Read Online The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online Page B

clasped peacefully over his vast paunch.
    “Perhaps,” he said, in a wheezy, jovial voice, “we don’t need to know where they took Wight. Perhaps they know the whereabouts of the object we were trying to make Wight get for us. After all, we can do without Wight. Personally, I didn’t care much for the fellow, did you?”
    The young Bond Street model fitted another cigarette into his holder. He nodded.
    He said to Smitty, “We know there is another model of the device that was in Wayne Carroll’s plane. It is somewhere in New York. Perhaps in a safe-deposit box. If you can tell us where it is—or where Wight now is—it will save you a great deal of inconvenience.”
    “Now, you’re way over my head,” said Smitty. “I don’t know what the thing is you’re talking about, how many of them there are, or where any of them are kept.”
    “An honest man,” sighed the fat man. “Well, honest men have certain fundamental traits. One is a disinclination to see the female of the species in distress. If we questioned the young lady . . . er . . . emphatically, and let this large young man watch us do so, interesting results might be obtained.”
    Smitty seemed to swell to twice his size, which was impressive enough to start with. The nearest thugs stepped hastily away from him, guns and all.
    “I guarantee they’d be interesting,” Smitty gritted out.
    The sleek young man with the overgrown cigarette holder took a small puff.
    “We can always do that,” he said. “Let’s try a less clumsy method, first. We have plenty of time, as long as we hold these two as hostages. Suppose we get in touch with the Bleek Street headquarters of this misguided chap, Benson, and offer to trade two of his friends for the information we desire?”
    “Holy smoke!” said one of the gang, with sweat forming on his forehead. “Have you got any idea what you’re sayin’?”
    “Yeah,” said another, looking even more distressed. “I’d rather climb into a lion’s cage and walk up and spit in the big cat’s eye than phone The Avenger and tell him we got a couple buddies of his on ice.”
    The young fellow looked at the fat man, with one eyebrow raised slightly in a bored way.
    “This Benson fellow seems to be rather respected. We are pretty frightened, aren’t we, Merto?”
    “Terrified! Utterly terrified!” murmured the fat man sleepily. “Your idea is a good one, Gerry. Have a man phone from a public pay station, many miles from here—leaving it in a hurry, of course—and we’ll see if a trade can be made.”
    Red was creeping up Smitty’s throat and face at this attitude toward his chief, Richard Benson. It wasn’t one that was encountered very often. Only crooks who were very stupid or who were not familiar with the United States would make such an estimate.

    Smitty said afterward he would never have taken such a chance if he hadn’t been blind mad.
    “I’ll do the phoning myself, Merto,” slim, indolent Gerry said.
    He took two steps toward the door—and Smitty got to the fat man.
    No one who didn’t know the giant ever believed he could move so fast. People didn’t stop to figure it out; they just looked at that tremendous hulk of muscle and gristle and bone and took it for granted that he would be muscle bound and slow.
    Actually, Smitty could move like a streak of light when necessity required. In one enormous bound, he got to the sleepily seated Merto and caught the fat, jowled throat from behind. It was so sudden, so incredible, that even the indolent fellow with the long cigarette holder stared with gaping jaws for an instant. Then his jaws clicked shut.
    But he did not reach for his gun. He raised his hand quickly when half a dozen guns in the hands of the less intelligent thugs aimed for Smitty—and Merto.
    “My mother told me,” said Smitty, “never to deal with underlings. Always go to the man at the top.”
    His huge fingers were biting into the fat neck. Merto had nerve—no denying that.