It was certainly a sleepy-looking scene. In the gallery, the women tourists looked disappointed. One of the reporters yawned audibly. The man with the concealed camera leaned back in his seat and looked bored, too. And the low buzz from the members of the Senate, down below, was like the sleepy drone from a beehive, or the low talking of a class of boys when teacher is out of the room.
Roll call was taken. Then, as scheduled, a bill was introduced by an elderly representative from Tennessee.
It was not a very startling or interesting bill. It proposed that $4,500,000 of flood control money be allocated to the purpose of building a dam across some little river somewhere in his home state. The proposal didn’t get a ripple from anyone.
The Avenger wasn’t listening to the rambling discourse following the proposal. He was looking down at Senator Burnside, eyes hawk-keen in spite of the colored pupils over his own colorless ones.
Burnside looked as if about to have a seizure of some kind.
He was sitting rigidly in his seat. His hands were clenched over each other so that clear from the gallery Benson could note their strained, milky whiteness. And he was glaring at his desk top as if the thing had suddenly become a great open maw about to engulf him.
Every drop of color had drained from his face. He was trembling a little, all over.
The Senator from Tennessee sat down. And Burnside, after trying twice before he could make his knees support his weight, stood up.
The Avenger leaned forward a little, eyes like ice behind their disguising tissue eyecups.
This was it!
“Mr. President,” quavered Burnside.
“Senator Burnside.”
“I would like to propose an amendment to the bill of the gentleman from Tennessee. It is that the park in my state designated as Bison National Park be thrown open to private bidding for mineral rights.”
One of the reporters in the gallery lifted an eyebrow, but then yawned again. There was no stir on the floor. It was quite true that such a bill might easily become law because few people knew much about the small section named. It would only be afterward that a storm would rage.
Burnside, sweating, trembling so that his colleagues stared curiously at him, rambled on.
Bison Park was small and out-of-the-way. He cited figures of tourists, indicating that few citizens of the United States had any interest in it. The park was expensive to maintain. He told of the money spent annually in upkeep. There was no reason why it should remain under government control—
The Avenger’s pale gaze was on Cutten, now. The other Senator from Montana was shifting in his seat, alternately red with a great anger, and white with a great fear.
But with anger winning out.
Burnside sat down. There was still no commotion at all. In fact, there was practically no interest. Ten years ago, Senator Burnside had been co-sponsor of a bill turning Bison Park over to the government. Now he was sponsoring a bill turning it back to private hands again. So what?
Burnside sat down and Cutten sprang up. In his face was a great resolve. And a determination that made his features seem as if carved out of stone. The Avenger leaned forward tensely, waiting.
Waiting for the storm of condemnation of the amendment to come from Cutten’s lips. For obviously the man intended to blast the park proposal wide open, and to hell with the personal consequences.
The blasting never began.
“Senator Cutten,” droned the chair, in recognition.
But Cutten was not staring at the chair. He was looking down at his desk top. And in his eyes was a horror that was as great as Burnside’s terror of a moment ago.
“The gentleman from Montana wishes to add a few words to Senator Burnside’s proposed amendment before the matter is opened for debate?” asked the chair.
Cutten moistened his lips, but obviously could not speak. He swallowed hard, shook his head and sat down, with no word uttered.
It was complete defeat!
The giant Smitty stared at the sign over the vacant warehouse sprawled on the bank of the Potomac River on the fringe of Georgetown.
Over the door of the building was a big, peeling sign: MURRAIN CO.
“That’ll be it,” said Smitty. “There’s nothing about grain in the sign, but Nellie said it was a vacant warehouse and the sign ended with — RAIN.”
“Ye’re right,” nodded Mac. “Now to get in.”
It was midmorning, but there weren’t many people along here. For the benefit of the few who might observe them, Mac and Smitty stepped from their car and walked openly to the warehouse-office door as if they had business there.
The door was boarded over; but when Smitty tugged at the handle a little, boards and nailheads moved in unison. The boarding was a fake.
So Smitty, vast right hand clutching the knob, exerted a little strength.
The lock, groaning, then screaming thinly like a live thing, came apart. The knob came out with its square stem like some kind of strange fruit plucked stem and all from a tough branch.
Smitty dropped it, reached a ponderous forefinger into the ragged hole, manipulated the bolt mechanism of the ruined lock and the door swung inward.
Mac and the giant entered a small, bare office that was an inch thick with dust — except in a straight line from door to rear partition.
There, many feet had recently scuffed the dust away.
The two followed the little trail, walking silently, alert for any sound or move.
It led them to basement stairs, and down. And it ended before what seemed a blank wall, till Mac began prodding around with powerful, bony fingers. Then a section of the wall swung back disclosing a tiny cell, in the floor of which was a manhole cover.
A new manhole cover.
“It’s been verrra easy,” whispered Mac dourly. “I’m thinkin’ it’s been too easy — to come here and find just what we’re after.”
Smitty snorted and lifted the manhole cover. The Scot was always sure of disaster when things were going well, reserving his optimism for situations so desperate that any other man would give up completely.
There was a tunnel under the manhole cover. Smitty’s small flash revealed that. He lowered himself to it, and Mac did the same.
“The lid?” whispered Mac.
“Better put it back in place, over our heads,” Smitty replied in a low tone. “Just in case some dope comes along in a minute and gets wise by seeing it out of position.”
Mac lowered the manhole lid into place. They went down the tunnel by the light of Smitty’s flash.
Speedily the thing broadened and heightened till it was a full-sized traffic tube, twenty or twenty-five feet wide and almost the same in height. But walls and floor were of rough concrete, never finished off, and drops of moisture oozed from the river bed just above.
They could hear the swishing of the water near their heads. They opened a heavy steel door.
“I don’t like this at all,” whispered Mac dolefully again, looking back at the door. It was like a bulkhead.
Smitty glared at him and the two went on.
There was a slight bend in the tunnel at the beginning. They rounded this bend; then Smitty pointed. Mac nodded wordlessly.
There, protruding from the side of the tunnel, was a plain iron lever. This was the lever Nellie had mentioned. It was rusted very little, indicating that it, and the flood-gate mechanism it controlled, had been installed only recently.
They had been told to keep anyone from throwing that lever, if anyone were near it as they came along. But there wasn’t a soul in the tunnel ahead of them.
They went on.
And behind them a score of men crept in the darkness as silently as rats!
The men got to the heavy steel door across the tunnel at the bend. They went through the doorway, and closed the portal behind them. One of their number remained behind, outside the door. There was a heavy iron bar there. He dropped it into place. Now, no matter what happened in the tunnel ahead, the big fellow and the Scotch guy would be trapped.