The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder (12 page)

“I have an idea on that,” he drawled. “Tell you later.”

Nellie watched the smoke from the cigarette curl from his nostrils. The little blonde’s blue eyes were narrowed ever so slightly. Trained eyes, quick to catch anything even slightly out of the ordinary, they had noticed a very small but rather puzzling thing.

This man, Gerry, at the Westchester place, had deeply inhaled every puff of his cigarette.

Now, twice running, he had not inhaled the smoke. He had seemed rather careful to avoid it.

Merto’s arrogant, cocksure eyes ran over Nellie and Josh and Smitty.

“At least we’ll dispose of these,” he said. “I have some of the . . . er . . . pacifier with me that we were going to use on Wight, if we found that he had the detector here with him so that we no longer needed him alive.”

“Excellent,” said Gerry puffing lightly at the long cigarette in its longer holder.

“Did you notice the small storeroom across from Wight’s laboratory?” said the fat man.

“Yes.”

“No windows, an exceptionally sound door—of metal to keep it fireproof, I suppose. It is an ideal cell for these three.”

Merto faced around to his men.

“Herd them up to the third floor,” he said. “Then down the hall to the right, to the door opposite the one you will see hanging from one hinge.”

The nearest man to the three trapped members of Justice, Inc., prodded Smitty with the muzzle of his gun. He did it very gingerly; he was scared to death of the giant, gun or no gun.

“Upstairs,” he said, overdoing the bluster. “You heard the boss.”

The three went up the stairs. They kept their eyes and wits busy, looking for a way of escape.

There wasn’t any.

As they passed from the lighted area of the lobby floor, Merto, coming up with his men, kept his big flash turned on the three. This was so that there should be no instant of darkness in which they might make a break for it.

The fat man was a competent workman. It was too bad his trade was murder.

On the third floor, the three got a glimpse of what had happened in the muffled explosion they’d heard downstairs. They saw a door hanging, as Merto had said, by one hinge. It was a heavy door, testifying to the force of the explosion. They got a glimpse of wreckage within that room.

Then Merto was herding them into a doorway across the corridor. His flash revealed the interior of the room behind this door.

It wasn’t precisely a room. It was a building-maintenance storeroom, a bit larger than most. About twelve feet square, it was, with no windows, no way of exit save that one door.

The door was either of metal or was heavily metal-sheathed. This was to make it fireproof, in case polishing rags, or waxes in here should catch fire from spontaneous combustion. It was not the building architect’s fault that he had chanced to specify a door that was not only fireproof but murder proof.

“In you go,” said the fat man cheerfully. He had apparently regained the sinister philosophy that was one of his distinguishing traits.

Josh and Nellie and Smitty halted on the threshold. For one more instant it was obvious that they wavered on the edge of suicidal rebellion.

Then they stepped in.

There was a little tinkling sound, as of glass shattering. Then the door boomed shut on them with the ponderous sound of a big refrigerator door. There was a loud click of the lock.

Smitty, with the tinkle of smashed glass, snapped out:

“Gas, maybe! Watch it!”

His tiny flashlight went on.

He and Josh held the lapels of their coats to their nostrils and breathed through them. Nellie pressed a handkerchief to her nose.

Fergus MacMurdie, homely, bony Scot, was one of the world’s outstanding chemists. One of many things he had invented was a chemical that would nullify the effects of any known gas. It was a cardinal principle of Justice, Inc., that, once a week, all members had this chemical renewed on lapels and handkerchiefs so that at all times they were prepared for gas attacks.

Never before had they needed that preparation with such terrible urgency!

Nellie’s eyes suddenly widened in breathless fascination. She nudged Smitty and pointed. She was looking, the giant saw, at one of the minor scourges of any big city.

A cockroach.

This cockroach had started to run nimbly from a place on the baseboard to a crack near the floor. Then he had slowed till he wasn’t running at all nimbly.

Now, he stopped, quivered, then fell to the floor.

A fly, on a wax bucket, started to take off. It flew a foot, folded its wings in midair and fell stone-dead. Smitty’s eyes met Nellie’s. This was something new in the way of gases. Never had they seen anything as swiftly deadly as this.

Mac’s chemical was checking; they felt no discomfort, yet, breathing through filtering fabric. But it would hold out against such stuff as this only a few minutes. Then they’d join the fly and the cockroach in stiff death on the floor.

Smitty went to the door. He grasped the knob with his colossal right hand, put a foot on the wall next to the knob, and prepared to heave. He turned the knob, pulled back hard—and staggered back against the far wall with a bang that almost made him jerk his hand away from his nose.

The door flapped peacefully open. It hadn’t been locked at all.

For a moment Smitty could only stare at it. But Josh and Nellie didn’t wait to stare; they got out of there, fast. The giant joined them, and they looked at each other in stupefaction.

“I sure don’t get this!” said Josh, frowning.

“I distinctly heard that lock click into place,” said Smitty.

“Maybe,” said Nellie, “the lock doesn’t work.”

Smitty went back to the door, putting his coat lapel up to his nose again.

He tried the lock. It worked perfectly.

He closed the door, locked it, and shook it hard.

No amount of shaking loosened the lock. It was a good lock, it was in perfect working order.

But it hadn’t stayed locked when the gangsters went away.

“It’s a trap!” said Josh.

“What are we supposed to be trapped into doing?” Nellie demanded.

Josh didn’t know. Neither did Smitty. It just didn’t make sense.

They gave it up and decided to just be thankful that a seeming miracle had saved them from a pretty certain death. Then Smitty stepped to the door that had been shattered by the recent explosion.

They had been listening for sounds from the street—squad-car or fire-engine sirens—in answer to the explosion. But not one had they heard. It was increasingly evident that the explosion, sounding so loud in the building, had not reached the ears of anyone on the street with enough violence to impel the listener to turn in an alarm of any kind.

The three walked into what had been the town headquarters of the small but important group known as General Laboratories.

This was—or had been—a well-equipped laboratory, too. It was a mess, now, with paraphernalia scattered in fragments all over the room.

The explosion seemed to have occurred near one of the windows. Here the damage was worst. A big desk had been knocked on its side and splintered. A hunk was out of the window sill.

And it was here that Rew Wight lay.

They took one swift look and carefully avoided looking again. He had caught the full force of the explosion. He had never known what hit him.

Smitty stepped to the window where a hunk was out of the sill. Bolted to the sill next to this was a shattered fragment of thin sheet metal. From the shape, it could be assumed that something like a metal cone, or small megaphone, had been fastened here, pointing out the window.

Smitty looked out.

All he saw was the East River. From quite a way up the river came a hooting sound. Probably the same boat that had tooted just as the explosion occurred.

Smitty had seen a thing like a megaphone frantically clutched by Chester Grace at the Pennsylvania airfield. So he could surmise very definitely that one of General Laboratories’ devices had indeed been here, either brought by Wight or waiting here for him.

But, as the fat man had said, it would do no one any good, now.

The giant went to a phone in the far corner of the room, found that it would work and dialed police.

He told them of the death and destruction here; then the three got out of the place.

Smitty contacted Bleek Street. Mac’s voice came exasperatedly through the tiny mike.

“We’ve been tryin’ to get hold of ye for half an hour. Where’ve ye been?”

“In trouble,” said the giant candidly. “We had more to think about than radio messages. Has the chief gotten in touch with anybody, yet?”

“No,” said Mac. And there was a note in his voice that Smitty had never heard before. “What’s more, I guess he won’t get in touch with anybody ever again. He’s—”

“Don’t say it!” snapped Smitty. “Anyhow, I don’t believe it. Nobody could get the better of the chief!”

“Accordin’ to what that girrrl said—”

“What girl?”

“Molly Carroll. The one who went off with Muster Benson. She phoned a few minutes ago, which is why I’ve been tryin’ to get hold of ye.”

“All right,” said Smitty. “What’s the dope? But make it fast. We have to get going to General Laboratories’ country plant in a hurry—”

“No, ye don’t!” snapped Mac. “That’s why I wanted to talk to ye. This Carroll girrrl called in here in a whisper. She said the gang is going out to General Laboratories tonight after they settle with Rew Wight.”

“Rew Wight,” said Smitty grimly, “is settled with! And now the gang is on its way out to Gen—”

“Will ye shut ye’r big face and listen?” fumed Mac. “The girrrl said the crew would first stop at a hideout they got west of the city, about halfway to General Laboratories. It seems they’ve got a getaway plane or somethin’ there. She says the gang is sure they’ll finish their business at General Laboratories in a short time tonight; then they’ll beat it back to this hide-out. But first, they’re stopping to make sure everything is in readiness for escape.”

“I got you,” said Smitty. “Well get out there quicker than you can say ‘murrrderrr,’ and we’ll fix that getaway plane for them! Where’s the joint?”

“Out Route 40 to Fountainville. Mile and a half north on a dirt road. Small red schoolhouse, not used, windows shut and boarded. Turn right on lane through woodlot. Pasture, with tangle of woods and bushes at north end. That tangle is a big plane, camouflaged, Molly says.”

“Think we can trust that girl?” said Smitty.

“No,” said Mac. “But it’s right on your way to General Laboratories. Won’t take long to investigate. Probably a trap, so watch your step. Cole and I are taking off for the laboratory in the new convertible gyro at once. ’Bye.”

Smitty, as he and Josh and Nellie hurried for the car Josh had come in—it was larger than the one Smitty and Nellie had used—ran over Mac’s talk with them.

“Probably a trap?” sniffed Nellie, echoing Mac’s words. “If that little she-crook gave out the information, it’s surely a trap!”

Smitty would have grinned if Mac’s ominous words about Dick Benson hadn’t still been ringing in his ears. He clicked on the red police lights with which all the Justice, Inc., cars were equipped, stepped on the accelerator and headed west.

Route 40 is a large, important highway. Even on this night, with a nation cutting down travel to conserve tires and gas, it was crowded. By a sort of constant miracle the giant kept an even seventy an hour through traffic that would have baffled a cab driver.

When they got farther out, he hit ninety.

At Fountainville, they turned onto the dirt road as Mac had directed, and Smitty put out the lights. They crept along at thirty miles an hour, with Smitty guided solely by the aid of the single electric wire looping from poles along the ditch.

He didn’t turn in the lane when they got to the unused schoolhouse.

“O.K.,” he said in a low tone, after sliding the car into thick bushes a quarter of a mile beyond the lane. “We’ll make it through the woods. No noise.”

The advice about the noise wasn’t needed. All three of them had had occasion to find out the cleverness and ruthlessness of the men they were up against. They didn’t want to get caught again!

They slid through the dark woods, single file, in a way to make an Indian jealous. There was not a sound, save the very occasional rustle of a dried leaf, such as a small night breeze might have produced. Even these three couldn’t entirely avoid stirring them now and then.

They took twenty minutes to go half a mile. And then Smitty saw open, level ground through a last fringe of tree branches. He saw something else, too, and instantly spread his big arms to stop the other two.

Half in the fringe of underbrush, a man stood. He was listening hard; possibly, he had heard one of the rare rustling sounds.

The three waited till the man’s rigid figure, seen only as a dark clump, slumped down a little. There was a little flare as the fellow lit a cigarette, probably against strict orders.

Smitty took off his shoes, and stole toward him, carrying them in his left hand. He got almost to him before a twig snapped under his vast weight. It was a small twig, so small that his questing toes had not found it; but the little snap sounded loud in the stillness.

The man whirled with his gun flashing up. Smitty flailed out with a shoe. It got the man on the side of the head, and he fell.

“Poor guy,” said Nellie, shaking her sleek blonde head. “Hit with one of those canal boats! I’d rather be hit by a falling beam than one of your size 15’s.”

“Will you cut out the yipping before you give us away?” whispered Smitty, putting on his shoes again.

There was no moon, but the stars gave a certain light, and in this they gradually saw the layout.

The pasture before them, level and not much grown with weeds, was an old private landing field, narrow enough to be rather dangerous, but extra long. There was a tumbledown, small building at this end, the near end, where they’d emerged from the woods. This was the old hangar, just big enough for a small private plane. Next to this was a thing to make you feel quite respectful about the ability of expert camouflage artists.