The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

audibly. Every one of them had heard that name. Richard Henry Benson! He was the peer of all of them in the realm of high finance. He was wealthier than all of them put together; could have bought and thrown away their bank.
    But they’d heard of him in another way, recently, too. And it was this that froze their voices in their throats.
    Richard Benson. Man of a Thousand Faces. The Avenger! Wherever crime had been done, that name could terrify. And under the circumstances, it could terrify in this sleek business room as well as in a gangster’s hangout. “I see you are very busy,” said Benson, with deadly irony in his voice. “I won’t take up much of your time. I came here to make a request.”
    They stared at the pale, awful eyes like rabbits at a weasel.
    “Millions of dollars worth of stock have been stolen,” said The Avenger. “Joseph Crimm’s stock in the Ballandale Glass Corp. Three murders have been committed: Crimm’s, Maisley’s and Haskell’s.”
    His face was as dead and emotionless as though he were discussing the best way to serve soup. His eyes were as expressionless as ice under moonlight. His voice was without emphasis. Somehow, that very calm, glacial tone was more horrifying than wild threats.
    “Someone among you,” said Benson, “knows who is directly responsible for the murders. Someone among you can produce the stock. So here is my request: Return the stock to Tom and Wayne Crimm and give up the murderer, with a full confession to the law.”
    The last two words echoed in the tense room.
    “—the law.”
    Wallach was the one who finally answered. There was cold nerve in his lanky body; courage of a sort in the brain behind his thin face.
    “Mr. Benson, I can only assure you that we don’t know quite what you are talking about. We have read of the tragic deaths of Maisley and Crimm. But Crimm died naturally of a heart attack, and Maisley unfortunately drove his car too near a cliff edge and fell to his death. Neither of them has anything to do with murder, I’d say. As for the stock you mention—”
    The icy, pale eyes had become colder and colder. And Wallach finally stopped, words trailing off into silence.
    “You will accede to my request,” said Benson, “or I shall declare financial war on you. With your connections in banking and financial matters, you probably know whether or not that declaration would be important to you. I will expect an answer shortly.”
    The Avenger turned and went out. And behind him, four frightened men stared at each other. Grand moved first.
    “After him! He can’t get away like that! Get him!”
    He sprang to the door. The door did not open to his jerking hands. This was for the very simple reason that a chair had been propped under the knob on the other side.
    Grand ran from the door to the telephone and put a call through in a hurry to a number that had been listed with the first preparation for the Ballandale plot. An emergency number!
    Down at the great bronze door of the bank, the bank guard stood with a queerly empty look on his face, and with eyes that seemed to look at things but not see them.
    Benson went unhurriedly to the man. His pale, infallible eyes bored into the guard’s like diamond drills.
    “You will open the doors for me,” he said, voice oddly monotonous. “You will lock them after I have gone out. In five minutes you will inject this into your thigh.”
    He put a hypodermic needle into the man’s robot-like left hand. The guard opened the door, closed it when Benson went out to the deserted street.
    Five minutes later the guard would use the hypodermic needle, blink, look around with a start, and hurry to where banging on a door sounded, from the direction of the conference room. But he wouldn’t be able to say anything about what he had done.
    All he would be able to say would be that he had gone to the street door in response to a continued, urgent pounding there—and that he had stared through bullet-proofed