However, there was a cold efficiency here that went far beyond the usual, murderous gang efficiency. Not one or two machine guns, but four! And when these were found to be ineffective, there was another deadly weapon, brought along for just such an emergency.
One window of the attacking sedan rolled down a foot. It revealed, for just an instant, a little more clearly, the five dark figures within. One of the figures had a round object in his hand. And the round object was thrown forward in a flat, practiced arc so that it came to rest directly under The Avenger’s car.
The round object was a bomb! It contained enough explosive to lift Benson’s car twenty feet and let it fall again in a tangled mass — with The Avenger a shattered, pulped thing at the remnants of a steering wheel.
He had had his answer from Town Bank: A death sentence!
CHAPTER VII
Beyond The Law
The girl was very pretty, in a dark, sinuous way. She had big, dark eyes and silky chestnut hair and a figure that had landed her many jobs in show business.
But that was before her brother had become so wealthy and could afford to give her enough to live comfortably.
Her brother was Nicky Luckow. And the girl, Beatrice Luckow, was with her brother, now. Her beauty was very much marred by a hard line around her lips that matched the hardness in Luckow’s face, and in the faces of three of Luckow’s men who were also at his apartment. “The sap’s played right into our hands,” exulted Luckow. “So little Tommy Crimm’s going to get back at the guys that turned the heat on his dad, eh? And what do you think his idea is? An idea — I’ll admit — that I stuck in his brain first.”
“What?” said Beatrice, hard young eyes examining a thumbnail that was tinted deep crimson.
“We’re to stick up the Town Bank. How do you like that? Tommy goes with the boys. All they’re to do is get back this Ballandale stock. That is, that’s all Tommy knows they’ll do. Of course if there’s a lot of cash just lying around, the boys might kinda take to it.”
“What’s so wonderful about that?” objected Beatrice.
“Tom goes with ’em,” said Luckow. “Didn’t you hear me say that?”
“Well?”
“Well, if everything goes right, he comes back with the boys and we go on with the stock stuff, with all the bank dough we can get stuck away somewhere. If things go wrong, young Tommy is left to take the rap. The perfect goat! Get it?”
“He’d talk,” said Beatrice.
“Not when a guy like your brother, Nicky, works it out,” said the mobster exultantly. “Look! Three of the boys are out right now, on the trail of — guess who? Wayne Crimm.”
Beatrice nodded slowly.
“I see.”
“Sure! Smart, huh? Tom takes the rap, we’ll say. He’d want to talk, turn us all in, too. But if we have his kid brother, Wayne, at the cement plant, Tom will never talk. At least I don’t think he would. You’ve met him a coupla times. What do you think?”
“I don’t think he’d squeal, with his brother’s life hanging in the balance,” agreed Beatrice. “That is a smart stunt, Nicky.”
“Right! A goat if we need one to clear the gang’s skirts from a bank stick-up. An extra dividend if we don’t need a goat.” Luckow smirked. “And tonight’s the night, if I get a certain phone call—”
The call came about an hour later. From Tim, Luckow’s man who looked like a cat with a grouch against the world.
“Nick — they’re in.”
“O.K.” Luckow hung up and turned to one of the three men. “Blinky, get the kid in here.”
Luckow grinned at Beatrice. He carefully kept his sister’s fingers out of any crooked stuff. But he trusted her implicitly, of course, and she knew a lot of his business.
“We got word that the directors of the Town Bank have been going in there a lot nights, lately,” he said. “So we hung the plan on that. Kind of hard to get into a bank after hours. But not when the big shots keep going in. We fixed it to get there the first night they were reported as going in. Then, when they come out—”
He laughed.
“So Tim just phoned that four of the bank hot shots just went in. So the job’s in the bag—”
Tom came into the room, following Blinky. Luckow’s face became impassive. Tom looked at him and then at his sister. Beatrice stared back at Tom with no expression on her pretty face.
“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.”