These three were dead, but seemingly untouched. No mark was on any of their bodies. Their eardrums were burst, but that was all.
They had been killed, without being physically touched, by the sheer violence of the explosion.
The police were completely mystified. How could any sane crook expect to bomb a bank at six in the evening, and then have time to loot it before crowds came?
“The guy must have been an amateur, or just plain nuts,” said one of the detectives.
“Maybe he didn’t realize how much soup he was using,” suggested the other. “Enough to wreck a whole building, when all he wanted was a small dose drilled in the big hinge pins!”
“You got to blow more than the hinge pins on vaults like these,” said the other.
Anyhow, the vault wasn’t cleaned out. Cash, bonds, jewels, everything both in and out of the safe-deposit boxes, strewed the floor untouched. Several hundred thousand dollars in cash alone. It looked as if the murderous blast had produced only empty failure for the killer.
It wasn’t till much later that the cashier, going over the contents of the vault, discovered the one box that was missing — a box belonging to Dr. Mortimer Barker, now on the high seas en route for Europe.
CHAPTER XIII
The Trap
“DARING BANK ROBBERY A FAILURE,” the headlines said.
The account in the papers ran on:
Last night at approximately six o’clock, the Jefferson branch of the City Bank was entered by a lone bandit, and the vault door blown off its hinges.
The bandit evidently misjudged the amount of nitroglycerin needed to accomplish his purpose, for the explosion was so violent that it wrecked almost the entire building and drew crowds from blocks around.
The bandit, whose ill-judged plan is responsible for the deaths of seven people, fled as the crowds began to gather, leaving nearly a million dollars in securities, jewels and cash in the vault.
The only thing missing was the safe-deposit box of Doctor Mortimer M. Barker. Apparently the man, having lost his head completely, snatched at the first thing he saw sticking out of the wreckage and ran with it—
In the Bleek Street headquarters, Dick Benson stood like a gray steel statue and read that account, which was in a paper lying on the table in front of him. Nellie Gray was at his side. Smitty filled to overflowing a specially built, oversized chair nearby.
“So they’ve got the brick — and the gold belt plate inside it — that dad gave to Dr. Barker for safe-keeping,” said Nellie.
“Of course,” said Benson. “That was the purpose of the explosion.”
Nellie’s pink-and-white fists doubled hard.
“Everywhere they’re succeeding. Everything they do, they get away with! And what are we doing to stop them — to get dad’s murderer? Nothing!”
Benson said nothing to that. He looked at the paper again.
“ The bandit… fled… leaving nearly a million dollars in securities, jewels and cash in the vault,’” he read again. His pale and steely eyes went to the girl’s face.
“By taking a little more care, the gang might have worked it so they got that cash and the jewels. But they didn’t care whether they got it or not. The brick in Dr. Barker’s safety box was worth more to them than all the rest of the valuables in the vault.”
Nellie’s eyes suddenly avoided Benson’s pale flares.
“Well, you’ve seen one of the plates,” she murmured. “Solid gold, with a big emerald—”
“The entire belt, bringing museum prices, wouldn’t be worth as much as the stuff the bomber passed up in that vault,” Benson said steadily.
Nellie Gray’s porcelain cheeks colored faintly. The gray steel man said in his silken voice:
“There is far more to that belt than just the great intrinsic value of its gold and emeralds. Do you care to tell me what it is?”
Nellie bit her lip and stared pleadingly at him.
“I… I simply don’t dare… even to you.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” said Benson. “The belt, valuable as it is, is only a key to something so much more valuable that it makes its own worth seem like small change in comparison.”
The icily flaming eyes were on her in that probing manner that seemed able to search the very depths of a person’s mind.
“The key lies in the ideographs on the backs of the belt plates. Put all those plates together, and the picture writing tells a complete message. The message is a description of a secret place where something tremendously valuable may be found. Is that right?”
With his words, Nellie had been growing more and more tense. Now she breathed deeply and relaxed.
“How did you know?” she said in a low tone.
“Because I can decipher Aztec hieroglyphs, to some extent. Not quite as well as the late Dr. Brunniger.” His steely fingers shut hard at mention of the gentle old man so cold-bloodedly murdered. “But well enough. I read the ideographs on the back of the plate we got from Knight’s rooms. There is just enough of the message to hint at the real secret of the belt.”
Nellie sighed.
“I might have known before now that nothing could be hidden from you. Yes, that is right.”
She stared at the table, not seeing it. Before her eyes was the face of her father, killed for the possession of this thing The Avenger had shrewdly guessed.
“I told you about the night we found this belt in the tomb of Montezuma the Second. I didn’t tell you quite all.
“When we got back to dad’s tent, from the tomb, he went over the belt. He read the ideographs rapidly enough to grasp the meaning of their story — but didn’t dare take the time to get the story in every little detail; he had to bake the plates into bricks before daylight so no one but his few intimates would ever know of the discovery.
“The story he got was colossal.
“As you know, the Spaniards invaded Mexico in 1520. They killed off the Aztecs — with the help of subject Indian tribes who hated the Aztecs anyway. But the Spaniards, while they got a lot of gold, didn’t find the real, central hoard. They knew they hadn’t found it, and for decades afterward they searched. They had heard legends of whole temple floors of gold, of big statues of solid gold. Tons of the stuff. And these things they didn’t get.
“The reason, which again they suspected from the start, was that the Aztec priests hid this huge hoard just before the Spaniards got into the ancient city that is now the site of Mexico City. None of the priests could be tortured into revealing it.”
Smitty was staring at the girl with his china-blue eyes popping.
“And that belt tells where all this gold is hidden?” he spluttered.
Nellie nodded.
“Directions for finding it are on the back of the belt — if all the plates are together in their proper order. The biggest treasure, perhaps, in the history of the world. A treasure probably larger than King Solomon’s itself. Now do you see why I didn’t tell even you — till now — about it?”
There was silence in the big room, broken finally by Smitty. Benson was pacing slowly up and down, face as dead as a mask of snow, eyes vital and flaring.
“The gang after this belt knows its real meaning, and the size of the treasure, too,” said Smitty finally. “That’s proved by the way they treated a bank vault full of valuables as if the stuff were so many pennies. All they wanted was Dr. Barker’s brick.”
Nellie said nothing. She watched Benson. There was something like awe in her pretty eyes.
Benson thought aloud.
“They have almost enough. They have the two plates Professor Gray kept in his own possession. They have Olin Chandler’s plate. They have Dr. Barker’s plate. Four out of five. With four fifths of the message, they may be able to guess the meaning of the last fifth.”