The Avenger 36 - Demon Island by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

guys been beating the bush for a couple of days. If Cole just fell in a ditch or something they’d have spotted him by now.”
    The Avenger said, “Yes, that seems likely. Therefore, we have to assume that there are other people on this island. Either that or someone with the motion-picture crew is up to something besides movie making.”
    “Could be that Fanny Fiddler dame,” the giant decided. “She looks like a tough little bimbo.”
    “No, I don’t think she—”
    Off to their left came the sound of someone moving through the forest.
    “We got company,” whispered Smitty.
    The Avenger nodded.
    They began to work their way, making almost no sound, toward the sounds.
    They had covered about a hundred yards when Smitty suddenly exclaimed, “Geeze!”
    A man’s body was sprawled on the sward in front of them.
    Benson knelt beside him and felt his pulse. “Dead,” he said. “Only minutes ago.”
    Smitty hunkered down. “It ain’t Cole?”
    “No,” said the Avenger, standing up. “He may be someone from the movie gang, but I don’t recognize him. Bring him back to the castle, Smitty. Give this area a good going over first.”
    “You going to try to catch . . . whoever it was?”
    Without replying the Avenger moved away from the body of Tucker.

    A swirl of white up ahead. Not mist but cloth.
    The Avenger, bent low, stalked swiftly among the trees.
    He was trailing a woman. He was fairly certain of that. He couldn’t identify her in the few seconds he’d seen her up ahead in the fog.
    A woman in a flowing white gown.
    His acute hearing picked up the faint signs of her passage through the misty forest.
    She was making her way toward the castle.
    The man she had killed wasn’t anyone who had come to Demon Island to work on Terence O’Malley’s film. Then who is he? the Avenger asked himself.
    Quite probably he was someone who knew something of the whereabouts of Cole Wilson. And now he was dead, and beyond telling them anything.
    The Avenger slowed, realizing that he no longer heard anything from the fleeing girl.
    There was only silence.
    Has she stopped? he wondered.
    He took another careful step ahead.
    Then something hit him in the back, a tremendous blow between the shoulder blades.
    It threw the Avenger face forward onto the ground.
    He was up in an instant, his unique .22 pistol in his hand.
    There was no one there. Nothing. Only the fog.

CHAPTER XII

Night Sounds
    She was in the musty, shadowy room and she didn’t know why. She had awakened a moment ago and found herself putting on her night dress and robe.
    Fanny Fiddler glanced around her, shivering.
    This was the wardrobe room. The clothes and costumes for Demon Island hung here. Props sat in two trunks against the stone wall. Through the one high window came a little fogged moonlight.
    The dark-haired girl tied and untied and tied again the cord belt of her robe. I’m not supposed to be here, she thought.
    She’d been in bed, trying to read a book of Carl Sandburg poems. She’d fallen asleep. Then there’d been . . . what?
    She pressed a hand to her throat.
    Something painful had happened then. But what?
    Her mother had died very young. Lord, if it was something like that . . . some kind of attacks that would kill her.
    No, but it wasn’t. It was . . . nothing. She looked into her mind and couldn’t get a single picture of what had happened.
    It had been the same way the other night. The night that good-looking Wilson guy had disappeared. Fanny knew Terry O’Malley thought she was keeping something back from him. She really wasn’t.
    Well, she had a terrible feeling that something very bad was happening to her. She didn’t want to talk about it. Not to anybody.
    You couldn’t really confide in anybody anyway. Tell somebody you were scared to death. Or that you were darned afraid you were going to die. You wouldn’t get sympathy. You’d just as likely find an item about it in Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons.
    Now, though, she’d