The Avenger 15 - House of Death (3 page)

Simon the Grind was a mind-reader when it came to asking prices. He smiled comfortably, serenely.

“Ten thousand dollars. That’s the first word—and the last.”

The spidery old fellow sighed. Then he shrugged.

“You’re a smart man, my friend. And a hard one. All right. You win.”

He put his hand into his breast pocket.

It came out with a gun in it.

“Turn around in your chair,” he said.

“Hey, wait!” bleated Simon the Grind. “You can’t do this to me! Why, you—”

“Are you going to turn around?” said the old man, very softly.

Simon the Grind swiveled around in his chair. He heard a step behind him as the old man reached the desk. Then Simon didn’t hear any more, but he saw a whole constellation of brilliantly colored stars.

That was when the gun cracked down on his head.

He slipped down in the chair, hung over the left arm for a moment, then went on with a thud to the floor as his lax weight overbalanced the thing.

That was the way he lay when the young fellow with the frayed, blue-serge suit and battered felt hat got back from Milky Morley’s room, still on the trail of the gold coin.

The door—that is, the fact that the door was slightly open and offered no difficulty of entrance—gave the man the first warning that all was not well here.

The sight of Simon the Grind, unconscious on the floor, confirmed it.

With his teeth gritting audibly in his rage, the man leaped to Simon’s side. Words chattered from his trembling lips. The words were gibberish to an American, but in the man’s native tongue they meant that some fiend from Hades must certainly have come first and taken that coin.

But the man looked through the place.

The room resembled Morley’s room before he was done—which is to say that it looked like a place where an unfriendly tornado had decided to take over and stay awhile.

But there was no sign of the gold medallion.

Curiously, the man made no effort to steal anything, although there was much of portable value around.

He did come across a bundle of banknotes, and almost absent-mindedly put a dozen or so twenties in his pocket. But he left far more than he took, and altogether his manner was that of a man anticipating a few expenses and abstracting just enough money to cover them.

Simon the Grind was conscious by then. Conscious, and sly as ever. That was too bad for Simon.

There was a gun under his desk, next to the right leg. He had found long ago that a gun in a desk drawer is not much good in emergencies, but that a gun on the floor can often be reached by some subterfuge.

Now, pretending still to be unconscious, he slid his left hand cautiously toward the gun. The man in the battered hat was putting money in his pocket at the moment.

Simon the Grind got the gun. He was transferring it from his left hand to his right when the man whirled and saw him.

With no more compunction than if Simon the Grind had been a horse with a broken leg, the man shot him.

Milky Morley’s gun thundered out; Simon relaxed on the floor with a hole over his heart. And that was that!

The man wiped his prints from Milky’s gun, tossed it to the floor beside Simon’s dead body, and went out.

A man had been slugged and two men had died, in a few short hours, because of that small and not very valuable-looking medallion with the figures 29 32, the letters H H, and the likeness of part of a building on it.

She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl.

Her hair was raven-black, but with lustrous highlights in it like the burnished feathers of a blackbird’s wing. It was rolled at the sides, presenting a look not unlike that of a coronet on her head. And, indeed, she was of the stuff from which princesses are made.

Her features were small and regular and regal, and her smooth skin had an olive tint. Her figure was slim but flawless in line and curve. A proud, fiery aristocrat from some Mediterranean country, you would have said. And that would have been correct.

The girl was from Spain. Her name on the register of the quiet little East Side hotel was Carol Haynes. But that was not the name she had been given at birth.

At the moment the girl was looking at a small gold medallion, about the size of a quarter but a shade thicker.

Since this was the night after the man had been slugged and robbed and then had killed two men in an unsuccessful attempt to get his medal back, it might have been assumed that this was that medal.

However, it was not. A close examination would have revealed that.

The gold medallion that had been taken from the man in the battered hat had the letters H H on it. This had the letters F H. That other had the numbers 29 32. This had 19 33. Both had likenesses of parts of a building; but that medal showed a larger section of wall than this one.

Otherwise, they were identical.

On impulse, the girl jumped up from the table at which she had been sitting and went to the door. The door was already locked as well as the standard hotel arrangement allowed: night-bolt thrown and regular lock secure.

In addition, tugging and hauling because of its weight, she dragged a bureau in front of the door and wedged it there.

Then she went back to the coin.

That gold medallion was beginning to represent death to her! Some powerful force wanted it; wanted it so badly that her life was of small consequence.

Carefully she put it in the coronet-like roll of her hair.

Four times in two days she had been attacked for it. Once it had been a simple purse-snatching; but, of course, she didn’t keep it in a place that could be easily rifled. Twice her room had been gone over while she was out. Last night two men had waited for her at the hotel entrance; she had barely escaped by leaping back and running, deer-fleet, down the avenue, to return with a policeman.

She caught her red lower lip in white, even teeth.

Four attempts. There would be more. And sooner or later, one would be successful.

Unless she had help.

She had no friends in New York City that she dared contact; there was too much chance that one of them might be secretly in with the crooks after her. But there was one source of help, she had heard, that was accessible to anyone in dire danger.

She reached for the telephone.

On lower Manhattan there is a street that, till a few years ago, was unknown to most native New Yorkers. That was because it was so short—only a block in length—and because there were so few addresses on it: a couple of stores, a warehouse, and three narrow three-story brick apartment buildings.

Then the street leaped into such prominence that few in the great city hadn’t heard of it. That happened because of the caliber of the man who took over the block.

The man’s name was Richard Henry Benson. But to an increasingly alarmed underworld he was better known as The Avenger.

Dick Benson took over this block, Bleek Street, by buying the three old buildings and leasing the warehouse and the stores under other names. The north side of the square was entirely taken up by the windowless back of a great storage warehouse, fronting on the next street.

The three old buildings, behind their unimposing facades, were thrown into one, which was outfitted with the quiet elegance of a very wealthy man. The entire top floor was one vast room. And it was in there that The Avenger and the little band who worked for him were usually to be found when not engaged in fighting crime.

They were in there now. At least, four of them were.

At a big desk near the rear sat The Avenger, himself, a figure calculated to give more and better nightmares to more and more criminals as the months went on and the results of his constant unpaid battles against the underworld piled up.

Benson was not a large man, no more than average size, but he seemed to own a rare quality of muscle that more than made up for quantity. He was as fast as light, as powerful as a cougar, and as deft in movement as a gray fox. You sensed this even on seeing his body in repose.

Dick Benson sat at his desk now, with his colorless, awesome eyes intent on a police report.

In one corner of the room was a teletype. All the world’s news flowed over this, and in addition there were complete police reports from the major cities. The report that held The Avenger’s interest right now had to do with events of last night.

A policeman, shot by a fleeing man, had gained consciousness hours later in a hospital to hazard the guess that he had been drilled by a second-story expert known as Milky Morley.

But Morley couldn’t be questioned because police, at his room, found him dead. He had been stabbed in the back, straight through the heart.

Morley, if indeed he was the one who had shot the cop, had slugged a fellow down the avenue. There was a wallet with Czechoslovakian currency in Morley’s room, which, it would seem, had been taken from this man.

Then, after that, police had found a suspected fence named Simon Hertziff, better known as Simon the Grind, dead in his room with a gun beside him that was later traced to Morley. There were no prints on the gun.

Four of Dick Benson’s six aides were here at headquarters. Fergus MacMurdie, the eminent Scotch chemist, was probably tending his Waverly Place drugstore. Probably. Most likely, he was to be found in the rear of the very same drugstore, in The Avenger’s crime laboratory, busily creating some advanced lethal gas or a new anesthetic, as yet unheard-of.

Another aide, Cole Wilson, the newest member of Justice, Inc., was in Detroit, acting as consultant on an important engineering task with which he had been associated before joining The Avenger’s crew of crime-fighters.

Beside The Avenger, as his pale, icy eyes studied the composite report, stood one of his aides.

This man was christened Algernon Heathcote Smith. But few people attempted to call him that because they knew it annoyed him, and he was a poor person to annoy.

Smitty, as the world called him, was a giant. He looked like something out of a heroic world of thousands of years ago.

He was six feet nine inches tall and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. The barrel of his torso was so muscled that his arms couldn’t hang straight, but hung crooked from his vast chest like the arms of a gorilla.

A keen brain resided in that huge bulk; Smitty was one of this world’s best electrical engineers.

“See any connection in those reports, chief?” the giant respectfully asked The Avenger.

“I don’t know,” said Benson slowly.

“Morley’s gun, found at Simon the Grind’s shop after Morley was discovered dead, would seem to be a connection.”

“But Morley’s gun had no prints on it,” a third speaker put in. “Morley wouldn’t have shot Simon dead, wiped his gun, and then left it there beside the body for the police to find.”

This third speaker was Nellie Gray.

Nellie was as valued an aide of The Avenger as Smitty himself. But at first glance a person would be apt to wonder why.

She was as slim and dainty-looking as a Dresden doll. Actually, she had been known to throw large men around like Indian clubs. She was past mistress of jujitsu, skilled at boxing and wrestling, and an expert marksman. Furthermore, she had more cold nerve than most men.

The Avenger’s black head was nodding at her words.

“It would look more as if the man who had killed Morley had also killed Simon,” Dick said, voice quiet but vibrant.

“It might have been this way,” mused Nellie. “Milky Morley robbed a man. He got something pretty valuable, and took it to this fence, Simon the Grind—shooting a policeman in his getaway. We’ll say he was followed. The follower broke into Simon’s after Morley had gone, killed the fence, and hunted for whatever it was Morley had taken. He didn’t find it; so he went to Morley’s place and killed him, too. Maybe he got the thing he was after there, maybe not.”

“Except for one nice big hole, that might be the way of it,” said Smitty, his tone condescending.

The giant held the diminutive blonde in very high esteem. It was suspected, indeed, that he was pretty crazy about her. To disguise it, he usually spoke to her as if she were a dull child of twelve.

In return, Nellie, who often gave indications of having a secret soft spot in her heart for the mountainous Smitty, addressed him as if he were an overgrown babe with only half a brain.

“What,” demanded Nellie, “is the hole?”

“Morley’s gun,” said Smitty, still condescending about it. “If the same guy killed them both, he must have killed Simon last, not Morley. Because he probably got hold of the gun off Morley’s dead body.”

Nellie shrugged alluring shoulders. “Morley first, Simon first—what difference does it make?”

The Avenger’s calm, compelling voice stopped the incipient argument as a window shade, suddenly drawn down, stops a glare of fight.

“Phone headquarters, Josh. See if there are any developments not yet put on the teletype. I have an idea this business might conceal something interesting.”

Josh Newton was the fourth of the little band at present in the huge room. Josh was the longest, lankiest, sleepiest-looking Negro in New York City.

When among friends, Josh talked as crisply and precisely as any college professor. An honor graduate of Tuskegee Institute, as was his attractive wife, Rosabel, Josh was as alert and quick as a steel trap.

Josh was over near a desk on which sat a battery of telephones. He picked one up, started to dial headquarters, then set it down as a soft buzz and a little light showed that somebody was trying to get them on another phone.

Josh picked up this phone.

Over the doorway downstairs was a small black sign with faded gilt lettering on it. The sign said:

JUSTICE, INC.

A small sign, inconspicuously lettered, but mighty in its import. Justice, Inc. Here, ye who are in need may receive help. Here, ye who are in peril may apply for safeguarding.

Josh quoted the sign: “Justice, Inc.” into the phone, as a telephone switchboard operator might have said, “A. B. Richardson Co. To whom do you wish to speak?”

A girl’s voice came over the phone, agitated and tense, yet cultured and pleasant.