The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil (8 page)

BOOK: The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil
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“The witchcraft, then,” said the girl, “that’s not the important thing at all, is it?”

Hollis chuckled. “It’s important to most of the fools who have joined the cult, the female witches and the male warlocks. To them, people who yearn for the simple solutions of a bygone time, it is highly important.”

“But not to you, Sam, you don’t believe any of it.”

“I believe in the job I was sent here to do,” he answered. “Sent here nearly ten years ago to prepare for.”

Slowly, Anne nodded her head. “You’re a spy.”

“Much more than that, Anne. I’m an agent, an agent of change, a representative of the winning ideology in the world,” he said.

“And the meetings of the witch cult, that’s only a cover.”

“Most of the fools in the coven do not know that,” replied Hollis. “I did a great deal of research into the history of this community. I learned, as I told you, about this magnificent system of underground tunnels—something no one else in Nightwitch even realizes the existence of. I also discovered that a witch cult flourished here in the late seventeenth century. Now, I know these people, Anne. They’re simple, a lot of them, superstitious. I calculated that a witch group could be started up again, if it was handled just right.”

“You use it to cover the activities of your spies,” said Anne.

“For much more than that,” Hollis said, chuckling. “You see, Anne, we’re landing agents here in the harbor. It’s a tricky business, but we’ve been highly successful so far. With a witch cult going strong, well, a good many people are going to stay home at night. And they’re not going to report a couple of cloaked, muffled figures they might see on a back road. It’s worked very well.”

“Until now,” she told him.

“You’re only a very small annoyance, not a setback.”

“What do you expect to do with me, Sam, keep me a prisoner forever?”

“Oh, no, Anne, I have something much more interesting planned for you,” he answered. “I’ve been preparing my fold for something like this for a long time, just in case we had to get rid of a meddler.”

“Preparing them for what?”

“A human sacrifice,” he said.

MacMurdie landed, after a drop of what felt like six or seven feet, on a stone floor.

“What is it?” called out a voice in the blackness. “What’s that?”

“ ’Tis Fergus MacMurdie, feeling none too bright.”

“Mac!” said John Ruyle. “It’s me, John.”

“Ah, ’tis happy I am to find ye’re alive and kicking.”

“Alive, at least,” said his friend. “Do you have any idea, Mac, what’s going on?”

“Aye, I’ve got a few,” replied the Soot.

“I mean, where are we exactly?”

“ ’Twould be my guess there’s some sort of underground passageway system been built beneath one of your old burying grounds or kirkyards. These birkies are using it for their own purposes.”

“I thought I knew what their purposes were, Mac,” said Ruyle in the absolute dark. “Now, I’ve been thinking all the time I’ve been down here, I’m not as sure.”

“The witches,” said Mac, “are only part of it.”

“Yes, that’s what I concluded. But what else are they up to?”

“We have to get out of here,” said Mac, “and find out just that.”

CHAPTER XV
Famous Last Words

Nellie knocked on the connecting door, then stepped into the Avenger’s room. “Everybody,” she announced, “seems to be elsewhere.”

Benson had been sitting, fingers peaked beneath his jaw, in a chair by the window. Heavy rain pattered on the glass behind his head. “Where?”

The little blonde crossed the flowered rug. “This is a small, somewhat old-fashioned, town,” she said. “They’ve got their secrets, of course, but everybody seems to know a heck of a lot about what everyone else is up to. The desk clerk told me, when I tried to call Mac’s room, that nobody’s seen him since last night.” She frowned. “He says the police are looking into it.”

“The police?” Benson stood up. “Why?”

“Apparently the clerk got worried,” explained Nellie. “Some gent who does odd jobs for the inn saw Mac leap out of his room last night at the witching hour. Clerk says all sorts of people have been asking for Mac, so he decided maybe he was missing.”

“Who was asking for him, besides Cole and Smitty?”

Sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed, Nellie took out a notebook from her purse. She flipped it open and read to the Avenger what the clerk had told her about Anne Barley and about the arrival of Cole and Smitty, She slammed the book shut, adding, “The chief of police let Cole and Smitty poke around Mac’s room, but they didn’t find anything. Right now, Cole and our resident giant are out looking for this Barley girl. Which is what you’d expect Cole to be doing.”

“I wonder,” said the Avenger, “how long I can go on posing as an absent-minded scholar here to do a paper on the witch trials of the seventeenth century?”

Nellie glanced at her tiny wristwatch. “I’d give it another two hours,” she said. “As I told you, the people around here seem to know what you’re up to before you do. I imagine half of Nightwitch is gossiping about us right now.”

“I’m convinced, which is why I decided to come here myself, that Mac’s witches tie in with the rise of sabotage in this area,” he said. “So we’ve got to . . .” He took hold of the minature sending and receiving set built into the buckle of his belt. “I’m going to try and see if I can contact them. We’ll try for Mac first.”

Benson sent out a signal that only MacMurdie’s set would receive. He tried several times, but there was no response.

“Nothing from Mac at all.” The Avenger shook his head, frowning. “Now let’s see about Cole and Smitty.”

But those signals drew no response, either.

The reason for that is simple. We’ll have to go back an hour to find out why.

The printer was extremely old, smeared with black ink and flecks of snuff. After Cole had been talking to him for several minutes, he leaned forward in his desk chair. “Maybe, young feller, I ought to tell you I’m a mite deaf.”

Cole halted, grinning. “I’m glad you have,” he said. “How much have you heard so far?”

“That’s right, deaf.”

Holding the sympathy card he’d found inside the gunman’s straw hat, Cole shouted. “Did you print this?”

“Yep,” said the ancient printer.

“For who?”

“Yep, I printed it.”

Smitty decided to try a bellow. “For whom?”

The old man started. “No need to scream, I ain’t stone deaf.” He tattered up out of his chair. “Just let me check my records.”

They followed him through the labyrinth of twisting corridors and workrooms that made up his ancient printshop.

“Look at there,” said the printer. “Another darn leak in the roof.”

Rain was gurgling in through a dollar-size hole in the ceiling, splashing on top of several rusty filing cabinets.

“Don’t fret,” said the old man, “the records you want ain’t in that part of the storeroom. Yessir, here we are.” He clutched at the handle of a green drawer. Nothing happened. “Dang thing always did stick.”

Smitty pulled the reluctant drawer out. “There you go.”

“Now, that type on that particular card was something they called Busino Extra Lite. Never caught on, and it was give up back before the war.”

“This war?” asked Cole.

“No, no, the Great War, back in ’Eighteen. This war, he says.” After some digging into the faded file folders, the printer produced a slip of pink paper. “Here it is. I thought I remembered that job. Run off five thousand of them little cards for the Bald Hill Floral Shoppe. See, right here. Five thousand cards incribed
With Deepest Sympathy
, set in 10-point Busino Extra Lite. Yep, picked up on April 5, 1917.”

“That’s over twenty-five years ago,” observed Cole.

“Told you they don’t use that typeface no more.”

“Whereabouts,” asked Smitty, “is this Bald Hill Floral outfit?”

“No place.”

“No place?”

“They went bust first year of the Depression, even before that fellow Roosevelt took over the country.”

“Where were they located back then?” Cole asked him.

“Well, where do you think? Right across the road from the Bald Hill cemetery.”

“I should have guessed,” grinned Cole.

“You can have it,” remarked Smitty.

“Ah, what’s become of your usual Pollyanna side?” asked Cole as the giant parked alongside the tumble-down wrought-iron fence on their left. “Here’s a lovely weed-infested cemetery, which no one has obviously entered, dead or alive, since the reign of Hoover I. Here is this ragtag graveyard full of cracked tombstones and toppled markers being battered with a torrential downfall of rain, and you say it gives you the creeps.”

“That flower shop we just drove by don’t look so jolly, either.”

“It does, however, look like the sort of place a gang of hoodlums and bravos might use as a hangout.”

“Could be.” The big man set the brake. “We’re out of sight of the joint, so let’s mosey back through that woods across the way for a look-see.”

“Very well, if you’re through admiring the gothic splendor of Bald Hill Cemetery proper.” Cole left the car, pulling down the brim of his hat and turning up the collar of his coat.

The two Justice, Inc., teammates sprinted across the road and into the wooded area. Soon they were weaving their way toward the building which once had housed the flower shop. The heavy rain came zigzagging down through the twists of branches.

Smitty, who was in the lead, held out his hand. “Whoa, there she is.” He stopped behind a tree trunk, nodding at the building.

Rainwater was cascading down across the slanting tile roof, splashing into a greenish water barrel. The windows were boarded up, the rear door chained and padlocked.

“Don’t look like they been open for business in a while,” said the giant.

“Camouflage,” said Cole. “If you’ll cast an eye on the path leading up to the door, you’ll notice the still-visible scrape mark made when that door was recently opened. Also, look there, you’ll find mud on the bottom of the door from said scrape.”

“Hard to be sure, with the rain slopping mud every which way.”

“I’m sure,” said Cole. “Somebody’s using that building, and the odds are they’re in there right now.”

“Not all of them,” said a voice behind them.

It was Straw-hat, minus his straw hat, but carrying two automatics.

“We’re interested in a floral piece made in the shape of a bass fiddle, to be sent to my late uncle who—”

“Once again,” said the gunman, “I suggest you put up your hands. Then I’d like you to step into the office over there.”

“You sure move quiet,” commented Smitty. “We never even heard you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty good at—”

While Straw-hat had been turned toward Smitty to explain his stalking ability, Cole had jumped into action. He swung out, flat-handed, and dealt the gunman a chop against the side of the neck.

Gagging, the man began to sway.

As Straw-hat bumped into the trunk of the nearest tree, a tiny buzzing sounded in Cole’s belt radio. He ignored the signal and knocked one of the man’s guns away.

“More coming,” warned Smitty.

Three men, each wearing a yellow slicker and two carrying shotguns, had come running around the side of the stone building.

BOOK: The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil
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