“I’ve told you he can be,” Sisco’s dry and deadly voice came in answer. “And he will be — tonight! In just a little while—”
There was a triple tap at the locked, heavy door. Sisco rose and opened it. A man said something in a low tone, staring curiously at the mask.
Sisco relocked the door and came back. There was murderous triumph in his tread.
“The sergeant on the switchboard at headquarters reported,” he said. “Benson just phoned and asked to talk to Cattridge. He said for Cattridge to get a squad of men he knew he could trust and to come here to the warehouse in half an hour — and to meet him here. So the fake radio business fooled the white-headed guy, and he’s on his way now.”
“But Cattridge!” bleated Wilson. “If he’s gonna show up here—”
Sisco’s greenish eyes burned through the slits in his mask.
“Do you think for a minute that Benson really talked to Cattridge? That phone sergeant’s our man. He passed as Cattridge, and fooled the white-headed guy. He’s on his way here, thinking the cops will follow him shortly. He’ll find out—”
At that moment, Benson and Smitty and Mac were in a rented sedan speeding toward the construction company warehouse. Smitty was driving.
“I don’t get it!” Smitty said again, to the man with the wax-white face and colorless eyes. “Why weren’t we killed down in that pit? How did we ever get out of it?”
The Avenger’s hard, taut body swayed with the movements of the car, a figure of whipcord and gray steel.
“It was reasonable to suppose,” he said quietly, “that the man who had devised that complicated way of hiding his money, would also devise a way out, to guard against being trapped in the well some day, himself, by accident. We searched till we found the spot where the ‘devil’s horns’ contact brought the section of office flooring down again; then we went up with it, that’s all.”
“Yes,” said Smitty, “but why were we allowed that much time? Why didn’t whoever trapped us down there, kill us before we could find a way out? It should have been easy.”
“We weren’t killed for a very obvious reason, that will be explained later,” Benson said, pale eyes as unreadable as two brilliant moonstones.
Mac spoke up, dour, gloomy.
“I hope ye’re sure of your mon, Cattridge,” he said. “If Cattridge double-crosses us and doesn’t send a squad, there’s a guid chance we’ll never get out of this place we’re goin’ to, alive.”
“You couldn’t stand it if you weren’t allowed to croak every time we make a move, could you, you Scotch raven?” said Smitty.
“Ye haven’t brains enough to see the possibilities in a given situation,” retorted the Scot. “Bein’ just an overgrown ape, ye haven’t imagination. And it takes imagination to foresee trouble.”
“I don’t go hunting for trouble like you do!”
“Neither would King Kong go huntin’ trouble,” said Mac, as if the giant were a bitter enemy instead of an inseparable friend. “He hasn’t the sense.”
The car drew near the construction yard. Smitty put his foot on the brake and stopped the car around a corner where it would be out of sight.
“There’ll be plenty of guards around there, chief,” he said. “The masked four wouldn’t take chances of being picked up when they meet. They’ll have all the boys watching the entrances.”
The Avenger nodded, eyes like pale fire opals.
“So we won’t use the entrances, of course, Smitty.”
He led the way, in a wide sweep, around a block of dark factory buildings to the back of the construction supply yard. Here, the rear wall of the third warehouse, in the basement of which the masked men met, formed part of the yard wall.
At the corner of the building, just the other side of a heavy-wire fence, there was a pile of iron reinforcing bars for use with concrete. They were a dozen feet long, and ran an inch thick.
The Avenger looked up at the low slope of the warehouse roof, about twenty-five feet over their heads, and then at the pile of bars within the yard.
Very cautiously, since the wire might be electrically charged and set off a far alarm if touched, he drew two of the bars through the wide mesh.
“Can you bend them, Smitty?”
The giant grunted assent, his quick brain taking in his chiefs idea instantly.
He got the end of one of the bars in his huge right hand, planted the other hand a foot down the iron shank, and twisted. The end of the bar went around to form a hook. He bent the other end in a second hook, and into this, he fitted the bent end of the other bar.
Lashing the hooked ends of the bars together so that they could be lifted in one length without collapsing in the middle, he raised them straight up. Slowly, so that no clang of metal should give their presence away, he fished till he had the hooked end of the upper bar over the rough cornice of the warehouse roof.
He jerked down lightly to break the string, and the hooks settled into each other in the middle, metal to metal. Then the three ascended, hand over hand.
The roof of the warehouse was of corrugated metal. The Avenger pointed to a square that was a little loose at the lower edge. Smitty, like a docile elephant, inserted his immense fingers in the crack, heaved, and bent the iron section up and away from the roof rafters as one would bend back the lid of a sardine can.
They dropped silently to a supporting beam below, and then climbed it upright. At the front of the warehouse, unseen in darkness, two men were talking in a low tone. Two gunmen watching the door, probably.
The three scourges of evil crept like shadows behind their backs, to the stairs, and down.
Here there was light, disclosing partitioned hugeness stacked with building materials. So here they had to go even more cautiously. The Avenger went first, pale eyes seeming to see all things at once; his gray steel figure moving with wraithlike noiselessness.
At the stair end of the basement, there was an open section with big iron drums in it. Between the wall of this, and the side wall, was a cement-block partition. Two doors in the partition indicated two tight-shut rooms taking up that walled-off length.
Steps on the stairs sent the three into the shadows under them. Through a crack in one of the risers, The Avenger’s pale, cold eyes peered out. He saw a man tap on the nearer of the two doors, saw the door open.
A masked head showed itself, there was an exchange of words. The door was closed again, and the man went back up the stairs. The Avenger’s keen ears heard a click, as the door was locked.
He slid from under the stairs, went past the locked door, with Smitty and Mac following closely. They could hear a faint hum of voices as they passed the door. Each thought the same thing: in that room were the four masked men who dominated the city. All four of them, conveniently in one spot!
Benson tried the heavy knob of the second door. The knob turned and the door opened. He swept a thin beam of light into it from his flash. The room was empty. There were no supplies, furniture, or anything else in it. Just a windowless cell, about fifteen feet by twenty, solid-walled, confronted him.
All three went in.
Now, for a moment without explanation and quite illogically, they could hear the voices of the masked four in the next room even more plainly than they had been able to in passing the door. You’d have thought they could hear more plainly through the wooden panels of a door.
A farther sweep of The Avenger’s light disclosed the reason.