The Avenger 20 - The Green Killer by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

men were streaming toward him, having instantly decided that he represented the greater danger. The man with the glasses instantly came to the same decision, and his gun went off, twice, with each barrel carefully aimed.
    What happened to the two little monkey men, at whom the gun had been methodically aimed, is best left to the imagination. A shotgun at close range does ghastly things.
    Nellie’s teeth ground on edge, and she looked toward the bulkhead instead of at the two who had been shot. She saw men tumble out from it at the sound of the shotgun, one after another, till the seven of them beside the leader looked like a regiment.
    Men with poisoned darts faced men with guns! No one had time for the slender little figure of the girl who had drawn the monkey men here. She leaped for the doorway.
    Behind her, shot after shot roared. She didn’t hear the response, but she could imagine it. The response would be the sinistering whispering of the tiny darts.
    She almost tripped over Smitty in the uncertain light of a candle. But bent down over him, shook his vast shoulder, slapped at his cheeks to bring him out of it. He moved under his own power, or he didn’t move. Two men could hardly have carried his bulk, let alone one small girl.
    Smitty groaned, and his eyes opened.
    “Save me the next dance,” he mumbled. Then his eyes opened wider.
    “Hey! What are you doing in here? I thought I told you— What’s all the shooting outside?”
    “Stop the silly questions,” snapped Nellie, “and come on.”
    “Where to?”
    “Away from here, stupid.”
    He got up, still reeling a bit. With her arm around him, they went to the door.
    The space beyond was like a battlefield. Three of Gleason’s men were on the floor, with the dulling eyes of curare victims proclaiming their near-death. Five of the little dark-skinned men were with them.
    The rest of the Indians must have slid out of the boat again, because the other gang were pouring out, too. They were shooting as they went, with no time for the two they left behind.
    “I don’t get it,” said Smitty, going to the opening.
    “Two enemies can be better than one,” said Nellie. “That is, if you can get them fighting each other instead of you.”
    “Oh!” said Smitty.
    He looked out. The little monkey men were worming through the shed wall with the others close behind. It was probable, after shots that would draw every cop for blocks around, that the gang would never use that abandoned boat as headquarters again, would never come back to the yard again.
    “Okay to leave—” began Smitty.
    “Look out!” Nellie cried.
    Smitty didn’t know what it was he was to look out for, but he ducked instantly and instinctively. One of the now-familiar little darts ticked against rusted iron where his head had been.
    Smitty jumped away from the opening. One of the Indians was moving; he had been knocked out, it seemed, instead of killed. He tried feebly to get away from the giant after having shot a dart at his back.
    Smitty kicked the bamboo tube from his fingers and held him with one hand while he ran over his skinny but sinewy frame with the other. He found no more darts in the little quiver the Indian carried.
    He picked the fellow up and held him under one arm.
    “Beat it,” he said to Nellie. “We’ll take this one back to Bleek Street as a souvenir. It’d be a good idea to get out before the police get here. We’d just waste time in questions for which we haven’t the answers, yet.”

    They rolled down the street in Smitty’s car a little before the first squad car arrived. They went to Bleek Street, with their apelike captive silent but squirming on the back seat.
    “All that trouble at the boat just for this!” said Nellie, staring distastefully at the Indian.
    “Oh, we got more than him,” Smitty said. “I overheard some things that might be useful to the chief. For one thing, that gang has set out to snuff us all out. ‘Eliminate’ us, was the nice