The Avenger 20 - The Green Killer (5 page)

Working on the disease that could turn a human being into an ape.

The police force of New York City had learned that The Avenger didn’t like to give out any information until he had a case all worked out. They had also learned that Dick Benson always did work them out, eventually, and that the force then got a whole lot of credit for something they hadn’t done.

So the police hadn’t expected any reports from The Avenger, but they were careful to give him reports on every detail they encountered, as soon as they could.

So they called him the minute they’d finished going over the delivery truck in which Heber had nearly been kidnapped under the noses of Smitty and Mac and Josh.

Nellie took the call, since The Avenger was so busy at the microscope.

“There are prints all over the truck,” said the sergeant who had called. “Nice plain ones. But they don’t tell us anything. They don’t match up with the prints of any crooks we have in our files.”

“Did you find out anything else?” Nellie asked.

“Nothing to get excited about. We traced the truck. It belonged to a guy named Hatch, till three days ago. He sold it to a fellow he’d never seen before, who laid cash on the line. That’s all Hatch knows. He described the man, but nobody here knew of him.”

“Are you holding Hatch?”

“No. We threw everything but the captain’s badge at him, and he kept telling the same story. He’s okay. We checked him off. His address is on South Street, Brooklyn, if you want him.” He gave Nellie the address.

The diminutive blonde thanked the sergeant and hung up. Then she called Smitty.

They’d all had a good rest by now. It was three o’clock in the afternoon after the crowded evening during which Heber had nearly been killed.

“The chief’s busy with the funny disease,” said the excitement-loving little blonde. “Heber’s still resting and is no good to anybody. The girl can’t or won’t talk, yet. Let’s you and I go and see this man Hatch.”

“Why not?” said Smitty.

“And I’d suggest that we take a couple of Mac’s persuaders with us.”

“Good idea,” said Smitty.

He got the “persuaders.”

Mac, one of the finest chemists in existence, had perfected many curious chemical compounds. One of the strangest was a faintly purple gas, released from a sullen-looking liquid, which clouded a man’s brain and robbed him of the will to resist questioning. A sort of truth gas. It didn’t always work, but in a majority of cases it did. To some extent, at least. Many were the reluctant admissions they’d drawn from a case-hardened crook with a “persuader.”

“I’d better go alone,” said Smitty. “There may be trouble, and you know how you are. You’re always catching it in your pretty neck, and then I have to go and rescue you.”

If looks could kill, Smitty would have been hash after Nellie’s glare. The giant grinned. It was a sure way to get a rise out of her—tell her that she was always getting into trouble and needing help.

They went out to Brooklyn.

The South Street address, they discovered, belonged to a tailor shop. A very innocent-looking tailor shop in a basement. A front-window sign said:

Tailoring, Dry Cleaning
Bert Hatch, Prop.

Mr. Hatch was alone when they walked down and in. He looked with appreciation at Nellie’s small perfection and almost with alarm at Smitty’s towering bulk. The giant always seemed to scrape whatever ceiling he stood under and to fill whatever room he entered.

Smitty followed up the look of apprehension by coming right to the point and booming threateningly. “You sold a truck to a bunch of gangsters recently, didn’t you?”

“H-huh?” stammered Hatch. Then he recovered his poise. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re asking, but I didn’t know they were gangsters. Honest!”

Nellie looked at Smitty in a way that told him to shut up. She had been staring at Hatch’s chubby, but firm, face, and she had decided that this man would tell nothing but what he wanted to tell. And the police had already heard that. It was a place for a persuader, all right.

She took one of Mac’s little pellets from her purse in such a way that Hatch, looking perplexedly from one to the other of them, couldn’t see. She broke the fragile shell by a hard pinch.

“Hey!” said Hatch suddenly. And now he didn’t look quite so much like a puzzled, innocent man. He looked wary. “What are you doing? What’s that purple stuff?”

The faintly purple haze surrounded the three of them. It affected Smitty and Nellie as well as Hatch; but since they were the ones who were doing the questioning, this did not matter. They had enough wit left to carry on.

“To whom did you really sell your van?” asked Nellie.

“To a man I never saw before who said his name was Gleason, just as I told the cops,” Hatch replied. The fact that he was no longer alarmed about the purple haze, didn’t ask any more about it, showed that the stuff was working. He was losing that shrewd caution of his and was softening up.

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big fellow, half bald, with a scar over the bridge of his nose. He wore horn-rimmed glasses with one plain lens and one reducing lens. He talked in a high, squeaky voice.”

“Is that what you told the police?”

Hatch hesitated just an instant, but the truth gas was working beautifully.

“No, I told them differently. I hadn’t any idea my old van was to be used for criminal purposes. But it had been. So I figured I’d stay out of trouble by lying about it.”

“Do you know where this big man with the glasses could be found?”

“I don’t really know. But I have an idea. He said something to another man with him—a smaller guy with yellow hair who limped—about a boat; where could they keep the van on a boat? The other man said something about keeping it in an old East River yard where the boat was abandoned. That’s all I know.”

“That,” said Smitty, “should be quite enough. Let’s go, Nellie.”

They got outside. The giant turned solemnly to her.

“The other night,” he said, “You went out with Cole Wilson.”

Cole Wilson was another member of Justice, Inc. At present, he was turning his production-management and engineering talents to the swifter production of heavy tanks for the army, at the government’s request. Wilson was black-eyed, dark-haired, and altogether too good-looking for Smitty’s peace of mind—when it was considered that the big fellow was pretty gone on Nellie.

“Yes, I went out with Cole Wilson,” said Nellie, who had inhaled quite as much of the persuader as Hatch had, and would be under the influence for another minute or two.

“Where did you go with him?”

“We went to the New York field office of the F.B.I, for some espionage information he wanted.”

Smitty grinned all over his big face.

“And what did you tell me later you did?”

“I said Cole and I had gone to the Pink Room for some dancing,” Nellie admitted.

“Why did you do that?”

“Just to kid you a little.” The influence of the purple mist was wearing off. Nellie looked sideways at the giant. Then she snapped indignantly, “You dumb edition of King Kong! You took advantage of me!”

Smitty hooted with delight.

“You made me talk when I was still fuzzy with that stuff!”

The giant doubled up with laughter. “Trying to make me jealous,” he gasped. “As if I cared where you went with Cole.”

“Oh, don’t you care?” said Nellie with ominous innocence. “Then, if that’s the case, I’ll really go places with Cole and have fun and—”

“Aw, now, Nellie,” protested the giant, with all mirth draining from voice and face. “I was only kidding.”

“I’ll only be kidding, too. But it’s going to be a lot of fun with Cole. He’s so good-looking.”

Smitty was still protesting in anguish when they reached the East River on the Manhattan side.

They went to the newsstand at the foot of Fortieth Street.

Justice, Inc., had a large band of helpers, which had proven invaluable. This band consisted of the newsboys of New York.

They all knew The Avenger. They all swore by him and lived to imitate him. They were the sharpest-eyed lads in the world, and they knew things and noticed things that even the police didn’t. It’s a small happening that can take place around a newsboy’s stand without his getting hep to it.

Of this boy, Nellie asked, “Do you know of any abandoned hulk of a boat around here docked at a yard also unused?”

The boy didn’t. Nor did the next one north. But with the third, the giant and the tiny blonde drew fire.

Their informant, a kid of fifteen or so with black eyes like gimlets, nodded at once.

“East River Wrecking Co.,” he said. “It handled junk. Went out of business last year. The yard’s never been sold or rented. There’s an old scow there, resting on the bottom.”

Smitty and Nellie went to the yard, and they stopped their clowning around at once.

The very look of the place was sinister.

Junkyards tend to be big, and this was no exception. It was at least a quarter of a block in extent, along the crowded river. Only the river, right at this point, wasn’t so crowded.

Between sidewalk and yard was what at first seemed to be a high board fence. Then Smitty and Nellie saw that it was not a fence; it was the back of a low shed. Smitty looked around, saw that no one was near them, then ripped a board off.

That sounds simple, but you should have seen the board. It was a two-inch slab, twenty inches across, nailed solidly to sound beams. An ordinary man could hardly have shaken it. Smitty put two vast fingers through a knothole, heaved, and then regarded a splintered board at his feet.

“You’ll be using telegraph poles for toothpicks if you keep on,” Nellie said.

She stepped through the opening. Smitty laboriously, at the expense of some skin, squeezed through after her.

The yard was empty, save for a litter of paper and broken glass. To the south was the four-story, sagging building that had been used as an office and also for further junk storage, perhaps for the more valuable metals such as zinc and tin and copper. To the north was a big building having nothing to do with the yard. It was windowless on that side.

The river end of the yard was open. There was a tumbledown dock, and next to this was a rusted hulk of a boat that was too large to be a seagoing tug, too small to be a tramp freighter, but looked a bit like each. A mongrel of a boat, which had probably been towed here and beached, to be cut up for scrap, but had not been taken down before the yard went out of business.

All around, there was no window through which one could spy. It was a perfect set-up for shady business.

The shed into which Nellie and Smitty had stepped was open in front, with a clear view from it to the boat, so the two kept in a corner where a pile of used lumber offered a shield.

“If anyone’s on that old tub,” said Smitty, “they’re probably keeping a lookout.”

“Yes. How are we going to get to it without being seen?”

“We,”
said Smitty, “are not going to get to it. I am.
You
are to stay here, ready to run like blazes if somebody comes, or to radio word to Bleek Street if I fail to come back in a few minutes.”

“Aw, Smitty—”

“Don’t be a dope. Why should you go on board when there may be fifteen or twenty guys with guns wanting nothing better than to cut you down?”

“Well, you’re going, aren’t you?”

“There’s maybe a pound difference in our weights, and an inch or two difference in our sizes,” the giant pointed out. “Here you stay!”

“Oh, all right,” said Nellie.

Smitty was suspicious of the obedience.

“And don’t try to pull any fast ones!” he warned.

Then he went to the boat.