The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder (9 page)

“Oh!” she said. “And I haven’t time to shop for new stockings now. And my others are in my trunk, which won’t be here till tomorrow!”

The exclamation had been subtly directed at the passing Mrs. Cranlowe, who had turned, to be met with a rueful smile.

She had taken the bait.

“You are just coming in? You can send your maid to my rooms, if you like. I have a little thread that ought to match that flesh tint. It will make a pucker in the stocking, but it’s better than a run.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Nellie. There was a little general conversation, and a self-introduction. And then, with Nellie’s dainty charm turned on full, there was a suggestion of dinner together.

Nellie was getting into a crisp frock for dinner, now.

“Did you see that man when you went out to the drugstore a few minutes ago?” Rosabel asked in a low tone as she hooked Nellie up the side.

The man in question was a fellow Nellie had told Rosabel about glimpsing as she left Mrs. Cranlowe in the lobby and went to an elevator.

He was a young-looking chap with something the matter with his eyes. They didn’t match the rest of him. They were a thousand years old, and all evil; as if they had been pried from the skull of an old, old man and set into the sockets of a young man.

The young man with the ancient eyes had come to the building door shortly after Mrs. Cranlowe had. He hadn’t come in; had just stayed there, but Nellie got the idea he was watching the inventor’s wife.

Then he had seemed to watch Nellie after she talked to Mrs. Cranlowe.

“No, didn’t see a sign of him,” Nellie said cheerfully.

“Be careful,” urged Rosabel.

Nellie laughed. It was a reckless, musical trill of sound.

“I’ll be careful, all right. I don’t think a coffin would become me.”

She went down to Mrs. Cranlowe’s apartment.

Mrs. Cranlowe was a woman of thirty-three or four, but looking younger. She was a brunette, on the plump side, with a full red little mouth and hands that were always making vague gestures.

She opened the door, when Nellie knocked, on a businesslike-looking night chain. Then she unhooked it when she saw Nellie’s face.

“I wanted to be sure it was you,” she explained.

“Sure it was me?” repeated Nellie innocently.

“Yes! You know I have had some most unpleasant experiences recently. Men following me, watching me. At least I think they have. Maybe I’m getting a persecution complex. But—no, I’m sure I’ve been observed.”

They went out to a small, exclusive restaurant near the building, and over a women’s meal she talked freely on the subject.

“It’s all due to that silly invention of my husband’s. You knew my husband was
the
Cranlowe? Jesse Cranlowe, the inventor?”

Nellie made polite sounds indicating that she was surprised and impressed.

“Well, Jesse, my husband, recently invented some kind of war thing. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never been much interested in his work. But this, it seems, is quite important. After he had invented it, he gave an announcement to the newspapers. It was an absurd thing to do. He said he had the most deadly weapon yet invented and would give it to any small nation for defense in the event that it is attacked by any larger nation. Going to stop war, and all that. But perhaps you read about it.”

“A little,” Nellie murmured. “Not a great deal.”

“Well, of course the minute such an announcement came out, it meant that all sorts of terrible people would try to get the weapon from Jesse. So he had to take necessary precautions. That’s why I’m living here, in town, instead of out at Cranlowe Heights with him. Though I have always spent a great deal of time in town.”

She waved a smooth, white hand.

“Our country home has been turned into an armed camp.” she said distastefully. “Guards and dogs, and all the trees cut down because otherwise people might hide behind them. It is very uncomfortable out there, so I live here.”

Nellie recalled her to her former subject.

“And you really think people have been following you around since that newspaper announcement? Because of your husband’s invention?”

“It must be because of the invention,” said Mrs. Cranlowe, nodding wisely. “Because no one ever followed me around before.”

“But why do you suppose they annoy you? You haven’t anything to do with his invention. Or—have you?”

“Not one single thing,” said Mrs. Cranlowe. “So, you see, it is all very stupid.”

Nellie didn’t say anything for a moment. But she was thinking. Not so stupid, perhaps. This woman didn’t have anything to do with Cranlowe’s work. But she had a great deal to do with the man, himself. Presumably she was adored. If she were kidnaped, and then threats made—

“Have you ever seen the people you think are following you? Ever had a good look at them?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Cranlowe. “There is one man I have seen so often that I’m sure he is following me. That is a young chap who doesn’t, somehow, look young, though you know he is. If you get what I mean.”

Nellie did get what she meant, having seen the same man herself.

“The other I’ve seen several times. He is a very fat man, not tall, who looks extremely good-natured. And yet I would hate to meet him on a dark street with money in my bag.”

Nellie marked those descriptions down graphically in her memory. She was getting, she thought, information more valuable than she had dared hope for.

The meal was about over. Mrs. Cranlowe kept looking at a tiny jeweled watch on her wrist.

“My son is coming for me very shortly,” she explained, at last. “Rather, Mr. Cranlowe’s son. He’s really my stepson, though neither of us ever think of that.”

“You mean the young man who came up to you in the lobby just after we’d met over the run in my stocking?” said Nellie, pretending she didn’t already know all about young Robert Cranlowe.

“Yes, that’s the man— Here he is now.”

A very good-looking young chap was coming in the restaurant door. He was tall and slim and dark-haired, with engaging blue eyes. Almost too engaging, Nellie thought. He was one of these young fellows whom everyone describes as “his own worst enemy.” The kind everyone liked but no one trusted in important matters.

He came gaily to the table where the two women sat. Mrs. Cranlowe introduced Nellie.

“Oh, yes, I noticed Miss Lang this afternoon!” Robert Cranlowe said easily. It took a minute for Nellie to remember that that was her pseudonym. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, Miss Lang. I hope you’ll be in Garfield City for quite a while. You are staying at the same building as Mrs. Cranlowe?”

Nellie assured him that she was. She was very nice about it, too. She might get information from the inventor’s son as well as the inventor’s wife, though she already was sure the information would be innocently given. She was quite sure neither the woman nor young man had any crookedness in them.

“Can we take you anywhere in my car?” asked Robert Cranlowe.

Nellie smilingly shook her head. The two bade her a pleasant farewell, and drove away. Nellie watched them from the curb for a moment, then turned to walk back to the building. It was only a short distance, so she went along with no haste. Once in her room she would communicate with the chief over the marvelously effective little radio Smitty had devised, and with which each aide of The Avenger’s was always equipped.

A long way behind her, and very cleverly, a man stalked her as a hunter stalks an animal.

He was the young fellow with the old eyes. In those eyes, now, was speculation—and murder. He trailed her to the building entrance, then hurried to a phone booth from which he could still see the building and make sure Nellie didn’t get out again without his knowledge.

“Kopell?” he muttered into the phone. “Something new on this, I think.”

“You mean on the Cranlowe dame?”

“Yeah! She’s got a new friend awful fast. A swell-looking little blonde. She checked into the building just before dinner, and got talking to the Cranlowe dame. I thought it was pretty fast, and I thought it was pretty smooth. But I wasn’t sure it meant anything, till a while ago. Then I saw the two of ’em go out to put on the feed bag together.”

“So?” said the smooth, oily voice at the other end of the wire.

“Well, look,” said the young fellow. “The blonde could be with some other mob that we don’t know about, couldn’t she? She could be shining up to Cranlowe’s wife on a new angle we ain’t hep to yet, couldn’t she?”

The logic of this was admitted, too.

“So, maybe—” said the young man with the old eyes, reaching mechanically a little way toward his automatic.

“Be on the lookout,” said the oily voice. “Don’t take the chance, yet. But be ready to with one funny move.”

The young man with the ancient eyes patted his shoulder holster.

“You bet,” he said, mouth like a thin gash in his flinty countenance.

Death’s face loomed close in that dark basement under the left wing of the Cranlowe castle.

There was the cellar room, perhaps forty by sixty feet, illuminated only by an unshaded electric bulb at each end. There was the curious chasm running through the center, lengthwise; beginning with a mere crack in the earth at one end of the basement, broadening to ten-foot width in the center, and narrowing to a crack again at the other end.

And there, on the brink, was the man pretending to be John Blandell, with two men gripping each arm.

“Have you anything to say before you’re thrown in there?” snapped Cranlowe.

“Just this,” said Benson quietly. “I’m a friend, not an enemy. I came out here to help you.”

“You sneaked out, made up as an old friend of mine and worked your way in here like a snake into a hole—because you wanted to ‘help’ me?” jeered Cranlowe. “That’s a good one! You came out here to steal my secret. And now you’re going to pay for it with your life. But I’ll take last messages, if you like.”

“There are no last messages,” said Benson steadily.

The cold wind from the river, far below, was dank on his made-up, paralyzed face. The four men looked at Cranlowe, who nodded. Their muscles tightened to force this man over the edge of the chasm.

Cranlowe yelled suddenly. But so fast had it all occurred, that his yell followed the thing he yelled about at least three seconds after it had happened.

Only about five feet eight, The Avenger weighed hardly a hundred and sixty-five pounds. But every one of those pounds had that queer muscle-quality now and then found in a great athlete which is more effective than muscle-quantity can ever be.

With the tensing of the grip of the four, Benson had moved, and moved fast! Backward—not forward. Had he swept his arms forward he might have thrown a couple of the four into the pit, and he didn’t want to do that. They were acting out of loyalty. They did not deserve death.

He swept his arms backward with a suddenness and violence that no one could have dreamed lay in his average-sized body. One of the four holding him fell flat. Another had his grip torn loose, staggered back a few feet, and fought with waving arms to keep his balance. The other two still retained a precarious grip on arms that seemed to have turned to steel bars in their hands.

Benson flung his arms forward, now. He was far enough away from the chasm. And the two remaining men smashed together with a force that knocked both breathless.

The man who had managed to keep his balance leaped in with sawed-off shotgun swinging down like a club! But the figure he aimed at had slid two feet to one side, like an elusive shadow. The gun stock grazed past harmlessly and smashed against the earth floor before the man could stop it. The stock splintered.

The man who had fallen was aiming his gun. Benson jumped for him. Not angry, he was simply trying to get out of a deadly situation with as little hurt as possible. His heels jammed down on the stubby barrel, and it discharged its flood of slugs into the earthen floor.

Benson kept on toward the door after the flashing movement. He seemed to flow toward the exit, rather than run like a normal man. Cranlowe got in his way.

Benson didn’t harm the inventor at all. He caught a thrusting arm and whirled the man around, and then he was at the door. He leaped out, and slammed the portal. There was a bolt on it. He shot that and ran on. The men in the cellar pounded fiercely. Then there was a shot, and half the panels splintered.

One more shotgun blast, and they were free. Benson raced up the stairs.

There was apparently no way out of here. Armed men in the house. Armed men roaming the grounds. Savage dogs loose. Iron fence encircling the place. But The Avenger had picked the one way out even before he had been dragged to the chasm.

The garage of the place was next to the north wing, attached to the castlelike house. He ran down a hall in that direction, felling a servant who first gaped at him and then tried to draw guns. He leaped over the body, slammed through a door at the end of the corridor and raced into the garage.

There was a roadster and a large sedan. The sedan sagged lowest on its tires. Armor-plated, bulletproofed, built to protect a man who had jeopardized his life with an announcement of his super war weapon.

Benson got in and kicked the starter. The motor roared to life. The garage door into the house flung open, and one man fired a shotgun; another let go with an automatic in each hand. The slugs spanged against steel and bulletproof glass—and did not penetrate.

The Avenger had the heavy car rolling. The big front door of the garage was only half opened. No chance to roll it back. So Benson hit it with the car, and tore it half off on his way out! He sped down the driveway.

Ahead of him was the iron fence, and the great iron gate. He had slipped off the special eye-shells as he ran up the basement stairs, because the tissue-thin things might be broken in a fight and injure his eyes. Now his unmasked eyes, colorless and icy and deadly, stared at the gate ahead of him and at the fence beside it.

He made his decision in about a tenth of a second. The fence didn’t look as strong as that gate. So, twenty feet from the gate, he whirled the heavy car to the left.