Free The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder by Kenneth Robeson Page B

decision in about a tenth of a second. The fence didn’t look as strong as that gate. So, twenty feet from the gate, he whirled the heavy car to the left.
    It jammed into the iron fence beside the gate with a whanggg that could have been heard for half a mile. Jammed into it, rolled through with a sound like tearing paper magnified a thousand times, and then sagged at the front end and stopped like a tired rhinoceros coming to its knees. Both front wheels had been jammed sideways and back, putting the car out of commission.
    So many men were running down the driveway after him that it looked like a young army. Ahead of them were loping the dogs.
    Benson got out of Cranlowe’s car and jumped into the rented one that he had left at the gate, seeming to be a whisking streak of light rather than a man. He started away from the gate.
    Not bulletproofed, this car. Just an ordinary automobile, He took a long look at the straight road ahead, noting that there was a ditch at each side not deep enough to wreck a car but quite pronounced enough to let you know if you hit it. Then he slid out from behind the wheel, and down.
    Crouched on the floor between gear-shift lever and right front door, he drove with a hand stretched up to the wheel. Drove blind, with the car dipping into the shallow ditch first on one side and then the other and being brought back to the unseen road again by the deft steely hand.
    The back window of the sedan flashed out. The windshield seemed to explode and disappear! Holes ripped into back and front cushions. Then there was neither sound nor violence. He had gotten out of range.
    He raised back up to the driver’s seat just in time to avoid a head-on collision with another car in which women were screaming at sight of an apparently driverless machine rocketing toward them. He roared on till the shot-riddled gas tank was empty; then he left the car and went back to town in an obliging farmer’s produce truck.

    In a grim, dark cellar, the face of death grinned fiendishly from a deep, black chasm which led to an underground river. But death has many faces. It showed another the next afternoon, at a place where its grimacing features had been seen before.
    At the Garfield Gear plant.
    Josh Newton had been told to look around the plant, and keep an eye on the executives. On the face of it, that would seem to be an impossible job. The place was guarded and fenced because of the war orders it handled. How could a Negro get in and watch the officials? But Josh handled it very simply.
    He picked up a shoe-shine stand in the morning; the kind of portable box in which are polishes, brushes and rags, and on which is a foot-standard. He showed up at the plant gate at noon. He asked humbly for permission to take care of the shines within the office—and got it.
    So now he was in the general office, at work. He had shined the shoes of the superintendent, a young hard-jawed driver who barked orders to underlings while he shifted his feet for Josh to work on. He had taken care of the black high-tops of the old office manager. And now he was in the office of the president, Mr. Jenner.
    There were three men in the office—Jenner, Josh and the anemic-looking secretary. And Jenner was dictating a letter while Josh began on the right foot.

“Testing Laboratories
    “United States Government
    “Washington, D.C.
    “Gentlemen:
    “We are at a loss to understand the complaints regarding the Cranlowe torpedo controls sent to you over the past five weeks. The release-pin holes were inspected as usual here, along with other general inspection, and each checked for accuracy before being shipped. Each was carefully gauged, as were the release pins themselves. We cannot, therefore, understand why any of the pins should stick and fail to function. We can only assume that a mistake has been made in your testing laboratory, and hope that it will be straightened out very soon. Mr. Cranlowe extends the same hope, through us, as he is