Read Online The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc. by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online Page B

arm.
    “You’re the chauffeur for Mr. Leon?” Benson said.
    There was black fury in the giant’s eyes. And something else. The ordinary person would see in the big fellow a moon-faced guy with mild china-blue eyes who was as stupid as he was enormous. But Benson saw deeper. He saw a fast brain concealed under the phlegmatic, full face, and plenty of intelligence in the far depths of the china-blue eyes.
    “I was the driver for Mr. Leon,” the man snapped. “I was just fired!”
    “Oh?” said Benson. “You mean, when you got back from Lansing’s house?”
    The giant glared. “How do you know I was there? And what’s it to you?”
    “I know you were there because I saw you,” said Benson calmly. “And it’s this to me: there’s a mystery about that house and I want to solve it.”
    The giant crouched a little, as if the words had been blows.
    “So!” he said. “You’re a cop! Well, you won’t get me for the boss’ disappearance!”
    He leaped at Benson as he spoke.
    Benson had been sure, on eyeing all that vast bulk, that the man would be so muscle-bound that he’d have about the agility of a snowplow. Bull Red had been slowed by being muscle-bound. But this man jumped at him as swiftly and certainly as if he’d been a flyweight boxer!

    Fast as Benson was himself, he had time only to get his right hand up, and jerk his head to one side as a fist like a side of beef swept by. It was lucky he got the hand up for the giant’s vast hand caught his left shoulder.
    The big fellow had time for only one short press of his huge fingers, but that almost did for the fast gray fox of a man with the dead, still face. Then Benson’s free right hand got a fold of flesh and muscle under the giant’s extended left armpit in a police grip that is warranted to make any man howl. He twisted with his steel-wire fingers.
    The big fellow gasped and let go. Benson’s hand shot up from the armpit to the column of a throat. He bent his back like a fast gray cat, and the giant rolled over it like an avalanche and crashed to the graveled drive.
    It would have done for most, but this man got up as lithely as if he’d weighed a third what he actually did. He flashed for Benson again, less recklessly this time, with the black fury higher in his eyes—but with something like respect there, too.
    From the house behind them some woman was screaming.
    “Police! Get the police! He kidnapped my father! Now he’s murdering somebody! Police!”
    Benson feinted from the tremendous arms that were reaching for him; but fast as he was, the big fellow was almost as fast. He got Benson’s right wrist in a bone-crushing grip, and twisted his arm up behind him.
    Then he put his right arm, as huge as a flexible tree trunk, around Benson with his doubled fist in the middle of his back and began breaking the gray man with the dead, white face in two.

    Quality in muscle, as well as quantity! The giant weighed nearly twice as much as Benson, and he was putting forth his full strength in an effort to crack Benson’s spine. But into the gray man’s steel cables of sinew surged the explosive, mysterious power that makes the muscle fiber of a rare few far superior, ounce for ounce, to that of ordinary men.
    For a few seconds he actually stopped that appalling pressure on his back. Like a steel bar, bending thus far and no farther, he quivered there in the big man’s crushing grip. But it could only last a few seconds, and Benson knew it. So he risked everything on a single throw.
    Deliberately exposing himself even more to the terrible pressure, he twisted enough to get his left arm loose, and brought his hand up to the back of the giant’s neck. There, with blackness fogging his brain and with his final reserve of strength almost gone, he pressed deep on either side of the spinal column with thumb and second finger.
    For a full five seconds the giant made no sound, and there was no slackening of his terrific grip. Benson, with the black fog