The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder (15 page)

He went around to the front and to the door.

The big metal door to the laboratory had a triple lock. The door could be opened only when all three locks were simultaneously turned. Since a man has only two hands, this meant that, by the simple device, the door could only be opened by two men or more. No one man, even belonging here, could get in alone.

It meant that no one person could ever prowl in this guarded spot alone. It also meant that no one, even Dick Benson, could pick his way into the building. But he had been here before, had noted that lock, and knew what to do about it.

On the inside was a master knob turning all three locks at once.

The Avenger took a small drill with an egg-beater handle from his pocket, and drilled a hole in the door next to where he remembered the inside knob was located. The panel of the door was about a half inch thick, of good steel.

He put a slim magnesium tube, designed to fit into that sized opening, into the hole, and pinched off the end of the tube. In the tube was powdered magnesium. He ignited it with a spark from a tiny cigarette lighter that had no fuel in it.

Four or five minutes later he reached in through the four-inch, ragged hole with the seared edges that had been melted by the terrific heat. He turned the knob, opened the door and walked in.

He walked in with Mike in his hand.

The Avenger never took life. But there were many occasions when he needed to put a man out of this world, at least temporarily. And at once! For this purpose, in a slim holster at the calf of his right leg, he carried the world’s oddest gun. It was a .22 revolver so slim and streamlined that it looked rather like a length of tubing with a slight bend for a handle. On the end was a silencer of his own contriving. He called the deadly little pea-shooter, “Mike.”

Benson had made himself vulnerable when he melted the hole. Anyone in the building hall, happening to look that way, could have seen it and waited, gun in hand, for the man outside. So Dick was ready to come in shooting.

He found that, almost for the first time in this affair, his luck was good. No one had been in the hall. He closed the door. Voices, loud and numerous, were coming from the lab room at the end of the hall to the right. Just then, something more tangible than sound came from that door.

It opened and a man stepped out. The man was one of Merto’s thugs. Benson knew all their unlovely faces by sight, after being with them disguised as Gerry. The man gaped at The Avenger, his neck swelled for a yell.

Mike whispered, and a little .22 slug creased the man’s skull—glanced from the dome of it, knocking him out but not killing him.

The Avenger let him lie there for a moment, since he had closed the door behind him before turning. Dick put his attention on the hole in the front portal This was glaringly evident, would give him away to anyone who looked in that direction.

The door was painted green inside. The Avenger’s tie was green, not a very close match, but it would have to do. He cut a square from his tie, spread it over the hole with bits of Scotch tape holding it, and went and gathered up the man.

He carried him to the storeroom where he had once put ten prisoners, only to have them mysteriously escape. He opened this door, and his colorless eyes flickered just once to show surprise.

MacMurdie and Cole Wilson were in here. They were bound with wire. Their eyes stared widely at their chief over gags so tight it was a wonder they could breathe.

The Avenger laid his unconscious burden on the floor, untied his two aides, and transferred some of the bonds and one gag to his own prisoner.

“We’re sure glad ye got here, Muster Benson,” whispered Mac. He added ruefully: “Cole and I came in the gyro, and we were picked up by these skurrrlies almost as soon as we set foot in the grounds. They’re smart and they’re wide awake.”

Cole said nothing. He was looking toward the door, with eyes narrowed to dangerous slits and muscles tensed for a leap. He didn’t make it, however; his body slowly relaxed and bitterness crept into his dark eyes.

The Avenger calmly turned. Merto was in the doorway. Past his bulk, in the spaces where it didn’t entirely fill the door frame, could be seen other men in the hall.

Dick Benson’s pale eyes were like chips of stainless steel in his expressionless face. For just an instant, rare emotion glittered in them—fury against himself. For his lightning brain sensed what had happened.

He had made a bad mistake.

The Avenger had thought to patch the door as well as possible against discovering eyes. But there had been another thing. And, being only human after all, this other thing he had not thought of.

When he had creased the man at the other end of the hall, a little blood had come from the shallow gash. Several drops at least must have stained the floor. The Avenger had not noticed and had not wiped it up.

Merto, stepping from that door, too, had not seen the man who had just left before him; but he had seen the small stain on the floor. It had warned him, and here the fat man was.

Merto looked as if he were about to have a stroke. His bulk swayed and quivered. His jowls were purple, paling in a minute to an ugly lavender. His eyes were wide, terrified.

“You pale-eyed devil!” he whispered. “You devil from hell!”

Behind him, someone said hoarsely, “Didn’t I tell you The Avenger ain’t human? We seen him go down with enough lead in him to sink a yacht. We seen him and all the rest bleedin’ to death. And here he is without a mark on him.”

Without a word, Merto turned and grabbed the submachine gun out of the man’s hands. He took the drum from it, looked at the cartridges.

“Blanks!” he exclaimed.

But the prosaic explanation of how a dead man could walk did not seem to allay the almost superstitious horror in his eyes. Rather, this fresh evidence of The Avenger’s inhuman forethought and efficiency seemed to increase it.

“Change ammunition,” he snapped. “We’ll run that execution scene over again, and this time it won’t be a rehearsal.”

The gangsters were almost sore enough to lose some of their fear. Almost—not quite! They made the change with savage swiftness.

The Avenger said, looking at his watch, “It is twenty-two minutes to twelve.”

Merto swore hysterically. “All right!” he concluded. “It’s twenty-two minutes to twelve. Does it satisfy you, somehow, to know the exact moment of your death?”

“At twelve o’clock, precisely,” The Avenger said, “it has been arranged that you—all of you here—will join us in death!”

The statement fell like a stone among them, and the succeeding silence was heavy. Then Merto managed to utter a short bark of sound intended for a laugh.

“Even at a moment like this, you try to bluff,” he jeered.

“At twelve o’clock, exactly, you will find out if I am bluffing.”

The Avenger’s tone was as easy and even as though he were in no danger at all. His face was composed, emotionless. His colorless, awe-inspiring eyes were utterly unreadable.

He stood there as if he had an unseen army behind him.

Merto moved uneasily. The men packed in the hall behind him did more than that. There was a lot of mumbling. Finally, one put it into words.

“That guy knows something we don’t,” he said with conviction. “If we know what’s good for us we’ll try to make him talk before we give it to him.”

“Try to make him talk?” said another, unbelievingly.

“We can try, can’t we?” snarled the first man. “I wanta know what cooks at twelve before we burn him down.”

There was entire agreement. Merto looked as if, much against his will, he, too, thought there might be wisdom in finding out what this man knew that made him so calm in the face of certain death.

He moved back to clear the doorway.

“Step out, you three,” he snarled. “We’ll take you back to where the others are. If you know anything, you’ll be wise to tell it. If you don’t, if you’re bluffing, it won’t get you anything but twenty-two more minutes of life.”

“Always grrrateful for small favors,” said Mac cheerily. The Scotchman had a queer trait: When things ran smoothly, he was the gloomiest pessimist alive. When things were terrible, when death loomed as sure, he suddenly became a cockeyed kind of Pollyanna, as if everything was going to be just wonderful.

The extreme cheerfulness he showed now was a sinister comment on how bad things really were.

Benson, Mac and Cole were herded into the room at the end of the hall from which the man had stepped to be felled by the little gun, Mike. Merto closed the door after all were in. He locked and bolted it.

He seemed to think, by now, that The Avenger could walk through walls.

In there, Gerry, when he saw The Avenger, reeled back against a lab bench to prop himself up. His shaking hand went to his mouth.

“He’s not a disembodied spirit, Gerry,” said Merto. His fat hand drew back for a vicious punch at Benson, but then he discreetly thought better of it and stepped away from the man with the pale, glacial eyes instead of toward him.

Dick wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at the far end of the laboratory room. Down there, some apparatus was smashed and in pieces on the floor. Also on the floor were two men, Ray Ryan and Frank Boone.

They were dead. Each had been shot through the head, neatly, just over the bridge of the nose. Of five participating scientists forming the backbone of General Laboratories, four were now dead. Only Chester Grace was left alive.

Grace sat back there, bound to a chair. On the back of his hand was a ghastly burn; an acid bottle nearby showed that the burn was from a drop deliberately poured there.

Also with Grace back there was Robert Spade, the plump business and financial agent of General Laboratories. Spade was not bound. But there was a burn on his hand, too, which he kept rubbing as if to still the pain.

Grace was pale and afraid, but in perfect command of himself. Spade was trembling in a rhythmic way, but his eyes showed only anger. He, it seemed, was the type of man who gets physically frightened, but at the same time has mental courage and despises his body for its quaking.

Crowded all around were the gunmen.

Merto said to Gerry, “Did either Grace or Spade talk while I was out?”

Gerry shook his head.

“Grace didn’t respond any more to the acid treatment than Spade did before we turned him loose. Neither would tell where the detector was.”

Gerry went on, glaring at The Avenger: “Why did you bring him in here? Why didn’t you kill him—again?”

“He pulled a bluff about something scheduled to occur at midnight that only he knew about,” snarled the fat man. “He succeeded in bluffing the men, at least, so they want to make him tell what it is.”

“He didn’t bluff you, of course?” said Gerry ironically.

“Well—” mumbled Merto.

The Avenger was staring at the two men at the other end of the lab. At mention of midnight, he had kept his pale eyes steadily on them.

It seemed that the burly Chester Grace stiffened just a little in his chair; even Benson couldn’t be sure.

“Mac,” said Benson calmly, “who killed Ryan and Boone?”

“ ’Tis the first I knew they were dead,” said Mac. “I—”

“Shut up!” snapped Gerry. “What do you care who killed them?”

“Kind of funny, though,” mumbled one of the gunmen. “They were dead when we got here—”

Merto whirled, and at the glare in his eyes, the man shut his mouth. None of the rest ventured anything.

“Dead when you got here,” said The Avenger calmly. “That fits in, all right.”

Gerry looked at his watch.

“It’s sixteen minutes to twelve. If you really know something about the hour of midnight, tell it. If not, take bullets.”

“You men will take the blame for the two murders, of course,” said The Avenger evenly, ignoring Gerry’s outburst. “Also for the death of Rew Wight. Also, by inference, for the crash of that plane and the death of Aldrich Towne. The other deaths in the plane didn’t count. It was Towne’s life that was wanted.”

“They’re lying, of course, when they say they didn’t kill Ryan and Boone,” said Grace, glaring at Gerry and Merto. “They must—”

“You keep still,” said Gerry, “or you’ll get another acid treatment.”

Grace didn’t finish what he had meant to say.

Merto’s eyes were gem-bright with concentration.

“You say we are ‘to take the blame,’ ” he said to Benson. “That’s an odd statement. Are you inferring that in some way Gerry and I are cat’s-paws?”

“Definitely,” said The Avenger. “You two—and your whole gang.”

“If this man doesn’t tell us about midnight,” Gerry began furiously.

Merto threw up his hand for silence. There was desperate urgency in the gesture. But he kept his fat face under fair control.

“I don’t know what Benson thinks he knows,” he said. “But it might be interesting to hear.” He looked at The Avenger again. “You are sure it’s not the other way around?” he said. “It could be that we are supposed to be cat’s-paws, but are really casting that role to someone else.”

It made no sense to Mac and Cole, all this business about cat’s-paws. But The Avenger seemed to know all about the reference.

“You will find out who is using whom,” he said, “at midnight.”

“There’s that hour again,” sneered Gerry. “Well, it’s twelve minutes to. We ought to find out for ourselves soon.”

“It is ten minutes to twelve,” corrected Benson. “It is, in other words, a little later than you know.”

Sweat formed on Merto’s forehead. He didn’t try to hide it. The human pachyderm was a badly worried man.

“I don’t like this, Gerry,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”

“So his bluff is working?” Gerry snarled.

“He knows too much,” said Merto, wiping at his forehead. “Much too much. I am beginning to believe he knows even more than we do.”

“The State police—a great many of them—would come a few minutes after midnight, I think,” The Avenger said evenly.

“Police?” worried Merto. “Now, what are you raving about?”

“A frame-up definitely signifies police,” Benson shrugged. “You are to shoulder the blame for four murders. Five, really; the fifth has not yet occurred. So, for the framing to be tight and legal, the police must be drawn in.”