The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns (15 page)

“He met this guy?”

“Sure, he did. But there wasn’t a raid, and the guy he met—couldn’t be trusted so well.” The snarling laugh sounded again.

“That sounds as if the guy he met was the guy who bumped him off, and was a—”

“Shut it!” said the other man quickly. “There are some things you don’t want to say out loud. And this is one of them.”

Deliberately and completely he changed the subject. Nellie Gray rose, beautiful in a white gown. She smiled impersonally at the elderly admirer at whose table she had sat long enough to hear the highly interesting words.

“Thank you for being so nice to me,” she said, looking wistful and soft-eyed. “I must go now and change for my next number.”

She left the disappointed elderly Romeo, and went to her tiny dressing room. But she didn’t start to change. She locked the door and got out the vanity case in which was a marvelous little short-wave radio of Smitty’s invention.

Nellie’s quick brain had sifted out that overheard conversation rapidly and thoroughly.

So Judge Martineau had been lured to the Friday the Thirteenth Club by the promise of someone, high in authority in the police department, that the club was to be raided and closed. And he had gone there expecting to meet someone perfectly trustworthy in order to see personally that the raid was carried out as a raid should be.

Who would he have met in connection with a raid? It seemed almost certain that such a person would be of the police force himself. And the inference had been that this man, thought trustworthy, had been the judge’s killer.

Did that mean that the murderer was actually a cop? It certainly could mean that—and Nellie thought Benson should know at once.

However, when she tried to get him on the radio, there was no answer. She frowned, and turned to Rosabel. Rapidly she told what she knew.

“Slip out to the chief, at Groman’s, and tell him,” she ordered in a low tone. “You can be back before it’s time for me to go, and we can leave together as usual.”

Rosabel didn’t waste time talking. There were brains in her darkly pretty head, too. She grabbed her plain cloth winter coat and went out.

Nellie began sliding out of the white dress into a dark green one that enhanced her striking beauty. She was just fastening the side when the dressing room door opened—and Rosabel came back in.

“Why, what on earth—” she began.

Rosabel held her finger to her lips. She came close and whispered breathlessly:

“Sisco! He knows something! He wouldn’t let me leave!”

Nellie slowly sat down on the bench before her triple mirror.

“You’re sure, Rosabel?”

Rosabel nodded her dark head.

“I started to leave by the door from the kitchens. The one that goes out into the alley. I got through the kitchens, to the door, and one of Sisco’s men stepped in front of me. The one called Harry.” Nellie’s lovely blue eyes narrowed. The man called Harry was the worst.

“He didn’t say a word,” Rosabel went on. “He just grinned at me and stood in the doorway, filling it. I went out to the front, but before I could even get to the street door, the big man with the black hair that is with Sisco so much barred me. So I came back here.”

Nellie considered. To say that she was not alarmed, would have been saying something not strictly true. She
was
alarmed. Plenty! She knew the kind of cutthroats and killers that frequented the Gray Dragon. But she was not so much moved by her personal peril as by the fact that she thought she’d found out something that Benson ought to know.

She tried the radio again, and again drew a blank. Then she slipped on her own wrap.

“I’ll try it myself,” she whispered.

She went out into the narrow corridor leading to all the dressing rooms, and walked softly back to the kitchens. Odorous, not too clean, these were tenanted by only three workers at the moment. She waited till they were busy at the far end, and went on tiptoe to the door.

She thought she was going to make it, going to be able to slip out. But just as she got to the door itself, a form slid out from a narrow pantry and interposed its bulk between herself and the alley.

The form belonged to the man, Harry. And he did to her just what Rosabel had reported. He said nothing at all. He just stood so that Nellie couldn’t get past, grinning at her in a way to send ice down her spine.

“Excuse me,” said Nellie, trying to shove past.

If the man had laid a hand on her, he would have found himself bouncing from the floor with the violence, if not the resilience, of a thrown rubber ball. For Nellie could teach the biggest of assailants some painful jujitsu lessons.

But the man didn’t touch her. He stepped back to keep a distance between them, and whipped out an automatic, still grinning and wordless.

That was more alarming than an attack would be. It seemed to indicate that he knew all about Nellie, knew how dangerous she was. And if her identity were known—

She whirled, went back to the narrow corridor and started down it toward the café room—and the street door. But she didn’t even get to the café room. Sisco came from it, down the corridor, and stood in front of her.

His greenish, deadly eyes were twin pools of murder. His voice was like a dry death-chirp as he said:

“What’s your hurry, Seattle, at this time of night? You haven’t sung your last number yet.”

Nellie knew it was no use, but she played it out.

“I was just going out to the corner drugstore to get some aspirin,” she said.

“I’ll send one of the busboys,” Sisco said.

Nellie started to go into her dressing room.

“Not that room,” said Sisco. “This one. We’re going to give you a nice new dressing room. You’ll like it.”

He had his hand in his pocket. Through the pocket, the muzzle of a gun nudged her back. Like the man at the kitchen door, he was laying no hand on this beautiful little bundle of dynamite.

“But—” Nellie began.

Sisco dropped the stalling.

“So you’re working for this guy, Benson?” he snarled. “And you thought you could get away with it—here—right under my nose. Go on, get in there!”

The door of the dressing room across from Nellie’s opened at the touch of his toe. Nellie stared in. She hadn’t been in there before.

She saw a room with not one stick of furniture in it, a little larger than her own, but still quite small. She saw that the walls were covered with black cloth, and that the door had a double thickness with a two-inch air-space between.

And she saw Rosabel, leaning back, warily, against the draped end wall with her eyes very big.

Then Sisco pushed Nellie in and shut the door. The door sounded like the ponderous portal of a vault as it closed.

Rosabel and Nellie looked at each other. No need to talk. Each knew the whole story.

This dressing room was Sisco’s execution chamber. Walls and the double door were so soundproofed that shots in here couldn’t even be heard in the next room, let alone out in the café room.

To make doubly sure, Sisco was probably going to wait till the café patrons had gone and the place was closed for the night. Then he would attend to the two girls—with slugs.

But whether he waited or sent men in with tommy guns right away, Nellie and Rosabel were all through.

The man, who was in Judge Broadbough’s study with him, was news all by himself. When the top gangster of a town comes to call on one of the town’s most eminent judges, it is something!

The man in with Judge Broadbough was Buddy Wilson. Josh, at the library door, could just hear the two talking.

They were talking of the devil’s horns.

“I simply can’t figure it out, Wilson,” came Broadbough’s pompous, affected voice. “Yet it must have great meaning. Hawley, in our secret employ, gave his life to find out those words. And he tried to tell us.”

“Aw, nuts!” said Wilson. “Devil’s horns! What can that mean?”

“I can only think,” Broadbough said, “that it has a connection with the one thing we want to know about old Groman.
The
thing. But we’ve got to know.”

“Yeah, and in the meantime, this other guy’s picked up dead at Groman’s.”

“What?” Broadbough’s voice was a little wild. “What other man?”

“I got it just a minute ago. Even the papers don’t have it yet. Some mug was found stabbed in the old boy’s office.
Someone that nobody knows!”

“Good heavens,” came the judge’s muffled voice.

“Yeah! That’s bad, all right. Who’s cuttin’ in on this?”

“Something will have to be done—fast!”

“Something will be,” Wilson grated. “I got it all laid out. A job that comes in
my
department—and I do jobs like that well.”

There was a rasp of a chair, and Josh got away from the door, hiding in the coat closet down the hall. Wilson had kept hat and overcoat on when he entered the judge’s study, and therefore wouldn’t be going in there.

He heard the library door open, heard Wilson’s steps, then the slam of the front door. For several more minutes Josh stayed in the closet. Then he looked out, and saw that light was still coming from the library. The judge was still in there.

Josh went back to his post.

He knew he was flirting with death in staying so constantly at that door. One of his shrewd axioms was that the smartest fox gets caught at last if he plays around traps long enough, and that, when he does, he’s a sorry-looking fox indeed.

But the colored man was working for The Avenger. And The Avenger’s aides drew the line at no risk, no matter how great.

The double, sliding door was open an inch in the middle. Josh peered in—and his eyes almost leaped from their sockets.

Broadbough was evidently satisfied that at this late hour the servants were long since in their own wing and asleep. And his guest had just left. Therefore, he must be alone. So he was acting accordingly.

With bulging eyes, Josh saw Broadbough step to the wall, take out two law books, and reveal innocent-looking plaster. Then he saw the plaster swing aside, at a finger touch, revealing a beautifully finished little safe.

The judge opened the safe and took out a big envelope. Josh saw a little brown note book, and half a dozen sheets of paper, written hastily in longhand. The Negro knew he’d made a ten-strike!

Benson had told him to watch out for the documentary evidence the judge was holding out on the gang for his own protection. And this was it!

For some reason, Broadbough suddenly feared that his regular safe was not the best place for the valuable stuff.

Josh saw the judge close the safe, look around, then go toward the street window. The judge touched the sill in several places—and it hinged up, revealing a long, flat recess about an inch deep. Broadbough put the papers in the secret recess, carefully shut the sill, and reached for the light switch—

Josh was out of the coat closet again almost before the sound of Broadbrough’s steps had died away on the second floor. He darted into the library, sped in darkness to the sill. The papers and the little book rustled faintly in his dark hand.

There was a sound at the door.

Josh opened the window an inch, dropped papers and book into evergreen shrubs along the outside wall, then stooped and made straight for the sound. He was next to the door when he thought he heard someone sneak into the dark room. But he didn’t wait to find out. He slid into the hall, and hurried to the rear. There, he climbed to his room under the eaves.

He had been in pajamas and robe. To be caught that way at this hour of the night would have been explainable: he could have said he’d heard a noise and had got out of bed to investigate. To have been caught fully dressed would have looked bad.

He got dressed now, in darkness. But before he left the room, he fumbled in the depths of his closet and got out his little radio. There was just a chance he’d be caught before leaving the house. He’d better get in touch with Benson. He plugged the radio in.

“Chief,” he whispered. There was a pause. Then again, “Chief—”

“Yes?” came the measured, clipped tone of the most dangerous crime fighter on earth. The white, terrible face and the flaring, pale eyes could fairly be visioned at the sound of that voice.

“It’s Josh. I just got something. I’m coming with it unless there’s an accident—”