Free The Avenger 2 - The Yellow Hoard by Kenneth Robeson Page B

of the divans in the Bleek Street headquarters. She sat on one foot, like a little girl, and she tapped her red underlip with the tip of a slim and fragile-looking finger in deep thought.
    The gigantic Smitty was there, in the big room. MacMurdie was back at his store. He and Smitty had seen the other members of the expedition assigned to them by Dick Benson, and had turned in their reports.
    Reports that told no more than had been found out before they were interviewed.
    Nellie spoke to Smitty. “Mr. Benson has said several times that I’m not being held here. That I’m free to come and go as I choose.”
    “That’s right,” said Smitty, eyes blue and ingenuous in his good-natured, full-moon face. “Say, you aren’t still suspicious of us?”
    “No. Not any more.”
    “Then why,” said Smitty, “did you ask if you could go out?”
    “Because that’s what I want to do,” said Nellie. “And I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t try to stop me.”
    “You want to go out!” gasped Smitty.
    “Yes.”
    “But you know the situation. It would be very dangerous for you to go roaming around alone! We’re up against a gang of killers. They’ve already tried twice to get you—once at the school, once when you were leaving police headquarters with the chief. And you’d go out and expose yourself to a third attempt!”
    “I don’t think there’d be so much danger,” said Nellie pensively.
    Smitty snorted explosively.
    “Anyway, I want to go out. Will you let me?”
    Smitty came and stood over her, gigantic, so muscled that his arms hung crooked at his sides like the arms of a gorilla. He made her appear smaller and daintier than ever.
    “You put me in a spot,” he complained. “Sure, you’re free. I haven’t any orders to keep you from leaving. But hanged if I’d allow you to go out and maybe get snatched or knocked off before you’d gone two blocks. There’s a healthy chance this gang knows where our headquarters is and are watching it. They know the chief’s interest by now—and tried to bomb him.” Smitty’s eyes went venomously to the big canary cage in the corner where the bomber was sitting dejectedly on a wooden stool and peering through the bars.
    “Then I’m not free!” said Nellie.
    “I didn’t say that,” Smitty mumbled, with a harassed look.
    “If you won’t let me go out, I’m not free. And if I’m being held a prisoner—”
    “Oh, for gosh sake!” said Smitty. “Can’t you understand I’m just trying to keep you in for your own good?”
    Nellie stood up. She could have walked under the giant’s outstretched arm and had plenty of room to spare. But she was in thorough, feminine command of the situation.
    “Since you haven’t orders to keep me in, I’ll go out,” she said.
    “But look here—” Smitty began hoarsely.
    “I think my things are on the floor below. Goodbye.”
    She went to the stairs leading down from the third floor headquarters.
    “But—”
    Smitty took a step toward her. Stopped. Started. Stopped.
    She smiled sweetly at the giant, and went on down.

    On the street, her smile became set and fixed on her full red lips. For her plan was indeed a desperate one.
    Police, Benson, everyone, seemed to have made no real progress in finding her father’s murderer. And she burned to have that man found—and electrocuted! So she was going to try a little investigating on her own hook.
    This gang wanted her. That was proven. They wanted her, probably, to wring information from her about the bricks. All right, let them catch her! Let them take her to wherever they hung out. There, she’d see just who were in the gang, so she could later identify them. She’d escape, and lead police back to wherever they’d taken her. They could capture the whole lot of them in one stroke.
    Of course, it might not be quite as easy as that, to escape from them. But she was willing to gamble on that recklessly slim chance. She might look like a Dresden doll, but she had the will of