In the lid of the little case was a mirror. Beside this, Benson pinned a photograph of — John Blandell.
The steely, white fingers prodded at the dead white face, and a miracle was wrought.
Blandell’s face had been heavy, pudgy-featured. With a great deal of manipulation and the use of a very little plastic, Benson’s face became the same way. Blandell’s eyes were brown; Benson slipped two of the ingenious little eye-shells over his eyeballs, and had brown eyes. Blandell’s hair was brown, streaked with gray. There was a wig like that in the case. Blandell’s body was burly, sagging with middle age. Benson’s body became that way with the use of artful rubber forms that could be inflated at waist and thigh, hips and upper arms.
The Avenger went to the corridor door of the empty office suite, and he was not Benson. He even walked like Blandell; in his careful gleaning of information concerning the banker, he had learned all his mannerisms.
The Avenger was not Benson — he was a man shot dead and at that moment in a funeral parlor being prepared for the grave.
He went out of the building, head down to keep from rousing incredulous recognition among chance acquaintances of Blandell, and climbed into a hired car. He drove to the country place of Jesse Cranlowe.
It had seemed insanely foolhardy for any man to dare to announce with all possible publicity that he was the possessor of a secret worth millions to any supercrook who could steal it. But a look at his place showed that he had quite a chance of protecting that secret, at that.
Cranlowe Heights was on a bare hilltop about eighteen miles out of Garfield City. The hilltop had been made bare. There was nothing but close-cropped grass for five hundred yards around the knoll, giving no possible cover for anyone trying to sneak up on it.
Around the base of the hill was an iron fence at least twelve feet high. Along the top ran a single heavy wire; and that wire was charged with voltage enough to kill a man at a touch. Along the top of the fence, floodlights were studded to play over the close-cut grass outside at night.
There was no chance at all of sneaking into the place, as Benson had guessed beforehand; so he had decided to come in openly. And there was no chance of entering openly unless you were a trusted friend, or someone highly unusual.
And that was why Benson had decided to come as Blandell.
Blandell had been a trusted friend of Cranlowe. Now he was dead — or reported so in the papers. His sudden appearance here, when he was supposed to be dead, ought to create such amazement and consternation that ordinary precautions of guards and servants would be relaxed.
Benson reached the heavy gate in the iron fence in his rented car. He got out of the car, walking like the dead banker. A guard with a sawed-off shotgun over his shoulder came to the inside of the gate, looked surlily at Blandell’s image — then glared with wide eyes and pale face.
“Mr. Blandell! But you’re dead! You’re shot! What the hell are you — a ghost?”
Blandell, Benson’s information had said, was an impatient, domineering man.
“Come, come!” Benson snapped peevishly. “Don’t keep me standing here. Let me in at once.”
“You — you are Mr. Blandell, aren’t you?”
“What do you think? Open that gate, instantly.”
The guard did so, with trembling fingers. And when Benson stepped inside, he felt furtive fingertips on his arm. The man was touching him to make sure he really had substance.
“You’ll have to stay here a minute while I phone,” the guard said.
“Of course,” Benson said crisply. “But hurry, please.”
There was a telephone on the gatepost. Benson saw the man pick it up, and ring. Meanwhile he looked around.
There were no trees inside the fence, either. There had been many; but they had recently been felled and taken away. The reason, of course, was Cranlowe’s invention. He had had to sacrifice beauty in order to be sure no daring thief entered his place under cover of trees or bushes. The grounds surrounding the house were bare, with no shelter anywhere.
The house itself was like a castle. Cranlowe had taken some castle on the Rhine as an architectural pattern; and here it stood, narrow slits in thick walls for windows, two turrets with flat tops on either end, a double, iron-studded door in front.
As Benson looked around, he saw three more men with shotguns patrolling; there were at least eight here, he concluded. And with them were eight or ten Great Dane dogs, the biggest and most ferocious-looking dogs Benson had ever seen. Cranlowe was guarding his formula, all right!
Benson could hear the conversation between the guard and the master of this house at the open phone.
“Blandell is there!” came a harsh, strong voice from the castlelike residence. “Blandell? Are you insane? He’s dead! He was murdered by Allen Wainwright.”
“Maybe Blandell’s dead,” said the guard, perspiring, though it was quite cool. “But he’s here at the gate just the same.”
“You’ve gone blind!”
“Nothing’s the matter with my eyes, Mr. Cranlowe. I’ve let Mr. Blandell in often enough to know him when I see him. And he’s here right now.”
“Let me talk to him.”
Benson took the receiver from the guard. Here was a shaky moment. When The Avenger impersonated someone, he usually had all knowledge of that person at his fingertips. He had a great deal of information on Blandell — but not all. He hadn’t had time or opportunity for that.
He did not know, for example, just what Blandell was in the habit of calling his old friend Cranlowe. So, to avoid calling him by an unused nickname or term, he didn’t mention the inventor’s name in any way.
“Tell this too-vigilant guard of yours to pass me to the house, will you?” Benson snapped into the phone. “I’ve been kept standing around long enough, I think.”
“Blandell!” Cranlowe gasped, at sound of the impatient, rather pompous voice. “You are— But how—”
“I’ll tell you about it when I get in and see you.”
“Get the guard on again,” said Cranlowe.
Benson gave the phone back to the man with the sawed-off shotgun.
A moment later he was walking to the great iron-studded front door. This opened as he neared it. An inside servant, or guard, with two automatics in a belt around his waist, admitted him.
This man, too, stared with bulging eyes at a man supposed to have been murdered yesterday.
And then Cranlowe was advancing down the wide hall.
Jesse Cranlowe, almost as well-known a name in the circles of invention as Thomas Edison, was a very tall, very thin, very stooped man nearing sixty. He had intense, black eyes deep in his head under heavy black brows. His head was enormous, and while he wasn’t actually bald, he gave the impression of being so. There just didn’t seem to be quite enough lank black hair to cover his huge skull.
He stared at Benson, looking like Edgar Allen Poe, and then came forward with both hands out.
“John, old friend!”
Benson took the extended hands. He disliked playing on emotions of friendship like this, but he had to know things from Cranlowe, for the inventor’s own good, and this was the only way of learning them.
“Your murder!” exclaimed Cranlowe, black eyes burning far back in his head. “All the papers said you were shot yesterday outside Jenner’s office. Everyone I know, personally, said the same thing. And here you are, alive.”
“I was shot at,” Benson said. “The shot missed. But headquarters was afraid another might be tried; so they are letting it be thought that the shot was successful, and, meanwhile, I keep out of sight.”