The Avenger 31 - The Cartoon Crimes (2 page)

She stepped into the darkness. “Gil, are you in here?”

Only silence answered her.

“Gil?”

After almost a full minute had gone by, he said, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Why are you sitting in the dark? What’s the—”

“Don’t want to talk.”

She turned on the floorlamp. A slim girl, red-haired, not quite thirty. “Is there something . . . what’s that all over the rug?”

“Mud, it’s mud.” He was leaning back in his chair, not looking directly at her.

“Did something happen? I don’t—”

“I went out . . . eventually I went out with a flashlight to find some trace, but there wasn’t any. Not even a footprint,” said Gil. “I knew there wouldn’t be, I knew that.”

Jeanne Lewing crossed the studio, stopped beside her husband, and put a hand, gently, on his shoulder. “Tell me, Gil, what happened?”

“What do you think happened? The same thing that always happened before,” he said, pulling away from the touch of her hand. “Now it’s happening again, all over again. No use trying to say it wouldn’t.”

“Someone was here?”

“No, nobody was here. I thought somebody was here, but there wasn’t anybody. I mean—people, real people—they leave footprints. Especially on a rainy day.” He stood up, jammed his hands into his pockets, and walked to one of the windows facing the Sound. It was all blackness out there, except for a few distant lights on the Connecticut shore. “I don’t know, I think I better quit.”

“What did you see?”

“Three guys running out of our house, acting like they’d just robbed it,” he said. “Jeanne, this has happened before. Lately again, three or four times the past few weeks since we moved out here. You know, I see something, and then when I go to check it out . . . nothing. It’s all getting to be like the other time.”

“Five years ago, Gil, and that’s all over.”

“Is it? All this pressure with Wonderman. The monthly, and the bimonthly, and the new newspaper strip. I think I’m going to have to quit.”

“You shouldn’t quit, Gil, not now when—”

“Yeah, now when we’re rolling in dough. But, Jeanne, those guys today had on masks. One had an ape head mask, one was a bear, and one was a fox.”

“It’s not unusual for burglars to wear masks.”

“Jeanne, I’ve seen those three guys before. Three burglars dressed exactly like that.”

“Where?”

“In the Wonderman story I just turned in.”

Whistling along Fifth Avenue went Cole Wilson. Hands in pockets, watching the clear blue afternoon sky, and at the same time managing to keep an eye on the intermittent parade of attractive girls.

“Ah, an opportunity to do a good deed,” he remarked to himself, glancing toward the doorway of a smart shop. “Allow me to assist you with that, miss.”

“No, that’s—oh, Cole, it’s you.”

“Is that so bad? It might have been Abbott and Costello, or the Ritz Brothers, or—”

“I only meant I was surprised to see you here,” said little Nellie Gray.

“I don’t know why,” said her Justice, Inc., teammate. “I’m quite a well-known boulevardier. Let me help you tote that suitcase, princess.”

“No need, the thing is empty,” said the blonde. “I just bought it.”

Cole took hold of the handle of the new suitcase anyway. “Planning a getaway, Nell?”

“A weekend in the country, actually,” she replied as they began walking up the avenue.

After studying her face a few seconds, Cole said, “You don’t seem to be anticipating it with much glee.”

“Well . . . oh, I guess I should wait and see. No use anticipating trouble.”

Cole whistled a few bars of that week’s number-three Hit Parade tune before asking, “What sort of trouble?”

“It may be only the domestic kind,” she said. “See, day before yesterday I had lunch with an old friend, Jeanne Lewing. Her husband is a cartoonist, he draws that . . .
Wonderman,
I think it is. Have you heard of it?”

“Child, every man, woman, child and moderately intelligent chimpanzee in America has heard of
Wonderman,”
grinned Cole. “It’s what they call a hot ticket right now. I often peruse the latest issues of Wonderman’s various comic books while idling about MacMurdie’s drug emporium. Are the Lewings having marriage problems?”

“I’m not sure. Jeanne says no. But something is bothering her. She only hinted at it at lunch,” said Nellie. “Then last night she phoned and pretty much insisted I come out this weekend. They have a new place out on Long Island.”

“Does she require you in the capacity of old chum or as an active member of the Avenger’s merry band?”

Nellie shook her head. “Not sure, maybe both,” she said slowly, “Jeanne’s not a nitwit or anything. If something’s bothering her, you can bet it’s real.”

“The veiled hints she dropped. Any notion from them what the problem is?”

“Something to do with her husband. I got the impression the pressures of his new success were doing things to Gil.”

“The price of fame and so on,” muttered Cole. “Still, I don’t think one would call on Justice, Inc., merely to have them deal with a swelled head.”

“I’ll find out tomorrow,” said Nellie. “I only hope . . .”

“Hope what?”

“Well, Gil had a nervous breakdown a few years back. He seems to have recovered completely, yet . . .”

Cole took hold of the little blonde’s arm. “Be careful out there, pixie,” he said. “If there’s any trouble—”

“There probably won’t be any trouble at all,” Nellie said.

But she was wrong.

“Why’d you do a thing like that?” shouted Gil Lewing.

His wife walked away from him across the large living room. “I didn’t think I had to get permission to invite somebody like Nellie for a visit. She’s an old friend and—”

“You know the dinner at Walling’s is tonight.” Striding angrily, he followed her, moving in and out of the long stripes of afternoon sunshine.

“I never go to any of those dinners of your publisher, Gil. So I don’t see—”

“Don’t think Walling doesn’t know how you feel about him. The man who gave me . . . never mind,” said Gil. “You get on that damn phone and tell that little snooper to stay away.”

“It’s much too late for that, Gil,” said his wife evenly. “I’m sure she’s driving out from the city by now.”

He nodded his head, too may times. “I get it, you didn’t even spring this on me until it was too late.” He reached out suddenly and flat-handed a lamp.

The lamp hopped, fell to the floor, and smashed. The bulb made a popping sound.

“I tell you what I’m going to do,” shouted the cartoonist. “I’m going to go out to the road and wait for little Miss Nellie Gray. I’m going to tell her she’s not welcome in my—”

“She’s welcome in my house,” said Jeanne, turning to face him. “Please, Gil, don’t work yourself into some—”

“Oh, good, let’s have it all. Poor suffering Jeanne, saddled with a goofy husband. He’s okay for coining the dough, but when it comes time to—”

“Need an umpire?” A chubby young man, with crewcut blond hair and a smear of brown freckles across his face, was leaning in the doorway. He held several sheets of typing paper in his hand and was chewing on a mechanical pencil.

“What the hell are you pussyfooting around here for?” yelled Gil. “You’re paid to be a flunky, not to come sneaking around the main house, Wayne. Damn it, if you don’t know your place maybe we’ll—”

Wayne Harmon chuckled and shook his head. “It’s a good thing I’m such an easygoing guy,” he said.

Gil shivered and then shook his head from side to side. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. Sorry I hollered at you, Wayne. What’s up?”

“That’s okay. It’s good training for when I get drafted. I hear sergeants bellow a lot, too.” He ambled into the living room. “Reason I unchained myself and left the studio, marse, is that I don’t get this script. I started to pencil the splash panel, and I realized it doesn’t make sense.”

“Wonderman doesn’t have to make sense,” said Gil. “That’s part of his charm. Who wrote that one?”

“That new kid Walling’s got. Fred Bream, I think.”

An angry look crossed Gil’s face. “I wish I had time to do all the scripts myself, the way I used to,” he said. “Bream is a cousin of Walling’s wife or something. A moron. I ought to tell Walling about it—”

“Whoa, boss,” said young Harmon. “We have an old saying in my tribe, about biting the hand that feeds, and so on. It’s a lousy script, granted, but not worth annoying the old man about.”

“He’s right,” said Jeanne.

Gil reached out to take the script from his assistant. “Let me see the damn thing.” He quickly scanned the typed pages. “Boy, it is lousy, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I meant to read all the stories before we started laying them out. But with
America’s Greatest Funnies
going bimonthly and
Pow Comics
a monthly again . . . there’s never enough time.”

“Maybe I could hire an assistant, too,” said Harmon.

“Listen to this,” Gil said to his wife. “ ‘Wonderman scoops Hazel from the path of the oncoming streamliner while ripping the wing off Luxor’s invisible airship and . . .’ Boy, I really ought to talk to Walling about this Bream kid.”

“Maybe we can just show the plane up in the sky,” suggested Harmon. “You know, with Luxor leaning out of the cockpit with that death-gun of his.”

“Yeah, that sounds okay,” said Gil, frowning. “That’s not a very big change.” He tightened his grip on the script, wrinkling the pages. “If I had any nerve, I’d . . . well, never mind. Let’s get over to the studio and straighten this out.” He gave Harmon a good-natured shove toward the doorway. “Let me know when Nellie arrives. Maybe I’ll have time for a highball with you.”

“Nellie?” said Harmon. “Sounds like we’re having lady visitors.”

“Yeah, and a pretty one, too. You’ll like Nellie,” said Gil.

Jeanne watched the two of them walk away down the hall. Then she stooped to begin gathering up the fragments of the smashed lamp.

Walling was a small fat man. His dinner jacket was too tight, his wig too loose. “Couple things I want to talk to you about, Gil,” he said now, leaning an elbow on the white-covered dinner table.

The cartoonist had been talking to the old man’s youngest daughter, who was seated on his right. “Sure,” he said, “right after dessert, if you want.”

“Right now would be better,” said Walling. “I can’t stand the dessert we’re going to have tonight, anyhow. Some junk with imitation whipped cream all over.”

His wife, also short and fat, smiled nervously at him. “You ought to stay to the end, A.J. All our guests . . .” She nodded, carefully, at the dozen people seated at the long rectangular table.

“It don’t matter, they all owe what they’ve got to me.” Walling shoved out of his highback chair, heading for the hallway. “I don’t have to be nice to them.”

“Another of his lovable displays of character,” thought Gil as he, smiling sympathetically toward Mrs. Walling, left the table to follow the publisher. “And he owns seventy-five percent of
Wonderman.
What a jerk I was to sign that original contract. Yeah, but who would have thought . . .” His feet sank into the carpeting of the long hallway. “I bought him all this, that seventy-five percent of
Wonderman.
A mansion on the Sound and—”

“Shake a leg, Gil,” called Walling from his den. “Come on in, shut the door already.”

Gil entered the paneled room and took a leather chair facing the old man’s desk. “Okay, what?”

Very slowly Walling lit a cigar. “I hear Maximus made you an offer,” he said, smoke spilling from his mouth.

“Huh?” Gil sat up. “That’s news to me. An offer to do what?”

“Not an offer to run the elevators in the Maximus Publications building,” shouted Walling. “What do you think? An offer to take
Wonderman
over to them. You know they ain’t got nothing beside
Amazingman
that sells worth a damn.”

“Come on, A.J. Nobody’s ever done that, switched characters from one comic-book outfit to another.”

“That’s because you’re one of the few guys who owns his own character. What a schmo I was to—”

“I may own
Wonderman,
A.J., but you’ve got seventy-five percent of the take. That’s not a bad deal.
Wonderman
grossed five million bucks last year.”

“It was only four and a half million, but I ain’t going to argue about that now.” The old man’s voice grew louder. “What I got to know is . . . why are you betraying me? Why are you going to that crook Maximus?”

“I’m not, A J.!” shouted Gil.

“Don’t yell at me, you punk . . . you quisling. If it wasn’t for A.J. Walling, you’d still be sharpening—”

“Don’t start complaining about what a bum deal you’ve got, you old hypocrite,” warned Gil. “How can you dare to tell me—”

“Are you going over to Maximus or not?” demanded Walling, rising up behind his desk. “Can you look me in the eye and swear to—”

The draperies behind him fluttered and were brushed aside. A masked man stepped through the french windows from the garden outside. He carried a .38 revolver in his gloved right hand.

Gil tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He’d seen this man before—this man dressed in a strange green suit, a Robin Hood costume. It was the Green Archer. The villain Wonderman was currently battling in the comic-strip sequences.