Synopsis | - Gregory Van Ashley, portly, middle-aged restaurateur and crime boss, dupes a bank president by posing as a mystery writer and interviewing him, at length and in detail, about bank security. While the president is conducting a tour of the bank, Van Ashley cuts the alarm system’s wires. Soon, at his hideout, Van Ashley, in a tuxedo, reviews the robbery plan with this gang. One hood, Slugger, complains that the gangsters should get bigger shares of the loot, so Van Ashley puts on a pair of white gloves then pulls out a revolver and shoots him.
The next morning Van Ashley and his gang arrive to rob the bank, and start by locking all the real bank employees in the vault. Then they have to do some stalling before the time locks will open, so they pose as tellers and try to conduct normal bank business. Young publisher Lee Travis shows up to make a withdrawal, notices a few things wrong, goes back to his car, and alerts Wing How. Travis and How change into their fighting togs and go into action; some chandelier-swinging and fisticuffs ensue. Crimson and Wing disrupt the bank robbery badly enough, and the police arrive loudly and quickly enough, that the remaining crooks flee. One of them goes upside the Avenger’s head with a tommy-gun barrel, but this fails to knock him unconscious. Shortly afterward, between panels, this thug is knocked out, probably by Wing. They drag him outside and prop him up behind the wheel of Travis’s car.
The Crimson Avenger has brought along his make-up kit, and quickly disguises himself as the portly middle-aged gang boss , then waits for the driver to wake up, and orders him to drive them to the hideout, which is Van Ashley’s restaurant, “Ye Old Windmill,” out in the country, built in the shape of an old-fashioned windmill, with a large, motorized set of blades. Ashley and a large number of thugs are here. Badly outnumbered, and absolutely outgunned, the Crimson Avenger and Wing lose their second fistfight of the story, and are left trussed up in a back room of the restaurant, in an overly complicated deathtrap involving a bag of gunpowder, a trail of gunpowder, and a candle. Van Ashley puts on his white gloves before leaving the unguarded pair behind.
But in the same room is a fan, which the Avenger manages to turn on, dispersing the powder trail, and buying them time to work loose from their ropes. Crimson & Wing then race to the hospital, where they interrupt Van Ashley’s attempted theft of some radium, by winning a third fists-versus-guns melee.
|