The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs (11 page)

The dark street near the Bureau of Engraving—4½ Street.

That was pretty vague. Josh had overheard his captors say that he was to be taken to 4½ Street, but either hadn’t overheard the address, too, or had been unable to figure a message to leave that was that explicit.

Mac and Smitty set out for the street named.

The dour Scot’s bleak blue eyes flamed with the light of battle, and the giant Smitty’s vast shoulders hunched in the same anticipation. When one of The Avenger’s little crew was in a jam, the rest sprang to the rescue. But even without so compelling a motivation, they would have sprung.

They didn’t like men who resembled rats—as all crooks do. They were always ready to smash them.

At the beginning of 4½ Street, they got out of their car. They started prowling down the walk.

A little later this street was to be widened and made beautiful. But now it was a dank runway of old buildings, badly lighted.

Mac saw the things first.

In catching Josh Newton, the gang of cutthroats who had murdered Coolie had caught a black panther. They didn’t know it, for Josh made it a policy to look sleepy and dumb. But it was only an effective guise.

There had been ingenuity in leaving that handkerchief-and-penny message. There was more ingenuity in marking the exact spot on the street. Yet it had been easy to do.

Josh, dragged along from car to house, had simply stepped out of his shoes.

There they were, at the edge of the walk in front of a totally darkened house a block and a half from the beginning of 4½ Street. And the Scot had no difficulty in recognizing them as Josh’s. They were too big to belong to anybody else.

Mac nudged the giant, Smitty, and pointed. Smitty nodded. The two started toward the entrance. Then they vaulted a rickety little picket fence and crouched in darkness in the next yard.

A man was coming out of the dark house. He walked slowly to the street, looking around as he did so. The men inside had finally seen that Josh wasn’t wearing shoes, apparently, and had sent someone out to see of they were lying around the house. They’d tumbled to his trick.

The man got to the sidewalk, grunted a little as he saw the shoes, and bent down to pick them up. Smitty took that moment to act!

It wasn’t a very complicated action. The giant, who had moved near to the man, simply leaned over the picket fence and brought his left fist down like a vast mallet on a nailhead. But the nail was the skull of the man with the shoes in his hand.

The man’s head seemed to sink clear down into his chest under that incredible blow. Then he went down, himself, and stayed down.

Smitty reached over the fence, picked up the body in one hand and lifted it over the pickets. He dumped it in the darkness and went on, with the Scot at his heels, to the entrance of the house from which the man had come.

The door was unlocked. The fellow hadn’t intended to be out long, so he hadn’t turned the key. Smitty and Mac stepped silently into a narrow little hallway.

The hall was dark. But from a door down the hall and to the right came light. The window there was probably covered with a blanket, for the two hadn’t seen light in any of the windows outside.

Smitty’s vast paw touched Mac’s arm as they were passing a darkened door on their way to the lighted one. Mac stopped as the giant did. They listened, and heard hoarse breathing.

They turned into the room.

There was a short, soft series of tappings. And Mac went to them and leaned down.

The taps had spelled, in code, “Josh.”

Mac felt around. He felt a gag and rope. He untied the rope and slid up the gag. Josh stretched his cramped body, and used his tongue. “Mac?”

“Yes,” the Scot whispered. “Smitty’s in here with me.”

“I could only hope— Couldn’t see in the dark—I tapped just on the chance.” He sighed. “I was afraid they’d found my shoes and picked them up. They didn’t see they were gone for a long time, because they dumped me in here in the dark. Then a man came in with a flash, a few minutes ago—”

“Smitty hammered his head flat,” said Mac. “Come on! Follow us out of here—”

Just sneak in, untie Josh and sneak out again with him. But it wasn’t to be as simple as that. Suddenly, lights flashed on in the room.

Smitty got an instant’s glimpse of a man in the doorway, gaping in stunned surprise at three men where he had expected only one. Then he whipped out an automatic.

Smitty reached up. He didn’t have to jump to reach the ceiling. He could touch almost any ceiling quite easily, with his six-foot-nine elevation.

He reached up and slapped the electric-light bulb seven ways from Sunday. It plopped into a million pieces. The light went out. Blackness resulted, split by three red streaks as the man in the doorway fired three times.

The three men in the room weren’t where they’d been when the light went out; so none of the slugs rang a bell. And there wasn’t a fourth slug because Smitty had reached the door and slammed it shut so hard that it carried the man in the doorway with it, to bang him against the opposite wall of the hall outside.

“The window!” yelled Smitty. “Out the window.”

But he grabbed an arm of Josh and of Mac and kept them from following the loud command.

He found a chair in the darkness and threw it at the window. Tinkling glass followed its crash. Then the giant stepped back from the door. Mac and Josh, getting the idea, flattened against the wall, too.

There were yells as men went outside to watch the window. There were more shouts as, in the hall, men banged against the door.

It was disconcerting to them to find the door unlatched. It opened so easily that all four of them poured into the room like water from a tap. They landed in a heap at the feet of the three aides of The Avenger.

Smitty got one, with his right hand almost circling the fellow’s throat. The bone mallet which was Mac’s left fist caught another in the face. And Josh felt a head and began banging on the front side of it with piston blows.

In twelve seconds there was no opposition at all when they started to walk out of the room.

Smitty shut the door, and this time he locked it against assaults. Then he leaped up the stairs. He wanted Burnside. They’d gotten Josh; now he wanted the other man taken from the hideout, the Senator. His window ruse had been for the purpose of clearing the house to give him a minute or two in which to search.

Burnside wasn’t upstairs. Smitty took the steps down in about three giant’s strides, and looked through the rest of the first floor. No Burnside! Nor was he in the basement.

The men in the room were shooting at the lock. They’d be out in a minute. The others were streaming back in the front door—and being methodically felled by Josh and Mac as they stuck their heads in.

Shots were popping, and some of them hit home. But the celluglass bulletproofed garments Mac and Josh wore were keeping them from any harm other than bruises.

Smitty came up to them, sore because he had failed to find Burnside. He took it out on a couple of the gunmen, who popped in through the door together and instantly crouched and began pumping slugs.

Smitty’s huge right hand caught a throat, and so did his left. The men screamed. Smitty banged them together. Head hit head like a pair of melons.

“Let’s go,” said Smitty, hurling the two bodies out the door and against three other men who were trying to get in.

They went out the back way.

“I want my shoes,” said Josh.

Mac snorted. “
Whoosh!
Ye can’t go back into that gang just for a pair of brogans!”

“I probably won’t be able to find another pair in Washington to fit me,” said Josh. “Where’d you say the car was? Foot of the street? I’ll meet you there.”

He was gone before either the giant or Mac could detain him. They shrugged and went on.

Josh appeared, almost invisible in the darkness, as they got to the car. He wore his shoes. And on his right fist was a gash where knuckles had hit teeth. But he was luckier than the other man. He still had his knuckles.

Josh and Rosabel sat very close together, watching The Avenger. Reunited after danger, the Negro and his pretty wife seemed to want to touch each other frequently to reassure themselves that each was there. They were a devoted couple.

Diminutive, blond Nellie Gray was there, from New York. She sat up straight like a little girl. You’d never have been able to look at her and picture her at the wheel of a gas-filled car, smashing it out of a garage through planks, heavy door and a rain of bullets just a short time ago.

Very near her was the giant, Smitty, trying to look unconcerned about her. It was to be suspected that little Nellie Gray was the giant’s main concern in life. It was also to be suspected that Nellie had a spot in her heart for Smitty; though a caterpillar tractor could not have dragged any such admission from her.

Mac was on the opposite side of the room. His eyes, as were the eyes of the others, were on The Avenger.

Benson sat in a straight-backed chair, powerful, compact body easily erect. His pale, icy eyes were like cold crystal, staring at nothing. He was putting together the things he had found out so far.

There was one other person in the room. An outsider, as far as the indomitable little band of crime-fighters was concerned. But not an outsider in this particular case. That was Nan Stanton. Nellie had brought Nan with her to Washington.

In his steely hands, Benson had the crumpled page from Nan’s book of routine calls that Nellie had deftly taken from the bony man’s pocket. He was looking at those names.

One of them was Tetlow Adams. The other was that of a man just murdered: Congressman Coolie.

“You say Tetlow Adams has called several times on Dr. Fram?” The Avenger said to Nan.

She nodded her sleek brunette head.

“But Congressman Coolie called only once?”

“Just once, as far as I know,” said Nan.

“That was in the New York office?” said The Avenger. “Not down here in Washington?”

“That was in the New York office,” nodded Nan.

“Tell me about it, please?”

Nan Stanton half closed her eyes to remember. “Congressman Coolie was in New York for the day, on some personal business,” she said. “At least that was what I gathered when he came in and asked to see Dr. Fram. It seemed that the doctor had gotten in touch with the Congressman and requested him to drop in. Congressman Coolie had come to the office, as asked, but was pretty impatient about it. He had a lot to do in a short time. And he didn’t seem to know why he had been called.”

“You’re sure of that?” interjected The Avenger, colorless eyes like ice under moonlight.

“Yes. He didn’t know what Dr. Fram wanted to see him about. I guessed that it was on the sanity test bill; but all I could do was guess, because nothing was said. The Congressman went into Dr. Fram’s private office. After a few minutes I heard his voice rise angrily; then he came out again. He looked angry and—and defiant. I think that’s the way you’d describe the expression on his face. He brushed past me without seeing me and went out. And that’s the last he ever saw of Dr. Fram, as far as I know.”

The Avenger’s prematurely white head nodded. His face was as emotionless as paralyzed, dead flesh must always be. But his eyes were like pale agates with little lights behind them.

“That fits in with the idea that has been shaping up in my mind,” he said slowly. “Coolie is House leader of land conservation plans. In the Senate, Burnside and Cutten head most of the same movements. All three are from Montana.

“Somebody wants some area in Montana taken out from government supervision, and turned over to private ownership. On the order of the Teapot Dome scandal.

“To narrow it down: Sheriff came in a hurry to Washington to talk over something with his State representatives. And just before he came, he had been on a visit to the government park nearest his town, Bison National Park. So it is Bison Park that some interest wants to get out from under the government’s thumb.”

Smitty usually sat as silent as the others when the man with the dead face and the icy eyes summed up facts. But this time something burst in his mind with such violence that he exclaimed aloud before he thought. “Of course! Helium!”

The deadly, pale eyes swung his way.

“It’s known that there are helium deposits in Bison Park,” said Smitty hastily. “It must be that private interests want to get control of the park because of the helium.”

Mac shook his dour Scotch head. “Helium’s no big factor industrially,” he said. “There is a very limited market for it. It would pay no man to steal it. Besides, helium is a weapon of war—for dirigibles. There would be a terrific public outcry if politicians turned over a deposit of it to private concerns.”

The Avenger went slowly on. Such was his concentration that it was quite possible that he had not heard the two at all consciously.

“Somebody wants Bison Park. The sheriff, somehow, got wind of the plan, and got hold of the cryptogram we just decoded, and hurried to Washington to block the move. He was killed to recover the cryptogram. So was Sewell, Burnside’s secretary. The plan went on. Coolie, Burnside, Wade, Hornblow, Collendar, Cutten were worked on to get a bill through that turned over Bison Park to private bidding. Burnside and Cutten, incidentally, were the two chiefly responsible, ten years ago, for having the Bison section taken over by the government. But how could these men be persuaded? Because of the helium known to be in Bison Park, anyone proposing that the park revert to private hands would surely be committing political suicide. An outraged public would never return them to office again. Some great threat would have to be held over them. They would have to be forced by fear—and a fear greater than the fear of death!”

“But where does Dr. Fram come in on this?” asked Nan Stanton. “He has nothing to do with parks or helium or anything but the practice of psychiatry.”

Now it was Nellie’s turn to have an idea that simply forced expression. “Tetlow Adams! He’s a mining man. He would be the one most interested in mineral rights. He must have forced Dr. Fram to be his mouthpiece, with the sanity test business as a blind to cover the real—”