The Avenger 35 - The Iron Skull by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

crate.
    The man kicked out, foot connecting with Smitty’s knee. “Yow!” said the giant. He managed to clutch at the man’s coat lapel for a few seconds, then let go and went hopping around and howling.
    The other thug had disengaged himself from the muddle of cartons. “Let’s scram. This jerk’s too tough!”
    His associate threw a body block into Smitty and then ran to the fallen crates. “Yeah, let’s lam!”
    “Yow! Ow!” cried the hopping giant.
    The two hoods ran for the rear door of the warehouse and thrust out into the cold day.
    Smitty ceased his cavorting. He straightened up, smiling to himself. “Lady bird, lady bird,” he said, “fly away home.”

CHAPTER XIII

Talking Business
    Cole Wilson did not flinch, did not turn away. “Pleased to meet you,” he said in a normal voice.
    The Iron Skull crumpled his silken hood in his flesh-and-blood hand. Only half of his face had skin on it. The right side was made of glistening metal. The right eye was obviously glass. His mouth opened in an odd up-and-down way, like that of a ventriloquist’s dummy. His teeth were silver. “I didn’t return myself completely to my earlier handsomeness,” he told Cole.
    “So I surmised.”
    The Iron Skull laughed, little sharp puffs of laughter spurting out through metal teeth. “You may know that it was common once, some centuries ago, to wear a tiny replica of a human skull around one’s neck. A memento mori. In the midst of life we are in death, and all that.” Touching his flesh fingers to the metal side of his face, he laughed once more. “With a similar purpose I let my face remain this way to remind myself that I am now part machine.”
    “Myself, I’d have settled for a string around the finger.”
    “I admire your calm, Mr. Wilson,” said the Iron Skull. “Very few people can look me in the face without showing some sign of revulsion.”
    Cole watched him for several silent seconds. “Now that we’ve had our Lon Chaney interlude and everybody’s unmasked,” he said, “suppose you tell me why we’re here.”
    The Iron Skull backed his chair toward the wall, reached up with his live hand, and pulled a tasseled bellpull. “Yes, an excellent suggestion. We’ll get down to business.” He came rolling back toward Cole. “Let me point out that I have a proposition for you. Not for the rest of your associates.”
    “I don’t know as how we want to break up the act.”
    “That’s not one of the choices you have to make.”
    The door at the Iron Skull’s back opened. Plump Nevins came in, followed by the frail older man.
    “Yes, sir?” said Nevins.
    “I understand,” said the Iron Skull, without looking around at them, “that there have been several more failures.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call them—” began Nevins.
    “You bungling fools!” cried the Iron Skull.
    “What happened,” said the frail old man, “couldn’t be help—”
    “And as for you, Clareson! Wasn’t the Kirby Macauley robot your special pride and joy? Now where is it? In the hands of the very people we are sworn to destroy.”
    “The monitoring equipment is in perfect order,” said frail old Clareson. “I don’t see how I can be held responsible for the Gray girl’s realizing it was a robot. It seems to me the fault, if any, lies in the design and not—”
    “I cannot work with you any longer!” The Iron Skull pushed down hard with one hand on the arm of his wheelchair. His legs made a mechanical creaking as he stood.
    The old man put his hands up in front of his face, protesting, “No, I didn’t do—”
    The Iron Skull stared at him and the artificial eye began to glow red. A thin line of intense scarlet light shot from the eye to the cringing Clareson.
    The old man screamed as the line of light burned into him. It went straight through his chest, starting the wall behind him to smoldering. He died as he toppled over to the floor.
    The burning eye clicked off. “Do something about that