“We know about him,” the masked leader cut in. “What about those working under him?”
“There’s a colored couple named Josh and Rosabel Newton,” said the man. “They don’t look like much, but they’re as smart as they make ’em.”
There was a sudden, smothered expletive from under Wilson’s mask. The man stared curiously at him, and continued:
“There’s a sandy-haired Scotchman named MacMurdie, who is a famous chemist, and was set up in a drugstore in New York by Benson. But MacMurdie leaves the store and goes with Benson whenever a case breaks.
“There’s a great big fellow, strong enough to be with a circus—”
“That will be this truck driver,” said the masked man at the head of the table. “We had him — and lost him. Go on!”
“Then, there’s a cute little trick you’d never think had anything to do with a guy like Benson. A girl, blond, about as big as a minute. But she can throw men around like umbrellas, I heard. Studied jujitsu, wrestling, and all the rest of it—”
Now it was Sisco’s turn to exclaim aloud. “Little, blond, harmless-looking! For the love of—”
“You’ve seen her?” the masked leader inquired.
“Seen her!” yelled Sisco. “I hired her! She’s working for me right now! And she took on a colored maid who’s this Rosabel Newton, sure as I’m sitting here!”
His voice sank to its normal dry deadliness. And it was much more menacing than it had been when he shouted.
“Well, there’s one we can fix right up. Let me out of here! I’ll stop her clock for her!”
CHAPTER XII
Nest of Murder!
The Avenger was himself again as he got in front of Groman’s building at a little after midnight. Gone were the wig simulating Sisco’s partially bald head and the facial conformation of the nightclub owner.
Benson had left Smitty down the line.
“Keep well under cover, Smitty. The police will be after you like a pack of hounds to get you back behind bars again. And with your size, you’ll be easy to spot.”
The Avenger went into Groman’s building, and once again stepped into a hornet’s nest.
A hornet’s nest of murder!
The second time a man had been found murdered in Groman’s office. The first time the victim had been Groman’s own secretary, Hawley. This time the dead man seemed known to no one.
The victim lay near the desk, as Hawley had lain. Captain Harrigo was there, with two plain-clothes men. The night nurse was in Groman’s bedroom having hysterics; she had stepped out of that bedroom an hour before, almost to stumble over the body.
This man had not been shot. He had been stabbed in the heart.
Harrigo glared murder at Benson, when The Avenger entered.
“Who are you?” he grated. “Ever since you landed here, we’ve been turning up dead men!”
Benson turned his pale, deadly eyes on the man.
“They haven’t been mine,” he said quietly. “Neither is this one. Who is he?”
Harrigo chewed his lip.
“We don’t know yet,” he said, sullenly, suspiciously.
“When was he killed?”
“About an hour and a half ago. And Groman’s son says you left a half hour before that, and the mug guarding the front door says you didn’t come back in—”
“Quite right,” said Benson. “The office door—”
“Locked when we got there,” said Harrigo savagely. “It looks like the man was stabbed while the nurse was right in the next room with Groman. She went out for fresh water and came back, and everything was all right then. But a little later she came out of the old man’s room to see this dead guy.”
“And nobody knows how he got in?”
“No!”
The Avenger’s keen eyes were at work. He had looked first at the floor beside the body. This time there were no words scrawled in blood.
The devil’s horns.
If this man knew anything about that, at least he had not tried to write about it. But then, death seemed to have been swifter with him than with Hawley. That heart wound had almost certainly been instantly fatal.
“Are Miss Groman and Ted Gorman here?” Benson asked.
Harrigo plainly was on the edge of refusing to tell this man with the pale eyes and white hair anything; he was equally plainly considering an attempt to arrest him again. But finally he replied:
“The old man’s son is here — has been in all evening. The girl’s out. I don’t know where.”
Benson stepped into the next room to see the nurse.
The night nurse assigned to the paralyzed hulk that had been Ashton City’s political boss, was about thirty, dark-haired, silent. Ordinarily she was composed. Now she was shuddering and biting at her fingers to keep back the screams.
She calmed a little more under The Avenger’s steady, pale gaze.
“The police say this crime was apparently committed while you were in this room,” he said.
She nodded, shivering.
“You were out for a few minutes before that?”
She pointed a trembling finger to a thermos pitcher on a night stand by Groman’s bed.
“I went out to get fresh water in that.”
“After you came back, you were in this room all the time?”
“Y-yes,” shivered the night nurse. “And I didn’t hear a sound in the other room. Not a sound.”
Well, a knife wound straight to the heart is silent and swift. The soundlessness was understandable. But who was the dead man, and who had killed him?
Benson didn’t even attempt to question Groman at all this time. The helpless bulk on the bed looked too wooden even for the eye blinks. The Avenger went back through the office and to the hall.
Terry Groman came in the front door just as he did so.
The girl was very pale, and her eyes looked wide and hunted. As if she had just come from some kind of trouble.
She staggered under the shock of murder, when Benson told her what had happened.
“We don’t know who the man is,” The Avenger concluded. His pale, icy eyes were drilling into the girl’s violet ones. “Would you recognize him?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure I wouldn’t. I have been away to finishing school most of my life, only recently returning to Ashton City. I wouldn’t know any of my father’s associates.”
“You seem to know Sisco,” Benson said.
She avoided his pale gaze.
“I… I met him after coming back home to live.”
Benson went on up the stairs, to Ted Groman’s suite. Ted Groman had talked to the police, he said, and told them all he knew.
Perhaps he had talked to the police, but Benson was sure he had not told all he knew. Anyway, when Benson asked about the dead man, Ted Groman’s eyes suddenly shifted. Difficult to lie to those uncompromising, dangerous eyes.
“You’re quite sure you don’t know who the man is?” The Avenger repeated.
“I— Yes!”
Benson’s eyes were diamond drills. His wax-white, immobile face was compelling.
“Ever since I’ve been here,” he said, “your father’s enemies have made one unending effort to get in here. Presumably they want to murder your father. Presumably you are in equal danger. Yet with Sisco and all his men fighting you, you won’t tell me what you know — when I’m here for the sole purpose of helping your father!”
“Oh, the dead man isn’t one of Sisco’s men—” Ted Groman said rapidly. Then he stopped, and slowly paled under that icy, relentless stare.
“So you do know who he is,” Benson challenged.
“No! No I don’t!”
“You at least know he isn’t one of Sisco’s men. You couldn’t possibly know all Sisco’s crew by sight, so you must know the dead man’s identity.”