HE WHIRLED, plucked a rifle from a soldier beside him and gripped it with light and ready hands. "These men we are going against have killed thousands," he said, "but they are cowards. They have killed by pushing buildings down on innocent men and women. We are the first who have had a chance to even that score." He looked about him and saw grimness creeping into the faces of these boys, their hands tensing on their rifles. "Remember, two inches of steel in the guts." He paused, drew a deep breath. "Follow me!"
With the word, he sprang to the hood of an automobile, vaulted clear and charged toward the bank. He had chosen his point of attack well. He was out of range of the window where the machine gun stammered, out of the line of the door. Yells rang out from all sides. An excited policeman leaped to the top of an automobile and threw down on the window with a submachine gun. It blasted to pieces in his hands, blew his stomach in so that he doubled over the shattered weapon. The ludicrous surprise on his face was instantly erased by the sponge of death.
Wentworth swung around the corner and a gangster with a machine gun at his hip gaped at him. He lifted the muzzle and Wentworth's rifle thrust out as lightly as a foil. The bayonet slid in over the machine gun, prodded through the man's clothing and was whipped out. The man's eyes closed and he slumped down. Blood welled out and spread over the steps in a widening pool.
Wentworth was flat against the wall behind one of the polished columns now, soldiers behind him and opposite him behind the other column.
The glass of the doors smashed to the stone floor and two soldiers against the opposite wall pitched to the steps across their guns. One bayonet struck point-on and shattered. Inside, a machine gun racketed. The hallway was a sounding chamber. The blasts were thunderous. Wentworth turned his head. "Grenade," he said crisply.
A heavy rough piece of iron was thrust into his hand. Wentworth yanked the pin and tossed the bomb through the shattered doors. The grenade's blast was oddly muffled and Wentworth nodded. The steel-eater had weakened the casing so that the force of the explosion was greatly reduced, but it still should do heavy damage. The machine gun had stopped. Wentworth sprang toward the doors.
There were cheers behind him now, cheers of men who saw hope for the first time. They went through the glassless doors in a resolute swift wave, bayonets thrusting ahead. They penetrated the inner door and a close group of men wheeled from a bank entrance on their left. Wentworth sprang close, his bayonet point snaking out. A man flung up his hands and went down screaming. Wentworth reached past him as he fell, but he could not get at the stomach of the next gangster and the man's pistol was coming up. He ran him through the throat and the steel snapped off short.
Wentworth had no time to snatch a fallen gun, no time even to think. There were five gangsters left. A pistol blasted and a soldier screamed. Falling, his head struck Wentworth's calves. He sagged slightly, pitched forward with the butt of his rifle sweeping upward. It crunched into the groin of another gangster and the man squealed, doubled over. The butt swept on, the rifle coming up over Wentworth's shoulder, and he grabbed it, thrust forward with all his weight behind the butt. It smashed a man's face.
On his right, a soldier ran his bayonet its full length into another gangster's stomach. A man behind the hood fired almost in the trooper's face and even as his bloodied head jerked back between his shoulder blades, a companion's bayonet slipped into the throat of the gangster. The hallway was cleared for the moment.
"Take their pistols," he barked over his shoulder, and stooped to scoop up two himself. There were only four soldiers behind him now. They were white-faced and alert. He nodded encouragement and slipped into the lobby of the bank. There were bodies scattered over the floor, steel cashier's cages were smashed and the vault-door was wrecked, but there was not a gangster in sight. Wentworth and his shattered squad raced the length of the long room, spotted an open door on the side and darted toward it.
Wentworth checked for a moment in that doorway, his face gone gray. Death confronted him. Death in a half-hundred scattered corpses of blue and khaki. He plunged on, darting toward the auto barricade. He lifted the body of a policeman from the fender of one of the cars, flung himself into the driver's seat and kicked the starter.
"Get five rifles with bayonets," he ordered.
He was frowning heavily as he flung the car about, as the four men who remained piled in. In some way, the gangsters had rendered their own guns immune to the gas. Either that, or the steel-eater had hovered so close to the ground that by raising themselves to the height of the bank's floor, they had been above the level that would affect guns. What wind there had been had blown from the East, and if the gas had been released so as to affect all the troops and police about the bank, it would have had to affect their own weapons, too.
Wentworth sent the car hurtling ahead, swung around a corner. Blocks away he could hear the shriek of sirens that betokened the chase. He flung on in pursuit, forehead still corrugated in thought.
Up ahead, the gangsters would run into police whose weapons had not been weakened by the gas, but slamming along in force as they were, no ordinary squad would have strength enough to stop them. Wentworth spun another corner and yanked violently at the wheel, barely skating aside from the wreckage of a police auto. In his one swift glance, he saw that the wheels of the police car had gone to pieces, all four of them. His lips shut grimly. A new use for the steel-eater. The gangsters had trailed it behind them in their flight and it had wrecked the car of at least one pursuer.
Wentworth flung a look ahead, saw two more cars piled up. He nodded his head. It was clever strategy, but there was a way to beat it. Three blocks to the right of the line of chase Wentworth hurled his car, then paralleled it with the motor roaring wide open. The robbers' defense had a defect. If they were to protect themselves by the gas, the gangsters must flee in a straight line. Otherwise, they might well double back upon their own weapon and be defeated by it. Police probably would not realize the reason for their cars crashing until too late to profit by the knowledge.
The accelerator was pinned to the floor and Wentworth's car rocketed along at close to seventy. He jammed the horn in place with a pin and kept it blaring for right of way as he raced on. Traffic was already disrupted by the wails of sirens. It dodged aside, gave Wentworth and his four soldiers a clear path. It was possible to keep track of the chase by the sirens and the scattering bursts of shots from the gangster cars. Gradually those sounds came nearer and finally dropped behind and still Wentworth crushed the accelerator to the floor and burned the street northward.
Finally he swung left once more, toward the line of escape. His mind was racing with the swift roar of his engine. It would be a futile thing to dash these five lives into the path of the gangsters. Something more was needed than five automatics, for which they had no extra ammunition.
His car crossed Fourth Avenue in a bound and he stood on the brakes, jerked his head toward the soldiers on the rear seat.
"You and you," he picked two with his eyes, "commandeer trucks and block Fifth Avenue."
The two men sprang out instantly with their rifles and Wentworth sent his machine lurching on, crossed Fifth Avenue and hurtled Broadway, where he ordered the last two soldiers to block the street with cars and trucks. Then he raced on, circled two blocks back along the line of chase and found an interurban truck lumbering southward with a heavy trailer behind. Wentworth stopped it, flung to the driver's seat, rifle in hand.
"Out," he barked. "I'm taking the truck for police business."
The men stared at his haphazard uniform, started to argue and decided not to as Wentworth clambered up with the business end of the bayonet forward. The truckmen dropped off and he started the truck with a lurch, headed east toward Broadway. The sirens and shots were racing nearer. Then the siren stopped and Wentworth guessed that the last of the police cars had gone to pieces under the assault of the steel eater. He crouched low behind the steel front of the truck and waited, saw six cars sweep up Broadway in a close bunch. Then he started the truck lurching forward again, turned into their wake.
He heard the frantic squeal of brakes, and grim laughter bubbled up from his chest. Two trucks, traveling abreast, had swung out into Broadway and were trundling straight toward the gangster cars. A blasting fury of gun shots ripped out from the mob cars and one of the trucks swerved, locked wheels with the other and turned them both over in a splintering wreck upon the street. They blocked it from curb to curb, sloped up on the sidewalks. There was no escape for the gangster cars. The leader had almost rammed into the wrecked trucks. Now he began to back and whirl southward again.
Wentworth had reached the corner of the block in which they were trapped. He angled his huge truck and trailer across the street, set the truck running wild toward the gangster cars and dropped from the driver's seat. He had two guns and the rifle and he flung himself flat on the street and began firing beneath the body of his truck. The huge twenty-tonner wheeled on. The leading gangster's car halted and men scattered from it. An instant later the nose of the truck rammed the car, ground over the wreckage. From the debris, a faint, almost imperceptible gas filtered upward, then settled heavily toward the street. The street was completely blocked and gangsters scattered from the other cars also. A machine gun stuttered and bullets began to pock the asphalt beneath the truck. Suddenly, the machine gun stopped. It stopped with a blasting explosion that hurled its wielder bloodily to the ground. An automatic exploded in another man's hand and Wentworth laughed grimly as he pumped out his last bullets. The steel-eater had turned on its users. Their own guns were crippled now.
With a yell, he bounded to his feet, snatching up the bayoneted rifle which he had carried with him. His shout brought one soldier from the wreckage of the trucks and around the corner from Fifth Avenue two others pounded. In the hands of each, a bayoneted rifle was gripped. More than one of those bayonets was tipped with red.
"Their guns are useless, men!" Wentworth yelled. "Remember, two inches of steel in the guts!"
He hurtled forward at a dead run, his bayoneted gun at port across his body. Two more gangsters tried in their excitement to shoot and the weapons blew up and tore their hands with their explosions. The bolt smashed one man's face, then the whole group turned and ran. Thirty men turned and ran frenziedly from four. But they were weaponless, their morale had been shattered when their sure defense turned upon them and stripped them of guns. And the four attackers had long knives that would stab, two inches deep, into their guts. The underworld murderers turned and fled.
A soldier overtook Wentworth and the Spider snatched another grenade from the man, hurled it toward the fleeing gangsters. It smashed with the same oddly muffled blast, but flying fragments felled two men. The other soldier, charging from the opposite end of the block, snatched out a grenade and hurled it. Another gangster spun on his heels and went down. Then the leaders reached a subway kiosk.
"Down here!" one hood yelled. "They can't throw grenades down here!"
The gangsters funneled into the subway, rats scampering to cover. Wentworth caught a grenade from a soldier and whirled toward the kiosk on the opposite side of the street. Where the gangsters had entered, they could reach only downtown trains, trains that would shoot them back into the arms of the police from whom they fled. But, by climbing down and crossing the tracks, they could catch an uptown train. That was what Wentworth raced to prevent.
He darted down the stairs, sprang to the uptown platform as the gangsters streamed out on the opposite side. Wentworth trailed his bayoneted rifle in his left hand. In his right, he held the grenade. The leading gangster, plunging for the tracks, reeled back and his companions collided with him. Wentworth cursed viciously. The leader was McSwag! Somehow he had gathered a fresh mob and returned to the assault. The red Spider glimmered on his forehead and Wentworth had sworn to put a bullet on that spot the next time they met, yet he was helpless without arms; he raised the grenade.
"Surrender," he shouted, "or I'll blow the roof down on all of you."
McSwag's lips writhed, but what he said was drowned in the thunder of an approaching train. It was on the downtown side and it slid its steel sides between Wentworth and his prey. The gangsters streamed in as the doors opened and through the windows Wentworth saw the three soldiers charging toward the turnstiles with bayonets ready. He saw McSwag race toward the front car, knock the conductor aside and press the buttons that controlled the slide doors, operated by compressed air. The doors slid shut. The motorman, unaware that anything untoward had occurred, got the electric flash of the automatic signal indicating the doors were shut and the train slid forward. The soldiers hammered against the doors, too late. As the train gathered headway, Wentworth saw McSwag striding toward the motorman's cubicle in the first car.
He cursed, but lowered the grenade. There were a hundred innocent persons aboard that train. He could not wreck it, even to wipe out this gang of murderers. He felt the platform beneath him shaking to the vibration of the departing train, and suddenly his eyes flew wide. He swung about and slapped through the exit doors from the platform, yanked open the door of the station-agent's booth.
"Stop all trains," he shouted hoarsely.
The station agent gaped at him.
"Stop the trains, fool," Wentworth snarled at him. "The steel-eater has been spread all along the streets above the subway. The gas is heavy and will settle into the tubes; the vibration . . . ."
He choked, reeled, caught the side of the door and stood trembling while a rumbling, hollow concussion roared through the tunnel. The lights blinked out and for a moment, utter silence followed the echoes of the cave-in.
"Too late," Wentworth said hoarsely. "Too late!" He pushed himself away from the doors of the booth, made his way heavily up the steps to daylight. The soldiers boiled out of the opposite exit, stared down the street. Four blocks down Broadway, the pavement had dropped through. Thereafter, for five blocks, the street had become a great crater. The roof of the subway had fallen in.
The gangsters had carried another hundred persons with them to death, but it was a cosmic retribution that had been visited upon them.
The weapon that they had used against others had crushed them in turn!