Read The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers Online
Authors: Kenneth Robeson
The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers
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By Kenneth Robeson
#1: J
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#2: T
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#3: T
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#5: T
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#6: T
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#7: S
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#8: T
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#9: T
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#10: T
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MILING
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#11: R
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#12: T
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#13: M
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#14: T
HREE
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OLD
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#15: H
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#16: T
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#17: N
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#18: D
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#19: P
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#20: T
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WARNER PAPERBACK LIBRARY
WARNER PAPERBACK LIBRARY EDITION
F
IRST
P
RINTING
: F
EBRUARY
, 1974
C
OPYRIGHT
© 1942
BY
S
TREET
& S
MITH
P
UBLICATIONS
, I
NC
.
C
OPYRIGHT
R
ENEWED
1969
BY
T
HE
C
ONDÉ
N
EST
P
UBLICATIONS
, I
NC
.
A
LL
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IGHTS
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APERBACK
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IBRARY
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DITION
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ITH
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C
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EST
P
UBLICATIONS
. I
NC
.
C
OVER
I
LLUSTRATION
BY
G
EORGE
G
ROSS
W
ARNER
P
APERBACK
L
IBRARY
IS A
D
IVISION
OF
W
ARNER
B
OOKS,
75 R
OCKERFELLER
P
LAZA
, N.Y. 10019.
A Warner Communications Company
ISBN: 0-446-75-480-3
Printed in the United States of America
CHAPTER III: Murder Without Motive!
CHAPTER VII: Accidents to Order
CHAPTER XIII: “Don’t Kill—Yet”
CHAPTER XIV: Death in Fractions
CHAPTER XVI: Captive Turns Captor
THE
HAPPY KILLERS
The Happy Killers
The man with the broken nose was plainly the leader of the gang.
There were four of them, besides the man with the twisted nose, and you wouldn’t have wanted to meet any one of the four in a back alley on a dark night.
One of them was a small fellow with wispy gray hair, although he couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. He had dead-black eyes and practically no mouth and chin, and fingers stained a deep yellow with nicotine. Another was a stocky man with a broad scar spiraling down from his right ear to the back of his neck, about where a collar button would be. The third was immensely tall and very thin and kept twitching his forefinger as if it were tightening around a trigger. For this trait, indeed, he was called Trigger. The fourth man was a fat fellow with baby-pink lips drawn down at the left corner in a perpetual sneer.
And then, of course, there was the man with the broken nose—big, brawny, with sand-yellow hair and muddy-gray eyes.
It was as nice a little bunch of cutthroats as you could find in New York, and they were about to get into action. And right after that all hell was going to pop. Though even the gang didn’t know that at the moment.
The four were waiting beside their car, a dark sedan that could hardly be seen in the blackness of the night. It was about midnight, and cloudy. The car was on a small, curving residential street in Great Neck, Long Island. It was a dead-end street, and the sedan was near its terminus, so no other cars went by.
The man with the broken nose looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch.
“Ten to twelve,” he growled. “She oughta be here by now. Old Brown goes to bed at the tick of eleven every night, she said. He’s had plenty of time to get to sleep.”
The man with the twisting scar stirred uneasily.
“I don’t trust that dame,” he said. “How do we know—”
“Shut it! Here she is!”
There was a faint click as the iron gate in the fence surrounding the last house on the street was pressed furtively shut. A figure glided along the walk, keeping close to the hedge so that it blended in shadows. It approached the car.
“O.K.?” the leader of the murderous little gang said, softly.
“O.K.,” was the return whisper.
As the figure drew closer you could see that it was a girl. The curves were there, very nice ones, and a long bob of cloudy dark hair. All feminine. But you couldn’t see her face. She had on a low-brimmed hat, a mannish kind of hat, and this was arranged so that no features showed.
“The old guy pounding his ear?” said the man with the broken nose.
“Yes,” whispered the girl.
“Did you get the dope?”
“Yes,” the girl said again. Her voice was attractive. “I looked through the keyhole, like you said. I used the glass. I could see the numbers plainly with it.”
The man grunted. “Sure. Swell little spyglass. Gimme!”
A scrap of paper passed from the girl’s hand to his.
“Why didn’t you get in touch with me sooner?” complained the man.
“It wasn’t till tonight that he opened his safe,” the girl replied. “Sometimes he goes for days without putting anything in or taking anything out. I told you that before.”
“You going back to the house now?” asked the man.
The girl shook her head. “I said good-bye at ten. I’m supposed to be out till late. Then I hid, so I could leave the house door, and the gate back there, on the latch when I sneaked out. I’ll keep on going now, and get back about one o’clock and be very surprised when—something has happened.”
The man with the broken nose chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound.
“You’re smart enough, kid. I could use you permanently if you weren’t so high-hat. You’ll get plenty out of this little job, though.”
“See that you don’t forget that,” the girl said coolly. “Good-bye.”
She went on down the street, keeping in shadow. There was a station on the main line about a mile and a half down. She was heading toward the depot, still keeping her head down.
“She sure is careful,” said the little man with the wispy gray hair. “Who is she, anyway?”
“You wouldn’t care to know,” said the man with the broken nose. “Come on. Let’s get going.”
They walked silently to the gate, found it not quite latched, as the girl had promised, and slid into the grounds. The grounds were quite elaborate; it was apparent that a very wealthy man lived there.
The fat fellow with the babyish lips nodded enthusiastically.
“This ought to be good,” he whispered. “Any servants?”
“Over the garage,” he said. “Nobody’ll get in our hair. It’s the first room on the left when you get inside. A kind of library. You pull out a shelf, books and all, and the safe’s behind it.”
They went to the door like four shadows, men whose business—which they’d learned well—was to move without noise in the night. They opened the door and stepped into a dark hall.
They started toward a double doorway off the hall—and then froze. They held their breaths to listen.
There was a faint creaking sound from the stairs.
The man with the scar moved his arm slowly. It was like the slow coiling of a deadly snake. The reason for the slowness was perfectly logical: he was trying to keep the fabric of his coat from rustling.
His hand closed on the gun in his shoulder holster and drew it out. The creak sounded again from the stairs, and then a tense voice: “Who’s there?”
The jaw of the man with the twisted nose tightened in anger. He’d been led to believe that there was no one in the house who would interfere.
“I saw you come in the door,” came the tense voice again. “Put your hands up.”
But there was lack of conviction in the unseen speaker’s tone, so the four men crouched where they were, near the front door, in darkness. The creak of steps sounded as the man came nearer.
