The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

Homburg hat.
    The cab was nearing the downtown section. It had stopped twice for lights.
    Benson took the top tray from the case and revealed wigs on the second. He slipped a light brown one with gray streaks over his own shock of thick white hair. He closed the case and snapped it. The case itself was capable of disguise. It had a tan slipcover on it. When this was reversed, it became a gray bag with a number of foreign labels on it.
    The cab stopped for another light. There were many people on the walks here, and cars lined the curb.
    The Avenger softly opened the door of the cab and slid out, leaving a bill on the seat to take care of his fare. He mingled with crowds on the walk as the cab went ahead on the green light.
    The car behind the cab suddenly slowed and two men got out. They had seen the shape slide from the stealthily opened cab door, and were looking for it.
    But The Avenger had entered that cab as Benson, with a tan bag. He left it as another person, with a gray bag.
    He walked right past the two without being identified, and went on.

    Back at the Gray Dragon, Nellie Gray had just finished singing her first number. It was a success. The customers applauded till she knew she had a place here—as long as Sisco thought she was a pretty crook from Seattle.
    She went back to her dressing room, and Rosabel helped her out of her gown and into a plain white, strapless evening dress that made her as lovely as a flower.
    But Rosabel shook her trim black head.
    “This man, Sisco, was in trying to pump me,” she said, in a whisper, as her fingers flew with hooks and fastenings. “He kept asking about Seattle. I don’t know anything about Seattle. I’ve never been there.”
    “It’s all right,” Nellie whispered back. “The less we tell, the more sure he’ll be that we have things in our past we don’t want to talk about.”
    “He’s a bad man,” said Rosabel, pursing her lips.
    “That’s why we’re here,” shrugged Nellie.
    She put a bright, set smile on her lips, and sallied forth in the white dress. It wasn’t time for her next song, but she had an idea Sisco wouldn’t mind if she circulated among the customers a little.
    And if she did that, she might learn something.
    She hadn’t gotten out the dressing-room door, past the orchestra dais, when suddenly she stiffened and stood flat against the wall, listening.
    She had heard the name—Martineau!
    The orchestra was off the dais. There was a table next to the bass fiddle. At this, two men sat over highballs. One was so smooth-skinned and pink-cheeked that he looked almost doll-faced. The other was as fat and soft-looking as a jellyfish. But a jellyfish with hard, cold eyes.
    Nellie Gray didn’t know who the soft, fat man was. But she knew the doll-faced man.
    He was Buddy Wilson, public enemy, notorious killer.
    “Talk’s dying down,” was the next thing Nellie heard after the mention of that name The Avenger had told them was so important. The fat man’s tone was satisfied, smug. “The bumpoff’s on page three now. Pretty soon it’ll be out completely. And that’ll be that.”
    The man with the cheeks of a girl and the shallow, vicious eyes of a killer-shark, nodded.
    “Hot while it lasted,” he agreed, “but it’s comin’ off all right. That’s because of the way the old guy got it. Smart! When a judge is shot in a joint like the Friday the Thirteenth Club, with a brunette sweetie like Lila Belle beside him, the dear public thinks the judge is too crooked to worry about. We framed him nice!”
    “We?” said the fat man sardonically.
    The public enemy’s shallow eyes tightened in a way to send shivers down your spine.
    “All right,” he growled, “so I wasn’t in on it. But I helped rig it up. We all did. So I guess I can say we if I want—”

    There were steps down the narrow corridor off which were the dressing rooms. Nellie instantly went on out the door, smiling brightly and impersonally, as if she had been walking all