Three Gold Crowns

CHAPTER IX The Curious Key

The Avenger, as was to be expected, reached the apartment long before the police did. The cops could move fast, but Dick Benson could move faster.

He came into the place, seeming to glide like a black panther in a hurry rather than a man. He paid absolutely no attention to the numbed building manager; The Avenger had a sort of sixth sense telling him when people did or did not count in the scheme of things.

He went directly to the other room, with Smitty on his heels.

This next room was a bedroom. In it there was a double bed, a dresser and highboy, and several chairs.

And a corpse.

The body lay next to the dresser, and it was clad in pajamas. It was Salloway, the tenant of the place, all right. The wealthy contractor was sprawled on his face; and from his back, between the shoulder blades, stuck up the handles of a pair of shears.

Someone had grabbed the shears from dresser or highboy and jammed them into the man’s back. Chances were he never knew what hit him.

“They must have done it just as I stepped in the door,” said Smitty. “I heard a kind of groan about that time.”

Dick Benson nodded. That thick black hair of his made his pale eyes seem even more colorless in contrast. They were brilliant agates now, as he looked at the dead man and the room.

“Almost noon,” he said, “and Salloway was here, in night clothes. It looks as if he had been staying very close to home lately. Afraid of just this, perhaps.”

He did not mention the thing that both he and the giant Smitty were thinking of.

The cigar case supposed never to leave his person.

In the cigar case, Farquar had been sure, was the fake murder clue Salloway was holding over the lawyer’s head. But one doesn’t carry cigar cases in pajama pockets. At least there was none in the single pocket of the dead man’s pajamas jacket. A glance told that.

Salloway’s fists were clenched hard. The Avenger bent down and opened the right hand. It took a bit of effort.

“You can’t do that!” bleated the house manager. “The police— No one is supposed to touch”

“Pipe down!” growled Smitty, “or you may get into even more trouble than I think you’re due for.”

The manager shut up. Dick saw that the right hand contained nothing; so he opened the left. And this did reveal something.

A queer-looking key.

It had a curved flange instead of a straight one and had more indentations than most keys. It evidently fit into a very complicated lock.

But what lock?

“Did Salloway have a strongbox or small safe installed in here since his occupancy?” Benson asked the building manager.

He got no reply.

“You’d know of such an installation, as manager here,” Dick said.

Still the man’s lips were obstinately sealed. And then he gasped suddenly.

Two hands like steel vises were on his cringing shoulders. Pale eyes like the eyes of Death itself glared into his.

“Well?”

Dick’s voice was almost gentle, but by now the luckless manager was shaking all over and his forehead was dewed with sweat. It was a frightening thing to look into The Avenger’s eyes when he was coldly annoyed.

“Y-yes,” he said, moistening dry lips. “Behind that dresser, I think.”

Dick pulled the dreser from the wall. The wall seemed unbroken, but tapping produced a hollow note. He pressed on an area where several slight smudges told of other finger-pressures, and a section swung out. It revealed a steel box front like that of a safe, but with a bent slot for a key instead of a combination knob.

Dick inserted the odd key, and the box opened. There were no papers, money, or other standard valuables there. It held only one thing — a silver cigar case.

As The Avenger picked it up, something rattled — something like a pebble in the case.

He started to open it, and nine men poured into the room like water pouring through a pipe!

It had been well done. The men must have literally held their breaths as they crept in from the hall and crossed the living room. Otherwise, The Avenger would have heard them. As it was, he’d have heard even the rustle of their clothes, with those keen ears of is, if he hadn’t been so intent on the cigar case.

But he hadn’t heard, and here they were, flying at him and at Smitty like so many leaping cats.

The cigar case went into a pocket, and Benson went behind the dresser he had pulled out from the wall. Two men slammed into the dresser as they tried to change their course and couldn’t quite make it.

And then the quaking building manager saw a sight that made his eyes bulge out.

Dick Benson was only average in size and weight. Not at all a big man. But now and then men appear whose muscle seems to have three times the strength of ordinary muscle. And Dick was one of these.

At any rate, the manager saw this average-sized man raise the big piece of furniture a foot off the floor, with the two men still draped over it so that over half their weight was lifted, too. Then he saw the man with the pale eyes half thrust and half throw dresser and men and everything else, with a furious burst of power. The tangled mess slammed into some more of the men four feet away and sent the whole group to the floor.

After that, the manager saw only a whirling kaleidoscope of movement as he shivered in a corner.

The three who had raced out when Smitty interrupted them had come back with these six more — to get that cigar case. That was evident. And they were certainly trying, now.

They couldn’t shoot, because there were so many in the room they’d have fired at each other. But nine to two, they must have thought, were odds enough to insure success.

That thought was soon altered.

Dick Benson followed the powerful thrust of the dresser with a flashing charge at the men. One, already up, got a blow to the jaw as scientifically administered as an anesthetic, and acting in the same manner. He crumpled and fell. Another, lunging for Dick’s knees, felt iron fingers press at the back of his neck in a nerve pressure — and then didn’t feel anything else. For that, too, could act as an anesthetic, putting a man out for half an hour.

Meanwhile, Smitty had swung his vast fists four times. The result was: one man doubled over and trying to get back the breath knocked out of him when knuckles apparently went from his stomach clear to his backbone, two men on the floor with cracked jaws, and one man over against the wall who would not move again. The giant had broken necks before by hitting just a little harder than he meant to. It was difficult to gauge his gigantic strength in the heat of battle.

There were only three left on their feet and these three wheeled for the door to get away, eyes glazed with fear at these impossible things. But Benson and Smitty had no idea of allowing this.

The two men had been in here a little over five minutes — an incredibly crowded five minutes — and the police, called by Smitty only a little while after he had contacted The Avenger, were due any second.

Smitty and Benson were determined that they’d arrive to find nine prisoners. Rather, eight battered prisoners and one dead one.

Smitty was as fast on his feet as a boy, in spite of his near-three-hundred pounds. He reached the bedroom door almost as quickly as Dick. He saw Benson get a fleeing man by the throat and haul him back as easily as if the fellow had been a child. Then, at the hall door, Smitty reached the other two.

He grabbed a neck with each hand, then brought his hands together. That was all.

But that was plenty!

Two heads tried to occupy the space required by one. There was a hollow thud. Smitty dusted off his hands and looked hungrily around to see if anybody was up and asking for more.

And then there was the clang of the elevator down the hall and a city detective and a uniformed patrolman galloped in.

“Hey!” said the detective, looking at the bodies strewn around the place like leaves in autumn. Ten of them in the two rooms. “Hey—”

He looked at Benson and Smitty. So did the patrolman.

“Jumping Judas!” said the cop. “You two did this?”

The detective drew a deep breath. He also drew his gun, fast!

“We’ll have to take you in, and I don’t want either of you within arm’s length. Not when you can clean up a mob like that, between the two of you— Wait a minute—”

He looked at Benson, staring into the pale eyes and at the thick, coal-black hair and the impassive, regular-featured face. Then he rubbed his jaw with his left hand while his right let the gun sag a little.

“Would you be Richard Benson, by any chance?” he asked.

Benson nodded.

“Aw, he can’t be Benson,” said the cop. “Benson has white hair. I know all about him.”

The detective shook his head. “There was a report a while ago on him,” he said. “He had some kind of accident in a factory in Detroit. It made all his hair fall out and it came back the color it had been before — black. And look at the big guy. That’s Smith, who works for Benson. There aren’t two other guys in New York that big! And look at the ones they laid out. Nobody else could do that”

“Here are my credentials,” said Benson quietly.

The detective looked at them: Letters from the governor of the state, from the President, from the New York police commissioner. Credentials proving Benson a member of the FBI and an honorary member of the city detective bureau.

“What has happened here, Mr. Benson?” he asked, very respectfully.

Dick told him.

“Salloway murdered, huh?” The detective looked at the dead man in pajamas with the shears in his back. “And one of these guys did it, huh? Well, we’ll take ’em to headquarters. A little persuasive talk will turn our murderer out.”

Benson doubted that. He doubted that any of these men, all hard cases from the look of them, could be made to say a word. He believed that they’d be sprung in an hour. He was sure they weren’t working for themselves, but for some man of wealth and respectability who could hire the best of lawyers.

But he didn’t say that. Nor did he say anything about the cigar case, which he had whipped into his inner pocket when the gang made their surprise entrance.

He took the case with him when he and Smitty went back to Bleek Street, after a lot more questioning.

There, on Dick Benson’s big desk, they opened it. The thing that had rattled around inside like a pebble fell out on the desk top. And Smitty breathed hard with astonishment while The Avenger stared with his icy pale eyes glittering like stainless-steel chips.

The thing was a gold crown, torn from a human tooth.