Read Online The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online

try and see if I can contact them. We’ll try for Mac first.”
    Benson sent out a signal that only MacMurdie’s set would receive. He tried several times, but there was no response.
    “Nothing from Mac at all.” The Avenger shook his head, frowning. “Now let’s see about Cole and Smitty.”
    But those signals drew no response, either.

    The reason for that is simple. We’ll have to go back an hour to find out why.
    The printer was extremely old, smeared with black ink and flecks of snuff. After Cole had been talking to him for several minutes, he leaned forward in his desk chair. “Maybe, young feller, I ought to tell you I’m a mite deaf.”
    Cole halted, grinning. “I’m glad you have,” he said. “How much have you heard so far?”
    “That’s right, deaf.”
    Holding the sympathy card he’d found inside the gunman’s straw hat, Cole shouted. “Did you print this?”
    “Yep,” said the ancient printer.
    “For who?”
    “Yep, I printed it.”
    Smitty decided to try a bellow. “For whom?”
    The old man started. “No need to scream, I ain’t stone deaf.” He tattered up out of his chair. “Just let me check my records.”
    They followed him through the labyrinth of twisting corridors and workrooms that made up his ancient printshop.
    “Look at there,” said the printer. “Another darn leak in the roof.”
    Rain was gurgling in through a dollar-size hole in the ceiling, splashing on top of several rusty filing cabinets.
    “Don’t fret,” said the old man, “the records you want ain’t in that part of the storeroom. Yessir, here we are.” He clutched at the handle of a green drawer. Nothing happened. “Dang thing always did stick.”
    Smitty pulled the reluctant drawer out. “There you go.”
    “Now, that type on that particular card was something they called Busino Extra Lite. Never caught on, and it was give up back before the war.”
    “This war?” asked Cole.
    “No, no, the Great War, back in ’Eighteen. This war, he says.” After some digging into the faded file folders, the printer produced a slip of pink paper. “Here it is. I thought I remembered that job. Run off five thousand of them little cards for the Bald Hill Floral Shoppe. See, right here. Five thousand cards incribed With Deepest Sympathy , set in 10-point Busino Extra Lite. Yep, picked up on April 5, 1917.”
    “That’s over twenty-five years ago,” observed Cole.
    “Told you they don’t use that typeface no more.”
    “Whereabouts,” asked Smitty, “is this Bald Hill Floral outfit?”
    “No place.”
    “No place?”
    “They went bust first year of the Depression, even before that fellow Roosevelt took over the country.”
    “Where were they located back then?” Cole asked him.
    “Well, where do you think? Right across the road from the Bald Hill cemetery.”
    “I should have guessed,” grinned Cole.

    “You can have it,” remarked Smitty.
    “Ah, what’s become of your usual Pollyanna side?” asked Cole as the giant parked alongside the tumble-down wrought-iron fence on their left. “Here’s a lovely weed-infested cemetery, which no one has obviously entered, dead or alive, since the reign of Hoover I. Here is this ragtag graveyard full of cracked tombstones and toppled markers being battered with a torrential downfall of rain, and you say it gives you the creeps.”
    “That flower shop we just drove by don’t look so jolly, either.”
    “It does, however, look like the sort of place a gang of hoodlums and bravos might use as a hangout.”
    “Could be.” The big man set the brake. “We’re out of sight of the joint, so let’s mosey back through that woods across the way for a look-see.”
    “Very well, if you’re through admiring the gothic splendor of Bald Hill Cemetery proper.” Cole left the car, pulling down the brim of his hat and turning up the collar of his coat.
    The two Justice, Inc., teammates sprinted across the road and into the wooded area. Soon they were weaving their