The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death (11 page)

The lesser employees of Town Bank scented that some titan was after them, and wondered who. The directors did not wonder. They knew!

“We’ve got to get Benson,” snarled Grand, at his home that night. “It’s our skins if we don’t.”

Wallach and Birch and Rath were there. They weren’t meeting at the bank any more, after that had been used as an entrance for thieves. But if they had been still meeting there, they’d have ducked it tonight. That was because they would have been afraid someone would see them with the fifth man in the group at Grand’s home.

This fifth man was thin and wiry and Latin-looking. He was not at all like the four businessmen. He was Louie Fiume.

Now and then, a smaller city produces a major gangster. Louie Fiume was such. From Denver, he was a smoother, more streamlined killer than any of the biggest cities had produced.

He had been brought in here by Grand and Wallach. It was his car that had rammed The Avenger’s the night before. It was his men who had nearly killed the white-haired scourge of the underworld. It was Louie, according to Grand’s next words, who had the whole proposition in his lap, now.

“You’ve got to get him, Fiume!”

Louie’s Latin darkness was moved by a sardonic grimace.

“The guy’s a ghost,” he said. “He slips out of stuff nobody else could. We wire a bomb to his self-starter. So what? So he comes up to the car with some kind of electrical dingbat or something. Maybe it rings a bell, or shows a red light, I don’t know what. Anyhow, he just opens the hood, takes off the bomb, and drives away.

“We ram him twice, once with a bomb we throw and the second time along the cliff near where old Maisley got his. What happens? The first time some goofy hooks stick out from his car and hook onto the boys’ can. They have to drag him away from the bomb when they drag themselves away. The second time he just happens to be in a can that nobody can knock over. That sedan must weigh five or six tons. All the boys got was a smashed front end, and he drives on.

“Then we lay for him at the door to that joint of his on Bleek Street. And what do we get? A thing like a glass cake-cover in a delicatessen slides down over him, and our slugs bounce off it like something out of a pea shooter.”

“It all looks,” said Grand, with a vague idea of taunting the slick gangster into more earnest action, “as if you aren’t as tough as is generally thought.”

Louie Fiume’s cold eyes swung steadily to Grand’s, and stuck there, getting colder and colder.

Grand cleared his throat and changed his mind.

“We think you’re tough, of course,” he said hastily. “That’s why we hired you. But we can’t afford to have any more delay in getting the man.”

Louie lit a long, specially-made cigarette.

“I got an idea on that,” he said. “We can’t seem to touch this guy with a face that looks like something dug up out of a cemetery. But he’s got helpers, see? A man-mountain called Smitty, and a funny-looking Scotchman, and a Negro called Josh. Now, Benson’d go through hell for any of ’em. That’s well known.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not so bright yourself, are you?” said Louie, arrogantly. “It’s like this. We can’t get Benson, but we can get his gang. Then we hold ’em and tip Benson they’re in trouble. Benson does what we can’t do—gets himself in a spot. Then we spring the trap and rub out the whole lot of ’em.”

Grand nodded. Birch licked dry lips and shivered, but nodded too. Wallach rubbed dry, lean hands together. Rath gulped and looked hastily away from the gangster’s face—but said no word of protest.

It was an illustration of the way crime deteriorates character—and also of the desperate plight of these men—that they could now listen to plans to kill four or five people where a little while ago the murder of two had made them physically ill.

“Go to it!” said Grand, sticking out his big jaw. “But whatever you do, do it fast.”

“It’ll be fast,” grinned Louie. “In fact, some of it will be done in about three minutes, if calculations are right. The big guy they call Smitty—”

The big guy called Smitty wasn’t far from the clandestine meeting at that moment. He was across the street from Grand’s home, in a doorway dark enough and big enough to shroud even his gigantic bulk.

He had been detailed by Benson to watch every move of Lucius Grand.

Similarly, Mac had been set on Rath’s trail, Josh on the trail of Birch, and Nellie Gray ordered to watch Wallach.

With all the directors at one spot, now, all Benson’s aides were, too. They were all near Grand’s home, each waiting for his man to come out. But they weren’t together. That might have tipped off their play. Each had a hiding place similar to Smitty’s doorway.

Wallach came out. Smitty didn’t see Nellie go after his car, but knew she had. He shook his huge head, troubled as always by the thought of how reckless the little blonde was.

Rath emerged, and Smitty knew, though he could not see, that Mac was slipping in his wake. Birch shook hands at the door with Lucius Grand, and left. And, after him, almost as black as the night, itself, Josh padded soundlessly.

Another man came out, after a short wait. Smitty was in a dilemma about this one.

He had seen him go in. The man looked like a rat. And Smitty liked to smash men who looked like rats. Now, he was coming out. He looked very rattish indeed. The giant wondered if he ought to disobey orders and trail him, or do as Benson had said and stick around where Grand was.

Not being able to see into the future, he decided loyally to obey orders to the letter. And thus he made true Louie Fiume’s prophecy that something “would be done in about three minutes.”

The other directors had come out. All but Grand. Smitty, after awhile, walked across the street to see if he could get nearer the house and do a little window peeping.

He got under a tree that was valiantly holding its own in the city’s dust and soot. Something fell on his head, as if the tree itself had leaned over and batted him one with its trunk.

That was all Smitty knew, for an hour and forty-five minutes. He knew the interval because the watch on his vast wrist was still running when he groaned and opened his eyes.

“Must have been hit with a building girder,” he mused. Then he was silent. His aching eyes had caught sight of a foot, on the dirty, cracked old floor near him. The foot was enormous. It was so big that he feared it could only belong to one person.

Opening his eyes further, he saw that he’d been right. Mac lay there beside him, bound and unconscious.

Smitty looked around. The two of them were in a bare room looking as if it were in a building two hundred years old and ready to fall down. There was a candle glittering on a box in the corner, illuminating large holes in the cracked plaster—

The scarred door of the room opened. Smitty got a glimpse of a couple of men, and of a third figure that was half shoved and half thrown into the room. The door closed. Smitty stared into the eyes of Josh Newton.

Josh had a lump on his jaw that would have showed purple if his own skin hadn’t been too nearly that same color to permit a contrast. He was bound, too.

“They got me while I was hotfooting after Birch,” Josh said thickly. “Four of them.”

“They got Mac while he was after Rath,” retorted the giant gloomily. “And me while I was outside Grand’s home.”

Josh shook his head wonderingly.

“How many of them took you?” he said. “I’ve always thought you could beat off any six men.”

“Not if you’re clubbed by somebody up a tree, in the darkness,” said Smitty bleakly. “Smart gang after us, all right. Looks like the roundup is complete, except for Nellie, Rosabel and the chief.”

The giant stopped and commenced biting his tongue. More steps had sounded outside, and one maker of the steps clicked along on dainty high heels.

Once more the door opened. This time it was Nellie Gray who was bundled roughly into the room, caught as she was intent on following Wallach.

Smitty’s vast shoulders bulged as he tried to break his bonds and jump at the men who had manhandled Nellie. However, the bonds wouldn’t break. This gang had taken sufficient account of the giant’s horsepower when they fastened him. He was bound with fine steel chain instead of rope. Yards of the stuff. This was one time when he could not bulge his gigantic muscles and burst his bonds.

The roundup was just about complete, now. Save for The Avenger himself.

As long as the chief was loose, however, Smitty could retain a large measure of hope.

It was fortunate for that hope that the big fellow could not overhear the gang’s plans for the white-haired menace of gangdom, a little later.

Louie Fiume, himself, was there, now.

“There” was a tumbledown tenement building in one of the poorest sections of New York. It was so old and dilapidated that it was to be torn down shortly as unsafe. Meanwhile, it was condemned and no tenants dwelt in it.

It was in a room of this old wreck that Josh and Nellie, Mac and Smitty were held.

Louie Fiume was in another room, a floor above. He was chafing at some delay. Then the delay was explained as one of his men came hurriedly in the door.

The man was slender, dapper, almost good-looking, save that something was wrong with his eyes. Those would have given him away to any experienced cop.

“Well, you punk!” flamed Fiume. “Where have you been? We’ve been hanging around here for an hour, waiting for you.”

“I couldn’t help bein’ late, Louie,” the man whined. “I got hung up. I took a shot at the white-haired guy from the warehouse roof on Bleek Street, like you said. I’d swear I got him in the belly, but he didn’t drop—”

“He and his gang wear some kind of funny vests. Ain’t you onto that yet? You got to get ’em in the head.”

“I was too far off for a head shot,” pleaded the thin, dapper man. “Anyway, he didn’t drop, and next thing I knew he was on my tail. I been all this time doubling around to get away from him.”

Louie Fiume looked suddenly as motionless as a block of basalt, with only his dark eyes alive in his face.

“He tailed you?”

“Yeah, for a little while.”

“Any chance he tailed you here?”

“None at all.”

Fiume didn’t even breathe, it seemed.

“Well,” he said, after a moment, “we’ll see in a minute whether he did or not. There’s the phone. Go into your act.”

The fact that a telephone was in this abandoned, condemned building was due to Town Bank. The bank owned this shell through foreclosure. It was coming in handy, now.

The man picked up the phone. He had been a female impersonator before Louie picked him up. Fiume had found many uses for him; but none so important as this.

The man got Benson’s Bleek Street headquarters. In a voice that perfectly mimicked Nellie Gray’s, he inquired if this was “the chief.”

The Avenger’s cold tone, unmistakable even over the phone, came back. And Louie expelled a great sigh of relief. Bleek Street was miles from here. If Benson answered his phone there, it meant that he couldn’t have trailed the female impersonator here, after all. So that was all right.

The man was almost whispering, but still imitating Nellie’s voice in a startling manner.

“Chief, they’re holding us, all of us, at a place in Harlem. I didn’t get a chance to see the number, but the building is between 118th and 119th Streets, on the east side of Lexington Avenue. It’s a sort of gray clapboard, and looks like a four-story house with a peaked roof. It’s the only one like it on that side. Come in a hurry! Ugggh—”

The man made strangling noises, as if somebody had discovered that Nellie was phoning and someone was throttling her.