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

the time and had not halted at all.
    The maker of the steps behind her was Sisco. He had come from one of the other dressing rooms. He emerged into the café room a little after Nellie, stared at her shapely back with a faint frown in his greenish eyes; then he went on to the nearby table where Buddy Wilson and the fat man were.
    And Nellie, in a few minutes, returned to her dressing room. She plugged her tiny, short-wave radio, concealed in a make-up box, into the socket designed for a curling iron, and tried to get the Avenger in order to report.
    She got no answer, so she carefully hid the little set and started back to the café room.
    Sisco stared at her with that dangerous half-frown still in his eyes, as she went to the orchestra dais to sing her next number.

CHAPTER VI

“Shock ’Em to Death!”
    The drugstore was a small but immaculate place. The stock was neatly arranged and complete. More to the point, the soda fountain was swell. And the maple-nut sundaes the place put out were masterpieces.
    So, at least, thought Joshua Elijah Newton. And Josh should know, he was a connoisseur of maple-nut sundaes.
    Whenever the long, thin, gangling colored man had the chance, he went for maple-nut sundaes. Lots of them. Enough every day, you’d have thought, to have made him hog-fat. He sat at the soda fountain of the neat little drugstore, now, over his fourth sundae in an hour and a half or so, with the man behind the counter staring at him with bulging eyes. Such a thin body ought to bulge with that many sundaes. But Josh’s didn’t seem to.
    “Gimme ’nuther,” he said, licking the spoon from the last gooey bite of the fourth sundae.
    “Another?” echoed the proprietor.
    “Yash, suh. They’s sho’ swell.”
    Josh tackled his fifth maple-nut sundae with gusto. But as he did so he kept close watch out the window.
    Looking sleepier and lazier than ever, Josh was as alert, really, as a hound dog on a chase. But when the colored man was most alert, he seemed sleepiest.
    “When the tiger roars and lashes his tail,” he always said, “folks go for their guns. When he sleeps in the sun, they pay him no mind.” Josh was a bit of a philosopher in his way.
    The drugstore was three blocks from Judge Broadbough’s home. It was on the street that anyone in that house would take if going to stores, transportation or any other outside interest.
    In the judge’s home there was a slick-haired, light-tan houseman by the name of Rill—Tosephus Rill. According to The Avenger’s order, Josh meant to take the place very soon of said slick-haired, light-tan houseboy.
    He was only waiting for him to appear down this street, as he was almost bound to do sooner or later.

    Josh wasn’t quite through with his fifth sundae when Tosephus Rill appeared on the other side of the street, going toward the streetcar fine. Regretfully, Josh paid for his sundaes and left the remnant of the fifth.
    He crossed the street.
    “To catch flies, use neither vinegar nor honey,” was one of Josh’s axioms. “Shock ’em to death.”
    He caught up with the natty Tosephus and tapped him on the shoulder. Judge Broadbough’s servant turned.
    Tosephus had on a wasp-waisted blue overcoat with tones of purple. His collar was about a half inch wide, with a huge-knotted tie. His shoes were mahogany in shade, under light-gray pants legs. His hair was mirror-shiny at the sides where it showed under a snappy gray hat. From the hair came a musky odor of pomade.
    He stared distastefully at Josh.
    “Well?” he said, in the tone of an important man in a hurry.
    “Hello, cousin,” said Josh, grinning widely.
    Tosephus gaped, then scowled.
    “What’s this yo’re pullin’ on me boy? Ah ain’t got no cousins. Leastwise not in Ashton City.”
    “Ef’n yo’ is Tosephus Rill, yas, yo’ has,” said Josh, beaming more widely.
    “If yo’ think yo’ can put the bee on me fo’ cash money—”
    “It’s de othah way ’round, Cousin Tosephus,” said