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

perishable,” he shouted. “You want me to leave it sitting out here, or what?”
    Two more minutes went by. Far off, on the other side of the low hills, thunder started rumbling.
    The truck driver squatted, putting his eyes to the keyhole. At the same time he rattled the doorknob. “Wake up in there,” he urged. “I got six dozen carnations for you guys.”
    The front door didn’t open, but from around the side of the building came a very thin man in a yellow slicker. “What seems to be the trouble, young man?”
    “You the Bald Hill Floral Shoppe?” asked the Avenger.
    “Closed for the duration,” said the thin man.
    “Then why in blazes are you ordering six dozen of our best-quality carnations?”
    “We’re not, nobody did.”
    Benson strode back to the cab of his truck, grabbed a clipboard off the front seat. “I got the bill of lading right here and it states—”
    “This states you better beat it.” A gun, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, appeared in his hand. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any.”
    “Listen,” persisted Benson, “somebody ordered the flowers, and you’re going to have to pay for them.”
    “Don’t you hear very well?” The thin man jabbed the gun at the Avenger. “Get in that jalopy and get moving away from here.”
    “I think not.” The Avenger’s foot kicked up, connecting with the thin man’s gun hand.
    “Damn!” The weapon went spinning up out of his grasp.
    Before the thin man could do anything beyond lifting his head to watch the gun climb, Benson had taken hold of his throat. The Avenger pressed certain spots in the man’s neck.
    The thin man had no choice. He passed out, fell down onto the muddy gravel.
    Taking hold of the unconscious man by the armpits, the Avenger dragged him around to the rear of the panel truck.
    Before his hand reached the door handle, another gunman appeared on the scene, wearing also a yellow slicker, running toward him, carrying a shotgun.
    “Hey, buddy, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    The Avenger turned to face him. “Collecting,” he answered.
    “Huh? Collecting what?” He came up to within a couple of feet of the rear of the truck.
    “Hoodlums.”
    “Oh, yeah? Well, you—”
    All at once, Benson threw himself to the ground.
    The back doors of the truck slammed open. The left-hand one took the shotgun man in the nose, elbow, and knee.
    He howled, went flapping back about a dozen feet before falling down on his backside. Muddy water splashed as he sat.
    The Avenger scooted over to him, knocked the shotgun out of his hands. “You might as well stay down,” he said to the sprawled man.
    Two chops to the side of the head accomplished that.
    “Reinforcements,” warned Nellie, who’d swung the metal doors open into the man’s face.
    Two more gunmen were trotting around the side of the stone shop. They wasted no time in talk or warnings. They started shooting.
    The Avenger wasn’t where he had been when the guns were aimed and fired. Neither the slug from Straw-hat’s right-hand automatic nor the scatter of pellets from the other man’s shotgun came near him.
    Benson kept rolling across the gravel. When he bounded to his feet, there was a weapon in each hand—in his right, the unique pistol he had dubbed Mike, and in his left the exceptional knife he called Ike.
    “Drop it,” warned Straw-hat, his fingers tightening on the triggers of both automatics.
    But even as he spoke, a .22 slug was whizzing from the gun. It deftly creased his skull. Straw-hat dropped.
    The knife blade sliced at the other man’s hands. He cried out in pain, let go of his shotgun. He slapped at each hand in turn, splashing blood all over the front of his yellow raincoat. The rain swiftly washed it away.
    Nellie sprinted over to him, twisted an arm behind his back. “Stand still,” she suggested.
    “I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, I’m going to bleed to death before your eyes.”
    “Nonsense,” said the blonde. “Okay,