The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers (4 page)

“We
did
have the mon, Muster Benson,” he said sourly. “But it seems he got Cole off guard, swatted him with an electric toaster, and got away. We thought he was out for an hour, but ye see, nothin’ seemed to hurt him. It was as if he couldn’t feel pain like normal folks.”

“Holy mackerel!” breathed Smitty. “It’s true then!”

The Avenger said evenly, “Better come over here right away. We’ll look into this at once.”

All of the members of Justice, Inc. faced one another in the vast top-floor room on Bleek Street—Cole Wilson and MacMurdie, Smitty and Nellie, The Avenger himself, and Josh and Rosabel Newton.

These latter two were as effective as any other of the band, though they didn’t look it. Josh was a tall, gangling Negro who constantly looked as if he were about to go to sleep on his huge feet. Actually, he was an honor graduate of Tuskegee Institute, and had a brain like a steel trap. His occasional lapses into a deep drawl, and his sleepy look, were deliberately cultivated to make folks think he was duller than he was. Rosabel, his wife, was a pretty Negro woman with liquid dark eyes, a gentle manner and a will of iron. She had saved more than one of Dick Benson’s hard-living crew from death.

The Avenger had just told MacMurdie the reason, as it seemed, at least, for the crazy, unprovoked attack by the man in the drugstore. The others had all listened, popeyed. And Mac was as incredulous as Nellie had been over the existence of such a drug.

But the laughing killer’s insane entrance into his store was proof enough, even for him.

The general verdict was the same as Smitty’s: The secret of such a sinister drug must not be allowed to remain in criminal hands.

The way to retrieve the formula, of course, was to recover the contents of Brown’s safe. Which meant locating the gang that had looted it.

“Josh, Rosabel,” The Avenger said, in the quiet but vibrant voice of a born leader, “you had better stay here next to the teletype and relay any possible police news of the robbery investigation to us. They’ll be working hard on it. There was murder, you know—Brown’s valet.”

The pale, icy eyes swung to Smitty and Nellie, and then included Wilson.

“Nellie, there was talk of a woman connected with the case. The Great Neck station agent reported that a girl, whose face he couldn’t see, bought a ticket to Manhattan at about midnight last night. That was the approximate time of the robbery. She might have no connection, but check on her anyway.

“Smitty, Cole, circulate around, talk to a few fences, see if there has been any attempt to dispose of the bonds or stocks from Brown’s safe. Here are duplicate lists of the serial numbers.”

Mac was looking as disappointed as a hurt child because he was being left out of this. But then The Avenger turned to him, and at his words the Scot’s bleak eyes filled with joy.

“You and I will look over the safe and have a talk with the police, at Brown’s house, Mac.”

Benson and Mac went out in The Avenger’s favorite car, a shabby-looking old sedan whose dingy hood was bursting with a motor that would drive them at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, if necessary. On the way, Benson summed up a little of Dillingham Brown’s background.

Brown was a prominent investment counselor with a thorough legal training, specializing in the formation and handling of trust funds. Under his care were many prominent accounts, from the foundations of rich men, kept up to endow laboratories or research endeavors, to the funds left in trust for widows and orphans.

Brown, however, was chiefly known as having once been the partner of William Xenan. They’d separated about three years before; and since that time Xenan, a corporation lawyer and more recently a financier, had rocketed up into the millions and left Brown—though quite wealthy—far behind.

“What’s this talk of Harry Tate?” Mac asked.

The Avenger told of the young man in Brown’s house. “He has evidently been working for some years on the idea of a total anaesthetic in pill form. I’ve talked to the sergeant in charge at Brown’s place, and he said he’d questioned Tate and thought he was a little off balance mentally. There is even a slight suspicion that Tate is the guilty party; that he stole down and robbed the safe and killed the valet.”

“But why would the young mon do that?” asked Mac.

“There isn’t a clear motive. He doesn’t seem to be a mercenary type. Brown gave him all the money that he needed. And certainly he wouldn’t have to steal his own formula from the safe. The police, by the way, have not been told of the formula. Brown begged that that be kept secret.”

The police examinations of Brown’s house and household had been completed by the time Mac and The Avenger arrived and there was one plainclothesman there.

That was all. He, it came out, was waiting around on the chance that Brown’s maid would come back.

“Left last night about nine,” said the man. “That is, Brown thought she’d left at that time. Said she wanted to visit her sister in Manhattan. But we haven’t located any sister, and the station agent at the depot thinks it was the maid that left at midnight.”

“The other servants?” Dick said.

The plainclothesman was looking almost in awe at Benson. He had never seen The Avenger before and could hardly believe the stories of great strength he’d heard about him. He had an idea he’d be able to break Benson in two; but he had another idea, after another look into the icy eyes, that it would not be wise to try.

“They were all out in their quarters over the garage,” he said. “Each can alibi the others, so they’re out. The valet, Peter Sheeley, was the only one in the house. We don’t know why he was in there, at midnight. He was the one who got bumped off.”

“Harry Tate?”

The plainclothesman shook his head. “Cracked, if you ask me. Want to talk to him?”

The Avenger did want to talk to him. The man got him.

Harry Tate, described by Brown as “a young cousin of mine,” was about twenty-six. He was slender, slow in movement, dreamy-eyed. His every action was that of a man half out of this world, though he seemed intelligent enough.

He shook The Avenger’s hand admiringly. “As a chemist,” he said, “I’m familiar with some of your work. You would be the world’s best-known research worker if only you didn’t spend your time chasing after . . . er . . . criminals.”

“Sometimes that is more valuable work than chemical research,” Benson said quietly. “You were here last night, Mr. Tate?”

Tate nodded and into his eyes came a guarded look.

“You heard nothing during the night?”

“Nothing,” said Tate.

“Mr. Brown told me that he thought he heard a noise downstairs at about midnight. Then he heard you laughing. Rather, he believed it was you. Why were you laughing?”

Tate’s eyes became more guarded. He glanced furtively at the plainclothesman down the hall. Evidently, the man hadn’t been told about the laughter.

“I was working on a certain experiment,” Tate said. “I . . . it turned out wrong, and I laughed.”

“You weren’t, perhaps, using yourself as an experimental subject? You didn’t swallow something that made you laugh?”

Tate said nothing. He bit his lips and looked most uncomfortable.

“Won’t the loss of your formula, stolen with the rest of the things from the safe, be a serious blow to you?”

Tate answered very reluctantly: “No. I . . . I can reproduce it from memory.”

The Avenger saw that he’d get nothing more out of Tate, so he turned with Mac to the room of the crime. The body of the valet was at the undertaking chamber, so they could not examine it at the moment. It had told little, anyway, except that the death had been caused by a blow with a blunt instrument, probably a clubbed automatic.

The wall safe didn’t tell much either.

No prints had been found on the knob; it had been carefully wiped. Someone knowing the combination had opened it, because there was no sign of violent entry. Brown’s own prints were on the metal around the knob. That was all.

The house had a good burglar-alarm protection but this had been switched off by someone inside, probably that maid. The outer gate and the front door had been easily opened, so probably they had been left not quite shut by the same person, the girl—

“Hello,” muttered Mac. “Who’s
this
girrrl?”

Mac wasn’t particularly susceptible to feminine charms, but there was a glint in his eyes as he stared at the figure that had suddenly appeared in the library doorway. Benson turned to look and saw why.

On the threshold was a girl in a maroon wool dress who could have stepped into the front line of a chorus. She was tall and slender. Her hair was ash-blond, and her eyes were light amber, like candy. She came into the room, looking at The Avenger.

“You’re Mr. Benson, aren’t you?” she said in a voice as charming as the rest of her. “I’m Edna Brown. I just came today to visit my father, and stepped into this mess. Isn’t it dreadful?”

“Quite,” The Avenger said evenly. His eyes went like drills into the amber orbs of the girl. “You say you just got here?”

“About an hour ago,” she said. “I have a job in the city. Librarian. But I was down in Washington visiting a friend, during a week off, when I heard from Dad. I came up by plane.”

“Oh. You thought your father had been hurt, and hurried because of that?” suggested Benson.

“No. I didn’t hurry for that reason.” Edna Brown looked around almost as furtively as Harry Tate had. There were only Benson and Mac and herself in the room.

“I hurried because I have an idea who might have done this,” she whispered. “I haven’t told the police. In fact, I don’t dare tell my suspicions. As soon as I heard you were on the case, I waited to tell you.”

“Good,” said The Avenger, face expressionless but eyes as cold and pale as ice under a polar moon. “Who do you think it is?”

She paused for so long that it seemed she wasn’t going to answer. Then she whispered, “I don’t think I’d better name names, even to you. I’ll do better. I’ll take you to a place where I think the contents of the safe might be hidden.”

The Avenger nodded. Mac was bursting with questions, but didn’t ask them. The three went out to the old sedan.

There’s a lot of length to Long Island. Far out are some pretty desolate stretches of beach, low and sandy, with a few summer cabins here and there, deserted save in mid-summer.

It was to such a section, it developed, that Edna was leading Mac and The Avenger. Meanwhile, she was being as obstinate as she was pretty—obstinate about not telling them any more than she had at first.

She had an idea that she knew who took the stuff from the safe, or caused it to be taken. But she wouldn’t say who. She thought she knew where it might be hidden, but she wouldn’t say how she’d come to her conclusions.

“My suspicions might be wrong,” she said. “If so, and I named names, a lot of trouble could come of it.”

Her stubbornness was maddening. To Mac, at least. The Avenger didn’t seem to be annoyed by it. His face was as masklike, his pale eyes as unreadable as ever, when, near the very tip of the island, Edna pointed and said, “There.”

The thing she was pointing at was just a speck far down the lonely road. The Avenger stopped and looked at it through a small but powerful glass.

The speck was pretty big through the glass. It was the wreck of a structure whose nature Benson guessed at a glance. It was a sort of small auditorium, in which at one time fights had no doubt been held, and which probably had a floor suitable for dancing or roller skating. The roof was half fallen in now, and boards were off the walls in spots.

It was as deserted and gloomy-looking as could be imagined.

“You think the things from your father’s wall safe are hidden there?” The Avenger said evenly.

Edna nodded her ash-blond head.

“And you don’t want to tell why you think so?”

She shook her head. The Avenger sent the car forward again.

The big low building was right on the water’s edge, which was one reason why it was disintegrating so fast: the waves of any big storm could work on it. On the bay side, the water seemed to extend under the building. Perhaps it had been a boathouse arrangement, once. On the other side there was windswept sand from road to building where once a drive and parking lot had been. The Avenger stared at this expanse of sand, roughened in many places, and his steel-strong fingers tightened ever so slightly about the wheel.

He drove the sedan up the sand till it nosed almost against the building. He got out, and Mac noticed with a narrowing of his bleak blue eyes that The Avenger was moving with his arms held just a little from his sides, and tending to walk just a bit on the balls of his feet, like a great cat.

He walked as if he expected trouble.

If so, however, he didn’t express it in words. He spoke calmly to the girl. “Where inside do you think the loot will be hidden?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Edna Brown faltered. She had gone pale and was glancing nervously around. “We’ll have to look.”

She was next to one of the places where some boards were off, making a kind of ragged doorway into the cavernous darkness of the place. Her voice echoed inside and came faintly back: “—
have to look.”