The Avenger 18 - Death in Slow Motion by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

please.”
    “One-and-a-half-ton truck, closed, dark-brown, with Atlantic Tool and Die Company lettered on it. Fairly new. Two men in it.”
    There was a phone at the gate, in a little house of its own like a police call box. Benson used it as such, getting in touch with headquarters. His voice was calm but vibrant, and he seemed two feet taller than his actual size.
    “Have two men been found dead or hurt in the vicinity of the Manhattan Gasket Company?” he asked.
    In a moment a very respectful voice replied, “No, sir. No report of anybody.”
    “I think there may be such a report soon. If so, get in touch with me here.”
    The Avenger hung up and turned back to the guard.
    “Just what did the two men from the truck do when they got inside?”
    “The driver,” said the guard, “stayed at the loading platform and helped unload the truck. The other man with him, a young fellow with kind of narrow eyes and a mouth a little thinner than most, walked to the employees’ entrance. I didn’t pay much attention; figured he had a friend working here.”
    “Then?”
    “I turned away. I looked back, and he was out of sight; had stepped inside, I guess. In a minute or two he was at the door again. After that, the truck was ready to go; so he climbed in and went out with it.”
    “You heard nothing?”
    “I heard a kind of muffled thump. That was all. And everything looked all right,” said the guard sheepishly, “so I didn’t investigate. Which I should have done.”
    “That must have been when the workman in the employees’ entrance was shot,” said The Avenger. “Did you examine these men when they drove in?”
    “I sure did,” said the guard. “Searched ’em from stem to stern.”
    “How is it you didn’t find the young fellow’s gun?”
    “I don’t know,” said the man, honestly perplexed. “He didn’t have anything on him bigger than a pocketknife. Neither did the other. And there wasn’t anything in the truck but just the stuff due here. My pal went over the truck while I went over the two guys.”
    The phone rang. It was headquarters.
    “You must have looked into a crystal ball, Mr. Benson,” said a police captain. “We’ve just had a report of the finding of two men near the Manhattan Gasket Company, in a boarded-up, vacant building. They were slugged, and slugged for keeps. One is dead; the other is unconscious and may never come out of it. No identification.”
    “I think you will find,” said The Avenger, “that they worked for the Atlantic Tool and Die Company. Thank you for calling me.”
    So that was confirmed. Benson dispatched Mac and Smitty to see if they could find the truck. It had probably been abandoned by now, but there might be vital clues in it. Then he went back to the guard.
    “You say there was no one at all in the yard save you and the other guard and the two from that truck?”
    The guard started to shake his head, then paused.
    “Say! There was one other person. I wonder—” He shrugged. “There was Old Mitch.”
    “Old Mitch?”
    “An old bum who makes his living off the streets and out of junk heaps. Comes around here every so often for what he can salvage. We let him take wood scraps and stuff. Crusty old guy, but he has more spunk than most.”
    “Was he anywhere near that truck?”
    “No,” said the guard, thinking back, detail by detail. “Let’s see. He was over there by that big crate. The young fella walked from the loading platform past it and—I remember. Old Mitch looked as if he’d like to kill him, and yet as if he was deathly afraid of him, too. Old Mitch hid behind the crate. I don’t think the young guy ever saw him.”
    The Avenger’s cold and glacial eyes were unrevealing. He went to his car.
    In the plant, he had learned the name of one workman near the time clock who had seen the young fellow from the truck. A man who had been hit particularly hard by the mysterious, slow-motion doom. The Avenger went to the address of that