“Your nephew, Henry?”
“Not so fortunate,” said Benson, tone grim.
Cranlowe peered into the expressionless image of Blandell’s face — necessarily expressionless because of the paralyzed muscles beneath — and shook his big head.
“It’s a miracle! But I’m glad it happened, John. Come into the library.”
Benson, walking with portly dignity as Blandell had walked, followed the man who looked like Poe into the book-lined room. He had woven together the few meager facts he knew about Blandell’s last hours into a likely statement to explain his visit.
“I won’t stay long,” he said. “I only came to tell you something I suppose you’ve already guessed plainly enough.”
“And that is?” said Cranlowe.
“There won’t be any more money advanced to you for a while. Neither mine, nor the bank’s. My personal funds are all tied up in the bank, and of course the bank is honoring none of my loans now that I’m supposed to be insane.”
Cranlowe nodded his huge head. “I was afraid of that. And I’ll confess that I need money desperately. I always have seemed to need it. Now, for some reason, my royalty payments on torpedo controls haven’t been coming from Jenner, and I’m in very bad shape. I must have money!”
“You can hang on for a while, can’t you?”
Cranlowe shrugged. “This place — the guards — everything requires a lot of cash. I can’t let the guards go or give up my fortress home — with my knowledge. But I can’t keep them, either, without cash.”
“You wouldn’t — sell the formula?” Benson queried.
Cranlowe’s stooped shoulders straightened. “Not if I starve!” he said. “Only one thing can ever draw that formula from me. That is, if a small, weak nation is attacked by a big, ruthless one. Then the small nation gets it for nothing.”
“But if you’re forced to leave this guarded place, and strangers can get near you, someone might steal the formula—”
“I thought I’d told you,” Cranlowe said. “I have never set that formula down on paper. It exists only in my memory. And that’s a place safer than any vault.”
“I wonder,” murmured Benson.
“What do you mean?”
“A secret can be tortured out of a man.”
“That can never happen while I’m here,” laughed Cranlowe. “Later, if I can’t get money to pay guards— But we can cross that bridge when we come to it. While I’m here I am safe.”
“You seem very sure.”
“Come with me,” said Cranlowe, rising. “I’ll show you something you haven’t seen before. Just another of my many precautions. I was not quite such a fool in giving my ultimatum to the world as people probably think.”
At the door of the library, the servant with the two guns was standing. He stood aside as Cranlowe came forward; and Benson followed him out of the room.
Cranlowe took him down dark stairs, to the basement of the place.
“You remember the peculiarity of this hilltop?” said Cranlowe. “Its queer rock formation was one reason why I built here.”
“Of course,” said Benson, wondering what it was.
“But you’ve probably forgotten, in the years the house has been here. I’ll show you how it works out, now.”
The inventor led the way through a conventional cellar with heating plant and other equipment, to a heavy door. He opened this, and exposed a second basement. And this one was oddly cold and drafty.
Cranlowe switched on a light, and Benson saw what he had meant by mentioning a “peculiar rock formation.”
In the center of this basement, the floor of which was bare earth, was a black, irregular ditch. At least it seemed to be a ditch, till he moved closer. Then he saw that it went down and down, into black depths. And from far down there a hundred feet or more at least, came the faint trickle of water.
“There is my disposal arrangement,” said Cranlowe. “A branch of the Garfield River runs under there. It must be around the range of hills between here and Garfield City. And it must flow underground for at least twenty miles, for no one knows of this branch at all.”
“Disposal arrangement?” Benson echoed Cranlowe’s words, staring into the black, deadly chasm.
Cranlowe drew himself up.
“With a secret like mine, I hold myself above the law,” he said quietly. “And since I am greater than the law, I dare not call in the law to protect me.”
Benson was staring at the man. There was egotism and eccentricity here that approached mental unbalance. And yet the man was sharp enough.
“I am the law under this roof,” Cranlowe said. “And I am executioner. If anyone does manage to get in here to steal my secret, he shall go down this chasm. His body will appear, hours later and miles away, in the Garfield River. And that is all anyone will know about it.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for your attitude,” Benson said. Then, since he had many more things he wanted to question Cranlowe about, as Blandell, he started to suggest that they go back upstairs.
But the suggestion was never made.
The door from the other basement opened, and four of Cranlowe’s shotgun-armed guards walked in.
“So?” said Cranlowe.
“That’s right, boss,” one of the four said.
“What—” began Benson.
The look in Cranlowe’s blazing, dark eyes interrupted him.
“I don’t know who you are,” the inventor said, “nor by what devil’s genius you can imitate another so perfectly. But imitation it is!”
Benson stared at the inventor, whose teeth showed suddenly in tremendous anger.
“Blandell, eh? When a man’s death is announced in the headlines of all the papers, and later that man shows up in person — it is time to investigate and corroborate. While you were on your way from gate to house, I ordered a man to phone Garfield City headquarters about you and, also, to phone whatever undertaking establishment you were supposed to be in. If everything wasn’t all right, these four picked men of mine were to report to me — down here.”
“So we report,” said one of the four, a big fellow with doglike loyalty in his eyes. “You see, Blandell is now holding down a slab in Fain’s Undertaking Parlor in Garfield City, and he’s already half-embalmed. So he can’t be here too, can he?”
“Grab him!” said Cranlowe. “Throw him down the chasm!”
The cold, dank air eddied up from the deep crack in solid rock as the four dragged Benson to the edge of the abyss.
CHAPTER IX
The Stalker
The rent on the three-room hotel-apartment suite was quite excessive. They were beautiful rooms, on the fifteenth floor, but they weren’t worth the high rent. However, Nellie Gray, registered as Josephine Lang, hadn’t even looked twice at the figure. None of the aides of The Avenger thought about expenses. They didn’t have to.
None, that is, save MacMurdie, who would always be in anguish when he had to spend a nickel, no matter how unlimited was the supply of nickels at his disposal.
Down two floors, there was a suite much larger than Nellie’s, and renting for twice as much. It was rented to Mrs. Jesse Cranlowe. The fancy sum indicated one of two things: Either Mr. Cranlowe had unlimited means at his disposal, too, or she was a very selfish person about her expenditures.
“It must be the latter,” said Nellie to Rosabel. “For the chief told us that Cranlowe was pinched for money at the moment. I guess the second Mrs. Cranlowe doesn’t care how pinched he is!”
“She seems to be nice, though,” said Rosabel.
“Yes, she does,” Nellie admitted. “I guess she’s more ignorant in financial matters, and spoiled, than mean. She probably hasn’t any idea what it means to be pinched for money.”
“She and Mr. Cranlowe’s son get along better than children and stepmothers often do,” said Rosabel.