Three Gold Crowns

CHAPTER II Murder Frame

The man walking along the avenue near the south end of Manhattan was truly a giant. A bad man to pick a fight with. Yet his face indicated that he was good-natured, and his china-blue eyes beamed affably on all comers.

The name of the giant was Algernon Heathcote Smith. But few ever dared call him Algernon or Heathcote. The name was Smitty, if you wanted to stay healthy. He was the valued aide of the almost mythical crime fighter known as The Avenger.

“Gosh! It’s sure warm for November,” said Smitty, wiping his forehead and paying no attention to the people who stared after him because of his size.

“It sure is,” agreed the giant’s companion, squinting his eyes against the morning sun.

Smitty’s companion was worth a second glance, too. He was not oversized, about five feet eleven. But he moved with a litheness indicating compact power, and he was very good-looking. Dark brown hair, high off his forehead; black eyes, blazing with vitality and alertness.

This was Cole Wilson, who had recently joined the indomitable little band who, under the direction of Dick Benson, The Avenger, made fighting crime a full-time occupation.

“For once I’m glad we’re not working on a case,” confessed the giant, Smitty. “I think I’ll—”

The thin, shrill noise past his ear was like the hum of a mosquito, magnified a thousand times. But it was not a mosquito. It was the unmistakable and terrible whine of a high-powered bullet! And it had come so close to Smitty’s head that it had nearly parted his hair for him — low and on the side.

For all his bulk, Smitty could move like a streak when he had to. But alert as the giant was, The Avenger’s latest recruit, Cole Wilson, was even more wary. Before Smitty could leap forward and to the side to put the bulk of a parked truck between him and the source of the bullet, Cole Wilson had shoved at his arm and reached the protection first.

Both had moved far faster than ordinary men. That was because their reactions were habitually timed to beat that fast mover, Death. The two crouched behind the solid bulk of the truck.

There was a second whine, and then a spang as if a gong had been struck. The old-style water-temperature gauge sprouting from the radiator cap of the truck disappeared as it was blown in a hundred pieces.

After that there were no more shots. Smitty looked at Cole, china-blue eyes as perplexed as Cole’s blazing black ones.

“Now what in the world’s behind that?” rasped Smitty. He looked irritated, and he was irritated. He was used to being shot at. But, being a reasonable man, he was annoyed when the shots came for no apparent reason.

Cole shrugged compact shoulders.

“I don’t know. We’re not working on any case just now. We were just taking our time walking to the Bleek Street headquarters through a nice fall morning. We were talking of nothing but the weather? And bam! Somebody tries to kill us from a block or two away with a high velocity bullet.”

“Think the guy’s still watching for us — whoever he may be?” said Smitty.

Cole Wilson shrugged again, and didn’t venture to put his head above the nose of the truck.

Some people had seen the odd way in which the motometer of the truck had exploded. They were watching the even odder way these two men were acting. They didn’t know anything about the bullets, since they’d come from too far away to hear shots.

“Let’s have a try,” said Smitty.

Cole was bareheaded, but the giant wore a hat, a gray felt. He thrust it up above the snout of the truck, as a man might thrust his helmet up above the side of a trench.

And about the same thing happened to it.

The hat jerked in his hand, and a hole appeared.

A couple of the people nearby yelled and were joined by a growing crowd.

“Let’s get out of here,” snapped Cole.

Another truck was coming up the avenue. The two let it pass, then with a quick dash caught up with it. For several steps, from their cover to the moving vehicle, they were in the open. But if more shots came, they weren’t close enough for the two men to know.

The truck was going in the direction from which the shots were coming; so the two men rode the tailgate, meanwhile staring around and trying to spot the marksman.

“No soap,” sighed Cole, after they’d gone two long blocks. “He might have been in any one of those windows.”

Smitty nodded. There were hundreds of windows in the distance they had covered. It would take a squad of police to track down the spot from which the shots had been fired. And by that time the rifleman would be miles away.

The two simply hopped a cab, went around a long circuit, and approached Bleek Street from the south instead of from the north.

Bleek Street was where The Avenger had his headquarters.

Dick Benson, figuratively, owned the whole short block that was all there was to Bleek Street.

On one side, the back of a windowless concrete warehouse took up the whole block. On the other were several stores and small storage buildings, under long lease to Benson, and in the center were three narrow old brick buildings that had once been shabby rooming houses.

Behind their dingy facade, these three narrow buildings had been thrown into one, and luxuriously fitted up.

The top floor was all one vast room; and in here were to be found almost any of The Avenger’s aides when they were not out on a case.

They were all here, now, when Smitty and Cole Wilson stepped in.

There was Fergus MacMurdie, a dour, bony Scot with sandy hair and sandy ropes of eyebrows over bleak blue eyes.

There was Nellie Gray, beautiful small blonde with a look of being more fragile than porcelain but actually able to handle most stalwart men.

There was Josh Newton, a sleepy-looking black who seemed dull-witted but was actually an honor graduate from Tuskegee. With Josh — always with Josh — was Mrs. Josh: Rosabel Newton, also a college graduate; a beautiful Negress who had performed more than one perilous task against the underworld.

And then there was The Avenger.

Dick Benson sat behind his big desk as Wilson and Smitty came in. If ever a man was a dynamo of power, regardless of his average size, it was this young man with the pale, deadly eyes and the thick, close-cropped black hair.

“Trouble?” said Dick Benson, the instant Cole and Smitty put in an appearance.

“How did you know that?” demanded Smitty.

Benson didn’t even bother to shrug. His almost colorless eyes dwelt on the giant.

“You went out with a hat; you came back without one.”

“Well, you’re right,” said Smitty. “I left it in the street because it’s not the fashion to wear hats with bullet holes in them.”

“Bullet holes!” gasped Nellie.

The diminutive blonde always kidded the giant, but the rest of the little band knew that she had a large regard for him. The report of bullets coming close enough to him to drill holes in his hat made her pale a little.

Smitty told what had happened, and The Avenger got up from behind his desk and walked abstractedly to the nearest window.

Even that move, not intended to be particularly fast, spoke volumes about the man’s great physical power and miraculously fast coordination of thought and action. Movement was a swift, smooth flow with him.

He looked out between slats of nickel-steel, tinted to look like ordinary Venetian blinds, but more bulletproof than blinds. And as he looked out the window, Smitty stared at him.

Not so long ago Dick Benson, who was only in his twenties, though few men of middle age had done the things he had, had appeared to be almost elderly. That was because his hair had been white and his face paralyzed.

A great personal loss through the machinations of crime had turned Benson into a cold, crime-fighting machine. That same loss, by a tremendous nerve shock, had whitened his hair and paralyzed his facial muscles into a sort of white wax death mask.

Then recently, a nerve shock of a different sort had tingled the facial flesh back to life and had caused all his thick white hair to fall out. And when the hair had grown back in, it had taken its first color — black.

“We’ll have a visitor pretty soon,” Dick Benson prophesied.

The rest looked at him — a man so youthful, who was known in financial, crime, and professional circles throughout the nation.

“But there wasn’t any sense in anyone’s trying to kill Cole and me,” protested Smitty.

“That’s just it.” Dick’s gray eyes, so pale as to seem like holes in his straight-featured, dominant face, still were staring down between the slanted nickel-steel slats at the street. “There was no reason for it. Yet there must be one, even if we don’t know it. Murders aren’t attempted for no reason at all. It must be, therefore, that someone is coming to us for help, and somebody else knows that and wants to warn us off.”

The pale eyes narrowed as they focused on something down in the street. Dick walked back to the big desk and sat down.

“And here,” he said, as a pinpoint of light glowed red in the wall beside the door, “is our visitor. Show him up, Smitty.”

The pinpoint of red light had resulted when a finger pressed the bell in the downstairs lobby — the bell over the small but mighty legend “Justice, Inc.,” which was the official name of The Avenger’s crime-fighting band.

In a moment the man who had pressed the bell was on the threshold. He looked around from face to face, but almost at once his gaze centered on the countenance of Dick Benson. Dick was obviously the leader here; he would have looked like the leader in whatever group he might be seen.

“Mr. Benson? My name is Markham Farquar. I’m a lawyer.”

Farquar was a man of fifty, with a direct gaze that was pleasing in its openness. He had thick gray hair and gray eyes and looked more youthful and fit than his years would warrant. He was nearly six feet tall and had a commanding presence.

“I’ve heard of your firm, Mr. Markham,” replied Dick Benson with a nod.

Markham permitted himself a wan smile.

“It’s fairly well known. And I’ve handled the troubles of clients fairly well for some years. Now I’m in trouble myself. I decided finally to come here because I’ve heard of the miracles Justice, Inc., has performed in helping people who were beyond the aid of the police.”

They all looked at him, Nellie and Smitty, Cole and Mac, Josh and Rosabel. But the coldest eyes in the room were those of The Avenger. Dick’s face was also the calmest. Only that face had been expressionless because it was paralyzed. Now, though able to express emotion as any other man’s face could, it seldom did. Dick held it immobile to guard against betraying his thoughts.

“I am being blackmailed,” said Markham Farquar, with a slight break in his voice, though he kept his countenance fairly well under control. “That’s why I came here.”

“The police are equipped to handle that,” said Dick quietly.

“Not this type of blackmail,” said Farquar bitterly. “You see, the blackmailers are too powerful. They are rich, respected, with fine business backgrounds and not a shadow against their names. The police can’t fight that type of criminal. Only you, as far as I know, can fight that kind.”

Dick said nothing. His colorless, infallible eyes were like drills on the troubled gray eyes of the lawyer.

“You’ve heard perhaps of Robert Beall, owner of the Beall Paper Manufacturing Company?”

Dick nodded.

“And Fredrick Salloway, of Salloway and Burke Contracting Corporation?”

“Yes.”

“And Iando Cleeves, the art collector?”

“Yes. I have met all three. You mean to say those men are blackmailing you?”

“Yes.” Farquar smiled crookedly. “You see what chance I’d have of help if I went to the police. The mention of blackmail in connection with three such respected men makes even you look questioning.”

“Go on,” was all Dick said. “What’s the foundation for their blackmail?”

“Murder!” said Farquar.

The pale diamond drills grew sharper yet.

“I have — or had — a clerk by the name of Smathers in my employ,” said Farquar. “A trusted man. He has been with me for over twenty years. Three nights ago he disappeared. He ran off, or wandered off; perhaps he died somewhere of a heart attack or an accident. I don’t know. There has been no news of him since. And Salloway, Beall, and Cleeves claim I murdered him.”

“They must have something to back up such a claim,” said Dick Benson.

Farquar nodded. “They have. At least, they claim they have. Each of the three claims to have a clue that will nail the murder of my clerk to me and send me to the chair. I don’t know what trumped-up evidence they have, but I am afraid it might be something pretty serious. Otherwise, three such men would have never made it the basis for blackmail for such a large sum.”

“A large sum, Mr. Farquar?” said Dick.

“One million dollars,” said the lawyer, with a great sigh. “I haven’t quite that much, but I could raise that amount if I had to. And I’ll have to if you can’t help me.”

“You don’t know the nature of the fake clues they have?”

“No,” said Farquar. “I do know this, though. Beall keeps his in a jewel case that belonged to his wife. Salloway has his in a cigar case that never leaves his person. And Cleeves keeps his in a small dispatch box. Which means that the clues are pretty small objects. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

“And you want us to get these things from the three men for you?”

“Yes,” said Farquar, with a quiver in his voice. “Yes! If only you could get the phony clues away from them — I’d be saved. And I’d be almost willing to pay you the sum of the blackmail demanded.”

“We don’t work for money, Mr. Farquar,” said Dick crisply. He didn’t bother to add that they didn’t have to work for money because the great gold hoard of the ancient Aztecs, in a secret spot in Mexico, was theirs to draw on any time they needed funds.

“Will you help me?” pleaded Farquar.

The Avenger didn’t give an answer yet. His pale eyes were incandescent with thought.

“Did anyone know you meant to come here and ask for help?” he said.

“Why… no,” said Farquar slowly.

“You didn’t tell anyone of your intention?”

“As far as I can recall, I didn’t tell a soul,” said Farquar slowly. “No — I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll do what we can to help you,” said Dick.

Farquar drew a deep, ragged breath.

“Thank heaven for that!” he exclaimed. “And thank heaven you saw fit to believe me, even though the men I named are so far, apparently, above suspicion.”

“We have a good reason for believing you,” said Cole Wilson impulsively. He was the most impulsive of The Avenger’s aides, the swiftest to act on lightninglike intuition.

When Farquar had gone, after leaving his home and office addresses and phone numbers, Cole turned to The Avenger.

“That’s the reason Smitty and I were shot at,” Cole said. “Somebody knew Farquar meant to come to us for help and wanted to prevent it. The simplest way seemed to remove all of us, one by one, from the land of the living. A pretty grim way, but a sure one.”

“It looks like it,” conceded Dick, pale eyes already glittering in a manner showing that the golden genius in the brain behind them was working on this problem. The rest stared expectantly at him. They knew how fast that brain worked and that there’d be small delay before The Avenger began outlining a course of action.