Free The Avenger 17 - Nevlo by Kenneth Robeson Page A

or corridor, instead of a room. Barely to be seen was the dim white blotch of a man’s face in the darkness.
    But Smitty, silhouetted against the stars, was more easily to be observed.
    There was a gasp as the man inside noticed the unfamiliar size of the one who opened the door. The gasp was preliminary to a shout. But the shout was never uttered.
    Smitty’s right hand took up its throttling task on a new throat. It shot forward for the neck under that dim white blotch of a face and found it comfortably.
    This time Smitty had no personal animosity exaggerating the power in his huge fingers. He calculated time by counting slowly to himself, as calmly as if he were timing a soft-boiled egg, and he opened his hand with the count of fifty. Slow. This fellow would probably breathe again. Smitty wouldn’t have gone so far as to guarantee that, but probably he would.
    The giant went down the dark hall, as softly as if he were a little Nellie Gray instead of the towering giant he was. One small slot of light showed in the otherwise all-prevailing darkness.
    This was a crack that came from another door, halfway down the corridor. He went to it and saw that it was the basement door.
    Ahead of him, in a room at the front of the house, he heard a low rumble of guarded voices. Several men in there. No telling how many.
    He opened the basement door and started down the stairs. Then he paused, lips stony.
    The stairs were of the half-finished type with no risers between the treads. And there was no partition between stairs and basement.
    It was a little like an ordinary ladder, slanted more than most, descending into the cellar. There wasn’t a chance of getting down that unseen.
    Smitty peered down and to the side.
    There, from this other angle, was the scene he had witnessed through the slit cut in the light-concealing blanket at the basement window.
    Seven men—counting the shambling, appalling figure that looked like a mad gorilla—and a girl. The strange figure was beside the girl now; and the misshapen, fumbling hands were touching her smooth arms.
    “Attaboy, Nevlo,” laughed one of the others, “show the gal you may not look like much, but you sure are a big-time Romeo!”
    A kind of glare came into Smitty’s eyes. Like most big men, he had a large regard for the rights of those smaller and weaker than he. It made him see red when someone was shoved around.
    And there couldn’t have been a more outstanding example of it than this: a girl, bound, helpless, dazed of brain, with six men around to slap her down if she tried to do anything—and a seventh, like a damned gorilla, now roughing her up!

    Smitty’s hand went to his left-hand coat pocket. In the pocket was one of MacMurdie’s brilliant chemical inventions. It was a small glass pellet containing a gas that paralyzed movement.
    It was the weirdest thing. The victim kept his clarity of mind and could see and hear all right, but he couldn’t move. The motor muscles were left without control.
    Smitty poised the pellet to toss it down to break on the cellar floor. And somebody kicked his elbow.
    The glass pill dropped and broke on the floor next to Smitty, as he had scrambled to his feet and stared up.
    A man had got up to him, sneaking down the hall from the front room where Smitty had heard voices. The man loomed over him now, snarling, murderous.
    “Throw a stink-bomb or somethin’, will ya?” the man howled. “Well, see how you like hot lead!”
    His hand started for his gun, but didn’t get to where it was holstered. His arm and hand seemed to wither and droop, like a plant stem in a drought. And then the man himself sagged slowly to the floor.
    He stared at Smitty with horrified perplexity in his eyes. Smitty knew just how he felt. He could see the giant, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He suddenly had mush for muscles. He couldn’t even get out of the way if Smitty tried to crown him. The gas was working!
    But Smitty wasted no time on the man. He