The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs (14 page)

Josh and Rosabel were plodding from new dachshund owner to new dachshund owner and finding nothing suspicious anywhere. Meanwhile, they were half out of their minds with sorrow over the vanished Nellie Gray.

Nellie, at that moment, was not far away. But she might as well have been on a desert isle as far as proximity could help.

Nellie and Nan Stanton were in a small stone cell. They’d had nothing to do for quite a while but look at it, in the light of a single candle; so they knew it all too well.

It was dank, with water oozing down its walls like sweat from the skin of a frightened man. It was far down in the earth; they knew that, from absence of all noise as much as anything else.

Absence of all noise? Well, there was a little noise in evidence. A constant, murmuring noise. A terrifying noise.

The noise of rushing water!

It came from a distance and from overhead, never slackening, never changing in tone. It was so faint that had it not been for the utter soundlessness of the place, you’d never have heard it at all. But it was unmistakable, nevertheless.

The two girls were not alone in the dank, deep dungeon. There was a third party in with them. That one was—Dr. Fram.

Fram had been bound and gagged when the two girls were thrown in here. They had untied him. Now he was giving them the low-down on the strange and tangled mess in which all three had been caught.

Nan’s first words, when she had looked at her former employer, had been an angry accusation. Fram met the charge with a weary but patient denial.

“I didn’t send you up to the New York office just to be kidnapped,” Fram said. “I sent you out of Washington simply because I was ordered to do so. I didn’t dream you were to be captured and held. I thought you were just wanted out of the way for a little while, so you would not have a chance to learn anything of what was going on in Washington.”

“You were ‘ordered’ to send her up?” Nellie Gray said swiftly.

Fram nodded. “Yes. Ordered! I’ve been under orders for a long time. And bitter ones they’ve been. I’ve been forced to betray my country and my soul.”

The psychiatrist paced up and down the cell, eyes bitter and defeated. The pacing was pretty constricted; the cell was hardly ten feet square.

“Wealthy mining interests want Bison Park,” he said. “One of them, fiendishly clever, found out about my interest in the sanity-test law for couples about to be married. He decided that that would be an excellent blind, behind which I could get in touch with politicians about turning Bison Park over to private interests. So I have been forced to be a mouthpiece, negotiating with senators and congressmen about the matter. Now, my usefulness is over. The mining crowd has made all the contacts they need. So I was seized and thrown in here to be killed. In that way, I’ll never be able to turn on my enemies.”

“How could they force you to do such a thing?” said Nellie, lovely gray eyes puzzled. “What possible hold could they have on you—what threat that would make you betray your country? And you
did
betray it. The helium deposits in Bison Park might be vital to the United States.”

Fram shuddered. His eyes seemed to sink a little farther back into his head. “What difference does it make how they forced me?” he said. “They did. That’s what matters. And now I’m to be killed for what I know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nan impulsively, gazing at the man for whom, after all, she had worked pleasantly for over a year.

“You’d better save your sympathy for yourself,” said Fram dryly. Then his face softened. He touched his trim goatee with his middle finger. “I didn’t mean to be sharp. It’s fine of you to say that. But we’re all in the same boat, you know. We’re all going to die down here. And the ironical part of it is that with just a little help we could beat this gang and turn the tables on our enemies.”

Nellie Gray’s face lightened at that. “How?” she demanded.

Fram shrugged. “Why go into it, since we can’t get the help that is necessary?”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Do you know where we are?” said Fram.

Nellie listened a moment to the faint, ever-present swish of water overhead. “We’re under something awfully wet,” she said, with a game little smile. “But that’s all I can guess.”

“We’re under the Potomac River,” said Fram. “I heard the gang talking about it when they brought me here. There are about twenty men in that gang, the choicest bunch of roughnecks I’ve ever had the bad luck to lay eyes on. It seems that years ago the city decided to build traffic tunnel under the Potomac to avert some of the overcrowding of the bridges during rush hour. The project was started, and then abandoned when two thirds done. The tunnel was bored and reinforced, but never paved or finished off.

“We are in a raised chamber off the tunnel. I was bandaged when I was brought here, but I got the cloth up from over my eyes a little and saw how they entered. There is an empty warehouse on the edge of the river. I saw part of an old sign:—RAIN CO. I suppose it is the something-or-other GRAIN CO. In that warehouse there is a newly cut opening, covered by a section of basement wall, that leads into the abandoned tunnel.

“But the main thing is—a plain iron lever in the beginning of the old tunnel, about fifty yards from the entrance. I heard the gang talking about that, too. It seems that that lever opens a floodgate into the river above us. If the police ever track them here, the gang means to open that and simply flood them out. That lever would be our salvation—if we could only get help. If we could be helped out of this barred dungeon, we could pull the lever ourselves and trap the gang!”

Nellie drew a deep breath. She’d had the means of calling for aid ever since she and Nan had been in here. But she hadn’t utilized it because she’d had no way of knowing where that aid was to come. She hadn’t had the faintest notion where she was.

Now she knew. Her hand went to her slim waist.

At his or her waist each member of The Avenger’s little band always wore a compact little receiving-and-transmitting radio that had been designed by Smitty.

So Nellie’s hand went to her tiny radio to call the help that Fram despaired of getting, and which should trap the trappers down there under the Potomac’s flood.

Josh and Rosabel had located the pet store from which, about a month ago, had been sold the dachshund answering to the name of Bob.

The pet store proprietor couldn’t remember the purchaser very well.

“He was a bony fellow, well-dressed and, yet, not looking right, somehow. His skin had an unhealthy color. And that’s about all I can tell you.”

It was enough for Josh and Rosabel.

A bony man with a skin like tallow had tried to kill Smitty and Mac at Bison Park. A bony man with a new scar across his forehead which, The Avenger had surmised, was made by the heavy end of a trash basket thrown at him by Spencer Sewell.

Which meant that he was the murderer of Sewell and Sheriff Aldershot.

Now this character was turned up as the purchaser of a dachshund.

“You have his address?” Josh asked. Ordinarily he talked and looked as sleepy as a worthless houn’ dog from his own South. But now the Negro was using his best and most precise English. He had to appear authoritative or he wouldn’t have gotten any information at all. As it was, the pet-store owner was talking with a great deal of reluctance.

“Of course I have the address of the buyer,” said the man. “But I don’t see why it should concern you—”

“I’ve already said,” Josh retorted, stretching the truth a little, “that we want to know because we found such a dog and would like to return it to its owner.”

The pet-shop man shrugged and opened an account book.

“Name of the buyer: Job Petrie. Address: 2232 K Street, Georgetown,” he said ungraciously. “I doubt if you’ll get a reward from Mr. Petrie. He didn’t strike me as a man who liked dogs very much. He probably bought it for a friend.”

“Then he can tell us where to find the friend,” said Josh.

He thanked the man and left, with Rosabel. But outside the pet shop they looked at each other and shrugged.

It looked as though they had struck a hot scent—but a short one. For, of course, the bony man wouldn’t have given a real address.

There was no such number as 2232 K Street in Georgetown. Where it would have been, along a well-to-do residential street, was only a vacant lot.

“Stuck!” said Josh.

But Rosabel shook her head slowly, soft dark eyes intent. Rosabel had plenty of brains, and she kept them polished by frequent and efficient use.

“There’s only this one vacant lot for blocks along here,” she observed. “All the rest is built up.”

“Well?” said Josh.

“Well, the man who bought the dog could hardly give the first number that came into his head—and have it just happen to be this vacant lot. The chances are a hundred to one against such a coincidence.”

Josh’s quick brain was getting into step. “Of course!” he said. “The purchaser gave this address because he
knew
it was a vacant lot. He did it to throw off all possible investigation. But to know that, he must be very familiar with the neighborhood. In fact, it’s a safe bet that his real address is near here. Let’s get a city directory. An old one, if possible.”

They went to the next street, where a few stores were mingled among houses not quite so pretentious as those on K Street. In a drugstore, they found a directory about three years old.

House by house they checked the block they were in and the block on either side.

They were in an old section; and the people there were home owners and not transient. They were looking for a recent buyer or renter in the neighborhood; but they didn’t find one.

But almost behind the vacant lot, on the next street, there was a vacant store.

Josh and Rosabel looked at each other. It was the one possible location for monkey business that showed anywhere around there. They went back down the street and through an alley to the rear of the vacant store.

There was a cluttered back yard and a general air of desolation, as if no one had been around the place in years. The two went to the rear door anyway.

Josh didn’t need to point to the lock. He and Rosabel worked so closely together that she had seen it as soon as he.

There was a shiny scratch on the lock where a key had recently been used.

Rosabel took a bobby-pin from her jet-black hair and handed it wordlessly to Josh. Josh bent it, inserted it in the lock experimentally, bent it a little more, and opened the door.

They stepped in.

There was a large back room, one side of which had been partitioned off and had a frosted-glass door in the partition. Then there was an open door to the front room of the store. A little light came from that one. Not much. The store front was shuttered.

They started toward that door, and then stopped. A noise had sounded within the small, narrow space partitioned off as an office. Josh took a step toward that, to throw the frosted-glass door open. But it was opened before they got there.

As silently as if swinging of its own volition, with no hand touching it, it opened back. And Josh and Rosabel croaked out exclamations and stared with rings of white showing clear around the pupils in their rolling eyeballs.

A little man, bright-red in color, stood in the doorway. The impossible little fellow was in frock coat and topper. At the end of a leash of braided flowers he had a dog. The dog was grass-green, and was smiling.

“For the love of—” breathed Josh.

A sound came from the door to the front room of the store. They turned.

There, on
that
threshold, was a little red man and a smiling green dog.

Rosabel checked a scream. She and Josh stared first at the one unbelievable apparition and then at the other, identical one. And after that they acted.

When in doubt, jump.

Rosabel sprang like a black tigress for the little man in the office doorway. Josh jumped at the little man in the store doorway.

And both found their hands clutching tangible substance.

These things looked like nightmares, more than anything that could really exist. But if so, each of The Avenger’s assistants caught a nightmare.

Rosabel’s little red man spoke first.

“Stop twisting my arm, will you?” he said peevishly. “You’re about three times as big as me. You don’t have to break me all up.”

Josh’s small red captive was yelling at the top of his voice.

The green dachshunds were apparently barking like mad—but no sound came from them. Then Josh caught on to the entry in the veterinarian’s book:

“Vocal cords cut.”

And also he caught on to a lot of other things.

“What’s you going to with us?” squalled one of the little men. They were quite unremarkable midgets, dyed red, when you examined them closely. And the dogs were quite ordinary dachshunds, dyed green, with lines cleverly painted at the corners of their mouths, thus making them appear to be smiling.

“What’re you going to do to us?” the little red man repeated sulkily. “We ain’t done nothin’. We just worked for a guy a coupla times who wanted to play a practical joke on some friends. And we posed for a coupla pictures. And that’s all.”