“And so — good-by,” said Knarlie to Benson, almost gently. The ugly little fellow faced his gunmen. “Out the door, there. Ritter, you, too. You men, give Ritter and me five minutes to get down to the street level and away from the building. Then take this man’s aides on the floors below.”
The men went back out of the room, with Ritter among them. Knarlie, at the door, smirked at The Avenger.
“Through murder you have risen high,” said Dick Benson calmly. “Through murder you will now destroy yourself. I warn you.”
Such was his calm, and such was the infallible gleam in his icy, pale eyes, that even Knarlie looked a trifle uneasy for a moment. Then he laughed, satanically, and his hand made a throwing motion.
A grenade struck the wall just behind Benson, and exploded! Knarlie slammed the door shut from the outside, and triple barred it. His dying steps sounded as he ran for the elevator, to join Ritter in escape.
The grenade poured out the last of its contents: deadliest gas known to science; a gas that lingered for hours. The Avenger had his saturated coat lapel to breathe through for a few seconds, and then his nose clip with the chemical-soaked sponge for the nostrils that would take him through a few more. Ten minutes at most.
And this gas would persist in a closed room for at least a day!
On the floor below, The Avenger’s band was jubilant over news just radioed by Rosabel, Josh Newton’s pretty wife.
Morel and Wilson were all right! They were out of the coma produced by Dick’s antidote, still weak but as sane as anyone and regaining their normal physical strength by the minute. Morel, most dosed, was the weakest.
It was at that moment that a far, far crash came very faintly to them.
“What,” said Josh after a moment, “was that?”
“I don’t know, but it had a nasty sound,” said Mac.
Then there was another sound.
A clamor of bells, outside the end door of this room and a little above them. The clamor was not loud, but it was continuous. At the same time, an orange light glowed over the door in question.
“Someone is on the stairs,” yelled Smitty. “They’re going up to tackle the chief. Come on!”
“They have already been upstairs,” came a quiet, almost weary voice. “They have already tackled me.”
They whirled.
From the center of the ceiling a strip had dropped, revealing itself as a narrow stairs, like a tall stepladder, concealed in the ceiling and floor above when not in use.
Down this was coming Dick Benson, pale eyes hooded and enigmatic. He was taking his nose clip from his nose as he descended. And they saw that he came down fast and raised the stairs to seal the ceiling again as soon as possible.
“Gas up there,” Dick said. “The type that is a shade lighter than air; so I don’t think much got down through the opening. But open all the windows.”
Nellie’s blue eyes were wide.
“That c-crash!” she stammered. “And the alarm on the stairs between this floor and the next!”
The Avenger nodded. His face was almost tired-looking, which told his aides all they needed to know. His features had that look only on one occasion: when a case had been closed and The Avenger was ready for the next battle against crime.
Mac was the one who pieced it out.
“Gas! And the private elevator has a special pin on the brake control so that when it is pulled and you push the down lever, the cage is left without support and falls. And say — you left that Justine Building address in the sedan on purpose!”
The Avenger nodded again.
“With Ritter here as prisoner, I wanted Ritter’s boss to come for him. And he did. Knarlie!”
“Yes. I guessed the supposed servant was really the master, some time ago. But I had no proof. I still haven’t. But now proof is needless. Knarlie grabbed Ritter, threw gas in the library and locked me in it. Curious. All he could see was steel doors barring me in to death. It didn’t seem to occur to him that after all this was
The Avenger’s pale, deadly eyes went unseeingly around the room.
“I warned him,” he almost whispered, in that dead and icy tone. “I told him he would destroy himself through murder. Why is it that a killer will never believe that his actions will eventually doom him?”
Smitty sighed and looked at his chief with something like awe.
“So it’s all over!” he rumbled.
“All over,” said The Avenger. “Ritter, poor mad dupe, and Knarlie, his supposed servant, will be found dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The thugs trapped in the stair well will talk, eventually, and the police and the rest of the nation will learn what happened — and the fate it narrowly escaped.”
