The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns (9 page)

“So you came here to do more than kill Groman! You meant to torture him as well! Why?”

The man shrank back from the awful eyes.

“You fools,” said The Avenger, “don’t you know Groman couldn’t feel your cuts? He’s lying in there, paralyzed. You could light fires on his body and he wouldn’t know it.”

He wasn’t going to get anything out of the fellow. He knew that. The gunman was one of those tough cases in whom stubbornness combined with fear of talking. He could be cracked all night in a police back room and still not talk.

Benson stepped to the door and called. One of Groman’s husky guards came, stared bewilderedly at the two men who had somehow gotten in.

“How in—”

“Where are you stationed?” Benson snapped.

“Back entrance,” said the man.

“Where’s the man at the front door?”

“Say! Where
is
he! I don’t see—”

Benson went to the hall door next to the front vestibule. He threw it open.

One of Groman’s guards would never guard a door again. He lay on the floor of this room, dragged in there out of sight, with his throat cut from ear to ear.

But how had the two gunmen managed to get in the front entrance quietly enough to catch the guard unaware?

Benson went swiftly up the stairs to the second floor of the building. Here were many rooms and suites, where at one time important and wealthy men had visited the political boss. They were all empty now, save for a suite set aside for Terry Groman, and another for Ted.

At the head of the stairs the third guard came up to Benson.

“I thought I heard somethin’ downstairs,” he said. “I was at the back, up here, and wasn’t sure. Don’t like to leave this floor till I’m told to—”

“Something happened,” The Avenger said grimly. “But it’s under control now. Stay here at your post.”

One of the doors opened and Terry, lovely and sleepy-looking in a dark-blue negligee, stepped out, and came up to Benson with bare white feet twinkling.

“Did something happen downstairs—” she began.

She stopped, reading the death in Benson’s icily flaring, pale eyes.

“Another attempt on your father’s life, Miss Groman,” Benson said. “The riddle is how the killers managed to get into this place. You have your key, all safe?”

“Of course!”

“May I see it, please?”

“Surely you don’t doubt—”

“I only want to make sure you really have it—that you didn’t lose it recently and still not know it.”

The girl went back into her room and returned with a small, beaded purse. She rummaged in it, and came out with a flat brass key. Benson took it.

He looked at it for a long time, then handed it back.

“Thank you. Which is Ted Groman’s door?”

Terry went with him to it. Benson knocked. Ted’s narrow-shaped face appeared at the door after a moment. Groman’s daughter had been awakened by the faintly heard sound of the disturbance downstairs. But Groman’s son had apparently slept right through it.

“What’s up?” he said, sleep fleeing from his eyes at sight of his sister and the man with the white face and snow-white hair.

Benson told him in a few words what had happened.

“You have your key all safe and sound?” he concluded.

Ted nodded. He went to his clothes, hanging over a chair back, felt in his trousers pocket, and came back with his key to his father’s two rooms.

The Avenger stared at that for a full minute, too, before handing it back.

“All right. There will be police around, but I don’t think you two need be disturbed. There is a dead guard, there are two wounded gunmen. We can book the gunmen for murder, and that’s that.”

But it was not so simple.

Harrigo was the man who came in answer to a phone call to headquarters. Harrigo was plainly looking for something on which to haul Benson off to jail. If he could just get The Avenger behind bars, with a mayor in the crooks’ power, and judges in their employ, it would be dandy.

In a dozen ways, the captain of detectives showed that he was one of the doubtful ones in high places mentioned by Groman and later by Commissioner Cattridge.

But, with Benson’s influence, there just wasn’t enough to jail him on!

“I was in this office,” Benson repeated quietly. “I was sitting in the dark—”

“Why?” barked Harrigo.

“Because I like to sit in the dark. As I sat there I heard the door open. The lights went on, and these two gunmen appeared. I overpowered them, and later we found the guard they had killed. That’s all.”

“No, it’s not all! You knifed the smaller one in the hand, and shot his gun away from him—”

“I have permits to carry both gun and knife,” said Benson, pale eyes taking on their basilisk stare.

Harrigo stared at the bigger man, still unconscious; stared at the gash on the top of his skull where Mike’s marvelously aimed bullet had creased him.

“How’d you do that?” demanded Harrigo. “Sock him with a piece of pipe or something?”

Benson didn’t even answer. He left Harrigo fuming, and went out of the office.

The Avenger was still grimly searching the answer to the entry of those two men. When he had looked at the keys of Terry and Ted, he had found a part of one. Ted’s key to Groman’s first-floor suite was all right.

Terry’s key showed just a trace of file marks, raw and new in the brass, on the serrated edge.

Somebody had filed out a duplicate key, using Terry’s as a master, a very short time ago. It was with that duplicate key that the two men had entered the office.

But how about the building itself?

Benson began making the rounds of the place to see if there were any trick entrances and exits. But there were none.

On the second floor a person might get in through a window—if he could climb sheer wall. But once in, he could only get to the stairs leading down by one staircase. And in the hall leading to that, a guard was stationed all the time.

The first-floor windows were barred. There was a guard at front and back entrances. The Avenger even went to the basement, and looked around, with microscopic eyes.

All was okay down there, too. There were no windows at all. No outer doors. The basement walls were solid cement, tapping revealed.

Benson went back to the office. His search had taken up a long time. Harrigo, blustering and baffled, had cleaned the mess in there and gone out. The Avenger began looking around.

Book-lined walls can sometimes conceal many unusual things. While he was searching around, Benson decided he’d better go over that, too.

He took out every fifth book, on every shelf in the room. There was, behind them, nothing but solid wall. No safe, no concealed exit, nothing. But he did find one peculiar thing about the books themselves.

In a lower shelf, under the barred and opaque street window, there were four books, new, on the same subject.

That subject was paralysis.

One title was: “Failure of the Motor Nerves, Cause and Effect.” Another: “Kephart’s Analysis of Thromboid Paralysis.” The other two were similar.

Benson stared
from
the four books to the door of the old lion, Groman, a hulk waiting for death. He’d had warning of a probable stroke, it seemed, and had bought books on the subject to see what was in store for him.

Well, he knew now, precisely, what paralysis meant!

The cavernous loading platform of the White Transportation Corporation thundered with the motor of a big truck. There were six or seven giant trucks in there, ten-ton affairs, enclosed, big as boxcars. They performed the function of boxcars, too. They were designed to haul freight over long distances.

The White Transportation Corporation had a lot of night runs. All trucking companies have. There are shipments that must be rushed to factory or consumer so as to get there first thing in the morning. Also, roads are clearer at night and better time can be made by the big vehicles.

The White Corporation had lately abandoned all night runs made solely for their own convenience. The rush shipments, however, they could not refuse if they meant to stay in business. Though they’d have liked to refuse them. Odd and deadly things had been happening to their trucks at night.

The foreman came up to one of the drivers. The foreman was big, but he was dwarfed by the driver. For the driver was Smitty, looking more vast than ever in dungarees and sheepskin winter coat.

“There may be trouble, Smitty,” said the foreman. He chewed a worried lip. “This run to Youngstown takes you over a stretch of backroads detour where anything can happen.”

That suited Smitty. The giant had joined the company looking for trouble. It was his reason for being there. If the trouble came right away—the first night—that would be fine. Save a lot of bothersome waiting.

“You know your orders,” the foreman went on. “If anybody tries to stop you, duck, and jam the accelerator to the floor. There’s nine tons of stampings in the truck. We can’t afford to have them stolen or dumped in the river.”

“With a couple guns pointed at your head, it might not be healthy to keep on going,” said Smitty.

The foreman conceded that.

“Yeah, we don’t want any funerals.”

“You guys have got guts, to fight the racket like you’re doing,” Smitty said admiringly.

The foreman sighed. “Maybe. The old man’s a fighter from way back. He’s lost four trucks, now. Maybe it’d be better just to join the association and pay the dues. You can’t fight all alone. And that’s the way you have to fight in Ashton City.”

He swore.

“If jobs weren’t so hard to find, I’d pack up and move my family to another city. I hate to have my kids grow up in such a rotten hole.”

“Perhaps,” said Smitty, with The Avenger’s white, deadly face and the colorless, grim eyes, burning in his brain, “Ashton City will be a better place to live in, soon.”

The foreman shrugged.

The man who was to go with Smitty came from the lockers. The helper assigned him was a cheerful-looking red-headed youngster. He and Smitty climbed to the high cab of the monster truck.

The motor thundered as Smitty gunned it. Then he tooled the big thing out to the street, and turned west, toward Youngstown.

“You’re new, ain’t you?” the red-head said to Smitty.

“Yeah!” Smitty said, huge arms moving the steering wheel effortlessly.

“Did you know there might be trouble with this job? The racket’s after us.”

“So I heard,” said Smitty.

“You don’t seem very excited about it,” grinned the young fellow beside him.

“I’m a peaceable guy,” said Smitty. “But if anybody wants trouble—” He hunched vast shoulders.

“I’ll bet you’re good in a fight,” said the other man admiringly.
“Look out—”

A small sedan had shot heedlessly from a side street. Smitty twirled the truck’s massive wheels as if they’d been a flivver’s. But still he couldn’t avoid the result of the sedan’s rash move. There was a clump as the right end of the truck’s bumper caught the left front fender of the little sedan.

“This is it,” Smitty heard himself say aloud.

The foreman had been worried about a dark detour far out in the country. But the racketeers’ plan hadn’t envisaged a country road. They’d laid their trap right in town.