Tuned for Murder

CHAPTER XI Field Reports

Benson’s pale eyes in his dead, white face were like little ice chips in a glacial sea. He seemed to stare right through Josh, such was his concentration on the report.

“That’s a thing no one would believe if it hadn’t actually happened,” he said at length. “The cold openness of it! And yet, it wasn’t as reckless as it seems. If he had succeeded in killing you, no one in the shop could have proved that you did not fall. All would have thought you had, because of his warning yell. So he would have gotten away with it. But it was mad. Insane! You say not one trace of his purpose was in his face?”

“No,” said Josh. “He was smiling and pleasant. No one could have guessed there was anything in his mind.”

“He must be a clever actor.”

Josh said, after a moment: “I can swear to that because I was watching his face closely. It was most unusual for a high executive to decide suddenly to take a shoe-shining Negro through the plant. I was sure something was wrong. So I kept watching his face, and now I realize there was one peculiar thing about him. He didn’t show any trace of dangerous intentions, but he did look just a little as if he were listening.”

“Listening?” said Benson.

“Yes! Almost as if some voice a long way off were trying to tell him something.”

The Avenger’s eyes glinted. Something about that last statement had set the flaming genius of his brain to moving in a new direction. But he didn’t put any of it into words.

“Stay in for a while, Josh,” he said. “And when you go out again, change your appearance a bit. Murder may strike at you again if you’re too easily recognized.”

Josh went out to one of the other vacant offices of the suite. And Benson turned to his small radio as the call signal of one of his aides sounded.

It was Smitty.

“Chief,” came the giant’s voice, in guarded accents, “I think I’ve stumbled onto something; so I thought I’d call and tell you about it.”

“Listening,” said The Avenger, voice quiet and crisp.

“You wanted me to get on the trail of the guys who tried to kill us. I didn’t have any definite lead on it; so I just began nosing around the crooks’ haunts, picking up what I could. Garfield City isn’t so big, but it seems it has a very well organized underworld. There’s a gang here as deadly and efficient as anything in Chicago. Run by a guy named Kopell, who is open for any job from murder down, for a few hundred bucks. Kopell lives openly and in style at the Garfield Point Hotel; has the whole top floor. So I went there, and I’ve been nosing since noon.”

“You’re there now?” said Benson.

“Yes!”

“Where are you speaking from? Your voice is barely audible.”

“I have to talk low,” explained Smitty. “I’m in a closet on Kopell’s floor. When he rented the floor, he didn’t rearrange any. The regular corridor is still there, with linen closet and all. I’m in the linen closet, now.”

“You said you’d stumbled onto something,” said Benson.

“Yes! Just a thing I happened to overhear. It was a mention of a guy at Garfield Gear. That’s the way it was put. “The guy at Garfield Gear.’ That’s all I heard, but to my mind it ties the company in with Garfield City’s underworld quite neatly.”

“Yes,” said Benson grimly, thinking of Josh’s terrible experience at the plant, “it does! Meanwhile, I have heard from Nellie Gray something that may help you. She has reported on two men who seem to be quite active in keeping tabs on Cranlowe’s wife. One is a young fellow whose eyes look much too old for him. The other is a jolly-looking fat man.”

“Check!” said Smitty. “Those are two of the guys that have been coming in and out of Kopell’s floor all afternoon. Signing off, chief. I’ll look around some more.”

The little radio went dead. And The Avenger turned from it. The glittering intensity of his colorless eyes showed that he was methodically tabulating what he had learned to date. More pieces all the time. With the proper places for them and more clearly indicated.

Cranlowe was frantically in need of money for two reasons. One was that his government royalty payments were being held up because of defective shipments of torpedo control parts from Garfield Gear. The other was because Blandell, his backer as well as friend, was out of the picture. So that looked pretty deliberate.

Somebody had first discredited Blandell, to keep him from advancing Cranlowe more loans. Then had discredited Sessel, who came to help his “demented” uncle. Then had had to kill both when they began to investigate around for the cause of their mental troubles. The point was that from the first the purpose had been to get Blandell out of the way and break Cranlowe financially. Granting this, it was reasonable to assume that the royalty payments had been stopped, in some crooked way, for the same reason: If Cranlowe could be bankrupted out of that fortress home of his, he would be defenseless and it would be easy to get to him and pry that war secret from him.

He knew why these various things had been done. But how! There was no guessing.

Blandell had been discredited by acting like a lunatic. So had Sessel. Then both had been killed by another, well-known man, also acting like a lunatic. In addition there were the insane acts of Cranlowe’s driver and Cranlowe’s secretary.

How had these people been impelled to do these things? Did it have anything to do with the queer “listening” look which Josh had read in Jenner’s face? There was no key to that, at the moment. Benson would have to know more before he could arrive at more definite conclusions.

Smitty had said he was in a closet when he had contacted his chief. A linen closet. He found its confines cramped for his huge body. So he got out of it as fast as he could after whispering into his tiny radio.

The top-floor hall of the hotel building had been furnished like the hall of a private home when Kopell took it over. There were urns along it, and a few big chairs, and a chest or two.

Smitty, looking out the cracked door of the linen closet, had seen that all the men who came here in the time he’d been concealed went to the same door; a portal at the front of the building on the left-hand side. And in front of that door a man lounged all the time, with a toothpick between his yellowed teeth and his coat unbuttoned so that now and then you could see the butt of a gun at his shoulder.

This guarded door was about twenty feet from the door of Smitty’s closet. He wanted very much to get into it — and out of the closet. But the man had to be dealt with first, and dealt with noiselessly.

Smitty’s vast hand went into his pocket and came out with a five-dollar bill. He opened the closet door two inches, wadding up the bill as he did so.

The guard at the door was staring dreamily at the opposite wall. The toothpick bobbled between his lips as he thought of something pleasant — possibly a glass of beer. He scratched his neck contentedly, and turned just a little toward the hall window.

Smitty snapped the wadded-up bill out along the hall as far toward the man as he could, using thumb and forefinger as a boy snaps a marble. The bill stopped about ten feet from the closet door and spread out slightly on the corridor carpet.

The man at the far door turned back from the window, scratched again, looked placidly toward the rear, and saw the green, wadded bit of paper.

Smitty had reasoned well. Even a millionaire will stop to pick up money if he sees it lying loose. When it comes to a gangster and a five-dollar bill—

The man stared with an unbelieving look, then with a look of slyness. Instinctively he gazed around to be sure no one was watching. Then he walked fast to the bill, and stooped down for it.

And Smitty sprang!

For all his bulk, the giant could move like a slim youngster. He was on the man in two soundless, flowing leaps. The fellow looked up in time to see a human avalanche descending on him, but not in time to do anything about it. Not even in time to yell.

Smitty got one hand on the man’s throat, and the other on his right wrist, as his hand clawed for his gun. The hand went almost around the man’s throat, it was so big. It squeezed a little.

After a minute Smitty left the man lying there, and went back to the closet. He returned with sheets and pillow cases. With the sheets he tied the man up like a mummy. With the pillow cases he gagged him till he couldn’t have uttered so much as a squeak. Then he bundled the guard into the linen closet, closed the door, and went back to the door that interested him so much.

He opened it an inch. His ears picked up mumbling voices a room or so beyond. His eyes told him that there was no one in the small foyer off the hall.

He went in.

Beyond was a two-story room, big, elaborate. In that the voices were sounding. Smitty tiptoed to the entrance, and stood there behind a drape.

In the duplex room were three men. One was a young fellow with ancient eyes. Another was a narrow-jawed man who looked as if he’d slit a throat for a quarter and give back ten cents change. The third—

Well, the third must be Kopell, the leader of Garfield City’s underworld, himself.

He was a little on the heavy side, about forty, well dressed and well barbered. His hands were soft and immaculate. His voice was soft and oily. But his eyes, dark and cold, like cold-black onyx, were a plain warning that here was a master killer.

“Trillo got the job drivin’ the station wagon.” the narrow-jawed man said. “Took a little work. Cranlowe was suspicious as hell after that crazy accident that put his old driver out of the world for six months.”

“Nice,” said Kopell, in his smooth, oily voice. “Now we got at least one guy inside that iron fence.”

“But Maizie,” said the young fellow, “didn’t get to first base on the secretary’s job. Either Cranlowe smelled something wrong, or else, for now, he don’t need a secretary.”

Smitty’s lips thinned. Here was the reason for the suicide of that girl, and the mad accident of the old station-wagon driver. Simply to get two of Cranlowe’s employees out of the way so that two of the enemy could get in in their places. And the fact that one death and one near-death had resulted meant nothing at all to this murderous crew.

“What’s this talk about a Negro out at the plant?” said the narrow-jawed man.

Kopell’s dark eyes slitted.

“I don’t know, exactly. He got in as a shoe-shine boy. I don’t know that it wasn’t all right. Nobody does. But it looked suspicious — like he was sent to spy around. So it was thought best to get him out of the way. But he managed to lam.”

The young fellow with the ancient eyes said thoughtfully: “There was a Negro in that sedan.”

Kopell stared, then laughed.

“I guess it couldn’t have been the same one. Fats said he stayed at the water’s edge for five minutes, and nobody had come up by then. And nobody could come up from seventy feet of water anyway.”

“I suppose not—” There was a little silence. Then: “What’s all this stuff of everybody out at the plant goin’ goofy, boss?”

“What do you care?” snapped Kopell.

“I bet you don’t know, yourself,” said the young fellow.

Kopell looked as if undecided whether to get sore or not. Finally, he didn’t. He scratched his jaw.

“Well, I don’t know if it’ll do you any good to be told. A lot of people have done a lot of funny things. I’m curious, naturally. But I don’t ask questions. I figure it’s none of my business—”

Smitty, behind the drape, heard a faint rasp from the door, and whirled fast. But not in time!

A man was standing on the threshold, pointing a gun at him. The man was the jolly-looking fat fellow he had seen up here before. The door had made that rasp, not when it was just beginning to open, but when it was opened all the way. And that was too late for Smitty.

“Just stand easy, with your hands up,” said the jolly-looking man. “Kopell!”

There was a rush from the duplex room, and the three within appeared on the other threshold, a few feet from the giant. They stared at him, first in amazement and then in murderous fury.

“What— How—”

“I came up the hall and didn’t see Pete at the door, where he should have been,” explained the fat man. “I looked around a little and found him — in the linen closet. So I came in quiet, and here’s this overgrown ape listenin’ in.”

“Kopell,” said the young fellow, eyes wide, almost whispering the words, “in that sedan, besides a Negro, there was a great big guy. How big, I couldn’t tell, because he was sitting down. But he might have been this guy here.”

“Nuts!” said Kopell. “There’s more than one big guy on earth. Everybody in that car’s dead, I tell you. They’ve got to be!” He glared at Smitty. “But I’d like to know where you come in on this, just the same. Who are you? Who you working for?”

Smitty was silent, a giant with hands raised and a gun almost touching the wall of his chest.

“Is another mob horning in?” snapped Kopell. “Who’s behind it?”

Still Smitty said nothing. His upraised hands were touching the drape behind which he had hidden.

“Look!” said Kopell persuasively. “You’ll get bumped off, here and now, if you don’t talk. If you do — well, maybe your mob can work with ours. This is awful big. There’ll be enough for both—”

Smitty’s hands flashed forward and down, and at the same time his body twisted sideways as if it had been a willow wand instead of a gorilla torso. A shot blared from the fat man’s automatic, slicing a red welt on Smitty’s abdomen. And then, the drape, torn loose by the giant’s big hands, went over the fat fellow like a fish net.

The fat man screamed in a muffled way under the drape, and fought to get loose. Guns appeared in the hands of Kopell and the narrow-jawed man.

The guns weren’t fired. Smitty’s vast paws had each by the nape of the neck. He smashed the two bodies together as if they had been rag dolls weighing about a pound apiece, flung the limp results at the young fellow with the ancient eyes and raced out of there.