Stockholders in Death

CHAPTER III Nicky Luckow

Nicky Luckow was a power in New York’s underworld. Some went so far as to say that he commanded it. Whether or not he headed it, he was so powerful that anyone could find him by merely looking up his address in the Manhattan phone book. He didn’t have to hide out.

Nicholai Luckow, West Twenty-fourth Street.

The address given was that of the Jeff Hotel. Luckow owned the place, a small one; and few but his henchmen had rooms there.

He was sitting in his second-floor office when the message came. The office was large, luxurious, and very, very businesslike. There were filing cabinets, a desk where a dark-eyed girl with a hard mouth worked, his own desk, and a battery of telephones. It didn’t look like a gangster’s lair at all.

The man who came in gave it away, though. He walked like a cat with a grouch against the world. His eyes were hooded and mean. The bulge at his left shoulder fairly shouted the fact that he packed a gun.

Luckow looked at the card the man dropped on his desk.

He looked at the card for a full minute, eyes as expressionless as dully polished stones. Then he raised immaculately tailored shoulders in a small shrug.

“Bring him in!”

Tom Crimm was in the little lobby of the hotel. He saw that the clerk behind the key counter looked like an inquiring weasel, and Tom was glad of it. He saw that three men watching him from other parts of the lobby looked like rats on a large scale, with a rat’s deadliness of eye, and he was glad of that, too.

The tougher this outfit was, the better Tom was going to like it.

The man who had taken his card came back.

“O.K., buddy.”

Tom got into an elevator with the man. The elevator boy looked at him with a pair of treacherous orbs, as if contemplating sticking a knife in him just for the hell of it. The cage stopped at the second floor.

Tom walked down a hall, and past an open door. There were five men in the room behind the door, playing poker, though it was earlier in the morning than Tom had seen cards played before. The five stared at him with an absolute lack of curiosity on their evil faces, as he went by. Then he was in the office of Luckow. himself.

Tom stared at a flat, blue-jowled face, and into eyes appearing more like gray-blue stones. And for just a moment he felt fear crawl along his spine, and he was not so sure he was being as smart as he’d thought he was.

But the apprehension died swiftly. To catch a crook, hire a crook. To deal with a murderer, employ another murderer. He’d show that bank gang—

Luckow listened to Tom’s story as if hardly hearing it. He grunted once or twice, and stared without words when Tom concluded.

“There you have it,” said Tom. “Somebody in that crew killed my father. I want him spotted and the stock recovered. There’s between two and two and a half million dollars’ worth of the stock. Your take”—Tom had read the books, and knew a few of the terms—“your take, if we can get the stuff back and nail the killer, will be five hundred thousand dollars. I guess that’s worth working for.”

“Yes,” said Luckow. His voice was soft, smooth, a bit sibilant. He was a product of the slums, but had put such a veneer over it that you’d never know it. “Yes, that would be worth working for.”

“Then you’ll throw in with me?” Tom said eagerly.

“I’ll think it over for a little while.”

“I’ll go back home and phone you—”

“Take a room down the hall,” said Luckow smoothly. “I’ll give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on this in a couple of hours.” He turned to the man who had brought Tom in. “Show him to Room 236, Tim.”

The man with the catlike walk and the hooded, mean eyes took Tom down the line to a vacant room. He returned to Luckow’s office.

“What do you think of the layout?” he said. He was Nick Luckow’s personal bodyguard and a trusted man.

“The answer’s ‘yes,’ ” said Luckow, “but I won’t tell the chump in 236, for a while. Make him think I’m not sure whether I want it or not. But I want it, all right. That guy’s going to be a gold mine to us, Tim.”

“He looks like he knew a thing or two,” said Tim.

Luckow almost smiled. And the grimace, on his hard flat face, was worse than a scowl.

“He’s a wise guy, Tim. And a chump who thinks he’s a wise guy is easiest to twist around. You can fool ’em clear to the end. A lot of ’em stay fooled even after the smoke’s cleared away and they’re planted. Oh yes, I’m taking him up on his proposition, all right. I don’t turn away gold mines when they walk up to me. Two to two and a half million in unlisted stock. Well, well! And we’ll get it back for him for five hundred grand. Sure! Sure we will!”

In the great third floor room at Bleek Street, The Avenger heard Wayne Crimm’s story with hardly a word of interjection.

Richard Henry Benson didn’t have to talk to be impressive. Just the looks of the man insured something like awe in all beholders.

His average-sized body concealed a physical power that was colossal. You knew that the moment you saw him. But the physical power was dwarfed by the sight of his face. It was paralyzed; white as the thick, virile hair above his broad forehead.

From the white, dead face peered a pair of eyes that were so light gray as to be almost colorless.

One look at The Avenger told you why the underworld hated and feared him as poisonous snakes hate and fear a mongoose.

As Wayne Crimm’s story unfolded, Smitty and Josh began to look more and more savage. And the faces of Nellie and Rosabel expressed more and more sympathy. All Benson’s aides existed only to fight crime, because all of them had been badly hurt at one time or another by criminals. And here was a rotten thing being turned up before their noses.

A theft of millions of dollars’ worth of securities! Subtle murder to conceal the trail of the theft! No clues for police to work on — and, indeed, perpetrators of the crime too powerful for the police to handle, in any event!

“That’s why I came to you for help,” concluded Wayne. “The thing is too big for the regular channels of justice. And that is why Tom, my brother, went to Luckow.”

Smitty and Josh started a little. Benson’s pale, infallible eyes suddenly were like chips of stainless steel in his paralyzed countenance.

“Your brother went to Luckow? You mean Nick Luckow?” he said vibrantly.

“Yes! Tom said Dad’s fife and the securities had been taken by violence, and that he’d have revenge the same way. So he has thrown in with the most notorious gang in the country.”

“He’ll get small comfort there,” observed Josh softly. The Negro was a philosopher. “Milk does not come from stones, nor honest help from rotten crutches.”

The Avenger was not talking. He was on his feet, going toward the door.

“We’ve got to get your brother away from Luckow, first thing,” he said, voice quiet but packed with power. “When honest folk tangle with criminals—”

He did not complete the sentence. But Nellie Gray, with a world of sympathy in her lovely blue eyes, could have completed it.

When honest folk tangle with criminals — great tragedy results. If any man on earth was in a position to know that, it was Dick Benson.

“You are going after Tom — in that nest of killers — alone?” gasped Wayne.

“Yes! He can’t be allowed to stay with Luckow,” Benson said, his eyes flaring. “I can foresee all sorts of trouble if that is permitted.”

“Probably he’ll be home by now,” faltered Wayne.

“No! He’ll be at Luckow’s. He could be very valuable to the man. Nick Luckow is smart, in his animal way. He won’t let your brother out of his sight if he can help it.”

“But — going alone!” said Wayne.

The giant Smitty was as concerned as Wayne. But Smitty said nothing. If the chief was determined to go alone, nothing could be said that would sway him.

“If I went there with help,” said Benson, “there might be trouble. If I go alone, they will think me harmless.”

Josh snorted a little at that. The idea of any man being able to look at The Avenger — with his dead, white face and terrible, pale eyes — and think him harmless, was almost funny.

But there was nothing funny about Benson’s actions. They were suicidal. Josh and Smitty knew that. And even Wayne suspected it.

Everyone seemed to know it but Benson, himself. He treated it as a matter of course.

When he got out of his car in front of the notorious Jeff Hotel a few minutes later, there was almost a smile in his cold, colorless eyes.

Benson walked clamly and unhurriedly into the lobby of the hotel. The desk clerk turned his inquiring weasel eyes on him, and clenched his hands suddenly. That death-mask of a face! The icy, pale eyes! Thev clerk was only on the fringe of the underworld, but he knew this man by sight.

His hand stealthily slid under the edge of the counter and pressed something. The Avenger saw the move and knew it was a warning to those upstairs.

Trouble! Danger in the lobby!

Benson walked past the desk, not seeming to move fast, yet getting to the elevators in an incredibly short time.

The three men who habitually lounged in the lobby were all starting for him, now. One had his gun halfway out. The Avenger slid into the cage waiting at the lobby floor, and closed the metal doors with a jerk at the lever.

“Hey—” began the rat-eyed boy at the controls.

He stopped as the pale and awful eyes bored into his own.

“Luckow’s floor,” The Avenger said to the elevator operator.

“It’s f-five,” said the boy.

He stopped. There was something about the icy glare in those eyes that robbed his will of the ability to lie. Anyhow, Luckow had enough rodmen around to take care of any one man — even one like this. So he didn’t see why he should risk his skin to conceal the floor on which the mob leader had his office.

“Two!” he corrected himself, sending the cage upward as he spoke.

He was almost smiling when he opened the elevator door on the second floor. Luckow’s men would take care of this smart ape with the snow-white hair and the dead pan and the white-steel eyes.

As Benson came out of the cage, a man in the hall turned idly; then he stiffened as he saw a stranger. His gun came out with a swiftness of draw that would have compared with the draw of the old Western gun-fighters.

But it wasn’t fast enough.

The Avenger had taken one step from the cage door. It was an easy, flowing motion, but it was actually so swift that it made the moves of the hall guard seem like those in a moving picture retarded ten times.

Benson’s fist flashed up. It caught the wrist behind the gun. The automatic spun up, butt over muzzle, while the man watched with gaping jaws.

The Avenger caught the gun expertly, while the guard rubbed his wrist and wondered if the bone were broken. Benson whirled toward the cage.

The operator had his hand at the back of his neck, where a knife was snuggled under his collar. At the glare in the pale eyes, he slowly took his hand away, trying unconvincingly to smile. And with a shaky whistle to show that he was really the most harmless fellow alive, he shut the cage door and started back toward the lobby.

“I want to see Luckow,” said Benson.

His voice was quiet. There was no more emotion in it than there was in his dead, still face. The guard stopped rubbing his wrist as he began to realize who this man was. He had heard tales, too. He was willing to believe all of them, now. Any guy with guts enough to come here, alone—

He did not realize, of course, nor did the world at large, that the guts of Richard Henry Benson came not from ordinary courage, but from a sort of supercourage springing from the fact that he didn’t care whether he lived or not.

Some day, he knew, he was going to die in a brush with professional killers. But he was entirely indifferent to that prospect. The sooner he died, the sooner he would be united with wife and daughter again.

A man who genuinely doesn’t care whether he dies or lives, can do almost impossible things.

“Well,” Benson said, still not raising his voice and yet getting a whiplash effect from it, “show me to Luckow.”

“O.K., pal,” said the man.

He started down the hall.

The office was at the front end. The path lay past several open doors; one of them was No. 236. As The Avenger went past this, his quick eyes noticed that it was open an inch and also noted a man within.

The man was walking slowly up and down the room, face twisted with rage and anger. He did not look like the type usually to be found here.

Benson stopped, and swung the door farther open.

“On second thought,” he said to the man with the injured wrist, “I won’t see Luckow. Not yet, anyway. I’ll stop in here first.”

“Want me to come in, too?” said the man, resigned to being held a prisoner so that he couldn’t give the alarm.

“No! Stay out.”

The man’s mouth hung open in surprise. This human hurricane with the steely eyes and the white hair was, in effect, giving him a free hand to call as many pals as he pleased.

He acted in a hurry, running toward the front of the hall where Luckow sat in his office.

Benson shut the door and turned to Tom, who was staring in surprise. The Avenger knew that a lot of alarms had already been given. One more, by the hall guard, wouldn’t matter much.

“You’re Tom Crimm, of course,” he said smoothly, eyes cold and calm and impersonal.

“Yes. I—”

“And you have come to this gang for help in your father’s death. I don’t blame you. The idea, on the surface, would seem to have merit. But, believe me, it is the wrong way to go about it. There is danger that—”

“I get you now,” said Tom, staring fixedly. “You’re this Avenger guy Wayne talked about.”

“Some call me that,” said Benson. “Please, there is little time—”

“And Wayne sent you to pick me up,” said Tom, getting louder of tone. “Sent you out like a nursemaid, to take me home and wipe my little nose for me. Well, I can wipe my own nose.”

The chill, pale eyes daunted Tom; but he kept on, working himself up into a fury.

“What’s your racket, anyhow? Everybody’s got one. So what’s yours? Think you can get all my father’s money, if you recover it? This stuff of working just to help people in distress is the bunk. I don’t believe it for a minute.”

“I knew you had sense, the first time I saw you,” a voice purred from the doorway.

Tom and The Avenger turned. Nicky Luckow was coming in on padded, soundless feet, like a great cat. His dull eyes turned on Benson.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said. “I have the same ideas as Tom, here. What’s your racket, pal? Why the sympathy for the underdog?”

“I don’t believe you’d care to hear about that,” said Benson, eyes like ice chips, face as emotionless as the face of the moon. He had lost! He’d known it the moment he looked into Tom’s cynical, dark eyes, and noted the wise sneer on his lips when he spoke of rackets.

There were steps in the hall. A lot of steps. Nicky Luckow’s hand slid from his coat pocket. There was a belly gun in it — a squat, small thing designed to blow a man’s abdomen into a streaming red crater.

“The boys will be glad to hear anything you’d care to say about anything,” purred Luckow. “They’ll be glad—”

There were at least a dozen men in the corridor. The many steps told that. And there the mob leader stood, to hold The Avenger at gunpoint till the gang could get in here. Benson shrugged. His stainless steel chips of eyes reflected on the odds coming to face him, and in their cold depths was a calm decision that it was too much trouble to deal with them.

Benson’s foot flashed up and out.

The Avenger had learned about all the arts of fighting, both officially and defensively, that there were. One was la savate, originating in Paris among the Apaches.

Luckow had been warily watching the pale and deadly eyes; so the movement of Benson’s foot didn’t catch his vision till it was almost to his waist. And then there wasn’t time to do anything about it.

The toe of Benson’s shoe cracked on his wrist, and the runt weapon spanged against the far wall. Luckow snarled, and leaped.

Benson’s fist went out. It didn’t seem to travel more than four or five inches. But Luckow stopped as if he had banged into a stone wall. Stopped, and sagged to the floor.

The Avenger went to the window.

“I’d appreciate it if you would visit me. Bleek Street is the address,” he said to Tom Crimm.

Tom’s sneer was shaken, but it was still in place on his lips. And the skepticism was undiminished in his eyes.

Benson opened the window. Down in the street, a few people stared up at the sound of the window’s opening. More stared swiftly, when a man with a white, dead face and snow-white but virile hair dropped from that window like a trained acrobat, lighting like a feather on the sidewalk.

The Avenger drove away with his pale eyes somber. He lived only to fight crime — and to help people threatened by crime’s clutches. But it’s difficult to help a person who refuses to be helped.

Benson had a stop to make before going back to Bleek Street. He went to the Crimm home, near the East River. He located the scene where a mad car had charged again and again at a sick, elderly man.

There were only few faint traces of tire tracks around there. Walking people had obliterated most of them. But one short length provided something interesting.

It would seem that the automobile that had chased Joseph Crimm had a distinctive peculiarity about its right rear tire.

There was a deep V-cut in that tire, according to the bit of track left.