The Avenger 14 - Three Gold Crowns (9 page)

Meanwhile, Smitty had swung his vast fists four times. The result was: one man doubled over and trying to get back the breath knocked out of him when knuckles apparently went from his stomach clear to his backbone, two men on the floor with cracked jaws, and one man over against the wall who would not move again. The giant had broken necks before by hitting just a little harder than he meant to. It was difficult to gauge his gigantic strength in the heat of battle.

There were only three left on their feet and these three wheeled for the door to get away, eyes glazed with fear at these impossible things. But Benson and Smitty had no idea of allowing this.

The two men had been in here a little over five minutes—an incredibly crowded five minutes—and the police, called by Smitty only a little while after he had contacted The Avenger, were due any second.

Smitty and Benson were determined that they’d arrive to find nine prisoners. Rather, eight battered prisoners and one dead one.

Smitty was as fast on his feet as a boy, in spite of his near-three-hundred pounds. He reached the bedroom door almost as quickly as Dick. He saw Benson get a fleeing man by the throat and haul him back as easily as if the fellow had been a child. Then, at the hall door, Smitty reached the other two.

He grabbed a neck with each hand, then brought his hands together. That was all.

But that was plenty!

Two heads tried to occupy the space required by one. There was a hollow
thud.
Smitty dusted off his hands and looked hungrily around to see if anybody was up and asking for more.

And then there was the clang of the elevator down the hall and a city detective and a uniformed patrolman galloped in.

“Hey!” said the detective, looking at the bodies strewn around the place like leaves in autumn. Ten of them in the two rooms. “Hey—”

He looked at Benson and Smitty. So did the patrolman.

“Jumping Judas!” said the cop. “You two did this?”

The detective drew a deep breath. He also drew his gun, fast!

“We’ll have to take you in, and I don’t want either of you within arm’s length. Not when you can clean up a mob like
that,
between the two of you— Wait a minute—”

He looked at Benson, staring into the pale eyes and at the thick, coal-black hair and the impassive, regular-featured face. Then he rubbed his jaw with his left hand while his right let the gun sag a little.

“Would you be Richard Benson, by any chance?” he asked.

Benson nodded.

“Aw, he can’t be Benson,” said the cop. “Benson has white hair. I know all about him.”

The detective shook his head. “There was a report a while ago on him,” he said. “He had some kind of accident in a factory in Detroit. It made all his hair fall out and it came back the color it had been before—black. And look at the big guy. That’s Smith, who works for Benson. There aren’t two other guys in New York that big! And look at the ones they laid out. Nobody else could do that”

“Here are my credentials,” said Benson quietly.

The detective looked at them: Letters from the governor of the state, from the President, from the New York police commissioner. Credentials proving Benson a member of the FBI and an honorary member of the city detective bureau.

“What has happened here, Mr. Benson?” he asked, very respectfully.

Dick told him.

“Salloway murdered, huh?” The detective looked at the dead man in pajamas with the shears in his back. “And one of these guys did it, huh? Well, we’ll take ’em to headquarters. A little persuasive talk will turn our murderer out.”

Benson doubted that. He doubted that any of these men, all hard cases from the look of them, could be made to say a word. He believed that they’d be sprung in an hour. He was sure they weren’t working for themselves, but for some man of wealth and respectability who could hire the best of lawyers.

But he didn’t say that. Nor did he say anything about the cigar case, which he had whipped into his inner pocket when the gang made their surprise entrance.

He took the case with him when he and Smitty went back to Bleek Street, after a lot more questioning.

There, on Dick Benson’s big desk, they opened it. The thing that had rattled around inside like a pebble fell out on the desk top. And Smitty breathed hard with astonishment while The Avenger stared with his icy pale eyes glittering like stainless-steel chips.

The thing was a gold crown, torn from a human tooth.

Everyone was gone from the Bleek Street headquarters save Nellie and Harriet Smith and Rosabel, Josh Newton’s pretty wife. They were all out working on the Farquar blackmail case.

And now, on the murder of Salloway. One of the three big-time blackmailers was dead, leaving just the two to cope with in Farquar’s defense. But who had killed Salloway? And why?

Nellie and Harriet were talking that over. But they were really more concerned with another thing.

That was the bulky white envelope Nellie had brought back from the house in which Harriet had almost been burned like a piece of scorched toast.

The name A.A. Ismail, and the address, was on the envelope in pencil. Perhaps the writing of that very address was the one that had left its impression on Smathers’s desk blotter at Farquar’s ofice.

A name written outside. But that was all.

Presumably, Smathers had taken that envelope, secretly and late at night, to Ismail’s house. Possibly, it was for this that he had been killed, after which his body had been taken to the freight yard.

Presumably, it was to retrieve that envelope, suddenly remembered, that the killer had returned to the house and caught and nearly killed Harriet Smith.

All these things in the envelope. And there was nothing in it! Nothing, that is, but a thick sheaf of blank paper folded to resemble, from the outside of the sealed envelope, a lot of documents.

Just blank paper. The Avenger had tried every test known to science to see if invisible writing came out on the paper—and a few tests known to no one but himself—and nothing had appeared.

Worthless blank paper in a sealed envelope, with murder and sudden death inexplicably revolving around it.

Incidentally, investigation had disclosed that there was no such person as A.A. Ismail. At least, not at that address. The house was owned by a bank which had foreclosed a mortgage. It had been lived in for many years by a Mr. Watkins, who had gone away some months before. No one in the neighborhood or connected with the bank had ever heard of anyone called Ismail.

“It’s crazy,” said Nellie, staring at the envelope. “People don’t kill for nothing. And this seems to be nothing.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Harriet suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

The two made an attractive picture—Nellie, dainty and small and blonde, Harriet taller and more mature but almost equally pretty.

“I think I’ve seen envelopes like this before,” said Harriet.

“You have?” Nellie’s eyes flashed. “Where?”

Harriet seemed to think that over a long time, as if wondering whether to say it or not. But finally she did.

“I think I’ve seen that kind of envelope, with that kind of watermark, at the offices of the Beall Paper Manufacturing Company.”

Nellie’s keen brain caught several curious hints in those words and promptly came out with them. After all, none of them knew anything to speak of about this girl.

“How is it you know anything about watermarks?” she demanded. “Usually only people in the business, and the police, know anything about such an obscure subject.”

“I was in the business,” said Harriet, after another hesitation.

“And how do you know what kind of envelopes there are in the Beall offices?”

“I . . . I worked there for a while,” said Harriet. “That’s where I learned something about watermarks. And I really do remember these envelopes. They have a special watermark that was used in all the company stationery.”

“Maybe we’re beginning to get somewhere, then,” said Nellie, eyes kindling again. “After all, Beall is one of the three we’re fighting, one of the blackmailers”

“He’s
not
a blackmailer!” Harriet snapped.

Nellie looked at her curiously. Harriet’s eyes had a glary look in them, and there was angry red over each cheekbone.

“He’s blackmailing Farquar,” Nellie said. “That’s the case we’re all working on. You know that.”

“Mr. Beall is no blackmailer. He’s an honest, decent man. I
know!
After all, I worked in his office, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think a mere stenographer in a large office could give a very accurate character description of the big boss,” said Nellie. She shrugged. “Have it your own way, though. The important thing is the envelope. That will have to be checked. We’ve got to know whether this is from the Beall office.”

“There’s one way to find out,” said Harriet, a bit breathlessly. “We can go there, right now, with this envelope and compare them.”

Anybody else would have replied that this was no work for a couple of girls. It was dark out. To prowl through a large factory office at night was a job for men.

But Nellie grabbed at the suggestion.

“Swell! We’ll do it!”

Thus she confirmed once more the perpetual wail of the giant Smitty: That Nellie hadn’t enough sense to stay in out of a rain of machine-gun bullets; that she was always taking on work that should have been assigned to two large policemen, and that someday she was bound to have her pretty little head knocked off her slim shoulders.

Nellie did leave word with Rosabel where they were going, as a precaution. But that was all. The two girls barged out the door, down to the basement where The Avenger’s fast cars were kept, and rolled up the ramp in the sleek coupé that Nellie usually drove.

“I hope,” said Nellie, “that nobody else has had the sudden idea, too, that the envelope supply in Beall’s office should be investigated.”

“Why would that happen?” demanded Harriet.

Nellie took a corner on two wheels.

“Somebody remembered the envelope might be in the house with the name Ismail on it,” she pointed out. “That person didn’t get the envelope. He may feel now that we will be able to trace it—and he may try to get there first.”

“M-maybe we shouldn’t go on,” Harriet said.

“Why not?” Nellie said. “I’m just pointing out that we’ll have to be on guard, that’s all.”

The Beall plant was up the East River, on the Queens side. From the car, Nellie looked over its five-story bulk, dark in the night.

“Thank heaven for fire escapes,” she said.

She drove the coupé into an alley beside the building and stopped under the drawn-up lower stair of the escape.

“Get on the top of the coupé and swing up to the first platform,” she directed. “Then lower the thing for me.”

Harriet dutifully climbed to the top of the car and then to the escape. Nellie drove back and parked her car innocently down the block. Then she joined Harriet on the iron rungs.

“Office?” she whispered.

“Top floor,” said Harriet, through chattering teeth.

“Watchman?”

“He stays on the ground floor except when he’s making his rounds.”

The two girls, like a pair of lovely burglars, crept to the top of the fire escape. The iron escape door was locked, of course. With a sideways leap to a narrow ledge that would have done credit to a cat, Nellie got to the nearest window, which was not locked. In a moment she had gone in through it, out to the hall and back. The door was opened from the inside and Harriet went in.

“I’m s-sorry I suggested this,” she chattered.

Nellie gripped her arm a minute.
“Shh!
Buck up.”

With eyes accustomed to the dimness, they got the layout of the top floor—though Harriet moved with a certainty indicating that she’d had the layout firmly in mind.

There was a general office, taking up most of the floor, and private offices along two walls, partitioned off with paneling and frosted glass.

“Would all those desks have the envelopes in them?” Nellie whispered, pointing to dozens of stenographic desks and chairs in rows in the big office.

“Probably,” Harriet whispered back.

Nellie went to the first desk in the first row and opened the drawers. It seemed that Harriet had guessed wrong. There were envelopes—but none of that type. The second desk had none, either. Nor the third—

Nellie was moving cautiously, senses tuned to the slightest breath of sound. And this was fortunate, for it allowed her to hear the barest perceptible scrape of a shoe.

The sound came from one of the walls along the private offices. Instantly she sank behind a desk, drawing Harriet down with her.

The last door along the line of private cubicles opened. A dark figure, looking more like a slinking shadow than a human being, slunk out of the office. And Nellie felt the hot blood buzzing in her ears.

There was no way of telling whether or not Harriet recognized the slinking figure. But Nellie recognized it—from the way it moved and from its general size and shape. Recognized it, and reached for the tiny gun in her purse.

It was the man who had been at the house of Ismail!

The figure came slowly toward where the two girls were crouching. Under its arm could be seen a large package. Then the two could make out what the package was.

Envelopes, tied tightly with string, but not wrapped.

“He c-cleared out the desks before we looked—” Harriet whispered.

‘Shut up!” breathed Nellie, fingers biting Harriet’s arm.

It was apparent enough without a whisper from the girl. This man was here after the envelopes, too. He had cleaned all the desks in the general office, and probably the private offices, too, since he had just emerged from the last in the line. They were all in that package under his arm.

And now he was coming directly toward them! Did he know they were there?

It was with difficulty that Nellie repressed a sigh of relief that would have been profound enough for the shadowy figure to hear. It had turned, and was going toward a blank wall at the rear.

“What’s there?” breathed Nellie, when she judged the figure was far enough away not to overhear.