Now guns roared! Smitty and Mac yelled as bullets raised welts under the bulletproof celluglass garments that shielded their bodies; yelled and raced for three tables next to the orchestra dais.
This was the main body of the gang, all right. There were ten men at the three tables. Rather, there had been ten places set. Seven were filled, the other three represented by the men lying like cordwood in the hall and the fellow with the mashed face in the doorway.
Almost all the seven had their guns out. So Smitty threw a table at them.
Simple? Sure. He just threw a table at them. But when it is pointed out that the tables were of the rustic type with young logs for legs and thick slabs for tops, it becomes not quite so simple. Try throwing a hundred and twenty or thirty pounds sometime.
The table only hit two of the group of seven because their chairs were so scattered. But these two stayed hit, and the rest had instinctively ducked when the ponderous object sailed at their heads, ruining their aim.
And then the three attackers were too close to be shot at.
Smitty socked a man who had managed to get to his feet. The man had had his fists up, with a gun in one, in a pretty good guard. But guards didn’t bother the giant any. He had never learned to box, simply because he didn’t need to.
He just hit at a man. If the man had his body or face guarded, the power of the giant’s blow was enough to drive the man’s own fists against him with knockout force. It did so in this case.
Cole landed on another; Mac swung and missed and was clouted glancingly with a gun butt.
Mac came up from the floor with a chair in his hands. Then his hands held only the splintered back of a chair, and bits of leg and seat spread between the prone bodies of two men the chair had reached.
Smitty suddenly bellowed “Ouch!” and whirled like a maddened bull elephant. In the doorway were the two men Cole had seen upstairs, drawn down by the commotion. Behind them, crowded at the barroom door, were the men from the bar.
One of the two had shot the giant in the back, and shield or no shield, it had hurt.
Smitty had happened to be engaged in swinging one man by the ankles like a club at two more men, when the shot got him. So when he turned, he stood, furious, with a leg in his left hand and the body of the man dripping down from the leg. It was like a child standing with a doll in its hand. And the sight, like a movie set of King Kong on a rampage, was a little more than the nerves of the men in the doorway could stand.
One of them yelled quaveringly. The other tried to yell and only gasped like a fish. Then both turned and ran for their lives, with Smitty bellowing after — forgetting till he reached the doorway to drop the leg he held.
There was the scream of a car engine, like that of a horse roweled beyond endurance. And Smitty turned back into the café, growling like a frustrated grizzly bear who had just had a hunter “that big” get away from him.
There was nothing left to do in the café. Mac and Cole were the only two standing. Except Mac wasn’t standing. He was going through the pockets of the paunchy man — who was going to need a new face when he came to.
Three little gold things glinted for an instant in Mac’s hand.
“Okay,” he said, straightening up.
So they went out to their car, with no one in the bar making a move. It wasn’t their fight; they were just customers here. And even if it had been their fight, the sight of Smitty dangling a man carelessly from his hand by the leg was one to linger long.
The three headed back to the city. They were as purry as cats after cream. Not for weeks had they had so satisfying a fight, with bare hands against the hated rats in human form they lived to attack.
“Nice,” said Mac with a sigh as the lights of New York glowed ahead. “We’ve got the three gold crowns back; the chief can release Farquar from the blackmailin’, and the case is closed.”
But The Avenger didn’t act as if the case were closed when they had returned to Bleek Street and turned in the crowns. He took a few thoughtful steps up and down the vast top-floor room, pale eyes burning like ice with light behind it.
And then the three remembered that there was more than blackmail to clear up, now. There were some fancy and assorted murders, too.
Salloway and Cleeves dead.
It looked as if one man held the solution to everything. Beall.
It looked as if Beall had killed the two, to get all the blackmail money; had sent Smathers to his death; had locked the two girls in the office vault to die; had done all the dirty work, with the aid of a hired gang.
But one queer thing couldn’t be explained by that.
If Beall was the power behind this, why had his son been kidnaped? Where did that fit in?
The Avenger dialed a number. It was Farquar’s number. Farquar still hadn’t come home; no one knew where he was. And there was that blood on his office floor!
It looked as if the lawyer, victim of blackmail, had been caught up with at last and was either dead or in peril.
CHAPTER XVII
The Perforated Ball
“We’ve got to get hold of Farquar — and fast!” said Cole Wilson anxiously.
“And of the mon Beall, too!” said Mac grimly. “He’s at the core of this thing.”
Dick Benson said nothing. He slowly paced the floor of the big headquarters room, like a thoughtful panther.
The red speck of light by the door warned that someone had come in the vestibule downstairs. But there was no buzz for admittance; so whoever had come in belonged here.
It was Nellie Gray and Harriet and the mountainous Smitty. The Avenger had sent Smitty and Nellie to pick up Beall and his son and bring them to Bleek Street at once. Harriet had tearfully insisted on going, too.
But they had not brought back Beall and his son.
“Neither of them has been home since late last night,”
Smitty said. “And nobody in the household knows anything about them.”
“I’m sure something terrible has happened to Dad and my brother,” Harriet cried.
Nellie looked sympathetically at her. Nellie was very sorry for Harriet, whose father was up to his neck in blackmail and murder — probably to save his firm which was on the verge of bankruptcy — but whom Harriet firmly believed to be an innocent man.
“There was no trace of them at all?” Dick asked the giant evenly.
“No trace at all,” said Smitty. “But we didn’t really turn the heat on and put out the kind of dragnet we can throw. Want us to go back and do that?”
Benson nodded. “Question everyone near the Beall place — newsstands, filling stations, local police. Comb the neighborhood. I want that man. It is vital that I get my hands on him. You, Nellie, might try the office angle. There is just a chance that Beall has been in touch with someone there this morning.”
The two went out again. Harriet went down to the exquisite boudoir assigned to her on the second floor. And The Avenger began his slow pacing again, with his pale thoughtful eyes like agate.
It was midmorning of the day after the Pair-O’-Dice episode, which had been so disruptive to the roadhouse. It was a gray, cloudy day, with moisture particles combining with the soot of the city to form a depressing pall.
The phone buzzed. The Avenger got to it so swiftly that it had been hard to see his separate moves. It was as if he had streaked there like an electric arc.
The rest in the room — Mac, Wilson, Josh, and Rosabel — watched him tensely, and they all gave a start at the name Dick dropped.
“Hello. Yes, Farquar! We’ve been trying to find you. There’s good news for you. All three clues. Yes, I have them all— What?”