The Avenger 35 - The Iron Skull (8 page)

“Wish I could talk my chief into letting us use something like that,” said Early.

From out of the tiny receiver came Smitty’s gruff voice. “Smitty here. What gives?”

“This is Nellie. Dick wants to know if—”

“Yeah, I’m on to something. I had a go round with a pair of heavies and trailed them here. I think they’re having a little tête-à-tête with their boss.”

“Where are you?”

“Just across the Connecticut line,” answered the giant. “Up in the woods behind a joint called the Steinbrunner Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital. What I figure is . . . Oops!”

“Smitty?”

His radio had gone dead.

The Iron Skull tipped the brandy decanter and poured himself a glass. “Join me, Wilson?”

“I never drink between meals,” replied Cole, “especially when it’s been such a long time between.”

“Forgive me,” said the man with half a face. “I’ve been so involved in showing off my accomplishments I’ve neglected your more immediate needs.” He sipped the brandy through metal teeth. “Come along with me.” He went rolling across the laboratory, through the robots in various stages of completion. “What do you think of what you’ve seen so far?”

“Impressive,” said Cole. “But I can’t believe you’ve gone to all this trouble merely to make an attempt at rubbing out the Justice, Inc., lads and lassies.”

A door opened in front of the Iron Skull and he propelled his wheelchair into another room. This was a large, beam-ceilinged dining room with a long white-clothed table at its center. “Please sit down wherever you wish, Wilson, and I’ll summon someone to take your order for whatever you’d like.”

“Much obliged.” Cole seated himself at the end of the long table. “I’m forced to admit that, what with being rendered insensible by your mechanical minions and thereafter deprived of my wristwatch, I’m not exactly certain what meal it is I should be attacking.”

“A late lunch would be most appropriate.”

“Ah, so I slept through dinner and breakfast.”

The Iron Skull wheeled himself to the head of the table and pushed a button. “As to my purposes,” he said. “I have been systematically replacing various key figures in various important positions.”

“Your robots are that good?”

“They are perfect,” said the Iron Skull. “Do not let the recent exchange between Nevins and Clareson and myself lead you to believe that there is anything wrong with my creations. No, they are perfect . . . unfortunately some of those humans I have been forced to work with are less than perfect.” He rested his brandy glass on the table. “I often think that society would function a good deal better if a great many of the top men were replaced by my robots. Robots, you see, are not subject to a great many of the foibles of human types. They are not venal, lustful, petty.”

“They’re not people,” said Cole. “You also might have a smoothly running country staffed only with chipmunks, but it wouldn’t be a people society. I’m really afraid we’re stuck with humans pretty much as they are.”

“How can you say that after I have shown you the things I have?” asked the Iron Skull. “Take my own case as a prime example . . . I have quite clearly improved myself. I am more efficient now than I was when I was completely flesh and blood.” He pointed his real fingers at Cole. “Do you realize that I could take your brain from your skull and place it in that robot doppelganger of you we just now inspected? Yes, I could do that and you would be much the better for it, Wilson.”

Cole grinned. “I hope we’re still on a theoretical plane,” he said.

“Oh, yes, you mock the idea now. It could well be that by transplanting a man’s brain into a robot body . . . perhaps one could gain a kind of immortality that way.”

“Aren’t you too busy with war work to devote much time to such lofty stuff?”

“This war will not last forever.”

A door silently opened, and a small man in a white jacket entered carefully. “Yes, sir?”

“You took your own sweet time about getting here, Reisberson,” said the Iron Skull. “Our guest would like to dine.”

“Very good, sir.” Reisberson approached Cole’s end of the table. “What would you care to—”

“Bring him the roast beef, Reisberson,” ordered the Iron Skull. “You will enjoy that, Wilson.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure to.”

“And, Reisberson, tell them to bring Joshua Newton up and place him in my den.”

“Yes, sir.” Little Reisberson bowed out of the dining room.

“Aren’t you going to invite Josh to join us?” asked Cole.

“I told you I do not like blacks,” said the Iron Skull. “Especially not as tablemates.”

“He’s been fasting as long as I have.”

The Iron Skull tossed off the last of the brandy in his glass. “You’ve seen something of my setup here, Wilson, and I have told you something about my purposes. What do you say?”

“About joining your staff, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I don’t see how I can afford to turn down your generous offer,” said Cole.

“Very good. I am happy to have you working with me now, Wilson,” said the Iron Skull. “One of the things which I demand from all who work under me is complete and unquestioning loyalty. The kind of loyalty I am talking about cannot be feigned. After you have finished your meal, I will put your loyalty to me to a test.”

“Oh, so?” said Cole. “What sort of test?”

“I will have you,” said the Iron Skull, “kill Joshua Newton.”

Why had Smitty stopped talking on his belt-buckle radio?

Two large men were coming up through the evergreens toward him. They were tough-looking customers, each wearing a red mackinaw and a knitted cap. They reminded Smitty of lumberjacks, and to make the impression complete, one of them was carrying an ax.

“Hey, buddy,” called the one with the ax, “you’re trespassing on private property.”

“Geeze, is that so?” Smitty gave himself a smack across the forehead and tried to look innocent. “I was out taking a hike and I must have strayed off the straight and narrow.”

“Well, take yourself a hike away from here.”

“Excuse it,” said Smitty with a shrug of his giant shoulders.

“Hey,” exclaimed the one without the ax, “there can’t be two enormous gonzos like this around. He must be the one the boys had their tussle with in the warehouse.”

“What’s that?” said Smitty. “Must be some kind of mistake. I ain’t the tussling kind.”

The one with the ax held the weapon straight out by its handle, pointing its sharp head at Smitty. “If you want to avoid a tussle, big boy, you better come along with us.”

“Naw, I don’t think I will, fellas.”

“Like hell!” The one without the ax jumped for Smitty, intending to get a bear hug around him.

Smitty avoided that, at the same time thrusting out a fist.

“Wow!” The punch caused the charging man’s head to snap far over to one side. He followed the drift of his head and banged into a tree.

“You hadn’t ought to of done that.” The one with the ax began slicing at the chill air with it. His intention seemed to be to practice on air for a while and then slice up the giant.

“That’s dangerous,” said Smitty, “swinging that danged thing around like that.” Suddenly he dropped down and then tackled the man.

The ax whistled harmlessly above his head.

Smitty tumbled the man over backwards into the snow. With his left hand he grabbed the handle of the ax. “Gimme,” he said as he jerked it away from the man.

He tossed it away, then delivered three short jabs to the man’s rising chin. His chin ceased to rise and returned to the ground along with the rest of him.

“I’ll chop you into little pieces!”

Smitty spun round. The other goon had gotten himself upright and rescued the flung ax. He was charging at the giant with it.

Smitty hopped back, all but one foot, out of the way.

The foot tripped the man. He went down face first into a mound of snow.

Smitty gave him two chops to the neck. The man’s hands were limp when Smitty took the ax away from him.

“Geeze, this has been one heck of an afternoon,” the giant said to himself. “If every day was like this, I wouldn’t have to worry about walking for exercise.”

He snatched the knitted cap off the nearest goon, then borrowed the man’s red mackinaw. Donning these, he rolled both of the slumbering men over behind a shaggy pine tree.

The ax swinging at his side, he went trudging downhill.

There was a wooden gate open in the stone wall. The gate his two lumberjack pals must have used. It was hanging open.

Smitty walked onto the hospital grounds. “Wouldn’t like to be sick in a joint like this,” he decided. “It ain’t got what you call a pleasing prospect.”

He encountered no one else as he made his way to the garages. The dark sedan he’d seen the plump Nevins arrive in was there.

Smitty tiptoed into the dark garage. He knelt by the car, took a tiny tracking bug out of his trouser pocket, and attached it to the underside of a fender. “Guy ought to take better care of this crate, too much gunk caked up under here.”

He heard footsteps now. He eased up and moved back toward the rear of the windowless garage. He stationed himself in a swatch of deep shadow next to a storage cabinet.

Nevins came into the garage, breathing hard. He noticed Smitty not at all. “What kind of life is this?” he was saying aloud to himself as he climbed into his car. “Morons on one end and a madman on the other. I wasn’t meant for a life like this . . . a man of my intelligence. There’s got to be something better.”

The engine came to life, and the car backed out into the snowy afternoon.

When the car was gone, Smitty again resorted to his two-way buckle radio. “Hey, Nellie! Nellie, can you hear me?”

Nellie’s familiar voice came out of the speaker. “We’re on our way to the hospital, Smitty. Turns out we were only about twenty minutes away. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it was a little tussle with a couple of lumberjacks that caused me to cut off before.”

“Lumberjacks?”

“Never mind that now. You got one of my tracking boxes in your jalopy, ain’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, switch it on and see if you can pick up a signal from the dingus I just planted on a guy’s car.”

There were several seconds of silence. Then Nellie said, “We’re getting it, Smitty. He’s heading our way.”

“Follow him,” he told her. “Forget about me. I got no problems. This bird may lead you to the higher-ups in this whole business. I got a hunch he’s some kind of middleman. Okay?”

“Righto. You sure you’re—”

“Yeah, yeah. Soon as I poke around here a little more I’ll pick up the guy’s trail, too. Meet you and Dick wherever it leads. Over and out.”

Okay, now the two goons in the woods would be out for a while. There were the other two, the warehouse boys, who were still inside the hospital. And no way of telling how many more heavies that pile held.

Still, he wanted to check around a little, maybe find himself somebody he could ask questions of. “So let’s sneak—”

Clang!

A bullet had come in out of the afternoon and struck the rusty vise about three feet from him.

“We don’t tolerate prowlers here!” shouted a voice outside the garage. “This is Dr. Steinbrunner himself speaking. Come out of there with your hands up, or I’ll mow you down. Do you hear me?”

“Oh, boy,” said Smitty.

The snow was falling faster, heavier.

“That’s him,” said Nellie.

They were parked in a little side road. Out on the main roadway a dark sedan went by. The tracking box indicated this was indeed the automobile Smitty had alerted them to.

The little blonde shifted into gear and swung out onto the road. “Let’s hope he’s going to where they’ve got Cole and Josh and Mac.”

“If Smitty’s hunch is right,” said the Avenger, “he will.”

A howling wind was spinning swirls of snow around their car. The road was alternately slushy and glass-slick.

“Our unknown chum,” observed Nellie, “is moving a bit faster than prevailing weather conditions call for.”

“He doesn’t have chains, either.”

“Well, let’s hope . . . oh, oh!”

Nevin’s car had abruptly lost its traction. It went sluicing from one side of the snow-banked road to the other. The bumper slammed into a drift on the wrong side of the road, and then the car went wobbling backwards out onto the road again.

Very deftly Nellie slowed their own car. “This bird had better stay alive long enough to get where he’s going.”

Apparently Nevins had slammed on his brakes. The car began to spin, then went rattling over to the right-hand side of the road. It seemed to jump off the roadway and dive nose foremost into a tree.

There was a very loud crumpling crash. The front of the sedan smashed in. The hood flaps opened and flapped like the wings of a huge dying bird.

“Drat!” said Nellie. She pulled their car up to the side of the road about ten feet from the wrecked Nevins.

The Avenger was out and running.

Nevins was leaning against the steering wheel, forehead bleeding. “How am I going to explain this?” he was mumbling, dazed. “He’ll say it’s . . . a failure . . . he’ll kill me for certain . . . how am I going to . . .”