Tuned for Murder

CHAPTER XVI Berserk Guards

Out there, in the darkness by the fence, Kopell and his nine men crouched, dim shadows near the gate. Kopell left the others and went up to the right-hand gate post. He stood there, hidden by it from anyone on the inside.

Beyond the gangsters’ sight, Mac and Josh and Smitty were mere dim shadows in the night. Smitty had a pair of binoculars in his hamlike hands. They had special lenses, worked out mathematically by The Avenger. The lenses were ground to an optical formula, as yet known to no others, which gathered a maximum amount of light where it would seem there was no light to be gathered.

With these exceptional night glasses in his hands Smitty could dimly see the gang leader at the gate, through Josh and Mac couldn’t see him at all.

Smitty saw Kopell take something out of his pocket, and stand with it in his grasp. He couldn’t, of course, see what it was. And if he had seen the black disk Kopell held, he still would not have known what it signified.

From the gate came the voices of two men.

“Stick on this gate hard, Pete. There’s something screwy about those lights burning out the fuse. There’s never been any trouble like that before.”

“You bet,” said the other man. “And you and the rest better walk a fast beat around the fence. Wait. Is the charged wire on top all right?”

There was a short pause, then a blue flash from the top of the fence. The man had thrown something up there to see if the current was dead, and had found it was not.

“O.K.,” said Pete. “I guess—”

That was all that was said. At least by Pete. His voice trailed off uncertainly, and he stood like a statue.

And two dogs near him suddenly began to howl in a weird death bay.

“Pete!” Smitty heard the other man say, voice perplexed. “What’s eatin’ you, man? Pete! Pete—”

There was a roar like that of a small cannon. A roar that was hideously muffled, as a sawed-off shotgun exploded its terrible charge into a man’s middle at short range.

And now Pete was alone at the gate.

Smitty, still stunned by the astounding knowledge that one of Cranlowe’s guards had suddenly whirled and shot another in cold blood, heard Kopell’s voice. He just barely made out the words:

“Go after the rest, pal. And the dogs. Don’t forget the dogs!”

At the same time, Smitty saw Kopell’s hand slide inside the gate bars, and then saw the gate begin to open outward.

The treacherous guard had opened the gate to the enemy. And yet — Smitty had a wild and baseless hunch that something more than treachery was afoot here.

Pete screamed. It was a high, unearthly wail, a lunatic outcry. And there was another shot, and again it was hideously muffled.

There were yells all over the Cranlowe grounds, now.

“Get Pete! Get him! He’s gone nuts!”

Wild shouts and the excited baying of the dogs. Then another shot, and one of the deeper bell-notes of a dog abruptly ceased as a shotgun blew its head off.

“He’s over there, in the corner. For Heaven’s sake, get him!”

Kopell had beckoned silently. His men came up to him. One by one they slid into the grounds, under cover of the hell that had broken loose with the berserk charges of a madman with a shotgun in his hands. They started toward the house.

“This is it,” whispered Smitty to Josh and Mac. “The payoff. I don’t know how in the world they managed to do that to the guard. But — come on!”

The three crept in through the opened gate at a safe distance behind Kopell’s mob.

The wild commotion was at the back of the house, now. For probably the first time since Cranlowe had announced his invention, felled all the trees and hired the guards, one whole side of his place was left vacant and unattended.

Kopell’s gang got to the iron-studded door, with Smitty and Mac and Josh forty yards behind. The gang had not the faintest notion that they were being trailed.

Nor had Benson’s three aides any idea that they had a silent follower. But such was the case.

Behind the three came one more figure, slim, silent, head down. The trailers were being trailed!

In the study, Cranlowe had leaped toward the door with the sound of the shots. And Jenner had interposed his bulk. Cranlowe drew back, knowing something terrible was up, ready to charge the plant president.

“Benson!” snapped Jenner. “Get him. Get Cranlowe.”

The Avenger stepped, like a docile robot, toward the inventor. Cranlowe yelled and tried to run. Benson was on him with one quick move. He hurled Cranlowe to the floor, and looked up at Jenner for further orders.

“Tie him up, Benson.”

Panting, raging, Cranlowe struggled. But he was a child, of course, in those steely white hands. Benson took the window drapes, torn down and tossed to him by Jenner, and bound Cranlowe with them.

“So you’re a man of honor,” Cranlowe raged to the man with the white hair and the dead face. “And you, Jenner, are my lifelong friend! Is every one in the world against me, just because I tried to save the world?”

Jenner didn’t even bother to reply to that one. He came and stood over Cranlowe.

“The formula, Cranlowe,” he said, voice level and emotionless. “I want it. At once.”

“You won’t get it. Nothing will make me give it up.”

“Nothing?” said Jenner. “I wonder. We have still another ace to play, my friend. Your son! Do you think much of your son?”

Cranlowe stopped his convulsive struggling and stared up at Jenner in a great silence. His eyes seemed to withdraw farther into his skull than ever.

“What… do you mean?” he whispered at last.

“Would you hold your formula as more precious than your son?”

Cranlowe was silent, glaring.

“Robert Cranlowe is being held at this moment,” said Jenner. “He will be unhurt, if we get the formula. If we do not—”

“You wouldn’t kill him,” whispered Cranlowe. “You wouldn’t do that, Jenner. No matter what else you’ve become, you’re not a murderer.”

“Do you want to wager Robert’s life on that?” said Jenner. “Or — do you want to write out the formula?”

Cranlowe began struggling again, exhausting himself against the tightness of his bonds. Finally he stopped. Jenner said, emotionlessly:

“I swear he’ll die, Cranlowe, if you don’t do as you’re told. And he won’t die a very pretty death, either.”

The inventor lay very still and straight, staring up at the plant president.

“Well?” said Jenner.

Cranlowe spoke, then, in a tone that was hoarse and cracked, but still indomitable.

“With that formula, a warlike nation could conquer the earth, and uncounted thousands would die in the process. With the formula in the wrong hands, I would become a kind of monster, for inventing such a thing. Whereas, used for peace, it can be a great blessing. My answer, Jenner, is— No!”

“It won’t be used for peace if something happens to you. It will die with you, and all your work will have been for nothing. And your son will have given his life for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” said Cranlowe hoarsely. “At least the weapon will have been kept from evil uses. I am sorry. I hope for forgiveness. But my own son will have to die for the sake of a threatened humanity.”

It was a complete failure for the plant president, apparently. But he only smiled.

From his pocket he drew another of the black disks. He came toward Cranlowe with it. He clicked a tiny knob on its side, like the stem of a watch, only smaller. There was a tiny, shrill buzzing sound, which almost at once went up beyond the range of Cranlowe’s hearing.

Jenner had paid no attention to Benson as he did these things. Why should he? The white-haired man was his machine, with will completely chained—

The Avenger’s foot danced out in a move almost too swift to follow. It caught Jenner on the wrist, and the black disk flew to the far end of the room.

With his mouth literally open with surprise, Jenner jumped for Benson. A lashing fist caught him on the jaw with delicate precision. He fell as if anaesthetized.

“I guess,” said The Avenger quietly, “I’ve learned about all I could in my role as automaton.”