The Avenger 2 - The Yellow Hoard by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

Benson’s dark-gray coat, but his lithe twist saved further damage. He caught the man’s arm and yanked him bodily out of the car. The coupé, driverless, crashed into the rear of a parked truck. Benson and the man rolled in the street.
    The man got up, dazed, and leaped for Benson. And Benson struck.
    At the last moment, the gray fox of a man pulled his punch a little. If he hadn’t, he would have broken the neck of the killer in the brown cap.
    He wanted to break the man’s neck. If ever a man had deserved death—but, dead, he’d be no good to anyone. Alive—he might be.
    Benson scooped up the man’s limp body, and ran with it to his old car with the mighty, special motor under the shabby hood. He got away as police sirens sounded at the far end of the street.

CHAPTER VI

The Veil of Mystery
    In the huge room on the third floor of Benson’s unique headquarters in Bleek Street, were Nellie Gray, Smitty, and MacMurdie.
    The girl, slim and dainty and pink-and-white as a Dresden doll, was staring around as she had several times before.
    “To get a layout like this,” she said, “you must rob the United States mint itself about twice a year.”
    Mac had just come from his store. He stared at Smitty, with his sandy ropes of eyebrows going up over his frosty-blue eyes, and his sandy-red hair wrinkling down on his freckled forehead.
    “She thinks we’re crooks,” the giant Smitty explained.
    Nellie sniffed.
    “She thinks we’re the ones who are after the Mexican bricks,” Smitty added.
    MacMurdie shook his dour Scots head.
    “She’s seen the chief, and still thinks we’re crooks?” He took a step toward Nellie. “Whoosh! Ye’re a very suspectin’ kind of gurrrl, I’m thinkin’.”
    “Suppose,” said Nellie Gray, “you stop where you are, my Scots friend. You could shoot me, from a distance, but you won’t, because you want me alive to question me. But you’d better not lay a hand on me.”
    “Take the advice, Mac,” said Smitty, grinning. “She looks little and harmless, with those big innocent eyes. But she can toss men around like a juggler keeping three billiard balls in the air at the same tune.”
    “Ye’re joking,” said Mac, staring at the slim and dainty-looking Nellie Gray.
    “Try it,” said Smitty.
    “See here!” snapped Nellie, with glints in the “big innocent” eyes. “I’m no guinea pig to experiment on.”
    But Mac was curious. He grabbed her left arm, just to see what in the world Smitty was talking about.
    He saw. Stars.
    Nellie Gray whirled. Mac, feet in a forward line from his last step, perforce whirled, too. He was in balance frontward and backward, but not sideways. He toppled sideways, pawing the air with his free hand as he swayed. But Nellie didn’t stop there. She kept right on turning, and Mac, with one ankle swept from under him by a dainty No. 3 patent-leather pump, loosed her arm before his own should break and smashed in a long slide on the floor against the carved leg of a davenport.

    He got up, rubbing his arm, too incredulous to be angry.
    “Whoosh!” he said, staring at the softly rounded, slim figure with bulging blue eyes. “Ye didn’t do that! Ye couldn’t have! It would take a man’s strength to toss my weight like that.”
    “A man’s strength did it,” said Nellie.
    “Whose? Not Smitty. He was clear over there all the time—”
    “You did it,” said Nellie. “Yours was the man’s strength that tossed you. You lunged at me like a clumsy ox, and I added a little new direction to your weight and the strength of your lunge and, like the song says, you came out there.”
    “They call it jujitsu, Mac,” said Smitty.
    “If ye don’t wipe the grin off yer silly face, ye overgrown clown,” burred Mac, “I’ll wipe it off for ye!”
    “You mean you will if you get our little friend to help you,” taunted Smitty.
    The Scot was about to retort to that one when the door opened. All three swung toward it.
    Benson came in. His eyes