The Yellow Hoard

CHAPTER XIV Borg Whines

Chandler’s apartment was a former artist’s studio. It consisted mainly of one big, high room, with several smaller rooms off that. In the big room were the black-eyed man, the two human rats who looked like brothers, and the man with the reddish hair. Also Chandler.

The engineer sat in a big leather chair. A sheet had been brought from one of the bedrooms, twisted into a most efficient cord, and tied around his body and the chair. Easy to work loose if he’d been alone and unmolested. But he wasn’t. The man with the reddish hair sat across from him, about four feet, with gun drawn and leveled at Chandler’s body. Whenever Chandler moved a little, the gun moved, too.

In a far doorway lay Chandler’s servant, a thin man in a white jacket. The top of his head was crushed. He was still breathing, but a glance told that he wouldn’t keep on breathing very long. He was good as dead.

Chandler stared at Benson, white-lipped but calm.

“Sorry,” he said. “If I’d only had a chance to warn you—”

“Shut up!” snapped the black-eyed man. It was at the point of his gun that Benson had been driven in here.

Benson stared at him with eyes like ice in a chill dawn.

“You’re Borg,” he said.

“Frank Borg, if it’ll do you any good to know the full name in hell,” the black-eyed man retorted. “Now, listen, and get this the first time, because we want to leave here fast. You’ve got the brick from Alec Knight’s place. We want it. Step to that phone there, call your joint, and have somebody bring it here.”

Chandler’s eyes cried out “No” to Benson’s white, still face. The engineer shook his head urgently.

One of the ratlike brothers stepped to Chandler and gave him a hard, backhanded slap across the face.

“Keep your bill out of it!” he snarled. “Let the white-headed guy do his own thinkin’.”

Red leaped into Chandler’s cheek where he had been struck. He glared at the man with slitted, cold eyes, and then looked at Benson.

“Why,” said Benson, silken voice showing no more emotion in the death trap than his cold, dead face, “do you want an ordinary clay brick so badly?”

“Stop stallin’. You know as well as we do. We want the nice gold hicky inside it. We’ve got almost enough without it. Maybe entirely enough. But we want that to make sure. So you just pick up the phone and order it brought here.”

Benson was silent. Then he shrugged and nodded.

“All right.”

Chandler looked savagely, coldly contemptuous. Borg grinned with triumph. Then the grin faded.

“Don’t have that man-mountain of yours bring it,” he cautioned. “Tell the jane, Nellie Gray, to come with it.”

“She doesn’t know where I keep it,” said Benson.

“You can tell her over the phone, can’t you? Come on — get going!”

Borg moved to the phone with his gun solidly in Benson’s side. The ratlike brothers stayed close, too, guns in their hands. The fourth man remained where he was, gun and eyes closely covering the engineer tied in his chair by the sheet.

Benson picked up the phone, of the hand-set type. He dialed a number. Meanwhile, he did not look at Borg. There had been surrender in Benson’s voice. There was none in the pale blaze of his eyes.

“Smitty,” he said, evenly, when a man’s voice answered, “take an order.”

A mile away, in a garage that chanced to own the number Benson had dialed at random, a man said bewilderedly:

“Smitty? Who you callin’ Smitty? There ain’t nobody here by that name. This is Hoag’s Garage.”

“You know that brick, Smitty,” said Benson, keeping the receiver end of the phone tight to his ear so that Borg couldn’t overhear. “Well, have Miss Gray bring it to me at Chandler’s apartment right away. What? Oh! She isn’t?”

Benson half turned toward Borg.

“He says Miss Gray isn’t there at the moment. Do you want me to have him bring it?”

“Well—” began Borg.

What he had been going to say was never finished. With the natural little half-turn toward him, Benson had accomplished his purpose, to get the gun shifted just a little less solidly and surely from his ribs.

Now he arched his body like a snapped spring, flashed his right arm up and down, and jerked hard.

Borg’s gun belched, but the slug missed Benson in his lithe turn by three inches. And then Borg choked and twisted with a noose around his neck made by the telephone cord Benson had snapped around his throat.

“You guys—” Borg choked out. “Get him—”

But to get Benson, the three would have had to get Borg first. For he was between the gray steel man and their guns.

The phone cord ripped out of the box with the force of Borg’s struggle. Benson dropped the cord and got his left arm around Borg’s throat instead. His forearm, like ridged metal, was viselike against Borg’s Adam’s apple. His right hand sought and got Borg’s gun.

He faced the three gunmen, with Borg as an anguished human shield in front of him, and Borg’s automatic leveled first at one and then another of Borg’s men.

“Drop the guns,” Benson said, silken voice deadly, white face like a mask.

The two brothers might have obeyed, but the reddish-haired man thought too fast.

“Go to hell,” he said hoarsely. “You ain’t as bright as you think you are. You can’t call the cops, because the phone’s broken. You can’t kill us all, because in the time it takes you to plug one of us the other two can plug you through Borg.”

“No! No!” panted Borg, struggling in the iron grasp of the gray steel figure.

Benson tightened his arm pressure.

“I can break your neck easily,” he said, soft-voiced. “And I will, if you don’t stand still.”

Borg stood still. Benson’s deadly, colorless eyes dwelt on the three who stood with guns pointed at Borg — and hence at him, too. It looked like a stalemate.

Chandler’s voice sounded suddenly.

“I’m about free, Benson. Another minute and I’ll be out of this chair. When I get you, I’ll take their guns—”

“No, you won’t,” said the man with the reddish hair. “If you try that, we’ll plug the white-headed guy through Frankie, too. And then the one or two of us left will get you, Chandler.”

“When you get free,” Benson’s smooth tone capped the gunman’s rasping voice, “go to whatever room has a fire escape by the window. I’ll follow.”

The engineer was on his feet as Benson finished. He edged toward a door behind and to the right of the men Benson had covered.

“This room,” he called.

“Right,” said Benson.

The gray fox of a man backed toward the door Chandler held open. Borg backed involuntarily with him, held by the awful forearm around his throat. And the man with the sandy-red hair bit his lip indecisively.

If an attempt had been made to disarm him and the other two, they’d have shot, even if they had to kill Borg to get Benson. If Benson had tried to shoot them down, the survivor or survivors would have done the same thing. But the mere escape of the engineer and the man with the pale eyes was an alternative the gunman didn’t know how to handle.

He didn’t know whether to shoot through Borg to prevent that or not.

“Don’t,” gasped Borg, reading the deadly uncertainty in his man’s eyes. “Leave ’em go. Don’t drill me!”

Benson was at the door by now, with Chandler opening a window. So the question was decided of itself. Benson shoved Borg away from him, toward the guns of the three, and slammed the bedroom door and locked it. Then he joined Chandler at the fire escape.

The engineer was admirably calm, though his eyes still reflected the shadow of death.

“I thought you’d given in, Benson. But… you hadn’t. That was a good stunt with the phone cord.”

He was running down the iron treads, with Benson behind. The door would stand the battering of the men long enough to let the two get to the bottom.

“Where now?” asked Chandler, on the last flight, panting from eight floors of swift descent.

“My place on Bleek Street,” Benson said. He wasn’t even breathing quickly. “You’ll be safer there than anywhere else.”

A little later, in the great top-floor room, Chandler told about it.

“They got into my apartment and overpowered my servant. They must have held a gun on him and made him phone me at the office. He told me to hurry home, as there had been another robbery and he was afraid some valuables I keep at home were taken. He didn’t know what I’d had, so I’d better hurry and check up and report to the police. Then, I guess, they slugged him.”

Chandler’s lips were stiff with anger. “My man was killed by them. And I guess I would have been, too, if you hadn’t showed up. Although… I’m not sure of that—”

“You think perhaps they had other plans for you besides murder?” Benson said.

Chandler nodded thoughtfully.

“They knew, somehow, that you were coming. They waited there for you, with the black-haired man out by the elevators. While they waited, they talked a little. Something about ‘the other guy who was with old Gray’ not being too well up on Mexico, and maybe I would know my way around down there better because I had been there twice.”

“I see,” Benson said. “There’s logic there. Those men are going to Mexico and—”

“In connection with Gray’s secret?” said Chandler, eyes intent. “You mean — they’ve guessed it?”

“Yes,” said Benson. “Apparently you have, too, from the expression on your face. They know the secret of the belt. They have most of the links. They are going down to find the cache described by the hieroglyphs. It was rather smart of them to think of forcing you to go, too, and help them locate it. You’ve been down twice, you’re familiar with Central America and South Mexico, and your engineering and survey work would make you a good trail finder.”

Benson’s pale flares of eyes were steady on Chandler’s face.

“In fact, it’s such a good idea that I think I’ll borrow it — and ask you to go down there with us, and help us.”

“You’re going, too?” exclaimed Chandler.

“Yes. They have four direction plates. We have three and a slightly superior knowledge. I think we can come as close to the spot as they can. And if we both do hit near — we’ll capture the gang there in the jungle and bring the lot of them to justice.”

“By George, I believe you’re capable of it!” said Chandler, staring into the inexorable, pale eyes.

“Want to go with us and help?” said Benson.

“By all means!”

Benson nodded approval. Then he said:

“When you mentioned the talk of Borg’s gang, you said one of them said something about ‘the other guy who was with old Gray’ not being too well acquainted with Mexico. Who do you suppose they meant?”

“I don’t know,” said Chandler, slowly. “But I’m afraid they meant some one of the men who were on the last expedition with Gray. Though I’d have bet my life they were all decent, sound citizens.”

“Yes, one of them must be our man,” Benson replied thoughtfully. “Though it’s pretty confusing to try to guess who it could be. A man of mine named MacMurdie has been checking on the movements of Bower, Doolen, Rex Orto, Harry Armitage, John Sanderson, Cole Tega — six of the nine members of the expedition besides Gray and his daughter. They all seem harmless enough. Alec Knight was killed at about the same time you were robbed of your brick, so he’s out. Only Dr. Mortimer Barker is unaccounted for. But he can’t figure in any of this, of course, for he’s on the high seas, on his way to Europe.”