Читать книгу The Avenger - Emile C. Tepperman - Страница 10

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IT is not strange that Dick Benson, as he paced impatiently up and down the lobby of the cozy little hotel, was unaware of the existence of Emma Puglese. For Emma lived eighty miles away in the heart of one of the slum sections of New York City, and Benson had never met her.

Yet his fate and hers—and perhaps the fate of a nation—were inextricably bound together, by threads which the Fates had begun to weave a long time ago.

At the moment, however, Benson's thoughts were far removed from Emma Puglese, whom he did not even know. They were upon a man named Crawford. He had driven eight miles from New York with Nellie Gray to meet this George Crawford, and now the man was forty-five minutes late.

As Benson paced up and down, Nellie Gray, demure in her slim young beauty, stood at the window looking out at Main Street.

It was a pretty little colonial hotel that Crawford had chosen for his appointment. It catered mainly to tourists, for Main Street was part of Linden Highway, which ran right through the town of Postville. But now, with gasoline being rationed, there were hardly any tourists. There were only two or three patrons in the dining room, and the clerk behind the desk at the rear was dozing fitfully.

At the window, Nellie Gray kept watch. The hotel was situated right where Main Street curved. From here the highway ran due west, up a hill into the setting sun. And the road was as straight as a ruler. To Nellie it looked like a broad ribbon laid carefully up the side of the hill, disappearing over the top.

She brushed the blond hair from her face and said, "I'm hungry, Dick. Why can't we eat while we wait?"

"I'm afraid we won't have time," he told her. "I've never known Crawford to be late. If he isn't here in five minutes, we'll drive up to his estate."

"But he particularly asked you not to. He was insistent when he phoned."

"I know. But I'm afraid something's happened to him."

"He only said his chauffeur had been kidnaped. Why should anyone want to kidnap a chauffeur?"

"I don't know, Nellie. He said he'd explain when he met us."

"But if that's all—"

"It's not quite all, Nellie. He also said something about not knowing where to turn; that the only man he could have looked to for help had been killed today in a plane crash."

"Ah!" Nellie's eyes narrowed. They were pretty blue eyes, but they were keenly intelligent. Indeed, she had to be intelligent to be able to work with a man like Benson.

"The teletype!" she exclaimed. "I saw it on the teletype before we left. Admiral Miles, of Naval Intelligence, was killed in a plane crash at Pensacola this afternoon!"

In their headquarters in New York they had a teletype machine which received, in addition to all the news services, the latest flashes from the police departments of nine States, and the confidential releases of the F.B.I.

For that headquarters, located not far from New York's East Side, was known throughout the world as Justice, Inc. And Dick Benson, its guiding genius, was known as The Avenger. To that building on Bleek Street in New York, came men and women from all the far corners of the world—men and women who could not find justice anywhere else; men and women who found themselves beaten in a hopeless fight against criminals in high places, beyond the reach of the law. Those men and women The Avenger helped. For he could go where the police dared not. His justice was neither blind nor shackled.

And so it was that the poor man came to Justice, Inc., when he had not the funds to hire a lawyer in a ten-dollar case, while the millionaire came when it was his only hope.

Of all these Benson selected those matters which plainly demanded his peculiar kind of justice. With untold wealth at his command, and ably assisted by a close-knit circle of assistants, he had made the name of The Avenger a synonym for ruthless war upon injustice.

He had chosen to answer Crawford's call tonight, because he had known Crawford well in other years; and though the man was wealthy, he had mentioned over the phone that this was a matter which might well involve the country's safety.

But now he was late, and Benson knew that the web of the Fates was being tightly spun.

Nellie Gray stiffened as she glimpsed a car which appeared over the rim of the hill, heading down toward town, with the sun splashing golden behind it.

"Dick!" she exclaimed. "There's a car. It's a Rolls-Royce. It must be Crawford!"

As they both watched the car, Nellie spoke over her shoulder. "When Crawford called, you told me to listen in on the extension, but I had to leave it for a moment to answer another phone. I just caught part of something he said to you about—it sounded like a black tulip."

"Yes," said Dick. "He did say something about a black tulip. But he was excited, and he jumped from one thing to another. He said something about looking out for the black tulip."

"I've never heard of such a thing," Nellie said. "It must be horrid. Imagine a tulip being all black!"

"During the last war," Benson said slowly, "there was a vicious German spy who passed himself off in this country as a Dutchman. He went by the name of Pieter van der Heusen. He killed without compunction, and he had no mercy for men or women or children. But he had an abnormal love of flowers. He spent all his spare time in horticulture. It was said that his greatest ambition in life was to develop a black species of tulip!"

Nellie's eyes were on the Rolls-Royce, which was tearing down the road at a terrific rate of speed.

"Crawford's in an awful hurry," she said. "But tell me about this Pieter van der Heusen. Was he caught?"

Benson shook his head. "No. He operated in this country all through the war, and then he went back to Germany and retired to grow tulips. No one knows whether he is still alive. If he is—"

Benson left the thought unfinished, and Nellie said slowly, "I wonder—"

She broke off, gasping, and pointed to the big Rolls-Royce. It was nearing the bottom of the hill, but instead of slowing down for the curve, its pace was increasing.

Nellie frowned. "He must have plenty of confidence in his brakes."

She uttered a short cry as the car leveled off at the foot of the hill and headed directly for the hotel, never slackening its speed. Now, with the Rolls less than a hundred feet away, they could clearly see George Crawford seated behind the wheel. He was upright, and seemed to be leaning backward, and his mouth was working spasmodically as if he were trying to shout to them. He seemed to be wearing a voluminous white coat of some sort, which was on backward. The car was so close to the hotel now that they could see the coat had no lapels or buttons.

"It's Crawford!" Nellie exclaimed. "He must have lost control—"

She had no chance to finish for she was suddenly seized around the waist from behind by Dick Benson. He fairly lifted her off the floor, and leaped backward toward the desk at the rear of the lobby.

Benson didn't move a fraction of a second too soon, for he had hardly carried Nellie to the safety of the desk at the rear of the lobby before the heavy Rolls-Royce, traveling straight as an arrow, jumped the curb and crashed head-on into the front of the hotel.

The smashing impact of the immense juggernaut tore away part of the wall and the doorway and sent chunks of plaster, brick and glass flying in all directions. The car crashed into the lobby, its front tires blowing out with cracking explosions like pistol shots. The hood became a mass of bent and twisted metal. Debris came piling down upon the car as one of the rafters in the lobby ceiling gave way. For a moment the whole building shook as if it might come tumbling down.

Then the tremor ceased, the plaster stopped falling, and the wrecked car came to rest, half in and half out of the lobby.

For the space of a couple of minutes neither the clerk nor the people in the restaurant moved. They were stunned by the sudden catastrophe.

But Dick Benson released his hold upon Nellie Gray and leaped to the side of the car.

Nellie shouted, "Look out, Dick, it may explode!"

He disregarded the warning and sprang to the door of the Rolls, wrenching at the handle. But the door would not open.

The figure of George Crawford sat erect and unmoving behind the wheel. The wheel was jammed into his chest, and the top of the car was crushed down upon his skull. He was dead, of course, but his body was still sitting upright.

Nellie Gray came up alongside of Benson and uttered a low gasp of horror.

"Dick! He's...he's wearing, a strait jacket!"

Benson nodded grimly.

Crawford's torso was incased in a white strait jacket, with the arms lashed across his chest so that he had been powerless to move as the heavy car hurtled down the hill, carrying him to destruction.

"It must have taken a fiendish imagination to conceive a thing like this!" Benson said. He pointed to two heavy wires, running from the steering wheel down to eye screws in the floor board. That was what had kept the car straight and true on its coarse. Crawford's body was also lashed to the seat so that he had remained erect all through the wild ride. Incased in the strait jacket, he had been helpless to do a single thing to save himself.

"Who could have done it?" Nellie demanded.

Benson was already reaching in through the shattered window. Pinned to Crawford's strait jacket there was a white card, perhaps five inches long and three inches wide.

"This may answer your question, Nellie." he said. He removed the card and held it so that she could read it. The message was written in indelible ink in a bold and striking longhand:

To the Avenger:

Here is your friend, Crawford, with my compliments. He signed his death warrant when he sent for you. Will you take a bit of advice, Mr. Avenger? Go home. Go back at once, and forget what Crawford told you. Otherwise, I shall wipe you out—and all those associated with you in Justice, Inc. Believe me, Mr. Richard Benson alias The Avenger, I can destroy you as easily as I destroyed Crawford.

There was no signature to the note. But attached to the card by its stem, just below the message, there was a single dwarf tulip. It had just begun to open. Its petals were of the deepest black, flecked here and there with blobs of red, which resembled nothing so much as drops of blood.

Somehow, though the flower was in itself satanically beautiful, its appearance afforded no sensation of pleasure, but rather one of horror. For no tulip had ever been grown so small, or with black leaves.

Some monstrous horticulturist must have taken a keen and evil joy in thus producing a horrid perversion of nature; perhaps the same kind of twisted mind which had devised the hellish scheme of sending Crawford hurtling to his death in a strait jacket.

Nellie Gray stared wide-eyed at the strange and startling flower which comprised the only signature to the note.

"The Black Tulip!" she said in a low, tense voice.