The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers (15 page)

Benson had seen a small bay in the trees and brush, however, and the big car nosed into this. The six men got out, Tate nervous and keeping near the giant Smitty for comfort. Smitty looked very huge and comforting, with trouble around.

The Avenger cut branches and piled them against the back of the car, hiding it from anyone else who might drive down the lane.

“Stay here,” he told them in a low tone. “I’ll look the boat over and come back.”

“And if ye don’t?” whispered Mac.

“If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come after me.”

“Let me go,” Josh protested. The Negro grinned. “I match the night pretty well, you know.”

“No. This is my job.”

The Avenger was gone, and the rest of them felt like rubbing their eyes. With his uncanny woodcraft, he seemed to have melted into the night—or vanished into thin air—rather than walked away like a normal human.

Dick had stopped about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The shoreline, on the whole, taking all its miles, was crowded along here. But this particular strip was evidently owned entirely by Xenan. There were only woods, for quite a stretch, on either side of the lane.

Benson flitted through the woods like a shadow, keeping wide of the lane. When he got to the water’s edge, he was a hundred yards from the dock.

He peered at the big bulk of private wharf and boat with expressionless, deadly eyes. The yacht looked dead and deserted even to The Avenger’s telescopic vision, at first. It would have kept on looking that way, to anyone else. But after a moment, he saw a thin crack of light at two of the stern portholes.

Benson stripped to shorts and shirt. With his outer garments went the bulletproof celluglass covering, which rendered him vulnerable. But he had to take that chance. He slipped into the water.

With a slow, smooth side stroke that didn’t once break the surface of the water, he slipped to the stern of the yacht. Slowly, he went up the ladder between the side of the stern and the dock and looked about at the dock’s level. No figure was in sight in the dimness. If there were guards, they were at the land end, watching for invasion that way.

Benson slid up over the yacht’s rail, and instantly sank down in its shadow. There, he wrung out shorts and shirt so they wouldn’t drip audibly. Right next to where he crouched was the yacht’s phone wire, going over the rail, plugged into the dock connections. It was that wire that had carried Xenan’s wild cry for help.

The Avenger started to look around.

The first thing he noticed was that there was no one on deck. Nobody at all. From somewhere near the stern came a faint mumbling of voices; if it hadn’t been for that, you’d have sworn the boat was deserted.

The next thing Dick noticed was that the yacht had been stripped as a green field is stripped by locusts. He went into two tiny cabins and looked around with short flashes of his light. They were bedrooms, beautifully decorated. But they were almost empty. Rugs, pictures, and all the furniture that wasn’t bolted to the deck, were gone.

The third thing he noticed was that a small high-powered motorboat, hardly larger than a large rowboat, trailed from a stern rope. It was over this that the two faint chinks of light showed. Dick lowered himself into the boat, and pulled himself silently along till he was under the first porthole.

By standing on tiptoe, he could just see in the crack from which the light came. He saw a solitary figure—Xenan.

The man was in a stout chair, with his arms bound to the chair arms and his legs similarly fastened to the chair legs. He was staring straight ahead, stonily, tensely.

A dozen men were cramped in the room. The air was blue with smoke. Six were playing cards; the rest watched. But no one seemed intent on the game.

One said suddenly, “Damned if I’m going to take any more of that laugh stuff!”

“Why not?” another shrugged. “It hops you up, and you don’t hurt if somebody socks you. Good on a job, I’d say.”

Benson lowered himself to the boat and crouched there for a moment. Then he slipped over the side again, and went down and down.

When he came up the next time he was clear on the other side, under the dock. And he was minus the undershirt.

He swam back to where his clothes were, put them on, and returned to the sedan.

“All right,” he said to the rest.

And he led the way to the dock, keeping to the lane this time.

It was The Avenger who saw the darker shadow in the clump of shadows next to some bushes near the dock. He held up his hand. The rest stopped. He went on, circling around the bushes.

The man who was crouching near the shrubbery was staring up the lane. He looked very much on guard, as if he’d heard the approaching party. He had a submachine gun over his knees, and his hands were tight on it.

Probably, he never knew what hit him.

Like a gray ghost, The Avenger came up behind him. One sinewy hand clapped over the man’s mouth. The other pressed the great nerve center near the base of the skull.

The man struggled hysterically but was held like a child in Benson’s grip. In a moment, he was still. The Avenger took a silk line from his pocket, hardly larger than fishing line, and bound him. He gagged him with a handkerchief, then went on.

They found no more guards. They stole silently onto the dock in the shadow of Xenan’s yacht and, in another moment, were aboard. The only slight noise made by any of them was made by Tate. He wasn’t trained to move silently.

There was a hatch cover on the foredeck. Benson motioned the others to wait. They sank in shadow, and The Avenger lifted the cover and lowered himself into the small hold of the yacht.

Even his eyes couldn’t see in the darkness down there; but he could feel around, and he was familiar with boats. He found the fuel tanks. One was empty. The other, he found by tapping softly, was less than half full. There was gas enough to run a boat this size about thirty or forty miles. No more.

He nodded and came back up, eyes like chips of polar ice. He rejoined the others and led the way toward the stern. There was still a faint sound of voices from the cabin where he’d seen the men playing cards. Benson stole down the companionway.

There was a fairly heavy bolt on the outside of the cabin door. Benson slid it noiselessly shut and motioned for Smitty to stand guard. Then The Avenger stationed Cole at another door, and Josh in the corridor leading back to the galley.

He stood for a moment in the corridor, colorless eyes flaming thoughtfully. Then he went up on deck again and to the stern.

The small boat still trailed back there. He drew it a bit closer under the overhang of the stern, and reached into an inner pocket. He dropped the object he had taken out. It hit the bottom of the small craft, gave out a glassy tinkle, but that was all.

He went below, rejoined Mac and Tate and went to the door of the second cabin from which light had shown.

He opened the door swiftly, but without sound, and stepped into the cabin.

“Hello, Xenan,” he said, his voice as expressionless as his colorless, glacial eyes.

Xenan sat up straight, straining against the ropes that bound him to the heavy chair. He stared at Benson with his mouth open. Then light came to his stony eyes and a long sigh of relief burst from his lips.

“Benson! You don’t know how glad—”

“Best keep yer voice down,” said Mac.

Xenan nodded and picked it up in a lower tone. “I’m quite sure you’ve saved my life, Mr. Benson. I was beginning to be afraid even you could never get aboard without being discovered and taken prisoner. Hello, Tate. You came, too! Free me, please, one of you.”

“In a moment,” Benson said evenly.

Mac stared. It seemed odd that The Avenger should come here to rescue this man and then not immediately untie him. Xenan seemed to find it strange, too. He stared in bewilderment.

“There’s no hurry,” said The Avenger, in the same unreadable tone. “And I’ll admit to a great deal of curiosity concerning one point in this affair. I believe you can clear it up for me—”

“What affair?” Xenan cut in, looking perplexed. “It has all been a hopeless jumble to me. Attacks on me and on Brown in my house. And Brown storming in and holding a gun on me; I suppose your man reported that?”

“Yes,” said Benson.

Xenan nodded. “Well, as I say, it’s all a riddle to me, so I guess I can’t answer any important questions. Whatever this thing started out to be, if it was to be anything besides simple robbery of Brown’s wall safe, it now seems to have turned into an equally simple plan to hold me for ransom. I have quite a bit of money, and—”

“What was in Brown’s safe that was so intensely valuable to you? And to him? That’s the one thing that needs clearing up.”

“I don’t understand,” said Xenan. Mac was staring in more surprise than ever. So was Tate.

“I think you do,” Benson said.

“Why—you seem to have some kind of suspicion against
me!”
gasped Xenan. “If you wouldn’t mind telling me why—”

“Glad to tell you,” Benson said. “Brown’s safe is robbed—emptied of all contents. Brown is terribly upset by it and terribly anxious to get back something not specified in the loss, something he didn’t want to tell the police about. He came to me for help. But Justice, Inc. doesn’t mix into straight police business, which this robbery seemed to be. To get me interested in the case, Brown made up a wild tale about a murder drug that sent men, laughing, out to kill whomever they were ordered to kill.”

“What do you mean—a wild tale?” Tate cut in. “Those pills of mine—”

“Nitrous oxide, giving the same effect as laughing gas, save that when they are swallowed instead of breathed the conscious will is not affected. Giving a man several of those is slightly more effective than giving him several shots of raw whiskey. But not much. He is insensitive to pain, has increased strength, but is no more murderous than any professional murderer is to begin with.”

Benson turned back to the staring Xenan.

“The story of the murder pills sounded impossible when Brown told it. He knew it would. So a man was sent to Mac’s drugstore, hopped up on the stuff, to put on an act. That would convince us. He was sent either by Brown or by you, of course.”

“Me?” Xenan gasped again. “I don’t understand. It is obvious that the men that robbed the safe used the stuff!”

“Beak Nailen was a common crook. Not too smart. He could never get a formula at midnight and know how to make it up, or have it made up, by the next morning. As a matter of fact, he never knew what he had. He burned the formula along with letters and financial papers, without a second thought. Ashes of the burned papers told us precisely what had been taken besides jewels and cash. But, to continue:

“Whatever missing prize was taken from that safe concerns you, too. Brown got in touch with you, acting pretty frantic, I expect, and told you of the robbery and of his decision to get the help of Justice, Inc. It wasn’t enough for you. You enlisted a tough crowd of professional gunmen, got a supply of the pills from Tate, and started out on your own hook to locate the thieves.”

Xenan was simply staring now, mouth and eyes wide open. Tate spoke up suddenly, humbly:

“I didn’t know what he wanted the pills for. He offered a lot of money for them, and I wanted some new laboratory equipment—” His voice trailed off.

“Do you realize what you’re saying, Benson?” Xenan said. “You’re accusing me of being the leader of the very men who are holding me prisoner here.”

“You are,” The Avenger said evenly. “I’ve known that since the fight at your home. You knew of that tunnel from the garage to the cellar, and you didn’t warn me of it. That meant you wanted me to be caught, which also meant you were in with the gang. Also—take tonight.

“You phone me wildly for help. You’re a prisoner. You know I can trace the call and hurry here. But is it reasonable that a gang of kidnappers would hold you here and let the telephone cable stretch undisturbed, in plain sight, over the yacht rail to the dock connection? Or let you get anywhere near a phone in the first place? This is trap No. 2, that’s all, and the fact was quite obvious.”

Xenan’s open jaw clicked shut, and there was suddenly a baleful sheen in his prominent eyes.

“Your gang of laughing murderers—given the pills to keep up the play acting about the formula—had orders not to kill us till we, or they, had found out who robbed the safe. We might be valuable. Then your crew found out it was Nailen, killed the whole mob, and then discovered that Nailen didn’t have what you wanted so badly, after all. So, from then on, the orders
were
to kill us, before we found out too much.”

“You devil!” said Xenan.

“If you didn’t want things to be brought to light,” Benson said evenly, “you shouldn’t have gotten us into the case.”

“I didn’t want to,” Xenan spat out. “It was Brown’s idea. I couldn’t keep him from it. All I could do was play along with him.”

The suave rich man was a different individual, now. The prominent jaw stuck out at a vicious angle. The ruthless lips and nose were like something chiseled out of stone. He looked openly as what he really was—a dangerous, nerveless, lawless killer.

“You want to know what was in the safe. All right, damn you, I’ll tell you. Much good it will do you—in a few minutes.

“Brown and I were partners years ago. We handled many trust funds, among other things. The funds were lying around idle, doing no one any good. I used some of the securities as collateral for loans, and with the loans I played the market and speculated in other ways. I made money—a lot of money. I put the trust funds back. Do you see anything wrong with that? No! But Brown thought it was wrong.

“He found out the accounts had been falsified. At first, he was going to turn me in—his own partner—and put me behind bars! Then I said I’d write a confession, taking sole responsibility, if he’d let me off. That would clear him if accountants ever found the falsifications as he himself had found them.”

“So it was that old confession that was in the safe,” said The Avenger, eyes like ice under a polar moon.