“And how are ye fixin’ to do that?” said MacMurdie. “You, one man alone, against a whole gang, and them with big money and big power behind them?”
“I’ll do it!” said Benson.
MacMurdie’s bitter blue eyes traveled over Benson. Of only average height and weight, not looking exceptionally powerful. Only the deadly pale eyes in the dead white face compelled attention.
MacMurdie was a practical man.
“What have ye got to fight with, Muster Benson?”
“I have a great deal of money, though few except the income-tax department know it.”
“Ye’ll have to have more than that.”
“I made the money,” said Benson, “in wild countries, and with men who make city gangsters look meek. I’ve located mines in the arctic. I’ve taken emeralds from Brazil. I brought a forty-thousand-dollar cargo of animals to the Cleveland Zoo from the Malay jungles. I held a crew in mutiny across the Pacific for twenty-three days. I don’t talk of these things much, but you asked me what I had to fight with.”
“You’re not so big,” said MacMurdie doubtfully.
Benson got up and went to him.
“Hit me,” he said.
“Whoosh! I’m twice as big as ye!”
“Hit me. As hard as you can.”
The Scot could use his hands. He feinted cleverly with his left for Benson’s abdomen, then sizzled a right to Benson’s jaw that would have knocked him out.
And Benson swayed two inches, caught the flying knobby fist and bore down. The Scot turned almost a complete somersault and banged to the floor.
“Ye’ll do,” he said, getting up and blinking bewilderedly at the man with the set, still face.
“I have still another little weapon,” said Benson. “I seem to have acquired it with the shock of this thing.”
He turned from the Scot. There was a mirror over the dresser near the window. Benson looked into that, moving his hands over his face. Then he turned.
MacMurdie visibly started, then slowly whistled.
When Benson had turned from him his face was his own, well-cast and regular-featured though, of course, devoid of all expression. When he turned back, the transformation was startling. High cheekbones gave Benson a Chinese expression. The corners of the immobile mouth were turned down in a sinister fashion. The ears set forward a little. Even the forehead was altered, pressed into a narrower line with deep wrinkles where the smooth skin had been.
It was the face of another man.
“I wouldn’t know ye,” said MacMurdie, voice awed, “if it weren’t for the white hair.”
“I can wear a hat to cover that,” said Benson. “With a few outside aids, I think I can disguise more quickly and perfectly than any other man in the world today. And that won’t hurt any in our war on these murderers.”
He rearranged his face into its normal lines, flesh staying plastically in whatever outline his deft fingers prodded it.
“We’ve got to get a starting point for our investigations, MacMurdie.”
The Scot nodded slowly. “Yes, an’ I think we may have one, Muster Benson. ’Tis one more thing I thought of, and was going to tell ye when ye shocked me out of a year’s sleep by changing your face like that. Ye say your wife and little girl simply vanished from that plane?”
“Yes,” said Benson. His pale eyes were stricken at the mention of Alicia and little Alice, but his face was a mask. “They… just vanished. Though that’s impossible. The regular door can scarcely be opened on a plane in flight. There’s no other way for them to have gotten out. But… they disappeared!”
“Well, here’s somethin’ that may help ye,” MacMurdie said. “The Great Lakes Airline, owners of the plane ye took to Montreal, have bought some of their crates secondhand. One of ’em they picked up from the United States Coast Survey. It was a plane they used to make maps with.”
Instantly the flashing brain behind the pale-gray eyes got it. Comprehension glittered in their gray-ice depths.
“That same plane,” MacMurdie went on, “was used last year. ’Twas in all the papers. The airline sent it up to Hudson Bay with their best pilot — and they dropped food and supplies to a bunch of starving miners blizzard-bound two hundred miles from civilization.”
Once more Benson was on his feet, rising in the single surge of lithe, tigerish power.
“A trapdoor!” he snapped. “By all that’s holy — of course! A trapdoor!”
“An’ there,” nodded MacMurdie, “may be our startin’ point. Though a startin’ point to nothing but a slug in the pump for each of us, I’m thinkin’. We can’t win in a game like this. We’re bound to be flattened out.”
Later, Benson was to learn that the dour Scot was always a predicter of disaster. Nothing could possibly succeed; nothing gave the man any hope — until he was actually into battle. Then, and then only, did a sort of hard grin appear on his somber lips. Then, and then only, did he predict sure success where any other man on earth would have been convinced of failure.
“Then we’ll be flattened out,” said Benson shortly. “But we’ll flatten a few others first. What was the number of the plane I rode in, MacMurdie?”
“The S404. That’s the one with the door in its belly.”
“I’ll have a look at it,” said Benson. He began to write on a sheet of hotel stationery. “But on my way to the airport, I’ll make a few stops. Meanwhile, you take this note to an old, old friend of mine. On reading it, the friend will give you two things — something I thought I’d never have to use again, something I meant to keep out of my life since I retired with a fortune from adventurous money-making. You bring them back here. I’ll probably be back as soon as you are.”
“Right,” nodded MacMurdie. Then he looked curiously at the dead, white face that, no matter what the situation or emotional strain, could never express a sentiment.
“What stops do ye make on your way to the airport, Muster Benson?”
“I’m stopping at the best tailoring establishment in town. Also at a theatrical costumer’s. Also at a rubber-goods novelty shop. Be careful with those two things you get from my old friend, MacMurdie. It would be very hard to duplicate either of them.”
CHAPTER V
The Camouflaged Plane
The agent at the Buffalo airport looked curiously at the man across the counter from him. He had a vague feeling that he’d seen the man before, somewhere — and yet he knew that he could not have.
The man was of average height, but seemed short because his shoulders were so broad and he was so stocky. He wore a flat-brimmed hat with a slightly Western look. His face was flat and broad, with deep, weather-bitten lines. He moved slowly, and looked almost sleepy, with his narrowed, expressionless eyes.
The eyes were very light gray, almost colorless.
“We don’t usually charter planes for so long, or to go such distances, Mr. Conroy,” the agent said. “You want it for work in Nevada, you say? Why don’t you get a plane from a Western company?”
“I told you,” said the man. “This work is to be kept secret. I’d rather have a pilot from two thousand miles away than do business with a local firm.”
He shifted slightly bowed legs under him as though lonesome for the feel of a horse on the open range.
“Like I said, I’m a prospector. I located this claim in a place where only prospectors and mountain goats can go. No chance of getting in machinery by burro. So I want a plane to drop a little light machinery by parachute. And I understand you have a plane with a trapdoor, which would be just the ticket.”
The agent hesitated quite a long time. Then he said: