Tuned for Murder

CHAPTER VIII Cranlowe Heights

Benson had said that Smitty’s was the most dangerous job. It wasn’t. The task The Avenger had in mind to tackle was far more dangerous. But always he excluded himself when talking of peril.

Benson wanted to talk, at once, with Cranlowe. Which meant that he would have to get into a heavily guarded fastness to see a man who, after that defiant ultimatum to a warlike world, would shoot on sight any person he was not acquainted with or sure of.

To accomplish this, The Avenger had thought up a typically fantastic and clever plan.

He would go to see Cranlowe in a dead man’s shoes!

When Benson had come up from the sunken sedan, he had carefully taken along a small case which was nearly always with him. He turned to that, now.

It was about the size of a small overnight bag; but when he opened it, it revealed equipment not usually found in such bags.

There was a top tray filled with tissue-thin glass shells, to fit over his eyeballs. Each pair had a slightly different color. Then there were wigs, the face tints and plastic for building up features. But this latter was seldom used, for the very curious reason that Benson’s face, itself, seemed to be made of a living plastic.

Because of this fact, Benson could mold his face into the likeness of almost any person he chose; and it accounted for the nickname whispered in fear in the underworld, Man of a Thousand Faces.

In the lid of the little case was a mirror. Beside this, Benson pinned a photograph of — John Blandell.

The steely, white fingers prodded at the dead white face, and a miracle was wrought.

Blandell’s face had been heavy, pudgy-featured. With a great deal of manipulation and the use of a very little plastic, Benson’s face became the same way. Blandell’s eyes were brown; Benson slipped two of the ingenious little eye-shells over his eyeballs, and had brown eyes. Blandell’s hair was brown, streaked with gray. There was a wig like that in the case. Blandell’s body was burly, sagging with middle age. Benson’s body became that way with the use of artful rubber forms that could be inflated at waist and thigh, hips and upper arms.

The Avenger went to the corridor door of the empty office suite, and he was not Benson. He even walked like Blandell; in his careful gleaning of information concerning the banker, he had learned all his mannerisms.

The Avenger was not Benson — he was a man shot dead and at that moment in a funeral parlor being prepared for the grave.

He went out of the building, head down to keep from rousing incredulous recognition among chance acquaintances of Blandell, and climbed into a hired car. He drove to the country place of Jesse Cranlowe.

It had seemed insanely foolhardy for any man to dare to announce with all possible publicity that he was the possessor of a secret worth millions to any supercrook who could steal it. But a look at his place showed that he had quite a chance of protecting that secret, at that.

Cranlowe Heights was on a bare hilltop about eighteen miles out of Garfield City. The hilltop had been made bare. There was nothing but close-cropped grass for five hundred yards around the knoll, giving no possible cover for anyone trying to sneak up on it.

Around the base of the hill was an iron fence at least twelve feet high. Along the top ran a single heavy wire; and that wire was charged with voltage enough to kill a man at a touch. Along the top of the fence, floodlights were studded to play over the close-cut grass outside at night.

There was no chance at all of sneaking into the place, as Benson had guessed beforehand; so he had decided to come in openly. And there was no chance of entering openly unless you were a trusted friend, or someone highly unusual.

And that was why Benson had decided to come as Blandell.

Blandell had been a trusted friend of Cranlowe. Now he was dead — or reported so in the papers. His sudden appearance here, when he was supposed to be dead, ought to create such amazement and consternation that ordinary precautions of guards and servants would be relaxed.

Benson reached the heavy gate in the iron fence in his rented car. He got out of the car, walking like the dead banker. A guard with a sawed-off shotgun over his shoulder came to the inside of the gate, looked surlily at Blandell’s image — then glared with wide eyes and pale face.

“Mr. Blandell! But you’re dead! You’re shot! What the hell are you — a ghost?”

Blandell, Benson’s information had said, was an impatient, domineering man.

“Come, come!” Benson snapped peevishly. “Don’t keep me standing here. Let me in at once.”

“You — you are Mr. Blandell, aren’t you?”

“What do you think? Open that gate, instantly.”

The guard did so, with trembling fingers. And when Benson stepped inside, he felt furtive fingertips on his arm. The man was touching him to make sure he really had substance.

“You’ll have to stay here a minute while I phone,” the guard said.

“Of course,” Benson said crisply. “But hurry, please.”

There was a telephone on the gatepost. Benson saw the man pick it up, and ring. Meanwhile he looked around.

There were no trees inside the fence, either. There had been many; but they had recently been felled and taken away. The reason, of course, was Cranlowe’s invention. He had had to sacrifice beauty in order to be sure no daring thief entered his place under cover of trees or bushes. The grounds surrounding the house were bare, with no shelter anywhere.

The house itself was like a castle. Cranlowe had taken some castle on the Rhine as an architectural pattern; and here it stood, narrow slits in thick walls for windows, two turrets with flat tops on either end, a double, iron-studded door in front.

As Benson looked around, he saw three more men with shotguns patrolling; there were at least eight here, he concluded. And with them were eight or ten Great Dane dogs, the biggest and most ferocious-looking dogs Benson had ever seen. Cranlowe was guarding his formula, all right!

Benson could hear the conversation between the guard and the master of this house at the open phone.

“Blandell is there!” came a harsh, strong voice from the castlelike residence. “Blandell? Are you insane? He’s dead! He was murdered by Allen Wainwright.”

“Maybe Blandell’s dead,” said the guard, perspiring, though it was quite cool. “But he’s here at the gate just the same.”

“You’ve gone blind!”

“Nothing’s the matter with my eyes, Mr. Cranlowe. I’ve let Mr. Blandell in often enough to know him when I see him. And he’s here right now.”

“Let me talk to him.”

Benson took the receiver from the guard. Here was a shaky moment. When The Avenger impersonated someone, he usually had all knowledge of that person at his fingertips. He had a great deal of information on Blandell — but not all. He hadn’t had time or opportunity for that.

He did not know, for example, just what Blandell was in the habit of calling his old friend Cranlowe. So, to avoid calling him by an unused nickname or term, he didn’t mention the inventor’s name in any way.

“Tell this too-vigilant guard of yours to pass me to the house, will you?” Benson snapped into the phone. “I’ve been kept standing around long enough, I think.”

“Blandell!” Cranlowe gasped, at sound of the impatient, rather pompous voice. “You are— But how—”

“I’ll tell you about it when I get in and see you.”

“Get the guard on again,” said Cranlowe.

Benson gave the phone back to the man with the sawed-off shotgun.

A moment later he was walking to the great iron-studded front door. This opened as he neared it. An inside servant, or guard, with two automatics in a belt around his waist, admitted him.

This man, too, stared with bulging eyes at a man supposed to have been murdered yesterday.

And then Cranlowe was advancing down the wide hall.

Jesse Cranlowe, almost as well-known a name in the circles of invention as Thomas Edison, was a very tall, very thin, very stooped man nearing sixty. He had intense, black eyes deep in his head under heavy black brows. His head was enormous, and while he wasn’t actually bald, he gave the impression of being so. There just didn’t seem to be quite enough lank black hair to cover his huge skull.

He stared at Benson, looking like Edgar Allen Poe, and then came forward with both hands out.

“John, old friend!”

Benson took the extended hands. He disliked playing on emotions of friendship like this, but he had to know things from Cranlowe, for the inventor’s own good, and this was the only way of learning them.

“Your murder!” exclaimed Cranlowe, black eyes burning far back in his head. “All the papers said you were shot yesterday outside Jenner’s office. Everyone I know, personally, said the same thing. And here you are, alive.”

“I was shot at,” Benson said. “The shot missed. But headquarters was afraid another might be tried; so they are letting it be thought that the shot was successful, and, meanwhile, I keep out of sight.”

“Your nephew, Henry?”

“Not so fortunate,” said Benson, tone grim.

Cranlowe peered into the expressionless image of Blandell’s face — necessarily expressionless because of the paralyzed muscles beneath — and shook his big head.

“It’s a miracle! But I’m glad it happened, John. Come into the library.”

Benson, walking with portly dignity as Blandell had walked, followed the man who looked like Poe into the book-lined room. He had woven together the few meager facts he knew about Blandell’s last hours into a likely statement to explain his visit.

“I won’t stay long,” he said. “I only came to tell you something I suppose you’ve already guessed plainly enough.”

“And that is?” said Cranlowe.

“There won’t be any more money advanced to you for a while. Neither mine, nor the bank’s. My personal funds are all tied up in the bank, and of course the bank is honoring none of my loans now that I’m supposed to be insane.”

Cranlowe nodded his huge head. “I was afraid of that. And I’ll confess that I need money desperately. I always have seemed to need it. Now, for some reason, my royalty payments on torpedo controls haven’t been coming from Jenner, and I’m in very bad shape. I must have money!”

“You can hang on for a while, can’t you?”

Cranlowe shrugged. “This place — the guards — everything requires a lot of cash. I can’t let the guards go or give up my fortress home — with my knowledge. But I can’t keep them, either, without cash.”

“You wouldn’t — sell the formula?” Benson queried.

Cranlowe’s stooped shoulders straightened. “Not if I starve!” he said. “Only one thing can ever draw that formula from me. That is, if a small, weak nation is attacked by a big, ruthless one. Then the small nation gets it for nothing.”

“But if you’re forced to leave this guarded place, and strangers can get near you, someone might steal the formula—”

“I thought I’d told you,” Cranlowe said. “I have never set that formula down on paper. It exists only in my memory. And that’s a place safer than any vault.”

“I wonder,” murmured Benson.

“What do you mean?”

“A secret can be tortured out of a man.”

“That can never happen while I’m here,” laughed Cranlowe. “Later, if I can’t get money to pay guards— But we can cross that bridge when we come to it. While I’m here I am safe.”

“You seem very sure.”

“Come with me,” said Cranlowe, rising. “I’ll show you something you haven’t seen before. Just another of my many precautions. I was not quite such a fool in giving my ultimatum to the world as people probably think.”

At the door of the library, the servant with the two guns was standing. He stood aside as Cranlowe came forward; and Benson followed him out of the room.

Cranlowe took him down dark stairs, to the basement of the place.

“You remember the peculiarity of this hilltop?” said Cranlowe. “Its queer rock formation was one reason why I built here.”

“Of course,” said Benson, wondering what it was.

“But you’ve probably forgotten, in the years the house has been here. I’ll show you how it works out, now.”

The inventor led the way through a conventional cellar with heating plant and other equipment, to a heavy door. He opened this, and exposed a second basement. And this one was oddly cold and drafty.

Cranlowe switched on a light, and Benson saw what he had meant by mentioning a “peculiar rock formation.”

In the center of this basement, the floor of which was bare earth, was a black, irregular ditch. At least it seemed to be a ditch, till he moved closer. Then he saw that it went down and down, into black depths. And from far down there a hundred feet or more at least, came the faint trickle of water.

“There is my disposal arrangement,” said Cranlowe. “A branch of the Garfield River runs under there. It must be around the range of hills between here and Garfield City. And it must flow underground for at least twenty miles, for no one knows of this branch at all.”

“Disposal arrangement?” Benson echoed Cranlowe’s words, staring into the black, deadly chasm.

Cranlowe drew himself up.

“With a secret like mine, I hold myself above the law,” he said quietly. “And since I am greater than the law, I dare not call in the law to protect me.”

Benson was staring at the man. There was egotism and eccentricity here that approached mental unbalance. And yet the man was sharp enough.

“I am the law under this roof,” Cranlowe said. “And I am executioner. If anyone does manage to get in here to steal my secret, he shall go down this chasm. His body will appear, hours later and miles away, in the Garfield River. And that is all anyone will know about it.”

“Well, I don’t blame you for your attitude,” Benson said. Then, since he had many more things he wanted to question Cranlowe about, as Blandell, he started to suggest that they go back upstairs.

But the suggestion was never made.

The door from the other basement opened, and four of Cranlowe’s shotgun-armed guards walked in.

“So?” said Cranlowe.

“That’s right, boss,” one of the four said.

“What—” began Benson.

The look in Cranlowe’s blazing, dark eyes interrupted him.

“I don’t know who you are,” the inventor said, “nor by what devil’s genius you can imitate another so perfectly. But imitation it is!”

Benson stared at the inventor, whose teeth showed suddenly in tremendous anger.

“Blandell, eh? When a man’s death is announced in the headlines of all the papers, and later that man shows up in person — it is time to investigate and corroborate. While you were on your way from gate to house, I ordered a man to phone Garfield City headquarters about you and, also, to phone whatever undertaking establishment you were supposed to be in. If everything wasn’t all right, these four picked men of mine were to report to me — down here.”

“So we report,” said one of the four, a big fellow with doglike loyalty in his eyes. “You see, Blandell is now holding down a slab in Fain’s Undertaking Parlor in Garfield City, and he’s already half-embalmed. So he can’t be here too, can he?”

“Grab him!” said Cranlowe. “Throw him down the chasm!”

The cold, dank air eddied up from the deep crack in solid rock as the four dragged Benson to the edge of the abyss.