The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death (15 page)

There were voices in the hall. Many voices. “Look at the smoke coming out the door crack! Bust in!”

Nellie felt a light hand on her arm. The hand pressed the code. “It’s me.” She went where the hand urged. Benson led to the window.

You still couldn’t see an inch in the room. Behind them, there were still furious sounds, as the three men left conscious fought among themselves, thinking they had hold of the enemy. But already the door was opening; Nellie and The Avenger couldn’t take on an army.

Nellie reached out the window and found the rope. She went up it with trained skill, and felt the rope tighten as The Avenger came, too. Then they were on the rooftop.

“They’ve caught on,” she said, at the sound of shouts below. She twitched the rope up so none could follow that way. Then they ran for the next roof and a fire escape.

The Avenger’s face was still like a mask, but Nellie knew this man as few others knew him; and in the expressionlessness, she could read a faint trace of emotion. It was that of cold fury, of defeat. So then she caught on.

“You saw that rope end when it first hung down,” she accused. “You knew the men were coming. You let them come, in order to capture them.”

“I didn’t know they were coming,” said The Avenger, tone calm and cool as his eyes. “But it seemed probable that we would have visitors. You see, it looked as though Emily Brace had been shot from a long distance, through the window, by a rifle equipped with telescopic sights. Otherwise, if she had been killed by someone in the room, there’d have been signs of a search; it was obvious that the color chart, which she’d somehow gotten hold of, was what the killers wanted. If she were killed from a distance, then men would be on the way to visit her apartment. As you say, I let them come, hoping to take them prisoner.”

The cold fury glinted just once in the glacial, pale eyes again.

“Well,” said Benson, “we didn’t get them. But they didn’t get the color chart, either. So we’re even.”

It was then that Cole finally got The Avenger’s attention on the belt radio.

“Chief,” came Cole’s tiny voice through the set. “I’ve been trying to get you. There’s important news. We have the picture, and the gang that holds Marsden has contacted us. We are to take the picture to Grayson Cemetery in—” There was a pause as Cole calculated time elapsed from the moment when they’d been told to show up in an hour and a half. “In an hour and ten minutes,” he said.

“Right,” Dick said evenly. “We’ll be there.”

They were in the car now. Benson had pointed its nose for Bleek Street. Now, he turned and headed toward Long Island.

It was too bad he did so, because hell was popping at Bleek Street—a kind the pale-eyed man would have given a leg rather than miss.

“No tricks,” the man had warned Jessica Marsden over the phone. The gang would be watching for trouble, so Jessica would have to meet them alone. They wouldn’t approach her if a couple of men appeared along with her.

So two miles from Grayson Cemetery, which was about ten miles from the Marsden home, Cole and Mac got out of the girl’s car.

Scared but game, she went on alone, with the metal map case containing the picture. Cole and Mac finished the trip on foot, coming up to the back of the block-square graveyard.

The cemetery was an old one, filled up long ago. Now, the only activity in connection with it was to keep it up. Consequently, after dark, at least, there wasn’t a soul around.

And it was dark, now. There was no moon, and only a few stars showed weakly through baleful-looking clouds.

“Wonder where the skurlies will be lurkin’?” said Mac.

“Probably there’ll be only one man hiding among the tombstones,” guessed Cole. “He can give a signal if all’s well, and the rest can come in with Marsden to trade for the painting.”

“If they come with Marsden,” retorted Mac, with all his Scotch pessimism, cropping up, “maybe they’ll just take the picture and keep on holdin’ the mon.”

“Why would they do that?” shrugged Cole. “A gang of regular kidnappers might take payment and refuse to turn their victim free, because they’d want more payment in the future. But all this crew wants is that painting. They’d have no reason to keep Marsden after getting it.”

There was a big tree within the cemetery, flinging a branch over the high, spike fence. Cole and Mac got up on this branch, then crawled along it and another branch till they were ten feet inside the grounds. But stayed up there for the moment.

Cole got out a pair of night glasses. The lenses were ground to The Avenger’s formula to gather the maximum luminosity in darkness.

Even with these, Cole couldn’t see much; but he saw enough to whisper an exclamation after a moment.

“There’s Jess,” he said to Mac. “She’s coming up the drive in the car. The gang must have left the gate open. Now the gate closes. Jess stops—”

Mac, without glasses, could see the girl get out of the car because of her white dress.

Cole whispered:

“There’s a man beyond the car, in the doorway of that biggest mausoleum, watching. Just one man, as far as I can make out.”

There was a tiny flash of light. Mac saw the dim white blur which was Jessica’s dress, as she went obediently toward the flash. Then the ray of light shot straight up against a tree, lasting for about a second.

“Signal to the others that everything’s all right,” Cole hazarded. “Yes, I can see a car, now, outside the fence toward the south, there. Two cars. They were ready to scram out of here if they had to, but now they feel they don’t have to. There’s a small side gate, just big enough for pedestrians, not for cars. It’s open. They’re coming in—”

“Give me those glasses for a change,” rasped Mac, “instead of givin’ me this blow-by-blow description. What do ye think ye are, a radio announcer?”

He grabbed the night glasses. He saw six men stealing toward the central mausoleum. One of the men seemed to be in such a daze that he could hardly walk. He held his arms stiffly beside him.

“They’re bringin’ Marsden all right,” said Mac. “They have his arms tied. We’d better join them, Cole.”

The two dropped noiselessly from the tree. The marvelous little night glasses had shown no one lurking around the north half of the cemetery, so they went down that side of the central drive.

Probably no one but another member of Justice, Inc., could have perceived their expert approach. And even Smitty or Nellie or The Avenger would have had to be looking right at them to spot them.

They slid from gravestone to gravestone, two faint shadows in a world of shadows, without sound. Over their faces were black squares of cloth, to keep the lights of their skin from showing. Over their hands were black gloves.

They got to a square shaft within twenty feet of the mausoleum doorway. There, they could see and hear quite well.

“Got it, huh?” said the man in the doorway. They could not see his face, but they could see that he was enormously fat. In the dimness, there seemed no end to the spread of the man.

“Yes,” said Jessica in a low tone. She extended the cylindrical, metal case. “Where is my father?”

“He’ll be along. I want a look at this.”

There was a click as the fat man opened the case. There was another flash as he rayed his small light over the painting, making sure that it was the one the gang was after.

“O.K.,” he sais huskily. “This is ‘The Princess,’ all right. You showed good sense in not trying to trick us.” He raised his voice a little. “Bring Marsden.”

Jessica whirled with a suppressed cry at the sound of shuffling feet. Obviously, she hadn’t known till then that she was not alone here with the fat man, though, of course, Cole and Mac were presumably not too far away.

The five men who came up to the mausoleum were almost carrying the sixth.

“Dad,” cried Jessica, “what have they done to you?”

“Shut up!” snarled the fat man. “He’s all right.”

Jessica had her arms around her father. He reeled there.

“You can take the gag off in ten minutes,” said the fat man. “Stay here for that length of time, too. Then you can do anything you please.”

Cole tensed beside Mac, feeling that their moment had come. They ought to get the picture back, now that the girl had her father and the gang their painting. Moreover, they ought to try to capture that crew. It was six men against two, but The Avenger’s aides had faced heavier odds than that.

They took a few noiseless steps after the gang, then stopped in amazement.

So did the gang.

A voice had sounded, eerie, faint but clear, where no voice had any right to exist.

Inside the shuttered mausoleum.

“The mark of Cain,” sighed the voice. “On your forehead is the mark of Cain.”

There was a moment of stunned silence on the part of all. Then the fat man spoke.

“What . . . was that?” He sounded as if he’d been running and was badly out of breath.

“On your forehead,” came the weird, faint voice in direct answer, “is hell’s mark. The mark of Cain.”

The fat man dropped the map case. He was trembling violently. Another man, whose face couldn’t be seen in the darkness, picked the case up.

“Look here,” panted the fat man to his fellows. “I was told . . . a frame-up— What does that voice mean?”

It didn’t mean a thing to Cole and Mac, except as a puzzling and rather scary hint that maybe, after all, there was such a thing as a ghost. But it obviously meant a great deal to the fat man. He was becoming more frightened by the minute.

“Aw, come on,” grated the man who had picked up the cylindrical metal container. “Whatever this is, we haven’t time to monkey around.”

Jessica had kept her head. She wasn’t in sight now. She’d taken her father to the car. They heard the door slam and her motor start. She’d taken full advantage of the distraction.

Mac and Cole crouched for a rush. But then the man who had picked up the map case gave a yell.

“It’s a trick! Stop that girl! Kill Marsden!”

Cole, wondering, saw that he’d taken the painting out of the case once more—and saw in the dimness that it didn’t look like a picture any more.

It looked vaguely like a lace tablecloth.

Then Cole couldn’t see it any more because the man dropped it as if it had burned him.

“It’s a trap! Get away!”

Cole and Mac were rushing the crew. They saw one man raise his hand. In it was a thing like a small pineapple, and they threw themselves to the ground. It was a bomb!

But the man never threw it.

There was a
phhht
of sound, and the man fell with a shallow gash on the top of his head.

“The chief!” said Mac.

The Avenger’s tiny gun, Mike, had made that deadly whisper. And it had spat a slug with Dick’s inimitable accuracy, so that it creased the man; glanced off the top of his skull and knocked him unconscious, instead of killing him.

The mausoleum door swung open and two dim shapes came out. The Avenger and Nellie.

They started after the remaining five men along with Mac and Cole. But the capture of the gang was not to take place. The yell of the man with the map case had come just an instant too soon.

The five were retreating. And two of them had belching submachine guns in their hands. Bullets sprayed in a deadly arc in front of them as they went. Corners chipped from marble slabs; whines sounded as slugs ricocheted.

The four went after them from shelter to shelter. But they were beaten. They saw the gang get back through the side gate and rushed as car doors thudded shut.

The Avenger’s arm snapped forward in an expert throw. There was an explosion, and the rear end of one of the cars jumped. But the grenade didn’t disable the machine. The cars whirled off.

“Damn!” groaned Mac.

The Avenger’s pale eyes swung his way. So did Nellie’s and Coles.

“ ’Tis my fault the skurlies got away,” said Mac. “If I’d known ye’d set a trap for them—”

“I don’t get it,” said Cole.

“The picture,” Mac moaned. “I put sulphuric acid in that case before givin’ it to the girl. It burned the paintin’ to shreds.”

“Oh!” said Nellie.

“Yes. So the picture was all right when the fat man looked at it. But then that other skurlie had to look at it again, a few minutes later, and be warned somethin’ was wrong. So they got away. I’m sorry, chief. I didn’t know ye’d be at our elbows.”