The Devil’s Horns

CHAPTER III Justice, Inc.

Richard Henry Benson, The Avenger, had not been persuaded by Groman to take on a battle against an entire city. With the receipt of the ex-political boss’ letter hinting at what was in the wind, he had made up his mind instantly to pit his marvelous powers against the organized viciousness in Ashton City.

When he had left New York for Ashton City, he had instructed his aides to come, too. They were to follow him from headquarters in several hours.

Benson’s headquarters was a curious place.

There was a block-long street in New York called Bleek Street. One side was taken up by the windowless back of a great storage building. The other side held a big vacant warehouse, three dingy old three-story brick buildings standing wall to wall, and a couple of vacant stores. Dick Benson owned the three brick buildings, and had the warehouse and stores under long lease. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, he owned the entire block.

The three buildings had, behind their separate exteriors, been thrown into one. Two of the entrances were permanently blocked up. The middle entrance, left open, had a small and inconspicuous sign over it.

The sign simply said: “Justice.” The few people wandering along the block might see the sign and think vaguely that “Justice” meant some sort of law firm housed in the place. But it meant help for people who couldn’t afford regular help. And it meant, often, doom to criminals so powerful or shrewd that they could not be vanquished by the regular police.

The faithful aides of The Avenger left the Bleek Street headquarters a little after Benson, and soon began to slip, one by one, from plane and train and bus, into Ashton City.

From the New York midnight plane stepped a man who was the target of all eyes. This was because of his size.

The man was six feet nine and weighed between two hundred and eighty-five and two hundred and ninety pounds. He was fifty-three inches around the chest and wore a size nineteen collar. His arms hung crooked at his sides, like the arms of a gorilla — and for the same reason. There were such ponderous pads of muscles sheathing his barrel chest that there was no room for his arms to hang straight.

The giant looked good-natured enough — and not too bright. His face was of the beaming, full-moon type. His eyes, bright china-blue, were peaceful and almost stupid-seeming.

Never had appearances been more deceptive.

The giant was keen, fast-thinking, and for all his bulk, as quick-moving and lithe as a cat. He was an electrical engineer of the first rank. But over and beyond that, he was a deadly crime-fighter, having joined The Avenger’s battle standards in order to devote all his great powers most effectively against the underworld.

His name was Algernon Heathcote Smith. But if you had any regard for your health, you never called him that. You called him Smitty. Two things could turn him from an amiable-looking mountain of muscle into a savage landslide. One was humor based on his name, the other was crime.

Smitty, looking like a great big, innocent kid, left the landing field and went to a modest hotel.

About the time he did that, the New York train pulled into Ashton City and discharged, among others, a man as odd-appearing, in his way, as Smitty was in his.

Fergus MacMurdie was tall, bony, gangling. He had big dim freckles barely visible under the surface of his coarse red skin. His ears stuck out like sails — perhaps to give windpower to his feet, which were as big as scows. The map of Scotland was written all over his face. And in this map bitter, bleak blue eyes were steady and unwinking. He had hands that, when doubled into fists, were like bone mallets; and when he swung those fists, they collided with things like iron knobs swung at the end of pliant lances.

Fergus MacMurdie went to a hotel, too. But not to the same one Smitty had entered, though Mac was every bit as important to The Avenger’s small but deadly crime organization as the giant Smitty was. Their separate residences did not mean a difference of rank, but a desire to keep low and unknown as long as possible.

Two hours after Mac had checked in, the New York bus arrived at the Ashton City terminal. In the cold gray dawn, among a dozen others, a girl got off swinging a suitcase.

She was as dainty-looking as a Dresden doll, blond-haired, pink and white complected, with helpless and appealing-looking blue eyes. So feminine and soft — but Nellie Gray could take a very large man, who tried to lay hands on her, and upset him as swiftly and forcefully as a female Jim Londos. She was expert at jujitsu, wrestling and boxing, and could have taken a marksman’s medals with a gun.

In the last of the crowd, a Negro couple got off. They paid no attention to Nellie Gray, and apparently, Nellie didn’t see them. But they were very, very well acquainted.

The man, tall and thin, with shovel feet and a sleepy-looking, placid face, was Joshua Elijah Newton. He could fight like a black tiger when necessary, but to look at his skinny length, you’d think a child could break him in two — if a child could ever get angry enough at the drawling, easy-going Negro to try it.

The pretty Negress with him was Rosabel, his wife. She didn’t look it — made a point of not looking it — but she was college-educated, intellectual, and as resourceful in tight places as that wiliest of animals, a weasel.

“Heah, honey-chile,” drawled sleepy-looking Josh Newton as they passed the deserted waiting room of the bus terminal, “lemme carry yo’ bag.”

Josh didn’t have to talk like that. He was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, an honor man. But when not among friends, he used the thick drawl that was expected of a slow-moving Negro.

He and Rosabel went to a boarding house near the terminal.

And then they all reported to their white-faced, dynamic chief. The manner of the reporting was noteworthy.

Each of them had a special little radio of Smitty’s devising. It was no bigger, batteries and all, than, a small shirt-box. But its short-wave transmitter, set permanently to just one secret station, could function clearly for a score of miles.

The one station was the receiving apparatus on Dick Benson’s own pocket radio.

They reported, and The Avenger gave them their orders.

“Nellie, there is a man named Sisco who owns a nightclub named the Gray Dragon. He is rich, powerful, very dangerous. Try to get a job in his nightclub as a singer. Your voice is quite good enough. But watch yourself, and if there’s the slightest hint of trouble, leave at once.”

One of the many things that made The Avenger’s aides so devoted to him was his constant care of their safety. It also, of course, led them into the wildest kind of dangers, simply because they were so devoted.

“Smitty,” Benson said to his giant aide, “there is a trucking war going on in this town. Rackets against a few big, fearless owners. The mob is fighting a company called the White Transportation Corporation at the moment. Get a job driving one of their trucks, if you can. If there is trouble, let yourself be taken by the racketeers. Try to find out who is running the racket.”

Benson crackled short-wave orders to Josh.

“In the north residence section there is a Judge Broadbough. He has a Negro servant. Try to take that servant’s place. Get all the information you can around the house. Anything at all. Particularly, try to get something on the murder two weeks ago of a judge named Martineau. Rosabel, if Nellie Gray is successful in getting a nightclub job, you will be hired as her maid.”

And to Fergus MacMurdie:

“Mac, two weeks ago Judge Martineau, a man a little too honest for Ashton City’s rulers, was shot at the Friday the Thirteenth Club, a place which is a wide-open gambling spot. I believe if we could find out who killed him, we’d have a handle against all the crime ring misruling this city. Investigate that murder.”

And to all of them, as a sort of postscript along the same line:

“The Martineau murder is most important. Circumstances lead me to think that solution of that murder is the entire key to the situation here.”

Orders given, Benson started, first thing in the morning, to check on the information given him by Oliver Groman, in whose lavish apartment he was making his own headquarters.

From the pockets of the two gunmen whom he’d rendered unconscious, Benson had taken all papers. But only one had any possible significance. That was a slip of paper with a phone number on it, and the notation, “call at noon.”

The number was Spring 9858. Benson had traced that number. It belonged to a Mr. John M. Singell. The Avenger knew nothing about him; but the fact that a known gunman had his phone number in his pocket with a notation to call him next noon was enough to focus attention on him.

He called first on Police Commissioner Cattridge, a big, square-set man with graying hair and a tired look around his firm mouth. He started a little when Benson introduced himself, then stared curiously at The Avenger’s awesome, white face and flaming, pale eyes.

A great many patrolmen and detectives, of the rank and file over the country, did not know of Benson. But there wasn’t a police chief in the United States who did not know The Avenger.

When Benson had quietly stated his reasons for being in Ashton City, Cattridge looked hopeful. But not too hopeful. Cattridge had been trying for a long time to do something about the conditions in his town, and had failed. Apparently, he didn’t think an outsider could do much.

Even if that outsider were The Avenger himself.

“I’m glad you checked in here,” he said to Benson. “I’ll give you all the help I possibly can. But I want to warn you — that won’t be much.”

“Why won’t it be much?” said Benson quietly. “You’re head of the law-enforcement department of Ashton City.”

“There are others over me.”

“Such as?”

“The mayor, for one.”

The Avenger’s pale, icy eyes took on their diamond-drill look. Cattridge didn’t meet their flaming stare.

“I’m convinced that his honor, the mayor, is honest,” the commissioner said, gazing out the window. “But they’ve got something on him, I think. Some terrible hold. I have a hunch that his two daughters have been threatened.”

Benson nodded, and got up to leave. He hadn’t expected to get promises of help; he didn’t need them, really. The Avenger was his own army, his own police force.

“Is there any organized group against the crime ring in this city?” he asked.

“Yes!” said Cattridge. “Some of the more courageous business men have organized a group they call the Civic League. The man at the head of the league is Arthur Willis, our leading banker. You might have a word with him—”

Cattridge’s phone buzzed. He picked it up, grunted “Yes” into it, then put it back on its cradle. In a moment his door opened and a man came into the office.

The man was dapper, about fifty, but with the walk and body of a man much younger. He had a neat Vandyke beard and wore glittering spectacles.

“I’m putting on a new crusade,” he began. “I called to get your cooperation, Cattridge—”

He stopped, as he noticed the man with the white, set face and the colorless eyes.

“Mr. Benson,” said Cattridge, “meet Mr. Norman Vautry. Mr. Vautry owns the Ashton City Bugle, our biggest newspaper. He is a member of the Civic League, and his paper has put on some fine crusades against rackets and such. Not, I’m sorry to say, with much result.”

Vautry’s dapper, firm hand clasped The Avenger’s steely white fingers.

“Mr. Benson is here to… er… make up a report on the crime conditions of Ashton City,” Cattridge explained.

Vautry’s hand tightened on Benson’s.

“Splendid,” he said. “The more reports, the more publicity we can have, the better. If I can help you in any way, let me know.”

“Perhaps you can,” said the Avenger. “Do you, or you, Commissioner Cattridge, know a man named John Singell?”

There was suddenly an explosive silence in the room. Both men had suddenly gone cautious, and perhaps frightened.

“You work fast, Mr. Benson,” Vautry said, after a moment. He licked his lips as though they were dry. “Yes, I know of Singell. So does everyone else in town. He is one of our most powerful politicians. He owns, among other things, the Sweet Valley Contracting Co., which gets most of the street and road work in Ashton County. He is a very wealthy man.”

“Has he anything to do with the conditions in Ashton City?”

Vautry plainly hedged.

“That’s pretty hard to say,” he murmured. He held out his hand again. “Well, glad to have met you.”

The Avenger nodded, with a lack of expression in his colorless, flaming eyes. He started to go.

“May I ask what you plan to do first?” said Cattridge, clearing his throat.

“I think I’ll have a talk with Mr. Singell,” said Benson. “Good-by, see you later.”

He swung out, but went first to the Ashton National Bank for a few words with Willis.

Arthur Willis, president of the bank, head of the Civic League, was a soft-looking, big man with unblinking gray eyes and a habit of weighing his words very carefully before he spoke. His hand was soft in Benson’s. Meanwhile, his glassy gray eyes took in every detail of The Avenger’s taut body and deadly white face and colorless, icy eyes.

“The known bad elements in town,” he summed up after a few moments, “are Singell, the politician and contractor; Sisco, night club owner and underworld connection; and Buddy Wilson, notorious public enemy. Together, they form a combination that baffles the law.”

“The Federal government?” said Benson.

“They’re too smart to do anything to get the F.B.I, down on them.”

“You know everyone of importance,” said Benson. “Do you know the newspaper owner, Norman Vautry? Is he all right?”

“My heavens, yes! Above suspicion. He crusades against crime in his paper and is a member of the Civic League.”

Benson went from the bank to the big home of John M. Singell. But he didn’t see Singell.

A man at the door, with a bulge under his left armpit and with hard, wary eyes, took one look at Benson and growled:

“The boss is out, mister.”

The Avenger stared at the man with his icy, pale eyes. The man shuffled his feet uneasily at the dynamic impact of that gaze. Benson had learned a lot from this reception.

The gunman at Singell’s portal had been indiscreet enough to look first at Benson’s hair. Which told the whole story.

Benson’s visit had been expected. “Look out for a man with white hair and light-gray eyes,” somebody most likely had phoned in to Singell. So orders had gone to the man at the door to keep out anyone of that description.

Only two men had known ahead of time that Benson meant to come here. Norman Vautry, and Commissioner Cattridge. The Avenger knew men. He was sure Cattridge was honest, if impotent.

Therefore, Groman’s hunch that the newspaperman was secretly in with the crime ring, seemed justified.

It must have been Vautry who tipped Singell off.

“I’ll call another time,” said Benson.

He walked away from the door. And in the doorway, Singell’s gunman guard stared after the straight, powerful back of the gray steel man with fear in his eyes.

A fear always thrust into the minds of criminals by the sight of this quiet, rather small man with the snow-white hair and the cold, colorless eyes.