The Smiling Dogs

CHAPTER XVI Terror in the Senate

There were few visitors in the Senate gallery. Perhaps it was the earliness of the hour; perhaps it was because no very important legislation was on the slate for the opening.

The Avenger, disguised as Tetlow Adams, looked around.

There were half a dozen middle-aged women, looking as if they might be a small party touring the Capitol. There were several newspaper reporters. And there was a man who seemed to have been able to smuggle a small camera into the gallery. The man was vague-looking, with watery brown eyes, not dressed very well. He had his small camera up between the folds of his coat, where it could only be seen from straight ahead — or by eyes as keen as The Avenger’s.

Just these few in the gallery. And there weren’t many more than that in the room below.

About twenty-five senators were there, reading newspapers, talking in low tones, walking on and off the floor. The rest were in various cloakrooms.

All the senators reported to have had anything to do with Dr. Fram, however, were present. Benson’s eyes went from Wade to Cutten, and Hornblow, and Collendar, and Burnside.

Yes, the Senator taken from The Avenger’s hideout was there. Benson had been sure he would be. It was improbable that Burnside would have been hurt or killed — or permanently detained. His usefulness was there on that Senate floor.

Burnside looked like a man who was ill. His face was pale. His eyes were dull and weary. His shoulders drooped. His fingers drummed nervously on his desk top, and his gaze was confined to those fingers and that desk top. He didn’t look at anyone else.

The rest of the senators whose names were linked with Fram’s were pale and nervous too; but not so much so as Burnside.

It was certainly a sleepy-looking scene. In the gallery, the women tourists looked disappointed. One of the reporters yawned audibly. The man with the concealed camera leaned back in his seat and looked bored, too. And the low buzz from the members of the Senate, down below, was like the sleepy drone from a beehive, or the low talking of a class of boys when teacher is out of the room.

Roll call was taken. Then, as scheduled, a bill was introduced by an elderly representative from Tennessee.

It was not a very startling or interesting bill. It proposed that $4,500,000 of flood control money be allocated to the purpose of building a dam across some little river somewhere in his home state. The proposal didn’t get a ripple from anyone.

The Avenger wasn’t listening to the rambling discourse following the proposal. He was looking down at Senator Burnside, eyes hawk-keen in spite of the colored pupils over his own colorless ones.

Burnside looked as if about to have a seizure of some kind.

He was sitting rigidly in his seat. His hands were clenched over each other so that clear from the gallery Benson could note their strained, milky whiteness. And he was glaring at his desk top as if the thing had suddenly become a great open maw about to engulf him.

Every drop of color had drained from his face. He was trembling a little, all over.

The Senator from Tennessee sat down. And Burnside, after trying twice before he could make his knees support his weight, stood up.

The Avenger leaned forward a little, eyes like ice behind their disguising tissue eyecups.

This was it!

“Mr. President,” quavered Burnside.

“Senator Burnside.”

“I would like to propose an amendment to the bill of the gentleman from Tennessee. It is that the park in my state designated as Bison National Park be thrown open to private bidding for mineral rights.”

One of the reporters in the gallery lifted an eyebrow, but then yawned again. There was no stir on the floor. It was quite true that such a bill might easily become law because few people knew much about the small section named. It would only be afterward that a storm would rage.

Burnside, sweating, trembling so that his colleagues stared curiously at him, rambled on.

Bison Park was small and out-of-the-way. He cited figures of tourists, indicating that few citizens of the United States had any interest in it. The park was expensive to maintain. He told of the money spent annually in upkeep. There was no reason why it should remain under government control—

The Avenger’s pale gaze was on Cutten, now. The other Senator from Montana was shifting in his seat, alternately red with a great anger, and white with a great fear.

But with anger winning out.

Burnside sat down. There was still no commotion at all. In fact, there was practically no interest. Ten years ago, Senator Burnside had been co-sponsor of a bill turning Bison Park over to the government. Now he was sponsoring a bill turning it back to private hands again. So what?

Burnside sat down and Cutten sprang up. In his face was a great resolve. And a determination that made his features seem as if carved out of stone. The Avenger leaned forward tensely, waiting.

Waiting for the storm of condemnation of the amendment to come from Cutten’s lips. For obviously the man intended to blast the park proposal wide open, and to hell with the personal consequences.

The blasting never began.

“Senator Cutten,” droned the chair, in recognition.

But Cutten was not staring at the chair. He was looking down at his desk top. And in his eyes was a horror that was as great as Burnside’s terror of a moment ago.

“The gentleman from Montana wishes to add a few words to Senator Burnside’s proposed amendment before the matter is opened for debate?” asked the chair.

Cutten moistened his lips, but obviously could not speak. He swallowed hard, shook his head and sat down, with no word uttered.

It was complete defeat!

The giant Smitty stared at the sign over the vacant warehouse sprawled on the bank of the Potomac River on the fringe of Georgetown.

Over the door of the building was a big, peeling sign: MURRAIN CO.

“That’ll be it,” said Smitty. “There’s nothing about grain in the sign, but Nellie said it was a vacant warehouse and the sign ended with — RAIN.”

“Ye’re right,” nodded Mac. “Now to get in.”

It was midmorning, but there weren’t many people along here. For the benefit of the few who might observe them, Mac and Smitty stepped from their car and walked openly to the warehouse-office door as if they had business there.

The door was boarded over; but when Smitty tugged at the handle a little, boards and nailheads moved in unison. The boarding was a fake.

So Smitty, vast right hand clutching the knob, exerted a little strength.

The lock, groaning, then screaming thinly like a live thing, came apart. The knob came out with its square stem like some kind of strange fruit plucked stem and all from a tough branch.

Smitty dropped it, reached a ponderous forefinger into the ragged hole, manipulated the bolt mechanism of the ruined lock and the door swung inward.

Mac and the giant entered a small, bare office that was an inch thick with dust — except in a straight line from door to rear partition.

There, many feet had recently scuffed the dust away.

The two followed the little trail, walking silently, alert for any sound or move.

It led them to basement stairs, and down. And it ended before what seemed a blank wall, till Mac began prodding around with powerful, bony fingers. Then a section of the wall swung back disclosing a tiny cell, in the floor of which was a manhole cover.

A new manhole cover.

“It’s been verrra easy,” whispered Mac dourly. “I’m thinkin’ it’s been too easy — to come here and find just what we’re after.”

Smitty snorted and lifted the manhole cover. The Scot was always sure of disaster when things were going well, reserving his optimism for situations so desperate that any other man would give up completely.

There was a tunnel under the manhole cover. Smitty’s small flash revealed that. He lowered himself to it, and Mac did the same.

“The lid?” whispered Mac.

“Better put it back in place, over our heads,” Smitty replied in a low tone. “Just in case some dope comes along in a minute and gets wise by seeing it out of position.”

Mac lowered the manhole lid into place. They went down the tunnel by the light of Smitty’s flash.

Speedily the thing broadened and heightened till it was a full-sized traffic tube, twenty or twenty-five feet wide and almost the same in height. But walls and floor were of rough concrete, never finished off, and drops of moisture oozed from the river bed just above.

They could hear the swishing of the water near their heads. They opened a heavy steel door.

“I don’t like this at all,” whispered Mac dolefully again, looking back at the door. It was like a bulkhead.

Smitty glared at him and the two went on.

There was a slight bend in the tunnel at the beginning. They rounded this bend; then Smitty pointed. Mac nodded wordlessly.

There, protruding from the side of the tunnel, was a plain iron lever. This was the lever Nellie had mentioned. It was rusted very little, indicating that it, and the flood-gate mechanism it controlled, had been installed only recently.

They had been told to keep anyone from throwing that lever, if anyone were near it as they came along. But there wasn’t a soul in the tunnel ahead of them.

They went on.

And behind them a score of men crept in the darkness as silently as rats!

The men got to the heavy steel door across the tunnel at the bend. They went through the doorway, and closed the portal behind them. One of their number remained behind, outside the door. There was a heavy iron bar there. He dropped it into place. Now, no matter what happened in the tunnel ahead, the big fellow and the Scotch guy would be trapped.

Mac and Smitty were, as yet, unaware of the events in their rear. They were too busy looking ahead.

Nellie had said she was held in a cell off this tunnel. So the two men were looking for some kind of portal behind which might be such a dungeon.

They didn’t see one. Instead, staring ahead, they suddenly saw feet and legs, in Smitty’s flashlight beam.

“Back!” roared Mac. “There’s an arrrmy of the skurlies waitin’ for us!”

The two started back.

Smitty’s flash rayed into the tunnel’s gloom, and threw into bold relief a multitude of faces. Rats’ faces, though on the shoulders of men.

“They’re here, too!” growled Smitty. “They’ve got us two ways, like a pair of pincers.”

As he yelled, he threw his flashlight at the nearest face, and charged, to fight them in the darkness. But it seemed they were not to have that advantage.

Light leaped out all along the tunnel’s length, from bulbs strung high overhead. With the light, the men behind the two and the men ahead of them, rushed forward.

It was like being caught between two tidal waves. A score of men on one side, a dozen or more on the other.

The two waves of snarling humanity met, with Mac and Smitty like two pieces of driftwood in between!

Smitty howled, and grabbed a man by his two clutching arms. Then he began to swing the man around in a giant’s circle. The fellow screamed as his arm sockets gave way under the strain and both arms were dislocated. But the scream didn’t stop Smitty.

He just kept swinging! And the flying feet of his captive knocked over men like tenpins.

Meanwhile, Mac was laying to right and left with fists like bone mallets swinging at the end of wirerope lengths.

The gang stepped back to avoid the swirling, helpless body of their pal. They waited till Smitty had to stop turning round and round to avoid getting so dizzy that he couldn’t stay on his feet. Then they came in again, in a second double wave.

Mac was down on one knee, but still battering away against the hopeless odds. There were going to be broken bones as souvenirs of his cold, controlled ferocity.

Smitty was doing all the damage he could. Which was about as much as a baby tank could have done.

The giant had never bothered to learn to box. With his colossal strength, it simply wasn’t necessary. He just hit, and whether his opponent had his arms up in a boxing guard, or not, made no difference. Smitty simply smashed through all conceivable guards and mashed face or body behind them.

He was knocking men around now with an enthusiasm that brought cold terror to their murderous eyes. The odds had been sixteen to one against these two; and it developed that such odds were not very much more than were needed. There weren’t many of the men unmarked when Smitty finally went down and out beside his unconscious friend.

The men kicked the two and took them down the line.

They threw open a door and tossed the two into it. Then they slammed the door shut again and barred it before a black panther could come from the cell inside and maul a few of them.

The panther, as Mac and Smitty discovered when their senses wavered back to them, was Josh Newton.

Nellie was in this dismal dungeon with Nan Stanton, as her radio SOS had said. But in addition, Rosabel and Josh stared somberly at the giant and the Scot when they sat up and rubbed their aching heads.

“So they got you, too,” growled Smitty.

Neither Josh nor Rosabel answered. The fact was self-evident.

All The Avenger’s aides were nicely immobilized in this rock prison. But there was one person missing who had been there at first.

Fram!

The doctor’s voice sounded suddenly from outside.

“Thank you for calling the help, Nellie Gray,” his voice came mockingly. “It was a help. It caught your companions quite neatly. Now I’ve got you all — except the man who commands you and so arrogantly calls himself The Avenger. I’ll have him too, in a little while. Then the lever will be thrown and we’ll be rid of the lot of you.”

Nellie looked guiltily and in distress at the rest. She had been the one to send out the fatal call for help. She had been entirely duped by the clever man whose business was the subtle manipulation of minds.

None of them wasted any time in regrets.

“The chief,” said Smitty in a low tone. “We’ve got to warn him. The radio—”

His great hands had been fumbling at his waist. They went slack. There was no radio there. The men outside had ripped it from him before throwing him into the cell.

He stared at Mac. The Scot mutely shook his homely head. There was no radio at his belt, either.

It was the same with Josh and Rosabel and Nellie. The diminutive blonde had been allowed to make that appeal; then her set had been snatched from her.

Now they had no way of contacting the man with the pale, infallible eyes and the white, dead face. They could only hope that he had not heard Nellie’s signal, as all the rest of them had.