The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder (13 page)

The white, dead face remained immobile as it always must. The colorless eyes, like bits of ice in moonlight, were steady, like diamond drills on the plant executive’s face.

“Another thing, Mr. Jenner. Royalty payments to Mr. Cranlowe on his torpedo control have been held up recently because the government has rejected recent shipments. Do you know why those shipments should be rejected?”

“I don’t understand,” said Jenner, frowning a little. “You said you were here on the murders of Blandell and Sessel. What have Cranlowe’s royalty payments to do with them?”

“Perhaps a great deal. If you would just tell me what the government has written you concerning the rejections—”

Benson stopped. The pale, chill eyes in his dead face took on an intent, fixed look. The Avenger was hearing something, very faintly, as if muted by distance. Yet it was something that seemed near at hand, too.

“Well?” said Jenner. “Go on!”

But Benson didn’t go on! He listened to the faint, shrill noise. It was a sound that not one person in a hundred thousand would have heard at all; but such was the trained acuteness of Benson’s hearing that he got it quite distinctly.

Though he
felt
it almost more than heard it.

Jenner was staring at him with a slightly different look. A sort of waiting, expectant look. And on the leather divan, Prince began to howl.

He had howled just before a man went crazy and tried to tap dance in the general office. He had howled just before two men had been murdered.

He howled in precisely the same way, now. And pawed at his ears as if they hurt him.

The sound The Avenger heard was gradually growing shriller, going more and more above the range of audibility even to his marvelous ears.

And in a blinding flash the meaning of it became illuminated and clear.

Why the dogs had howled and pawed at their ears as if in pain. They
were
in pain! They could hear this sound that only Benson, among humans, had heard. They could hear it distinctly, and it hurt their ears with its shrillness.

Why men had had blank spells, mental lapses, in this place, and gone out to do mad, murderous things.

Why—

Benson knew, now! He knew, suddenly, many things. But in the instant of his knowing, the sound passed at last beyond the range of hearing—and his agate-bright, colorless eyes went strangely blank. His body was erect and straight and powerful; but it seemed, in those last few seconds, to have become a shell—as if life and volition had been drained from it.

Jenner smiled. He rose from behind his desk and went to Benson.

“Shake hands with me,” he said peremptorily.

Benson’s steely right hand came out and clasped his.

“You will do precisely as you’re told?”

The Avenger’s voice had a dulled and docile quality that no man on earth had ever heard in it before.

“I will do precisely as I am told.”

“Good!” said Jenner, chuckling and going back to his desk. “You have an international reputation for honesty. You are widely known as a very rich man who does not need to steal secrets. We can use you!”

In the hotel-apartment building where Mrs. Cranlowe was staying, Nellie Gray and Rosabel Newton were going out. But they were not going out to call on Mrs. Cranlowe. They were not going out for any social reasons at all.

They were going because there was a gun jammed in the side of each.

“You’re making a mistake, I tell you,” Nellie said.

“Yas, suh, yo’ sho are,” said Rosabel, who, like her husband, Josh, talked quite differently to strangers than to close friends.

The two men with the guns prodded them harder. One of the men was fat and jolly-looking—till you stared a second time. The other had a narrow, mean jaw.

“It’s no mistake,” said the fat man. “You’re hornin’ into somethin’ that’s nobody’s business but ours. So you’ll come with us and tell all about it.”

Nellie considered a reckless move. If she could get that gun away from her side for a second, she could handle three like the fat man, versed as she was in jujitsu.

But she didn’t dare try anything. Not only would she almost certainly be shot; but if she did win free, the other man would probably shoot Rosabel. And Nellie didn’t want to risk the pretty Negress’ life.

“Down the stairs,” said the fat man.

“Down fifteen floors?” gasped Nellie.

“Sure! Why not? You’re young and healthy. Pretty, too,” Fat leered.

“But—”

“Go on, go on!” growled the narrow-jawed man. “There ain’t any elevator operators on stairways to tell the cops, later, about a coupla dames bein’ walked along at the point of a gat.”

Nellie and Rosabel went toward the stairs. There was nothing else to do, with death nudging their ribs like that.

Nellie was coldly furious at herself. She figured this had been her fault. She had been expecting Robert Cranlowe to knock at her door. The inventor’s pleasant son had asked if he could take Nellie to dinner along with his stepmother that evening, and Nellie had jumped at the possibility of getting more information.

He had phoned and mentioned the time that he’d come for her. Nellie could have sworn it was really his voice. But it began to look as if it had not been. Because when she had opened to the knock at her door, at the time given, a gun had been jammed at her by this fat man and another had leveled at Rosabel.

“Why are you kidnaping us, anyway?” Nellie asked, on the long trip down fifteen flights of stairs.

“As if you didn’t know!” snorted the fat man. “Anyway, I told you. You’re hornin’ in where you ain’t wanted.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Cranlowe, babe. Cranlowe! You picked up Mrs. Cranlowe too smooth and easy to be natural. You found out there was a guy trailin’ her, and reported it to somebody or other. We know that because a great big guy with hands like hams suddenly shows up at our headquarters and begins listenin’ in. So we come to get you and have you tell us, like a good little girl, just where you fit.”

There was a closed car in the alley behind the building. The four stepped out the rear door and into the car without a soul seeing them. It was a jolt for Nellie and Rosabel. They’d hoped someone would be around.

The car went out of Garfield City to an old farm. There was a house with the roof gone, and a barn that was a little more intact. The car passed the abandoned house and stopped beside the barn.

The girls were prodded out of the car and into the barn; then the car drove away again. But neither of the two paid much attention to that. They were staring at a man in the barn who was sitting moodily on a moth-eaten-looking bale of hay.

The man was Robert Cranlowe!

“For heaven’s sake—” began Nellie.

Robert Cranlowe shook his head at them in sober sympathy.

“So they got you, too!” he said. “But—why?”

“You mean, you were kidnaped?” said Nellie.

“That would seem to be the word for it,” young Cranlowe growled. “And believe me, if I ever get my hands on some of these bright boys when they haven’t got guns at their shoulders—”

There were three men at the far end of the barn, playing with greasy cards on an upended box.

“Aw, shut up!” grated one.

Young Cranlowe glared, but did as he was told. The card game went on, with the cards making little slapping sounds.

“They must have heard you phone me,” Nellie said, “and then came to my rooms at the time you said you would come—”

“Listen,” one of the three at the box jerked out, “we don’t want to hear anything from any of you! Get that?”

Each had his automatic lying on the box. The man who had spoken picked his up, and faced the two girls and the inventor’s son for a moment. Then he returned his attention to the game, and there was silence.

Nellie glanced at Rosabel, who shrugged a little. And then the dainty blonde, who looked so fragile and soft and helpless, gazed around the place of their confinement.

The barn was small, rough-floored. The floor of the old hayloft above had been removed, leaving a tracery of beams and supporting joists in midair. There was still the ladder up to where the hayloft had once been, now leading to nothing but a warped old beam.

Nellie began to walk slowly around. The ill-tempered man at the upended box looked as if he were going to stop all movement as well as all speech, but finally he snorted and said nothing. Nellie got near the ladder.

Rosabel glanced at her once with alert, comprehending eyes. And the slow minutes passed.

Then another car approached outside. They could hear it roll quietly to a stop beside the barn. A good, powerful, silent car. The heavy barn door slid back and another man came in.

This man was smooth in dress and manner, and had dull, dark eyes, like black onyx.

“Kopell,” said one of the men at the box, looking up from the cards.

The man nodded, and looked with contented eyes at the two girls and young Cranlowe.

“So you picked them up,” he said. “Good enough. Even if we don’t get anything out of them, we’ve got them away from
her,
so there won’t be any trouble at that end. That was the main thing.”

“You wanted to pop a couple questions at the girls, didn’t you?” said the man at the box.

“Oh, sure,” said Kopell. “If they’ll talk, swell. But it don’t matter much if they refuse.”

“No,” said the man at the box, grinning. “I guess it won’t matter much to ’em—six feet underground.”

The Avenger and his aides rarely got into a mess, no matter how perilous, from which they did not emerge with some useful bit of information. It was so in this case, with Nellie Gray.

At least she had the information. Whether or not she was going to be able to emerge with it was something else again. But she was hoping that she was.

Kopell, Garfield City’s Public Enemy Number 1 and underworld leader, came rather carelessly toward the tiny blonde who looked so softly feminine and helpless. She backed against the ladder, presenting an excellent picture of scared girlhood in the hands of bold, bad men.

“Don’t like this so much, huh?” Kopell said to her, smiling wolfishly. “You mix into a big game, and then don’t like it so well when you lose out. Well, you shouldn’t have poked your pretty little nose in it in the first place.”

“In what?” said Nellie innocently. “What big game are you talking about?”

“The game that made you pick up a fast friendship with Mrs. Cranlowe,” said Kopell.

“You all keep talking about that,” said Nellie. “I just happened to meet her in the lobby when I checked into the apartment hotel—”

“And then pumped her for information,” nodded Kopell. “And also spotted the guys we had watching her. But still you don’t know a thing about anything!”

“That’s right,” Nellie said.

“A while ago,” snarled Kopell, “you heard me say it didn’t matter much whether you talked or not. Well, it doesn’t. But I’m curious, like any other guy. I’d like to know where you come into this, who you’re working for, and a lot of other things. If it isn’t too much trouble, I’ll make you or that maid of yours tell. I will now proceed,” he added, with a smirk, “to take some trouble. A good twist of the arm ought to refresh your memory.”

He reached out toward Nellie’s left wrist. He really shouldn’t have. Rosabel knew that and got ready for action. But Kopell, naturally, didn’t know.

He almost got the wrist, and then it had moved up six inches so that he missed his hold. But Nellie Gray did not miss hers. Her small right hand darted out and closed on Kopell’s wrist. It was there for about a second, but the man yelled as if he had laid his hand on a stove.

Nellie’s thumb had found a nerve center and pressed, with the resulting effect of running a large red-hot needle into Kopell’s arm.

That was just for good luck, it wasn’t the main purpose of her clasp. The main purpose came out a breath later, when Kopell suddenly took a header over her outstretched left leg and crashed ten feet away on the splintery floor.

Rosabel screamed then. She shrieked like a steam whistle and jumped toward the side of the barn where a loose plank flapped. She grabbed hold of the plank and began shaking it back and forth, screaming.

There was no sense to it, but there didn’t have to be. Working in perfect unison with Nellie, the Negress had wanted just one thing—to get all eyes on her for a second or two. And her shrieks and crazy actions accomplished this.

Everybody gaped at her for a couple of heartbeats except Kopell, who was dazedly, incredulously picking himself up off the floor. And in that short time, Nellie was six rungs up the ladder. She leaped from there.

Like a dainty projectile, she flew toward the upended box on which the three gunmen had been having their card game. She lit on it, and three guns, which were being snatched up by men who were beginning at last to get really alarmed, went in three different directions. They had been lying on the box. Under the impetus of Nellie’s small foot, they were kicked yards away.

The three grabbed for her. But it was like grabbing for a shadow which you didn’t expect would be in that particular spot at that particular time anyway. She jumped over the head of one of the men and was halfway to the door before they were on their feet.