The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil (11 page)

“Doggone,” said Smitty, joining him, “the guy’s more your size than mine.”

Benson said nothing; he donned the cult robe.

“I think I ought to crash the party, too,” said the giant.

“Wait here, back me up.”

Smitty said, “Okay.” He crouched beside the warlock and proceeded to tie him up.

The Avenger, shrouded in the cloak and hood, returned to the road. He went walking, stiff and straight, uphill into the darkness.

Nellie did not hesitate.

She crossed the room, stepped out into the hallway. “Cole?” she softly called.

He was nowhere to be seen. The long, shadowy hall was empty. Out here you could hear the steady beat of the rain more clearly.

Cole had a sense of humor, Nellie was well aware. But she didn’t think he’d play a joke like this one on her. Not at a time when the lives of several people, including Mac, were at stake.

Which meant something had happened to him.

And if she weren’t careful, it could well happen to her.

Carefully, she backed into the shrouded living room. Thunder exploded outside, farther away this time.

“Somebody had to sneak up on him,” she told herself. “There’s probably more than one secret opening in these old walls.” She glanced around at the sheet-covered tables, chairs, and sofas.

She crossed to a shuttered window and tried to get a look at the darkness outside.

Then she heard it, almost lost in the noise made by the rain and the wind. A faint click.

Nellie did not turn around; she stayed at the window.

Five seconds passed.

She dropped to the floor on one knee, spun, and flashed the light upward.

The man who’d been approaching her with a blackjack ready to swing was taken by surprise. He jerked a hand up to shield his light-dazzled eyes.

Nellie reached out, caught hold of the blackjack hand. She pivoted, sent the stalker spinning across the dark room.

“Holy smokes!” He smacked into an empty bookcase, rotated, and tripped on the shroud over a fat chair. Muttering, he fell, entangled in the sheet, to the rug.

The deceptively sweet-seeming blonde was right after him. She grabbed him up, twisting one of his arms high behind his back. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“My friend, the man who was with me.”

“In the wall,” answered the man, wincing. “Let up on that arm, that’s my pitching arm, lady.”

“That’s right, I don’t want to spoil your chances of playing on the prison team,” said the girl. “How many of you are there?”

“Only me, lady. I’m the lookout here, case anybody comes snooping. Got me a nice little apartment fixed up underground. Only trouble is I have a heck of a time getting any of my favorite radio—”

“Where’d you leave my friend?”

“He’s down in my place,” answered the lookout. “I decked him while he was out in the hall. I got several different places I can step through the walls.”

Planting a foot on the man’s back, Nellie swiftly ripped up a sheet and tied him with it. Then she flashed the light around. The section of wall still hung half open.

“Lady,” called the man as Nellie approached the entrance to the hidden passage, “don’t leave me here, huh? This room gets awful damp. How about you drag me into the—”

Nellie stepped carefully into the wall.

There was a three-foot-wide passway there. It ran between the walls for about ten feet before dropping away into stairs. One hand shielding the light, the blonde moved along the passageway and went down the steps.

The stairway ended on a stone floor. Nellie calculated she was now roughly twenty feet underground. From up ahead somewhere she heard a moaning.

Silently, clicking off the light, she inched ahead.

Someone was groaning and singing up there in the dark.

“Oh, my darling Nellie Gray, they have taken you away. And I’ll never see my Nellie any more . . .”

“That’s taken
her
away,” Nellie corrected. She turned the flash back on, spotlighting the dazed Cole.

He was slumped against a wooden door, rubbing at the back of his head. “Ah, is that an angel of mercy come here to minister to me?”

“No, it’s me, Nellie.”

Shaking his head, yawning, Cole tried to stand. “Some chap gave me a clout on the sconce,” he said.

“I know, he tried the same thing on me.”

“But you manfully resisted, apparently.” Wobbling, he got partway up.

“I had an advantage, I was expecting him.” She put a hand out and felt his head. “A goose egg, but he didn’t crack your skull. You’ll be okay.”

“I don’t like to be trite and say what everybody says on these occasions,” said Cole, “but where am I?”

“The mansion looks like it’s a link with some kind of underground tunnel system,” replied Nellie, taking another feel of his bump. “Yes, I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

“You overcame the lout who did this deed, you say?”

“Got him tied up in the living room.”

“Would a bit of questioning be in order?”

“Maybe, but I think he’s just another hireling,” said the girl. “Somebody put here to see that only authorized personnel use the secret passages.”

Taking the flash from her, Cole aimed the beam to his right. “Where would you guess these tunnels lead?”

“Well, since they left the kidnapped girl here, and since she doesn’t seem to be around now, I’d say this is one way to get to witch headquarters.”

Cole nodded, then grimaced. “Got to remember not to bob my head yet,” he said. “Suppose, pixie, we follow this yellow brick road for a bit and see where it leads us.”

“Maybe to where they’re holding Mac,” said Nellie.

Cole put his arm through hers. “Thanks, by the way, for the hairbreadth rescue,” he said.

“It was nothing.”

The black-cloaked figure stooped to place a golden chalice beneath the trough in the stone altar. Tall black wax-encrusted candles, four of them, burned at the corners of the altar. In a gold censer grains of pungent incense burned, crackling and sputtering, sending up whirls of musky smoke. The walls of the huge abandoned barn had been hung with thick dark draperies. Rain pelted the peaked roof; thunder thumped.

Ten of the members of the coven were here, nine of them kneeling on the straw before the dark altar. The tenth, a gaunt woman of sixty, was making final adjustments to the trappings of the altar. When she finished, she joined the others, kneeling.

There was silence among the witches and warlocks. They knelt, eyes looking straight ahead, waiting. Three enormous rumbles of thunder shook the wooden walls of the old barn.

Then there was a new sound.

It cut across the silence, grating on the night air. A scream, a frightened, protesting scream.

Through the dark draperies at the rear of the altar came two dark-robed men. They carried Anne Barley between them. The girl’s hands and feet were bound, but she managed to struggle. Hulda Dolittle, carrying a fat black candle, entered next. The rain, which had splashed at her robe, had extinguished the candle.

The witch walked to the altar and relit the candle from one of those that were burning there. As she held the flickering candle aloft, the two men carried Anne up and placed her atop the stone altar.

“Wake up, all of you!” cried the girl. “I don’t know what they’ve given you, but you must snap out of this!”

Hulda placed her candle on a stand beside the altar, then went to kneel with the rest. The other two joined her.

Twisting so she could look down at them, Anne said, “You can’t go ahead with this! Don’t you understand?”

The coven, complete now, did not respond. They remained on their knees in the straw, watchful and, now, expectant.

“Sam, Sam Hollis!” called out Anne. “You’re one of them, you’re here. Sam, you have to stop this!”

Only silence answered her pleas.

Lightning crackled quite near to the barn; thunder boomed.

The Devil appeared.

Yellow smoke spewed up from behind the altar, spiraling up to the eaves. Then the masked figure stood revealed, arms raised high in a triumphant gesture.

There was a low murmuring among the witches and warlocks.

In his right hand the masked Devil held a golden-handled knife.

The long, sharp blade of the sacrificial knife flared in the candlelight. The light played, too, on the mask and on the twisting horns.

In a booming voice which had something of the rumble of the thunder in it the Devil said, “No one can defy the Power.”

“No one,” repeated thirteen voices.

“All who defy the Power must perish.”

“Perish.”

“There is no stronger power on earth.”

“None stronger.”

“The Power of Satan.”

“Satan.”

“You see before you one who would destroy us.”

“Destroy.”

“She must pay.”

“Pay.”

“The price of blood!”

“Blood!”

“Stop it,” cried Anne. “You chanting fools, you’ll never get away with this.”

“The hour is at hand,” boomed the Devil.

“At hand,” replied the congregation.

“The time is now!”

“Now!”

The knife began its fatal descent, driving down toward the girl’s breast.

Then the knife was no longer in the Devil’s hand. It had gone spinning out of his fingers while the tip of the blade was still a foot from the girl.

The masked figure shouted with pain.

One of the robed men was standing. In his hand he held a strange pistol.

“Who dares defy me?” cried the Devil. “Who interferes with my plans?”

“I am known as the Avenger,” said Benson in a resounding voice.

“Kill him!” ordered Satan.

A dozen cloaked figures converged on the Avenger. They struck him, clawed him, pulled him to the ground.

“We’re a-getting further beneath the earth,” observed MacMurdie. “If this keeps on, we’ll soon be shaking hands with the real Devil in person.”

They were moving along a stone corridor that twisted downward. There was a light from a series of infrequent bulbs; air was fanned in through recently installed vents.

“I’ve been considering, Mac,” said Dr. Ruyle, “this tunnel system. Most of the construction down here has to date back to the last century, at least, with the exception of the lights and the air-conditioning system, of course.”

“Aye, John, that’s so.”

“I’d hazard a guess, therefore, that these passages were originally built for the use of smugglers who thrived in this vicinity some hundred or so years ago.”

“Then it’s a good bet some of these tunnels lead to the water.”

“Undoubtedly.”

Mac nodded to himself. “There’s probably been smuggling going on again, a new kind of smuggling.”

“Foreign agents, you mean?”

“Aye, this witch nonsense is but a cover for a much worse business.”

The two friends grew quiet, traveling on in silence until they reached the next intersection of tunnels.

“Which way now, Mac?”

The Scot scowled. “ ’Tis a labyrinth we’re in, for fair.” He suddenly took hold of the professor’s arm. “Back into that alcove, John.”

Mac tugged his friend back the way they’d come.

From the right-hand forking of the tunnel came the faint sound of shuffling feet.

Then, soon, the murmur of voices drifted up to them.

“
Sicher und unversehrt
, Weidner,” said one.

“
Ja
, we have been very lucky, Ulrich.”

“It is as we were told,” said Ulrich. “The scheme works.”

“Let’s hope you birds work out,” said a third, gruffer, voice.

“Stay here until they pass,” cautioned MacMurdie in a whisper.

If the men, three of them at least, continued on in the tunnel they were in, Mac would have a better chance to try what he had in mind. They might, though, come this way, meaning he and Ruyle would be spotted.

Eyes narrowed, holding his breath, Mac waited.

The men appeared at last, three of them, walking single file. The first two were garbed in dark cloaks and hoods, the third man wore a black raincoat and carried a shotgun.

The first man started to turn into MacMurdie’s corridor.

“No, not that way,” said the big man with the shotgun. “Keep on straight ahead.”

“Sorry.”

When the three had passed out of view, Mac made a wait-here gesture to Dr. Ruyle and left the shelter of the alcove.

Silently he moved in their wake. In seconds he narrowed the distance between himself and the rear man, the one with the double-barreled shotgun.

Mac closed in and made his move. He leaped for the big man, got one hand over his mouth and another on his throat. Deftly applied pressure knocked the man out. MacMurdie grabbed hold of the shotgun as the man tumbled to the ground.

“Was—?”

The two enemy agents had whirled around while their escort was dropping.

“Make not a move,” warned Mac, turning the shotgun on them.

One of them had been reaching beneath his witch robe, “What are you—FBI?” he asked, raising his hands high.

“Just an interested private citizen, lad.” Keeping the shotgun barrels leveled at them, the Scot called out, “John, I hae need of yer help.”

The professor came running. “You caught them?”

“Aye, and now if ye’ll help in getting them trussed up, we’ll the sooner be on our way.”

“I’m very disappointed, Ulrich.”

“So am I,” admitted his companion.