The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

he had rendered unconscious with the delicate precision of his fingers. He went through his pockets. One possession of the dead veterinarian was there. It was a small black book. The blank pages of the book were alternate yellow and white. The doctor’s letterhead was printed at the top of the pages, and lines were ruled in bill form.
    It was a fairly new book, with only eight entries in it The entries described pets he had worked on. Benson thumbed through it. There were three entries concerning cats, one for a pet monkey, one for a pony, and three for dogs. The entries regarding the dogs read:
Breed, Airedale. Answers name of Tierre. Distemper.
    Breed, Dachshund. Answers name of Bob. Vocal cords cut.
    Breed, Dachshund. Answers name of Gordo. Crushed left front paw.
    This little case book, it seemed, was what the three men had come here for. Its attempted theft was responsible for the death of the veterinarian, Quinn.
    The Avenger pocketed it and went out to phone headquarters and have the unconscious man booked for murder.

CHAPTER VII

Two in Trouble
    In the late afternoon of that day, Nan Stanton, in Dr. Fram’s anteroom, wrote down the name of the latest visitor. It was strictly routine. She listed all who came to see the doctor.
    This man was quite well known for his wealth and his power in the business world. He was Tetlow Adams, railroad magnate and mine owner.
    Adams was a husky man of sixty, still retaining the straightness of body and wideness of shoulder gained in his youth by hard labor on the roadbed of one of the railroads he now controlled in Wall Street.
    He had a hard blue eye, a bluish, close-shaven jaw hinting that he was not a person to trifle with, and a craggy nose twisted a little to one side from having been broken in a fight long ago.
    Nan, smiling, went into Fram’s office, and came out again at once.
    “You can go right in,” she said. “Dr. Fram is expecting you.”
    The railroad and mining man went into the inner office. Nan completed her entry of the visit: time, date and the rest. Purely routine.
    It seemed that her routine was to be interrupted for a while. Dr. Fram came out and stood looking down at his pretty brown-haired secretary. His middle finger touched his trim little goatee gently.
    “Miss Stanton,” he said, “I’d like you to go back to the New York office, please. Open it again and take charge.”
    In Nan’s brown eyes appeared the natural wonder as to why he wanted her in an empty office. Fram continued pleasantly: “I’m thinking of running up to New York every other week or so. I have things well started here in Washington on my sanity test bill. You may make appointments for next week in New York.”
    “You want me to go at once?” asked the girl.
    “At once, please,” Fram said.
    Nan packed some papers for the New York files in a briefcase, checked out of her hotel and took the next train from Washington.
    She ate on the train; and then, on arriving in New York, she took a cab for the office instead of the small apartment she maintained in lower Manhattan. Nan was like that. The interests of her employer came first The papers in her briefcase were important. Therefore, she would file them first in the office vault, then go home.
    It was an unfortunate act of loyalty.
    Fram’s office was near the downtown financial section in a building with so many offices of professional men that it was kept open all night. It was not like the average big building—hard to get into after regular hours.
    Nan nodded to the elevator starter, took an elevator to the eighteenth floor and went to where Fram’s suite was located. As she went, she hummed a tune from a recent movie, and thought of the things she wanted to catch up on now that she was back home.
    If there was anything she did not think of, it was danger. She saw no one in the eighteenth-floor corridor, but that was not unusual at eleven o’clock at night. She inserted her key in the lock of Fram’s suite, opened