The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers (7 page)

There was a fresh scrap of paper on the floor among a lot of older tatters. She picked it up. It was the waxed paper that comes around sandwiches put up by a store. It was in the doorway of a big room that must have been a parlor at one time. She went into this room.

A fireplace with a cracked marble facing was at the end, and she placed it as the one from which that chimney led. She hurried to it.

Yes, there had been a fire in it fairly recently. A fire of paper alone, as far as she could tell. There were no wood ashes around. There were ashes of paper there, though, and she whistled soundlessly as she looked at them.

You can make out a little of the original paper after it is burned to ash. And Nellie could make out that financial paper had been fed to the flames.

Stocks and bonds.

The ashes were cold, so some time had elapsed since they were fired; but still, with the breeze stirring outside, some of the fine specks floated up the chimney, so they hadn’t been there too long.

“Say from five to twelve hours ago,” she breathed. “But I don’t get it. Did the
maid
kill the valet, take the stuff from the safe, and come here to hide it?”

Nellie wanted a box in which to put those ashes, very gently, so that they could be studied in the Bleek Street laboratory. She went toward the stairs. In the attic there might be old boxes. A shoe box for instance.

She went up the stairs, moving silently through habit, not through caution. The danger sense had died down, and now she was annoyed at herself for radioing Smitty. There was nothing here she couldn’t take care of all by herself.

She had almost reached the second floor, and in the darkness something brushed softly against her cheek. She checked a cry, and hopped back down a step, hugging the wall. It felt as if a hand had just touched her cheek; as if fingers had lightly stroked it.

But that was crazy. Any reaching hands in this place would go for her throat, not her cheek.

She stood there in the blackness of the stairway for a full minute, then reached slowly upward. Her fingers touched other fingers. It had been a hand!

She wanted to scream, because some things are far worse than direct danger. But she didn’t scream. She forced her fingers past the hand—which was ice-cold—and felt to a wrist.

It was a woman’s wrist. A girl’s wrist. And there was no pulse there. She was dead!

With her breath catching in her throat, Nellie forced herself up to the top step and around the rail. She snapped on the small flash which, with the belt radio, was part of the equipment of each member of Justice, Inc.

The white ray fell on an equally white, cold face. A rather pretty face, even in death, in spite of the terrible discoloration of the throat beneath. It fell on cloudy dark hair in a long bob; on a mannish hat of brown felt lying crumpled to one side of the face.

It was Brown’s maid. She would never return, nor would she ever tell police what she might know. She lay there on the dirty floor, with her arm happening to have fallen between bannister uprights so that the stark hand hung over the stairs.

Nellie looked around to see if her purse were near, then snapped off her flashlight with a quick little hiss of breath and retreated down the dark hall.

There had been a sound from the rear. The sound of a door softly opening and closing.

Someone else had stolen in. And it couldn’t possibly be Smitty; it would be many more minutes before he could get there.

Nellie debated on attempted retreat out a window over the porch roof, then shook her sleek blond head. She’d stick around. There was no way for the gang to know anyone was inside. And she might overhear something.

“—ought to’ve waited a little longer before we came back to this joint,” a man’s sullen voice sounded downstairs as the kitchen door swung open. Nellie heard footsteps in the dining room.

“We had to come the minute it got dark,” snapped some other man. “Had to clean the joint out the minute we could.”

The steps were in the hall, and Nellie started edging toward the corridor window, immediately behind her. Having her back to it, she didn’t see that it was slowly being raised, and that outside it, on the porch roof, was a black blob of a figure.

Nellie stopped retreating. The men downstairs were going into the parlor. The ashes! They’d thought of those, and were going to take them away, along with the cold, stark thing lying with its dead arm hanging over the stairs.

Nellie decided it was time to leave. She’d slide out the window and wait across the street in shadow till Smitty and Cole Wilson arrived. Then the three of them could come back and capture—

“Mmmmp—” Nellie got out. It was meant to be a scream, but just in time a hand clamped over her mouth from behind! Another arm went around her like iron cable, pinioning her arms to her sides.

She’d started to scream when two things flashed like lightning across her mind. One was realization that a ghost of a step had sounded
behind
her, right after the steps downstairs. The other was realization of a ghastly mistake she’d made.

She’d thought these men had no way of knowing she was in the house. She had forgotten that she had left the door off the latch, open a bit, telling a plain story that someone was in the house.

So the men downstairs had put on an act of not knowing someone was in the house, and one of their number had crawled in the hall window and trapped her very neatly from behind.

Nellie tried to yell again and couldn’t. She tried to reach backward and catch an arm or something that would allow her to bring into play her deft knowledge of jujitsu. She couldn’t manage that, either. But she could, and did, manage to bite the gagging hand over her mouth.

There was a furious oath, and then her captor demonstrated that he was no gentleman. He socked her on the head with a blackjack or something, and she was out of the world.

Nellie slowly struggled back to a consciousness that was very uncomfortable. And it was very dark. She opened her lovely blue eyes.

She was lying, all cramped up, along a wall, on the hard floor. She was in the parlor, with just a trace of light from a street lamp straying in and keeping the room from being in impenetrable blackness. She was bound very tightly, and she was gagged. She was not alone.

Four men sat, near her, on their haunches staring at her in a way that made her wonder if her dress was pulled down far enough. Though the cold menace in their eyes made her realize an instant later that this was a minor worry.

“I don’t get it,” said one of the men. “You’re not a cop. How do you get into this?”

He was obviously the leader, Nailen, the burly fellow with a nose that had been badly broken, at some time in the past, and badly reset so that it was twisted.

“She’s one of The Avenger’s gang, I tell you,” said another of the men—a fellow with babyish pink lips and a chubby pink face. There was fear in his eyes as he spoke the name so hated by the underworld.

“Benson wouldn’t be in on this,” said the man with the broken nose. “He don’t go for straight jobs. He leaves them to the cops.”

“Just the same,” whined Baby-face, “the dame’s in with Benson. I
know!”

The other two of the four said nothing. They only looked acidly at Nellie. One was tall, gangling, and kept moving his trigger finger all the time. The other was a wisp of a man with premature gray hair and a thin, consumptive chest.

“O.K.,” shrugged Nailen. “Hot or cold, with Benson or not, she’s got to be fixed.”

Smitty, Nellie thought, don’t let any grass grow under your feet.

“We could never get
two
stiffs outta here without somebody seein’,” protested Baby-face. “It’s tough enough to try and cart the one you promoted at Brown’s house, without—”

“We won’t take two away,” said the leader. “This one’ll stay here. It’s nobody’s fault if she dies in an accident, is it?”

“Accident?” repeated the chubby man.

“Sure! Somebody hits her with a car. Runs square over her, all four wheels. Gets away without anyone seeing. It’s tough, see? But it’s an accident.”

“Nailen, you’re nuts! Take this dizzy fluff out on the street, bound and gagged, and throw her down and back a car up and run over her? How many people d’you think would see?”

“You dope,” snarled the leader. “All we want is for her to be
found
on the street. She don’t have to be
run over
on the street.”

“Oh,” said the chubby one.

“There’s a big garage, or an old carriage house or something out back. We toss her on the floor of that, and run the crate we came in over the proper place. Then we wait till no one’s around, toss her into the street with the ropes off, and drive off with the other one tucked down in the back of the car.”

“Not bad,” said the little man with the gray hair. Nellie had begun to wonder if he and the tall, skinny one had voices. “No follow-up on this blond. And nobody ever again sees your girl friend from Brown’s. So she finally takes the rap for opening Brown’s safe and conking Brown’s man. Not bad.”

“Oh, Smitty!” Nellie silently urged.

Then something happened that seemed to turn the blood in her veins to ice water. The leader got up; and, as he did so, the luminous dial of his wrist watch showed. Nellie saw the time.

Not fifteen minutes had elapsed since her radio to the big fellow! She couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute or two, and she’d thought it had been at least a quarter of an hour. Smitty and Cole couldn’t possibly get there for another half-hour, Nellie realized.

She had to stall. She made as much noise as she could against the gag, and pointed to her mouth, indicating that she wanted to say something.

The tall, skinny fellow looked at the one called Nailen. The man with the twisted nose shook his head.

“If you take it off, she’ll yell.”

“Maybe she’s got something to say that we oughta hear,” suggested Baby-face.

“What?” shrugged Nailen. “We don’t care what she’s got to say. All we care about is that she’ll never say anything. Come on. Bring her back.”

So that was out, Nellie thought. No soap on that stall. But she had to pass some more time!

Baby-face got her by her dainty ankles, and the tall, thin man took her by the shoulders. They carried her to the kitchen, and Nailen softly opened the door to the back yard.

Nellie kicked out with all her strength.

The chubby man fell to his knees, rasping out a savage but muted oath. Then he hit Nellie in the jaw, and tightened his hold on her ankles.

Nellie’s head rolled groggily. She was in no shape to try any more kicks as they took her to the carriage house.

There was a high board fence around the back yard, rickety but with no planks off. The next houses were fifty yards away, with lots of trees in between. No one could see back there.

Nailen shoved and strained till he got the rusted sliding door of the garage open. Baby-face and the thin fellow dumped Nellie on the greasy, splintery floor, just inside the garage and in the center of the doorway. Nailen went out and, an instant later, Nellie heard the sound of a starter and then a car motor.

A moment afterward she saw a big bulk roll smoothly toward the open doorway. She was lying straight across the doorway. The car slid toward her, with its front tires, to her wide eyes, looking nine feet in diameter. They almost touched her!

With a convulsive movement, Nellie snapped around lengthways, so that the car straddled her. Baby-face swore, and Nailen leaned out the car window and looked back. He saw what had happened and swore, too.

“You damn fools!” he raged. “Hold her, can’t you. She’s as slippery as an eel!”

He backed the car for another try. This time Baby-face held her head, and the thin man clasped her legs, ready to release her at the last minute. The fellow with the wispy gray hair was plucking at his lips with shaking fingers and looked sick.

The car rolled forward a second time.

So this is it, Nellie thought. All of us have played around with the grave. This time it catches up! This—

The rolling car stopped. “What the—” came Nailen’s bewildered voice at the wheel.

“There’s a beam under your rear wheels,” Baby-face called softly. Then he stopped, realizing there’d been no beam there before.

The realization came’ too late to do anybody any good. Something like lightning on two legs streaked up to the open car window. A long arm snaked in and coiled around Nailen’s throat.

The car jerked as his foot slid off the accelerator. It climbed halfway up the twelve-inch beam under the rear wheels, looking as if it would climb all the way and rush forward on Nellie. Then it stalled and rolled back.

Meanwhile, Baby-face and the two other men jumped to help Nailen. At that moment, a figure so gigantic that it must have looked to them like King Kong’s, charged in. It scattered them in all directions.

“Strangle that guy, Cole,” Smitty yelled.

Wilson promptly drew Nailen clear through the car window and threw him to the ground. Smitty, having saved Nellie by sliding the big beam under the wheels just in time, now tore at her bonds to free her.

That was a strategic mistake. The giant should have finished his mopping-up maneuvers. But the sight of Nellie lying there bound was more than he could take. He was crazy about this blond half pint, though wild horses couldn’t have dragged an open admission from him. So his first instinct was to help her.