“Josh and I tried to stop him,” said Rosabel. “But we’d have had to knock him down and tie him to keep him from it, he was so determined. And you hadn’t left any orders about it—”
“It’s not your fault,” Benson said, “but Burnside — he should have known better.”
He stepped to the phone. In a few seconds the exchange was tracing that call, spurred on by the magic name of Richard Henry Benson.
“He telephoned Congressman Coolie,” said the Avenger, after a moment. “Coolie is also from Montana, near Bison. And he is also interested in conservation projects, as Burnside himself is. How soon were you raided after the call?”
“Less than half an hour,” said Rosabel.
Benson’s pale eyes had been darting around the room. They rested now on a little white thing under a table. He went to it and picked it up.
The little white thing was half a handkerchief. In it were four pennies.
Four pennies and half a handkerchief. The Avenger’s pale eyes glittered. Josh had left these as a message.
“Get Mac and Smitty over here. They’re at the hotel. Tell them to go after Josh. They’ll know what to do when they see these. Are you all right?”
“Yes. But—”
The Avenger was gone, seeming to move slowly, such was his perfect coordination of mind and muscle, but actually getting out the door before Rosabel could utter another word.
The reason for his hurry was the swiftness with which the man had come to get Burnside after that phone call. Less than half an hour! It could only mean one thing. That was that the men had been near Coolie’s phone when Burnside called. In no other way could the call have been traced so quickly.
Coolie’s home was in the top-floor apartment of a big building overlooking Rock Creek Park. The building had no lobby or desk where Benson could get a pass key.
The Avenger went to the cliff side of the building. There was ornamental design in the side of the building, formed by the familiar method of placing alternate rows of bricks endways instead of lengthways and letting the ends protrude a half inch. Benson went up the side of the building.
It was a hundred feet down to jagged rock. But he didn’t look down. Apparently he didn’t even think of that sheer drop. Up he went, as easily as if climbing a ladder, till he got to the top floor.
He opened a window and climbed noiselessly into a bedroom. But there was no need for soundlessness in the apartment of Congressman Coolie.
There was nobody in it but Coolie, and Coolie would never show interest in anything any more.
The Congressman lay in a pool of his own blood, with a knife blade sticking out of his chest. The Avenger’s deductions had been all too sound.
Burnside would have been rash to make any phone call at all. As luck would have it, this particular call had been more than indiscreet. It had been suicidal. He had chanced to telephone a person in the clutches of the very men he was hiding from.
Coolie had, perhaps, been dead, and his voice had been imitated by one of the men. Or perhaps he had been forced to talk, and then had been murdered later.
That point suddenly struck the cold brain behind the icy, colorless eyes as important.
Coolie’s body was clad in a bathrobe. One tassel of the robe lay in the blood, reddened a couple of inches up its length. The other tassel was on top of the body, and dry.
The Avenger put the dry tassel in the pool of blood, and watched it with his watch in hand.
It took sixteen minutes for the tassel to suck up blood to the point reached by the other tassel that had landed in the pool when Coolie fell.
The Congressman had been murdered thirty-two minutes ago. That was after Burnside had been safely taken into custody again. They had not killed him till they knew they had Burnside where they wanted him.
The Avenger looked at his watch again. It was twenty minutes past ten at night.
CHAPTER XI
Lights Out
Twenty minutes past ten was the time the man with the dead, paralyzed face and the cold, colorless eyes had noted on his watch.
Twelve minutes later, at twenty-eight minutes to eleven, a man got a phone call.
The man was a hard-working young fellow who had just opened an office as sales representative of a New York toy firm. He had two tiny rooms. One was the office part. The other was the sample room, with shelves around all the walls and samples of different kind of games and toys on the shelves.
He was in the office part, bending over a new list of prospects he had dug up that afternoon. But the light was on in the sample room, too. Through the open door a toy panda leered at his back with glass-button eyes.
The building in which the little suite was located was on Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the Willard Hotel. There were several other lights in it. Not many, for few were at work this late at night.
And then the man’s telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, wondering who was calling him at this time of night
“Peter Gottlieb,” he said mechanically. “Knox Toy and Novelty Company.”
“Mr. Gottlieb,” came a smooth voice, “I am Withers, with the Baylor Game Company. I wonder if you could drop over and see me about a business proposition. I am at the Willard Hotel.”
Gottlieb looked mildly surprised. “It’s a little late, isn’t it, Mr. Withers?”
“Yes. But I’m sure an up-and-coming young man like yourself doesn’t mind a night call.”
Gottlieb was an up-and-coming young man, and he did not mind a night call. Or one at two o’clock in the morning, if it would bring in some business. But he was clever, too. And he did not think it would be good policy to make this call.
If the Baylor Game Company wanted to see him, it must be that they wanted him to handle their line of games and toys, too. And it would not be good business to be too eager about accepting such a proposition. He would get less commission the more anxious he appeared to want the job.
So he stalled, which was good psychology, but very bad destiny. “I’ll have to make it in the morning, I’m afraid,” he said importantly. “I’m very busy listing a big order I got today.”
“It will have to be tonight — at once, or not at all,” snapped the voice of Withers.
Gottlieb smiled. Fat chance this man had of getting another representative this late at night. He’d be around in the morning, all right. And Gottlieb could get a better commission in a contract if he stuck to his guns.
“I’m awfully sorry. I just can’t get away tonight.”
The phone went dead.
Gottlieb had a moment’s doubt, but he reassured himself that he had acted smartly and that a phone call at that time of night on such a proposition was kind of screwy anyway. He went back to his work.
Ten minutes passed; then there was a tap at his door.
“Come in,” he said.
A heavy-bodied, elderly woman, dressed in shabby grey, with mop and bucket in hand, opened the door.
“Will you be through pretty soon?” she asked wearily. “I’m supposed to clean up in here.”
Gottlieb stared, then smiled. “You’ve made a mistake. This office has already been cleaned. At about eight o’clock.”
“I’m supposed to do the floor again,” said the woman. “It wasn’t done right before.”
“It’s done well enough for me,” said Gottlieb cheerfully.
“But—”
“You can just skip this office. I’m busy; don’t want to be interrupted.”
The scrub woman looked as if about to say more, but didn’t. She went out.
On her feet, though Gottlieb didn’t notice it, were men’s shoes. But perhaps many scrub women wear the heavier soled brogans of men for their work.
Five minutes later the phone rang again. Gottlieb, frowning a little, picked it up.