’s a whale of a job. Ashton City, under a lax police department, has become the national hang-out of notorious killers and crooks. They’re in a solid group, under Buddy Wilson, public enemy number two, with the crooked big shots you’ll be against. They’ll fight, too.”

“Rackets?” said Benson.

“The town is riddled with them,” admitted Groman. “Right now, the trucking racket is the most active. Half a dozen men have been taken for rides. Even a judge, named Martineau, was killed two weeks ago because he was too honest. The lid was kicked off when that happened. But so far no arrests have been made, and I think there will continue to be no arrests. Police Commissioner Cattridge is an honest man, but he is helpless with all the dishonesty at city hall and right around him in his own department. Most of the police force are honest. But they’re hamstrung by a few in high places, too.”

Dick Benson nodded, but he had something else in his mind.

The Avenger was a man able to see at a glance what others might take a day to really observe. Having seen, he could make deductions that most could never have arrived at, at all. Those colorless, awe-inspiring eyes had been very busy since he’d arrived here.

“I have seen three servants who looked very much like paid guards,” he said. “I have seen evidences that you—and your son and daughter—rarely leave this place. Why?”

Groman’s cigar twitched angrily in his one-sided mouth.

“The men I used to lead have gotten a hint of my idea,” he said. “They know I’m out to clean the town, now, instead of robbing it. So they want to kill me before that can be done. They’re after me for that reason—and for another. They think I have a great deal more money than I really own. They think some of it should be shared by them. So they want to wipe me out, and Terry and Ted, too, and take all the cash they think I’ve held out on them. For that reason, we live in here as if it were an armed fort, with guards around night and day. In spite of that, the gang has tried. Two have gone out of here feet first, to be found in ditches far in the country next day.”

“You’re being very frank,” said Benson quietly.

The sound right hand waved again.

“You won’t turn me in. I can be too valuable to you in the kind of job you live for. Even if you did—so what? I’m old. I’ve had a stroke, and I’ll probably have another one. I haven’t long to live. I don’t care much if I do go to the pen! I certainly wouldn’t go to the chair because I had the two killed in self-defense on my own premises.”

“Who are the ones at the top, as far as you know them?” asked Benson.

“A man named Sisco is the biggest big shot. He owns the Gray Dragon Club, and he is usually there. But he’s number one in alley politics, and he owns a big share in a couple of contracting companies that get all city jobs. Also, he’s hand in glove with Buddy Wilson and his gunmen.

“Another man to watch is Norman Vautry. He owns a newspaper which is always crusading against me. But I think he is in with the gang.

“Outside of Commissioner Cattridge, I’d suspect everyone in the police department till he’s proved himself honest, if I were you. And the judicial situation isn’t too good. There have been some changes since I lost control of the mob. But I know at least one judge who has done some funny things. That’s Judge Broadbough.”

The Avenger’s pale, icy eyes flared steadily at the scarred political veteran who wanted to end his few remaining days in some sort of decency.

The average American town, Benson knew, wasn’t a half-bad place to live in. The cops were square and the judges were respectable, if human. But now and then an Ashton City comes along, where misrule has been permitted for decades, until the very foundation stones under the city hall seem rotten and treacherous.

“I’ve been honest with you,” said Groman. “I’ve told you frankly all you have to face. It’s a tremendous job.”

“I’m taking it,” said Benson.

“The police will be against you—because the few rats in high places can lead the honest majority where they want it led. The underworld politicians and some of the big-business men will be against you. Even the bench, if you aren’t lucky, would be against you if the gang could land you in a court on some hand-picked charge.”

“I’ve said I’m taking the job!” was Benson’s quiet repetition.

Groman’s dressing-gowned bulk leaned back in the swivel chair from the elaborate teak desk.

“Ashton City has gotten more than it deserved,” he said, “when I was able to persuade you to fight for it. All the luck in the world, my son—and if what you turn up will have to crucify me along with it, just go right ahead. I’ll take my chances on the clean-up. Just so there
is
a clean-up!”

Dick Benson only nodded, quiet, sparing with words, a machine rather than a human being. A machine dedicated to the doom of the country’s shrewdest criminal leaders.

One man against a cityful of crooks and killers. Could such an unequal battle end in anything but disaster for the white-haired, dead-faced man? Only time could tell.

Richard Henry Benson, The Avenger, had not been persuaded by Groman to take on a battle against an entire city. With the receipt of the ex-political boss’ letter hinting at what was in the wind, he had made up his mind instantly to pit his marvelous powers against the organized viciousness in Ashton City.

When he had left New York for Ashton City, he had instructed his aides to come, too. They were to follow him from headquarters in several hours.

Benson’s headquarters was a curious place.

There was a block-long street in New York called Bleek Street. One side was taken up by the windowless back of a great storage building. The other side held a big vacant warehouse, three dingy old three-story brick buildings standing wall to wall, and a couple of vacant stores. Dick Benson owned the three brick buildings, and had the warehouse and stores under long lease. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, he owned the entire block.

The three buildings had, behind their separate exteriors, been thrown into one. Two of the entrances were permanently blocked up. The middle entrance, left open, had a small and inconspicuous sign over it.

The sign simply said: “Justice.” The few people wandering along the block might see the sign and think vaguely that “Justice” meant some sort of law firm housed in the place. But it meant help for people who couldn’t afford regular help. And it meant, often, doom to criminals so powerful or shrewd that they could not be vanquished by the regular police.

The faithful aides of The Avenger left the Bleek Street headquarters a little after Benson, and soon began to slip, one by one, from plane and train and bus, into Ashton City.

From the New York midnight plane stepped a man who was the target of all eyes. This was because of his size.

The man was six feet nine and weighed between two hundred and eighty-five and two hundred and ninety pounds. He was fifty-three inches around the chest and wore a size nineteen collar. His arms hung crooked at his sides, like the arms of a gorilla—and for the same reason. There were such ponderous pads of muscles sheathing his barrel chest that there was no room for his arms to hang straight.

The giant looked good-natured enough—and not too bright. His face was of the beaming, full-moon type. His eyes, bright china-blue, were peaceful and almost stupid-seeming.

Never had appearances been more deceptive.

The giant was keen, fast-thinking, and for all his bulk, as quick-moving and lithe as a cat. He was an electrical engineer of the first rank. But over and beyond that, he was a deadly crime-fighter, having joined The Avenger’s battle standards in order to devote all his great powers most effectively against the underworld.

His name was Algernon Heathcote Smith. But if you had any regard for your health, you never called him that. You called him Smitty. Two things could turn him from an amiable-looking mountain of muscle into a savage landslide. One was humor based on his name, the other was crime.

Smitty, looking like a great big, innocent kid, left the landing field and went to a modest hotel.

About the time he did that, the New York train pulled into Ashton City and discharged, among others, a man as odd-appearing, in his way, as Smitty was in his.

Fergus MacMurdie was tall, bony, gangling. He had big dim freckles barely visible under the surface of his coarse red skin. His ears stuck out like sails—perhaps to give windpower to his feet, which were as big as scows. The map of Scotland was written all over his face. And in this map bitter, bleak blue eyes were steady and unwinking. He had hands that, when doubled into fists, were like bone mallets; and when he swung those fists, they collided with things like iron knobs swung at the end of pliant lances.