There was a series of thuds, like the simultaneous dropping of windblown ripe fruit from a tree. But this was strange and evil fruit!
The ceiling of the little office was about nine feet high, and above that extended empty space to the roof of the warehouse building itself. The men had been on this office top section. They were the fruit that had thudded to the floor.
Seven or eight of them— With blackjacks and clubbed guns!
“Chief!” yelled Mac.
But there had been no need to yell. Benson had heard the slight sounds the men had made in squirming to the edge to drop over. Less than a second of warning. But it was enough.
In The Avenger’s right hand was Mike, reloaded after shooting the lock out. In his left was the almost as deadly Ike, the throwing knife. Two of the world’s queerest weapons.
Mike whispered and one of the men went down with a little hole in his shoulder, again conforming to Benson’s refusal to take life, for he could have hit the heart just as well.
Mac wasn’t fighting for the moment. With men clawing for him, his hands were fiddling with his belt, as if he had an arsenal there. One man had a blackjack lifted over the Scot’s head.
Benson’s left hand flashed out. The Avenger was able to use either hand at all forms of fighting. Ike flashed from his fingers, sliced agonizingly across the back of the hand that held the sap, and went on to fall in shadow. Mike spat again, and a man went down with a gash on the exact top of his head, stunned but not killed. And then the rest were on Mac and Dick.
Mac’s hands weren’t at his waist any more. They were clenched into bone mallets of fists, and they began to do excellent work. Two men went down. Another yelled as The Avenger, unable to use the gun at close range, got a nerve pressure on the fellow’s thigh that made him think his leg was coming off at the hip.
This second time, Mac had no chance to yell to his chief, as he’d done when men thudded from above the office. He didn’t see the newcomers himself till a gun was swinging at his skull.
They’d come from behind a pile of crated furniture and sneaked up behind Mac and Dick. And they turned the odds into something unbeatable.
Mac went down from that clubbing gun. And the last thing that registered on his consciousness was the sight of another man clubbing down with a gun at the head of The Avenger.
CHAPTER XV
Dead Dentist
It is advantageous to have buildings on rivers, but their basements are usually a drawback because water seeps in. There are two ways to overcome this: spend some money and make the walls watertight, or spend a little less for a pump to pump out the seepage.
The basement of the Gallic Importing Co.’s warehouse was armored against the seepage from the East River by the pump method.
But the pump was not working now. It had been switched off, and the water was rising in the basement.
It was the cold water, up to Mac’s ankles, that finally brought consciousness back to him. He opened his eyes, batted them in bewilderment, then realized all that had happened.
“Chief!” he barked in sudden apprehension.
There was no answer. In anguish, Mac tried to get up, and found he was tied hand and foot. He looked around the place. In the light of a couple of little twenty-five-watt bulbs, he saw Dick Benson.
The Avenger was still unconscious, slumped against the wall. Blood was matted in his close-cut, thick black hair from that crack on the head. Mac felt a gripping fear, but then the pale, deadly eyes opened.
Benson had a wild animal’s ability to regain consciousness fully alert. When he woke, no matter how sound the sleep, he woke all over, at once. It was the same on coming out of unconsciousness.
The colorless, composed eyes turned toward Mac’s anxious face.
“So they trapped us,” Dick said quietly.
“It looks like it,” said Mac. “The skurlies! If I ever get my hands on them—”
“Water from the river?” said Benson, staring at the rising flood in the basement.
“Yes,” said Mac. “Risin’ pretty fast. But I guess it’ll be a couple of hours before we have trouble. And long before that we’ll get out.” Mac’s cockeyed philosophy of being a shining optimist when trouble was worst was coming to the fore.
This time, however, Mac had a real basis for it.
Benson was trying to get the trick sawing-wire in the edge of his vest working. But, by chance, the gang had bound him so that he couldn’t quite get his fingers on the end loop.
“The rats — to leave the lights on, so we could see the water risin’, said Mac bitterly. “The skurlies! The—”
There was sound above. There was commotion, as of heavy things being thrown down violently. There were yells and a shot or two!
Benson looked quickly at Mac. And the dour Scot displayed one of his rare grins.
“That,” Mac said contentedly, “will be young Cole Wilson. And it sounds like he’s as good a scrapper as I had an idea he’d be! A bonny boy, Muster Benson.”
“Wilson?” echoed Dick.
“While you were shootin’ the lock out with little Mike, I was tappin’ the street address of this warehouse to Cole. When the men jumped us, I had just time to tap one SOS.”
And Mac had just time to finish that, too, when the racket upstairs suddenly died down.
There was the creak of a door, fast steps on stairs, the splash of hurried feet through almost knee-deep water, and then Cole Wilson’s blazing black eyes took in the spectacle.
“Good!” Wilson said, running his powerful hand through his dark hair. “I don’t feel so bad about that one with the red mustache.”
He sliced ropes from Benson and Mac and helped them up. Mac had a shrewd idea that the chief would never have been drowned down there; that he would have come out somehow without aid. But it would have been unkind to mention it in Wilson’s hearing. Cole was too tickled with himself for having come to the aid of The Avenger.
“Thanks, Cole,” said Dick. And Wilson flushed with pleasure. This was rare praise, just the thanks.
“What are ye talking about — one with a red mustache?” said Mac, stumbling through the water to the stairs with the circulation slowly coming back to his cramped limbs.
“Some of the gang who put you down here were on duty up above,” said Wilson. “Guess they were going to make sure the water got you, and then float your bodies down the river so it would look like natural death from drowning. I had to tangle with them. I hit one too hard — a fellow with a red mustache and a scar under his left ear. I was kind of sorry about it till I saw what they’d done to you.”
Wilson looked rather apprehensively at The Avenger, but Dick Benson said nothing. He himself never took life if it could be avoided; but if an aide, in the thick of battle, happened to strike too hard, that was one crook less and it couldn’t be helped.
“How many of them were there?” said Mac.
“Only four,” said Cole with a shrug.
“Child’s play,” said Mac solemnly.
Meanwhile, Dick was looking around with those pale, clear eyes of his. Those eyes were like microscopes when the occasion demanded, or as telescopic as a hawk’s eyes when there was distance to pry into. He picked something up off the water.
It was a match folder, empty, crumpled in an impatient hand when the owner of the hand started to light a cigarette and found no matches there. On the folder was an advertisement for the Pair-O’-Dice Café. The folder claimed it to be fifty minutes from Times Square, dine and dance, fine food, fine music.
“Someone in the gang searched us carefuly,” said The Avenger, his calm, pale gaze on the sodden folder. “They got the three gold crowns from me.”
Mac exclaimed in dismay and anger.