Then Smitty really put on steam. He began running as fast as he could. He had seen the car waiting in the areaway next to the school, and from it he had seen three men come.
All got near Carp and the girl at about the same time. The only difference was that Smitty saw the three men and the three men were too engrossed in the girl to see Smitty.
They were made aware of his presence very soon.
The giant got one of the three by the nape of the neck, like a kitten. He jerked back, hard, and opened his hand. The man kept on going back along the sidewalk, to fall finally and slide for a couple of yards on the cement.
Smitty caught a second of the three by the shoulder. And then the third, snarling, whipped out a gun. In his murderous little eyes was the plain intent to use it, and use it to kill.
Smitty really got mad, then. He didn’t have time to get to the man with the gun, so he smashed the fellow whose shoulder he still gripped against him. The gunman staggered and tried to get his gun back into line. While he tried, Smitty caught his right forearm in a tremendous hand and turned it very quickly, as though the arm were a baton which he mean to twirl.
There was a thin, high crack. The gun thudded to the sidewalk. And the man began to scream while he held his right arm tenderly in his left hand.
A whistle was going mad at the corner. There were pounding feet. A cop was coming up, drawing his gun as he came.
The man who had been smashed to the sidewalk began racing for the car. Carp was already in it, at the wheel. The other two went for the car, also. They leaped in. The car veered over the walk, doors still open from the mad retreat. Down the line a squad car, called by the patrolman’s whistle, gave a siren wail.
The cop got up to Smitty and the girl and the little black-haired boy.
“You all right, miss?” he said solicitously. “You and the kid?”
“We’re all right,” the girl said, perfectly calm. Smitty stared in amazement. She looked as little and delicate as something made out of porcelain. But a scene that might well have excited any man — and which had excited the cop, as his face showed — left her completely unruffled.
At the curb a big coupé had stopped with a white-faced woman in it. The woman’s features were like the small boy’s. She was one of the rich mothers, a bit late in coming to school for her child. She opened the door and came toward them.
“We’ll get those guys in the car,” the cop said confidently. “And when we do—”
The mother had the little boy. With no look at the blond instructoress or the patrolman, she carried sonny to the overstuffed coupé. The cop went with her.
“Well! That was nice while it lasted,” Smitty said to the girl.
Her lovely gray eyes went over his vast bulk.
“You’re rather strong,” she said.
“A little,” said Smitty. “But you — say! What happened to the guy who put his hands on you?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“It looked like you tossed him over your shoulder. But you couldn’t throw a grown man around. Or could you?”
“He must have tripped on something,” murmured the girl, dimpling.
“Anyhow, he was one kidnapper who made a mistake. Who is the little boy?”
“Franklin Wellington Course, the Third,” said the girl.
Smitty whistled.
“Of the steel and oil Courses, eh? No wonder there was an attempted kidnap! Can I do anything for you? You all right?”
“Perfectly,” said the girl. “And you’ve already done enough. Thank you.”
She turned and started away. There was purpose and finality in her shapely back. Smitty knew he was dismissed. He hesitated, then started back to Mac’s drugstore.
And there, though he didn’t dream it at the time, he made a mistake. One which, probably, the subtle genius, Dick Benson, would not have made. But then Smitty, for all his horsepower, was not Dick Benson. There was only one Avenger.
CHAPTER III
Mexican Bricks — And Murder
The girl, fifteen minutes later, turned into the vestibule of a neat but inexpensive apartment building near the East River, uptown. She pressed a buzzer there. Over the button was the name Archer S. Gray.
Archer Gray was a retired professor of archaeology, Columbia University. He was, moreover, the girls father. Her name was Nellie Gray.
Professor Gray opened the door for her, and she kissed him. He was a tired-looking man of sixty, stoop-shouldered but wiry, with iron-gray hair. He was in a faded blue robe and had spectacles pushed up on his forehead.
“Dad! At it again?”
“I can’t help looking at them, Nellie. They’re the most important thing that ever happened in my life. And I think it’s safe to get the others pretty soon.”
“I’d give it another month,” said Nellie Gray.
She went back into the apartment with him, to a small room lined solidly with books save where the door and a window made open spaces. There was a flat-topped desk in the center of the room. The window, opening onto a tiny back yard, let in the afternoon sun.
On the desk were two oblongs of dingy brownish-gray.
They were of dried mud, or clay, or some such stuff, and looked quite commonplace — except that there were strange markings on them.
The markings were the ideograph writing of ancient Indians — Aztec Indians, to be precise.
Gray patted the two crude clay bricks.
“If the university knew what I had here—” he said.
Nellie’s pink-and-white cheeks were a little more white than pink as she stared at the two lumps of dirt.
“If anyone knew what you had there, your life wouldn’t be worth a moment’s notice! Dad, why don’t you put them in a safe-deposit box?”
The distinguished archaeologist smiled sheepishly.
“The miser has to have his gold where he can count it,” he said. “I have to have my archaeological pets where I can see them and gloat over them.”
“But—”
“I’ll put them in a bank tomorrow,” promised Gray. “Did you say there was vegetable stew for dinner? Cooked as only you can cook it?”
The girl got dinner. She cooked as attractively as she looked. Which was enough to whet any appetite. Father and daughter ate, and then Professor Gray went back to the little library and closed his door. He wanted to be alone with his precious bricks again.
Nellie Gray sat in the living room by the radio.
The living room was at the other end of the apartment from the little library. The radio, though she turned it low, drowned any noise which might have come from there. She listened to some concert music.
In the library, Professor Gray turned on his desk lamp as gray dusk faded to black autumn night. The lamp made a pool of bright light on the bricks, with darkness rimming the pool as an overhanging bank rims a pond.
In the darkness came silent-footed terror.
The window opening onto the back yard was open a few inches. A hand, in a black glove, slid into the opening and lifted. Slowly, without sound, the window raised. The professor turned over one of the bricks.
A figure slid over the window sill. Draping the figure and causing it to melt into the shadows was a dark suit, a black felt hat and a dark gray shirt. Even the face could not be seen; in lieu of a mask, the man kept his left hand over all his features but the eyes. The eyes burned murderously at the unconscious back of the engrossed professor.
“Soon,” Gray murmured to himself, smiling, “we’ll get them all together again. Then—”
The black, dim figure crept toward the seated man. In one black-gloved hand was a short, metallic object that glinted a little as light struck it.
Down the hall, Nellie Gray turned from classical music to swing. With the change in rhythm, the black shape from the night paused, hand upraised. Then the hand swept down. The hand with the metallic thing in it.