As if in concerted answer to a raised baton, all the guns stopped at once. The gunmen were unconscious.
The pale-eyed, immobile-faced man stepped from the pilot’s compartment, with Mac close behind. A glance sufficed to show the hangar door controls. Benson threw the switch that opened them, and went to where Smitty and Nellie lay.
Unfortunately, they’d had to breathe the air of the ferry, too. But Mac’s gas wasn’t lethal; just knocked people out for a time.
Benson stooped, shouldered Smitty’s great bulk and walked back to the plane with it. Smitty weighed nearly twice as much as the gray fox who carried him. But Benson walked easily erect under the weight.
Mac came with Nellie in his arms. But the Scot rebelled as Benson closed the cabin doors, after they’d pushed the ship till she’d float slowly backward into clear water.
“Ye’re not just goin’ awa’ and leavin’ these skurlies!” he protested. “The murrrderin’ fiends!”
“What do you suggest doing with them?” said Benson quietly. It was uncanny — the complete lack of emotion in The Avenger’s voice, and the icy rigidity of his dead face in the midst of menace and destruction.
Mac pulled at his bony fingers in impotent anguish.
These men were just tools of the shrewd brain behind the gigantic destruction-plan. They could be turned over to the police — but they’d never talk, and they’d probably be out on bail very soon.
“We could kill them all,” said Benson, icy eyes reading the Scot’s every thought. “That is, we could if I hadn’t my old-fashioned ideas against executing people. But if we did — it would only delay the man behind them in his plans till he could get together another gang. And we don’t want delay.”
The cold-eyed man started the motors.
“No use staying around now. Those shots will have been heards for miles out over the lake. The ghost plane will never land now — if, indeed, it meant to before.”
Mac shrugged helplessly as the big ship took off. Odd as it seemed simply to go off and leave these murderers free, he knew in his heart it was the course of wisdom.
CHAPTER XI
Strange Revelations!
At the Gary laboratory of the Missouri Steel Corporation, Benson straightened from an analysis of two bits of steel. With him, respectfully watching the conclusion of a bit of laboratory work far beyond his own capabilities, was the head metallurgist of the plant.
The two pieces of steel had come from the ruins of the collapsed skyscraper.
In that deathly debris had been some steel girders that were whole and unflawed — among the many that were as cracked and rotten as brittle glass. Benson had analyzed a bit of the whole steel, as well as a bit of the rotten steel.
“Steel for that building,” said the metallurgist, “was supplied by us. Some of the girders were of ore from our own Pennsylvania mines. Some was of ore from the Catawbi Iron Range in Michigan. Your analysis will give a hint as to which steel failed.”
Benson was ready with the analysis now.
“In the steel that did not fail,” he said quietly, “there is a slight trace of low-grade chromium. Perhaps a thousandth of one percent. That would have placed the ore the steel came from, even without your sales records. For traces of chromium in raw ore are only to be found in a few localities, of which Michigan is one. Therefore, the steel which endured was of Catawbi origin.”
“You think that was due to the trace of chromium?” the metallurgist said eagerly. “Because it would be very easy to add the right percentage of the alloy to all our steel, and—”
“I don’t know yet,” Benson cut in. “You say you obtained access to the America Steel Corporation’s books and found out the same thing about the collapsed pavilion? That two types of steel had been used in the girders, and one fell down while the other remained all right?”
“Yes!”
“So,” Benson murmured, pale eyes flaming in his white, dead face. “Catawbi steel is not affected by these catastrophes, and ordinary steel is. Tell me a little about the Catawbi setup.”
The metallurgist explained.
“Up in Michigan there is an entire small range of hills which is almost solid iron ore. Easy to mine, near the surface, near Chicago. But the ore is so low-grade that the cost of processing it makes it a little more expensive than other ores. Therefore, most steel companies, like our own, prefer to get ore from their own mines. So the Catawbi Range is a losing proposition.”
“It won’t be if this sort of thing keeps up,” mused the gray-eyed man.
“No,” said the metallurgist, “it won’t. If Catawbi metal stands up, and all other steels collapse, the public will insist on Catawbi steel being specified in all new buildings, and the owners of the Catawbi Range can ask any price they like for their ore.”
“Who are the owners,” said Benson.
“A short-tempered old fellow by the name of Ringset, Colonel Marius Q. Ringset, owns practically all the range, with a few local Michigan people sharing the little that’s outside his holdings.”
“Ringset is a very wealthy man, then?” Benson suggested.
The metallurgist shook his head.
“It’s been a battle for years for him to sell enough of his low-grade ore to keep his range out of the hands of the banks. And the range is all he’s got.”
“Well, he’ll probably become a very wealthy man now. For he’ll have no difficulty selling Catawbi ore from now on, if I know anything about public reactions.”
As though Benson’s words could be heard miles away in Missouri Steel’s Chicago office, and also in the offices of the city engineers, at that moment the laboratory phone rang. The metallurgist answered it, listening with growing concern to an excited voice over the wire, then turned to Benson.
“You’ve hit it all right,” Mr. Benson,” he said. “That was our Midwest sales manager on the wire.”
The scientist chewed his lip.
“Missouri Steel Corporation was awarded a big bridge contract last spring. Work was about to be started on it next week. Four thousand tons of Missouri steel were to be used in the construction. Now the city has cancelled the order.”
The man stared bitterly at the bits of metal Benson had concentrated on.
“What’s more,” he said, “two big private contracts on office buildings were cancelled earlier this morning. People don’t want to put up buildings that are apt to collapse, no matter what makes them collapse — enemy invasion, poor quality, anything else. We can publish this report of yours that steel made with Catawbi ore stands up. But from now on we’ll have to use Colonel Ringset’s ore, at any price, if we want to stay in business!”
Benson went back to his temporary, top-floor headquarters.
The name of Colonel Marius Ringset had not been as unfamiliar to the gray fox of a man as he had pretended. That name had come up before. It occurred in the list of the Gant brothers’ close friends that Benson had culled from police reports for exhaustive study on his own account.
He had said to MacMurdie that the man behind the sky-walking and the tragedies of collapsed buildings, and the loss of steel track resulting in a train wreck, must necessarily fit into certain specifications.
That man would be intimate with the Gant brothers, would be well-to-do, would have an interest in publicizing the catastrophies, and would be familiar with the Catawbi Railroad setup.
So Benson had started on the list of the friends of Robert and Max Gant.
Smitty and Mac and Nellie had gone over that list with all the power of their exceptional intelligences, and had narrowed it down to three names. Those names were Arthur D. Vanderhold, Abel M. Darcey, and — Colonel Marius Ringset.