“I hadn’t heard of those two things.”
“But you did hear your dog howl. Have you any idea what was behind his antics?”
“No,” said Jenner, “I haven’t. He howled, and pawed at his ears. But why, I can’t say. Is it important?”
“I think it may be very important, indeed. Haven’t you even a guess to make?”
“Not even a guess,” smiled Jenner.
The white, dead face remained immobile as it always must. The colorless eyes, like bits of ice in moonlight, were steady, like diamond drills on the plant executive’s face.
“Another thing, Mr. Jenner. Royalty payments to Mr. Cranlowe on his torpedo control have been held up recently because the government has rejected recent shipments. Do you know why those shipments should be rejected?”
“I don’t understand,” said Jenner, frowning a little. “You said you were here on the murders of Blandell and Sessel. What have Cranlowe’s royalty payments to do with them?”
“Perhaps a great deal. If you would just tell me what the government has written you concerning the rejections—”
Benson stopped. The pale, chill eyes in his dead face took on an intent, fixed look. The Avenger was hearing something, very faintly, as if muted by distance. Yet it was something that seemed near at hand, too.
“Well?” said Jenner. “Go on!”
But Benson didn’t go on! He listened to the faint, shrill noise. It was a sound that not one person in a hundred thousand would have heard at all; but such was the trained acuteness of Benson’s hearing that he got it quite distinctly.
Though he felt it almost more than heard it.
Jenner was staring at him with a slightly different look. A sort of waiting, expectant look. And on the leather divan, Prince began to howl.
He had howled just before a man went crazy and tried to tap dance in the general office. He had howled just before two men had been murdered.
He howled in precisely the same way, now. And pawed at his ears as if they hurt him.
The sound The Avenger heard was gradually growing shriller, going more and more above the range of audibility even to his marvelous ears.
And in a blinding flash the meaning of it became illuminated and clear.
Why the dogs had howled and pawed at their ears as if in pain. They were in pain! They could hear this sound that only Benson, among humans, had heard. They could hear it distinctly, and it hurt their ears with its shrillness.
Why men had had blank spells, mental lapses, in this place, and gone out to do mad, murderous things.
Why—
Benson knew, now! He knew, suddenly, many things. But in the instant of his knowing, the sound passed at last beyond the range of hearing — and his agate-bright, colorless eyes went strangely blank. His body was erect and straight and powerful; but it seemed, in those last few seconds, to have become a shell — as if life and volition had been drained from it.
Jenner smiled. He rose from behind his desk and went to Benson.
“Shake hands with me,” he said peremptorily.
Benson’s steely right hand came out and clasped his.
“You will do precisely as you’re told?”
The Avenger’s voice had a dulled and docile quality that no man on earth had ever heard in it before.
“I will do precisely as I am told.”
“Good!” said Jenner, chuckling and going back to his desk. “You have an international reputation for honesty. You are widely known as a very rich man who does not need to steal secrets. We can use you!”
In the hotel-apartment building where Mrs. Cranlowe was staying, Nellie Gray and Rosabel Newton were going out. But they were not going out to call on Mrs. Cranlowe. They were not going out for any social reasons at all.
They were going because there was a gun jammed in the side of each.
“You’re making a mistake, I tell you,” Nellie said.
“Yas, suh, yo’ sho are,” said Rosabel, who, like her husband, Josh, talked quite differently to strangers than to close friends.
The two men with the guns prodded them harder. One of the men was fat and jolly-looking — till you stared a second time. The other had a narrow, mean jaw.
“It’s no mistake,” said the fat man. “You’re hornin’ into somethin’ that’s nobody’s business but ours. So you’ll come with us and tell all about it.”
Nellie considered a reckless move. If she could get that gun away from her side for a second, she could handle three like the fat man, versed as she was in jujitsu.
But she didn’t dare try anything. Not only would she almost certainly be shot; but if she did win free, the other man would probably shoot Rosabel. And Nellie didn’t want to risk the pretty Negress’ life.
“Down the stairs,” said the fat man.
“Down fifteen floors?” gasped Nellie.
“Sure! Why not? You’re young and healthy. Pretty, too,” Fat leered.
“But—”
“Go on, go on!” growled the narrow-jawed man. “There ain’t any elevator operators on stairways to tell the cops, later, about a coupla dames bein’ walked along at the point of a gat.”
Nellie and Rosabel went toward the stairs. There was nothing else to do, with death nudging their ribs like that.
Nellie was coldly furious at herself. She figured this had been her fault. She had been expecting Robert Cranlowe to knock at her door. The inventor’s pleasant son had asked if he could take Nellie to dinner along with his stepmother that evening, and Nellie had jumped at the possibility of getting more information.
He had phoned and mentioned the time that he’d come for her. Nellie could have sworn it was really his voice. But it began to look as if it had not been. Because when she had opened to the knock at her door, at the time given, a gun had been jammed at her by this fat man and another had leveled at Rosabel.
“Why are you kidnaping us, anyway?” Nellie asked, on the long trip down fifteen flights of stairs.
“As if you didn’t know!” snorted the fat man. “Anyway, I told you. You’re hornin’ in where you ain’t wanted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Cranlowe, babe. Cranlowe! You picked up Mrs. Cranlowe too smooth and easy to be natural. You found out there was a guy trailin’ her, and reported it to somebody or other. We know that because a great big guy with hands like hams suddenly shows up at our headquarters and begins listenin’ in. So we come to get you and have you tell us, like a good little girl, just where you fit.”
There was a closed car in the alley behind the building. The four stepped out the rear door and into the car without a soul seeing them. It was a jolt for Nellie and Rosabel. They’d hoped someone would be around.
The car went out of Garfield City to an old farm. There was a house with the roof gone, and a barn that was a little more intact. The car passed the abandoned house and stopped beside the barn.
The girls were prodded out of the car and into the barn; then the car drove away again. But neither of the two paid much attention to that. They were staring at a man in the barn who was sitting moodily on a moth-eaten-looking bale of hay.
The man was Robert Cranlowe!
“For heaven’s sake—” began Nellie.
Robert Cranlowe shook his head at them in sober sympathy.
“So they got you, too!” he said. “But — why?”
“You mean, you were kidnaped?” said Nellie.
“That would seem to be the word for it,” young Cranlowe growled. “And believe me, if I ever get my hands on some of these bright boys when they haven’t got guns at their shoulders—”