Free The Avenger 7 - Stockholders in Death by Kenneth Robeson Page A

mean her death.
    For a gun had suddenly, without warning, been thrust against her side!
    “Havin’ a good time, kid?” snarled a voice above her.
    She looked up. She hadn’t been as smart as she’d thought. The man from the gate was there, with a .38 in his hand. He must have spotted her taxi, slugged the driver and rolled him off into an alley; then he had returned to see who had come here in the cab. At least, she hoped that the driver had only been slugged—
    “Hey!” yelled one of the men in the office, feet slapping to the floor in alarm. “Who’s out there?”
    “Me,” sung out the man. “Just caught up with a visitor. In there, you!”
    Nellie marched into the office with the gun prodding her shapely back.
    But the other one stared at Nellie’s blond loveliness with no spark of anything but lust for murder in his cold eyes. There was going to be immediate use for a cement coffin, after all.
    Unless, Nellie thought frantically, that brief radio S.O.S. of hers had been heard.

CHAPTER IX

Human Tank
    At the corner of Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue is the world’s strangest drugstore. Bought originally by Dick Benson, he had placed it in the proprietorship of his aide, a tall, dour Scotchman named Fergus MacMurdie.
    The front of the store was like any other drugstore, but the rear three-fifths served as a dual laboratory. Down one side ranged benches containing transcendent paraphernalia belonging to the giant electrical engineer, Smitty. Along the other side was a complete laboratory in which MacMurdie conducted his chemical experiments.
    Mac’s blue eyes were bitter, now, and flaming. He had been listening to the big, special radio in the laboratory. He had just heard one interrupted sentence on the radio’s special wavelength. Then he began transmitting himself, feverishly.
    “Smitty! Smitty! Mac calling. Smitty!”
    About five minutes passed before he got a reply.
    “O.K. Mac. This is Smitty.”
    “Ye overgrown clown,” burred Mac. “Why don’t ye pay some attention to the silly little belt radio ye’ve made us all wear? Where are ye?”
    “Out near the Brooklyn Bird, checking on Luckow,” came the giant’s voice.
    “Meet me at the Gailord Cement Plant, beyond Jackson Heights. Nellie—she’s in troub—”
    Mac didn’t even bother to finish the word. He knew Smitty would already be on his way, radio disregarded.
    Two things could turn the good-natured giant into a human landslide. One was calling him by his full name, Algernon Heathcote, instead of the nickname of Smitty. The other was—trouble threatening Nellie.
    When that diminutive bundle of pertness was in peril, Smitty was like a mad bull elephant.
    Mac got out to the vicinity of the cement plant almost as swiftly as if he had flown. He found Smitty lurking down the block from it, chewing his fingers in impatience. Smitty had been there for nearly eight minutes.
    “You croaking Scotch raven!” he rumbled in a savage whisper. “Did you stop to change your suit, or what? I’ve been here an hour—”
    “I didn’t call ye till thirty-five minutes ago, ye mountain of suet,” Mac snapped back. “And you were nearer, to start with— Sh-h-h.”
    Down the block from the dark spot where they lurked, the plant gate was opening. Methodically, the man there was coming out to patrol the outside of the grounds as well as the inside.
    The man came toward the two. A sort of growl rumbled in Smitty’s throat, and Mac felt profoundly thankful he wasn’t that man.
    The fellow got within ten feet of them, then saw the Scot’s foot protruding from behind a big trash box. He stopped dead.
    It wasn’t the first time the Scot’s huge feet had given him away. But in this case it didn’t matter.
    Smitty came within a dozen pounds of weighing an even three hundred. But he was up and over that trash box like an agile boy. He got the man by the throat as a startled yell came to his lips.
    Smitty didn’t bother to use both hands. Why should he?