“Stay in here till I can get to the lever and close the floodgate. Then I will go on to the steel bulkhead door and burn that open. That will allow the flood to go on along the rest of the tunnel till the surface at this end is several feet below the tunnel roof. You can swim out at your leisure. When you feel the water move, follow me.”
As simple and easy as that, to hear the man with the paralyzed face and the pale, deadly eyes express it. But what miracles of applied science and engineering forethought lay behind this incredible escape!
“He’s a great mon,” said Mac, in a hushed tone.
“And a lonely one,” murmured Nellie Gray, profound sympathy in her voice.
She knew better than any of them, perhaps, how desolate was the world in which Benson moved. His was a death in life, without the wife and daughter that crime had taken from him.
Now he had won again. An entire gang, with their cold, subtle, inhuman leader, had been destroyed by their own hands — as gangs of crooks fighting The Avenger always were destroyed; since he himself refused to take life.
A great treasure had been taken from scheming hands. Now, a large source of radium would be opened to relieve public suffering at a cost low enough for the majority to afford. A great public benefaction.
Yes, he had won again. And with their own lives saved. Nellie could picture the awesome personage, whose face could never express an emotion, going calmly under water to the lever, shutting it off, going on to burn through the flood bulkhead and open the doorway there. Then he would be carried in a rush of the released flood till he could get his footing again, and open the final manhole cover for them. And there would be other bodies swirled through the door with him. Dreadful, staring things. Dead gangsters and — Dr. Fram, diabolical in life, harmless in death.
But the victory would mean nothing to The Avenger. Nothing save release of brilliant energies for another case; another brush with criminals too subtle for the police to handle; another chance to avenge the death of his dear ones—
The water began to suck from the cell, waving their legs in its passage. The bulkhead door down the line had been opened, and the floodgate shut to prevent the entrance of more water. The way to life and safety was clear.