The five looked at her, dead-pan, indifferent. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars apiece,” said Lini hysterically. “Twenty thousand. I swear it!”
“We’ll get that much from the boss,” said one of the men.
“I’ll double any offer he makes.” Lini remembered an expression she had seen in the faces of men, similar to these, in gold fields she and Brent had visited. The yellow metal she knew, could do something to greedy men that even piles of currency could not do. “How would you each like to have more gold than you could carry? Well, if you’ll let me go, I’ll turn over to you more gold than you’ve ever seen.”
“Where would you get any gold?” jeered one of the men.
“You know something of what this is about, don’t you? I heard one of you mention Indian relics. Well, that’s what the person who hired you is after. And among those relics is a whole roomful of gold ornaments and statues. You can have the whole thing. I can still sell the rest of the stuff for enough to make my brother and me rich.”
One of the men moved uneasily. “Johnny, maybe there’s something in what the dame says. If there’s a roomful of gold to—”
The big door began to open, and the man promptly shut up. Lini’s heart sank. It had looked for a moment as if she might succeed in her bribery attempt. This interruption had ruined it. The door swung all the way open, and two more men came in.
One looked much like the other five, only a little more smooth. His face was as callous as any of theirs, but sleekly shaven and pink with massages. His clothes were as loud as theirs, but a little better in fit and quality. His eyes were as cold, but were bland and had more intelligence in them.
The other figure was one to make Lini wonder if she had quite recovered from the effects of the drug yet. It was the figure of a man in a long overcoat that hid his body. He had on a felt hat with a peculiarly drooping brim; and this down-drooping brim, plus the turned-up overcoat collar hid all of his face but nose and eyes. And over the eyes were dark glasses. The man seemed very old. His nose was that of an elderly person, and his hands were lined. Yet his step was firm and young. It was as if he were very old — yet, in a way, ageless. The skin of the man’s hands was nut-brown, with a faint hint of copper under the tint. Like the skin of an Oriental with Negroid blood. Or of an Indian.
“Hi, Corny,” said the man with the thin mouth to the first of the two who had come in. He and the rest stared furtively, in perplexity not unmixed with fear, at the second man. The man with the shielded face and dark glasses said not one word. He reached into the inner pocket of the overcoat and drew something out, a peculiar little hammer with a thin striking head and long, sharp prongs on the opposite end.
Corny was staring at his men. “Did I hear something about a roomful of gold as we opened the door?” he said. His voice was smooth and he was smiling a little. But the look in his bland eyes made all the men shake their heads promptly and vigorously. “No, Corny. Nothing like that,” said the thin-lipped hood. “We know what you’re thinkin’, but you’re way off.”
“I’m sure I am,” nodded Corny, still with the set smile on his lips. “I know none of you guys would want to sell out to anybody, at any price. In the first place, you’re all too honest to do a thing like that.” He smirked. “In the second, you’ll get a wad that’ll choke a horse for doing what you’re told. In the third — none of you’d live long enough to spend much sell-out money, if you were bats enough to take it.”
The curious figure in the long, loose coat was paying no attention to this pleasant chitchat. After taking the queer little hammer from his inner pocket, he reached into an outer one with nut-brown, lined hands and took out a roll of paper. The paper held a sliver of metal. Steel, from its sheen and color. It had been rolled in the paper to keep an excessively sharp point from sticking through the fabric of the coat. The man jerked his head toward the girl, and then toward the bench.
Corny got the wordless command. “Tie the dame to the table,” he said, without even looking at Lini. Two men picked her up. She screamed! The sound backed against her eardrums in a hundred echoes from the ice-walled room. None of the men paid any heed at all. She could scream as loud as she pleased, with no chance of the sound being heard outside.
They dumped her on the low table under the strong white light. The man in the loose overcoat came toward her! He hadn’t said one word since coming in, and continued to be absolutely silent, as if he were a disembodied spirit instead of a man. He held the steel splinter, which was much like a darning needle, and the hammer, in one hand. The fingers of the other began to explore Lini’s skull through the silky thickness of her hair.
She bobbed her head around wildly. The man’s free hand went into his overcoat pocket again and this time came out with a roll of two inch adhesive tape. The tape was passed over her forehead, down and under the bench. Now she couldn’t move her head a fraction of an inch.
The fingers took over their exploring task again and finally halted. The nut-brown hands parted the silky tresses and bared the scalp. The point of the slim steel length was placed lightly against that spot and held in the man’s left hand. The right raised the hammer.
He was going to drive the thing into her head! Again Lini screamed, and again no one paid the least attention. She fainted before the queer little hammer could drive down against the steel splinter!
CHAPTER VI
Falling Death!
The Avenger had his headquarters in one of the most curious buildings in New York City. It was on Bleek Street, which is only one short block long, and in effect, Benson owned the block. On the side where his headquarters were, he had all the buildings under long lease or straight ownership. The entire other side of the block was taken up by the windowless back of a huge storage warehouse.
Three dingy, old apartment buildings had been thrown into one, and their top floors had been made into one tremendous room. The Avenger and his aides were up in this room now with a map spread out on the great center table. Next to the table was a radio, the likes of which no commercial manufacturing company had ever seen, with a special radio-directional antenna. This had been devised by the man who was at the moment delicately adjusting the range-finder.
He didn’t look like a person capable of inventing anything at all. He was a giant, and his moon face appeared more good-natured than intelligent. But regardless of his looks, he was one of the finest electrical and radio engineers in the world. “No more’s coming over that wave length,” he said.
“Let me listen, mon,” said the man standing next to him, reaching for the special earphone in which every last bit of distant radio sound could be gathered and further amplified. “Ye couldn’t hear a gunshot on a quiet day if the bullet whizzed right past yer ear.”
“All right, smart guy,” said the giant.
The other man took the earphone. He was the tall, bony Scot, Fergus MacMurdie. “Thanks for the compliment, Algernon,” he said.
The giant flushed wrathfully. He had been christened Algernon Heathcote Smith, but folks who valued their health called him Smitty. Except for Mac, who sometimes could use the Algernon and get away with it.
Richard Benson had tuned the radio in on the wave length he had noted at the empty rooms of Lini Waller. Smitty had listened over the silent wave length for some time. Then a voice had sounded.
“Sis? You still there? Everything’s O.K. on this end. There was a little trouble, but everything’s all right now. Good night.”
After that, there had been no more sounds at all. But the few words that had been spoken enabled Smitty to swing his direction-finder to a point he felt sure was accurate. A line drawn on the map, along the direction noted, ended somewhere along the Pacific coast in northern British Columbia. But there was no telling from where, along the line, the radio had transmitted the words.