The Avenger 23 - The Wilder Curse (10 page)

This one had died fast; the crimson trickles around him showed no movement of the body after it fell.

“Sillers,” said The Avenger, with a glance at the expensive clothes—now terribly ripped and soggy—and at a huge sapphire set in a platinum band on the scrawny hand.

There’d been a lot they had wanted to ask this man. Had he hired professional gunmen to attack Justice, Inc.? If so, why? Had he called Foley down to his death? What had he said to his partner, Marsden, to cause Marsden to exclaim, as he glared over a gunsight at The Avenger: “It looks as though Andrew was right, after all.”

No one would ever ask the man anything now.

The Avenger’s pale eyes were like little chromium chips in his mask of a face. Mac knew that his own perplexity was shared by Benson; knew the questions racing through the fast brain behind those colorless orbs.

Sillers had sneaked into the building and down into the basement so secretively that no one of the employees even knew he was in the place. Why? His body looked just as Phelan’s and Foley’s—and Carter’s—looked, after death. What killed like that? And, having murdered, how could the killer get away without being seen?

Benson went to the basement door, first making sure there were no other exits. There were none—only this door.

The door led to the stairs—nowhere else. The Avenger went up the stairs, now seeing the blood trail again. On the first floor of the main building there was just one exit, the main front door. There was no rear opening.

The wide hall through the side of the building went past the double doorway of the general office. Twenty or more people worked in there. Most of their desks faced the doorway.

The Avenger approached the doorway, down the hall, without sound. He looked inside through the crack between opened door and jamb. He tried to pick a moment when no one happened to be gazing at the hall and to get past the door without being seen.

Two in there saw him, in spite of the fact that they were clustered around Carter’s body and the doctor, with their attention very much distracted.

It was impossible for anyone to walk past that double doorway, in working hours, without being seen. Yet, presumably, a murderer had walked past it, then Andrew Sillers had walked past it, then the murderer had returned past it, and no one had noticed at all!

Dan Moran hurried out to the hall and came up to Benson. He was even more agitated than he’d been at sight of Carter.

“Myra!” he said shakily.

The Avenger stared at him.

“You may have noticed I seemed a little upset when you first came into my office,” he said. “Well, it was because of Myra. She was in the office talking to me just before you and your man came. Then she went out for a minute—and didn’t come back. I was a littie worried about her—”

He clenched his fist.

“Now, it’s worse! I’m something more than worried. Two men have been murdered in this building, and I don’t think Myra left the building when she went out of my office. Where
is
she?”

His voice cracked on the last words.

The street door opened, and a man came in. He was young and almost too good-looking, with yellow hair and ingenuous eyes.

“Hello!” he said, pausing and looking at Moran and The Avenger. “I seem to have run into some excitement here. Police cars yelping up the street and all. What’s happened?”

It was Clarence Beck.

Mac grabbed Beck’s shoulder so hard the blond youth exclaimed and tried to get away.

“Hey!” he said. “What’s the idea?”

“Why did ye run out on us at the garage?” Mac snapped, bitter blue eyes blazing. “Why didn’t ye get in touch with the police in ten minutes? Why—”

“I’ll explain if you’ll give me a chance,” said Beck.

Mac let him loose, and he stood rubbing his shoulder where the Scot’s iron fingers had dug in.

“I was taken for a ride,” Beck said angrily. “It wasn’t my fault I didn’t do as I was ordered. Those thugs had a more complete trap rigged up than you guessed. They even had men in the street and must have seen me with you. About a minute after I hit that doorway, three of them jumped me. They piled me into a car.”

Beck touched his ribs.

“Kicked me around a little. I guess they started out to kill me and then decided I wasn’t in with you enough to make it worthwhile to take the risk. They dumped me out of the car ’way up the Merritt Parkway, then drove off. I thumbed a ride back. Say, I’m sure glad to see you two alive. I didn’t think you could possibly get away from that garage.”

“Did they get the fire out before the building burned down?” asked Mac.

“Sure,” said Beck. “The garage is all right.” Then he grinned excitedly. “I get it. Trying to test me; trying to see if I really was ridden away from there. Well, I was, all right. I know about the fire being put out, because I was curious to see if your bodies had been discovered. I went around past it on the way here. I found there was no trace of you guys, and the garage is O.K. except for a hole burned in the roof over where the van must have been standing.”

It was double talk to Mac. He thought it smelled. He thought Beck smelled. But The Avenger seemed to pay no attention to him. Benson was walking toward the outer door.

Mac swung in beside him, and Beck trotted along like an overgrown boy. Mac told him what had happened—two more of the violent murders. Sillers dead. Carter, head engineer, dead.

“Why, that’s horrible!” exclaimed Beck. “Sillers and Carter! What are you going to do about it?”

The Avenger said nothing.

Beck said, anxiously, “Say, there’ll be a flock of folks moving out of Thornton Heights after this. Four killings in this one little area. In the one central building, in fact! It’ll give Thornton Heights such a bad name it will never live it down. It’ll bankrupt us, unless we find the murderer.”

The Avenger didn’t answer that, either. They’d gone out the front door and were at the door of the nearest building. Benson went in and they found the janitor, a stooped, taciturn man with a drooping mustache.

“Did Mr. Sillers come in this building this morning?” Dick asked the janitor.

“Sillers!” exclaimed Beck. “Why, it was the
next
building he—” His voice died in a hurry as the colorless, terrible eyes flicked his way.

“No, Mr. Sillers ain’t been in here in weeks,” said the man, shifting a cud of tobacco from left to right. “He’s one of the owners. He doesn’t go barging around the buildings.”

They went to two more buildings, while Dick made his strange request. At the third, they got an answer that seemed even stranger—to Mac, at least.

“Yeah,” this janitor said. “Mr. Sillers came in here about an hour ago. Went to the basement—I passed him coming out. He said I needn’t stay with him.”

“How soon did he come out again?” The Avenger asked, face as masklike as ever.

“I wouldn’t know. I went on about my business. It don’t do to stand around where
he
can see. He likes people to work for what he pays ’em.”

So the murdered man came into this building, went out again and into the main building and was killed there. What did a visit to this smaller building mean, Mac wondered.

Then The Avenger stood still an instant, as though listening. But he wasn’t listening, it developed; he was feeling.

He got a tiny black disc from his vest pocket. A threadlike wire trailed from it. The wire went to a small case under his belt which held the world’s smallest efficient two-way radio set. It was one of the giant Smitty’s brain children.

All the members of Justice, Inc. wore them next to their waists. When one wanted to get in contact with the rest, there was the tingling of mild shock, and the person thus notified got out his receiver.

Benson had felt the premonitory tingle, it seemed.

“Yes?” he said, into the quarter-sized transmitter.

“Nellie talking,” came a tiny, high voice. “There’s something queer going on in connection with this Myra Horton. She phoned here a while ago, then hung up before she had said anything.”

“Hung up?” said Benson.

“Yes. She said, ‘Hello,’ and I said, ‘Hello, this is Nellie Gray talking.’ Then she hung up.”

“You’re sure it was Miss Horton?”

“Dead sure. I recognized the voice.”

Clarence Beck suddenly caught The Avenger’s arm.

“What’s this? What about Miss Horton? She’s a good friend of mine. She’s more than a friend. If she’s in trouble—”

Benson shook off Beck’s grasp with what seemed an easy and small ripple of muscle.

“Did you trace the call?”

“Can’t,” Nellie said. “The chief operator said it was an unaccounted-for telephone. The phone company’s excited about it, too, and is going to try to find where it is.”

“All right,” said The Avenger. “No orders. I’m going to look up a little data that may tie in with Miss Horton, among other things.”

He put the tiny microphone back in his pocket. Beck was staring at him, on the verge of a hundred anxious questions.

The Avenger said in a low tone, as if to himself, “The main street in Thornton Heights is called Wilder Avenue. I wonder why?”

He turned. “Mac, stay and help the police if you can.”

He started off. Beck tagged after him. “Can’t I help? Can’t I go along? If Miss Horton is in a jam—”

“Come if you like,” said Benson expressionlessly. “You might find it dull. I’m only going to the public library. I may be there for several hours.”

Just before Nellie had gotten the unexplained call, the mountainous Smitty came back from his job of getting information on Andrew Sillers.

That is, he had come back from the job of
not
getting any information. At least any information linking him to murderous, or even shady, enterprises.

“Never been on a police blotter even for speeding or parking wrong,” growled Smitty. “Evidently, Sillers is a careful old hen in pants, who wouldn’t even curb his car near a fire hydrant if his life depended on it. All he’s done all his life is make money and not spend it, except on himself, where it shows most.”

“That’s not very helpful,” said Nellie.

“I’ll say it’s not. There isn’t one thing I could dig up that would indicate that he’d mix with gunmen. Yet, it sure did look as if the gang after us was hired by Sillers. And they play for keeps!”

“Of course,” said the little blonde patiently, “there is probably a great deal of stuff you weren’t able to find.”

“Huh? What do you mean? I didn’t have time to go sluething around, but I got all the known facts on Sillers.”

“Probably a good many things would have been ‘dug up,’ as you put it, if you’d had me along to help.”

“Look here, half-pint, any time I can’t find out more in a minute about somebody than you can in a week, I’ll—”

The phone rang. Smitty glared. Every time he was going good, giving this maddening little blonde what was coming to her, something happened to interrupt him.

“Hello,” he heard Nellie say. Then after a minute, she clicked the receiver.

“Hello, operator. I was cut off. Please call that number back and connect us again. No, I don’t know what number it was.”

A few more minutes, and Nellie slowly hung up.

“What’s wrong?” said Smitty.

“Myra Horton just called. She said, ‘Hello.’ Then she hung up.”

“Hung up?”

“Yes. Just like that. And when I called back, the operator said there was no record of any call.”

The phone rang again. Nellie picked it up, listened, and looked funnier than ever.

“That call came from an unrecorded phone,” she said.

“Ghost phone, huh?” said Smitty.

Any good electrician with a spare phone can plug it in on a line and talk. An instrument like this, not listed, not wanted, is a “ghost phone.” There are a whole lot more of them than the phone company would like, although they can’t be used more than two or three times without being traced.

“Yes.” Nellie went to the big radio cabinet. She got The Avenger on his tiny belt set and told of the incident. Then she went back to Smitty.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said. “There was something sneaky about the way that connection was broken. The phone was hung up softly and slowly. It’s as if Myra Horton grabbed a chance to phone where she wasn’t expected to and someone got her from behind and clapped a hand over her lips, then very gently hung up the phone.”

“What an imagination you have,” jeered Smitty.

“Did you hear any sound at all to bear out a yarn like that?”

“No,” Nellie confessed.

“Any sound of any kind to give a clue as to where she was when she called?”

“No sound at all— Yes, there was, come to think of it. But it’s nothing I can place. There was a kind of low roar behind her words. A sort of whispered roar.”

“Probably a lion with a cold in its chest,” said Smitty. “Myra must have been phoning from the zoo.”

“Are you ever funny?” Nellie snapped. “Here’s a nice girl in a mess, and all you do is make jokes.”

The phone rang again. Nellie snatched at it. “Hello!”

Again Smitty saw a queer look on her face. Strain his ears as he would, he couldn’t hear anything coming out of the receiver she held so tensely in her white small hand. After a minute, without a word, she replaced the phone on its cradle.