The Devil’s Horns

CHAPTER XVIII Chamber of Death!

In a locked room in the basement of the rear warehouse in the Sweet Valley Contracting Co. yard, four masked men sat at an oval table.

At the head of the table sat the masked Ashton City big-business man whom nobody knew. At his left sat Sisco; at his right sat Buddy Wilson and John Singell.

“So now we get the set-up,” came Singell’s snarling voice from behind his mask. “That old weasel, Groman, got Benson in here to try to run us out before we could get our money!”

“Gentlemen,” came the suave voice of the man at the head of the table, “this gets us nowhere. We aren’t concerned with Richard Benson, but with the fact that he has us at the end of our rope. We can only guess at the damaging things in the documents taken from Judge Broadbough. The judge hasn’t told us all, I’m sure, but in his fright he has told us enough! Those papers, plus the things that have been ferreted out on the Martineau affair, put our entire organization on the spot — unless Benson can be stopped.”

“I’ve told you he can be,” Sisco’s dry and deadly voice came in answer. “And he will be — tonight! In just a little while—”

There was a triple tap at the locked, heavy door. Sisco rose and opened it. A man said something in a low tone, staring curiously at the mask.

Sisco relocked the door and came back. There was murderous triumph in his tread.

“The sergeant on the switchboard at headquarters reported,” he said. “Benson just phoned and asked to talk to Cattridge. He said for Cattridge to get a squad of men he knew he could trust and to come here to the warehouse in half an hour — and to meet him here. So the fake radio business fooled the white-headed guy, and he’s on his way now.”

“But Cattridge!” bleated Wilson. “If he’s gonna show up here—”

Sisco’s greenish eyes burned through the slits in his mask.

“Do you think for a minute that Benson really talked to Cattridge? That phone sergeant’s our man. He passed as Cattridge, and fooled the white-headed guy. He’s on his way here, thinking the cops will follow him shortly. He’ll find out—”

At that moment, Benson and Smitty and Mac were in a rented sedan speeding toward the construction company warehouse. Smitty was driving.

“I don’t get it!” Smitty said again, to the man with the wax-white face and colorless eyes. “Why weren’t we killed down in that pit? How did we ever get out of it?”

The Avenger’s hard, taut body swayed with the movements of the car, a figure of whipcord and gray steel.

“It was reasonable to suppose,” he said quietly, “that the man who had devised that complicated way of hiding his money, would also devise a way out, to guard against being trapped in the well some day, himself, by accident. We searched till we found the spot where the ‘devil’s horns’ contact brought the section of office flooring down again; then we went up with it, that’s all.”

“Yes,” said Smitty, “but why were we allowed that much time? Why didn’t whoever trapped us down there, kill us before we could find a way out? It should have been easy.”

“We weren’t killed for a very obvious reason, that will be explained later,” Benson said, pale eyes as unreadable as two brilliant moonstones.

Mac spoke up, dour, gloomy.

“I hope ye’re sure of your mon, Cattridge,” he said. “If Cattridge double-crosses us and doesn’t send a squad, there’s a guid chance we’ll never get out of this place we’re goin’ to, alive.”

“You couldn’t stand it if you weren’t allowed to croak every time we make a move, could you, you Scotch raven?” said Smitty.

“Ye haven’t brains enough to see the possibilities in a given situation,” retorted the Scot. “Bein’ just an overgrown ape, ye haven’t imagination. And it takes imagination to foresee trouble.”

“I don’t go hunting for trouble like you do!”

“Neither would King Kong go huntin’ trouble,” said Mac, as if the giant were a bitter enemy instead of an inseparable friend. “He hasn’t the sense.”

The car drew near the construction yard. Smitty put his foot on the brake and stopped the car around a corner where it would be out of sight.

“There’ll be plenty of guards around there, chief,” he said. “The masked four wouldn’t take chances of being picked up when they meet. They’ll have all the boys watching the entrances.”

The Avenger nodded, eyes like pale fire opals.

“So we won’t use the entrances, of course, Smitty.”

He led the way, in a wide sweep, around a block of dark factory buildings to the back of the construction supply yard. Here, the rear wall of the third warehouse, in the basement of which the masked men met, formed part of the yard wall.

At the corner of the building, just the other side of a heavy-wire fence, there was a pile of iron reinforcing bars for use with concrete. They were a dozen feet long, and ran an inch thick.

The Avenger looked up at the low slope of the warehouse roof, about twenty-five feet over their heads, and then at the pile of bars within the yard.

Very cautiously, since the wire might be electrically charged and set off a far alarm if touched, he drew two of the bars through the wide mesh.

“Can you bend them, Smitty?”

The giant grunted assent, his quick brain taking in his chiefs idea instantly.

He got the end of one of the bars in his huge right hand, planted the other hand a foot down the iron shank, and twisted. The end of the bar went around to form a hook. He bent the other end in a second hook, and into this, he fitted the bent end of the other bar.

Lashing the hooked ends of the bars together so that they could be lifted in one length without collapsing in the middle, he raised them straight up. Slowly, so that no clang of metal should give their presence away, he fished till he had the hooked end of the upper bar over the rough cornice of the warehouse roof.

He jerked down lightly to break the string, and the hooks settled into each other in the middle, metal to metal. Then the three ascended, hand over hand.

The roof of the warehouse was of corrugated metal. The Avenger pointed to a square that was a little loose at the lower edge. Smitty, like a docile elephant, inserted his immense fingers in the crack, heaved, and bent the iron section up and away from the roof rafters as one would bend back the lid of a sardine can.

They dropped silently to a supporting beam below, and then climbed it upright. At the front of the warehouse, unseen in darkness, two men were talking in a low tone. Two gunmen watching the door, probably.

The three scourges of evil crept like shadows behind their backs, to the stairs, and down.

Here there was light, disclosing partitioned hugeness stacked with building materials. So here they had to go even more cautiously. The Avenger went first, pale eyes seeming to see all things at once; his gray steel figure moving with wraithlike noiselessness.

At the stair end of the basement, there was an open section with big iron drums in it. Between the wall of this, and the side wall, was a cement-block partition. Two doors in the partition indicated two tight-shut rooms taking up that walled-off length.

Steps on the stairs sent the three into the shadows under them. Through a crack in one of the risers, The Avenger’s pale, cold eyes peered out. He saw a man tap on the nearer of the two doors, saw the door open.

A masked head showed itself, there was an exchange of words. The door was closed again, and the man went back up the stairs. The Avenger’s keen ears heard a click, as the door was locked.

He slid from under the stairs, went past the locked door, with Smitty and Mac following closely. They could hear a faint hum of voices as they passed the door. Each thought the same thing: in that room were the four masked men who dominated the city. All four of them, conveniently in one spot!

Benson tried the heavy knob of the second door. The knob turned and the door opened. He swept a thin beam of light into it from his flash. The room was empty. There were no supplies, furniture, or anything else in it. Just a windowless cell, about fifteen feet by twenty, solid-walled, confronted him.

All three went in.

Now, for a moment without explanation and quite illogically, they could hear the voices of the masked four in the next room even more plainly than they had been able to in passing the door. You’d have thought they could hear more plainly through the wooden panels of a door.

A farther sweep of The Avenger’s light disclosed the reason.

High in one corner of the partitioning wall there was a foot-square grating. Through that came chinks of light — and the sound of the voices.

The Avenger pointed.

Smitty nodded, stood under the grating. He bent down, seized his chief’s ankles, and raised him up, easily and without a quiver of gigantic muscles.

Benson looked through the grating.

There were the four masked men, about an oval table — the target of all their efforts — the quadruple head of all the crime and murder and extortion in a city of half a million people!

The four were talking in such low tones that Benson couldn’t hear their words. But he made out the dry, deadly voice of Sisco, coming from under one of the masks, and the harsh, flat tone of Buddy Wilson from under another.

The Avenger pressed closer to the grating. In a very few minutes Cattridge, with trusted men, would smash a way in here, and the four supercriminals would end their careers behind police bars that no corrupt politics could swing open for them. But anything he could overhear now might help later—

It was then that Benson saw the drum.

It was one of the huge iron casks such as were stacked in the doorless space next to the room in which he looked, that had been rolled in here. It was near the end of the small meeting chamber. From it ran a one-inch pipe, with a valve.

The pipe ran toward the wall against which The Avenger was leaning, but he could not look down at a sharp-enough angle to see its terminal point.

Instantly Benson leaned down and tapped the giant’s hand to lower him.

He moved along the wall in the darkness, feeling with sensitive, steel-strong fingers. Mac, wondering what was up, heard his hands sliding lightly over the wall, low down. Then he heard a faint sniff as Benson, with jungle-trained nostrils that were as supernaturally keen as his other senses, sought after a faint odor.

“Yes,” Mac heard The Avenger whisper. “So that’s it.”

Mac heard a slight scrape, then Benson came back to where they stood, under the grating.

“Up again.”

Smitty raised Benson. The Avenger looked again into the next room—

It seemed that Mac wasn’t the only one who had heard the slight noise along the wall! When Benson stared through the grating a second time, he saw that the hooded heads of all four men faced him.

And then a laugh came from under one of the masks. The man who laughed shot out a hand. There was a loud, heavy click at the lock of the door behind The Avenger.

“Chief,” whispered Smitty. “Chief — did you hear that? I think we’re locked in here. I think some kind of trick catch has been thrown, and we’re trapped.”

The Avenger said nothing, but in his pale and relentless eyes was an awful urgency.

Mac came back from a leap to the door.

“They’ve got us,” the Scot whispered. “The door’s barred—”

The man in the next room stopped laughing.

“Are you at the grating, Benson?” he called. “But of course you are.” It was Sisco’s deadly voice. “You came here to spy on us, so naturally you’d go right to that room of your own free will, and not have to be thrown in!”

The Avenger said nothing. Like drawn steel blades, his deadly eyes peered through the steel grating.

“Do you know what room you’re in — you and your pals?” Sisco’s murderously exulting voice went on. “Our gas chamber, my white-haired friend. You’re familiar with chlorine gas, I suppose? Funny stuff. It’s a purifier — and at the same time it’s a fast and deadly poison. There is chlorine in this drum. We have a supply of it here for the municipal swimming pool to be built next year, at a hundred and fifty per cent profit. From the drum there’s a pipe going into your room. I’m going to turn the stuff on now! Sweet dreams.”

“Sisco!”

The Avenger’s voice snapped like a whip. There was in it such steely purpose, such strength, that Sisco found himself stopping as if jerked at the end of a string.

“I advise you not to turn that valve,” The Avenger said. “I advise it very strongly.”

Sisco’s laugh sounded again — but it was curiously hollow.

“You’re in a swell position to give advice!” he taunted.

“Cattridge and his men — the honest members of the force — are on their way here,” Benson said, with that calm and deady tone that never changed any more than did his immobile face. “At any moment you’ll hear shots upstairs, as he crashes into the warehouse from the street. You don’t want him to come just after you’ve turned that valve.”

Sisco’s laugh lost a little of its uncertainty. He had been puzzled, and vaguely alarmed at the reasonless note of authority in the calm voice. But now that the reason had come out, he could taunt again.

“Cattridge, eh?” he said. “So that’s your hope. You can kiss that goodbye. You didn’t talk to Cattridge when you called headquarters a while ago! He isn’t coming here with anybody. He hasn’t the slightest idea where you are!”

Sisco went toward the drum. Benson, with a move as swift as light, got out Mike, the silenced .22, The little gun spat all its four slugs, one after another, through the grating. But no opening was big enough for the barrel to swivel toward the men at the table, or toward Sisco. The slugs spanged into the door.

Sisco was laughing more loudly as his hand reached out to the valve controlling the deadly contents of the big drum.

“Keep it up, Benson,” he called. “Shoot all you like. You won’t have much more chance.”

“Once more, Sisco, I urge you not to turn that valve,” came The Avenger’s inhumanly calm, even voice.

“I’ll bet you do!” said Sisco. The man at the head of the table spoke at last. “Oh, turn it on,” he said. “Have it over with.” Sisco opened the valve with one quick turn and stepped from the container. He snapped a shutter over the grating. From the drum began pouring the quickly fatal chlorine.