Justice, Inc.

CHAPTER XVI Quick-Change Artist

The ten o’clock sun, which could only with difficulty get into two heavily barred basement windows, was brilliant on the glittering surface of Lake Ontario.

In the seeming center of the brilliance, floated a fast motor cruiser, engine cut off and idling.

Far in the distance on every hand, vague smudges showed on the horizon. Islands of varying sizes in this honeycomb of submerged hilltops. Straight ahead was the nearest island — perhaps four miles off.

In the cabin of the cruiser, standing with his face to the bow, Benson waited for developments, pale eyes flaming, steely muscles tense.

Murdock, sitting behind him in the cockpit, with gun trained through the broad opening of the cabin hatchway on his back, had said he was to be dropped overside in a thousand feet of water. Very well. But if he were just dropped, he would float. Benson didn’t think Murdock would want a floating body around, apt to be discovered.

It was dollars to doughnuts that the man meant to weight him down, somehow, before dropping him over the side. To do that, Benson thought, he’d have to come close. And if he came close — Benson was going to get him, gun or no gun.

Benson, though Murdock didn’t even dream it, was on that boat of his own volition. Murdock’s attention had been drawn to him on the dock when Benson’s foot slipped.

But Benson’s foot had slipped on purpose. The gray jaguar of a man was too sure-footed ever to have made that noise by accident. He had wanted to be “captured” in the hope that Murdock would take him to the hideout of the gang.

Well, he’d been captured. But he wasn’t going to the hideout. He was going to a watery death, unless he could overpower Murdock when the man drew near to tie a weight to him.

But with the boat drifting and ready, Murdock said: “Keep on standing right where you are, dummy. I’d just as soon put a slug in you as not!”

Then Murdock moved around. Benson heard him. And in the clear glass of the cabin windows before him, the gray man could catch a faint reflection of action behind him.

Murdock was taking a smaller, spare anchor from the side locker whose lid made one of the cockpit seats. From the same locker he drew a coil of half-inch rope.

“Like fish?” Murdock taunted. “They’ll be your buddies in a minute — for a long time.”

Benson, experimentally, turned a little. Like light the man had dropped the rope and had his gun in his right hand. Benson stooped over a little. If he could get Mike out of his right leg holster, or Ike out of the left—

“Straighten up!” snapped Murdock, jabbing the gun forward. “I’m taking no chances with you.”

Benson straightened. He knew Murdock would prefer not to shoot, because sound carries so far and so clearly over water. But he knew the man would shoot, if he felt it necessary. He could always say later he’d shot at a floating bottle or what not.

Benson would have to abide by his first idea — get Murdock when he drew near to fasten the weight to him.

But that plan didn’t pan out, either. Murdock was an old hand. He made a loop of the end of the rope, and came to the hatchway.

From a distance of six or seven feet, far too great for Benson to get at him swiftly, he tossed the loop with his right hand, holding the gun ready in his left.

The loop settled over Benson’s body. Murdock yanked it taut. The loop held Benson’s arm at his sides. Only then, chuckling evilly, did Murdock come close, gun lax.

“Going to jump me, huh?” he said. “Well, bigger men than you have tried to—”

His voice broke in a wild scream. Benson’s arms were held to his sides, but he could move his hands — and he had!

Steel fingers gripped over Murdock’s legs just above the knees. Like iron claws they bit and twisted, and the punishment of it was testified by Murdock’s hoarse yells.

Murdock came out of his fog of agony enough to remember that he had a gun. He leaned back away from Benson to get clear and use it.

Benson had been waiting for the move. He shoved backward, hard. The shove, plus the backward leaning, sent Murdock flying backward to fall in a heap in the center of the little cabin. His head banged the deck.

Foggily he raised his gun. But Benson, arms swelling loose from the slip-noose, was on him before he could shoot. He got the gun with one powerful swoop. Murdock cried out again as he stared into pale and deadly eyes flaming from a white, still face that in the midst of turmoil showed no emotion whatever.

Then Benson swung the gun.

There was silence, broken by a thump from the cockpit. Benson leveled the gun. The thump had come from the locker across from the one in which Murdock had found rope and spare anchor.

“Come out of there, or I’ll shoot!”

The lid opened. A red, raw face showed, at each side of which was an outstanding red ear, like a sail. Frosty blue eyes stared into Benson’s deadly gray ones.

“MacMurdie!”

“I’d have got the skurlie with a boat hook, if you hadn’t nabbed him,” MacMurdie said calmly enough.

“Mac! How—”

“I saw the man come in this boat, from behind the crates. I saw him go into the general store, and twigged he was Murdock. So I changed our plans, I hid in the locker, thinkin’ the boat would bear me to where we want to go, and that later I could get back and lead ye to it. But it seems ye came along, too.”

Already circumstances had proved what a rare man this red-faced, bony-fisted Scot with the enormous feet was. This capped it.

Benson’s hand touched the bony shoulder for an instant.

“Thanks,” he said. Then, voice expressionless again as his dead, white face: “But the plan has misfired. We didn’t find where the hideout is—”

“I’m thinkin’ we did,” MacMurdie interrupted. He went back to the locker in which he’d hidden, bent down, and came up with a dirty, water-stained piece of paper.

“It seems more than one mon runs this boat. So for the convenience of those who might not know the lake around here to the last detail, some laddie among the gang we’re after drew a neat little chart. And here it is. I found it when I jumped into that fish-smelling coffin.”

Benson spread it out. Rough pencil lines showed an island with a curiously shaped tree on a high point. The tree was low on one side and high on the other. It resembled a gigantic setting hen.

In a line from the east to the tree, the shore was indicated as a straight low cliff. And in the cliff was a black circle, arching from the water.

“A hole in the cliff!” said Benson, pale eyes blazing. “That’s their dock!”

MacMurdie nodded. The meaning was plain.

“And that’s our island dead ahead,” added Benson.

Even from that distance the two could see the tree resembling a setting hen.

Benson slid the clutch, and the motor started bearing the motor cruiser toward the island.

“Mon, mon!” expostulated MacMurdie. “ ’Tis broad daylight. We haven’t a chance of landing on that island, with no guessin’ how many of the murderous rats waiting to greet us. We ought to wait till night—”

“We go now,” said Benson. There was death in the pale eyes. “My… wife and daughter… may be on that island, Mac. And every passing hour might make it too late.”

“But the minute one of the skurlies sees us, the game is over,” said MacMurdie earnestly.

“I think not,” said Benson. “Bring Murdock into the light.”

Benson dug around and found a half of a cracked mirror. He propped Murdock on the floor, back against the wall, and sat beside the still-unconscious man. Mac held the mirror so that both faces, side by side, were reflected for comparison.

Man of a thousand facesl That was what Benson had become with the shock that killed the flesh of his countenance. Till now, he had used this odd phenomenon only incidentally. Now he utilized it to the full. And the result was something like magic. Anyhow, it left MacMurdie mumbling under his breath.

Murdock had a flat face. Benson massaged his own cheeks and forehead till some of that flat look was attained. It was mainly illusion, for the bony structure under the plastic flesh was unchangeable. But the illusion was startling, artistically good.

Murdock had high cheekbones. Benson massaged the flesh of his face up and forward a little. The flesh stayed where it was left — and he had high cheekbones.

Murdock had a faint cleft in his chin. Benson pressed the tip of his thumb against the gruesomely plastic flesh at the tip of his jaw — and a small cleft appeared.

When the miracle was done, Benson’s face resembled Murdock’s as a blurred carbon copy resembles an original letter. With the two faces side by side in the mirror there was, of course, no question of telling which was which. But separate the two, and the resemblance would hold!

“Mon, ye ought to go on the stage!”

Benson didn’t answer. He stripped the ancient pants and sweater from Murdock’s unconscious body and donned them. They were too big for him.

“Your height and your eyes,” said MacMurdie, “are what will give ye away.”

Murdock’s eyes were muddy brown. Benson narrowed his pale-gray eyes sleepily, to minimize the difference. Later, in a life destined to be perilous and active as the lives of few men ever are, he would have a dozen pairs of shell-thin eyeball glasses, with different-colored pupils, to slip over the telltale gray flames in his dead face. But he had no such thing now.

Later, he would have dozens of pairs of shoes, with varying thickness of soles or with no soles at all, to change his height. But he could only bear himself on tiptoe, now, to reach some of Murdock’s slouching stature.

“All we want is to land,” Benson said. “This ought to get us ashore. After that—”

He went aft, to the cockpit controls, and slipped the hook from the wheel. The boat, held on its course by the hook, was very near the island.

“Inside, Mac.”

MacMurdie hid in the cabin, beside Murdock’s still form. Benson sent the boat straight at the low cliff.

There was no hole in sight!

Benson’s pale eyes widened a little. There had to be a hole there! The chart showed it. Meanwhile, he didn’t dare slacken speed or show uncertainty. It might be noted from the shore and arouse suspicion.

It wasn’t until the prow of the fast boat was within fifty yards of the cliff that a rocky knob just off-shore was passed enough to reveal the water-edge cavern. Benson breathed a sigh and sent the boat into it at reduced speed.

Not far back in there was a roughly leveled rock ledge. There was a mooring ring in it. Benson brought the boat to a stop and moored it. There was a sound of steps.

He looked around and saw a crude stairway, cut in the rock, leading up. A man appeared at the foot of these, a bald-headed, paunchy fellow with a gash for a mouth.

“Took your time, didn’t you, Murdock?” snarled the man. “You know we want that insulin fast. And the other supplies.”

In the cabin, MacMurdie literally held his breath. Benson calmly straightened up from the mooring ring, and took a step toward the paunchy man.

The man stared pugnaciously at the flat face with the high cheekbones and the cleft chin. The face of Murdock.

“Farr wants to see you right away. He wants to work on Vincent some more, and you’re the boy for that, with your little tricks—” The man stopped, then stared, slack-jawed.

“Hey! You’re not Murdock—”

Size and eye color had given Benson away. But not till the resemblance had let him get near the man — which was all Benson had asked it to do.

Benson leaped. The man crashed back against the rock cave wall, with hands like a steel vice at his throat. He tore and twisted and turned, and could not break the pressure.

MacMurdie came from the cabin. Benson’s eyes held a reflection of Alicia and little Alice, victims of this man among others. The flaming pale orbs also, for an instant, held madness.

But before the purpling unconsciousness of the man could pass into the blackness of death, Benson forced his eager hands to relax their grip.

He laid the man down, and MacMurdie, with rope from the boat’s locker and swabs of waste from the same source, bound and gagged him and the still-unconscious Murdock.

Then the two went up the rock stairs.

The stone steps ended in a clump of bushes cleverly concealing them from any chance walker on the ground.

They peered from the bushes at an old house a hundred yards away.

The house was big and rambling. In its day it had been quite a summer estate. But it was boarded up now, with weeds where a lawn had been. A falling-down little sign announced the place as Thornacre Hall. Benson nodded.

“Thornacre. A Buffalo realtor. Died a few years ago, and his estate has been tied up in the courts ever since. This place among the rest of the things — evidently-closed and unused. Nice spot for a hideout.”

Benson was still in the old pants and sweater and still wore the amazingly good likeness of Murdock’s face instead of his own. MacMurdie shivered a little and looked away.

“House?” he said succinctly.

Benson nodded.

Mac sighed dolefully. “We’ll do no good there,” he said, pessimism blanketing him with gloom. “They’ll be three or four to one, with machine guns and all. We won’t get to first base, Muster Benson.”

Benson was beginning to understand this sail-eared, huge-footed assistant of his; was beginning to understand that before action the dour Scot was sure always of disaster, but in action was a devil on wheels and equally sure of success, no matter how improbable.

Benson’s pale-gray eyes almost smiled in the white, still mask of his face — or, rather, of Murdock’s face.

“Come along,” he said.

Bushes to tree to stack of underbrush piled long ago by a neat gardner to burn but never fired. Underbrush to low stone wall to the edge of the lawn. And there they paused a moment

“We’re stuck, mon. We could never cross that cleared space without being seen—”

“The weeds are shoulder-high,” Benson said quietly. “We’ll crawl.”

They started. Over their heads as they inched forward with toes and elbows the weeds waved sinuously, but there was a little breeze blowing to cover that.

And then the breeze suddenly stopped, and MacMurdie didn’t! The movement above him was a dead give-away if anybody was looking.

A shout from the house told that someone was. “Hey! What’s that out there in the weeds—” The wicked snout of a submachine gun poked in that direction. The gunner drew a careful bead—