The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs (10 page)

Burnside, in The Avenger’s own hideout, was most accessible for questioning. So Benson went to his secretly held office suite with the windowless storage room so conveniently fixed as a bedroom.

But he did no questioning. For Burnside wasn’t accessible after all.

Benson opened the door, started to go into the first room of the suite, and stopped with his icy eyes taking on their crystalline glitter.

On the floor of this room lay Rosabel Newton. The pretty negress was deeply unconscious. The cause of the unconsciousness was plain enough: it was a deep welt on the side of her head where she had been slugged.

There was no sign of Josh. Nor was there any trace of Senator Burnside.

Both were gone! The Avenger went swiftly through the two rooms and the storage room, and found that out in a hurry.

Gone! But where? Why?

He went back to Rosabel. From his pocket, the pale-eyed man who was as eminent in the field of medicine as in all other fields, drew a small hypodermic case. The needle went deftly into Rosabel’s arm.

In two or three minutes Rosabel’s soft dark eyes opened. They rested on the white, dead face of The Avenger. She struggled up with a cry.

“Josh! Where’s Josh?”

It was typical of Rosabel. The first thought of Josh Newton was for her—always. And that went double for Rosabel.

“Josh isn’t here,” said Benson gently. “What happened? Why are he and Burnside gone?”

“Some men came.” Rosabel closed her eyes in pain and moaned a little. “They must have taken Josh out with them. And Senator Burnside, too. But they hit me when they first came in; so I can only guess.”

“Some men?” repeated Benson. “But how could they have located Burnside here?”

“He telephoned,” said Rosabel.

“Telephoned!” Benson’s pale eyes were steely chips. “Why on earth did he do that? He was hiding out. Didn’t it occur to him that there was a big chance of this place being discovered by his enemies if he went phoning all around Washington?”

“Josh and I tried to stop him,” said Rosabel. “But we’d have had to knock him down and tie him to keep him from it, he was so determined. And you hadn’t left any orders about it—”

“It’s not your fault,” Benson said, “but Burnside—he should have known better.”

He stepped to the phone. In a few seconds the exchange was tracing that call, spurred on by the magic name of Richard Henry Benson.

“He telephoned Congressman Coolie,” said the Avenger, after a moment. “Coolie is also from Montana, near Bison. And he is also interested in conservation projects, as Burnside himself is. How soon were you raided after the call?”

“Less than half an hour,” said Rosabel.

Benson’s pale eyes had been darting around the room. They rested now on a little white thing under a table. He went to it and picked it up.

The little white thing was half a handkerchief. In it were four pennies.

Four pennies and half a handkerchief. The Avenger’s pale eyes glittered. Josh had left these as a message.

“Get Mac and Smitty over here. They’re at the hotel. Tell them to go after Josh. They’ll know what to do when they see these. Are you all right?”

“Yes. But—”

The Avenger was gone, seeming to move slowly, such was his perfect coordination of mind and muscle, but actually getting out the door before Rosabel could utter another word.

The reason for his hurry was the swiftness with which the man had come to get Burnside after that phone call. Less than half an hour! It could only mean one thing. That was that the men had been near Coolie’s phone when Burnside called. In no other way could the call have been traced so quickly.

Coolie’s home was in the top-floor apartment of a big building overlooking Rock Creek Park. The building had no lobby or desk where Benson could get a pass key.

The Avenger went to the cliff side of the building. There was ornamental design in the side of the building, formed by the familiar method of placing alternate rows of bricks endways instead of lengthways and letting the ends protrude a half inch. Benson went up the side of the building.

It was a hundred feet down to jagged rock. But he didn’t look down. Apparently he didn’t even think of that sheer drop. Up he went, as easily as if climbing a ladder, till he got to the top floor.

He opened a window and climbed noiselessly into a bedroom. But there was no need for soundlessness in the apartment of Congressman Coolie.

There was nobody in it but Coolie, and Coolie would never show interest in anything any more.

The Congressman lay in a pool of his own blood, with a knife blade sticking out of his chest. The Avenger’s deductions had been all too sound.

Burnside would have been rash to make any phone call at all. As luck would have it, this particular call had been more than indiscreet. It had been suicidal. He had chanced to telephone a person in the clutches of the very men he was hiding from.

Coolie had, perhaps, been dead, and his voice had been imitated by one of the men. Or perhaps he had been forced to talk, and then had been murdered later.

That point suddenly struck the cold brain behind the icy, colorless eyes as important.

Coolie’s body was clad in a bathrobe. One tassel of the robe lay in the blood, reddened a couple of inches up its length. The other tassel was on top of the body, and dry.

The Avenger put the dry tassel in the pool of blood, and watched it with his watch in hand.

It took sixteen minutes for the tassel to suck up blood to the point reached by the other tassel that had landed in the pool when Coolie fell.

The Congressman had been murdered thirty-two minutes ago. That was
after
Burnside had been safely taken into custody again. They had not killed him till they knew they had Burnside where they wanted him.

The Avenger looked at his watch again. It was twenty minutes past ten at night.

Twenty minutes past ten was the time the man with the dead, paralyzed face and the cold, colorless eyes had noted on his watch.

Twelve minutes later, at twenty-eight minutes to eleven, a man got a phone call.

The man was a hard-working young fellow who had just opened an office as sales representative of a New York toy firm. He had two tiny rooms. One was the office part. The other was the sample room, with shelves around all the walls and samples of different kind of games and toys on the shelves.

He was in the office part, bending over a new list of prospects he had dug up that afternoon. But the light was on in the sample room, too. Through the open door a toy panda leered at his back with glass-button eyes.

The building in which the little suite was located was on Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the Willard Hotel. There were several other lights in it. Not many, for few were at work this late at night.

And then the man’s telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, wondering who was calling him at this time of night

“Peter Gottlieb,” he said mechanically. “Knox Toy and Novelty Company.”

“Mr. Gottlieb,” came a smooth voice, “I am Withers, with the Baylor Game Company. I wonder if you could drop over and see me about a business proposition. I am at the Willard Hotel.”

Gottlieb looked mildly surprised. “It’s a little late, isn’t it, Mr. Withers?”

“Yes. But I’m sure an up-and-coming young man like yourself doesn’t mind a night call.”

Gottlieb was an up-and-coming young man, and he did not mind a night call. Or one at two o’clock in the morning, if it would bring in some business. But he was clever, too. And he did not think it would be good policy to make this call.

If the Baylor Game Company wanted to see him, it must be that they wanted him to handle their line of games and toys, too. And it would not be good business to be too eager about accepting such a proposition. He would get less commission the more anxious he appeared to want the job.

So he stalled, which was good psychology, but very bad destiny. “I’ll have to make it in the morning, I’m afraid,” he said importantly. “I’m very busy listing a big order I got today.”

“It will have to be tonight—at once, or not at all,” snapped the voice of Withers.

Gottlieb smiled. Fat chance this man had of getting another representative this late at night. He’d be around in the morning, all right. And Gottlieb could get a better commission in a contract if he stuck to his guns.

“I’m awfully sorry. I just can’t get away tonight.”

The phone went dead.

Gottlieb had a moment’s doubt, but he reassured himself that he had acted smartly and that a phone call at that time of night on such a proposition was kind of screwy anyway. He went back to his work.

Ten minutes passed; then there was a tap at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

A heavy-bodied, elderly woman, dressed in shabby grey, with mop and bucket in hand, opened the door.

“Will you be through pretty soon?” she asked wearily. “I’m supposed to clean up in here.”

Gottlieb stared, then smiled. “You’ve made a mistake. This office has already been cleaned. At about eight o’clock.”

“I’m supposed to do the floor again,” said the woman. “It wasn’t done right before.”

“It’s done well enough for me,” said Gottlieb cheerfully.

“But—”

“You can just skip this office. I’m busy; don’t want to be interrupted.”

The scrub woman looked as if about to say more, but didn’t. She went out.

On her feet, though Gottlieb didn’t notice it, were men’s shoes. But perhaps many scrub women wear the heavier soled brogans of men for their work.

Five minutes later the phone rang again. Gottlieb, frowning a little, picked it up.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Withers, but as I told you—”

“Who? This isn’t anybody named Withers. My name is Mason. I’m buyer for the Washington Department Store. I’d like you to run over here now, if you will, and show me your line. It’s a little late, but—”

Gottlieb scowled. He knew some young fellows in Washington. By now he had decided that these phone calls were a practical joke of some of his joking friends. So he just hung up.

He was getting kind of stubborn about not leaving his office now. He was stubborn anyway. Two phone calls and a belated visit by a scrub woman.

It was almost eleven o’clock.

The door opened. His back was toward it; so he did not see the movement.

Through the doorway slid a figure, careful to make no noise. It was the scrub woman again. But in her hand was a heavy .45 automatic, and in her eyes was murder.

But it wasn’t “her” eyes. It was “his.” For now you could see that this was a man dressed in woman’s clothes.

Gottlieb turned a page of his new prospect list. He bent over a map of the city. He was listing each name in a certain section, so that he could avoid all unnecessary traveling around in calling on prospects.

The woman’s figure was right behind him. The hand with the gun in it, raised.

Perhaps Gottlieb heard something, at that last moment. Perhaps he merely meant to get up and get a drink of water from the cooler behind him. Anyhow, he started to turn.

The move was never completed. The gun flailed down. There was a horrible dull thump. Gottlieb slid from chair to floor, with a deep crease in his skull!

The man with the gun wiped the barrel on Gottlieb’s coat. Then the killer went back to the door of the sample room. He turned the light out in there. He returned to the corridor door, turned out the office light, too, and left.

He didn’t look around. He didn’t take anything.

He just struck murderously, turned out lights, and left.

In the darkness the little toy panda stared with unfeeling button eyes through the sample-room doorway at the dead body of Gottlieb.

In the hideout where Burnside had been—and from which he and Josh had been snatched—Mac and Smitty stared at the cryptic message left behind by Josh.

Four pennies an the handkerchief torn in half.

But it wasn’t so cryptic. The Avenger had gotten the message in a flash, and had been so sure that Mac or Smitty would, too, that he hadn’t even bothered to tell it to Rosabel.

Four pennies and the handkerchief torn in half, half. To anyone at all familiar with Washington, that was crystal-clear.