Read Online The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online

footsteps as she ran up the basement stairs, though the steps must have been quite loud. That door was thick.
    Cole jumped back to the window. It was too small to get through, even if there had been no bars. But, at least, he could hear through it. He smashed the glass out and listened.
    He heard more glass breaking, down the house wall and overhead. The gang was breaking openly into the place this time. Tricks had failed. Now, they were smashing into the house!
    Cole heard a shot over his head, muffled, then another. That would be the girl’s gun. And he was all too sure that it wouldn’t be heard outside that thick-walled house, even with a window broken open, so that help would come. He himself heard the shots through the floor, not through the window.
    The shots were followed by a scream; and Cole, swearing impotently, flung himself against the door to get out. Of all the rotten breaks! To be shut in here while disaster occurred overhead.

    He heard no more sound from above, now. Minutes passed. He kept on jamming against the door; there was nothing else to do. He had just banged against it for the dozenth time when it opened suddenly and he sprawled through the doorway onto the basement floor.
    As he sprawled on the cement, he saw the legs of the man who had noiselessly and abruptly opened the door. They were incredibly thick legs, like tree trunks. He looked up. Then his spine seemed to freeze.
    The legs belonged to the enormously fat man with the blue-black jowls who had shot the blond fellow at the crossroads. The man who had murdered his friend with the apologetic words: “Sorry, friend.”
    The fat man had a gun aimed at Cole’s head and his forefinger was pressed hard against the trigger. He had been about to drill Cole. But then he recognized him.
    “Well, shoot him,” snarled a man next to the fat one. There were half a dozen in the basement. “If you don’t, I will.”
    His gun, a foreign-looking automatic, swung into line.
    “Wait!” said the fat man.
    “What for? We can’t stay here all day.”
    “This man—he was the one who trailed Harris that night. He’s the one who got away with Harris’ body and made me kill Harris so he couldn’t talk.”
    His fat lips jerked with rage, then were calm again. Menacingly calm.
    “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
    Cole said nothing.
    “He was helping the girl and her father, of course,” said the man who held the foreign-looking gun. “That’s the way his crowd operates. They help people. Even if they risk their stupid necks to do it—”
    “He was locked in there,” the fat man pointed out. “And he wouldn’t have been locked up if he’d been considered as a friend.”
    “So?”
    “So we’ll take him along—”
    Two more men piled downstairs. Cole stayed where he was, on hands and knees, not attempting to move or get up. His life hung by a very thin thread and he knew it.
    “No trace of the picture,” said one of the two, with an oath more feeling than interesting.
    The fat man swore steadily for half a minute. “You’re sure?”
    “Of course, I’m sure. We took the place apart. The picture isn’t in this house.”
    “Now I know we’ll take this dog along,” snarled the fat man, prodding Cole with his toe.
    It was almost his last prod. Cole got the ankle behind the toe with a move so fast it almost defied the eye. Equally swiftly, he pulled. The fat man crashed down, and Cole got behind his bulk.
    It was a fruitless move, because he had no gun, thanks to Jessica; and all the others were armed. Two covered him, while a third bound him with phone wire ripped from the basement ceiling.
    They carried him out to the driveway and piled him into a car there.
    He saw Marsden and his daughter in another car. Both were unconscious. There was a red welt on the girl’s forehead.
    The two cars started, swung out to the road and headed for the thinly inhabited tip of Long Island lying to the east.

CHAPTER VIII

Watery Coffin!
    The