The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc. (8 page)

“It seems to be the only wise course,” he added.

The man he was talking to was Arnold Leon, a Buffalo manufacturer. Leon was sixty, slight, gray-haired and worried-looking. He protested vigorously.

“Sell my block of stock in Buffalo Tap & Die?” he said. “What kind of advice do you call that?”

“Good advice, as far as I can see it,” Buell said. “We know all about Tap & Die. Our New York associates floated the stock issue in the Buffalo Tap & Die Works, as you know. We’re quick to catch an unfavorable trend. The stock is down, and it’s going lower, Mr. Leon. Sell!”

“According to the last annual report,” Leon said worriedly, “Tap & Die has cash assets more than equal to their indebtedness. It’s a sound company. Why should I sell the stock at a loss?”

“Here’s one reason,” said Buell. “No one knows it as yet but us. You know Lawrence Hickock?”

Leon nodded. “I know of him.”

“Well, Lawrence Hickock, president of Tap & Die—can’t be reached anywhere.”

“What?”

“Yes.” Buell’s eyes were looking a little worried, too. “For three days, his whereabouts have been unknown. His friends don’t know where he is. His family don’t know. No one knows. He has just—skipped out! And when the head of a company mysteriously disappears, what is your natural conclusion?”

Arnold Leon chewed his lips.

“The natural conclusion is that something crooked has been going on, and that he fled before it should become known,” he admitted.

“Exactly,” said Buell. “Now, the stock is already far down below par. Suppose the papers get hold of Hickock’s flight? That’ll take the stock down so far it may even be removed from the board. I have sold what little I own—and I repeat, you’d be wise to sell, too.”

Leon worried it out, waxen, elderly face twisted with the jitters.

“I put a lot of faith in your judgment,” he said. “I’ve done business with you a long time. But, confound it, the cash reserve of Buffalo Tap & Die should meet any emergency. Suppose there has been crooked work. It could hardly be on such a large scale as to wreck the company. Suppose the stock does go way down. It’ll come back, or ought to. I don’t want to sell—”

Buell’s private phone buzzed. Buell picked it up, then said, “Mr. Leon? Yes. Right here.”

He handed the phone to Leon.

“Arnold?” came a voice. “This is John Lansing talking.”

“Lansing!” Leon’s voice was surprised. John Lansing was a Buffalo millionaire with a great deal of authority around the city, and with his fingers in most pies. “I thought you were in Florida.”

“I was. Just got back this morning. And I’ve been hearing some curious things about Tap & Die. Could you come and have a talk with me about it?”

“Gladly!” said Leon. “Ill be right around.”

He hung up with an almost explosive sigh of relief.

“Lansing wants to talk it over,” he said to Buell. “He owns a big block of stock, too. And he’s as shrewd as they make ’em. It will be a relief to discuss the proposition with him.”

Buell looked relieved, too.

“Lansing
is
a smart old duck,” he said. “After your talk, drop me a hint of his advice, will you? I trust his judgment as much as your own, even though we’re professional traders.”

“I’ll do it,” nodded Leon.

He went out of the big ground-floor offices of Carney & Buell, past the customers’ room where the board and its chalked quotations held the rigid attention of a score or so of men, and through the bronze revolving door.

At the curb was his car. It was a big town car of dark blue. In the front seat, immobile as a block of wood, was a gigantic figure of a man in black whipcord.

“To Mr. Lansing’s home, Algernon,” Leon said.

The chauffeur’s huge face, moonlike and placid, with peaceable and not-too-intelligent-looking china-blue eyes, writhed a little with that “Algernon.” But the giant only said, in a voice rather high for his vast bulk: “Mr. Lansing’s home. Yes, sir.”

The home of John Lansing, in the heart of the best residential section, squatted in half a block of lawn and looked like a bank. It seemed very quiet when you considered how many people must be around. All the servants, a family, friends. But not a soul could be seen as Leon’s town car went up the front drive.

At the rear, there was a four-car garage with servants’ quarters over it, and a covered tunnel into the house. No one moved out there, either.

“You’re sure he’s home, sir?” said the giant driver.

“Yes. Just got a phone call from him. Wait here, Algernon.”

Leon, spruce and elderly and sober, trotted up the steps and rang the bell. The front door was opened. He stepped inside the house.

The minutes passed. Not one sound of activity came from the house. Not one glimpse of a living soul came from the grounds. The gigantic driver shifted uneasily at the wheel, and kept looking at the blank, dead door.

He opened the dash compartment and took out a thick book. “Radio-active Phenomena,” the book was titled. He opened it near the back and began studying. But he could not keep his mind on the text.

An hour passed. And abruptly, with a shake of decision, the huge driver moved his vast shoulders and got out of the monkey seat. Something about this picture didn’t smell right.

He went to the door and rang the bell. A butler would open it, of course, Leon would presently appear, and he’d bawl him out for being so fresh as to inquire for him. But the driver decided he’d take that chance. Every instinct told him something was wrong.

No one answered the ring. He punched at the bell again, heard it echo hollowly through vaulting space. You can
feel
if a place is untenanted.

But this place ought not to be empty! His boss had gone in there, hadn’t he?

The chauffeur’s placid eyes had taken on a queer, deep, alert look on his moon face. He put his hand on the ornate wrought-iron doorknob.

This man, for all the commonplace-looking chauffeur’s livery, was like something that had stepped from the legendary age of giants. He was six feet nine. He weighed two hundred and eighty-five pounds. He was fifty-three inches around the chest, and wore a size-nineteen collar. His arms were bigger around than most men’s thighs, and his legs were pillars fit for building-foundation purposes. Under his arms, among the barrel of his chest, the slabs and knots of muscle were so ponderous that his arms couldn’t hang straight down—they crooked out so that they looked stubby, though actually they were almost of gorilla length.

Men of the giant’s breed are seen occasionally. Primo Camera was one such. But they are rare. And when they do happen along, the ordinary appliances and furnishings of life are not proportioned for them.

The giant shook the locked front door. Then, with a heave that threatened to burst the whipcord livery over his huge shoulders, he lunged inward.

The heavy front door thudded, stuck, then burst in, taking half the frame along with it. The big fellow stepped into a front hall. He loomed there—alone. And in the house was not a tick of sound.

“Hey!” he yelled.

No answer.

“Mr. Leon—”

He started forward, but stopped at the first doorway. The furniture inside was sheeted. So was the stuff in all the other rooms.

Only the hall was normal, with chairs uncovered. The house was closed. Lansing wasn’t here. No one was. But Leon had been admitted by a man in livery.

The giant hurried with increasing speed from room to room. All were empty. His employer wasn’t in that house. He raced to the back, along the covered tunnel to the garage, which backed on an alley. Reason told him that Leon had been taken out here. But instinct held a superstitious turn.

It was as if the man had stepped into that house—and in it vanished into thin air! The chauffeur raced back to the town car.

In the clear May sunlight, a small closed truck drove along the residential section. On its sides was lettered: “Buffalo Malt Products Co.” A thin fellow with a cap pulled low and a cigarette dangling from a corner of a slack mouth was alone in the cab.

Behind, were three men. Two were of a piece with the ratlike driver. The third was Leon.

Leon lay on the floor of the truck, breathing heavily, face blue-white. One of the men was holding a soaked rag to his nose. The other suddenly grabbed it away.

“Hey! Easy on that chloroform. Don’t croak the old goat!”

“Ah-h-h! So what? He’ll probably get it anyway.”

“Not for a while, he won’t. The boss has got ideas about him.”

The man with the rag was scowling, but he’d taken it away from Leon’s nostrils.

“Sure,” he complained. “Sure. The boss has ideas. But
what
ideas? Did it ever strike you that nobody ever tells us guys anything? The ‘boss,’ whoever he is, gives orders to do something, so we do it. He says not to do something, so we don’t do it. But nobody ever whispers a word of what it’s all
about”

The other man looked actually frightened for a minute.

“Shut up, you dummy! This is one play where it ain’t wise to know too much. It’s big. A big shot or two’s behind it. There’s plenty of protection. That’s all we need to know.”

“It ain’t all
I
need. I like to have a foot in the door when I do things. I don’t like to play ’em blind.”

The other man was silent a moment, ratlike eyes on his pal’s face.

“The last guy talked like that,” he said finally, “got picked up in a ditch with a couple pounds of lead in him. This is so big nobody’s supposed to ask questions.”

“I’ll take my chances,” the other said arrogantly. “I’m going to nose around and find out some things. You wait and see!”

His pal glanced through the small window ahead, and saw over the driver’s shoulder, through the windshield, that the little truck was coasting along a street where vacant lots were the rule and houses the exception. He whirled back.

“Pete!” croaked the man with the rag suddenly, voice hoarse.

He stared into the automatic that had appeared in Pete’s hand.

“Pete—”

The gun moved forward a little.

“Pete . . . I didn’t mean it! I don’t care what’s behind this. I won’t try to find out anything.”

Pete was silent.

“You can’t do a thing like this, Pete! Why, we’re pals. We been together for six years. We did time together. Now you can’t rub me out just because—”