The Avenger drove away with his pale eyes somber. He lived only to fight crime — and to help people threatened by crime’s clutches. But it’s difficult to help a person who refuses to be helped.
Benson had a stop to make before going back to Bleek Street. He went to the Crimm home, near the East River. He located the scene where a mad car had charged again and again at a sick, elderly man.
There were only few faint traces of tire tracks around there. Walking people had obliterated most of them. But one short length provided something interesting.
It would seem that the automobile that had chased Joseph Crimm had a distinctive peculiarity about its right rear tire.
There was a deep V-cut in that tire, according to the bit of track left.
CHAPTER IV
Wanted — For Murder
The night after Joseph Crimm died, at almost the same late hour there was a light in the solid stone building of the Town Bank, on upper Broadway.
The light was in the small conference room. It illuminated five men, huddled around a big oval table at one end. The men talked in whispers to be sure the night guard — even though he was a floor below and many feet to the rear — could not catch even a syllable.
“We’ve got to give this thing up!” insisted one man. He almost whimpered it. He was horribly frightened and did not trouble to hide it. Fear rode high in his spectacled blue eyes. Fear distorted his lean, long-nosed face and made his pudgy body tremble.
The man was Theodore Maisley, president of the bank. The person he was addressing most directly was Lucius Grand, one of the directors.
Lucius Grand was tall and broad-shouldered, and had a jaw like a snowplow. He had stony eyes, too, which were not being softened any as they turned on Maisley.
“Get hold of yourself, Maisley,” he said, with contempt in his voice. “Everything is going fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
The three other directors nodded agreement with Grand.
The three were Robert Rath, Louis Wallach and Frederick Birch. Rath was pompous and plump and loud-spoken. Wallach was thin and a little stooped, with the face of a deacon and a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. Birch was choleric and red-faced, but with a sort of emptiness in his blurry gray eyes which indicated that behind all the bluster was a wide streak of yellow.
“I tell you we’re heading into terrible trouble,” bleated Maisley, the president. “We’ve got to give it up.”
“What would you suggest that we do, Maisley?” asked Wallach in his soft, near-whisper. He rubbed his thin, dry hands together like a bishop about to pronounce benediction.
Maisley fearfully outlined his ideas of what they should do.
“We ought to burn that damned stock. If it’s ever found in our possession we’ll get jail for life. Maybe the electric chair! Don’t forget Joe Crimm.”
“Burn the stock?” It was a maddened bellow from Grand.
“Ssh,” said Wallach quickly. “Ssh! The bank guard—”
“Burn the stock?” Grand said in a lower tone. “Are you crazy?”
“But Crimm—”
“Is dead,” said choleric, red-faced Birch, voice as blustering in its carefully low-pitched tone as if he had shouted. “And he died naturally. Don’t forget that. A heart attack. They don’t put people in the electric chair for a heart attack.”
“The stolen stock, though,” Maisley persisted, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That’s grand larceny. Damned grand—$2,380,000 worth.”
“That will be taken care of,” said plump and pompous Rath. “Joseph Crimm was taken care of, wasn’t he? Well, this will be taken care of, too. All we have to do is—”
“You all seem to forget that there is a very weak point,” interrupted Maisley. “Crimm ordered the stock delivered to his home. You know that, don’t you? He was specific about it. Sent a note in his own handwriting to his broker. Instead of that, the broker, Haskell, deliberately delivered the stock to the bank, as we had ordered. Now, Haskell is a weak spot. If he ever talks—”
“He won’t talk,” whispered Wallach, rubbing his thin hands together. “That, also, will be attended to. You’ll see.”
“I’m against this,” persisted Maisley. “My vote is to drop the whole matter. Millions from the eventual sale of the stock? More millions from voting control of Ballandale Glass? What of it? The millions won’t do you any good if we get tripped up. Out-and-out crime like this—”
His voice died uncertainly at the look in the eyes of Grand and Wallach and Rath.
Maisley, with shreds of honesty still clinging to his petty soul, was in a bad spot. He was afraid of what might grow out of all this. But he was afraid of his associates, too.
Theodore Maisley, president of Town Bank, was not the only one to whom the weak spot in the crime plan was apparent. There were others thinking along that line. Right at the moment, in fact.
The Avenger had said that Nicky Luckow, Public Enemy No. 1 in the East, was smart in an animal sort of way. And he was correct.
Luckow’s eyes, like dully polished stones, were duller than usual as, for the fourth time, he went over what Tom Crimm had told him.
“Funny,” he said, “that your dad would have the stock sent to the bank when it was the bank he was thinking of fighting. If he didn’t trust ’em why’d he let the stuff get near enough for ’em to sink their hooks in it?”
“He says he didn’t,” said Tom. “He says he ordered the stock delivered to his home.”
“And it was sent to the bank instead,” mused Luckow. “Who’d be the guy to send it out?”
“Dad did business through the firm of Haskell, Lampert & Klein, on the New York Exchange. Particularly through Haskell, I guess. Probably it was Haskell who sent out the Ballandale Corp. stock.”
Luckow pressed a buzzer on his desk.
“I think we have something there, kid,” he said softly. “This guy, Haskell, may have a few things he’d like to talk about — if he’s approached the right way.”
Tim, the man who looked like a mean cat with a grouch against the whole world, padded in in answer to the desk buzzer.
“Tim, get Blinky and go with Tom here. Tom’ll show you where. There’s a guy he knows who may have something to say that we’d like to hear. Tom’ll do the questioning. You and Blinky will do the work of loosening his tongue.”
For an instant, faint apprehension came over Tom’s face. He had tied in with a tough gang just because they were tough; he had tough work ahead of him. But the sinister overtones in Luckow’s voice as he spoke of “loosening” Haskell’s tongue sent a chill to Tom’s spine.
He snapped out of that momentary weakness, though. His father had been robbed of his fortune and murdered. Anything that happened to men who could do things like that — anything — would be better than they deserved.
“You’re going with us, aren’t you?” he said to Nick Luckow.
The mob leader smiled a little, softly, dangerously. It had been some time since he went with his boys on a job. He preferred to let others take their chances with New York’s excellent cops.
“I’ll stay here,” he said. “I got some thinking to do. Luck to you, kid.”
Tom and the two called Tim and Blinky went out to a sedan parked in front of the hotel.
“So?” said Tim softly, at the wheel.
Tom gave the address of Harry Haskell, his father’s broker.
Haskell lived in a rather small penthouse on Riverside Drive. When the car pulled up to the building, Tim and Blinky hung back at the door.