The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death (8 page)

“You still want to go through with it, kid?” Luckow said smoothly. “You haven’t lost your nerve?”

Such was Luckow’s tone that even if Tom had “lost his nerve,” he’d have been stung to a fast denial. But Tom didn’t need the jeering tone. His face was harsh and reckless, his eyes narrowed.

“Of course I want to go through with it,” he rasped. “The men who murdered Dad and took his fortune are beyond the law because of their wealth and influence. So we’ll go beyond the law to strike at them.”

“O.K.,” said Luckow, flicking a triumphant glance at his pretty but hardboiled-looking sister. “Then we’re all set to go.”

Luckow and Blinky and Tom went downstairs to an alley entrance. A car was there, with four men in it, waiting. Blinky and Tom got in. Luckow, as usual, was staying out of actual maneuvers.

“There’s just two things you guys have got to remember,” said Tom, as the car lurched forward. “No gunplay; nobody killed. And no loose robbery. You’ll see cash lying around, if our plan goes through, but leave it alone. You’re working for half a million dollars on the stock proposition. That ought to be enough.”

“Sure,” said Blinky promptly.

At the tone in his voice, the man at the wheel almost snickered. But he kept silent.

The car stopped around the corner from Town Bank. Six men walked leisurely toward the entrance. There were excited voices from inside the bank. Then the big doors rattled, and opened.

Four men came out. Tom recognized Grand, one of the bank directors. The other three he did not know by sight, but assumed correctly that they were Birch and Wallach and Rath.

It was ridiculously easy.

Blinky stepped up to Grand, while the others crowded close to Grand’s fellow directors. A gun poked into each set of ribs.

“Back into the bank, you guys,” Blinky said in a low tone.

The men glanced wildly around. There wasn’t anyone within two blocks at this late hour.

“Go on! Back in!”

The four directors backed into the bank again. The six men from the car around the corner followed them. The bank guard, still looking dazed from his unaccountable hypnotic spell a while ago, stared at the six men and then started to draw his gun.

Blinky’s automatic rose, flailed down. The bank guard fell with a creased skull.

Grand had recognized Tom by now.

“Crimm! What in Heaven’s name do you mean by this? Murder of Haskell—now bank robbery! Are you mad—”

“Yes,” said Tom steadily, “I am. Mad enough to put bullets through you and your three precious companions if you don’t do exactly as you’re told.”

“You are insane! But what do you want here?”

“Dad’s Ballandale stock,” said Tom. “After that, the name of the man responsible for his death.”

“You’re talking in riddles, boy. We have no stock. As for your father’s heart attack—”

The words froze on Grand’s lips at the look in Tom’s eyes. Birch let out a sound very much like a whimper. Rath and Wallach stood in frozen quiet.

“We’ll go to the vault,” said Tom. “We’ll have a look through the safe-deposit box of each of you. We’ll keep on looking, if that doesn’t turn the stock up. We have at least two hours before it becomes dangerous to stay here. We’ll take the whole time, if necessary.”

Wallach’s thin, dry lips moved.

“We can’t open the vault. Nobody can. There is a time lock on it that is set for nine in the morning.”

“None of that,” snarled Blinky. “We’ve cased this joint. See? We know there’s no time lock. Get going! Lead us to the vault and open it. You other three go ahead in single file.”

The four directors, on stumbling feet, went to the rear of the bank. There was an iron grille. Grand unlocked that with a key on his watch chain. The little group went to the vault door.

“For the last time, Crimm,” said Grand pleadingly, “you are making a hideous mistake. You’d become a bandit, a killer, all to no purpose. There is no Ballandale stock in this bank—”

“Open up!” snapped Blinky.

Grand manipulated the combination with his chalk-white fingers. Finally the great door swung open with ghostly ease and silence in the gloom.

They went in, all but one man left in front as a lookout.

“Open your safe-deposit boxes, one after another,” ordered Tom.

Birch went first. He hauled a box from steel shelving and opened it. Tom riffled through the contents. There was a lot of cash in thousand-dollar bills, some bonds, some other certificates, but no Ballandale.

“Put it back. Next!”

Rath withdrew his steel box. Tom looked through it, and did not find what he was after. Meanwhile, Blinky was dipping into the first box. The thousand-dollar bills went deftly into his pockets.

“Grand!”

Lucius Grand shakily took his box out.

There was no Ballandale stock in that, nor in the box belonging to Birch. Tom’s face was twisted in dark frenzy. He had counted a lot on getting the stock. Whoever had the certificates in his possession, he had reasoned, would know who had killed his father.

But none of these four had it.

“Damn you all,” he raged. “Where is it? Who has it? If one of you doesn’t speak up, all four of you will have a torture session, here, in this soundproofed vault—”

As if to refute his statement that the vault was soundproofed, a noise came from the front of the bank. It snapped through the open vault door like a minor bombshell.

“Scram everybody! Trouble!”

The yell was followed by a sharp crack as a gun was fired.

Luckow’s men didn’t delay any. They piled out of the vault at top speed, leaving the dazed directors behind them. Tom, after a second of indecision, ran after them.

At the door was another prone figure beside the bank guard’s. This man was dressed in plain clothes, but had under his lapel a badge with the inscription: Pinkley Protective Association.

“All right,” snarled Blinky. “You dummy—what goes on here?”

“This guy found the door open. You know we didn’t shut it because we figured we might have to lam out fast.” The man who had been left as lookout was panting the words. He was hauling at Blinky’s arm to get him away. “He had it open for a look around before I spotted him. Then he started for his gun, and I yelled and let him have it.”

“Blinky, we just gotta get out of here—”

Luckow’s men streamed for the big street door. The sound of that shot would have been heard in the street. The cops would come any minute.

“I told you—no killing!” Tom said in a strangled tone, staring with wide eyes at the dead watchman. “I told you—”

He was talking to himself. The gang was gone.

Grand had come up. He grabbed Tom’s arm.

“So—murder as well as banditry. You—”

Tom could hit hard, and he did, now. His fist slammed against Grand’s oversized jaw, and Grand slid back a yard. Tom ran out the door, too, and to the corner where the car had been left.

Down the street sounded a police siren. It was coming fast.

Tom turned the corner in time to see the car swirl off bearing Blinky and the rest from danger.

“Wait! Wait for me—”

The car faded down the street. The police sirens were right in Tom’s ears, now.

He started to run, knew he’d be caught that way.

A coupé slid to a stop beside him. At the wheel was a woman’s figure. She opened the door, and he hopped in. The coupé dashed on and around the next corner just as the squad car appeared down Broadway.

“Many thanks,” panted Tom. He looked at the woman. She was young, he sensed. But that was all he could tell. She had a veil over her face so heavy that he couldn’t see a single detail.

“You’ve saved my life, and more,” panted Tom. “But how did you happen to come along so appropriately?”

The veiled woman at the wheel did not answer.

Tom had jumped into the car without question. Anything to get away from the police. He was full of questions, now. But asking them did no good. The woman at the wheel remained silent while she sent the coupé forward at a fast pace, down through town and over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“You’re working for Luckow, I suppose?” he said, finally. “You were posted as a sort of extra lookout to take care of any details that might slip? I didn’t know Luckow had girls doing that kind of work.”

Still no word from the enigmatic, veiled figure at the wheel. She stopped the car a block from the Bird, Luckow’s Brooklyn night club.

Tom wanted to try some more to make her talk, but he didn’t dare. At any moment a cop might come along and see him.

He ducked into the Bird, and up the private staircase.

Blinky opened the door when he knocked four times.

“For the love of—” gasped Blinky, on seeing Tom’s face.

Luckow stared over his shoulder with his impassive face for once showing emotion. First, stark surprise. Then, as he whirled to Blinky, a mounting fury.

He repressed both almost instantly, and turned smoothly to Tom again.

“I’m sure glad you got out of that bank, kid. The boys told me the job went sour. If they’d caught you—”

“Well, they didn’t,” said Tom, with a show of bravado.

“So I see.” Luckow smiled a little. He was most dangerous when he smiled. “Better go in your room and rest up after this. I’ll be along later.”

When Tom was gone, he whirled to Blinky.

“You sap! You said you’d left him there to take the rap for the gang.”

“We did,” said Blinky, tone completely bewildered. “I don’t know how he got away. There were no cabs or nothin’ around there for him to lam in.”

“Leave it to you guys to mess things up,” said Luckow, less furiously. “Well, you got nearly two hundred grand out of the vault while the Crimm sap’s back was turned. That’s a good haul. And we can turn the kid in, now, as well as before.”

“Better make it fast,” pleaded Blinky. “The guys at the bank know Tom, and they can maybe describe one of us enough for the cops to catch on. Tom Crimm and some of the Luckow mob! They’ll go over your joints for Tom. If they find him, we’ll all take a rap.”

Luckow shook his head.

“They won’t find him. Because I’m turning him in, right now. It’ll clear us. And he’ll never talk.”

“You got his brother?” said Blinky.

“Yes,” said Luckow. “We picked up Wayne Crimm while you were out. I got the call just after I came here from the apartment. So I turn Tom in right now. If he tries to squeal, his kid brother dies. He’ll take the rap!”

Luckow picked up his phone and started to dial headquarters. Tom would be tossed neatly to the wolves. He’d be picked up at a distance with some of the bank cash on him—

Luckow’s dialing finger stopped as if frozen. He gripped the phone convulsively and listened with something like fear on his hard, flat face.

The sleek, streamlined little gang of killers that had been called into action by Grand, after The Avenger burst into the conference room, were dead sure that Benson, in his ruined sedan, was as good as a mangled corpse right now.

Why shouldn’t they be? His car had been rammed so hard and so deftly that it couldn’t possibly move under its own power. Under it was the bomb, with the fuse terribly close to the detonation point. If the man with the white hair and the steely eyes tried to flee from the sedan, they could cut down on him with their machine guns.

The man at the wheel of the killer car slid into reverse and tried to whirl back away from the doomed car.

And couldn’t!

From The Avenger’s sedan slid four steel bars with hooks at the ends. One of the four found the front bumper of the gangster’s car. There were yells from the car.

“Pike! Get going! That thing’ll go up in a second!”

“Break loose from the guy’s can!”

“Get going!”

The man at the wheel charged forward with a clang against the disabled sedan, and backed up furiously. The steel hook held.

They’d set a trap under an enemy’s car and, due to this damned gadget sliding from under his chassis, were firmly hooked to death, themselves.

All five of the men in the murder car were screaming. Pike, at the wheel, dared not monkey around any more. He gave her the gun, in reverse. The car sped backward, away from the bomb.

It dragged The Avenger’s car back from the bomb, too.

The thing went off with a terrific roar. Both cars bucked and jumped.

And then the five saw that the car they’d been helplessly coupled to was empty.

The man with the deadpan face was gone. The death trap that had been so sure—was sprung.

“He got away while we were shakin’ around in the pineapple blast,” snarled Pike. “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

But he could ask that question till he was blue in the face, and get no answer. Not on Bleek Street.

As has been said, The Avenger figuratively owned the street. And in the buildings lining his side of it, there were more trick exits and entrances than anyone could ever dream of, unless he were a member of the little band calling itself Justice, Inc.

Benson had slid into one of these entrances.

Calmly, he made his way to the central cluster of buildings and up to his third-floor headquarters, leaving the band outside to slink off with a damaged car, before police came in answer to that blast.