Stockholders in Death

CHAPTER XIX Down to the Sea

Tom stared at the veiled girl, trying to make out the features under the mesh. There was a very grateful look in his eyes. She had saved him from the chair when she had driven him away from Town Bank the night he had been such a fool as to hold it up with the Luckow mob.

But the rest looked at The Avenger.

There was grim finality in the pale, deadly eyes; the look of accomplishment that came to their colorless depths when Benson had finally gathered all the facts he needed to know to annihilate a supercrook.

MacMurdie knew that look. So he nodded.

“Ye’ve got our man where ye want him, then?” he said in his broadest Scotch accent.

“Yes,” said The Avenger, voice cold and calm as ice. There was a faint throb of a propeller as some boat passed the dock in the river outside. No one paid any attention; the river traffic is always heavy in the Hudson. The sound of the propeller died.

“That Town Bank crew of pirates—” burst out Wayne Crimm.

“They are not directly responsible,” said Benson. “They were only hired hands. It was another man who killed your father, shot Haskell with a silenced gun, and forced Maisley over the cliff. That last, by the way, was done rather well. The man drove a car with a pair of foglights under the regular headlights. As he approached Maisley’s car, the foglights were swung to the left, on a hinged bar. So two sets of lights rushed toward Maisley. He undoubtedly thought two cars abreast were plunging toward him, swerved right to avoid them, and went over and down.”

“You can prove all this?” said Tom eagerly.

Benson nodded. “Quite easily. I have the car outside, with the foglight arrangement. And the rear tire with the telltale V-cut in it is still on the machine. There will be fingerprints all over the car. We’ve got our man as surely as if he were seated in the electric chair this moment—”

A voice came from the door — hard, ruthless, triumphant.

“That’s what you may think, Benson. But let me assure you that you are a little mistaken. It isn’t you who have me. It is I who have you.”

They all whirled to face the voice. It was coming from the steel bulkhead door. The door had not been quite closed by Benson when he came in. It was an inch or so ajar.

“You are supposed to be practically omnipotent, Benson,” continued the man just outside the door. “But apparently there are tricks that can take you in. That car you mention was rather important to me. So on the slight chance that something might happen to it before I was through using it — which I am now — I fixed it so that I could trace it no matter where it went, or by whom it was driven. Didn’t you hear a slight clicking from the dash as you drove?”

The Avenger said nothing. Eyes like diamond drills gauged the distance to the partly opened steel door.

“That clicking was caused by a rather crude wireless sending apparatus,” the voice went on. “A simple spark signal, constantly sounding, and keeping me informed of the location of the machine. I had ample time to gather up Fiume’s men and Luckow’s men and come here to this dock. Your trail was as plain as though you had scattered colored paper in your wake.”

Tom and Wayne Crimm were pale and desperate-looking.

Josh and Rosabel, Mac and Smitty and Nellie stared at their chief’s face. It was as dead and expressionless as ever, of course. Even in moments of extreme stress it could express nothing.

The pale eyes were expressionless, too.

The group in the hold felt a slight jar. They heard propellers throb heavily under load just outside the hull. And they heard water lap gently against the steel shell between their ears and the river.

The ship was moving.

The propeller they’d heard a while ago was that of a stealthily approaching tug. Now the tug had slipped a line to the docked freighter and was towing it out to sea!

Smitty roared like a maddened bull, and dashed toward the steel door.

It slammed in his face.

They were trapped in here, while the Minerva bore them gently and easily toward the broad Atlantic.

“They’re going to scuttle the ship and sink us,” breathed Rosabel, dark eyes seeking Benson’s dead face.

The Avenger said nothing.

Nellie Gray spoke up. Her voice was as calm as if she were commenting on a new shade of lipstick.

“You’re all familiar with the Minerva,” she said. “Don’t you remember where the sea valve is located?”

Smitty suddenly smacked one big fist into an equally huge palm.

“Of course. The sea cock’s under the deck plates of this very compartment. That gang out there will find that out with a little searching. They’re going to have to come in here and take up the deck plates to do their scuttling job. When they do—”

His big hands opened and closed like the jaws of a steam shovel.

The killers outside, it seemed, found out about the location of the sea valve at just that time. There was a scrape at the door, as the great bar on the other side was raised.

Smitty leaped to the door as it opened an inch.

“Down!” snapped Benson.

The giant fell just in time. Over his head poured a burst of machine gun slugs. The gang wasn’t going to be circumvented quite so easily as he’d hoped. The instant the door was opened, they’d poured in lead to discourage just such attempts as Smitty had had in mind.

The cold, clear voice of the man who had addressed Benson a few minutes ago, sounded out.

“It seems we’ll have to take over that compartment you’re in, Benson. Go aft, into the next compartment.”

As the man spoke, the bulkhead door at the far end of the compartment, opposite the one through which Benson and the rest had come, was opened a little. It had been barred before, like the other one, to keep them prisoners. None of the little group had made a move.

“Go on! Into the next compartment!” the cold voice cracked out. “Unless you all want to be gassed.”

Benson and his aides didn’t care about that threat. They were always equipped to go through a gas siege. But there were Tom and Wayne Crimm to consider — and the girl who still kept her face veiled. They weren’t prepared for gas.

“Into the next compartment,” nodded Benson.

The group filed in, through the steel doorway, and the bulkhead door clanged shut behind them.

They were in the aft compartment, with the hull rounding at each side of them to form the Minerva’s stern. They could hear a little through the door that had just been barred after them; could hear the activities in the compartment where the fatal sea valve was.

“All of you,” ordered the cold voice. “In here. Get to work. Are the boats ready to lower? Then open the valves now. Let the ship be settling while we tow her out. Then we’ll leave her, awash, at the last minute. That way, even if she is sighted, no one can get to her in time.”

“That voice,” said Wayne Crimm suddenly. “I’ve heard it before.”

“Yes,” said Benson quietly.

“I can’t quite place the speaker, though—”

“You’ll know in a minute,” said The Avenger, colorless eyes like blazing white agate.

“In a minute,” said Tom, shivering, “we’ll be dead.”

But just then Smitty gave a delighted yell.

“Why, of course!” he boomed. “The valve—”

It happened then. Somebody in the next compartment opened the sea cock.

And there was a heavy thud and a steel bar dropped into place — on Benson’s side of the bulkhead door.

“Whoosh!” shouted Mac jubilantly. “Where were ourrr brrrains? Of course! The safety gadget!”

Careful method in every move of The Avenger. A sea cock could be opened by the wrong hands, or it might corrode and become defective. So on every boat, large or small, that Benson owned, there was the same device.

A safety hook-up that closed the sea-value compartment hermetically when that valve began to admit water. Smitty had had to disconnect that safety hook-up to sink the launch. This gang, naturally, hadn’t dreamed there was anything to disconnect when they opened the Minerva’s cocks.

“Ye knew they were trailin’ ye here to the boat!” Mac accused Benson, staring with suddenly wide eyes. “Ye wanted ’em to do it.”

The Avenger nodded, pale eyes as cold and calm as winter moonlight.

“The leader out there, at Wallach’s house, shot at me with a silenced gun. That shot decided me to let the marksman trail me here — and to a trap. Because possession of that gun will nail him to the cross—”

Yells from the men in the next compartment and sudden banging on the steel doors told that the mob had discovered that they were caught.

“Hey! I can’t get out!”

“How—”

These and other yells came to the ears of those in the aft compartment. Smitty grinned. Then there was a louder hail.

“Shut off that valve! We’ll be drowned ourselves if we can’t—”

A wild clangor cut off this cry. Someone was blasting at the aft bulkhead door with a machine gun!

Benson almost seemed to smile. Though he couldn’t actually, of course.

“Come, we’ll go on deck,” he said.

“But we’re locked in here,” began the veiled girl.

The Avenger’s steely forefinger began counting rivets in the deckplates overhead. He touched one.

A concealed hatchway slid evenly back, showing the pink of beginning dawn.

“This old boat has a lot of tricks,” said Benson calmly. “That’s why I thought it would be a good idea if our enemies did trail me here. We could have gotten out of the other compartment as easily—”

A sharp, vicious spat sounded out, and a bullet glanced from the deck an inch from the white paralyzed face. One man, at least, had not been trapped in the valve compartment: the leader of mobsters and Town Bank stooges alike, the man who had been at Wallach’s with the silenced gun.

“Let me at him!” snapped Mac, trying to push up past Benson.

The Avenger’s hand on his shoulder repressed him. The pale eyes, eyes of an infallible marksman, searched the deck of the Minerva, which was lightening with dawn.

Benson saw a furtive head over the freighter’s bridge rail. There was a mask over the face. The leader in the Ballandale stock plot had easily guessed that blackmail might be in the minds of Fiume and Luckow if the plot were successful, and he was keeping his identity hidden from the mob, even now.

Mike spoke! It was silenced .38 against silenced .22. And Mike won out.

The little pellet from its whispering muzzle creased the head over the masked face, and the man on the bridge sagged forward over the rail.

“Go and get Ballandale, Smitty,” said Benson, voice as calm as the dawn around them.

“Ballandale!” exclaimed Tom Crimm.

His brother Wayne nodded excitedly.

“Of course! Ballandale! It was his voice — only I couldn’t place it. But how did you know?”

The Avenger’s colorless, flaring eyes watched Smitty climb to the bridge, start to descend again with the unconscious man like a sack over his vast shoulder.

“The moment it became apparent that the Town Bank directors were the pawns instead of the king in this death game,” said Benson, “it got pretty clear that the king was Ballandale. Aside from the bank men, the president of the corporation, himself, would be the only one in a position to know of Joseph Crimm’s secret stock purchases, to know just how to wreck the corporation at the stockholders’ meeting. However, just knowing that Ballandale was our man and being able to prove it, were two different things. That was why I let him trail me here with the gangs — to get him red-handed.”

Smitty dumped the masked man on the deck unceremoniously. He took the mask from him, revealing the features of Arthur Ballandale. There was a slight flutter of Ballandale’s eyelids. The gash on top of his head was much shallower than that which Mike usually inflicted.

“And ye have him red-handed?” repeated Mac dourly. “Ye know the power of rich men to evade the law.”

“This will be one who won’t,” said The Avenger quietly. “First there is the silenced gun — which is still in his hand. That will be the gun that killed Haskell, I believe. Then there is Ballandale’s car up the street, with the tell-tale foglights and hinged bar to tie him to Maisley’s death. Finally, the Crimm stock will be in his possession. That will strap him to the chair. Not to mention the V-cut in the rear tire, which can be connected with Crimm’s death—”

The veiled girl screamed. And Ballandale’s silenced gun spat again.

Not at Benson. But at the holder’s own head.

Ballandale had recovered consciousness on his way down from the bridge. Surrounded by hopeless odds, hearing what seemed a sure death sentence read against him, he had jerked the gun to his own head, almost without expression on his face, and pulled the trigger.

Mac spoke the epitaph.

“Whether he could have beaten the rap, we’ll never be knowin’.” He stared at The Avenger’s white, death-mask face. “He has sent himself to the Great Beyond. ’Tis a queerrr habit yer powerful crooks have, Muster Benson, of savin’ the law trouble and expense by disposin’ of themsel’s!”

Benson said nothing to that. He looked down river. Red, in the rising sun, the tug that had been towing them was getting away in a hurry. They’d cut loose when the shots indicated trouble and were fleeing to save their hides.

Mac stirred himself.

“I can get enough steam up to bring the Minerva back to dock,” he said. “I’ll go to the engine room—”

“No!” said Benson quickly.

Mac, and the rest, stared at the white face.

“At the dock,” said The Avenger, “the fine crop of gunmen we have penned securely in the valve compartment are only trouble makers, to be booked as such at police headquarters and soon bailed out. But here on the open river, away from the dock, they can be taken for a charge that will keep the whole lot of them behind bars for years. Piracy! Get to the radio room instead, Mac, and call the river police.”

They all stared in something like awe at the man with the white hair and the deathly white face and the pale eyes.

Ballandale, master crook, dead by his own hand. The two remaining Town Bank highbinders, Wallach and Grand, to be easily convicted for their sins by evidence Ballandale was bound to have in his strongbox. Fiume’s gang and Luckow’s gang, held in a big steel cell below decks, to be imprisoned for piracy.

A few hours ago it had seemed that failure for once was tapping the shoulder of The Avenger. Now all that was changed — and the whole case neatly disposed of.

Except, in Tom Crimm’s estimation, for Tom Crimm himself!

“How about me, Mr. Benson? I’ve been a fool — worse than a fool! I was in a bank holdup. I’m wanted for murder. I resisted arrest with a gun at the garage—”

“We have a good deal of front-page credit for the police department aboard,” said Benson quietly. “I think the commissioner will be willing to trade: a dropped charge against you in exchange for two gangs and a dead murderer.”

Tom sighed deeply, raggedly, with relief. Then he faced the girl with the veil. He had been looking at her all along with an expression in his eyes that brought one of amusement to Nellie’s.

“You saved me from a police slug or the chair, at that bank,” Tom said softly to the girl. “And you’ve helped all of us besides that. Won’t you take off the veil? Show us who you are?”

The girl shook her head agitatedly and started to move quickly away. The Avenger’s eyes swung to her, gentle for once.

“Go on,” Benson said. “Take off the veil. You’ve got your brother’s certain imprisonment to worry about in a little while. You’ll need a friend — or more than a friend — such as Tom would like to be.”

“Her brother—” gasped Tom.

“Yes. Nick Luckow!” said The Avenger. “The tint and texture of her nail polish gives her away. You can see that whether or not she wears a veil.”

The girl had the veil off, now. She had eyes only for Tom.

“I never really shared Nick’s activities,” she said, in a low, pleading tone. “I’ll admit I didn’t move to stop any of them, though — till you came along. I… I kind of liked you. I heard the things they meant to do to you, and helped a little. The last time was when I heard Nick phone for the gang to go to Wallach’s house after Mr. Benson. I hurried there first and got in that car to wait and see if I could help. But I guess a man like Mr. Benson doesn’t need help. And I guess it doesn’t make much difference anyway — when you’re a gangster’s sister—”

Tom caught her arm and urged her toward the bow, where they could have a little privacy.

“If a gangster’s sister can stand a bank robber,” the rest heard him say, “I guess—”

They were out of earshot then. The Avenger watched them for a moment, then turned abruptly and strode farther aft. Over the stern, from down the river, a police boat could be seen speeding in answer to Mac’s call.

Nellie Gray’s eyes were luminous with compassion as they rested on the chief’s erect, lonely figure.

Others, he could help. Himself, never. There was nothing left in life for The Avenger but the annihilation of crooked gangs like these, and grim battle against crime to avenge the death of his own loved ones.