The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death (2 page)

One of these subjects was art.

Smitty knew something about the painting called “The Dock.” It was a picture of a wharf at Villefranche, on France’s Mediterranean coast near Nice. One of Gauguin’s best, it had been in a private collection in Paris the last Smitty had heard of it.

It was worth probably a hundred thousand dollars.

“How,” the giant demanded, blue eyes not looking quite so bland and innocent as usual, “do you happen to be in this country with a picture like ‘The Dock’?”

Teebo looked around again. The move had a comic quality. But the next few minutes were to prove that there was nothing comic whatever about his apprehensions.

“In war, there is much looting,” he whispered. “Many art treasures get into strange hands. ‘The Dock’ got into mine. I have learned that your Mr. Benson is immensely wealthy and is a well-known art collector. So I thought—”

It was Nellie who made up their minds for them. What the man had said about The Avenger was true.

A man whose life was dedicated to stamping out crime, Dick Benson had his softer moments. One of these concerned great paintings. He loved them and could afford them. If this fat fellow really had Gauguin’s “Dock” to sell, Benson would undoubtedly buy it. After the war was over, he’d probably give it back to stricken France as a gift; but meanwhile he’d have had the enjoyment of it.

“We’ll look at it,” nodded Nellie.

Smitty sighed and called for the check.

“Where is the picture?” asked Nellie.

“At my shop on Eighty-ninth Street,” said Teebo.

Smitty loomed comically beside dainty Nellie Gray as they walked to the entrance of the Pink Room with balloonlike Teebo.

“Where’s your shop, exactly?” Smitty demanded.

“That, I’ll not say. I will lead you to it; and, in the taxi, you must keep your head down for the last few blocks in order not to see.”

“Oh! So it’s like that!”

“What difference does it make if you don’t see exactly where my shop is?” said the fat man hastily. “You won’t mind, I am sure. It doesn’t look like an art shop, but in it is ‘The Dock.’ I guarantee.”

“Wait’ll I get my hat,” said Smitty, turning toward the checkroom.

“I’ll powder my nose,” Nellie decided.

And in such manner was a man doomed to die.

As has been said, the Pink Room is on the forty-fourth floor of the Coyle Hotel. On the side where the supper club itself extends, there is a drop of twenty stories to a setback. On the side containing the foyer, checkrooms and lounges, there is no setback. It is forty-four stories straight down to the sidewalk.

That, if anyone should ask you, is a long, long way down!

When Smitty and Nellie went their separate ways, Teebo nervously walked to a window. The view from there over Manhattan’s electrically lighted expanse was gorgeous. But it is doubtful if Teebo noticed the view. He just stood at the window—and looked scared.

Then Teebo wasn’t there any more.

The window was open to let all possible cool air in, because this was midsummer and a hot night. It was open wide enough for even a man as wide as Teebo to step out of it. But then no one would be insane enough to step out of a window into forty-four floors of thin air, would he? Of course not.

Yet, the fact remained that at one moment Teebo stood looking out the open window—and at the next there was just the open window with no one at it.

The first to notice was a woman in a white evening frock, cut so low that even the head waiter stared in fascination. And she wasn’t sure of the disappearance.

“That man,” she said in a startled tone to the sleek dark chap who was her escort.

“What man?” the escort said.

“The fat man. Where on earth did he go?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t see a fat man.”

“That’s just it.” Fear was creeping into the woman’s voice. “He was standing by that open window. I looked away, looked back again, and he wasn’t there.”

“Probably just went to the men’s lounge,” said her companion indifferently.

“No, he couldn’t have. I mean, I only looked away a second, not long enough for him to have moved more than a few steps—”

She stopped. The two of them bent their heads to listen. From far below came a faint, humming sound. But faint as it was, there was excitement in it.

The hum came from a rapidly growing crowd that gathered around something that had fallen so far and so hard that it had cracked the solid sidewalk in a dozen places.

“The guy was crazy,” Smitty concluded.

Nellie said nothing. She just looked thoughtful.

“He must have been,” said Smitty. “There’s no other way to explain it. He wants us to get a picture and take it to the chief to see if he wants to buy it. Then, having won his point, what does he do? He steps out of a window. Just plain nuts.”

“Did he step from the window?” demanded Nellie. “Or was he pushed?”

“Who was around to push him?” shrugged Smitty.

Nellie went to the couple who had first noticed the disappearance. Or, rather, the woman in white.

The place was an overturned beehive, by now. And all the excitement gave Nellie her chance. The woman in white was in a sad state of shock, and the crowd made it worse.

“Back,” Nellie said, with an air of authority that outweighed her diminutive size. “Can’t you see she’s about to faint? Stand back! You,” she added to the dark, sleek escort, “help me get her to the lounge.”

In the women’s lounge, with the door barred, Nellie tried some questions while she chafed the woman’s wrists and put cold water on her forehead.

“Did you see him jump?” she asked.

The woman shivered.

“I saw him standing there,” she said. “Then I didn’t see him. That was all.”

“Did you see anyone near him?”

“No. There wasn’t a soul.”

“There’s a ledge outside the window,” Nellie observed. “Not a very wide one, but I suppose someone could stand on it. If anyone had been out there, could you have seen him?”

“I . . . I think so. I’m not sure.”

“What’s the idea of all the questions?” demanded the man angrily. “Are you a police woman or something?”

“Call it something,” said Nellie crisply. She transferred her attention to him.

He was of average height, a bit heavy, with dark, sleek hair and a good-naturedly dissipated face. A rather weak face even in anger. The term “playboy” was coined to fit such a person.

“You saw nothing?” Nellie said.

“Not one thing. I think you’d better let us alone.”

“What’s your name, if you don’t mind the question?”

“I do mind,” snapped the man. “Not that I have anything to hide, though— Oh, well, my name’s Richard Addington. This is Miss Emily Brace.”

Nellie nodded. “How far were you two from the fat man?”

“About twenty feet,” said Addington.

The woman in white was breathing more evenly and seemed to be feeling better. Nellie thought she had all the information out of the two that there was to be had. Which was nothing.

“You two had better stay till the police get up here,” she said. And she left.

Smitty was by the elevators when she got back to the foyer. A door opened. They got in and went down.

“Know what I think?” said the giant. “We’d better go to this guy Teebo’s art shop and look around.”

“Sure,” said Nellie. “He tries to sell us a picture and zingo! He’s murdered. There must be a connection. But how are we to find his place? All he said was that it was on Eighty-ninth Street and that it didn’t look like an art shop. There’s an awful lot of Eighty-ninth Street.”

“Maybe there’ll be an answer downstairs,” shrugged the big fellow.

There was.

The crowd around the tragic, flattened figure on the sidewalk had grown even bigger, but Smitty was born to cut through crowds. He plowed along like a tank, while Nellie went behind him like a dainty yacht protected from storm by the lee of a huge ocean liner.

They got to the police ring, and the police nodded respectfully. All of them knew The Avenger’s aides.

“What’s the dope?” demanded Smitty.

“Little enough, Mr. Smith,” said a lieutenant. “Some of the boys are on the way up to the Pink Room now to see what they can find. On this end we have learned only two things. The guy’s name was Teebo, and he was awful fat.” Even the lieutenant shuddered.

“Nothing in his pockets?” said Smitty.

“A slip of paper with a number on it,” said the man. “The number might be anything—phone number, address without a street being named so that it might be in any town in the United States, anything.”

“Could I see that?” said Smitty.

The lieutenant showed him a slip of paper. It was part of a cigarette package, the plain inside bit of the paper bearing the number. Smitty kept Nellie from seeing the paper. It was sopped with red.

The number was 87-89.

“Thanks,” said Smitty.

He backed out of the crowd, with Nellie in tow.

Teebo had suggested going to his shop in a taxi, and Smitty and Nellie had agreed. But they had a car of their own there. Or, rather, one of The Avenger’s fleet of cars, since all the property of this indomitable band was, in a sense, owned by the whole group and used as any one of them pleased.

They got into it, a long, tubelike coupé. Nellie said, “You think that’s the address on Eighty-ninth?”

Smitty nodded.

“I don’t think so,” said Nellie. “Why would a man bother to make a note, on a piece of cigarette paper, of his own address? You aren’t apt to forget your own address.”

“Maybe it wasn’t his,” said Smitty. “Maybe this shop is owned by someone else, or used by many as a headquarters. A place for loot, maybe. Anyhow, we’ll find out. Then I’ll phone police headquarters. We don’t want to hold out information on the cops.”

“Smitty,” said Nellie, with almost a note of exuberance in her voice, “I think we’re being followed.”

“Huh?” said Smitty.

“Yes. The same headlights have been behind us since we left the Coyle Hotel.” Her voice was contented. The half-pint blonde lived for excitement.

Smitty began doubling back and forth to shake a possible trailer.

“In that case,” said Smitty, carefully, “I’ll take you to the chief’s place where you’ll be safe—”

“You and who else will take me?” blazed Nellie. “What do you think I am—something made out of glass that has to be kept in cotton wool?”

Smitty grinned. He had only been after a rise from her.