Kenneth robeson the av.., p.7
Kenneth Robeson - The Avenger 04, page 7
Mac got swiftly to work. He wanted to get out of there fast. If he were picked up for breaking and entering, in this town, it would be bad.
He went first to a spindle-legged desk and worked deftly through it, not disturbing the contents enough so that evidence of a search would remain. He was looking for something, anything, relevant to the night Judge Martineau was shot.
He found a bale of letters from indiscreet rich men of the town. He found a deadly-looking little .25 automatic, which he took the precaution of unloading. And then he found a bank book.
The book showed a deposit, just two weeks ago, of one thousand dollars.
Payment for her part in smearing Martineau's good name on the night of the murder? It looked like it. Mac finished with the desk and went to the bedroom.
This place was even more cloying in its over-feminine fanciness. He grimaced, and searched with big, bony hands through frills and furbelows. He found one more thing.
In the dressing case, in the bottom of a jewel box with a lock that a child could have picked, was a folded paper. The paper said:
Good work, toots. Here's the grand.
J.M.S.
Sometimes shrewd, ruthless men are betrayed by habit. It apparently was John M. Singell's habit to initial things leaving his desk. So he had initialed this, without thinking. And Lila Belle, like a good, careful crook, had saved the little note for future emergencies.
Mac put the note in his pocket?and heard voices.
* * *
The next instant, he heard a door open?the door leading from the hallway into the apartment, here. So Lila Belle never got home before three! Well, this was one night she was breaking the rules. And with her was some gentleman friend.
Mac, lips taut, flattened against the bedroom wall, near the door. But the bedroom would be the first place the girl would come on arriving home.
The two hadn't turned the lights on yet. Mac, unbelievably silent and fast on his Gargantuan feet, slid back into the living room and to one of the windows. There was no way out there, but the drapes?
He stood behind one of the heavy, pink things?and the light went on.
Between drape and wall there was an inch crack. Mac peered through this. He saw a girl of twenty-four or so, but looking older by reason of the hard line bracketing her mouth. In spite of the line, however, she was very pretty, with creamy shoulders rising bare from a low-cut gown revealed when she took her fur coat off.
With her was a man with cheeks as pink and smooth as a girl's, but with the flat, hard eyes of a killer-shark. So Mac knew both of them. Lila Belle?and Buddy Wilson, the deadliest gunman in Ashton City.
Lila said something, with a low laugh, and justified Mac's forethought by going straight to the bedroom. She threw her coat on the bed, glanced at her face in the vanity-table mirror, and came back out. Wilson had put a cigarette between his lips, flicked a lighter and sunk into a big easy chair.
She sat on its arm.
"There's money in what you told me," she said. "I'll bet anything on it."
"Aw, look, now," protested Wilson. "We're gettin' along all right. Why take a chance on upsetting things?"
"But look at the set-up," said the girl. "We might bleed this guy for a million?if we could find out who he is. And you ought to be able to do that."
"Pretty hard," grumbled Wilson.
"So since Pop Groman passed out of the picture," the girl mused, "you five run things. Five men meeting masked, at the warehouse, to rule Ashton City! It sounds like something out of a movie. And four of the five are you and Sisco and Norman Vautry and Johhny Singell."
"I didn't say those were the guys," said Wilson, looking uncomfortable.
"You don't have to, sugar. It's a natural that they are. But, anyhow, it's the fifth one I'm interested in. You say he's a real big shot. Somebody high in business and money circles. The rest of you four know each other, under the masks. But none of you know who the fifth is. Some big business man, meeting with you crooks?"
"Hey, whadda you mean?" said Wilson, scowling.
"Come off it, sugar. You are crooks, aren't you?"
"Well," said Wilson, twisting.
"Don't you see?" the girl went on. "It's perfect! If we can find out who's under that fifth mask, we can blackmail him for the rest of our lives. It'll make the money we take from the regular stuff look like a kid's penny-bank."
Wilson chewed his lip and looked vacantly toward the window.
"Maybe there's somethin' in what you say," he mumbled.
Then he became still, and looked very hard indeed. But Mac, behind the curtain, couldn't see his face. The girl's brunette head was between.
"We could think it over, anyhow," said Wilson.
Mac saw him get up out of the easy chair, and saw him begin to pace thoughtfully back and forth across the room, coming all too close to the drapes that hid the Scotchman. He could see Wilson's face now, but the girlish-looking countenance told him nothing.
"The question is," said Wilson, pacing, "how to get a peek under that mask without havin' everybody else cut down on you. That's?"
His pacing had brought him so near that Mac had to move so he wouldn't risk being seen in the narrow crack between drape and window.
* * *
And then the drape was whisked aside so fast the end snapped, and Mac's bitter blue eyes stared into a gun muzzle.
"Anybody with feet like yours," said Buddy Wilson, public enemy, "shouldn't stand behind drapes. Your toes stuck out six inches."
It is a common characteristic of professional, long-experienced killers to be chillingly impersonal about their work. They've taken lots of lives. It means little.
Buddy Wilson was like that now. He trained his gun on MacMurdie with the calm of any workman handling a long-accustomed, common tool. And his voice was emotionless, almost indifferent.
The girl had kept her back to the drape while Wilson's clever pacing brought him gradually within striking distance. Probably she didn't feel that she could control her features after Wilson's warning wink. Now she whirled, and glared like a tigress at the intruder.
"Buddy! Do you suppose he heard?"
"He did if he ain't deaf. And I don't think he is."
The gun prodded Mac out of the window niche and to the center of the living room floor. Wilson's girlish face was a horrible thing, with the flat, shark eyes.
"Who are you, buddy?" he said. His nickname had come from the fact that that was what he called everyone else: "Buddy."
Mac said nothing. There wasn't much to say.
"Speak up," cracked Wilson. "Are you one of Catt-ridge's men? Or some stooge for the Civic League under that glass-eyed bank president, Willis? Or what?"
"I'm the gas-meter reader," said MacMurdie, who had his moments of doleful humor. They usually occurred when he was in an impossibly deadly spot. When things went well he had no jokes and was the most pessimistic soul alive.
"You're going to be a dead gas meter reader in about thirty seconds," began Wilson, "if you don't talk."
"He's got to be anyway," said the brunette dancer, shaking with rage and fear. "After what he's heard? Buddy?you know what you've got to do."
"Sure! You're right. So it don't make any difference if he talks. I'll walk him out of here?"
"There's a better way," said Lila Belle hoarsely. "He was in a good place a minute ago."
Buddy Wilson frowned, then got it.
"Sure!?The window! If a guy jumps out of a window, nobody can tell what floor he jumped from, and the guy himself would never tell. Not from the fourteenth story! You got brains, lady."
"Don't ye think ye're a little loose with the term lady?" said MacMurdie, hands obediently in the air. He hadn't a chance with that expert gun so relentlessly on him.
"Why, you?" screeched Lila Belle, clawing for him.
Buddy Wilson batted her back with his left hand, at the same time keeping eye and gun rigidly on the Scot.
"Keep out of the line of fire, dummy," he snapped. "And you, with the map of Scotland on your homely pan, back up to the window again."
Lila ran ahead of the two and opened the window wide. Nice girl, Lila.
Mac slowly backed to it, bleak blue eyes colder than Wilson's own. He felt the window sill hit him just above the knee, and stopped. Wilson came on till the gun almost touched his abdomen. Then, grinning, Wilson reached out his left hand to give Mac a shove.
* * *
It was a necessary move?and just the one MacMurdie had been waiting for.
The Scot's knee flashed up as he tilted back, and his hands flashed out. The knee caught Wilson's gun so that it whipped up and exploded a slug past Mac's ear instead of into his stomach. The bony left hand caught the barrel after that, and the equally bony right grabbed Wilson's left wrist.
The gun fell to the floor. A moment later Public Enemy Buddy Wilson staggered backward and followed suit, with a white welt on his jaw where the bone mallet of the Scotchman's fist had landed.
Screeching again, the dancer leaped for Mac. He pushed her out of his way and stepped up to Wilson just as the raging gunman got to his feet, with another automatic in his hand.
The toe of Mac's big foot sent that one flying, before it could be used, and then, in a leisurely way, Mac planted a right fist wrist-deep into Wilson's stomach, and lashed him in the mouth with a straight left.
"I don't like rats who masquerade as men," remarked MacMurdie. So he belted the public enemy three times more.
He deliberately pulled his punches so that unconsciousness wouldn't result too soon. He wanted the gunman on his feet for a little while longer.
The girl was off his hands for a moment. She had flown to the desk and clawed out the .25 automatic. She was snapping it again and again at MacMurdie, cocking it and pulling the trigger and sliding back the barrel again, waiting for a slug to work up from a clip she'd supposed was full.
Mac smashed the killer's girlish nose, split his lips again. Then, as the dancer screamed and threw the empty gun at him, he shrugged and ended it with a sock to Wilson's groggy jaw that seemed to have broken his neck.
"He'll get you for this!" screamed Lila Belle, trying again to scratch MacMurdie's eyes out. "Nobody can do that to Buddy Wilson. You're a dead man right now! He'll get you! And if he don't, I will."
MacMurdie was scrupulous even in a pinch. He didn't hit women, even of Lila Belle's sort. He held her clawing hands till he could get to the door. Then he pushed her back away from it, leaped out, and went to the fire escape.
And with him went the most valuable secret picked up so far. Knowledge that five masked men, taking over Groman's robes of leadership, met to rule Ashton City.
Chapter X
Behind Prison Walls!
Ashton City's local jail dipped back into the past history of penology about fifty years. There was a half acre or more on the edge of town, surrounded by a high stone wall. There was a two-story building with cells above and offices and mess hall below.
The prisoners, small offenders, or men, like Smitty, waiting for trial, had just finished lunch. They were out in the snow-covered prison yard for their regular exercise. That consisted of walking around with vicious short steps and cursing fate, the law, and everything else the prisoners could find to curse for their incarceration. Everything except themselves.
The giant, Smitty, was pacing alone near the wall. On top of the wall, two men with guns negligently paced while the men were out of their cells.
Three prisoners came slowly up to Smitty. One was a big, hulking man with the scarred features of a prize fighter. Another was as lean and agile as a snake, with a snake's flat head and dull, baleful eyes. The third was an apish-looking man with an empty grin on his face.
The three, Smitty had noticed before, were the rulers of the rest of the cell inmates. They were the bullies of the place, and what they said went.
The biggest man, with the twisted nose and cauliflower ears, stopped truculently in front of Smitty.
"What's your name, punk?" he rasped.
"Smith," said Smitty, looking thick-witted and slow and good-natured. The big fighter stared at the giant's bland blue eyes and amiable moonface.
Easy pickings, he obviously thought.
"Well, Smith," the prize fighter growled, "we been talking about y'u, and we've decided we don't like the shape of your mouth. So we're gonna change it?unless y'u wanta pay the fine."
"Fine?" said Smitty, looking perplexed.
"Yeah! We got kind of a court. See? I'm the judge and my two pals, here, are the jury. Now, we've judged y'u, and we've fined y'u ten bucks."
"Ten dollars?"
"Y'u heard me. Come on, shell out, or we'll go to work on that mouth of yours that we don't like."
Smitty looked bewildered, but wasn't. Not at all. He knew just what he was up against; a variant of the cruel kangaroo court, in which prisoners judge other prisoners and fine them whatever amount they think they can wring from them.
"Come on, come on," snapped the fighter. "Shell out!"
"I ain't got any money," said Smitty. "They stripped me, in the office."
"Y'u can get it, can't y'u?"
"Well?"
"Ah, cut out the soap," drawled the snaky-looking man wearily. "Give him a sample. The guys on the wall are looking the other way."
"Okey doke," said the fighter cheerfully.
* * *
His professionally fast left hand lashed out toward Smitty's abdomen, to be followed an instant later by a smashing, knockout right to the jaw.
But some very peculiar thing happened.
The left hand hit home?and seemed to bounce back as if it had collided with a wall of stone and rubber. Which was about what Smitty's abdomen, sheathed with tremendous pads of muscle, was.
The right hand didn't hit home at all. The giant had moved his head sideways three inches so the fist went harmlessly over his shoulder; then he had caught the fighter's arm in a careless left hand.
The prize fighter yelled suddenly with anguish. The man with the apish grin jumped Smitty from the right, and the snakelike man, swearing, moved in from the left.
Smitty, still wearing his good-natured look, and with his moonface seeming amiable and slow-witted, smashed the man he held first to the left and then to the right. He handled the fighter's body as if it had been a rag doll. A rag doll weighing practically nothing.
The fighter's body knocked the snaky man back a yard and bowled the apish-looking one clear off his feet. With , the last smack, Smitty indifferently opened his hands, and the boxer fell, too.
It wasn't the end. All the other men in the yard were gaping at the amazing display of strength. The three bullies knew their power was slipping. If they let the giant get away with this, there would be no more rulership, no more juicy fines wrung out of them.
The man with the mashed nose bored in in a professional crouch. The snaky one slid close with a knife made out of a file. The third suddenly had a stabber in his hand made from a fork that had been straightened and left with only one sharp tine.
Smitty had never learned to box. He simply hadn't bothered to. It had never been necessary. It wasn't now. He let the prize fighter hit him in the chest, as a grown man plays with a child by letting it hit him as hard as it pleases. And while the man was thus engaged, Smitty reached out and seized hold of the left forearm the man had up in a supposedly efficient guard.
He broke the arm!
Then he caught the other two men and knocked their heads together, taking a light gash on the back of his hand from the file-knife as his sole punishment.
There was silence in the yard, and then an audible, concerted sigh.
"The guy's an elephant," somebody whispered at last.
Smitty stared at the whisperer with mildly surprised, slow-witted blue eyes. Then the guards came.
"All right, break it up. Break it up! Back into the building. And you?gorilla?you'll catch it for this. Think we can have fights in here all the time?"
"They tried to hit me," said Smitty mildly.
"You started it, tough mug. I saw the whole thing. Go on?into the building."
* * *
Later in the day, Smitty watched the fading of winter daylight through the bars in his cell window. But he wasn't seeing the daylight.
He was seeing a strong, wax-white face that never, in any set of circumstances, moved a muscle. Because it couldn't change. He was looking into flaring, icy, colorless eyes under a thick shock of virile, snow-white hair.
Smitty was in a bad spot. But he could look at that mind's-eye picture of The Avenger and feel that somehow he'd be gotten out of it. All The Avenger's aides felt that way: that while Benson lived, they'd somehow be gotten out of the worst kind of jams. Which was one reason why they were willing to take such long chances.
Smitty suddenly heard a man clearing his throat in a meaningful sort of way. He turned from the window. He heard the sound again, from near the barred door.
He went there, covering the length of the cell in three short strides, squeezing between cot and wall. And he found that the throat-clearing came from the barred door of the cell next to his.
"Smith!"
It was a ghost of a whisper. The giant barely caught it.
"Stand next to your door so you can hear me, but pretend you aren't listening."
Smitty stood, vacant-eyed, next to his cell door. The whisper went on.
"You'll have a mouthpiece, or friends, or somebody comin' to see you. I want you to give 'em a message. I saw you knock Hammer and his two pals out, so I know you're on the up and up."
Smitty leaned against his door, and stretched his great arms as if sleepy. That was for the benefit of a man across the narrow corridor, who could see Smitty's door?and the one next to it?if he looked.
"It's about Judge Martineau," the whisper came.
The giant almost grunted aloud with the mention of that name. The most important thing, The Avenger had said, on their calendar of investigation.
"The guys who did it, crossed me and put me in here," the whisper went on. "I got a hunch I'll never get out?even to go to a courtroom. So I'll get back at 'em by tellin' what I know. I drove the getaway car the night the judge was burned down in the Friday the Thirteenth Club. There were two guys in the can, but the one who went into the club and?"
