She put her hands over her eyes.
“After that, I came here for help.”
“You weren’t very helpful yourself, were you?” said Benson quietly. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
Harriet spread her hands miserably.
“I come for help, and what is the first thing I find? You are working for Farquar; for the man I feel is Dad’s bitter enemy! I didn’t know whether you were really in with him, or were being hoodwinked by him. I gave you the benefit of the doubt by staying here, but I didn’t dare tell all I knew till I’d found out more about you.”
“You’re not telling all you know, even now,” said The Avenger, face as calm as his voice. “There’s something more. What is it?”
“There isn’t any more—”
“What is it?” said Dick inexorably.
So Harriet, after a pleading glance, gave in.
“While the two were in the alley, I saw still another man appear from somewhere and do something to the first car — the sedan. He might have been searching it, I don’t know. I was watching the alley more than the car and only saw the man out of the corner of my eye.”
“For goodness’ sake,” said Nellie impatiently. “I don’t see why you should be so careful to keep that to yourself!”
“I think I do,” said Benson quietly. He was still staring at Harriet. “You felt you knew that man searching the car, didn’t you?”
“Why, I… I—”
“You thought it was your father!”
And then the little pinpoint of red showed near the door, in warning that someone was in the vestibule downstairs. Josh went to the tiny television set that revealed anyone there.
“Markham Farquar,” Josh said. And he pressed the admittance buzzer at Benson’s nod.
“Farquar?” cried Harriet wildly. “Let me out of here! I don’t want to face that man!”
Nellie looked at The Avenger, and Benson nodded again. So Nellie took Harriet out and down to her room on the second floor.
“You know what I think?” said Smitty. And the giant said it regretfully because Harriet was a very pretty girl and Smitty was susceptible to such. “I think she’s in with her father on this blackmail plot. I think she’s hanging around here, trying to spy on us, and ready to throw a monkey wrench in the gears if we begin to really threaten Beall’s safety.”
Then the door opened and Markham Farquar came in. The man whom Harriet Beall didn’t dare face.
Farquar looked like a sick man. Gone was his imposing carriage and his air of authority. He seemed less than life-size, shriveled, defeated.
“I just came to tell you,” he said dully, “that I’m giving up the fight on this affair. I’m licked. I’m going to scrape together the blackmail sum, pay it, and get some peace.”
“Oh?” said Benson, face impassive. “You’ve had more trouble lately, then?”
Farquar laughed a little wildly. “Trouble! Four times in ten hours I’ve missed being killed by a matter of inches! Somehow, someone has rung a gang of killers or racketeers in on this. I think the attempts on my life were deliberately meant not quite to succeed. Just to show me on how slim a thread my life hung if I didn’t surrender! So — I’m giving in.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Dick Benson’s eyes were like cold wells of pale ice in his expressionless face.
“There has been murder. There have been attempts at kidnaping. Such things are my business, Mr. Farquar. I intend to go ahead.”
Farquar’s shoulders straightened a very little. He looked hopefully at The Avenger.
“You think we have a chance to beat them?”
“I do,” said Benson.
“You give me new courage,” said Farquar, voice a bit tremulous. “Very well, then, we’ll try a little longer.”
“Would you like to put up here at Bleek Street?” asked Benson. “It would stop these attempts on your life.”
Farquar shook his head.
“I’ll stay for a while to throw possible trailers off my track; then I’ll go home and lock myself in. You have my number. You can tell me any developments over the phone.”
“I can tell you one now,” said Dick. “We have reason to believe that your clerk, Smathers, did not go home or anywhere else from your office, the night he died. He left for Death’s address, direct from your place.”
“From my office?” Farquar said, with panic in his voice. “That’s bad. That’s very bad! It would look in a law court — if this ever gets to court — as if I sent him on that last errand of his! You’re sure of this?”
“Reasonably sure,” said Benson, not giving the source of the information.
Farquar drew a deep breath.
“I’ll still put my faith in Justice, Inc. I still believe that you can get hold of those three bits of fake evidence held over me, and I’ll hang on till then.”
He left with a different gait from the one with which he’d entered, after waiting a while, as he had said, to throw possible trailers off his path.
“Scaring him physically as well as mentally,” mused Smitty. “The blackmailers must be getting desperate, chief. Suppose one of those near-attempts on his life should accidentally succeed? Then there wouldn’t be any Farquar left to pay out the money.”
The Avenger nodded, eyes pale and icy, face impassive.
CHAPTER XIII
Two More Crowns
Cole Wilson had hung on Beall’s trail like a shadow. But even a shadow can be given the slip occasionally — in the darkness, for instance.
Beall had managed to lose Wilson for several hours the night Harriet and Nellie had been shut up in the office vault. Then Wilson had picked up the trail of Beall again, and had kept to it.
Now, at a little after noon of the next day, Wilson had again taken his station outside the Beall grounds.
But he hadn’t left his car where he’d parked it before. Car and place had proved to be well located, by the ramming the gang had given it when they came out with the kidnaped son of Beall.
Wilson’s car was five blocks away, this time — another car. Wilson himself was hiding in weeds along the iron fence where it came closest to the house.
And he was damned tired of it.
“I’m going to bust this stalemate,” he told himself rebelliously. Wilson was always impulsive. “I’m going to get in that house and see what goes on.”
Beall had not moved out of the place since coming in late last night, either to go to his office or anywhere else. Neither had Beall’s son.
Wilson looked around. There was no one near enough to see him, he judged. He reached up, caught the top of the iron picket fence, drew himself over, and dropped inside.
He did it just about that swiftly, too, vaulting the ten-foot height rather than actually climbing it. The compact power of this man, and his daring, made him a very able henchman for The Avenger indeed.
Inside the grounds, Wilson crept toward the house. The way his dark hair grew back from his forehead made him look slightly Indian. He moved in a way reminding one of Indians, too.
It was broad daylight, of course, but so deftly did Cole slide from bush to tree bole, and then to the yews next to the house wall, that he had every reason to believe that no one in or near the house could have observed him.
He crouched among bushes near a window. Then he pulled a trick The Avenger had taught him. He drew a slim length of wire from an inner pocket. It is amazing what a complete kit of tools a ten-inch length of wire can be.
He bent the two ends in opposite directions till the wire looked like a tiny periscope. Then he raised the wire till one end pressed against the bottom of the windowpane and put the other solidly between his teeth.