The Flame Breathers

CHAPTER VIII Nitro on Tap!

Up along the Hudson there is an estate, several acres in extent, worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the center of this show place, there is an appropriately palatial home. That is, there was a home there! It existed up until two days after a speed plane and a test car were destroyed in Utah. Then it disappeared much as the plane and car did.

The home was the property of Lorens Singer, which was a name to conjure with. A millionaire by stock market transactions before he was twenty-three, Singer had swelled his fortune ever since, up to his fifty-first year, by financial dealings, business promotion and factory ventures. He was mentioned in almost the same breath with the country’s leading financiers. Like them, he seemed very conscious of the great power of his wealth and endowed colleges and charity foundations with millions.

He was big-framed, still husky, with shrewd but kindly brown eyes. His manner was habitually courteous to all — servants and manual workers as well as his financial equals. He had business enemies, of course; but no personal enemies that anyone knew about.

That was what made the thing so inexplicable.

It happened, fortunately, at 5:30 in the afternoon. Fortunately, that is, for Singer. It was unfortunate from the standpoint of his servants.

At 4:30 on most afternoons, the servants were all in the house busy with preparations for the cocktail hour and dinner, at which Singer usually entertained at least half a dozen friends in his huge bachelor hall.

At that same hour, the financier himself was accustomed to looking over his famed formal garden. He was so engaged on this particular day, which saved his life.

The afternoon was still and tranquil. The blue Hudson flowed a hundred feet below the terrace wall with scarcely a ripple. The early summer air was hazy and windless.

The great house, of granite and marble and looking like a European castle rather than an American building, spired up into the blue with an appearance of eternal solidity.

Then — it wasn’t there any more!

There was the most peculiar sound Singer had ever heard. It was not exactly like an explosion. It was a soft roar, only on a tremendous scale. It was like the eruptive rumble deep in the heart of a volcano, or like the bellow of a landslide. It didn’t come from any one part of the big house. Lorens Singer could swear to that. It came from all over the building. And later investigation bore out his statement.

Anyhow, there was this soft but colossal roar, and then what had been a million-dollar castle was a steaming, smoking heap of rubble and debris.

Singer was thrown flat on the ground. A gardener, working near him, was similarly knocked flat by the concussion. He was up first, and he helped his employer to his feet.

Singer’s first words indicated the caliber of the man. They weren’t about his house or his loss.

“The servants,” he faltered, face as white as death.

But the people working in Singer’s home were beyond all hope or care.

The fire department, screaming up from half a dozen local stations, and the score of policemen, arriving almost simultaneously in squad cars, found that out.

There had been eighteen servants in the house, from Jasper, the sixty-four-year-old dignified butler, down to Agnes, the newest maid. The only thing they would need, from now on, would be eighteen coffins.

Police there. Fire department there. And within forty minutes — The Avenger.

Just a hint of the curious nature of the catastrophe had come out in the first hurried news dispatches on his private teletype. But even the hint was enough to send the man with the dead face and pale, icy eyes to the scene.

So the explosion had seemed to come from all parts of the house at once! It indicated a multiplicity of bombs — or else something much more odd.

Benson found that it was the latter.

He looked for something, anything, whose nature might indicate that it had packed explosives. Finally he found something. But it was not a bomb casing.

It was a length of copper water pipe. Quite a long length.

He kept on looking, and he found some more pipes with the same appearance; they were blasted and burst and twisted like flattened ribbon. He also found bits of standard water faucets blown to pieces.

It was as if someone had filled the entire water system of the mansion with TNT, and then set it off. But you can’t fill the water pipes of a big house with nitro. Or can you?

The idea that the police are dumb is held by many people. They are wrong. There are sharp brains in the police forces of America. The sharpest, in this case, belonged to a young patrolman scarcely out of the rookie class.

The young cop knew all about the almost mythical character known as The Avenger, though this was the first time his awed eyes had rested on that paralyzed, deadly face and the pale, infallible gaze. So it was to Benson that he went with his deductions.

“The explosive,” he said, “was in the water pipes. I’m sure of it, Mr. Benson.”

Benson looked at the young patrolman, with his earnest, intelligent face, at the length of copper pipe at his feet which he had just been inspecting, at the prowling cops and detectives all around them.

“How can you be so sure?” Benson asked expressionlessly.

“The look of the pipes for one thing. But for another — something even more important. Look here, sir.”

Benson followed him half a dozen steps to where the young cop had heaved aside some beams. There were more of the burst pipes and an electric cable, shredded of insulation but otherwise intact.

The end of the cable was scraped bare. Marks of the scraping knife were there, bright and recent.

No bared cable like this had any business in a house.

“That cable,” said the cop, “must have been wired to the plumbing. Then, at a given time, a spark was switched into the water system, and the thing blew up.”

Benson had been so sure there was some such arrangement in the wreckage that he hadn’t even taken the time to look for it. But he didn’t tell the rookie that. The youngster had done a good job, even if the genius of The Avenger had beaten him to it by a considerable margin.

“It looks as if you might be right,” said Benson, pale eyes like ice chips on the cop’s face. “What is your name?”

“O’Shawn, sir,” said the cop, repressed excitement in his tone. He was going to have something to tell about in the locker room for a long time: a face to face talk with The Avenger himself!

“Thank you, O’Shawn,” said Benson.

There was going to be a swift promotion here. A word from Benson would take O’Shawn out of harness for his quick wit and keen eye.

The Avenger sought out the gardener who had been with Singer at the time of the explosion.

The gardener was foreign born, but had evidently been in the country long enough to master perfect English.

“Nope, there wasn’t a thing to warn a guy of what was goin’ to happen. It just goes up in dust and smoke. See? Not a very loud boom. Mr. Singer was about twenty feet from me, lookin’ at delphinium sprouts. See? We both got knocked flat.”

“You and Mr. Singer were pretty scared?” said Benson.

“I’ll say! I know I was. And I never saw a guy look more scared than Mr. Singer. He was white as chalk and shakin’ all over. And then he got mad. ‘The servants,’ he says. ‘My heavens, the servants!’ And, running toward the rockpile with me, he says, ‘It’s murder. Murder of eighteen people. If I ever find out who did this I’ll kill him with my own hands, so help me.’ And Mr. Singer could still do it, too. He’s got muscle in that frame of his.”

“There was no hint of how the building went up?”

“Nope, Not a thing.” The gardener’s eyes became doubtful as he stared into the pale, icy orbs of the man who was questioning him.

“But mebbe I’m talking’ out of turn. Mebbe you better see the boss himself.”

Benson nodded and went toward the big front gate of the estate.

Lorens Singer was there, sitting in a deck chair that had seen far out on the lawn and hence had escaped the wreck. The chair had been dragged to the gate; and the millionaire was surrounded by police to guard him from intrusion by the curious.

He sat in the chair, puffing slowly on a thin brown cigar, staring with unblinking eyes at what had been his home. The unblinking eyes looked up to meet Benson’s dead face and flaring, pale eyes as The Avenger walked up to him. Singer’s eyebrows raised a little at the way this man could walk through a cordon of cops without a move to stop him; but that was all.

“A pretty complete disaster,” said Benson, standing easily beside the financier.

Singer nodded. “It is.” His voice was as steady as his hands. But it was harsh, and his eyes were as hard as brown crockery.

“My name is Richard Benson,” said Benson evenly. “You may know the name—”

“I know it well. Half my friends seem to be acquainted with you. And I got to know the name quite well, indeed, over an oil deal in Venezuela, years ago. You won some concessions there against me and several other men. But there’s no grudge.”

“I’m not dealing in oil now,” said Benson.

“I’ve heard about that, too. You tackle crime as a business, I hear. Laudable, but hardly understandable. You could be the richest man on earth if you’d stick to straight business.”

Benson’s pale eyes didn’t flicker. It was possible that he was already the richest man. Down in Mexico was the vast hoard of gold the Aztecs had hidden from the invading Spaniards. Benson knew where that was, and drew on it when he wished, as on a bank account. But no one outside his small circle dreamed of that.

“In connection with my new pursuit,” he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“As many as you like, young man,” said Singer, whose straight gaze had at once noted that The Avenger’s snow-white hair had nothing whatever to do with age; that the gray steel figure of a man was very young, indeed.

“Have you any idea who did this?” asked Benson bluntly.

“None at all.”

A trace of bewilderment mingled with the cold rage in Singer’s rocky face. He was looking back at the great pile of debris, again, with flinty, unblinking eyes.

“You have enemies?”

“Certainly! But they’re on Wall Street. They’d cut my throat on the market, but they aren’t bomb throwers.”

“You can’t think of any personal enemies who might have done this?”

“I cannot.”

“You are usually in your gardens at that time of day — the time of this explosion?”

“Yes.”

“Is that fact widely known?”

“Well — I’d never thought of it before. But I guess it isn’t. There’s a pretty high wall around this place. All any spy would know is that I usually get here from my office at about four o’clock, and come in this gate. They’d probably think I went into the house and stayed there; they couldn’t see that I was in the garden.

“What do you intend to do about this, Mr. Singer?”

Singer’s agate-brown eyes moved slowly from the debris to Benson’s dead countenance again. His hands clenched and were no longer steady.

“Plenty, Mr. Benson!”

His voice was as still and even as calm water. He still drew small, deliberate, leisured puffs from his thin cigar.

“There are about fifty private detectives in and around New York City who are really good. They’re all hired, right now, to drop whatever they’re doing and concentrate on who blew up my house and why. I don’t care what they charge to begin immediately. Besides, I can swing a little authority with the police. A great many city detectives will work here for some time to come. If all this doesn’t do the trick, I’ll import the cream of Scotland Yard and the best of the Paris gendarmerie. The loss of my house isn’t much. But eighteen people, working for me, died in that stone pile.”

He showed how he had made his big success. Courteous and kindly in normal pursuits, Singer was as ruthless and grimly persistent when aroused.

It was obvious that he didn’t know how or why this had happened. The Avenger’s infallible eyes caught that. But it was equally obvious that he was going to make it his business to know — and damned soon.

Benson turned to go to his car and return to Bleek Street.

A car was just pulling away from the many parked by curiosity seekers. There was just one man in it, at the wheel. The man seemed rather small, though you couldn’t tell from his sitting posture. He was bareheaded and had a rather average face but curious ears. They were decidedly pointed, almost like the ears of a trimmed show dog.

The man drove away toward Manhattan Island. On his face, Benson saw, was a fleeting look of anger and apprehension. But those emotions might have been merely the expected ones of any honest citizen at the sight of such an outrage.