Justice, Inc.

CHAPTER IX Smitty Joins Up

The giant was bursting out of the largest ready-made suit Benson had been able to get in Buffalo. But it would have to do till a tailor could make up a suit to order.

“Or maybe ’tis a tent maker we’ll have to call in for ye,” said MacMurdie, frosty blue eyes traveling over the great body.

The three were in Benson’s hotel suite. Benson was staring with gray gimlet eyes at the giant’s mild-seeming china-blue ones.

“Your employer just walked into that house, belonging to John Lansing, and didn’t come out again?” Benson repeated.

The big fellow nodded.

“And you came back in a hurry and reported it to his daughter, and she hysterically discharged you, and indicated that she was going to hand you over to the police.”

“Yes,” said the giant, voice too high for his bulk.

“Why was she so sure you had something to do with the kidnaping? For kidnapping’s what it must have been.”

The big fellow reddened. “Because I’ve been in jail,” he said defiantly.

Benson’s gray eyes probed deep. He didn’t see the sly shrewdness of the criminal in the china-blue eyes. All he saw was a huge fellow, a lot smarter than he appeared to be, who would be as decent a citizen as anyone else — unless he were roused.

“Care to explain the jail sentence?” he said.

“I was framed,” said the giant. “It was with a big electrical-equipment corporation. I’m an electrical engineer. Graduated from Massachusetts Tech. I was working on television, and some platinum disappeared from the laboratory. Eight thousand dollars’ worth. They nailed me for it, and I got a year in the pen. I’d have gotten ten, only the evidence was so clouded the conviction wasn’t clear. I couldn’t get a regular job after that. All I could get was a job as chauffeur to Mr. Leon, who overlooked my past. Then something has to go and happen to him! If I’m ever tagged as the last man to see him alive, with my jail record, I’ll go up for kidnaping as sure as there’s a ceiling over our heads.”

“That’s why you charged at me the minute I opened my mouth to ask you a question?”

“That’s why. I thought you were a cop and I didn’t dare let a cop take me.”

“What’s your name?”

The giant stared at the pale-gray eyes with his ears slowly reddening.

“Algernon Heathcote Smith,” he said in a stifled voice.

MacMurdie stared at the almost three hundred pounds of brawn with his frosty blue eyes widening. Then for the first time Benson heard him laugh.

“Algie!” the Scot hooted. “Algie! Heathcote! Why—”

The giant’s body rippled toward him, and MacMurdie became discreetly silent. The big fellow faced Benson again.

“The name’s Smitty to my friends,” he said. And he added dangerously, “Most people try to be friends with me.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Benson, ice-gray eyes traveling over the unbelievable mountain of sinew. “So you’re out of a job, Smitty. And you can drive, and you’re an electrical engineer with enough technical training to be working on television. Would you like to work for me? I think I could use you.”

“I’d like it very much.”

“Whoosh, chief!” exclaimed MacMurdie. “We don’t need the help of little boys. You and I can—”

Smitty’s ingenuous blue eyes went his way again, and MacMurdie once more relapsed into thoughtful silence.

“What work is it you want me to do?” Smitty asked the gray man with the immobile white face.

“Dangerous work,” said Benson. “I wouldn’t blame you if you decided against taking it when you’ve heard about it. We’re fighting against some organized gang of criminals so daring that men like your employer, Leon, and like Lawrence Hickock, seem menaced — along with Heaven knows how many lesser lives. A gang so powerful that the police seem helpless to hold any of the lesser killers turned in to them. A gang so clever that even now, after strenuous efforts, we hardly know more concerning their eventual murderous goal than we did when we started out. Quite possibly one or all of us may be killed before we’re through. That’s the work, Smitty. Care to take it on?”

The giant’s moon-full face with the china-blue eyes, for once, expressed the keen intelligence and firm will that dwelt behind the not-very-bright-looking exterior.

“I’d count it a rare privilege to help you in such work, sir,” he said. “And now, if you wouldn’t mind telling me more—”

Benson told the story from the start, eyes like tortured gray steel in a face that could not move a muscle to express the agony of recounting that dreadful starting episode in the plane. And Smitty listened with fury and sympathy to the clipped words of his new chief.

Mystery can work in opposite directions. If Benson had been unable to get far, as yet, toward the core of the grim mystery that had been exploded into his life with the disappearance of wife and child, so, too, had the men against whom he was fighting been unable to penetrate the mystery of who was beginning to get so close to their mongrel heels.

Pete, from the light truck that had borne Leon away to an unknown destination, and the slack-lipped driver of that truck, still with his inevitable cigarette drooping from the corner of his loose mouth, talked it over a bit.

They were in a cheap boardinghouse room kept in Pete’s name.

“It’s that guy, Benson, of course, who’s behind the monkeyin’ around,” Pete said. “But where’s Benson keeping himself? Benson’s a black-haired young fella. All we’ve seen around is a white-haired guy with a face like something dug up from a grave at midnight. I tell you, the boss is getting kinda worried about it.”

“Who is the boss?” mused the slack-lipped driver.

Pete turned baleful eyes on him. The man hastily backtracked.

“Look, I ain’t sayin’ I’m going to nose around and find out things — like the guy you had to knock off in the truck. I’m just a little curious — see? Don’t get me wrong. If you know anything about this, and feel like talking, go ahead. If you don’t, I don’t care. Get me?”

“I don’t know a thing,” Pete said, relaxing stiffly. “That’s the truth.”

“You don’t know the answer to all this stuff we’ve been doing?”

“No. Snatch. That’s all I know. But — nobody’s had the bee put on ’em for money yet. It beats me.”

“And you don’t know who’s behind it?”

“No, and I don’t want to. It’s unhealthy. Anybody in the crowd gets a grand for opening up anybody else who gets too nosy. That’s a standing offer. When it’s like that — you think I’m going around investigating?”

Pete lit a cigarette and drew deep.

“Now, this white-haired guy who has been gettin’ so busy—” he began.

His phone rang. He picked it up.

“S404,” a voice said. All you could tell about the voice, so muffled and disguised was it, was that it was that of a man. But the code number — of a plane — was right.

“O.K. shoot,” Pete said tersely.

“Go to the home of Mrs. Martineau,” the muffled voice rapped out. “Others are going to the homes of the rest. You will do as they are ordered to do: Watch the place. Don’t be seen. Watch from a distance. Any man going there to investigate — see that he doesn’t get far alive. You understand?”

“I understand. You want I should go alone?”

“Take another with you. The man we’re beginning to want out of the way is clever. But two of you should be able to handle him.”

“I’ll say we’ll be able to handle him!” Pete said, lips in a cold grin. “O.K., boss.”

He hung up. The other man stared.

“Say! Was that the boss? Was—”

“I don’t know,” Pete snapped. “That’s the way we get all our orders. Just a guy over the phone. I don’t know who he is. Come on.”

“Where to?”

“The joint where the widow Martineau lives — or lived! The big shots are worried that Benson may get wind of what happened to her, and go snoopin’ around her place. If he does—”

Pete took out his automatic, looked at the full clip, and slipped the safety off and then on again in answer.

Back at the Hotel Ely, Benson was studying the latest editions of the newspapers. So was the giant, Smitty. But Benson was reading financial pages with his eyes like devouring gray flame, while Smitty was concentrating on the regular news.

The giant laid down the last paper with a sigh.

“There’s no mention of the cops being after one Algernon Heathcote Smith,” he said. “I believe it’s as you predicted it would be: Leon’s daughter stopped calling for the cops right after we left. She is now kept silent by the same fear that holds in all such cases. She’s afraid if she reports anybody to the police — me or anybody else — it will go hard with her father. I guess it will be all right for me to walk around loose for a while.”

Benson simply nodded. He was studying the financial news that had been repeated in one form or another by all the papers.

The news was local — and had to do with the Buffalo Tap and Die Works.

For the past twenty-four hours it has been impossible for anyone to get in touch with Mr. Stephen Vincent, secretary-treasurer to Buffalo Tap & Die. He has gone away “for a week’s rest,” according to members of his family and employees near to him. In the opinion of this humble correspondent, that seems highly unusual when you consider that for some time past, it has been impossible to get in touch with Mr. Lawrence Hickock, president of the same firm. The unexplained absence of two high officers of this concern seems to hint that perhaps an investigation of finances should be in order. Where is the much vaunted S.E.C. in this matter?

And in another part of the same paper, under “Financial Transactions,” the following caught the pale-gray eyes:

The extensive holdings of Mrs. Robert Martineau, widow of Dollar Martineau, in Buffalo Tap & Die Works, were thrown on the falling market for that stock with the opening bell this morning. It further added to the chaos of the unfortunate firm’s affairs. Insiders are trying to guess what is in the wind—

Benson looked at the stock quotations, deadly pale eyes like swords of ice in his dead face.

The stock of Buffalo Tap & Die, par 100, was down to 14.

Benson got up, a flashing gray fox methodically and swiftly weaving one cold trail after another into a straight path on which the scent was growing warm. Smitty towered anxiously over him.

“Going somewhere, chief? Let me go for you, huh? You haven’t given me anything to do. You’ve got that redheaded Scotchman out at the Buffalo airport snooping around. But you haven’t given me a job.”

“You’ll get plenty, Smitty.” The clipped words came from lips as still and set as gray stone. Meanwhile, Benson was at work before the mirror.

His fingers, growing ever more deft at their almost gruesome job, were manipulating the strangely dead flesh of his white face.

The set lips went up a little in a reckless, happy-go-lucky cast. The features were shaped into a lean and cynical mask. One eyebrow went up a fraction of an inch higher than the other.

Benson put on the hat and bent brim and crown into shapelessness. He put on the topcoat and left the collar up a little, sloppily.

Smitty suddenly nodded. “I get it. A reporter.”

“Yes,” said Benson. “There may be danger where I’m going. Men posted to block investigation. If I can slip into the place and out again as an ordinary reporter, I may avoid trouble.”

“If there’s a chance of trouble,” said Smitty, “there is also a chance that you might not come back. If you don’t, in a specified time, where shall I go to look for you?”

“I’m going to Mrs. Robert Martineau’s home. If I’m not back in an hour, follow me there.”

Benson went out, with the giant’s eyes still anxious on his new boss. Benson seemed a figure of ice more than a man. His face was like something resurrected from death. Not once had he shown a human emotion. Yet there was something about the man that had roused Smitty’s instant and instinctive obedience. He felt he’d go through fire and flood for him. And he was worried about his safety now!

Had he known the trap set at the Martineau home, nothing could have kept the giant from going along.