The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death (3 page)

In lower Manhattan there is a street only a short block long. One whole side is taken up with the windowless back of a great storage building. The other side has several stores, vacant, a vacant warehouse and, in the middle, three old brick apartment buildings.

The street is named Bleek Street. In effect the block is owned by one man, since he has the stores and warehouse across from the storage building under long lease, and owns the three old brick buildings.

That owner is Richard Henry Benson, known to police and underworld, alike, as—The Avenger.

The three old three-story buildings, behind the shabby facade, are thrown into one; and the interior is furnished with a quiet splendor possible only to a very rich man.

The entire top floors of the three buildings are one enormous room; and in that room, when they are not at work on some dangerous case, are to be found the little crew calling itself, Justice, Inc.

Four of them were up there now: Nellie Gray, Josh Newton and his wife Rosabel, and Smitty, whose full and much-hated name was Algernon Heathcote Smith.

Smitty looked at the clock. It was a quarter of nine.

“Where’s the chief?” he asked.

“In the lab,” said Nellie. There was a reverent tone in their voices. Almost an awed tone. You didn’t speak lightly of The Avenger. “As far as I know he’s been there all night.”

“He doesn’t seem to need sleep or anything,” said Josh. “I sometimes think he isn’t human—”

There was a soft buzz and they all were silent.

Down on the street, in the center of the three converted buildings, was the entrance and vestibule under the small sign which simply read:

JUSTICE

The buzz had indicated that someone, down there, wanted to get in. And when that happened, it was usually important.

Smitty switched on a small television radio. The giant, with his moon-face and not-too-intelligent-looking china-blue eyes was an electrical engineer of superb capability. He had designed the gadget. It showed whoever was in the vestibule.

On the screen, now, flashed the image of a young fellow with hurt blue eyes and blond hair.

“Yes?”

They saw the young fellow start when Smitty’s voice sounded out of nowhere in the vestibule downstairs.

“I am Wayne Crimm,” he said, looking around, not knowing in what direction to pitch his voice. “I would like to see Mr. Benson.”

Crimm? At that name, they all looked at each other.

In the corner was a teletype that continually flashed the news of the world before the eyes of The Avenger and his aides. It had flashed a message concerning that name, early in the morning.

Joseph Crimm, well-known lawyer, had dropped dead of heart failure a block from his home in the late night.

Now his son was here to see Dick Benson.

Smitty stared at Nellie, who nodded.

“I’ll get the chief from the lab,” she said. “You let Wayne Crimm up. I’m pretty sure the chief will want to see him. And I’m pretty sure that when he does, there will be some sparks flying, somewhere!”

Nicky Luckow was a power in New York’s underworld. Some went so far as to say that he commanded it. Whether or not he headed it, he was so powerful that anyone could find him by merely looking up his address in the Manhattan phone book. He didn’t have to hide out.

Nicholai Luckow, West Twenty-fourth Street.

The address given was that of the Jeff Hotel. Luckow owned the place, a small one; and few but his henchmen had rooms there.

He was sitting in his second-floor office when the message came. The office was large, luxurious, and very, very businesslike. There were filing cabinets, a desk where a dark-eyed girl with a hard mouth worked, his own desk, and a battery of telephones. It didn’t look like a gangster’s lair at all.

The man who came in gave it away, though. He walked like a cat with a grouch against the world. His eyes were hooded and mean. The bulge at his left shoulder fairly shouted the fact that he packed a gun.

Luckow looked at the card the man dropped on his desk.

THOMAS W. CRIMM

He looked at the card for a full minute, eyes as expressionless as dully polished stones. Then he raised immaculately tailored shoulders in a small shrug.

“Bring him in!”

Tom Crimm was in the little lobby of the hotel. He saw that the clerk behind the key counter looked like an inquiring weasel, and Tom was glad of it. He saw that three men watching him from other parts of the lobby looked like rats on a large scale, with a rat’s deadliness of eye, and he was glad of that, too.

The tougher this outfit was, the better Tom was going to like it.

The man who had taken his card came back.

“O.K., buddy.”

Tom got into an elevator with the man. The elevator boy looked at him with a pair of treacherous orbs, as if contemplating sticking a knife in him just for the hell of it. The cage stopped at the second floor.

Tom walked down a hall, and past an open door. There were five men in the room behind the door, playing poker, though it was earlier in the morning than Tom had seen cards played before. The five stared at him with an absolute lack of curiosity on their evil faces, as he went by. Then he was in the office of Luckow. himself.

Tom stared at a flat, blue-jowled face, and into eyes appearing more like gray-blue stones. And for just a moment he felt fear crawl along his spine, and he was not so sure he was being as smart as he’d thought he was.

But the apprehension died swiftly. To catch a crook, hire a crook. To deal with a murderer, employ another murderer. He’d show that bank gang—

Luckow listened to Tom’s story as if hardly hearing it. He grunted once or twice, and stared without words when Tom concluded.

“There you have it,” said Tom. “Somebody in that crew killed my father. I want him spotted and the stock recovered. There’s between two and two and a half million dollars’ worth of the stock. Your take”—Tom had read the books, and knew a few of the terms—“your take, if we can get the stuff back and nail the killer, will be five hundred thousand dollars. I guess that’s worth working for.”

“Yes,” said Luckow. His voice was soft, smooth, a bit sibilant. He was a product of the slums, but had put such a veneer over it that you’d never know it. “Yes, that would be worth working for.”

“Then you’ll throw in with me?” Tom said eagerly.

“I’ll think it over for a little while.”

“I’ll go back home and phone you—”

“Take a room down the hall,” said Luckow smoothly. “I’ll give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on this in a couple of hours.” He turned to the man who had brought Tom in. “Show him to Room 236, Tim.”

The man with the catlike walk and the hooded, mean eyes took Tom down the line to a vacant room. He returned to Luckow’s office.

“What do you think of the layout?” he said. He was Nick Luckow’s personal bodyguard and a trusted man.

“The answer’s ‘yes,’ ” said Luckow, “but I won’t tell the chump in 236, for a while. Make him think I’m not sure whether I want it or not. But I want it, all right. That guy’s going to be a gold mine to us, Tim.”

“He looks like he knew a thing or two,” said Tim.

Luckow almost smiled. And the grimace, on his hard flat face, was worse than a scowl.

“He’s a wise guy, Tim. And a chump who thinks he’s a wise guy is easiest to twist around. You can fool ’em clear to the end. A lot of ’em stay fooled even after the smoke’s cleared away and they’re planted. Oh yes, I’m taking him up on his proposition, all right. I don’t turn away gold mines when they walk up to me. Two to two and a half million in unlisted stock. Well, well! And we’ll get it back for him for five hundred grand. Sure! Sure we will!”

In the great third floor room at Bleek Street, The Avenger heard Wayne Crimm’s story with hardly a word of interjection.

Richard Henry Benson didn’t have to talk to be impressive. Just the looks of the man insured something like awe in all beholders.

His average-sized body concealed a physical power that was colossal. You knew that the moment you saw him. But the physical power was dwarfed by the sight of his face. It was paralyzed; white as the thick, virile hair above his broad forehead.

From the white, dead face peered a pair of eyes that were so light gray as to be almost colorless.

One look at The Avenger told you why the underworld hated and feared him as poisonous snakes hate and fear a mongoose.

As Wayne Crimm’s story unfolded, Smitty and Josh began to look more and more savage. And the faces of Nellie and Rosabel expressed more and more sympathy. All Benson’s aides existed only to fight crime, because all of them had been badly hurt at one time or another by criminals. And here was a rotten thing being turned up before their noses.

A theft of millions of dollars’ worth of securities! Subtle murder to conceal the trail of the theft! No clues for police to work on—and, indeed, perpetrators of the crime too powerful for the police to handle, in any event!

“That’s why I came to you for help,” concluded Wayne. “The thing is too big for the regular channels of justice. And that is why Tom, my brother, went to Luckow.”

Smitty and Josh started a little. Benson’s pale, infallible eyes suddenly were like chips of stainless steel in his paralyzed countenance.

“Your brother went to Luckow? You mean Nick Luckow?” he said vibrantly.

“Yes! Tom said Dad’s fife and the securities had been taken by violence, and that he’d have revenge the same way. So he has thrown in with the most notorious gang in the country.”

“He’ll get small comfort there,” observed Josh softly. The Negro was a philosopher. “Milk does not come from stones, nor honest help from rotten crutches.”

The Avenger was not talking. He was on his feet, going toward the door.

“We’ve got to get your brother away from Luckow, first thing,” he said, voice quiet but packed with power. “When honest folk tangle with criminals—”

He did not complete the sentence. But Nellie Gray, with a world of sympathy in her lovely blue eyes, could have completed it.

When honest folk tangle with criminals—great tragedy results. If any man on earth was in a position to know that, it was Dick Benson.

“You are going after Tom—in that nest of killers—alone?” gasped Wayne.

“Yes! He can’t be allowed to stay with Luckow,” Benson said, his eyes flaring. “I can foresee all sorts of trouble if that is permitted.”

“Probably he’ll be home by now,” faltered Wayne.

“No! He’ll be at Luckow’s. He could be very valuable to the man. Nick Luckow is smart, in his animal way. He won’t let your brother out of his sight if he can help it.”

“But—going alone!” said Wayne.

The giant Smitty was as concerned as Wayne. But Smitty said nothing. If the chief was determined to go alone, nothing could be said that would sway him.

“If I went there with help,” said Benson, “there might be trouble. If I go alone, they will think me harmless.”

Josh snorted a little at that. The idea of any man being able to look at The Avenger—with his dead, white face and terrible, pale eyes—and think him harmless, was almost funny.

But there was nothing funny about Benson’s actions. They were suicidal. Josh and Smitty knew that. And even Wayne suspected it.

Everyone seemed to know it but Benson, himself. He treated it as a matter of course.

When he got out of his car in front of the notorious Jeff Hotel a few minutes later, there was almost a smile in his cold, colorless eyes.

Benson walked clamly and unhurriedly into the lobby of the hotel. The desk clerk turned his inquiring weasel eyes on him, and clenched his hands suddenly. That death-mask of a face! The icy, pale eyes! Thev clerk was only on the fringe of the underworld, but he knew this man by sight.

His hand stealthily slid under the edge of the counter and pressed something. The Avenger saw the move and knew it was a warning to those upstairs.

Trouble! Danger in the lobby!

Benson walked past the desk, not seeming to move fast, yet getting to the elevators in an incredibly short time.

The three men who habitually lounged in the lobby were all starting for him, now. One had his gun halfway out. The Avenger slid into the cage waiting at the lobby floor, and closed the metal doors with a jerk at the lever.