The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

warrant help in a thorough search.
    “Smitty,” she said into the tiny transmitter. “Nellie calling. Smitty, this is Nellie. Smitty—”
    “Hello, half-pint,” came the giant’s voice as she held the dime-size receiver to her ear. “In trouble again? O.K. I’ll come and haul you out of it. Where are you?”
    “I’m not in trouble!” Nellie snapped indignantly.
    It was a standard joke of the giant’s that he always had to trail her around and save her pretty hide when she got into jams. Actually, Nellie had saved his oversized hide plenty of times, too, but the big fellow conveniently forgot that.
    “I’m not in trouble at all. But I think I’ve uncovered a possibility on the trail of Brown’s maid, and I think maybe you’d better come out and lend a hand.” She told him where she was. “It’s a big old house with turrets and things on it. Only house like it for blocks around. You can’t miss it. But maybe you’re busy, now?”
    “Nope,” said Smitty. “Cole and I just ran out of work. We’ll be up in a shake.”
    Nellie put the tiny disks back into her skirt pocket, and settled down, across the street from the big house and down a few doors, to wait till Smitty and Cole came. But waiting was a thing Nellie did very badly.
    She bit her smooth red lip in annoyance after ten minutes, looked around and saw that no one was in sight. She hesitated, then decisively started across the street toward the mysterious big house.

CHAPTER VII

Accidents to Order
    Nellie lived for excitement. The little blond positively fed on trouble. More than once her impulsiveness had led her into a horrible mess; but, as Smitty said, she’d probably never learn. She’d always be poking her pretty head into places where it was likely to be knocked off.
    But she certainly couldn’t see signs of real trouble outside the house. She felt pretty virtuous about radioing Smitty at all, instead of just going ahead with an investigation.
    The front door of the place had no knob and was nailed tight. She left that and went to the back. There was a knob here. And something else.
    On the keyhole plate was a tiny, fresh scratch. A key had recently been inserted.
    “So what?” she told herself. “Probably the real estate agent showing a prospect the house.”
    She took from her bag a tool which each of Benson’s aides carried—a flexible length of steel with a tiny hook at the end. Like a flexible crochet needle. With this, she picked the old-fashioned lock.
    She opened the door an inch and listened for a long time. Not one sound came from anywhere in the house. She entered noiselessly and closed the door behind her. She left it open a half inch for a possible fast exit and winced as the spring catch squeaked thinly.
    She was in the ruins of a kitchen. A mouse streaked across the floor, and she had a bad moment. Nellie could contact gunmen without a blink, but a mouse—
    The nasty thing went into a hole and left her alone. She drew a ragged breath and went through the next room, a dining room, into a wide, cluttered hall. And there she had her first sign of something wrong.
    There was a fresh scrap of paper on the floor among a lot of older tatters. She picked it up. It was the waxed paper that comes around sandwiches put up by a store. It was in the doorway of a big room that must have been a parlor at one time. She went into this room.
    A fireplace with a cracked marble facing was at the end, and she placed it as the one from which that chimney led. She hurried to it.
    Yes, there had been a fire in it fairly recently. A fire of paper alone, as far as she could tell. There were no wood ashes around. There were ashes of paper there, though, and she whistled soundlessly as she looked at them.
    You can make out a little of the original paper after it is burned to ash. And Nellie could make out that financial paper had been fed to the flames.
    Stocks and bonds.
    The ashes were cold, so some time had elapsed since they were fired; but