The Avenger 23 - The Wilder Curse by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

stairwell. The Avenger’s fingers hooked over the sill. He drew himself up and then out.
    The next window in the third-floor line could be reached by leaning far to the side. He reached it, swing up, raised it and slid in.
    He was in a small sitting room where there was a desk with several phones on it and a man behind it. The man whirled as Benson straightened from his catlike entrance. In the man’s hand was a .38 revolver.
    “I thought my servant told you we didn’t want you in here,” the man said.
    The words were composed, but the voice was not. It shook badly. So did the gun. Shaky guns are far more apt to go off than steady ones in the hands of experts.
    “You’re Marsden, aren’t you?” said The Avenger, voice as calm and expressionless as his mask of a face.
    “Yes. And you’re Richard Benson, and I want nothing to do with you—unless I have a gun in my hand. It looks as though Andrew was right, after all.”
    “Andrew? You mean your partner, Andrew Sillers? Right about what?”
    The Avenger’s voice was a powerful tool, a compelling thing. Few could defy its cold vibrancy. Probably Thomas Marsden couldn’t have understood its compulsion, either, if he had not been so frightened. He looked at The Avenger as if in deadly fear for his life.
    “Get out of here!” he said, waving the gun unsteadily.
    His hand touched a button on his desk. The door of the small sitting room opened and a servant in a white jacket came in. He was plump and soft, with a bald head and popping eyes. At least, the eyes were popping when they rested on Benson, who was supposed to have walked peacefully away from the front door.
    “Show this man out,” said Marsden, words much more resolute than his voice. “You have the gun I gave you. Keep it against his back till the door closes on him.”
    The white-jacketed man drew a gun which he seemed to regard with as much fear as he did Benson. He walked around The Avenger and pressed the muzzle against his spine. Benson could feel it quaking against him.
    Now, The Avenger had ways of taking guns away from people. He had ways of making people talk, too, without the use of violence. Quite probably, he could have done both of these things in this instance, but the mention of Andrew Sillers’s name had decided him to leave here peacefully and go at once to see Sillers.
    Marsden had said, “It looks as though Andrew was right, after all.”
    That seemed strange enough to call for investigation.
    “I’ll be back,” he said evenly to Marsden.
    Fear leaped higher in the tall, thin man’s gloomy eyes.
    “The next time you try to break in here, I’ll shoot you on sight,” he yelled.
    His gun covered Dick till The Avenger had gone out of the room. And the servant’s gun trembled against his spine till he had walked out of the apartment.
    But The Avenger wasn’t to talk to Andrew Sillers for a while, yet, which was black misfortune for Andrew Sillers.
    He had just started his car toward Thornton Heights, when the radio came to life.
    “Calling Mr. Benson. Urgent! Mr. Benson.”
    The Avenger said into his own transmitter, “Yes, Nellie. What’s up?”
    “It’s Cole and Mac, chief,” came the little blonde’s voice. “They’re in some kind of trouble. Couldn’t talk. Either Cole or Mac tapped an SOS on his belt-radio transmitter. I just heard it. That’s all I know.”
    “Exact time?” Dick asked.
    “Just a minute ago. Ten thirty-two.”
    “Have Smitty meet me at Carl Foley’s house. That’s where they were last, as far as we know,” said Benson.
    “You mean have Smitty and me meet you, don’t you?” Nellie said hopefully.
    “No. Just Smitty.”
    “Oh!”
    You could fairly see Nellie’s disappointment. The diminutive blonde lived for excitement. And it now looked as if she might miss some.
    The Avenger, pale eyes glinting as they always did when some of his band were in trouble, sped toward the Foley house.

    Smitty’s car shrieked to a stop in front of the