The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death (16 page)

“Nellie and I have been in the mausoleum for a quarter of an hour. We simply entered it as a hiding place; but then the man chanced to pick it as a meeting spot, probably because it’s central and the biggest structure here. So I tried to unnerve him a bit with a ghostly whisper before attacking.”

“Ye unnerved him, all rrright,” burred Mac. “Ye un-nerrrved me, too. What was all that about the mark of Cain?”

But Benson didn’t answer. He turned to Cole. “Miss Marsden?”

“She was to go with her father to Bleek Street. She’ll probably get there about the time we do.”

“Anyhow,” said Nellie, looking regretfully in the direction in which the gang had escaped, “they haven’t that picture to work on.”

“And we have at least one of the gang on ice,” nodded Mac. “The one Muster Benson creased with Mike. I’ll get him.”

He came back through the side gate in a moment with the unconscious man over his shoulder. They went to where Benson had hidden his car, and then rolled back to Bleek Street.

And there, with midnight not far off, they got their next bad jolt.

Smitty and Josh and Rosabel were up in the big top-floor room. Smitty was swearing steadily, and his face was white. Josh and Rosabel were doing nothing.

They were lying on the floor, and the giant was working frantically over them.

The Avenger’s icy, pale eyes went from them to Smitty.

“I think they’re dead,” said Smitty in anguish. “Somebody poisoned them or something. I came in from looking up Addington’s supposed address on Gramercy Park and found Josh and Rosabel on the stairs just inside the vestibule door. The painting, ‘The Dock,’ was unrolled beside them.”

“If they’ve killed these two—” began Cole, through set teeth.

But then Josh moaned a little, and his eyes opened. He looked at Dick, who was now bending over Rosabel.

“She . . . all right?” whispered Josh. Rosabel was the core of his life; the two were a devoted couple. So his first inquiry was about her.

Benson, finger on her pulse, which was improving, nodded. Josh relaxed, and a faint, bitter laugh came from his lips.

“I . . . thought I was smart,” he whispered. “The buzzer rang. The screen showed one man in the vestibule. This dark one, Addington. He offered a hundred thousand dollars for a look at the picture. Just a look. So Rosabel and I thought we’d trap him.”

Even at such a moment, Mac grinned a bit. The bribe was funny, if Addington had known it. If there was anything that did not interest any of Justice, Inc., it was an offer of money. The Avenger, though few knew it, was one of the richest men in existence; and what he had all his aides could share any time.

“We said we’d bring the picture to the vestibule and he could look at it there. We meant to get him just inside; then he’d be all through.”

Josh didn’t have to explain. All could grasp his plan. The bottom half of the stairs, on the first level, could be closed off at the press of a button, so that whoever was on them would be trapped in a steel box. Rosabel and Josh had meant thus to trap Addington.

“We went down and showed the picture through the glass of the inner vestibule door to Addington,” Josh went on weakly. “We said he’d better step in on the stairs where the light was better. He did. Rosabel, behind me, reached for the trap button. And then we went down.”

Josh looked as if he could break down and bawl.

“There was a flower in his buttonhole. There must have been a little squirter in it, some gas. Anyway, I didn’t remember anything after that till now, when I woke up to see you all here.”

“You had ‘The Dock,’ you say?”

“Yes.” Josh shivered. He needed no one to point out the full meaning of this. “Addington had plenty of time to go over it. And it’s been over an hour now, since he left.”

They were all grimly silent at that.

Whatever message of chaos and death lay in “The Dock,” had by now been deciphered. It was the worst defeat of all.

The buzzer sounded. Josh reeled to the television screen with forlorn hope in his eyes that maybe it was Addington again, indiscreetly visiting, for one last time, the headquarters of his enemy.

But it wasn’t, of course.

“Miss Marsden and her father,” Josh sighed.

“Put them up in a suite on the second floor,” said The Avenger, voice metallic.

Then he stepped to the limp form of the hoodlum they had brought from the cemetery.

“The address Addington gave the cops was a phony,” said Smitty. “There is no such address on Gramercy Park.”

The Avenger only nodded. It would have been remarkable if the address had not been a fake one.

Meanwhile, he was going through the captured gunman’s personal effects. And he found something in the lining of his coat.

If that strip of paper had not been so carefully concealed in the man’s coat lining, even the infallible eyes of The Avenger might not have caught its significance, because it certainly didn’t look important.

It was a strip about four feet long and two or three inches wide, of the kind of paper on rolls that banks use in adding up figures for a monthly statement. On the strip, there appeared to be a long list of someone’s stock holdings.

Such things as U.S. Steel, Amer. Can., Tel. and Tel., with the current prices after each.

But that strip was, at a glance, about the same length as the strip on which was the color chart, which The Avenger had taken from Emily Brace’s apartment. And when it was laid next to the color chart, it could be seen that the stock quotations were so spaced as to coincide exactly with a strip of color, apiece.

Benson’s eyes were like chips of ice as he unrolled “The Dock” and thumbtacked it to his desk top.

“Get the ruler we took from the blond man, Harris,” he said evenly.

Cole got it and took it to him. All crowded around, perceiving that something momentous was up.

The Avenger turned the ruler so that its back, with the single mark on it, was up. He measured off that space from the right-hand side of the painting and put a tiny dot there. Then he laid the ruler down so that the upper side was revealed, with the bottom end exactly at the dot. As he moved, he spoke evenly, his calm voice revealing no more emotion than his expressionless face.

“We know a great deal about all this, now. There is a ring of picture thieves, with some members in France and some in this country. The French members smuggle out looted masterpieces in some cases. In others, where they can’t get the originals, they have a clever copyist turn out fakes.”

He was marking the points at which the lines on the ruler came on the painting. All saw where the top line came. It coincided with the little fisher boy’s red nose.

“Behind that gang of ordinary crooks, not even suspected by the crooks, is a subtle crew of spies and saboteurs with official connections. The first gang is allowed to smuggle these paintings out, though they don’t know that. But before the pictures go out, they are charted for certain colors to be matched later on one of these strips. If the colors wanted can’t be found in an original painting, they either touch up one of the tints, as was done on ‘Diabolo,’ or put out a copy with the right tints as was done with ‘The Dock.’ ”

Dick was matching the colors on the painting, marked by the odd ruler, with the colors on the chart.

“This second gang permits the pictures to be brought to this country and sold. If any trouble arises, the police will arrest what seems to be an ordinary gang of criminals in a fake-masterpiece racket and won’t bother to investigate further. But, as each picture is sold, the second gang traces it down, gets access to it long enough to decipher the message with a color chart and strip of paper like this one, then follows the instructions so given.

“The home office of a foreign intelligence bureau, with nation-wide reports on the head man’s desk, would know better than any saboteur which dams, plants, ships were key objects to be destroyed. This would be the reason why orders came from a distance—via pictures—not only as to when to destroy an object but also as to what to undermine in the first place.

“The way the enemy has it worked out, the timing of the sabotage acts is the important part of the plan. In earlier pictures, instructions were given as to what to prepare for destruction. In later ones, saboteurs were told just when to push the button, with the catastrophe to come at just the worst moment for United States morale. The timing of destructive blows can be more demoralizing than the destruction itself.

“This time element is also the reason why the saboteurs needed so little time to look at the later pictures in order to decipher instructions. They already knew what object to destroy, and they needed only the time it would take them to learn when to act. Sometimes there is trouble. They’d have had a hard time getting to ‘The Dock’ if it were here in Bleek Street. This place is like a fortress. So Addington promptly killed Teebo at the Pink Room to prevent such a sale. We got ‘The Dock’ anyhow; and they had to take desperate risks to get at it for the required few minutes, which they succeeded in doing.”

“How do you suppose Addington managed the Pink Room murder?” Nellie asked.

The Avenger’s shoulders moved in a slight shrug.

“Probably used a silenced gun. The force of the slug would topple Teebo forward out the window. Perhaps Emily Brace later began to connect that death with some sound like a slap—the gun—which she remembered hearing. That would make it necessary for Addington to murder her. That and the fact that she’d gotten hold of one of the color charts.”

“But you’re forgetting that we’ve since seen Teebo, this man supposed to be murdered,” objected Smitty.

The Avenger didn’t answer. He was laying the color chart beside the strip of paper. On the chart was marked each shade of color noted by a ruler marking.

Mac shook his dour head as he watched. “I got it. The numbers and letters marked by the different shades should spell a message. But would all those paper strips be the same? Maybe this strip goes with ‘The Princess,’ Marsden’s picture, which has been destroyed?”

“Maybe it does,” nodded Benson, pale eyes intent. “But I’m hoping either that all the strips are the same—the color charts are undoubtedly all the same—or that this is the strip that goes with this painting. After all, they didn’t get to it till just a short time ago—”

He marked down on separate paper the letters and numbers coinciding with the marked shades on the color chart.

“They’re a clever crew, all right. No suspected foreign agent, watched constantly by our government operatives, could get in a code message that wouldn’t be intercepted and read. But through another gang, which itself doesn’t even know how they’re being used, Addington and his band have time and again deciphered full instructions from pictures. Their color charts and paper strips would mean nothing to an observer. The pictures would mean nothing. But put them together, and—”

He stopped, and flashed to his feet. He stared at the words and figures he had finished marking as if at a poisonous snake. His face was still its usual masklike self, but on his forehead the rest saw moisture suddenly appear.

“This gives a message all right. Listen:

“ ‘U.S. Zinc 8¼. Carolina Chemical 19. Philadelphia Die Casting 3½. Gas Products 45.’ ”

Nellie stared in bewilderment at The Avenger, and then up at gigantic Smitty, who looked equally bewildered.

“If that’s a message, I’m a gor—” began Smitty.

But there was to be no time for talk.

“All of us,” snapped Benson. “To the hangar. The amphibian. Mac, you and Cole gather up diving helmets for three. Hurry!”

The secret hangar of Justice, Inc., was a dilapidated and apparently disused dock on the East River. At least, that was where the amphibians were kept.

The little band got there in double-quick time; and, still mystified, Cole Wilson piled aboard three sets of diving apparatus. Then they were in the air and winging south and west—Nellie and Smitty, Mac, Cole and Dick.

Nellie said, “What is all this, chief? Can you explain, now?”

The Avenger nodded patiently. He set the robot control, and drew out the paper. They looked again at the seemingly senseless list.