A long way behind her, and very cleverly, a man stalked her as a hunter stalks an animal.
He was the young fellow with the old eyes. In those eyes, now, was speculation — and murder. He trailed her to the building entrance, then hurried to a phone booth from which he could still see the building and make sure Nellie didn’t get out again without his knowledge.
“Kopell?” he muttered into the phone. “Something new on this, I think.”
“You mean on the Cranlowe dame?”
“Yeah! She’s got a new friend awful fast. A swell-looking little blonde. She checked into the building just before dinner, and got talking to the Cranlowe dame. I thought it was pretty fast, and I thought it was pretty smooth. But I wasn’t sure it meant anything, till a while ago. Then I saw the two of ’em go out to put on the feed bag together.”
“So?” said the smooth, oily voice at the other end of the wire.
“Well, look,” said the young fellow. “The blonde could be with some other mob that we don’t know about, couldn’t she? She could be shining up to Cranlowe’s wife on a new angle we ain’t hep to yet, couldn’t she?”
The logic of this was admitted, too.
“So, maybe—” said the young man with the old eyes, reaching mechanically a little way toward his automatic.
“Be on the lookout,” said the oily voice. “Don’t take the chance, yet. But be ready to with one funny move.”
The young man with the ancient eyes patted his shoulder holster.
“You bet,” he said, mouth like a thin gash in his flinty countenance.
CHAPTER X
Two Faces of Death!
Death’s face loomed close in that dark basement under the left wing of the Cranlowe castle.
There was the cellar room, perhaps forty by sixty feet, illuminated only by an unshaded electric bulb at each end. There was the curious chasm running through the center, lengthwise; beginning with a mere crack in the earth at one end of the basement, broadening to ten-foot width in the center, and narrowing to a crack again at the other end.
And there, on the brink, was the man pretending to be John Blandell, with two men gripping each arm.
“Have you anything to say before you’re thrown in there?” snapped Cranlowe.
“Just this,” said Benson quietly. “I’m a friend, not an enemy. I came out here to help you.”
“You sneaked out, made up as an old friend of mine and worked your way in here like a snake into a hole — because you wanted to ‘help’ me?” jeered Cranlowe. “That’s a good one! You came out here to steal my secret. And now you’re going to pay for it with your life. But I’ll take last messages, if you like.”
“There are no last messages,” said Benson steadily.
The cold wind from the river, far below, was dank on his made-up, paralyzed face. The four men looked at Cranlowe, who nodded. Their muscles tightened to force this man over the edge of the chasm.
Cranlowe yelled suddenly. But so fast had it all occurred, that his yell followed the thing he yelled about at least three seconds after it had happened.
Only about five feet eight, The Avenger weighed hardly a hundred and sixty-five pounds. But every one of those pounds had that queer muscle-quality now and then found in a great athlete which is more effective than muscle-quantity can ever be.
With the tensing of the grip of the four, Benson had moved, and moved fast! Backward — not forward. Had he swept his arms forward he might have thrown a couple of the four into the pit, and he didn’t want to do that. They were acting out of loyalty. They did not deserve death.
He swept his arms backward with a suddenness and violence that no one could have dreamed lay in his average-sized body. One of the four holding him fell flat. Another had his grip torn loose, staggered back a few feet, and fought with waving arms to keep his balance. The other two still retained a precarious grip on arms that seemed to have turned to steel bars in their hands.
Benson flung his arms forward, now. He was far enough away from the chasm. And the two remaining men smashed together with a force that knocked both breathless.
The man who had managed to keep his balance leaped in with sawed-off shotgun swinging down like a club! But the figure he aimed at had slid two feet to one side, like an elusive shadow. The gun stock grazed past harmlessly and smashed against the earth floor before the man could stop it. The stock splintered.
The man who had fallen was aiming his gun. Benson jumped for him. Not angry, he was simply trying to get out of a deadly situation with as little hurt as possible. His heels jammed down on the stubby barrel, and it discharged its flood of slugs into the earthen floor.
Benson kept on toward the door after the flashing movement. He seemed to flow toward the exit, rather than run like a normal man. Cranlowe got in his way.
Benson didn’t harm the inventor at all. He caught a thrusting arm and whirled the man around, and then he was at the door. He leaped out, and slammed the portal. There was a bolt on it. He shot that and ran on. The men in the cellar pounded fiercely. Then there was a shot, and half the panels splintered.
One more shotgun blast, and they were free. Benson raced up the stairs.
There was apparently no way out of here. Armed men in the house. Armed men roaming the grounds. Savage dogs loose. Iron fence encircling the place. But The Avenger had picked the one way out even before he had been dragged to the chasm.
The garage of the place was next to the north wing, attached to the castlelike house. He ran down a hall in that direction, felling a servant who first gaped at him and then tried to draw guns. He leaped over the body, slammed through a door at the end of the corridor and raced into the garage.
There was a roadster and a large sedan. The sedan sagged lowest on its tires. Armor-plated, bulletproofed, built to protect a man who had jeopardized his life with an announcement of his super war weapon.
Benson got in and kicked the starter. The motor roared to life. The garage door into the house flung open, and one man fired a shotgun; another let go with an automatic in each hand. The slugs spanged against steel and bulletproof glass — and did not penetrate.
The Avenger had the heavy car rolling. The big front door of the garage was only half opened. No chance to roll it back. So Benson hit it with the car, and tore it half off on his way out! He sped down the driveway.
Ahead of him was the iron fence, and the great iron gate. He had slipped off the special eye-shells as he ran up the basement stairs, because the tissue-thin things might be broken in a fight and injure his eyes. Now his unmasked eyes, colorless and icy and deadly, stared at the gate ahead of him and at the fence beside it.
He made his decision in about a tenth of a second. The fence didn’t look as strong as that gate. So, twenty feet from the gate, he whirled the heavy car to the left.
It jammed into the iron fence beside the gate with a whanggg that could have been heard for half a mile. Jammed into it, rolled through with a sound like tearing paper magnified a thousand times, and then sagged at the front end and stopped like a tired rhinoceros coming to its knees. Both front wheels had been jammed sideways and back, putting the car out of commission.
So many men were running down the driveway after him that it looked like a young army. Ahead of them were loping the dogs.
Benson got out of Cranlowe’s car and jumped into the rented one that he had left at the gate, seeming to be a whisking streak of light rather than a man. He started away from the gate.
Not bulletproofed, this car. Just an ordinary automobile, He took a long look at the straight road ahead, noting that there was a ditch at each side not deep enough to wreck a car but quite pronounced enough to let you know if you hit it. Then he slid out from behind the wheel, and down.