“This is Wayne Crimm speaking.” Wayne’s voice.
“Well, I’m one of Luckow’s mob. I won’t say who. I got some dope for you on what happened to your old man, if you want to hear it. It’s about your brother, Tom.”
“Of course I want to hear it — if it’s on the level and you really have something to say.”
“I’ve got something to say, all right,” snarled the furtive voice. “And I’m sure glad to get it off my chest. I’ve been shoved around a little here at The Corners, and I don’t like it. I’ll show those guys—”
“What’s the dope you claim you’ve got?” Wayne’s voice interrupted.
“It’s about your brother, kid. Maybe you ain’t got the guts to take it.”
“I’ll take anything you can give,” snapped Wayne’s hostile voice.
“All right. Hold onto something. Your brother, Tom, killed your old man.”
For perhaps thirty seconds the record whirling impersonally in the vast Bleek Street top-floor room gave out no sound but that of Wayne’s heavy breathing.
Then his voice came, strangled, furious.
“Liar! That’s a lie and you know it. You said you had something to tell me. And you try to feed me that kind of stuff—”
“I said it’d hit you where you live. It’s the truth. Your brother did it, himself, that night. Want the proof? All right. Tom told you he’d been held up by a blow-out, didn’t he? Said something cut a V-shaped piece out of his right rear tire. Well, he didn’t have a blow-out. And the car that killed your dad had a V-shaped piece out of the right rear tire! It was Tom’s car!”
Another silence. Then: “You… you’re lying, I tell you!”
The Avenger’s eyes were grim as he heard this. He had told of seeing the V-shaped mark in the tread of the tire left by the murder car on the sidewalk. Told of it in the hearing of young Wayne.
“Where are you?” yelled the boy’s voice from the record. “The Corners? Where? I’ll cut your heart out for that lie! I’ll—”
Only a click answered, as the caller hung up. Then there was a broken sob from Wayne, and that was all.
The Avenger snapped the record off. Here was the answer to Wayne’s absence.
There was just enough devilish plausibility in the phone call to Wayne to send the boy raving out to find his brother and demand explanations. Perhaps enough to impel him to try to kill Tom!
There was a case of the latest in fine guns along one section of the east wall. Benson stepped to that. His pale, infallible eyes ranged over the guns. A Mauser was gone. So it was the latter.
Wayne Crimm had gone out, furious, insane, to kill his own brother, Tom. He had fallen for a kidnap trick.
The Avenger left Bleek Street, a fast gray shadow. Behind him, he had to leave Robert Rath, locked in the second-floor office. But the bank director would be safe there. He couldn’t get out of that room.
CHAPTER XV
Life for a Life
More than Josh had heard the call over Rosabel’s little belt radio. Mac and Smitty had heard it, too. It took them quite a while to get to The Corners, because they had been north of New York, looking around Theodore Maisley’s country place, and the place on the road where the bank president had been forced over the cliff.
They had found something, too. Though many hours had passed since that accident, a trace had endured. They had found tire tracks up a soft lane off the main road. The tracks told of a car having been driven in, turned around, and then driven out again.
The lane was just beyond the curve where the cliff was called Suicide Heights.
“It could have been this way,” rumbled the giant, Smitty. “Maisley is driving out toward his house. He gets to the curve. A car is coming toward him, from the opposite direction, so it’ll meet and pass him on the curve. Another car waits in this lane, and shoots out as that second car goes by. Then the two cars race abreast toward Maisley. He swings to the right to try to miss them and goes over the cliff.”
“Nice reasonin’,” said Mac ironically.
“What’s the matter with it, you Scotch raven?”
“Plenty,” said Mac. “In the first place, there isn’t a chance in a hundred that another car would happen along in just the right place at just the right time. In the second, if one did, and this guy shot out, the other car’d pull ahead or drop behind before the curve was reached. If he didn’t, it would mean he was in on the killing. In which case both cars would have been in the lane and come out together.”
“Then why was this car in the lane?”
“How do I know? Maybe it had nothin’ to do with the accident.”
Smitty played a trump card. Mac’s blue eyes had missed a trick this time.
“This waiting car,” he said, “had a V-shaped cut in the right rear tire just as did the car that shagged Joseph Crimm into heart failure.”
Mac whistled, and looked closer.
“I guess maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “I guess the car did have somethin’ to do with Maisley’s death. But how—”
It was then that Smitty felt the vibration of his tiny radio indicating a call. He held up his hand and listened. So did Mac. And they got Rosabel’s beginning message to Josh. Got that — and the sudden silence.
Without a word to each other, Mac and the giant piled into their car. Trouble! And when one of The Avenger’s aides got into a jam, it was the concern of all the rest of them to get him out.
Mac knew where The Corners was. He started toward it, down Hudson Boulevard, at seventy.
Cops started to phone ahead to stop the maniac in the blue sedan, then refrained as they saw the police insignia which was on several of The Avenger’s machines.
To The Corners.
Mac spotted the car in which Josh had come. All The Avenger’s aides were trained in tactics like army majors. The Scot had decided on a rear approach to the roadhouse as instantly and surely as Josh had. So when the blue sedan came to a stop, it almost nosed into Josh’s car.
Smitty nodded.
“One of us here,” he rumbled. “The three of us can take that place apart and not bother to put it back together again. We—”
The Scot’s bony hand on his arm stopped him. From the roadhouse across the fields came the sound of shots. Many of them.
The two began to run toward The Corners.
Tom came back groaning, to consciousness, about ten minutes after the smashing blow on the head had knocked him out. He opened dazed eyes and saw the face of the man who had socked him.
“Hi, sucker,” said Blinky.
Josh and Rosabel, lying next to Tom, were bound. Tom was not. In a moment he saw why Blinky hadn’t bothered to tie him up.
Blinky had his gun in his hand and was evidently going to stay right in the room with the three to make sure there was no slip-up.
“So you’re going to kill me — and these two,” said Tom thickly.
Blinky shrugged, gun carelessly alert.
“The black boy and his dame — yes,” he said. “You — I still don’t know. Nor does Luckow. He was up here a minute ago and said to hold off for a while.”
“Luckow here?” repeated Tom, starting to get up. “I want to see him—”
“Relax!” snapped Blinky, gun jerking into line. “Just lie right there where you are.”
Tom relaxed. The bitterness of his thoughts was reflected on his face. It isn’t nice to find you have made a major fool of yourself. Tom was finding that out, now. Even more than he’d found it out when he saw that this gang was ready to execute a helpless girl in cold blood.
He glanced at Rosabel with somber sympathy in his eyes, then looked at Josh.
The Negro’s eyes were staring rigidly at a section of wall, high up.