The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil (9 page)

Smitty bent to grab up the .45 automatic that Straw-hat had dropped.

Unexpectedly, as Cole struggled to take the other gun away, Straw-hat kicked out with one booted foot.

“Hey!” The toe of the heavy boot nudged hard into the side of Smitty’s head. He let go the automatic and sloshed to one knee in the muddy ground.

“Hold it right there, big boy!” shouted the closest man with a shotgun. He was now only ten feet from them. “Stay down on your knees, or you’ll get your noggin blowed clean off.”

Cole succeeded in wresting the second automatic from Straw-hat. He waited an instant, then gave the man a tremendous shove in the direction of the aproaching trio.

Straw-hat went dancing across the mud, flapping his arms to keep his balance, his booted feet kicking up slushy mud.

Cole grabbed Smitty’s arm. “Come on, let’s make a hasty departure.”

The big man put his hand to his head. “I can’t seem to . . .” All expression left his face. He dropped forward.

Cole left him and ran. Stopping with a tree trunk at his back, he tugged out his belt-buckle radio. “Bald Hill Floral Shoppe,” he said into the receiver. “Bald Hill Floral Shoppe. We got trouble.”

Then they were on him.

Late in the afternoon the rain slackened. The sky lightened slightly, turning from a chalky gray to a muddy brown. The old panel truck came bouncing along the road, only one windshield wiper working. Lettered on its side was Crittenden Bros. Wholesale Flowers. With a rattle and a cough of smoke, the venerable vehicle turned off the road and came to a stop near the front door of the defunct Bald Hill Floral Shoppe.

A medium-sized young man bounded out of the driver’s seat and began pounding with his fist on the boarded-over glass door. After doing that for nearly a full minute, he let off. Scratching his head through his checkered cap, he looked anxiously around. Then he tried pounding on the door again.

“Hey, this stuff is perishable,” he shouted. “You want me to leave it sitting out here, or what?”

Two more minutes went by. Far off, on the other side of the low hills, thunder started rumbling.

The truck driver squatted, putting his eyes to the keyhole. At the same time he rattled the doorknob. “Wake up in there,” he urged. “I got six dozen carnations for you guys.”

The front door didn’t open, but from around the side of the building came a very thin man in a yellow slicker. “What seems to be the trouble, young man?”

“You the Bald Hill Floral Shoppe?” asked the Avenger.

“Closed for the duration,” said the thin man.

“Then why in blazes are you ordering six dozen of our best-quality carnations?”

“We’re not, nobody did.”

Benson strode back to the cab of his truck, grabbed a clipboard off the front seat. “I got the bill of lading right here and it states—”

“This states you better beat it.” A gun, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, appeared in his hand. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any.”

“Listen,” persisted Benson, “somebody ordered the flowers, and you’re going to have to pay for them.”

“Don’t you hear very well?” The thin man jabbed the gun at the Avenger. “Get in that jalopy and get moving away from here.”

“I think not.” The Avenger’s foot kicked up, connecting with the thin man’s gun hand.

“Damn!” The weapon went spinning up out of his grasp.

Before the thin man could do anything beyond lifting his head to watch the gun climb, Benson had taken hold of his throat. The Avenger pressed certain spots in the man’s neck.

The thin man had no choice. He passed out, fell down onto the muddy gravel.

Taking hold of the unconscious man by the armpits, the Avenger dragged him around to the rear of the panel truck.

Before his hand reached the door handle, another gunman appeared on the scene, wearing also a yellow slicker, running toward him, carrying a shotgun.

“Hey, buddy, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The Avenger turned to face him. “Collecting,” he answered.

“Huh? Collecting what?” He came up to within a couple of feet of the rear of the truck.

“Hoodlums.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you—”

All at once, Benson threw himself to the ground.

The back doors of the truck slammed open. The left-hand one took the shotgun man in the nose, elbow, and knee.

He howled, went flapping back about a dozen feet before falling down on his backside. Muddy water splashed as he sat.

The Avenger scooted over to him, knocked the shotgun out of his hands. “You might as well stay down,” he said to the sprawled man.

Two chops to the side of the head accomplished that.

“Reinforcements,” warned Nellie, who’d swung the metal doors open into the man’s face.

Two more gunmen were trotting around the side of the stone shop. They wasted no time in talk or warnings. They started shooting.

The Avenger wasn’t where he had been when the guns were aimed and fired. Neither the slug from Straw-hat’s right-hand automatic nor the scatter of pellets from the other man’s shotgun came near him.

Benson kept rolling across the gravel. When he bounded to his feet, there was a weapon in each hand—in his right, the unique pistol he had dubbed Mike, and in his left the exceptional knife he called Ike.

“Drop it,” warned Straw-hat, his fingers tightening on the triggers of both automatics.

But even as he spoke, a .22 slug was whizzing from the gun. It deftly creased his skull. Straw-hat dropped.

The knife blade sliced at the other man’s hands. He cried out in pain, let go of his shotgun. He slapped at each hand in turn, splashing blood all over the front of his yellow raincoat. The rain swiftly washed it away.

Nellie sprinted over to him, twisted an arm behind his back. “Stand still,” she suggested.

“I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, I’m going to bleed to death before your eyes.”

“Nonsense,” said the blonde. “Okay, I’ll let you go. Here, put this handkerchief—leave it folded up—against your hand and press hard with the other one.”

“Oh, that’s not going to do any good. There’s so much blood, I . . .” The man’s face paled, turning to a shade of yellow that matched his raincoat. His eyes flapped shut, his mouth fished open, and he slumped to the ground.

“Can’t stand the sight of blood,” said Nellie. She shrugged, knelt beside him, and bandaged up his moderately gashed hands with two white handkerchiefs.

“They promised us peace and quiet when we took this country place,” said Cole Wilson, peering out through the opening front door of the flower shop. “What brings you to Nightwitch, pixie?”

“Is Smitty okay?”

“Yeah, sure, Nell,” called the giant. He pushed Cole aside and stepped out into the rain. “A couple hours from now, you maybe would get a different answer.”

“These chaps have made some dire threats,” said Cole. He waited until the Avenger had retrieved his throwing knife, then held out his hand. “Good to see you, Richard. I see you got my message.”

Benson nodded. “Is this the whole bunch, these four?”

“It’s all they had holding us,” answered Cole. “But these gents are, to coin a phrase, merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We’re dealing with something big here, Richard.”

“I sensed as much,” said the Avenger. “What about Mac?”

“He’s still alive,” said Cole, “from what hints these goons dropped.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“Nope,” said Smitty. “I ain’t sure these bozos even know. Like Cole says, there’s a lot of guys involved in this goofy business. I got the idea Mac got grabbed by the witches themselves.”

Glancing around at the four sprawled men, the Avenger said, “We’ll question each of them.”

“We can use the flower shop for interrogations,” said Cole. “As my old chum Straw-hat very recently pointed out, it’s quiet and secluded here.”

Straw-hat, it turned out, was the only one who knew anything much.

Using a pellet of truth gas, which he broke beneath the gunman’s nose, the Avenger put him into a half-awake state.

He slumped in the sprung old sofa chair he was sitting in, eyes half closing. His crease wound had been treated, and there was a cross-hatch of bandages on his scalp.

“You will answer all my questions,” Benson told him, “truthfully.”

“Yes, sir.”

The rain drummed on the tile roof and ran down the outside of the dirty windows. The thunder-rolled closer.

“Who hired you?”

“The Devil.”

Nellie, who was sitting cross-legged on a warped counter top taking notes, raised her eyebrows.

The Avenger asked, “What’s his name?”

“The Devil, I don’t know his real name. Never dealt with him directly.”

“How do you get your orders?”

“By phone,” answered Straw-hat. “Sometimes by letter. When we get paid off, the dough is left in envelopes at certain places.”

Cole frowned, began stroking his chin.

Benson said, “What sort of jobs have you done for the Devil?”

“All sorts of things. Rough up people, swipe certain things, all sorts of odd jobs.”

“The Barley girl,” put in Cole. “Did you kidnap her?”

“Well, we took her someplace. Knocked her out first, then delivered her.”

“Delivered her where?” asked Benson.

“Sort of a funny place. We got orders to leave her in the living room of a deserted house on Blackpond Road. Place called the old McRobb mansion.”

Cole leaned closer to the dazed man, “Where did you grab the girl?”

“Down by the boatyard, where we tangled with you.”

“How’d you know we’d be showing up there?”

“Got a phone call,” replied Straw-hat. “Told us to go back to the boatyard and grab a couple more nosy people.”

“Huh,” remarked Smitty. “Nobody knew we were going there, except that newshound guy.”

“Did Sam Hollis phone you?” asked Cole.

“Don’t know who called me. Same voice as always, the Devil.”

The Avenger took over the questioning once more. “What about MacMurdie?”

“Witches got him.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know.”

“When are they meeting next?”

“Tonight, I think.”

“Where?”

“They got a new location, in a big abandoned barn at a place called White Horse Hill,” said Straw-hat. “Going to have something special tonight, I heard.”

“What?”

“Sacrifice of somebody to Satan,” said the man.

“Ah,” said Cole, “rain on a tin roof, nothing is cozier, is it, pixie?”

“I can think of several things,” replied Nellie. “None of which include you.”

The Avenger and the three members of the Justice, Inc., team were seated in the back of the panel truck. Their four prisoners were still inside the old stone building, securely bound. Before turning them over to the local police, the Avenger wished to hold a conference—hold it where the captives would have no chance of overhearing.

“Do you think,” asked Nellie, “this gang of witches will go so far as to actually sacrifice someone?”

“They don’t sound any too gentle,” said Cole.

“We have to operate on the assumption that they will,” said Benson. “Therefore, I plan to attend their conclave this evening and see to it no violence is done to anyone.” He nodded in the direction of the crouching giant. “You’ll come along with me, Smitty.”

“Okay,” said Smitty. “I’m still dunking about what that guy with the straw hat was saying. How he got a phone call telling him to expect us at the boatyard. Then, when we was driving out to see that mouthpiece, they knew about that, too.”

“It begins to look as though,” said Cole, “Sam Hollis must have some connection with the witches. However, there is another possibility.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve noticed that the sweet lady who handles the phone service in Nightwitch has a habit of listening in on calls,” said Cole. “Granted, it’s a common practice in small towns . . . large towns, too, for all I know.”

Smitty snapped his big fingers. It made an enormous popping sound. “Sure, she could have heard us set up that meeting with Gil Lunden.”

“Another thing struck me as Straw-hat bared his soul,” continued Cole. “He implied that many of their nefarious deeds were openly discussed over the telephone. Indeed, the Devil himself called him on occasion. Seems to me that if our Mrs. Dolittle—which diligent inquiries revealed to be the good operator’s name—if she heard a chap saying, ‘Hello there, Straw-hat, this is your old pal Satan . . .’ Well, it might give her pause. And yet witches and warlocks are phoning hoodlums and heavies all over the place, and not a peep has popped out of Mrs. D.”

“She’s certainly,” said the Avenger, “someone we’ll check up on.”

“What about the house he mentioned?” asked the little blonde. “The McRobb place, where they left the girl. Do you think there’s any chance she’s still there?”

“No, it was most likely only a drop,” said Benson. “But I want you and Cole to go there and search the house.”

“Ah, splendid,” said the grinning Cole. “You realize that I have yet to meet the girl in the case. It’s not like me.”

Smitty slapped his knees impatiently. “Okay, we got our jobs figured out,” he said. “We better start loading those bozos into the truck. I got a hunch Chief Storm’s not going to let us off without a lot of talk.”