Read Online The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online Page A

away, that he murdered her. That must have been during the day, in broad light, or he’d have driven her body away to hide it at once. As it was, he had to leave it, and come back tonight after dark. In the meantime, he burned the financial papers from Brown’s safe. Then I got in the way and received the full attentions of the gentlemen.”
    “Did they laugh?” Smitty said suddenly.
    “Huh?” said Nellie, staring.
    “They tried to murder you. Did they laugh while they were doing it? You know—had they had any of that dope?”
    “I’ll be darned!” said Nellie. “I didn’t think of that. No, they didn’t, Smitty. There wasn’t a laugh in the crowd. No laughing-murder stuff here!”
    “Guess we’d better report all this to the chief,” said Wilson. He tuned in to Bleek Street. Rosabel’s soft voice answered.
    “Mr. Benson and Mac are at Mr. Brown’s house again, with Josh,” Rosabel told them.
    Smitty headed the car that way.

    As The Avenger and Mac approached Brown’s house for a second time that day, all the lights showed in the black of night. The whole place blazed, from cellar to attic, giving an indication of the tension and confusion within.
    A detective yanked open the door and, with a gun in his hand, confronted the two when they rang the doorbell.
    “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Benson,” he said when he saw the masklike face with the pale and terrible eyes. He put the gun up. “There’s been some trouble out here since you left.”
    It was the same man who had been left in charge earlier. His eyes were angry, baffled and apprehensive.
    “This guy, Tate, did a disappearing act. Right out from under my nose! They’ll give me a ride at headquarters for that.”
    “Were you keeping a close watch on him?” asked Benson.
    The man stared sharply at him to determine if he were being bawled out. Then he saw that The Avenger was merely asking a question.
    “Well, pretty sharp,” he said. “Tate wasn’t under arrest, you know. At the same time, there was enough chance that he was mixed up in this to keep the commissioner interested. He wasn’t to leave here, and any phone calls he made were to be traced.”
    He bit his lip exasperatedly.
    “I watched the doors and thought that was enough. When Tate went up to the attic, I thought no more about it. Had a hunch he wasn’t in on any part of this, so I didn’t even have a small notion he’d pull a sneak out a window. Just goes to show—always believe a guy’s guilty till he’s proved innocent.”
    Benson didn’t bother to point out that this was directly opposite to American legal practice. He asked: “There was no sign that Tate wanted to get away?”
    “None,” said the man. “He went up to the attic. Your man, Newton, came and said he wanted to see him. I sent him up to the attic. Tate wasn’t there. That’s all there is to it. Boy, will I get taken for a ride over this!”
    Josh, it appeared, was still up in the attic. Dick and Mac went up there.
    Harry Tate had converted Brown’s attic into a fairly efficient little laboratory. You could picture him up there under the eaves, striving to perfect an anaesthetic pill that could be administered orally and swiftly in a battlefield operating tent. And never quite getting the result he wanted. Coming up, instead, with the bizarre laughing-murder drug described at Bleek Street.
    Josh greeted The Avenger and had, as might be expected, more to offer than the detective.
    “Mr. Tate must have gotten away just before I got here,” he said. “He went out this window.” He pointed to a dormer window against which a great branch of a tree almost leaned. It would be easy to get down that tree from the top floor of the house. “There are bits of bark scraped off.”
    “How do you know he got away just before you came?” Mac asked.
    “The plainclothesman downstairs had talked to Tate less than an hour before I got here,” Josh said. “But there is another hint as to the time. Tate made up a