“Any man who can hit a dime at fifty paces can do it. It’s not too difficult.”
“It sounds miraculous to me,” said the giant. “But — why didn’t you kill them? They certainly deserved it.”
Benson’s ice-gray eyes narrowed.
“Ever kill a man, Smitty?”
“No.”
“Well, I had to, once. In Tahiti. I swore I’d never kill again, if I could possibly avoid it. And to help avoid it, I practiced with Mike till I could hit that dime at that fifty paces.”
Benson’s eyes changed expression. His face could not change; it was a dead thing. So the gray flame of his pale, deadly eyes seemed to be gaining more expressiveness than eyes ordinarily have, in compensation.
He stared at Smitty.
“Any phone calls while I was gone?”
The giant shook his head. “Were you expecting any?”
“Expecting?” said Benson, tortured words slipping from lips that showed no torture. “No, Smitty. Hoping? Yes. I am still hoping that my wife and girl are alive. I am still hoping I’ll get a demand for money in exchange for their lives. If I do — well, I have several million dollars, and the crooks can have it all, if they give Alicia and Alice back to me. After that — I’ll wind them up or die trying! But first they can have all I’ve got if they’ll return those two, alive.”
“There was no phone call,” said Smitty gently.
The door opened, and MacMurdie came in. The dour Scot was much excited about something.
“Reportin’ from the airport,” he said, with his Scotch burr more pronounced than ever. “There’s things afoot, Muster Benson. New devilry.”
The pale-gray eyes drilled into MacMurdie’s frosty blue ones.
“The crowd that was on the plane with you that night have booked the same plane again tonight — for Montreal,” said Mac.
Benson’s body was as still as his face. Smitty stared at the Scot and then whistled. MacMurdie said:
“Another trip with… something… bound for… somewhere, I’m thinkin’. The plane with the trapdoor. Now what’ll be dropped tonight?”
“A man,” said Benson, voice as even and expressionless as his features. “That’s what will be dropped. And I think the man will be Leon, your ex-employer, Smitty!”
CHAPTER XI
The Trapdoor Plane
Benson summed it up.
“Lawrence Hickock is gone, and no one knows where. Arnold Leon has disappeared. Mrs. Martineau the same — she has been missing even longer than Hickock. According to the newspapers, Stephen Vincent has also vanished. Perhaps others have, too. All those people seem to have one common comiection. They either own stock in, or run, the Buffalo Tap & Die Works.”
Benson continued: “The gang that takes over the Buffalo-Montreal plane periodically is connected with those disappearances, so I think we can accept almost as proven fact the theory that the gang kidnaps these wealthy, influential people and, one by one, drops them through the trapdoor of that plane to some unknown destination. That is what is carried aboard in the trunk each trip — a living, human body. That is what is dropped. And that is why they had to dispose of my wife and girl. The gang didn’t dare have a living soul witness what went out that trapdoor.”
“You mean, they just drop them?” said MacMurdie, blue eyes blazing. “Or do ye think they use parachutes?”
“Parachutes, I think,” said Benson. “There would seem to be no point in going to such elaborate lengths just to kill their victims by dropping them in Lake Ontario. There are far easier ways to murder. No, they must ’chute the victims down, and hold them alive somewhere. And tonight, you say, Mac, the gang has booked the Montreal plane for one more run?”
“That’s right, Muster Benson.”
“Well, we’ve gone at least a little way in our journey of vengeance. I think we can go a little distance further and make a good guess at where the victims are dropped.”
Benson opened a large map and pored over it with face bleak and white and dead but gray eyes alive. The map was of the eastern Great Lakes region. He pointed to the head of Lake Ontario, with Canada on one side and the United States on the other.
“I have figured the speed of the plane as well as I could,” he said, clipped words rattling from still, immobile lips, “and I think the ship was about over the Thousand Islands region when I last saw my wife and girl. The Thousand Islands! There’s a labyrinth for you! In that wilderness of water and rock, a hundred hiding places might be found where a gang would be safe from the law indefinitely. That is where I think our eventual goal lies. That is where I believe these missing persons are being held. Always assuming they aren’t dead, of course.”
MacMurdie, the careful Scot, went to the map with his lips pursed. No yes-man, MacMurdie. The chief’s idea seemed sound to him. But he wanted to verify it a little.
“The Montreal air line runs like so,” he said.
He traced a line from Buffalo to Montreal, and noted where it hit the St. Lawrence River. Then he nodded to Benson.
“It runs over the Thousand Islands. That’ll be the place. But as ye say, it’s a labyrinth. How would we ever get an idea as to what part of the Islands these skurlies’ll be hidin’ it?”
Benson shook his head a little, pale eyes flaming with concentrated thought.
But it was Smitty, the good-natured looking, moonfaced giant who had an idea first.
“I’ve got it!” he said so suddenly that MacMurdie jumped and turned resentful blue eyes on the big fellow.
‘What have ye got, mon?” he snapped. “The little crawlin’ things in your bonnet?”
“You say the plane takes the gang again tonight. And you, sir”—the giant turned to Benson—“have told us how your tragedy and your entrance into this business came from forcing your way into the plane with your wife and child that night. Well, I could perhaps locate their hide-out in the island myself, like this.”
He spoke eight words. Benson’s eyes seemed to go more colorless than ever, and to become, if possible, brighter. MacMurdie stared open-jawed.
“Whoosh/” the Scot said finally. “ ’Tis suicide, mon! Ye can’t do a thing like that!”
“No, Smitty,” Benson said. “I can’t permit anything like that.”
“I could do it,” insisted the giant. “That is, I think I could. You!” He stared at MacMurdie. “What plane will they be taking?”
“The S404, of course. The one with the trapdoor.”
“You know that plane?”
“Like the inside of my hand.”
“Draw the undercarriage. And draw it to scale! Because I’m going to do this — and if your drawing isn’t right I’ll come back from the grave and haunt you.”
“If anything goes wrong ye won’t have a grave,” said the Scot somberly. “Ye’ll be buried in black water in the Ontario.”
The Scot was drawing the under carriage of the S404, and being very careful about it.
In Benson’s pale and deadly eyes, as they rested on the giant Smitty, was a look not seen there since his hair had whitened and his face died. But he was shaking his head.
“I told you, Smitty, I won’t permit it.”
The big fellow stared back at him.
“And I’m telling you, sir I’m going to do it. It’s the answer, if I can stay alive.”
“No!”
“You can’t stop me. You downed me once, but you can’t do it again. And the only way you can keep me from trying is to get me down and strap me to the floor.”
The eyes, pale, but seeming composed of living flame, dwelt on the big fellow’s face. There was no seeming stupidity in the moon countenance now. It was vital with intelligence and with resolve. Benson’s hand rested on the vast shoulder for just an instant.