The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death (10 page)

“You croaking Scotch raven!” he rumbled in a savage whisper. “Did you stop to change your suit, or what? I’ve been here an hour—”

“I didn’t call ye till thirty-five minutes ago, ye mountain of suet,” Mac snapped back. “And you were nearer, to start with— Sh-h-h.”

Down the block from the dark spot where they lurked, the plant gate was opening. Methodically, the man there was coming out to patrol the outside of the grounds as well as the inside.

The man came toward the two. A sort of growl rumbled in Smitty’s throat, and Mac felt profoundly thankful he wasn’t that man.

The fellow got within ten feet of them, then saw the Scot’s foot protruding from behind a big trash box. He stopped dead.

It wasn’t the first time the Scot’s huge feet had given him away. But in this case it didn’t matter.

Smitty came within a dozen pounds of weighing an even three hundred. But he was up and over that trash box like an agile boy. He got the man by the throat as a startled yell came to his lips.

Smitty didn’t bother to use both hands. Why should he? This guy was hardly six feet tall and didn’t weigh more than a hundred and ninety. A pigmy, that’s what he was.

The giant held the man rigid, at arm’s length, for a minute or so, then opened his huge hand. The man dropped like something loosed from the jaws of a dredge, and Mac and Smitty went to the gate.

The fellow had locked it when he came out. Smitty didn’t even bother to swear. He looked around, caught up a big beam, inserted the ends between the two-by-four slats of the gate.

There was a grinding wrench, and the gate came to pieces like wet paper.

“Smitty! The noise—” protested Mac.

“What’s the difference? The guy back there got out a yell. They’ll be coming to investigate anyhow—”

Two men did come, even as he spoke. Smitty and Mac crouched behind the cement-loaded truck till they were within arms’ length. Then Smitty straightened from his crouch.

To those two men it must have seemed as if he kept on going up for ten minutes. He seemed to tower above them in the darkness like a brick chimney. Then Smitty grabbed them.

A shoulder in each hand, a swing, two heads smashing together!

“Ye’re not leavin’ much for me to play with,” Mac complained bitterly.

He didn’t say any more. If he had, he would have addressed it to empty air. Smitty was galloping toward the plant building like an elephant whose young is threatened.

They reached the door. It happened to be unlocked.

Smitty burst into the plant, with Mac on his heels.

At a far corner, near a cubicle walled off for the superintendent’s office, were two men, a girl, several sacks of cement and a barrel.

A yell came from Smitty’s lips like nothing Mac had ever heard before. The giant went like an express train off rails toward the sinister tableau.

The man with Nellie dropped her arms, and the man with the club dropped that. Each drew a .45 and began firing with methodical and excellent aim.

Benson and his aides wore bullet-proof garments of The Avenger’s own devising. Made of woven strands of an incredibly tough and pliant plastic he called celluglass, it was transparent, light, but stronger than steel.

Smitty had on his, shielding him from throat to knees. But even at that, the kick of a .45 slug can stop the average man, whirl him around, club him hard.

However, Smitty was not an average man. He grunted with the shock of each terrific slug against his barrel chest, but kept right on. And the two began to look very scared indeed.

“He’s gotta vest on!” one of them squealed. “Get him in the head!”

This was different. Slugs in the head would kill. But Smitty didn’t falter. If anything, he speeded up, with his head moving from side to side on his vast shoulders, and his columnar legs carrying him in a zig-zag path.

He got to them, picked up one of the sacks of cement.

A sack of cement is not exactly a feather. But in the giant’s hands this one seemed so. Smitty threw the thing as if it had been a basketball. It caught one of the men on the chest and he fell with a broken back. The other man tried to run.

Off by the office door was still another man, one Smitty hadn’t seen at all. This man was on one knee, with his right hand braced on his left forearm. In the hand was a .44 revolver.

At that range, braced in a marksman’s pose, the man couldn’t miss his target: the giant’s head.

It was sure death for Smitty. Only a matter of seconds. But the giant didn’t know that. Nor did MacMurdie.

Mac was still near the door, busy himself. A man had scrambled in after them from the plant yard. Mac had knocked the gun from his hand and was now methodically reducing him to mincemeat with great knobs of fists that were like bone mallets.

Smitty got his hands on the second man, and for a moment he was comparatively still as he pressed great thumbs at the fellow’s windpipe. It was the instant for which the unseen, calm marksman was waiting.

His sights were on Smitty’s right ear. His finger was tightening.

There was a queer little spat. It was like a soft handclap, hardly heard at all in the place. But with the deadly little whisper, something happened to the marksman.

He sagged to the floor, and on the exact top of his head was a neat gash, as if he had been clubbed. Only there was no one around with a club.

His gun clattered as he fell, and Smitty’s attention was drawn at last. He stared almost stupidly at the person who had so nearly been his executioner, then whistled as he realized what a close call he’d had.

Mac came up dusting his hands from the encounter by the door. Mac saw the other prone man, the gash on his head.

“Oh, oh!” he said. “Mike did that. The chief’s here. Where are ye, Muster Benson?”

The Avenger carried two of the world’s oddest weapons. One was a deathly-sharp little throwing knife with a hollow tube for a handle. The other was a silenced little .22, so streamlined that it appeared to be a length of slim, blued steel pipe rather than a revolver. He carried the knife in a sheath below his left knee, and the gun holstered at his right calf. The knife he called, with grim affection, Ike. The gun was Mike.

Mac had seen the man drop, from a little distance, had heard the tiny spat of sound, and had seen the gash leap into being. Only one gun and one man could do that; Mike, in the hands of Dick Benson, who never killed but used his marvelous little gun only to knock enemies cold by “creasing” them.

The Avenger came toward Mac and Smitty from a door on the opposite side of the plant.

“So ye heard Nellie’s call, too,” said Mac.

Benson nodded, dead white face as emotionless as a mask of ice.

Smitty had Nellie in his arms and was bearing her toward the door. Mac caught up Wayne Crimm’s bound form.

“Now why,” the Scot mused, “did these skurlies kidnap the boy? If his father were alive, it might be they’d hold the boy’s life over his head to keep him from fightin’ the gang that stole his stock. But his father isn’t alive—”

“His brother, Tom is,” said Benson steadily.

Mac looked at him.

“News came over the teletype just as I was starting out,” said The Avenger. “Town Bank was held up, a protective association operative killed, the bank guard slugged and lying at the point of death. Tom Crimm was recognized as the leader of the bandit gang.”

“Whoosh!” exclaimed Mac, eyes round. “A cat’s-paw for Luckow! And a goat!”

“That’s right,” said Benson.

“And Wayne must have been taken to keep Tom from talkin’, and make him take the rap for the gang!”

“Yes. But we’ve got Wayne out of their hands, now.”

The Avenger went into the office. He picked up the phone and dialed the Brooklyn Bird, Luckow’s private number.

There was no time for a ring, when he heard the phone at that end being picked up. He spoke, tone as calm and measured as the voice of Fate, herself.

So it was that when Luckow started to dial, and to hand Tom over to the electric chair to clear himself and his gang, he heard the words that froze his reaching finger and sent fear to his heart such as he had never known before.

“This is Benson. We have taken Wayne from your men. Act accordingly with Tom Crimm.”

Nicky Luckow’s one slightly redeeming trait was his feeling for his sister.

He had never allowed crooked matters to concern her. He had taken her from show business because he didn’t like that kind of life for his sister. He was tyrannical with her; and she looked as hardboiled as she was pretty. But she was not one of the gang.

Therefore, the fact that next day he sneaked Tom Crimm to her apartment to stay for awhile showed how badly he was worried.

He had been anxious to turn Tom over to the cops. If the police found young Crimm dazed, with bank cash on him, after a tip from a mobster who openly confessed that he was afraid his boys would be suspected, Luckow and the gang would be in the clear.

But now, Tom could talk if he were caught. Wayne was no longer held as a threat over his head. He could talk plenty. It would hang Luckow!

So now, Luckow was as frantically anxious to keep Tom from police headquarters as he had been before to take him there. He was so anxious that he was putting him in his sister’s place to lie low for awhile.

“He’s plenty hot,” he told Beatrice. “He was wanted for the murder of Haskell. Now, besides, he’s wanted for a bank stick-up and the murder of the Pinkley man.”

“That’s all right,” said Beatrice, studying one crimson-tinted fingernail. “I’ll see that no one ever gets an idea he’s here.”

“I noticed you have a new maid.” Luckow jerked his head toward the bedroom door. Beyond that was the person referred to: a pretty, young Negress with liquid, dark eyes.

“Yes. Name’s Rosabel. But she’s all right.” Beatrice studied another crimson nail, with the hard lines around her pretty mouth more apparent than ever. “I’ll take care of Tom, the young sap. Don’t bother any more about it.”

Thus lightly she dismissed the new maid, Rosabel, who happened to be the wife of Josh Newton, and like the Negro, an aide of Richard Henry Benson.

Later in the same day, the powerful Town Bank began running around in little circles.

The Avenger was one of the wealthiest men in the world, though few knew that. Benson kept huge sums of cash in various banks. He needed a lot. His bill for wrecked planes and cars alone was enough to bankrupt a rich man. He needed expensive equipment constantly.

Millions on deposit in many banks. One of them was Town Bank.

His opening shot was to withdraw $1,100,000 from Town Bank, and to have several close friends of his take out $4,500,000 more. It was all done swiftly; and even a big bank can be embarrassed by such large withdrawals without notice.

His next maneuver was to drive far below par the shares in three concerns in which he knew Rath, Birch, Grand and Wallach were heavily interested. Thus the directors were unable to come personally to Town Bank’s aid if such aid became necessary.

Finally, rumors began to be whispered around that the bank wasn’t as sound as it looked. In starting those rumors, The Avenger wasn’t being heedlessly cruel. The assets of the bank were enough so that no depositor would lose, in a crash. If any did, Benson would have made up the loss out of his own pocket. All he was after was the executives.