Free The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs by Kenneth Robeson Page A

time, after I’d heard only a little, he got up and shut the door flush.”
    “It could be,” murmured Nellie, “that you were supposed to hear just that much—and no more.”
    “It’s hard to believe anything like that. As I say, Dr. Fram isn’t a phony. He’s eminent in his line. And in a whole year of contact with him, I’d say he is a nice, honest, pleasant person.”
    “Who set you up to be kidnapped,” Nellie pointed out.
    “We don’t know that.”
    “No, we don’t know it. Perhaps he is innocently surrounded by some sort of crooked work and hasn’t yet suspected it. Perhaps he has been forced into something; an unwilling tool. Perhaps—”
    The door opened. In the doorway stood the bony man and the two who had carried Nan Stanton downstairs in the coffinlike steel locker.
    The bony man was smiling a little. One glance at the smile made Nellie wish he wouldn’t. She had seen murderous smiles before. This was a perfect example of one.
    “My, ain’t they a nice pair?” mocked the bony man, looking the two girls over.
    They were a nice pair. Nellie, with her tawny-yellow hair and blue eyes, was a perfect foil in beauty for Nan Stanton’s brunette loveliness.
    But the minds of the three kidnappers were obviously on things other than pulchritude. The bony man had just sounded off to be smart.
    Nellie felt cold all over. This was it, she thought, in a corner of her brain. The bony fellow had been waiting orders from someone as to the disposition of the two prisoners. Now he had received his orders. Deadly orders!
    The wings of death were hovering very low over Nellie Gray and Nan Stanton!
    “You’re going to have a little sleep,” said the bony man, smirking. “You’re going to go by-by to slumber land, just like the kids’ programs say on the radio.”
    He stopped smiling.
    “Out! Come with us. And you”—he glared at Nellie—“any of your panther tricks and you won’t go out the easy way.”
    Nellie and Nan went to the door. The men stood back—way back—till they had passed. Then the men fell in behind, herding the two girls along.
    Nan was white and scared and mystified. Nellie was not so mystified. The few words of the bony man, and the fact that they weren’t clubbed or shot down at once, had given her the key to the next act.
    They were to be killed, but in such a way as to make it seem to be an accident and not murder.
    The two went along a narrow corridor and up a greasy flight of stairs. They stepped into a small garage room.
    Not a big one. A small room. That was because it was a back room, partitioned off from the main garage. It was a workshop, with a bench along one wall. The partition was flimsy, of planks instead of concrete and cement blocks; but it would do to keep any casual visitor to the garage from knowing what was going on back here.
    “Got the sedan ready, Buck?” the bony man called.
    A man standing next to a two-year-old black car of moderate price nodded and opened the back of the sedan.
    “In there,” rasped the bony man, shoving Nan.
    So then Nellie got the rest of it.
    Carbon monoxide. The two girls would be killed by the stuff so often responsible for accidental deaths. Then they would be found by the roadside somewhere, in this car or another impossible to trace. And that would be that. The motor of the sedan was running gently. But no exhaust smoke showed at the rear. That was because a hose ran up from the exhaust pipe into the body of the car. The interior of the sedan was already faintly blue and nauseous with gasoline fumes.
    “Tie ’em?” said the man called Joey, looking at the two girls.
    The bony leader shook his head. “That’d leave marks. You know how a bruise shows up—afterward. No! Just bundle ’em in and—”
    Nan screamed and tried to run. Joey caught her, but was careful not to hit her.
    Nellie said, voice amazingly calm; “We just won’t get in there. And what do you think of that?”
    “You won’t, huh?” snarled the bony