The other directors had come out. All but Grand. Smitty, after awhile, walked across the street to see if he could get nearer the house and do a little window peeping.
He got under a tree that was valiantly holding its own in the city’s dust and soot. Something fell on his head, as if the tree itself had leaned over and batted him one with its trunk.
That was all Smitty knew, for an hour and forty-five minutes. He knew the interval because the watch on his vast wrist was still running when he groaned and opened his eyes.
“Must have been hit with a building girder,” he mused. Then he was silent. His aching eyes had caught sight of a foot, on the dirty, cracked old floor near him. The foot was enormous. It was so big that he feared it could only belong to one person.
Opening his eyes further, he saw that he’d been right. Mac lay there beside him, bound and unconscious.
Smitty looked around. The two of them were in a bare room looking as if it were in a building two hundred years old and ready to fall down. There was a candle glittering on a box in the corner, illuminating large holes in the cracked plaster—
The scarred door of the room opened. Smitty got a glimpse of a couple of men, and of a third figure that was half shoved and half thrown into the room. The door closed. Smitty stared into the eyes of Josh Newton.
Josh had a lump on his jaw that would have showed purple if his own skin hadn’t been too nearly that same color to permit a contrast. He was bound, too.
“They got me while I was hotfooting after Birch,” Josh said thickly. “Four of them.”
“They got Mac while he was after Rath,” retorted the giant gloomily. “And me while I was outside Grand’s home.”
Josh shook his head wonderingly.
“How many of them took you?” he said. “I’ve always thought you could beat off any six men.”
“Not if you’re clubbed by somebody up a tree, in the darkness,” said Smitty bleakly. “Smart gang after us, all right. Looks like the roundup is complete, except for Nellie, Rosabel and the chief.”
The giant stopped and commenced biting his tongue. More steps had sounded outside, and one maker of the steps clicked along on dainty high heels.
Once more the door opened. This time it was Nellie Gray who was bundled roughly into the room, caught as she was intent on following Wallach.
Smitty’s vast shoulders bulged as he tried to break his bonds and jump at the men who had manhandled Nellie. However, the bonds wouldn’t break. This gang had taken sufficient account of the giant’s horsepower when they fastened him. He was bound with fine steel chain instead of rope. Yards of the stuff. This was one time when he could not bulge his gigantic muscles and burst his bonds.
The roundup was just about complete, now. Save for The Avenger himself.
As long as the chief was loose, however, Smitty could retain a large measure of hope.
It was fortunate for that hope that the big fellow could not overhear the gang’s plans for the white-haired menace of gangdom, a little later.
CHAPTER XI
Flaming Death!
Louie Fiume, himself, was there, now.
“There” was a tumbledown tenement building in one of the poorest sections of New York. It was so old and dilapidated that it was to be torn down shortly as unsafe. Meanwhile, it was condemned and no tenants dwelt in it.
It was in a room of this old wreck that Josh and Nellie, Mac and Smitty were held.
Louie Fiume was in another room, a floor above. He was chafing at some delay. Then the delay was explained as one of his men came hurriedly in the door.
The man was slender, dapper, almost good-looking, save that something was wrong with his eyes. Those would have given him away to any experienced cop.
“Well, you punk!” flamed Fiume. “Where have you been? We’ve been hanging around here for an hour, waiting for you.”
“I couldn’t help bein’ late, Louie,” the man whined. “I got hung up. I took a shot at the white-haired guy from the warehouse roof on Bleek Street, like you said. I’d swear I got him in the belly, but he didn’t drop—”
“He and his gang wear some kind of funny vests. Ain’t you onto that yet? You got to get ’em in the head.”
“I was too far off for a head shot,” pleaded the thin, dapper man. “Anyway, he didn’t drop, and next thing I knew he was on my tail. I been all this time doubling around to get away from him.”
Louie Fiume looked suddenly as motionless as a block of basalt, with only his dark eyes alive in his face.
“He tailed you?”
“Yeah, for a little while.”
“Any chance he tailed you here?”
“None at all.”
Fiume didn’t even breathe, it seemed.
“Well,” he said, after a moment, “we’ll see in a minute whether he did or not. There’s the phone. Go into your act.”
The fact that a telephone was in this abandoned, condemned building was due to Town Bank. The bank owned this shell through foreclosure. It was coming in handy, now.
The man picked up the phone. He had been a female impersonator before Louie picked him up. Fiume had found many uses for him; but none so important as this.
The man got Benson’s Bleek Street headquarters. In a voice that perfectly mimicked Nellie Gray’s, he inquired if this was “the chief.”
The Avenger’s cold tone, unmistakable even over the phone, came back. And Louie expelled a great sigh of relief. Bleek Street was miles from here. If Benson answered his phone there, it meant that he couldn’t have trailed the female impersonator here, after all. So that was all right.
The man was almost whispering, but still imitating Nellie’s voice in a startling manner.
“Chief, they’re holding us, all of us, at a place in Harlem. I didn’t get a chance to see the number, but the building is between 118th and 119th Streets, on the east side of Lexington Avenue. It’s a sort of gray clapboard, and looks like a four-story house with a peaked roof. It’s the only one like it on that side. Come in a hurry! Ugggh—”
The man made strangling noises, as if somebody had discovered that Nellie was phoning and someone was throttling her.
He hung up, grinning. Louie grinned, too.
“That’ll bring him,” he said. “Everybody thinks he’s so damned smart— What do you want?”
One of his gang had come in, a bulky man with reddish hair and a sullen face.
“There’s one of the bank guys at the door,” the man said.
“What?”
“One of the bank guys. He wants to come in.”
Louie Fiume swore in exasperation, and went downstairs. He looked into the choleric face of Frederick Birch.
“What are you doing here?” Fiume snapped. “Don’t you know there’s fireworks about to start in this place? Why can’t you keep out of business that’s none of your concern?”
“But it is my concern,” said Birch apologetically.
“It isn’t! You guys hired me to do a job. I’ll do it, if you don’t mess around.”
“I came to see if it wasn’t possible just to hold these people prisoners for a while,” bleated Birch. His face was very pale and his hands moved agitatedly. “After all, a mass murder—”
“It ain’t mass murder,” snarled Fiume. “It’s slaughter! So what are you going to do about it?”
“If you could just hold them prisoner—”
“No dice! They’d talk later, wouldn’t they? You’d never get away with whatever it is you’re trying to do. No, they got to die. Particularly the white-haired guy. And he’ll be along here any minute. So, with everything set, you have to come around and whine about mass murder! Beat it!”