“That man Farr! Watch out!”
Smitty whirled — and leaped. But he was too late. Farr had come to a little sooner than expected. He had crept to the door while everyone was breathlessly watching the giant’s incredible feat of strength. Now he had the door open.
“Everybody! Down here!” he shouted hoarsely, as loud as his bruised throat would permit. “Here! Quick! The big fella’s loose!”
Then he was outside and had slammed the door and bolted it, just as Smitty thudded against the panels to follow him. Smitty leaped for the window and completed tearing the bars out. He poked his head out — and instantly fell back in again.
A swift burst of machine-gun fire had almost taken his nose off with its first emergence from the window.
He was free of his chains, but still a prisoner in the basement. He went back to the door, and banged against it with a pile-driver shoulder. Then he jumped warily aside. And it was well he did.
Lead poured through the wood in a solid stream following the impact of his shoulder. A man was posted out there with a machine gun.
Smitty, growling with baffled rage, leaned against the wall next to the door and waited. There seemed nothing else to do at the moment.
Outside, in the high weeds of what had once been a well-kept lawn, MacMurdie and Benson lay four yards apart after MacMurdie’s mistake in waving the weeds when there was no breeze to wave them normally.
Those pale, deadly eyes of Benson had seen the slip. On just such trifles as that, the gray-steel man had staked his life many times in his adventurous past.
“Left — fast!” he snapped in a low tone to MacMurdie, the instant he saw those weeds wave when they shouldn’t have been waving.
The two split right and left. Fortunately the breeze was blowing again, covering the weed movements. MacMurdie and Benson had hardly gotten their distance apart when there was a monotonous, terrible hammering as slugs came from a machine gun. The space between them — where they had been lying an instant before — spewed little gouts of dirt where bullets ripped. Weeds fell as if severed by tiny, unseen scythes in the hands of gnomes.
Then the leaden hail stopped. The two could only lie there and wonder if the man were coming, gun in hand, to see if he had hit anything. They couldn’t see over the weeds from where they lay, and didn’t dare raise their heads.
As a matter of fact, the man was coming. He went slowly, a few steps at a time, gun cradled and ready. He was beginning to think he’d shot at shadows. But he wanted to make sure.
MacMurdie turned his head to stare at Benson. The gray fox of a man could barely be seen through the few yards of weeds. The Scot felt a chill touch his spine. He himself was in mental agony, wondering if the man were sneaking up on them, wondering when he would feel machine-gun slugs plow into his back. He knew his face expressed all this. But Benson’s face did not — could not — express anything at all.
It was still, calm, terribly emotionless. The pale and deadly eyes flaming out of the face that was shaped to resemble another man’s, gave a ghastly effect. Like eyes peering from the grave. From another man’s grave!
And then, at a stroke, he saw the gray man’s stony calm shattered to bits.
From the house, high and terrible, came a woman’s scream. And Benson went all to pieces. Another scream sounded out, and Benson’s face, sweat-beaded, went down to grind into the earth.
A woman in terror — perhaps in torture! Was it — could it possibly be — Alicia? His wife — alive in there? The possibility was too much to be borne. Benson was a quivering and helpless bulk in the grip of an unendurable hope.
MacMurdie watched in growing horror. If the man with the gun was creeping up on them, Benson, in his present state, would prove as helpless as a child.
“Mon, mon, get yersel tagither!” MacMurdie begged soundlessly. And then he heard the weeds rustling not twenty feet away. And Benson, still a quivering wreck from that scream, had obviously not heard.
Mac’s groping hand closed on a rock the size of his fist. With a flick of his bony, powerful wrist, he snapped it as far to his left as he could. Which, since he dared not disturb the weeds with a full throw, was not far.
It stopped only a few feet away — and hell broke loose and shaved the dour Scot’s ear.
The machine gunner poured lead into the spot where the rock had waved the weeds for a full five seconds. Then stood — and watched. He was too old a hand to risk being gripped by the ankles if he went unwarily closer to whatever was disturbing the weeds.
The pause did the trick. There was suddenly a man’s faintly heard yell from within the house.
“Everybody! Down here! Quick! The big fellow’s loose!”
The man turned toward the house. Benson and Mac followed carefully.
The basement windows were at the sides of the house.
And anyone watching the doors from the inside would be apt to overlook a stealthy entrance from the outside.
Benson waved to the Scot to come onto the porch. MacMurdie did so. He flattened against the wall while Benson tried the front doorknob. The door was unlocked.
With his pale and deadly eyes glittering like ice in a gray dawn, Benson stooped down and got Mike, the special little gun. He coolly opened the door.
There was a man in the front hall, with his back turned. He was watching in the wrong direction, it turned out. He whirled at Benson’s entrance.
His gun started to snap up, wavered as he saw the face of Murdock and the clothes Murdock had worn when he left in the motor cruiser.
“Murdock—” he said questioningly.
Then, with its soft, deadly spat, Mike spoke. The man went down, scalp deeply gashed on the top, knocked out, but not killed, by the stunning impact of the little slug glancing from bone.
They went down two steps of the winding stairs leading to the basement. There they halted as a burst of machine-gun fire sounded around the bend beneath them. Somebody shooting through the basement door? It sounded like it—
There were pounding steps in the hall, coming toward them. Men — too many to face, were converging from all the rest of the house to the basement.
A machine gun at the bottom of the stairs, men coming to the top. Benson’s pale eyes flamed lambently. He crept to the bend in the stairs, and leaped like a jaguar.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Big Shot
The machine gunner never knew what hit him. He was crouching on the bottom stair, gazing at the door, through which he had just poured a burst of lead at the battering impact of Smitty’s shoulder.
Benson lit on his back. His head banged against the door.
“Whitey!” yelled one of the men just starting down the steps. “What’s up? Is he getting out—”
Benson had the door bolt open. He flung the door open just as the first of the men got around the bend in the stairs and stopped talking as he saw MacMurdie and the white-haired man with the steely light eyes.
The two got into the basement just as slugs began to rip through the door they’d banged behind them. A huge hand fell on Benson’s shoulder. He started to whirl and hit, but stopped. His flashing brain told him there was only one hand that big; and only one “big fellow” the gang could yell about being loose.
Smitty! He’d gotten through!
Benson turned. He stared up into the giant’s moon-face with profound gratitude and admiration. But he only said:
“So now we’re all cooped up in here. But I guess the three of us can take them.”
Outside, Fair’s savage voice sounded: “Seven of us, with two Tommy guns, I guess we can take them all right. All together when I tell you—”