The Avenger 22 - The Black Death (8 page)

He felt his knuckles crunch against the cartilage of someone’s Adam’s apple and heard the owner go down wheezing in agony. The Avenger felt a throat, and pressed at the nerve center at the base of the skull.

Another man went down, this time without sound. But it was a hopeless fight. Two clubbed guns found his skull at almost the same instant, and a third cracked against his shoulder so hard that the bone would have been splintered if it weren’t protected by slabs of rock-like muscle.

There was silence in the smoke-filled doorway. Then the smoke dissipated. Coughing and swearing, seven men went to the aid of the four who had originally trapped Cole and Benson.

Then they carried the unconscious Cole and Benson off.

Cole came out of it first. He came out of it hearing familiar voices—the deep rumble of Smitty’s voice and the high, clear melody of Nellie’s. He opened his eyes.

“Attaboy,” came Smitty’s rumble. “Feeling better?”

Cole nodded and looked around.

He got the impression that they were in a cell. It was a big cell, about twenty feet square, with no windows. Cole was foggily puzzled about the source of the light. Then he saw that Smitty or Nellie had fixed one of the tiny flashlights, which all members of Justice, Inc., habitually carried, on a bench so that it pointed upward.

Cole got back all memory with a rush.

“The chief?” he gasped, struggling upward.

He saw The Avenger, still and limp beside him. Nellie was bending over him, slim deft fingers touching his head.

“I think he’ll be all right,” Nellie said. “I don’t think there’s concussion. But you can’t be sure. He was hit pretty hard. What happened?”

Cole groaned.

“I have a dirty hunch that what happened was that once more I acted on impulse instead of common sense. I may have pulled a boner.”

He told them all that occurred.

“Now that I look back on it,” he confessed, “I can see that the chief could probably have thrown smoke or gas pills long before I had the chance. After all, he’s quicker than I am—quicker than any other living man. The fact that he did not try it, makes it look as if he had some plan in mind. If so, I sure knocked it into the middle of next week. And got ourselves knocked there, too.”

Nellie patted his hand. “You don’t know that,” she soothed. “Anyhow, it’s done. No use worrying.”

Smitty glared at her. Cole Wilson was extremely handsome, and the giant could be jealous even of him when the tiny blonde indulged in such gestures as hand pattings.

“We did just as foolish a thing as you,” she said. “We came here to join you, with Dan Miller, and had hardly set foot inside when we were picked up by a young army with machine guns. We didn’t have a chance and were taken completely off guard. We let ourselves be surrounded like a lot of dopes and here we are.”

“Miller?” said Cole.

Nellie told who he was and a little about him.

“Where is he now?”

Nellie caught her red lip between her teeth. “I . . . I’m afraid he was seriously hurt. Maybe even killed. He tried to put up a fight and was clubbed down. The gang just left him lying on the ground when they herded us in here. He sure looked like a goner.”

“By the way,” said Cole, “where is ‘here’? Are we in a basement?”

“No,” said Smitty. “Garden house. This is a separate little building in back where they store hose and gardening tools and wheelbarrows and such—as you can see if you stop strangling Nellie’s hand and look around. It’s built of cut stone like the house. Regular fort of a place.”

“Wonder why they shut us up in here instead of just knocking us off?” said Cole moodily.

“Who cares?” said the giant. “We’re still alive, which is the main thing. I have the idea, though, that the only thing that saved us was that these guys seemed to have something else on the pan that didn’t leave them time to take care of us properly. They were too busy, just then, for a neat and noiseless mass murder— Look! He’s coming around!”

The three stared anxiously at The Avenger.

The colorless, glacial eyes, like polar ice in moonlight, had opened. They stared around the solid little stone house as widely as possible without a head movement. They went to Nellie’s face, Smitty’s, Cole’s.

And the three felt icy fingers tear at their hearts, and Nellie cried out softly.

In the pallid, deadly eyes there was no recognition, it seemed, and no intelligence. Only dreadful vacancy.

“What’s . . . the matter with him?” whispered Smitty.

But they all knew what was the matter. It was hardly necessary for Cole to say, “Those blows on the head! There
is
concussion or something. We’ve got to get him out of here. Got to get him to a hospital.”

Nellie’s small hand went to Smitty’s vast paw now. That was where it was always to be found in times of real stress. But the giant released it after a second and strode to the door. He banged against it frantically with his shoulder.

It was a very solid door, thick, of oak. But such was the big fellow’s frenzy that he might actually have rammed it down, given time.

However, he wasn’t given time. The little door was still shivering when the answer came. A cold voice just outside said, “Hold it, pal. There are three of us here with Tommy-guns. And we’d be glad to use them.”

Breaking down the door was out of the question.

The Avenger seemed not to have heard the commotion. He didn’t even seem to notice Smitty. Dick simply lay there, staring with pale and vacant eyes at nothing.

“We’ve
got
to get him out!” Cole repeated with a quiver in his voice.

But there was no way to get him out. All they could do was stare at each other and at their chief for what seemed many dragging hours.

The little door opened from the outside. A man spoke in a harsh and domineering voice.

“All out. End of the line. But come slow, and come with your hands up.”

“One of us is hurt,” said Cole. “I don’t think he can walk.”

“He’d better walk,” snapped the man outside. “Nobody around here is going to carry anybody.”

Smitty gently raised The Avenger to his feet. Benson stayed upright, swaying a little. The injury, it seemed, was to his mind. His body worked fairly well. Smitty went out of the garden house first, with Benson next and then Cole, helping The Avenger keep his feet. Finally Nellie came out.

Cole saw that a rear driveway came almost to the door of the little building. Beyond that was the rear of the house and the laboratory. He saw these things because an outside light was on; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to see at all. It was full night now, and a very dark one.

In the driveway was one of the biggest limousines he had ever seen. Around this was a group of men. And with the fellow who had opened the garden-house door were four or five men. All had guns in their hands.

“Into that car,” snapped one of these. “Step on it!”

The Avenger seemed not to have heard. He was staring vacantly around, at the rear of the house, up at the eaves, at the chimneys. Smitty looked, too. He couldn’t see anything that might have attracted the pale eyes. The eaves were just eaves, the chimneys just chimneys, with the usual lightning rods clamped to their sides.

“You heard me,” rasped the man again. “Into the car.”

There is a time for obedience. People who live dangerously, whose profession is peril know this. Smitty got into the back of the big limousine. With all those guns pointed at their heads—not their bodies, safely sheathed with bulletproof fabric of The Avenger’s invention—it would have been suicide not to. Maybe it would be suicide to obey too; but at least that way they’d live a little longer.

So the giant got into the car. So did Nellie. The Avenger, helped by Cole, put his foot up on the running board.

Then Benson staggered a little, lost his balance, fell sideways and forward so that his head almost grazed the end of the front bumper. One of the gunmen cursed and started a kick at the prone man.

Cole Wilson went berserk at this.

Roaring, he leaped at the man and knocked him a dozen feet away. From him he turned to two more, and though they got him to his knees finally, their faces were both smashed to pulp first. After that, half a dozen cursing men surrounded him and methodically beat him down.

But there was, strangely, no gunplay.

“Throw that clown inside,” somebody said.

They threw Wilson into the rear of the car. And then there was a commotion!

“Hey!” yelled a voice. “That guy— Benson! Where the hell—”

“He’s gone!”
another screamed.

Smitty and Nellie looked at each other with dawning comprehension.

“An act,” breathed Nellie. “The chief was putting on an act. And it fooled them—”

“In that tree!” came a yell. “Get around it; Don’t let him get away. But don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to!”

Nellie and Smitty sagged back in the seat. So The Avenger hadn’t gotten away. He’d made a fine try at it, but now was surrounded. They tried to look out and see which tree, but the roof of the car cut off vision upward.

Smitty saw that between front and rear compartments of the big car was heavy glass. Nonshatterable, of course. And when the men closed the car door on them they did something to the handle.

Too late, Smitty realized what was happening. His great hand snapped to the door, but he couldn’t budge the handle. They were locked in here from outside. They were as helpless as they’d been in the little fortlike stone garden house.

A man got behind the wheel, grinning evilly.

“Take ’em to the river,” said the one who’d opened the garden-house door. “You know the place—where it’s good and deep. Run ’em over the edge, car and all, then report back here.”

“O.K.,” said the man at the wheel. He looked as if the order was a very enjoyable one.

The car smoothly and soundlessly followed the drive around the side of the house and swung down toward the gate. At one point, half a dozen men were tense in a circle around a big tree. Two more were cautiously climbing it.

To capture The Avenger with as little noise as possible, obviously.

At the gate, a man stepped from the little house, also grinning evilly. The gate swung open. The gang seemed to have taken over John Jay Hannon’s house entirely. With the consent of the eminent inventor? There was no way of telling.

The car rolled into the curving road and started for “the river. You know the place—where it’s good and deep.”

The Avenger was back there, hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered. Cole and Nellie and Smitty were in a death car, being driven to a watery grave!

“The stock of Justice, Inc.,” said Nellie, “seems to be at a very low ebb at the moment.”

Just how low was indicated by the lightness of her tone. Every member of The Avenger’s little band lived with death always at his elbow and used to its presence. But they all knew that sometime death would get nearer than their elbow. It would get them by the throat! You can’t live forever in a constant war with the underworld.

Quite often, death seemed about to snatch them; and when this happened, instead of sitting down and moaning about it, the little crew made jokes about it. The worse the predicament, the lighter the tone.

And Nellie’s tone now was very light indeed.

“Well, it’s nice to be driven to the cemetery in style,” said Cole, glancing around at the luxurious flittings of the car. He had dabbed the blood from his face and was about recovered from the brush with the men.

“Swellest hearse I’ve ever seen,” nodded Smitty.

Suddenly there was a movement of the driver’s arm and a click. Thin steel shutters walled off the windows of the car.

“Like the back of a dog catcher’s truck,” growled Cole. “This guy Hannon sure had his house and apartment and car and everything else fitted up to trap people. He was certainly a suspicious duck.”

“Maybe with reason,” shrugged Smitty. “Everybody after his inventions all the time. And now it looks as if somebody has murdered him for one—which Miller said he hadn’t even perfected. The television scrambler.”

“Unless,” said Cole, “this Miller guy was mistaken and Hannon did perfect it after Miller left his employ.”

Nellie was the first to notice the change. She blinked sleepily, then sat bolt upright.

“Good heavens! This is like the back of a dog catcher’s truck! That thug up there is shooting carbon monoxide in here from the motor exhaust. Going to kill us with monoxide, then drown us in thirty or forty feet of water.”

They got out their nose clips and put them on. The clips might or might not protect them till they got to the river, depending on how long that took. But there was certainly no use just lying down and dying ahead of time.

The driver looked up in his rearview mirror and grinned bleakly back at them. There was no steel shutter over the glass separating front from rear.

Then his grin faded and suddenly the front of the car sagged in a curious way and the rumble and thump of a flat tire boomed out.

Faintly through the front glass they heard the driver swearing furiously. Then he hopped out of the car in a hurry. His haste was obvious. Here he was, less than half a mile from his starting point, and had a flat to fix with a car full of prisoners. If a cop ever caught up to him and got curious about the shuttered windows—