A man had fled from the room just prior to their arrival. He had left behind him an automatic fitted with silencer.
But they did not penetrate to the sanctum which had once belonged to the commander of the Silent Seven. Nor did they reach the corridor below, where the body of a giant man lay at the end of the passage. Bron’s watch post had become his tomb.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE RETURN
THE end of the Silent Seven was a tremendous newspaper story. To Detective Joe Cardona went the credit for the extermination of the most amazing gang of criminals that New York had known in years!
Rodney Paget collapsed under grilling, after confessing to the murders of Henry Marchand and Doctor George Lukens.
The identities of the dead members of the Silent Seven created a tremendous stir.
One was a prominent lawyer; another a well-known politician. Two were figures in the underworld, reputed gang leaders, who had constantly eluded the law. One was a prominent banker.
But the discovery of the body of Professor Jukes, deserted in his limousine just beyond the city limits, created the greatest surprise. This man had been a noted scholar. Now he proved to be the master mind of a powerful organization whose existence the police had scarcely suspected!
Detectives were rounding up members of the Faithful Fifty. Every hour was bringing new disclosures. The Silent Seven had already been linked with half a dozen unsolved crimes.
Investigators were hard at work, tracing the checkered career of this desperate gang that had worked for years in silence, spreading their crimes at intervals, never even leaving a tangible clew.