The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death (6 page)

It was after two o’clock in the morning when he got there. The place was jammed, of course; that’s the shank of the evening at spots like the Bird.

Couples were coming out of the blazingly illuminated doorway and getting into cars. Other couples were going in. Then a man came out alone.

The man was middle-aged, but tried to act much younger. He was bareheaded and wore a tuxedo. He staggered when he walked past the doorman.

The doorman held his arm for a minute.

“Sure you’re all right, Mr. Keenan?” Benson heard him ask.

“Sure! Sure, ’mall right,” said the man. “Lemme go.”

He jerked free and walked with exaggerated dignity to a big sedan down the line of parked cars.

Benson went to the car, on the roadside. It was pretty dark here.

The man addressed as Keenan opened the rear door of the car and fumbled around. Benson stealthily opened the door on the other side.

The man finally saw him.

“Hey, you! Wha’ you doin’ in my car—”

That was all he said. The Avenger’s hand shot out. Thumb and forefinger clamped in a secret pressure at the base of the intoxicated man’s skull, where a nerve lies close to the surface.

The man jerked a little, then sagged forward, as painlessly and mercifully unconscious as though doped. The Avenger lifted his body into the rear of the car, and climbed in himself.

Man of a Thousand Faces, Benson was called. And his swift work now revealed the reason for the title.

With a flashlight and a tiny mirror, he set to work. His pale, infallible eyes took in, feature by feature, the unconscious man’s face. And, feature by feature, Benson altered his own face to match.

The nerve shock that had paralyzed his face had made a weird, living plastic of the flesh.

Benson prodded the base of his nose and stroked firm fingers up the bridge. His nose became thinner at the nostrils and higher in the bridge—and stayed that way when his finger pressure was removed. His hand cupped hard at his jaw, and the compressed flesh at the corners made the jaw point narrower. His fingers worked at the flesh of his cheeks; and his cheeks became a trifle pudgier-looking, making his whole face seem shorter.

He put on the man’s tuxedo, holding his powerful shoulders in to imitate Keenan’s narrower ones.

The Avenger surmised that Keenan had come out to his car to get a box he had forgotten to take into the Bird. The box was from a Manhattan florist’s shop. Benson picked it up, and got out of the car on the sidewalk side. He went to the door.

Every member of Luckow’s gang would be on the alert against Richard Benson. But the staggering Keenan was known to the doorman, at least, and could reel into the night club with no hand raised to stop him.

The doorman winked at the reeling figure in the tuxedo.

“For Millie?” he said, looking at the box.

“That’s right,” said Benson, imitating the voice he had heard a moment before when the doorman tried to help Keenan.

He went on in.

“You forgot your hat, Mr. Keenan,” the hat-check girl called gayly.

“Not leavin’ yet.”

Keenan went into the big café room. There he stood a moment, swaying uncertainly. The headwaiter came up. As the doorman had attempted to do, he slipped a hand under the reeling man’s arm.

“Here, Mr. Keenan.”

The Avenger didn’t try to shrug the grip away, as the real Keenan had, outside. He didn’t know where “here” was.

The headwaiter steered him to a table next to the floor, with one chair beside it and a half-finished drink on top.

Benson sat down, holding the florist’s box. He pretended to drink, keeping an owlish gravity, and keeping his lids lowered as much as possible to hide the pale clarity of his deadly eyes. Those eyes weren’t remotely like Keenan’s. They were a source of risk.

The lights went low and the chorus danced out. Ten girls with veils for costumes. The second from the end glanced brightly at Benson, and soon was near in a twisting dance step.

“Eddie! The flowers! For me? How nice.”

Benson’s pale eyes, under lowered lids, followed her as the number was concluded. She was at the end of the line as the girls danced off the floor and through a narrow doorway leading to the dressing rooms.

Benson got up and went unsteadily toward that door. The headwaiter frowned, then shrugged tolerantly and made no move to stop him. Keenan, whoever he was, had the run of the place.

Benson went into the dressing-room corridor just in time to see the girl who had spoken turn into the end room. He went there, opened the door and stepped in, himself. Now, by design, he didn’t stagger any more and he opened his eyes to their normal width.

“Eddie!” exclaimed the girl, as he came in. “You ought not to come here—”

She stopped and swayed back a step, her hand at her throat.

“You’re not Ed Keenan,” she said. “Your eyes—”

Benson put the florist’s box on the vanity case, and in doing so, allowed the girl to spring behind him and out the door again.

He had gotten in here smoothly and without fuss. Next thing was to locate Luckow and Tom Crimm.

He thought the girl might be the guide.

He was correct. She flew up the hall again, and into an unmarked door. Benson followed, not letting her see that he was coming after her. She was intent on giving a warning.

She went through this room, through a door covered by an innocent-looking drape, and up narrow stairs. At the top, she knocked four times on a heavy door.

The door was opened. Down the stairs and out of sight, The Avenger heard her say a few words. Then she stepped into a room, and the door was shut again.

He went up and knocked four times.

The door opened six inches, and was hastily pushed as the man behind it saw pale, deadly eyes and a deadpan face. But The Avenger had hand and arm through the crack, now. The hand closed on the guard’s windpipe.

After a moment, Benson lowered him to the floor and went on. There was a small suite here. He heard the girl’s voice in the next room; so he opened that door and stood on the threshold.

Tom Crimm, Nick Luckow and the excited girl stared at him. Luckow’s hand flashed for his gun.

In Benson’s hands was no weapon of any sort. But such was The Avenger’s air of calm certainty, as he stood there, that Luckow’s hand came away from his holster empty. Benson acted as if an army were at his back; and it shook Luckow’s nerve.

“You again!” said Tom.

The young fellow was white and nervous. His fear was plain in his eyes. He’d thought the cops were bursting in to take him off for murder when the door opened so unceremoniously.

“Me again,” nodded Benson quietly. Luckow said nothing. He simply glared at Benson with murder in his dull eyes. His jaw was blue where The Avenger’s fist had contacted it at the Jeff Hotel.

“I suppose the police are right behind you?” said Tom.

“No,” said Benson, voice quiet but vibrant. “Why should they be?”

“If you turned me in, you’d get in good with the cops, wouldn’t you?”

“I have no idea of turning you in,” said The Avenger. “The idea I have in mind is strictly the opposite. I’d like to see that you don’t get taken for a little while. You’d have a hard time of it, right now, with the murder charge so definite and recent against you. I can put you in a place where no one will ever find you.”

Tom’s eyes, suspicious, keen, wary, played over the face of this man who had rearranged his features to resemble another man, but whose dead countenance and pale eyes were unmistakable when you knew who it was.

“No one will find me here,” Tom said. “You’ve got more than that in mind. You’re just trying to get me away from Luckow, again, and get your own hooks on me.”

“I want you to leave Luckow,” nodded Benson. “This rat is dynamite for you—or for anyone else impulsive enough to trust him.”

It had been a long time since anyone had called Nicky Luckow a rat to his face. The mobster’s eyes glinted and his jowls darkened.

He turned to Tom Crimm.

“Want to leave, kid?” he said.

Tom shook his head, angry eyes on The Avenger.

“You’ll hang with us?” persisted Luckow.

“Yes,” said Tom.

“O.K.!” Luckow’s face suddenly became impassive. “You run along to the next room, now. I want to ask this guy a coupla things.”

Tom went out. The girl went with him, after a swift glance had swept between her and the mob leader. Benson saw that glance, though he seemed not to have seen it.

Luckow turned toward him.

“When any guy sticks his nose into my business the way you have,” he said, “that guy dies! And when any guy messes up gang business like you have a dozen times in the past, he oughta get burnt by anybody getting his hands on him. Get me?”

“Certainly,” said The Avenger. “You mean that, on two counts. You intend to carry me out of here feet first; you mean that you didn’t send Tom out of here so that you could question me—but just so that he wouldn’t witness a killing.”

‘That’s right,” said Luckow in his soft, dangerous voice.

Downstairs, eight men came after the girl. Luckow’s swift glance had told her to come back with all the help she could. The eight men came up the stairs with drawn guns.

They went into the first room behind the concealed door at the top of the narrow stairs.

From the inner room, Luckow’s room, a familiar figure was emerging as they entered. The figure closed that door, turned, and faced them.

“Nick,” said one of the eight, “the girl said—”

The man addressed as their leader rubbed his right fist suggestively.

“He’ll keep for a while,” he growled. “You guys stick around here, though, and be sure he doesn’t try to get out. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He walked through their ranks, down the stairs, and through the café room. From all sides were little nods of recognition. To some he nodded back; to others he paid no attention.

He went out the street door, got in the car The Avenger had come in and drove to Bleek Street.

And up in Nicky Luckow’s suite the eight gunmen finally went into the room to see why the Benson guy was so quiet. Benson wasn’t there!

Instead—they found Nicky Luckow, in shorts, with a tuxedo lying beside him, bound and maniacal with rage.

No detective in New York could twice have invaded the mobster’s den single-handed. But The Avenger, who could fool his way into places by making his face over to look like others, had; and he had twice walked out with ease. But he had failed twice, in the final analysis.

He had failed to make Tom Crimm see reason. The son of Joseph Crimm was still in a wolves’ den—thinking it to be a safe fold—with doom hanging over him every moment of the day and night.

Next night the light burned again in the directors’ room of Town Bank. And that light illuminated very grave and worried faces!

The faces of Grand and Wallach, Rath and Birch, were worried enough tonight. Also, frightened. All, that is, save the thin countenance of Wallach.

The director who looked as bland as a deacon was rubbing his dry thin hands together slowly and smiling a little.

“Maisley was badly scared,” he murmured. “Maisley might have talked. So Maisley was taken care of. You see? We are all quite safe.”