Rath swallowed. Then he broke completely. Shuddering, he clutched wildly at Wayne’s arm.
“I’ve got to get out of all this,” he chattered. “Murder, robbery, crime — I can’t stand it anymore. I want to throw in with you and Benson. I want to right some of the wrong I’ve done.”
Wayne felt fierce triumph fill him. The break they had all been hoping for! If this man, one of the insiders in the nasty mess of the Ballandale Glass stock, should talk, all would be well.
“How do I know you’re on the level about this?” he demanded, keeping a little wariness to the last.
“When you all hear what I have to say,” Rath replied, “you’ll know. But I want to speak to Benson. Where is he?”
“He isn’t in right now,” said Wayne. “Nobody is here but me.”
In the wall at his elbow, a little glass dot was glowing deep red. He didn’t see it, and wouldn’t have known what it meant if he had. But any of The Avenger’s aides would have known.
That tiny red signal meant danger; meant that the visitor standing next to it was armed.
Rath looked desperate at the statement that The Avenger was not in.
“When will he be back? I haven’t much time. If any of the others should find out I’m here”—he shivered again—“I’d get what Maisley got.”
“He ought to be back soon,” said Wayne.
“I’ll wait awhile for him. As long as I dare. Where can I wait?”
Wayne was not entirely a fool. He still had his gun drawn and was still covering the bank man with it.
“There’s a small office on this floor. You can wait in there. And you’d better be telling the truth. Because if you try to lie to a man like Mr. Benson—”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” said Rath earnestly. “Where is this office?”
Wayne led him to a small room in the rear. There were books from floor to ceiling. There was a big desk with three phones on it and a swivel chair behind it.
“I’ll tell him you’re here as soon as he comes in,” said Wayne.
He went out. The door locked automatically as he swung it shut. The lock, a ponderous one, would keep Rath a prisoner, he knew. He thought he was being pretty smart in this whole affair. And he was jubilant at the prospect of getting the lowdown from Rath.
He went up to the third floor, to the great room where The Avenger and his aides spent most of their time while at headquarters. He would wait for Benson there—
Quite a naïve young man, Wayne Crimm. Young enough to believe Rath. Young enough to assume that, of course, when Benson returned to the Bleek Street place he would go at once to the top floor.
But it happened that Benson didn’t.
Pale eyes intent in his white, dead face, The Avenger went to the second floor instead of the third. He walked with his silent, catlike tread to the little rear office. There was some dope there he wanted to get. Some information on nail polish, with particular regard to the various colors of the stuff.
He opened the door without warning of any kind of what waited inside.
He opened the door — and stood on the threshold looking into the muzzle of a .38 revolver that seemed to laugh grimly at him under the frantic, deadly eyes of Rath.
For the space of a heartbeat, Benson considered action. But in the same fraction of a second he dismissed the idea.
The gun was pointed, not at his chest, which was protected by the marvelous celluglass plastic, but at his head. And a shot there would kill him just as surely as if he had been an ordinary police rookie, instead of The Avenger.
Also, that shot would be forthcoming without hesitation if he moved.
It was going to come anyway. His pale eyes told him that, as they peered into Rath’s frenzied, desperate ones. But if Benson were utterly still, it would take Rath a little while to work himself up to the point of doing murder in cold blood.
“So,” said Rath finally, with a deep, hissing sigh, “the simple methods sometimes succeed where the elaborate ones fail.”
Benson said nothing. Face as still as the frozen face of the moon on a winter night, he stared at Rath with his pale eyes like ice.
“We have set complicated traps to get you,” Rath went on, injecting fury and triumph into his voice as he lashed his courage to the point where he could pull the trigger. “They failed. Finally it occurred to me that it might be possible to come here openly, face you as I’m facing you now, and shoot you down. With your organization, you are prepared to beat complicated traps. But it might not occur to you that death could be this simple. It looks as though I win.”
“It does,” nodded The Avenger.
His tone was as calm, as cold as his dead face. And into Rath’s eyes began to creep a shade of uncertainty. This man with the death-mask countenance acted as if he had a machine gun under each arm. Rath longed for him to make some little move of attack so that he could fire at him.
But Benson continued to stand still.
“Come into the room. Shut the door behind you,” Rath said harshly.
Benson did so. The click of the lock sounded like the tick of doom.
The Avenger spoke then, voice measured and glacial.
“You are determined to kill me?”
“Yes,” said Rath. His finger was tightening a bit on the trigger. He was almost at the point where he could twitch it.
“Suppose,” said Benson, “I call off the war against you and your institution, Town Bank?”
Rath stared.
“That doesn’t sound like you, Benson,” he said suspiciously. “All I’ve heard about you is to the effect that once you have started on something, you don’t stop till it is finished, no matter what threatens you.”
“Perhaps,” said Benson, “I have never been in such a dangerous position before.”
Rath could agree with that. He knew this man was going to die; knew that lead from this gun of his was going to smash into the dead face and through Benson’s brain.
“You are killing me,” said Benson, “to keep me from exposing the murders and theft of your little crew. Isn’t that right? But if I gave up my war against you — then you wouldn’t have to kill me.”
“How could I trust your word in a thing like that?” snapped Rath.
Benson took a slow step toward the desk.
“Suppose I stop the wheels of Justice, Inc., right now, in your presence. Then you’d know I was acting in good faith. In other words, suppose I act before the threat of your gun is taken from me instead of after?”
In Rath’s eyes was a blazing thought. Heavy lids drooped hastily to hide it. The thought was very comforting.
Let this man go ahead and call off the dogs. Then, with that done — kill him as intended before.
Rath nodded.
“All right, Benson. Your life in return for our safety. First, call up your friends who withdrew all that cash from our bank. We need it badly. Tell them to deposit that much with us, again, at once. They’d do it if you insisted.”
“Yes,” said The Avenger tonelessly, “they’d do it for me.”
He went on to the desk, careful to move slowly and not alarm Rath into firing. A nervous man with a gun is more dangerous than a couple of polished killers.
He sat down at the desk. His right hand went for one of the phones. His left unobtrusively touched the desk edge.
He picked up the phone and leaned back in the swivel chair. Rigidly, Rath’s gun moved to keep absolutely in line on The Avenger’s head, muzzle yawning toward the thick white hair over the paralyzed, glacial countenance.
“Mr. James Bard,” The Avenger said, to whoever answered the phone. Rath knew that name, all right. It was the name of a great financier. The bank director had heard of Benson’s host of friends among financiers as well as longshoremen, mechanics and others in the humbler walks of life. Here was proof.