The Avenger 3 - The Sky Walker (12 page)

“It won’t be if this sort of thing keeps up,” mused the gray-eyed man.

“No,” said the metallurgist, “it won’t. If Catawbi metal stands up, and all other steels collapse, the public will insist on Catawbi steel being specified in all new buildings, and the owners of the Catawbi Range can ask any price they like for their ore.”

“Who are the owners,” said Benson.

“A short-tempered old fellow by the name of Ringset, Colonel Marius Q. Ringset, owns practically all the range, with a few local Michigan people sharing the little that’s outside his holdings.”

“Ringset is a very wealthy man, then?” Benson suggested.

The metallurgist shook his head.

“It’s been a battle for years for him to sell enough of his low-grade ore to keep his range out of the hands of the banks. And the range is all he’s got.”

“Well, he’ll probably become a very wealthy man now. For he’ll have no difficulty selling Catawbi ore from now on, if I know anything about public reactions.”

As though Benson’s words could be heard miles away in Missouri Steel’s Chicago office, and also in the offices of the city engineers, at that moment the laboratory phone rang. The metallurgist answered it, listening with growing concern to an excited voice over the wire, then turned to Benson.

“You’ve hit it all right,” Mr. Benson,” he said. “That was our Midwest sales manager on the wire.”

The scientist chewed his lip.

“Missouri Steel Corporation was awarded a big bridge contract last spring. Work was about to be started on it next week. Four thousand tons of Missouri steel were to be used in the construction. Now the city has cancelled the order.”

The man stared bitterly at the bits of metal Benson had concentrated on.

“What’s more,” he said, “two big private contracts on office buildings were cancelled earlier this morning. People don’t want to put up buildings that are apt to collapse, no matter what makes them collapse—enemy invasion, poor quality, anything else. We can publish this report of yours that steel made with Catawbi ore stands up. But from now on we’ll have to use Colonel Ringset’s ore, at any price, if we want to stay in business!”

Benson went back to his temporary, top-floor headquarters.

The name of Colonel Marius Ringset had not been as unfamiliar to the gray fox of a man as he had pretended. That name had come up before. It occurred in the list of the Gant brothers’ close friends that Benson had culled from police reports for exhaustive study on his own account.

He had said to MacMurdie that the man behind the sky-walking and the tragedies of collapsed buildings, and the loss of steel track resulting in a train wreck, must necessarily fit into certain specifications.

That man would be intimate with the Gant brothers, would be well-to-do, would have an interest in publicizing the catastrophies, and would be familiar with the Catawbi Railroad setup.

So Benson had started on the list of the friends of Robert and Max Gant.

Smitty and Mac and Nellie had gone over that list with all the power of their exceptional intelligences, and had narrowed it down to three names. Those names were Arthur D. Vanderhold, Abel M. Darcey, and—Colonel Marius Ringset.

Benson, when he got back to the hotel, went over these three personalities again.

“Arthur Vanderhold,” he said slowly aloud. “Owner of the sensational newspaper which came out with the story of the building collapse, and knew of it beforehand. He knew the Gant brothers for years, and once advanced them money. He is wealthy. He lives up along the shore, uses the Catawbi Railroad, owns some of it in this commuter-shareholder arrangement, and presumably knows something about it. But as far as can be found out, he has no interest whatever in Catawbi ore. It is to his interest, however, to publish sensational news—like building collapses—before any other paper can publish them. And Vanderhold has long been known as a man who sometimes makes up his own news in order to score a beat on other papers.”

“Whoosh! Even Vanderhold wouldn’t knock a buildin’ down so he’s know of it ahead of time and have a news scoop,” Max objected.

“It doesn’t seem logical,” Benson said, dead lips barely moving in his paralyzed face. “We’ll go on to the next.

“Abel Darcey knew the brothers very well. He is rich—largest stockholder in the Michigan Builders’ Bank, which is financially interested in the Catawbi Mine holdings, and would probably profit if the mines did. He is president of the board of Catawbi Railroad, though he doesn’t own much stock in it. There seems to be little reason why he would want to publicize the building collapses.”

Benson checked the last name.

“Then there is this Colonel Ringset.

“He didn’t know the Gant brothers as well as the other two, but he saw them pretty often. His mines are not a rich proposition at present, but he could be personally well-off enough to come in our category of suspect. As owner of the source of Catawbi ore, he stands to become fabulously wealthy because of the failures of other steels.”

“Ye think one of these three is the skurly we’re after?” said MacMurdie.

“It’s probable,” Benson said. One of his characteristics was that he didn’t jump to conclusions. He had an almost intuitive sense of deduction, but he always checked up on his mental thrusts before making decisions.

The phone rang. Nellie went to it. The respectful voice that spoke to her was that of the police commissioner, himself. There was a little more information on one of the names Mr. Benson had sent in to headquarters.

Nellie came back with blue eyes sparkling.

“It’s on Arthur Vanderhold,” she said. “It had come out that he owns a large block of stock in America Steel Corporation. I guess that eliminates him. America Steel will lose a great deal of money if they have to buy Catawbi instead of ore from their own mines. And Vanderhold wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt the corporation he has so much money in, would he?”

“It would seem not,” said Benson.

He was moving as he spoke. He went to one of the three trunks that formed his portable laboratory. In that trunk was the record he had made of the bizarre noise from the sky.

He took out the record, and set it on a playing disk. From his pocket he took the two fragments of steel from which he had rasped filings at the Missouri laboratory for his test.

He set the two bits of metal on the table next to the record-playing device—the piece made from Catawbi ore on the right, the piece from Missouri ore on the left. Then he started the record going.

The giant Smitty, and bitter-eyed Mac, and fragile Nellie leaned close to hear the sound that came forth. And in spite of themselves they shivered at the recorded sound which, in three instances before, had been a prelude for death and destruction.

From the device came the monotonous, droning noise.

It tore at their eardrums, seemed to set the pictures on the walls to dancing. But it had no effect whatever on the bits of steel.

Benson played the record through four times. When he got through, the Catawbi steel was unchanged in any way. But so was the other unchanged!

Smitty sighed like a disappointed elephant.

“Blank,” he said. “And I thought—”

“The sound,” Benson said, pale eyes reflecting neither disappointment nor any other emotion, “had nothing whatever to do with the structural steel failures. So we will go ahead with our personal investigations. Mac, call on Vanderhold. Tell him what I just found out in Gary, Indiana, that the steel which holds up when other steel fails is made from Catawbi ore. See if his reaction to that statement tells you anything. Tell him anything else you please. Meanwhile, use your eyes and ears and your wits in trying to pick up some clue that might be useful.

“Nellie, go to the office of this man Abel Darcey. See what you can find out about him—both from the man himself and from his employees.”

“How about me, chief?” Smitty said quickly. The giant was no spectator. He wanted to be in the thick of things.

“You’ll come with me to visit Colonel Ringset,” the white-haired man said quietly. He stared at Nellie and Mac.

“Be very careful, you two. This gang knows all about us, now. They know each of us by sight, know where we are staying, and no doubt there are men stationed to trail and try to kill each of us. So—watch your step!”

In a city like Chicago there are many office buildings that, in their way, could be called “tenements” just as many apartment dwelling places are tenements. There are office building in neglected neighborhoods, old and shabby and dingy, waiting to be torn down and meanwhile, rented for whatever they will bring.

It was in such a building, on the west fringe of the Loop, that Colonel Ringset had his office.

Ringset was his own ore salesman. He had this little office to which he came from Catawbi every day, and out of which he sold the few but large orders that kept his mines barely solvent. There was a spinster secretary and office girl, and that was all there was to the office end of Catawbi Mines, Inc.

Colonel Ringset was a tall old man of seventy, with biting gray eyes under bushy white brows. He barked instead of talking. He had a temper that was notorious. He had an arrogant hawk nose and a ruthless, bony jaw.

He had bought the Catawbi Range as worthless land, forty-eight years ago, and had later developed the iron mines. But even his driving power and ingenuity had been unable to squeeze from ore, which was higher-priced than any one else’s, the millions to which he was entitled.

Meanwhile, he did what he could. He shipped his ore to Gary, Indiana, and South Chicago on the Catawbi Railroad, under a special rate. He borrowed from one bank to pay overdue interest on mortgages held by another; got new loans just when it seemed he must lose all his holdings; managed to keep his chin above water when almost any other man would have drowned.

Most people didn’t like Colonel Marius Ringset. But they didn’t say so. For he was a savage old fighter, dangerous in spite of his seventy years.

His spinster secretary was out to lunch when Smitty and Benson entered the ancient office-building doorway at one o’clock in the afternoon.

“Ratty old place,” Smitty observed, as they got into an ancient elevator.

The operator, a bleary-eyed man as old as his cage, sent the contraption upward. It creaked and jerked and groaned ominously. The colonel’s office was on the top, the ninth floor.

At the door with the marking, CATAWBI MINES INC., on it, Benson stopped the giant with a gesture.

“Stay in the outer office, Smitty. Look around while I’m inside with Ringset.”

“Look around for what?”

Benson’s eyes were lambent, cold flame.

“Look for orders, for any kind of material whatever, sent to the Warwick Corporation in New Jersey.”

Benson opened the door, then, and walked into a large but dingy outer office with a deserted desk and chair in it. He went on through to the door marked PRIVATE.

Smitty stood so that he wouldn’t be seen when that door opened.

Benson tapped on it.

“Come in, come in,” snapped an irascible voice.

The gray fox of a man opened the door, went in, and shut the door behind him again.

“Who are you?” said the hawk-nosed old man at the desk. He went on without giving a chance for an answer. “If you want to buy Catawbi ore, you’ll have to compete with the others in the regular way. People have found out what good steel the ore makes, now. A lot of ’em want to buy. And the supply is limited. Send me a letter stating the price you’ll pay and I’ll compare it with the rest—”

“I don’t want to buy steel,” Benson said quietly. “I came for a few words with you about the skyscraper that collapsed yesterday. And the Lincoln Park pavilion that went down. And the missing two miles of track and the wrecked depot on the Catawbi Railroad.”

Colonel Ringset stared at the man with the snow-white hair and dead, white face with his savage old eyes unreadable. He was a man who would play a marvelous game of poker.

“Why come to me about these things?” he barked. “I don’t know anything about them.”

“I came,” said Benson, “because the accidents are so complimentary to Catawbi steel.”

The cold glare from Benson’s colorless eyes and the deadly expressionlessness of his white face were beginning to eat at the colonel’s will like acid on metal. But he tried to bluster it off.

“What the devil do you mean?”

“In the case of the building collapse, some sound girders were found—of Catawbi steel. The same thing was true of the pavilion collapse. In the case of the missing rails, toward the end of the section where they’d vanished, a few rails were lying untouched. They were, I discovered later, of Catawbi steel.”

“Well?”

“It has not yet been determined what has caused the steel made from competing ore to fail,” said Benson. “But whatever it is, it leaves Catawbi steel untouched. That means that the market for Catawbi ore will suddenly skyrocket. You’ll be able to see all you can mine, at your own figure.”

The colonel’s veined old face began to get purple.

“These catastrophes will leave you a very rich man,” Benson said quietly. “That’s why I came to see you about them.”