The Avenger 31 - The Cartoon Crimes (10 page)

She liked being up by herself at this hour of the morning, especially with Gil still sleeping and not out in the studio ending up one of his all-night sessions at the drawing board. She liked to fix herself a cup of cocoa and take it out to the back patio facing the sea.

Life really could be quite pleasant. Especially here in their new house, if only . . .

Footsteps in the hall.

Not looking around, she said, “Did I wake you?” She took a saucepan out of a cupboard. “I really thought you’d slumber on till noon.”

The footsteps came closer.

“Want some— Wayne! What are you doing here so early?”

The freckled young man gave her a strange, incomplete smile. “This isn’t exactly a social call, Jeanne.”

“I hope not, since I don’t like the idea of your walking into the house like this. I’m afraid—” She saw the gun then.

Harmon had brought a .38 revolver into view from behind his back. “I’m on a tight schedule, Jeanne,” he told her. “So if you’ll just come on along.”

“What are you talking about?”

He gestured impatiently with the gun. “Come on, out to my car.”

She put the pan on the sink edge. “Is this some kind of prank? You can’t be serious.” She said that, but she knew he was serious.

“Come on, Jeanne.” He looked at the electric wall clock, then at his own wristwatch. “I wouldn’t like to involve you in a shoot-out. And I don’t know when some of the Avenger’s buddies may come trooping in.”

“You don’t expect to come into our house and drag me off,” she said. “Gil’s not going to—”

“Gil’s not going to do a damn thing,” said Harmon. “Except sleep. I saw to that, Jeanne. My lord, you don’t think I’m that inept! I’ve been through the whole house, making sure there’s nobody else here. Then giving Gil something to make him go on slumbering. So, let’s move out.” He came near to her and prodded the air between them with the gun barrel.

Jeanne began to walk toward the hallway. “I don’t . . . I really don’t understand what you’re doing. Do you?”

“Yes, Jeanne dear, very clearly,” said the young artist. “Things, unfortunately, are not going quite as planned. They weren’t supposed to kidnap you until later.”

She walked along the hall. “They?”

“The people I work for. Their reasons for taking you are somewhat different from mine,” he explained. “All I want is a hostage. Somebody I can use to bargain with. Forgive me, Jeanne, but you were the first person who came to mind.” He actually touched her with the gun barrel now. “On out the front door, please. Then into my car.”

She turned the door knob, opened the door. “You’ve been mixed up in all the terrible things that happened to Gil, haven’t you?”

“Yes, yes, move faster.” He urged her around to the driver’s side. “I want you to drive. And don’t think I won’t shoot you if you get cute,” Giving her a shove, Harmon climbed into the back seat of the four-door sedan.

“The keys aren’t here,” she said.

“Yes, they are.”

“Not in the ignition.”

“Damn you!” he said, poking the barrel hard into the back of her neck. “I’m warning you, Jeanne. Listen to me, if they catch me I can get the electric chair. I’m not fooling around. Now pick up those damn keys where you dropped them on the floorboards.”

The auburn-haired girl complied. “All right, where do you want me to take you?”

“That’s better,” said Harmon. “Take the Riverhead road and then the Sheridan Farms turnoff. That’s all you have to know for now.”

Jeanne started the car and backed it along their gravel driveway. “Let somebody show up,” she was thinking. “Let the Avenger get here. Anybody.” She remembered that Harmon’d said no one but Gil was in the house. She had no idea where Nellie and her friend Smitty had gotten to. “If only they’d—”

“Left here, Jeanne, not right. Keep your mind on your driving.”

There was hardly any traffic on the roads this early. A few produce trucks, nothing much else.

“What is all this about?” she asked after a few minutes.

“It’s about saving my neck,” said Harmon. “To get you back they’re going to have to guarantee me safe passage out of the country. They’re going to have to arrange a flight for me down to Argentina or someplace.”

“Did you kill Walling?”

“I was in on it, but I didn’t do the actual shooting.”

“Then why do you think they’ll execute you if you’re caught?”

“This is wartime, Jeanne, in case you haven’t heard, dear. The usual penalty for espionage during a war is death.”

“Espionage?”

“Yes, that’s what this is all about.”

“But what does this have to do with Gil and me?”

Harmon said, “It’s a long, long story, dear. I’ll tell you all about it perhaps when we get where we’re going. Right now, though, you just keep your mouth shut and drive.”

Jeanne drove. The fog burned away, and the sun shone bright and clear.

The tufted hassock came sailing through the air. Cole ducked it, remarking, “Another heirloom bites the dust.”

Exasperated, Geiss made another try for the gun the grinning Cole had knocked from his hand.

The two of them were struggling in a small parlor-like room off the main sales room of Pournelle’s Antique Barn. Geiss had taken a shot at them from here when the Justice, Inc., trio had first entered the place. Cole had fancy-footworked his way into the parlor and chopped the gun away. Like every room in Pournelle’s establishment, this one, was crowded with a great deal too much furniture.

As Cole kicked aside the gun his elbow toppled three stacked Black Forest cuckoo clocks.

“Swine,” snarled Geiss. He grabbed a Venus clock and swung it like a club.

“Such an Old World word, that.” Cole pivoted, dodging the swishing statue. He thrust out a foot and rammed it between the other man’s legs.

Geiss stumbled and fell against a stuffed elk.

Closing in on him, Cole delivered two jabs to his chin.

The other man dropped to his knees, hitting a pile of rolled rugs as he fell. He teetered for several seconds.

Cole gave him a tentative push.

Geiss collapsed. A vase of peacock feathers jumped from a shelf to thunk into the small of his back.

Out in the main room Josh was feeling uncomfortable. The one-armed bartender was coming at him with an ornamental Japanese sword, whirling it high overhead.

“Look, mister,” Josh was saying, backing into a forest of claw-footed hat trees, “whyn’t you put that there thing away?”

“Put it away across your skonse.”

“See, I feel right bad ’bout taking it away from you. You being handicapped and—”

“I’ll handicap you, you—”

Waiting no longer, the Negro went in low and slammed a fist into the bartender’s chest.

The man gasped and dropped the sword into a glass case full of campaign buttons. Several Willkie buttons and a Landon-Knox spewed up along with jagged spikes of broken glass.

Josh struck again.

The bartender jolted backwards on his heels for approximately seven steps. Then, sagging, he tottered into a loveseat, fell, and rolled under it.

Josh scanned the vast cluttered room.

“Seems to be considerable intent on the part of the opposition,” remarked Cole as he joined him, “in defending yon stairs.”

Across the showroom two bulky men, armed with .38 revolvers, were crouched at the foot of a stairway that led up to the second floor. Their intended target was the Avenger, who was barricaded behind two heavy sofas.

“Must be something up there they don’t want us to get at,” concluded Josh.

Cole, looking from the gunmen to the ceiling, said, “What would Douglas Fairbanks do in a situation like this?” There were several ornate chandeliers dangling up above.

“Junior or senior?”

“Either one.” With a grin, Cole leaped atop a rolltop desk, then leaped again and caught hold of the sturdiest chandelier. He swung back and forth, emiting a fair imitation of a Johnny Weismuller yell.

It caught the attention of the two men with guns.

One of them straightened up to try a shot at the swinging Cole.

The Avenger moved, too. His hand flicked. His perfectly balanced knife, the one he called Ike, went whizzing through the air.

The blade caught the standing gunman’s sleeve and pinned his gun arm to the wall.

“Geronimo!” shouted Cole as he let go of his chandelier.

The other gunman decided that this was all too much for him. He turned tail and ran up the stairs.

Cole landed next to the pinned gunman and relieved him of the .38. “How many more of you delightful chaps upstairs?”

“Up your nose, buddy.”

“Tsk, tsk.” Cole freed the man’s arm, waited a second, then knocked him out with a haymaker blow. “I believe you dropped this, Richard,” he said, returning the knife to Benson.

Josh peered up the stairwell. “They’re going to be planning a little reception for us up there.”

“Wait.” The Avenger signaled for silence.

After a few seconds Josh said, “Sounds like some of them are creeping out the back way.”

Before he’d finished speaking, the Avenger was gone.

“That’s what we get for being so imperious and feisty,” said Cole, taking off for the nearest exit. “Should have put a man on the back.”

“Too bad Mac is laid up. We could have put him on that detail.” The Scot, still groggy, had been sent back to Manhattan to recuperate.

They ran rapidly through the labyrinth of antiques.

Before they reached the misty morning they heard two shots and a scream.

When Cole looked cautiously out he saw the Avenger, gun in hand, facing a stairway that zigzagged down the outside of the barn.

The gunman who’d run off was there, rubbing at his wounded hand. Behind him, hands held high, were Gruber and the fat man.

“That appears to be the lot,” said the Avenger.

“Good,” said Cole, “now maybe we can find out what this case is all about.”

Agent Early turned their car onto the Lewing drive. “Any messages hidden in it this morning?” he asked.

Thompson was pouring over the comic page of the morning paper. “Oh, you mean in
Wonderman?
No, not today,” he said. “Actually I was just reading it for the story. Luxor, you see, has invented this machine that causes prominent politicians to kill themselves, and Bruce Fairfield, who is, as you may recall—”

“Never mind,” said the government agent. He parked in front of the gabled garage.

“Say,” said the eager Thompson, hopping out of the auto, “do you think it would be out of place to ask Lewing what happens next? Because frankly I don’t see how even Wonderman is going to—”

“Hold on.” With a twist of his head Early directed Thompson’s attention to the front of the house.

“Door’s half open,” said Thompson.

“Yeah.” Sliding his hand under his coat, Early started for the big house.

He mounted the front steps with care, alert for any sound, any sign of movement within. The mansion was silent, still.

With his foot Agent Early kicked the door all the way open. Nothing followed.

Hand still touching his shoulder holster, he went inside.

Thompson waited a few seconds before following.

“Think they’ve run off, sir?”

Early was frowning down at the hall runner. “Muddy footprints,” he said.

They went through the lower floor of the house and found nothing.

Upstairs in the master bedroom they found Gil Lewing. The cartoonist was snoring loudly, sleeping a drugged sleep. One sleeve of his pajama coat was rolled up, and there was a splotchy red circle on his upper arm.

Early took the drugged man’s pulse and checked his eyes. “He’s going to be out for a few more hours yet,” he decided.

“It looks as though,” said Thompson, “someone grabbed his wife. Doped him so he wouldn’t interfere. I can’t quite see why, though.”

“Suppose Lewing doesn’t know about the messages we found in his work,” said Early, slowly circling the bedroom. “Or maybe he does and he decided he wanted to quit doing that kind of thing. Guys who took his wife may want to use her to force him to keep cooperating. I can think of several motives for a kidnapping. And there’s always ransom.”

“But that would be a coincidence,” said Thompson, “And I don’t like those. No, I’d rather believe this has something to do with the saboteurs.”

“Probably does,” agreed Early. “Just pointing out that there might be other reasons. Okay, I’d better call Lieutenant Allen and get him to put some of his boys on this. I guess we’ll have to let the FBI know, too.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said the younger agent. “Though they tend to—”

“Keep the mitts right where they are, sonny,” ordered the giant who appeared in the doorway of the master bedroom.

“Wait, Smith, hold off,” said Early, recognizing Smitty.

“Huh?” Smitty lowered the gun. “Oh, it’s you guys. What the heck is going on?”

Little Nellie stuck her head around from behind the giant. “What’s wrong with Gil? And where is Jeanne?”

“Justice, Inc., people?” Thompson asked his boss.

“Mr. Smith and Miss Gray,” said Early. “This is Agent Thompson.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Smitty. “Now what the heck is happening on these premises?”

“Been drugged,” said Early, tilting a thumb in the snoring Gil’s direction. “Know anything about it?”

“We just dragged home ourselves,” said the giant.

“But we have a fair hunch,” said Nellie, “about what’s transpired. Especially after we saw those sandy footprints all over the rugs downstairs. Did you notice those, gentlemen?”

“Yes, what about them?”

“We been over to the beach area where Wayne Harmon used to live,” said Smitty. “Seems like—”

“Used to live?” Early interupted to ask. “Doesn’t he any more?”

“Naw, I don’t think he’ll be coming back there no more,” continued the giant. “See, we tracked the punk there. He’s one of the guys who’s been pulling tricks on Gil there. You know, putting on funny masks, hanging dummies on wires. Cute stuff like that.”

Nellie took over the explanation. “When we confronted Mr. Harmon, after trying to mow us down with a double-barreled shotgun, he settled for blowing up my automobile. Good thing we weren’t in the thing at the time,” she said, massaging a scuffed patch of her bare arm. “I’d guess, if Jeanne really isn’t here any place, that Harmon stopped by here and took her.”