And here was the first step in the tearing down of the wall the pale-eyed man had been building inexorably around the Town Bank crew.
“Jim,” said The Avenger steadily, after a moment. “Benson talking. You remember I asked you to withdraw whatever funds you might have on deposit in Town Bank, a few days ago? I’d like to ask you to do something else, now. I want you to request every person you know with large funds in that bank to draw them out, too—”
“Damn you!” screamed Rath, as he saw his whole new hope being dashed to the ground by the man behind the desk. “Damn you—”
He pressed the trigger three times, in such quick succession that the three shots sounded like one long explosion.
Three slugs banged straight at the skull of The Avenger! At that range they couldn’t miss. They went straight into the pale forehead under the thick white hair.
And instead of the spurt of life blood from the brain behind that spot — there was a round of bursting glass.
The Avenger’s eyes smiled grimly even though his lips could not.
Rath screamed again, incoherently, and staggered a little. He noticed that Benson was breathing through his coat lapel, but his numbing brain couldn’t gather the reason for it.
The bank man tried to fire again, and couldn’t force his hand to line the gun. Then he tottered and fell prone.
The Avenger hung up the phone, over which at no time had he really talked to anyone. He got up and went to a little switch in the wall.
So easy just to walk in here and shoot down The Avenger. Rath could have been pardoned for thinking that. Because Rath couldn’t know of the thing at the desk which Benson had been so careful to reach.
When The Avenger’s finger had touched the desk edge, a thin, non-reflecting sheet of glass had slid between him and Rath. The glass was curved a little. That curve had showed Benson’s head as being a foot higher than it really was. So that when The Avenger slid down low in his chair, the curve of the glass gave a false target. Rath had drilled a forehead nearly twelve inches over the target he’d thought to shoot at, hitting glass instead of flesh.
Then the vibration of the shots had released a gas of MacMurdie’s devising that promptly put the man to sleep.
Benson turned the wall switch stopping the gas flow, opened windows to air out, and left the room. Rath would be unconscious for a quarter of an hour.
Meanwhile, Benson wanted to talk to Wayne and find how it was that the fellow had gotten in in the first place.
But Wayne Crimm was not there.
Wayne’s hat lay on a table in the big top-floor room. There would seem to be no reason for his dangerous desertion of Benson’s safe hideout.
Yet he had obviously dashed away, shortly before, in such a hurry that he hadn’t even thought to take his hat.
CHAPTER XIV
Three To Die!
One reason why The Avenger had walked into headquarters with so little of his usual superhuman awareness of danger, was that the place had been left in the reliable hands of Josh Newton.
Wayne shouldn’t have been alone there, to use his own discretion about whether or not to admit visitors. Josh should have been with him. The reason he wasn’t, was Josh’s pretty wife, Rosabel.
Rosabel Newton was in a difficult spot as maid for Nicky Luckow’s sister. She had known that when she got herself hired. But Rosabel had more courage than most men. And at no time did she shirk her duties because of fear.
She wasn’t shirking them, now.
In the living room of Beatrice Luckow’s apartment, Luckow and the man called Blinky were talking. Rosabel could hear their voices only as a rumble. So, in the bedroom, she opened the door an inch.
She shouldn’t have been in that bedroom. She should have been in her own room down a hall and around a corner, where she could have heard nothing whatever. But she was in the bedroom, and she was hearing things. Plenty!
“This sap, Tom Crimm, is too hot to hold,” Blinky was complaining. “We’ve got to rub him out, Nicky.”
“If we do that,” rumbled the mob leader, “our first plan is shot. Then we’d have no goat for the bank job.”
“You ain’t got one as it stands,” Blinky pointed out. “If Tom gets caught, he squeals. If he dies, we beat the rap on the bank stick-up any way we can. We’ve done it before; we can do it again. Let me go out to The Corners and turn the heat on him.”
There was silence from Nicky Luckow. Then:
“I’ve got one more play to try first,” the mobster rumbled. “I’m still laying for the kid brother. If we get him, we can swing back to the first idea: Turn Tom over to the cops, with his brother’s life snuffed out if he talks, and let him clear us on the bank job—”
Rosabel backed soundlessly away from the door. She had a report to make on this. She got the little radio from her waist as she backed away.
She touched a night table in the room, and held her breath as it teetered. But it did not fall, only made a little creaking sound and then settled upright. She went on, into the bathroom, and closed the door.
The tiny radio was warmed up by then. She whispered into it, “Rosabel calling. From Beatrice Luckow’s apartment.”
A little voice came from the set, just audible enough so that the compact earphones didn’t have to be used.
“It’s Josh, honey. Go ahead.”
“About Tom and Wayne Crimm,” Rosabel breathed into the transmitter. “Did you ever hear of a place called The Corners? I think it’s out of town somewhere, because one of the men spoke of going ‘out to The Corners—’ ”
Rosabel stopped talking, then. And she felt as if a spot between her shoulder blades were slowly turning to ice. It was doing that at the sudden touch of a hard, cold object.
That object was a gun muzzle.
She turned, and looked up into the dull stones that Luckow had for eyes.
Behind Luckow, in the bathroom doorway, were Blinky and Luckow’s sister, Beatrice. Blinky was snarling soundlessly at the pretty Negress crouched over her small radio. Beatrice was expressionlessly looking at her crimson fingernails.
“I thought you said this maid was all right,” Luckow rasped to his sister. “All right, huh? She’s a little spy.” His gun prodded painfully into Rosabel’s back. “Drop that radio or whatever it is.”
Rosabel’s hands opened. The curved metal case tinkled to the floor. Luckow smashed it flat with his foot.
“You spy,” he snarled. “Who are you working for? The cops? The white-haired guy? And what’d you spill before we heard that table creak and came in here?”
Rosabel said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Luckow jerked her to her feet.
“Well, it doesn’t matter whether you spilt or not. The important thing is, not to see if you’ll talk to me, but to make sure you won’t talk to anybody else. Take her to The Corners, Blinky—”
That was all Rosabel heard. Without warning, treacherously, Luckow’s fist flashed up in a cruel blow. It caught her flush on her rounded, firm jaw.
And miles away in Bleek Street, Josh went crazy.
He knew Rosabel wouldn’t have taken the risk of radioing unless she had something very important to talk about. And, once started, he knew she wouldn’t have stopped unless something terrible had happened.
Her voice had ceased almost in the middle of a word.
Then there had been a beginning sound like the crackling of a match box under a heel. That was when her radio case went under Luckow’s foot. That sound had stopped as the pressure crushed the radio’s internal workings.
Then silence.
That was why Wayne was alone at headquarters. Josh raced out of the place without a word to him, or a thought of anything but Rosabel’s safety.