The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder (2 page)

“I’ll take a sock—” snarled the young man.

He saw a cop looking at him, and slunk off. The cop turned his perspiring face toward a brother cop.

“We’ll have to run him in, Casey. There ain’t anything else to do.”

“You do it, then,” was the prompt reply. “Me—I’m not takin’ John R. Blandell, president of the Garfield Bank, to the cooler.”

“We don’t have to take him to the cooler. We could take him to a brain doc.”

“I’m not goin’ to accuse a bank president of bein’ nuts, either.”

The portly president turned with all the dignity of a multimillionaire to a ragged, gaping newsboy, standing at his elbow.

“Go into the bank, please,” he directed. “Tell them Mr. Blandell wants more dollar bills. New dollar bills. Thousands and thousands of them.”

“Gee! Yes, sir,” breathed the boy.

He darted in through the bronze revolving doors. And the bank guard caught his arm.

“You! What did Mr. Blandell send you in for?”

“More dough,” said the boy. “He’s about shot all his dollar bills.”

“Naturally,” said the guard, “he’ll get no more bills. You stay in here.”

In the window, the bank executives were getting more worried than ever. They were experienced in crowd psychology. They could read in people’s faces the things the people were beginning to say, out there.

“Hey! I’ve got my cash in that bank,” a man said, beginning to edge toward the revolving door. “I don’t want any money in a madhouse like that. If the president’s goofy, what about the rest? I’m going to take my money out, fast.”

“Me, too,” said his neighbor. “Maybe it’s some of my dollars he’s passing out!”

The two crowded toward the door, and a lot more began to crowd along with them.

The cashiers turned from the window. “Get the tellers ready. There’s going to be a run.”

The vice president in charge of loans said nothing. He began to walk fast toward the president’s office. Then he began to run. He wanted to see what loans Blandell had made recently and cancel them out. The loans of a lunatic are no good.

On the street, Casey was beginning to share the other cop’s conviction. Some of Casey’s money was in the Garfield Bank, too.

“Yeah, we’ll have to take him in,” he said. “It’ll probably break us, but we got to do it. Imagine me, takin’ in the president of a bank!”

The two pushed their way to the generous banker. Casey stood at his right with the other cop at his left. Mr. Blandell handed Casey a crisp, new dollar.

“Compliments of the Garfield City National Bank, officer. Buy some spot-remover and go after that gravy on your tunic.”

Casey purpled, but didn’t forget the man’s position in the town.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, taking the dollar. “Now, would you mind comin’ with us?”

“I can’t, officer. I must stay here. I am nearly out of dollars and more are coming from the bank. I must be here to receive them and pass them along.”

“We know a place where you can get even more dollars than the bank has,” said the other officer coaxingly. “How would you like to come with us and get them?”

“How,” said the dignified, elderly bank president, “would you like a smack in the puss?”

The cop bit a little piece off his tongue.

“Come on,” he said.

He dragged on one arm, and Casey on the other. The banker struggled.

“I won’t go,” he yelled. “I’m staying right here. You understand? Officer! Officer! You over there! Come here and arrest this cop!”

“Bundle him off,” said Casey. “Oh, you would would you?”

Blandell had kicked him in the shins. Casey sighed—and measured a short arc to the banker’s jaw. Then he laid his fist there, in just the right spot.

Blandell’s head snapped back, and he sagged in their arms. The other cop shook his head.

“I’d sooner hit a grizzly bear than a banker. It’d be safer.”

“Come on, come on!” growled Casey. “We got to get him to a brain doc, and then get back. I want my money out of this joint.”

In the bank the tellers were shoveling out money to alarmed citizens.

“Yes, you can have it all, of course. The bank is perfectly sound. Every depositor can have every cent. But it’s not wise for you to withdraw like this.”

And the guard was calling: “Watch out for pickpockets. Many of you have a lot of money. Watch out for thieves!”

In the president’s office the vice president was feverishly tracing any recent loans the president might have made. And he was canceling them just as feverishly, till investigation could be started.

At nine o’clock that night, a hundred and ten miles away, a man sat reading a newspaper.

Three things made that simple-sounding act remarkable: the man, the story the newspaper screamed to the world, and the place in which he was reading.

The man was an awe-inspiring figure. He was obviously young, in spite of his thick, snow-white hair. But it was his dead, waxlike face that commanded breathless attention. The paralyzed facial muscles remained constantly immobile and could express no emotion whatever, though this lack of facial expression was made up by the almost colorless eyes that flamed inexorably from his white, dead face.

He was Richard Henry Benson, but because he had made it his life work to fight crime, he was known far and wide as—The Avenger!

The place in which Benson, The Avenger, now read his newspaper, was as unique as the man himself. It was his headquarters, located on a short block in New York City called Bleek Street. Three brick buildings opposite a block-square warehouse—which Benson owned—had been thrown into one, to house his complete laboratory, office and living accommodations.

Over the entrance was a small sign:

JUSTICE

The Avenger and his aides were known as Justice, Inc. Two of the aides were up in the great room now as Benson read the newspaper item.

“The man who let that yarn get into a reporter’s hands is asking for death,” said one of the aides.

The man who had spoken was the giant, Smitty, the electrical engineering genius of The Avenger’s crime fighters.

“It would seem,” said a gangling, lean Negro, Josh Newton—another of The Avenger’s aides—“that he released the story deliberately to all the papers at once. Cleveland has it, and Philadelphia, and Denver—every big paper in the country.”

“This man Cranlowe must want to commit suicide awfully bad,” said Smitty.

“Or else he thinks he’s a superman and can protect himself against the trouble this is bound to start,” Josh added reflectively.

The Avenger nodded in his critical analysis of the item.

The headline read:

FAMOUS INVENTOR GIVES
ULTIMATUM

And the account went on:

Mr. Jesse W. Cranlowe, well-known inventor, proclaimed to the world last night that he is going to stop all future warfare. From the remote fastness of his lower New York State home, he handed out a statement which he says will have historical importance. The statement hinges on a recent invention.

“I have discovered a war weapon,” said Mr. Cranlowe, “which makes obsolete all the present paraphernalia of war of all nations. With this weapon, a small nation could crush a large one in a week. It is, in my opinion, the most deadly force ever contrived. But it shall not be used for war. It shall be used for peace.

“I shall keep the formula myself—not on paper, but only in my memory. I shall hold it in reserve against all aggressive nations. This is my ultimatum to a restless world: From this date forward, any nation that shall aggress against any other national shall find itself faced by the terror of my new weapon. For I shall at once turn the formula over to the victimized country, free of charge, and personally help them manufacture it. Hence, any nation that decides on conquest shall, with that decision, instantly become a beaten nation. This I swear.”

Mr. Cranlowe would not explain the nature of his new weapon. But your correspondent, through a great deal of questioning, discovered that for the last three years the distinguished inventor has been working on explosives.

The news story went on for two columns more. Its tone was half jest, half earnest. The colossal conceit of a man who proposed single-handedly to end war, naturally drew jest. Yet Cranlowe was a great inventor. Anything he had to say commanded attention.

“The man’s a fool,” said the giant, Smitty. But there was somber admiration in his eyes. And in the cold, flaring eyes of The Avenger, like bits of polar ice in a cold dawn, there was also admiration.

With that announcement, Cranlowe made himself the target of every nation on earth desiring new weapons for new conquests.

Yes, he was a fool. But a splendid fool—risking all he had in an effort to stop war.

“Where does he live?” asked Josh.

“Garfield City,” said Benson, voice quiet but vibrant. “That’s about halfway across the State, west of here.”

In Garfield City, a little earlier, a man had gotten out of a plane who was, in his way, as distinguished as John R. Blandell, president of Garfield City National Bank.

The man, tall, dark of hair and eyes, with a dark Vandyke beard, was Henry Sessel, biologist and author. He was Blandell’s nephew. Word had been sent to him about his uncle’s curious slide from sanity, and he had flown here instantly in answer.

Blandell was in his own home, but he might as well have been locked up somewhere. He was not allowed to leave; friends had kindly seen to that. He was under constant supervision, “for his own good.” He was a bewildered, shattered prisoner.

“What made me do it?” he said, after he had told his distinguished nephew of the corner episode. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know what I had done, till they told me later. My mind seemed to go blank while I was taking leave of Jenner, and it stayed blank till I was here at home with police swarming around and a doctor and psychiatrist in attendance. I suppose the word for it is—insanity.”

“Stop it!” snapped Sessel. “There never has been insanity in our family. Why should you suddenly lose your mental balance?”

“I suppose it has to start in a family sometime,” sighed Blandell. “It’ll be a couple of years before the bank lives down what I did,” he added. “Naturally, I’ve resigned as president.”

Sessel was striding up and down the Blandell living room, fingering his well-kept dark Vandyke beard.

“You say this happened to you while you were taking leave of your friend Jenner at Garfield Gear?”

“Yes,” said Blandell wearily. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It just happened that I was there. If a mental lapse was due, it could have come on me any place.”

Sessel answered noncommittally, and went out to the company in question.

The Garfield Gear Company was a large plant on the edge of town. There was a high barbed-wire fence around it, with an electrified strand on the top. There were men nearby to act as guards. This was because the company, in addition to making gears and axles, made a lot of gun and torpedo parts for the government. War materials are guarded.

Ned Jenner, president and majority stockholder of the company, knew Sessel slightly, so the nephew of the bank president was immediately ushered in to see him.

Jenner was a big fellow, not quite fifty, with a strong jaw, a frank handclasp and a straight glance. In his office, when Sessel entered, was an employee: a slim, slightly bald young man with sensitive lips and a high-arched thin nose.

“Mr. Sessel, Mr. Stanley Grace, my secretary,” Jenner said, rather absently. “I won’t need you for a little while, Grace.”

The secretary nodded silently, folded his notebook, and left the office. Jenner’s frank gaze came to Sessel.

“You’re here about your uncle, I suppose?”

Sessel nodded. He was looking at a leather divan, set along one wall of the office. On the divan was curled a little fox terrier, not asleep, looking Sessel over with bright, alert eyes, but making no move or sound.

“That’s Prince,” said Jenner. “He’s my pal, aren’t you, Prince?” The dog’s tail wagged. “Where I go, Prince goes. He’s in the office when I am, and he usually looks over the plant beside me.”

Jenner turned back to Sessel. “I don’t know that there’s a thing to tell about your uncle,” he said. “It was shocking to hear the news. Shocking! But I’m sure it’s temporary. John has been eminently sane all his life. I know that. Went to school with him. He couldn’t have gone off his head now, at middle age.”

“I don’t think so either.” Sessel was staring at the fox terrier. “The attack came on, he thinks, while he was here at the plant with you.”

Jenner nodded. “I heard that also. And I can see, now, that probably it did. Because the minute I heard it, I remembered that John’s eyes had gone curiously dull as he was shaking hands and leaving. As if he were very tired. All I thought, at the time, was that the old boy must be working too hard. But looking back on it—”

“There was nothing that happened here that could have disturbed him?” said Sessel, staring at the dog.

“Nothing!” said Jenner. “He came out to discuss a short-term loan, we settled the matter and had a chat; then he left. That was all.”

A little whine came from the fox terrier, and he moved uneasily on the divan.