The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil (7 page)

Cole grinned at the giant and flashed from behind his tree to fire again at the stalking gunmen.

Three slugs came whispering up in his direction. One dug into the trunk of his tree, but none hit him.

Smitty, though a huge man, was able to move as stealthily as a jungle cat. He worked his way downhill now, making no sound.

Two of the gunmen were crouched at the lower edge of the woodland area, shielded by a high mound of rocks and boulders. Two others were already in among the trees, intending, probably, to sneak up on the Justice, Inc., teammates.

There might be, for all Smitty knew, even more armed men around than he’d been able to spot. He’d have to take a chance on that.

Up above him, Cole was carrying on a conversation, giving the impression that they were both still up there. “. . . can’t see how you prefer the work of Amy Lowell to that of Emily. Dickinson, Smitty. Take the question of imagery alone, why . . .”

The giant was only a few yards from the two men behind the rocks.

“What say we charge them?” said one, a porky fellow in a checkered overcoat.

“Charge them?” asked his associate, a tiny hairless man. “This ain’t up front, Patsy.”

“You don’t have to rub it in I’m 4F, Nat. I feel lousy enough without you—”

“I don’t care if you’re 4F or 1A or 26Q,” said the hairless Nat. “I just don’t want to go charging up there into the woods. They already winged Willy.”

“We could sit here all day and get sopping wet,” complained Patsy. “And pretty soon some rube is going to come along the road and raise a squawk about that hay wagon.”

“Relax, Charley and Bert will of snuck up on them by then.”

Smitty rose up and, taking careful aim, flung one of the glass pellets.

It landed on a rock near Patsy’s feet. “Hey!” he exclaimed.

Before either of them could do anything a cloud of blackness enfolded them. The gas in the pellet mixed swiftly with air to produce a nightlike pall which covered several square feet to a height taller than the tallest of the gunmen.

Smitty dived right into the black cloud. In his mind’s eye he saw the men as they had been standing at the instant he threw the pellet. Reaching out, he grabbed.

And got his huge fingers around the throat of the hairless Nat.

“Jeeze, it’s—”

Smitty applied pressure to a nerve in the little gunman’s neck, and he passed out.

The giant went for Patsy.

But Patsy wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

Smitty got hold of nothing but black air. Then a bullet zinged by his head.

“Got you now,” said Smitty to himself. He hunched low, made a flying tackle.

He was right. He got Patsy around the knees and brought him down, hard, to the ground.

Before the porky gunman could use his gun again, Smitty knocked him out with two short, intense, jabs to the chin.

Very carefully he began to circle the rocks. He didn’t know what he’d meet when he stepped out of the black cloud.

There was gunfire up in the woods.

The giant dashed out into clear air. Shielding his eyes from the hard-driving rain, he looked uphill.

There was no sign of anyone up there.

Head tucked down, Smitty went charging up through the pines and maples.

“All clear,” said Cole, emerging into view from behind a tree.

“What’s up?”

“A couple of them were sneaking up on me, as you may have noticed,” explained Cole. “Believing as I do that turnabout is fairplay, I decided to sneak up on them. I succeeded and, having the element of surprise on my side, got a shot at both of them. But instead of sticking around to do combat, they both took off.” He pointed to the right. “They are, as Josh so aptly puts it, long gone.”

“That’s okay,” said the big man. “I got us two more down there.”

The black cloud was thinning some, but it still masked the two fallen gunmen.

“Let us gather them up, then,” suggested Cole.

He and the giant made their way to the mound of rocks.

“You take the little one,” said Smitty when they were inside the black pall.

“Which one is that?”

“Well, I got hold of the big one. So whoever you find lying around, you take.”

Cole came out of the blackness first. “As soon as this lad comes to his senses, we can ask him what—”

“Holy mackerel!” said Smitty, dropping Patsy beside Nat.

Both men were dead. Each had had his throat cut.

Scanning the area, Smitty said, “Who did it?”

“One of the ones who was still alive, obviously.”

“Yeah, but I was only up here with you a few minutes.”

“They may have had an extra man backing them up.”

“Why kill these birds, though?”

“They probably would have preferred to do us in, Smitty. But we looked too formidable,” said Cole. “So they did the next best thing, and silenced these poor chaps.”

“This is more than witchcraft,” said Smitty. “They wanted these guys quiet for some other reason.”

“Never underestimate the power of the Devil,” said Cole.

A car door slammed down the road. A young man got out and waved. “Say, would one of you be Wilson?”

“Indeed one of us would,” Cole called back.

“I’m Gil Lunden,” he said. “I got worried and came looking for you.”

“I was worried there for a while myself.” Cole went over to the muddy road to him.

The auto was impressive—long and low, glistening black, so highly polished that the rain beaded on its bright surface. It appeared before the Colonial Inn late in the afternoon.

One of Nightwitch’s elder citizens was standing under the awning, watching the rain splash in the puddles on the sidewalk. He’d been trying to whittle an alder branch, but he was a little shaky as a result of sampling some bad applejack last night. He watched the handsome car, noticing it was driven by a young woman—a right pretty young girl, with blond hair.

The rear door of the auto opened, and a young man in a tweed suit, with a rumpled raincoat over his shoulders, hopped out. He was carrying a fat briefcase and several thick books. He hurried up the steps of the inn, then halted and looked back. “Ah, Miss Spaulding, I neglected to wait for you. Forgive me, I was thinking of . . . something else.”

The diminutive blonde smiled pleasantly as she climbed out through the rain to join him. “Think nothing of it, Dr. Winters.” She, too, was loaded down with a briefcase and a stack of old books.

They went inside. The old man returned to watching the rain fall.

The small clerk was resting in one of the big chairs in the lobby. He got to his feet as the Avenger and Nellie Gray arrived. “Yes?”

“I’m . . .” began Benson, pausing to stroke his chin. “Ah, yes, I’m Dr. Montague Winters. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Moving behind his desk, the clerk said, “Well, sir, I know your secretary phoned in a reservation early this morning. Miss Spaulding, isn’t it?”

Nellie smiled at him. “Yes, you have a very good memory.”

“You more or less have to, in this business.” He tugged out a drawer, fingered through a pile of papers and cards. “Yes, here’s the reservation. A room for Dr. Montague Winters and a room for his secretary Miss Emmy Lou Spaulding. I put you folks in 101 and 102, up on the second floor. If that suits you?”

Benson had wandered off and was squinting at a primitive portrait that hung over the fireplace. “Excellent piece of work, exceptional,” he murmured.

“That your line of work, pictures and such?” asked the clerk as he passed the register across the counter toward Nellie.

The Avenger turned. “I can see you haven’t heard of me,” he said. “I suppose that’s to be expected. No, my field of interest is . . . witchcraft.”

The clerk blinked, swallowed. “Witchcraft?”

Walking toward him, Benson continued, “Surely you know, a man immersed in the relics of the past as you are, that this town was once the center of a practicing coven of witches and warlocks?”

“Oh, you mean back in the old days,” said the clerk, after licking his lips. “Yes, that’s certainly true, professor. Yes, a good many strange things went on back then, so legend has it.”

“Exactly,” said Benson. “Which explains my being here. I am researching a book on the witchcraft of New England. You may have seen my earlier work,
Devils and Demons of Middle Europe
.”

“I don’t do much reading,” admitted the clerk. “When I do, I usually buy a few of these pulp magazines over to Gibson’s General Store.”

“I see, I see.”

“Perhaps we’d better get up to our rooms, professor,” suggested Nellie. “We’ve had a long drive over from Princeton, and in your condition . . .”

“Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right.”

The clerk located two keys and led them up a shadowy darkwood staircase to their rooms.

The man with the gun was tall, very blond. He gestured with the .38 revolver in his hand. “Step along this way, Mr. MacMurdie.” A faint trace of accent was noticeable in his speech.

“Would ye be a paid-up member of the coven, lad?”

“That needn’t concern you,” the blond man said. “It was a mistake to have stashed you up in the crypt. Very clever of you to have discovered a way out.”

“The wrong way, it seems.”

The blond man said, “You will walk along this corridor now, if you please.”

Mac complied with the gunman’s order.

“Unfortunately for you, Mr. MacMurdie, every time the door in the crypt opens, a light flashes down here,” said the blond man. “That’s far enough. Stop by that wall lamp there, please.”

Mac glanced around at the wooden walls and at the beams that supported the low ceiling. “Where mot we be?”

“It really doesn’t matter.” Keeping the revolver trained on the Scot, he reached up and twisted the base of the lamp.

“These walls are nae new,” observed Mac.

A section of the wood paneling slid, jerkingly, aside. There was a heavy metal door behind that.

The gunman pressed several spots on the door, and it grated open. He gave MacMurdie a sharp push, his hand slamming hard between the shoulder blades.

Mac went stumbling forward into darkness.

The floor was slanted. He couldn’t keep himself from moving ahead. He grabbed out, but couldn’t get hold of anything but darkness.

Chill air hit him, and then he was falling. Down and down.

Anne Barley sneezed.

There was dust lying thick on most of the surfaces of the dim room she had found herself in. It was a stone-walled room, with an ancient wooden table against one wall and an equally antique chair in its center. The only light came from a weak wire-shielded bulb in the ceiling.

Anne had awakened a few minutes earlier. The lower part of her face felt vaguely strange; her lips and nostrils burned. She remembered they’d pressed something over her face. They’d grabbed her from behind, down at the old dock area where she’d been trying to find some trace of a boat accident.

And now she was here. When Anne left the chair, she discovered she couldn’t quite walk steadily yet. She kept at it, though, determined to explore the entire room.

After a few moments she said, “I’m starting to feel like one of those ships in a bottle. I know I’m in here, but I can’t see how they did it.”

She could discover no trace of a doorway.

“They popped me in here, so there’s got to be a way to get out.”

Anne climbed up onto the rickety chair and studied the stone ceiling of her cell.

She was still up there when a section of the far wall swung open. She turned, then laughed. “Sam, thank goodness! I don’t know how you found me, but . . .” The look on her editor’s face made her stop talking all at once. “Sam?”

There was a smile on Sam Hollis’s gaunt face, a twisted, unsettling smile. “I really can’t blame you, Anne,” he said. “You’re a pretty fair reporter, and any good reporter is going to dig once he smells a story. I wish, though, you’d kept out of this one.”

“Oh, Sam.” She climbed to the floor, sank into the chair. “You mean you . . . you’re one of them?”

Nodding, the rawboned man approached closer. “Yes, that’s right,” he answered. “You kept this story to yourself, mostly. Too bad, because if I’d known what you were up to a little sooner, I might have been able to steer you off the trail. Now, though, you’re too involved.”

“It’s not only me, Sam,” she reminded him. “It’s Dr. Ruyle and Mr. MacMurdie. If you harm them . . . you’re going to have to contend with Justice, Inc. I don’t know if you know who—”

“I know all about Justice, Inc., Anne. And about this self-styled Avenger,” cut in Hollis. “We can handle any of them, the same way we handled MacMurdie.”

“You did something to him . . . what did you do?”

“He came spying on a meeting, no doubt because of a tip you kindly supplied him,” answered Hollis. “We have him now, here.”

Shivering against her will, Anne asked, “Where is this place? Where are we?”

“You didn’t do enough digging into the background of Nightwitch, girl. I know, you were concentrating on the witch lore,” said the editor, chuckling. “In the last century, after the bay ceased to be an active port, there was quite a profitable smuggling trade carried on here. They were very ambitious in those days, and labor was cheap. So a series of tunnels and storerooms were built underground. The system links up with the harbor and also with the old Bald Hill Cemetery. It’s proved to be quite handy.”