Justice, Inc.

CHAPTER XI The Trapdoor Plane

Benson summed it up.

“Lawrence Hickock is gone, and no one knows where. Arnold Leon has disappeared. Mrs. Martineau the same — she has been missing even longer than Hickock. According to the newspapers, Stephen Vincent has also vanished. Perhaps others have, too. All those people seem to have one common comiection. They either own stock in, or run, the Buffalo Tap & Die Works.”

Benson continued: “The gang that takes over the Buffalo-Montreal plane periodically is connected with those disappearances, so I think we can accept almost as proven fact the theory that the gang kidnaps these wealthy, influential people and, one by one, drops them through the trapdoor of that plane to some unknown destination. That is what is carried aboard in the trunk each trip — a living, human body. That is what is dropped. And that is why they had to dispose of my wife and girl. The gang didn’t dare have a living soul witness what went out that trapdoor.”

“You mean, they just drop them?” said MacMurdie, blue eyes blazing. “Or do ye think they use parachutes?”

“Parachutes, I think,” said Benson. “There would seem to be no point in going to such elaborate lengths just to kill their victims by dropping them in Lake Ontario. There are far easier ways to murder. No, they must ’chute the victims down, and hold them alive somewhere. And tonight, you say, Mac, the gang has booked the Montreal plane for one more run?”

“That’s right, Muster Benson.”

“Well, we’ve gone at least a little way in our journey of vengeance. I think we can go a little distance further and make a good guess at where the victims are dropped.”

Benson opened a large map and pored over it with face bleak and white and dead but gray eyes alive. The map was of the eastern Great Lakes region. He pointed to the head of Lake Ontario, with Canada on one side and the United States on the other.

“I have figured the speed of the plane as well as I could,” he said, clipped words rattling from still, immobile lips, “and I think the ship was about over the Thousand Islands region when I last saw my wife and girl. The Thousand Islands! There’s a labyrinth for you! In that wilderness of water and rock, a hundred hiding places might be found where a gang would be safe from the law indefinitely. That is where I think our eventual goal lies. That is where I believe these missing persons are being held. Always assuming they aren’t dead, of course.”

MacMurdie, the careful Scot, went to the map with his lips pursed. No yes-man, MacMurdie. The chief’s idea seemed sound to him. But he wanted to verify it a little.

“The Montreal air line runs like so,” he said.

He traced a line from Buffalo to Montreal, and noted where it hit the St. Lawrence River. Then he nodded to Benson.

“It runs over the Thousand Islands. That’ll be the place. But as ye say, it’s a labyrinth. How would we ever get an idea as to what part of the Islands these skurlies’ll be hidin’ it?”

Benson shook his head a little, pale eyes flaming with concentrated thought.

But it was Smitty, the good-natured looking, moonfaced giant who had an idea first.

“I’ve got it!” he said so suddenly that MacMurdie jumped and turned resentful blue eyes on the big fellow.

‘What have ye got, mon?” he snapped. “The little crawlin’ things in your bonnet?”

“You say the plane takes the gang again tonight. And you, sir”—the giant turned to Benson—“have told us how your tragedy and your entrance into this business came from forcing your way into the plane with your wife and child that night. Well, I could perhaps locate their hide-out in the island myself, like this.”

He spoke eight words. Benson’s eyes seemed to go more colorless than ever, and to become, if possible, brighter. MacMurdie stared open-jawed.

“Whoosh/” the Scot said finally. “ ’Tis suicide, mon! Ye can’t do a thing like that!”

“No, Smitty,” Benson said. “I can’t permit anything like that.”

“I could do it,” insisted the giant. “That is, I think I could. You!” He stared at MacMurdie. “What plane will they be taking?”

“The S404, of course. The one with the trapdoor.”

“You know that plane?”

“Like the inside of my hand.”

“Draw the undercarriage. And draw it to scale! Because I’m going to do this — and if your drawing isn’t right I’ll come back from the grave and haunt you.”

“If anything goes wrong ye won’t have a grave,” said the Scot somberly. “Ye’ll be buried in black water in the Ontario.”

The Scot was drawing the under carriage of the S404, and being very careful about it.

In Benson’s pale and deadly eyes, as they rested on the giant Smitty, was a look not seen there since his hair had whitened and his face died. But he was shaking his head.

“I told you, Smitty, I won’t permit it.”

The big fellow stared back at him.

“And I’m telling you, sir I’m going to do it. It’s the answer, if I can stay alive.”

“No!”

“You can’t stop me. You downed me once, but you can’t do it again. And the only way you can keep me from trying is to get me down and strap me to the floor.”

The eyes, pale, but seeming composed of living flame, dwelt on the big fellow’s face. There was no seeming stupidity in the moon countenance now. It was vital with intelligence and with resolve. Benson’s hand rested on the vast shoulder for just an instant.

“You can have anything I’ve got, if you pull out of this, Smitty.”

“I don’t want anything but just to work for you.”

Mac passed over his careful drawing.

“Ye’re a suicidal fool, Smitty. But ye have your points, you overgrown gorilla. Though, of course, ye haven’t a chance in this.”

“You’re a wet blanket, Scotch,” said Smitty, studying the drawing.

And then he was gone, with Benson staring after him with that strange light in his eyes, and MacMurdie’s sandy ropes of eyebrows pulled down low.

“I wouldn’t tell him to his face,” Mac said, “but he’s a very brave mon.”

Benson only nodded.

“And I wouldn’t want to be the man he’s after,” added the Scot dourly.

The men Smitty was after, and over whom, though they didn’t yet realize it, the looming dead face of a man whose soul was as lifeless as his features drew ever closer, were on their way to the Buffalo airport.

That is, four of them were. The four were in an ordinary taxi. They were the big fellow with the black pads of hair on the backs of his hands, who had been a passenger the night Benson went to the men’s lavatory, two of the three ordinary-looking men who had also been along, and a newcomer — a dapper, slim man of forty, who was continually smiling with his lips but not with his eyes.

“Rena has the trunk?” the smiling man said.

“Yeah,” replied the big fellow with the hairy hands.

“The plane is booked solid?”

“You dummy! of course. Think we’d have other passengers?”

“You did, one night, I hear.”

The big man snapped out an oath.

“They didn’t stay aboard long! And a thing like that can’t happen again. We got it fixed so it can’t.”

The cab dumped them at the airport — four men who were dressed and who acted like any other four businessmen on the verge of a fast trip by plane. Each had a suitcase, of airplane weight. They walked toward the runway.

There, on the flat stretch, a transport stood with idling props. On its nose was painted S402. But it was the S404, all right — the one with the trapdoor. Somebody had decided that the switching of numbers was such a good idea that they’d make it permanent.

The four walked slowly; and in a moment, three other people from another cab caught up to them. There was a light trunk strapped to the back of the cab. The driver and an airport man got the trunk and carried it over the level field to the plane. They stowed it in the tail.

The three from the second cab were two men, average and unremarkable-looking as were the ones in the first taxi, and a woman. The woman was rather pretty, save for a hard line around the mouth. These, too, had innocent-looking airplane luggage with them in addition to the trunk. No one would have any suspicions about them, merely on looking them over. Seven people bound for Montreal by plane. One with a trunk. So what?

They climbed aboard. The props idled a little faster. A third cab drew up at the gate with a scream of brakes. From this cab leaped a figure that looked nine feet tall and five broad.

The giant lit running and raced toward the plane. He was a bizarre figure. For all his size, he had a hump on his back. It made you wonder how tall the tremendous hunchback would have grown if his spine had stayed straight.

“Hold that plane!” he yelled. “I’ve got to get aboard. Got to get to Montreal in a hurry!”

Aboard, the big fellow with the black pads of hair leaped to the door of the pilot’s compartment.

“Get going!” he snapped. “Some fool is trying to get on. Hurry!”

“I can’t get away till they take the chocks from under the wheels,” said the pilot. He waved wildly to the men on the ground to remove the blocks.

Near the steps still in place up to the plane door, the humpbacked giant who had ran from the cab was gesticulating and arguing with a field attendant.

“I don’t care if the plane is full! I’ve got to get aboard. I’ll sit in the aisle. And don’t try to tell me a ship like this one can’t get off the ground with just one passenger over capacity! These boats can take an extra half-ton overload and walk off with it.”

The attendant still barred the way. The humpbacked giant simply plucked him up by the collar, held him kicking two feet off the ground in one hand, and then set him aside a yard to the right.

They were closing the plane door. The giant got it, and forced it out against the pull of three men with seeming effortlessness. Then he was inside, beaming good nature and stupidity on the passengers.

“Sorry to cause a disturbance, folks, but I had to get aboard.”

The big fellow with the hairy hands was still at the pilot’s compartment. The pilot had heard the giant enter.

“Do I stall here till you can throw him off?” he said in a low tone.

“Yes!” the big man answered savagely. Then: “No. Here comes a couple of airport guys not on our payroll. We can’t stick around and have a brawl that’ll end with the cops sticking their bills in. That flat-faced, over-grown cripple! Well… nothing for it but to pull away fast.”

The door was slammed and secured. The pilot gave her the gun. The big ship flashed along the runway and majestically rose.

And in one of the seats always so curiously vacant when this crowd booked the plane, sat Smitty, beaming good nature with all his vast face and staring with amiable lack of intelligence at the others.

The pilot said just one word to the man with the black pads of hair.

“Where?”

“Just before we drop the other,” snapped the big fellow. “East end of the lake, as soon as you pick up the beacon light in the distance. We’ll fix the big dope like we fixed that other dummy who was fool enough to force his way on board. This guy got on at Buffalo — but he’ll never get off at Montreal.”