River of Ice

CHAPTER VII The Alibi

Next morning at about ten o’clock, Benson left the Greenwich Precinct Station with his white face as expressionless as always, but with his pallid, deadly eyes glittering as they did when he was pitted against large-scale crime.

That this was super crime he was now sure since hearing the results of police investigations of the collapse of the building wall. The wall had been made to fall by a charge of explosive cleverly placed at the base, in the cellar. The explosive had been touched off from a distance, when Benson came along in his massive sedan. It had been a streamlined death trap, all right. And it seemed as if Lini Waller must have deliberately sent him into it.

And yet how could that be so? It would indicate that the girl was fighting against her own best interests, allied with forces who were trying to get the relics away from her. Who wanted to eliminate The Avenger from the game before he could get a chance to move against them?

Benson went from the Greenwich Station to the Kembridge Building. Wittwar, Conroy, Werner and Mallory were all there in the Foundation office. They were neglecting their own businesses, it seemed, while they made sure of getting the priceless relics of a race that had died out over fifty thousand years ago. They were pretty angry when Benson came in. Wittwar didn’t bother to say “Hello.” He opened up with, “We’re in a fine mess now, Mr. Benson. We were to meet that girl here and arrange for the trip west to wherever those caves are — and she hasn’t shown up. She was to come at nine o’clock.”

“I’ve told you what she has done,” snapped Werner, testily. “She has gone somewhere else. She has approached some other foundation or museum or something, in an effort to get more money. She has crossed us up.”

“So we asked you to come in for a minute or two and advise us,” said Mallory. “We thought possibly you could tell us how to locate her. You see, we don’t know where she is staying, or anything. We have asked her for an address, and she has refused to give us one.”

The Avenger quietly seated himself at one of the chairs placed around the conference table. “She may be in after all,” he said. “There is no reason that I can see why she shouldn’t — and every reason why she should — with two and a half million dollars and much, much more at stake.” It didn’t seem a hundred percent intelligible to the four at the table, from the slightly perplexed looks on their faces, but they didn’t ask for an explanation. You just didn’t demand explanations from the man with the white, paralyzed face.

“I still think there may be something crooked about this business,” snapped Werner. “Not the ancient manuscript. That has been proven to be genuine. But something crooked about the girl. I’ll bet the manuscript is the only thing she and her brother found — if there is a brother.”

“Why would she act as she has?” objected Mallory. “If the bundle of ancient records is all there is, why go through the act of selling us more? She knows she won’t get any money till all the rest of the stuff she has mentioned is located by our men.”

Werner shrugged. “I don’t know what game she has in mind, but it could easily be crooked. Look at the way she acts; won’t even tell where she is staying in New York!”

As they talked, The Avenger studied the four men out of colorless, brilliant eyes. One of these four, he thought, was a crook, an employer of thugs and murderers who would send a six-story wall toppling down on a sedan with three men in it — or would kidnap a girl. Lini Waller had sworn she had told only the four directors of the Wittwar Foundation about the discovery of the ancient relics. Benson believed her. But if that were true, then one of these four was trying to steal the objects instead of buy them — and might be attempting to get the two and a half millions from the Foundation for the relics, and take the relics too. But all of them were respected men in the city.

The Avenger, without seeming to do so, took Wittwar visually apart: burly body, muscular for a man in his fifties; firm, aggressive jaw, clear but rather hard gray eyes. However, Wittwar was, it would seem, too wealthy a man to attempt kidnap and murder for money. As for the relics, he didn’t have to steal them. They were to be acquired by his Foundation with funds that didn’t come from his own pocket, but from a dead man’s estate. There was no reason for him to be in it.

There was Conroy with stiff, reddish hair not unlike the hair of Fergus MacMurdie. But there the resemblance ended. For Conroy was heavy-set too; even heavier in body than Wittwar. And he was heavy-featured, with eyes a lot less icy a blue than Mac’s. Conroy was the millionaire owner of a butcher’s supply company; and he too would seem to have no monetary incentive for working against Lini Waller.

Werner came next in The Avenger’s cold, clear evaluation. Werner, with the cherubic face, the steel-trap jaw and square, strong chin. Werner owned a big printing establishment, and was worth nearly as much money as Wittwar. No money motive here, either.

The last of the four, Mallory, was of a slightly different stripe. He was well off, but no millionaire, as Benson had found out when he methodically rounded up all available facts about the four men. Mallory was, indeed, an employee of Wittwar. A very important one — vice-president and general manager of all Wittwar’s powerful packing enterprise — but an employee nevertheless. Mallory did have reason to covet the two and a half millions the Foundation stood ready to pay for the relics. But The Avenger knew that more than a motive must be unearthed before a man could be suspected.

The secretary opened the door. “Miss Waller is here, Mr. Wittwar.”

“Well! It’s about time! Show her in.” Werner, who had seemed most suspicious of all concerning Lini Waller’s possible integrity, was now the most reassured when she actually did show up. His face was all cherubic smiles again, and he rubbed his pink hands delightedly together. Lini came in. She nodded to the men and to The Avenger. Her manner was just as it had been at Bleek Street last night — wooden and dull, almost indifferent. You’d think the acquisition of two and a half million dollars meant nothing whatever to her. It was not at all like her previous visit when the offer of the big sum had enraptured her.

“We were getting worried, Miss Waller,” said Wittwar. “You are so late, we were beginning to fear you weren’t coming at all.”

“I was detained,” was all Lini said, dark eyes calm to the point of dullness. She neither avoided Benson’s gaze nor sought it. “Is the money ready to be turned over to me?”

Wittwar nodded. “It is on deposit at the Standard Trust Bank. You know the terms. When men of ours see the rest of the things you describe, the sum will be made over in your name.”

Benson stood up, lithe, powerful looking. “Gentlemen,” he said, “with your permission I would like to speak to Miss Waller alone — in the next room.” There probably wasn’t another man in New York who could have made such a request at that moment, and have gotten away with it. And the four directors didn’t like it very much — even from Richard Benson. Mallory, blinking sourly through his glasses, was the one who finally spoke for them. “Well, all right. But don’t keep her out there too long, Mr. Benson. We’d like to have Miss Waller settle the question of how soon we can send men to the caves.”

Benson nodded. He went to the next room, the connecting room between anteroom and conference room. He shut the conference room door, and stared into Lini’s brown eyes. “We had a little trouble last night,” he said. “On our way to the address you gave, a building wall caved in on us. We were pretty lucky to get out of it.”

Lini nodded, little trace of emotion in her face. “I know, Mr. Benson. I saw the wall collapse.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes,” said Lini. “I got to thinking that you might be trailed, or be in danger, if you went to get the suitcase with the other relics in it. So I left Bleek Street just a few minutes after Miss Gray showed me to a room. I… I ran toward Twelfth Street and reached the corner just as the wall fell — right on your car, it seemed. I went on quickly and got the suitcase myself and hid it.”

Benson’s eyes were pallid diamond drills, boring into her own dark orbs. Few could face that stare unless they were telling the truth. Lini’s eyes never wavered.

“A man of mine went on to the hotel you mentioned and was told no one of your description had rented a room recently.”

Lini nodded passively. “The clerks were paid to say that to anyone who asked,” she said. “I told you I had kept my identity a secret there.”

“Then the only reason you stole away from my place last night was because you were afraid I might run into trouble on your errand?” Benson said.

“Yes,” nodded Lini calmly. “That’s the only reason. I can see where it might be suspicious, but it’s the truth.”

“Where is your suitcase now?”

For the first time, a flicker of agitation appeared in Lini’s face. “It’s gone. Stolen!”

“Stolen?”

“Yes. After I had gotten it and was hurrying to put it in another place, I was attacked. A car stopped alongside me, and I was jerked into it and taken away.”

Benson said nothing. But his eyes were like pale fire opals as they dwelt on the girl’s countenance. Lini’s hand went to her forehead, and she rubbed it in a queer, dazed way. “I was taken to my brother,” she said. “I didn’t see my brother, but I was taken to the icy caves of the ancient race. I regained consciousness in the cave after being knocked out. A cave of ice, cold and bare, bright with the white light that has burned all these thousands of years.”

This was beginning to sound like pure gibberish. But Benson was paying as much attention as though the words were pearls of sanity from a great philosopher. “Cave of ice?” he said softly. “Light burning for thousands of years?”

“Yes. That’s where I was taken.”

“But the caves are thousands of miles from here.” Benson spoke in a gentle, almost monotonous tone, and his eyes were compelling on hers. He was trying hypnotism; and The Avenger was probably the best hypnotist alive. “The caves are thousands of miles from here, Miss Waller. How could you be taken that distance in a night and be back here in the morning?”

“I was in the ice-walled cave.” Lini stopped rubbing her forehead in that dazed way, and her manner became calm to the point of indifference again. “I had better go in to see those men now.”

The Avenger had tried to hypnotize her, and had failed! It was the first such failure he had ever had. He let her go back into the conference room, and he stayed in the room where they had been talking. When she came out again, she was going to Bleek Street with him and was going to stay there. Benson sensed some dreadful thing more subtle and sinister than he had ever encountered before — with this girl on the receiving end!

But she didn’t come out of the room. Benson waited for nearly ten minutes. Then, with his pale eyes looking deadly in their cold wrath, he walked into the conference room. The four men were obviously about to leave and go to their own offices. They had finished. And they were alone.

Benson looked around, his face white and still. “Where is Miss Waller?”

“Why, Mr. Benson,” exclaimed Wittwar, after his nervous little throat-clearing that preceded most of his sentences, “we thought you had gone.”

“Where is Miss Waller?”

“She went directly from here.” It was Mallory talking, saturnine, thin and dry-looking. “There’s a private exit to the hall from here. See that panel? Pretty good job of concealing, isn’t it. Miss Waller wanted to leave privately; so we let her go out that way. She is to tell us this afternoon just how to get to the caverns, and will go with our men…”

Mallory’s voice dribbled into silence at the look in The Avenger’s pale glacial eyes. All four stared at him in awe, mixed with a little inexplicable fear, as he walked out of the room with his soft panther tread.