CHAPTER XI
Field Reports
Benson’s pale eyes in his dead, white face were like little ice chips in a glacial sea. He seemed to stare right through Josh, such was his concentration on the report.
“That’s a thing no one would believe if it hadn’t actually happened,” he said at length. “The cold openness of it! And yet, it wasn’t as reckless as it seems. If he had succeeded in killing you, no one in the shop could have proved that you did not fall. All would have thought you had, because of his warning yell. So he would have gotten away with it. But it was mad. Insane! You say not one trace of his purpose was in his face?”
“No,” said Josh. “He was smiling and pleasant. No one could have guessed there was anything in his mind.”
“He must be a clever actor.”
Josh said, after a moment: “I can swear to that because I was watching his face closely. It was most unusual for a high executive to decide suddenly to take a shoe-shining Negro through the plant. I was sure something was wrong. So I kept watching his face, and now I realize there was one peculiar thing about him. He didn’t show any trace of dangerous intentions, but he did look just a little as if he were listening.”
“Listening?” said Benson.
“Yes! Almost as if some voice a long way off were trying to tell him something.”
The Avenger’s eyes glinted. Something about that last statement had set the flaming genius of his brain to moving in a new direction. But he didn’t put any of it into words.
“Stay in for a while, Josh,” he said. “And when you go out again, change your appearance a bit. Murder may strike at you again if you’re too easily recognized.”
Josh went out to one of the other vacant offices of the suite. And Benson turned to his small radio as the call signal of one of his aides sounded.
It was Smitty.
“Chief,” came the giant’s voice, in guarded accents, “I think I’ve stumbled onto something; so I thought I’d call and tell you about it.”
“Listening,” said The Avenger, voice quiet and crisp.
“You wanted me to get on the trail of the guys who tried to kill us. I didn’t have any definite lead on it; so I just began nosing around the crooks’ haunts, picking up what I could. Garfield City isn’t so big, but it seems it has a very well organized underworld. There’s a gang here as deadly and efficient as anything in Chicago. Run by a guy named Kopell, who is open for any job from murder down, for a few hundred bucks. Kopell lives openly and in style at the Garfield Point Hotel; has the whole top floor. So I went there, and I’ve been nosing since noon.”
“You’re there now?” said Benson.
“Yes!”
“Where are you speaking from? Your voice is barely audible.”
“I have to talk low,” explained Smitty. “I’m in a closet on Kopell’s floor. When he rented the floor, he didn’t rearrange any. The regular corridor is still there, with linen closet and all. I’m in the linen closet, now.”
“You said you’d stumbled onto something,” said Benson.
“Yes! Just a thing I happened to overhear. It was a mention of a guy at Garfield Gear. That’s the way it was put. “The guy at Garfield Gear.’ That’s all I heard, but to my mind it ties the company in with Garfield City’s underworld quite neatly.”
“Yes,” said Benson grimly, thinking of Josh’s terrible experience at the plant, “it does! Meanwhile, I have heard from Nellie Gray something that may help you. She has reported on two men who seem to be quite active in keeping tabs on Cranlowe’s wife. One is a young fellow whose eyes look much too old for him. The other is a jolly-looking fat man.”
“Check!” said Smitty. “Those are two of the guys that have been coming in and out of Kopell’s floor all afternoon. Signing off, chief. I’ll look around some more.”
The little radio went dead. And The Avenger turned from it. The glittering intensity of his colorless eyes showed that he was methodically tabulating what he had learned to date. More pieces all the time. With the proper places for them and more clearly indicated.
Cranlowe was frantically in need of money for two reasons. One was that his government royalty payments were being held up because of defective shipments of torpedo control parts from Garfield Gear. The other was because Blandell, his backer as well as friend, was out of the picture. So that looked pretty deliberate.
Somebody had first discredited Blandell, to keep him from advancing Cranlowe more loans. Then had discredited Sessel, who came to help his “demented” uncle. Then had had to kill both when they began to investigate around for the cause of their mental troubles. The point was that from the first the purpose had been to get Blandell out of the way and break Cranlowe financially. Granting this, it was reasonable to assume that the royalty payments had been stopped, in some crooked way, for the same reason: If Cranlowe could be bankrupted out of that fortress home of his, he would be defenseless and it would be easy to get to him and pry that war secret from him.
He knew why these various things had been done. But how! There was no guessing.
Blandell had been discredited by acting like a lunatic. So had Sessel. Then both had been killed by another, well-known man, also acting like a lunatic. In addition there were the insane acts of Cranlowe’s driver and Cranlowe’s secretary.
How had these people been impelled to do these things? Did it have anything to do with the queer “listening” look which Josh had read in Jenner’s face? There was no key to that, at the moment. Benson would have to know more before he could arrive at more definite conclusions.
Smitty had said he was in a closet when he had contacted his chief. A linen closet. He found its confines cramped for his huge body. So he got out of it as fast as he could after whispering into his tiny radio.
The top-floor hall of the hotel building had been furnished like the hall of a private home when Kopell took it over. There were urns along it, and a few big chairs, and a chest or two.
Smitty, looking out the cracked door of the linen closet, had seen that all the men who came here in the time he’d been concealed went to the same door; a portal at the front of the building on the left-hand side. And in front of that door a man lounged all the time, with a toothpick between his yellowed teeth and his coat unbuttoned so that now and then you could see the butt of a gun at his shoulder.
This guarded door was about twenty feet from the door of Smitty’s closet. He wanted very much to get into it — and out of the closet. But the man had to be dealt with first, and dealt with noiselessly.
Smitty’s vast hand went into his pocket and came out with a five-dollar bill. He opened the closet door two inches, wadding up the bill as he did so.
The guard at the door was staring dreamily at the opposite wall. The toothpick bobbled between his lips as he thought of something pleasant — possibly a glass of beer. He scratched his neck contentedly, and turned just a little toward the hall window.
Smitty snapped the wadded-up bill out along the hall as far toward the man as he could, using thumb and forefinger as a boy snaps a marble. The bill stopped about ten feet from the closet door and spread out slightly on the corridor carpet.
The man at the far door turned back from the window, scratched again, looked placidly toward the rear, and saw the green, wadded bit of paper.
Smitty had reasoned well. Even a millionaire will stop to pick up money if he sees it lying loose. When it comes to a gangster and a five-dollar bill—
The man stared with an unbelieving look, then with a look of slyness. Instinctively he gazed around to be sure no one was watching. Then he walked fast to the bill, and stooped down for it.
And Smitty sprang!