Free The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder by Kenneth Robeson

He sat there calmly, though his face went rather pale. The giant, crouched behind the chair with only his hands showing, could not be shot unless Merto were shot first. Merto knew that.
    Then his pale face got mottled in color as Smitty’s hands squeezed ever so little.
    “You will do as I say,” the giant said, “or I’ll break your friend’s neck. If you’ve noticed the bent bars at the basement window, you’ll believe I’m able to do that quite easily.”
    “I think I’d do as he says, Gerry,” Merto said.
    “Nellie,” Smitty said, “step into the hall. Find a room that looks pretty tight.”
    The little blonde went to the door of the big living room. The gangsters were livid as she walked past their guns, so close that she nearly brushed against a couple of muzzles. Their fingers positively trembled on the triggers.
    She was back in a minute.
    “There’s a library,” she said. “It has a trick window, small and high up near the ceiling. The door is good.”
    “Lead the way to the library, Gerry,” said Smitty. “The rest, follow. Go on!”
    A single, short choked sound was wrenched from Merto’s lips. Gerry took a thoughtful puff at his cigarette, then led the way to the library. Nellie followed the last man, and the giant came after her, with Merto as a shield. The easy way he swung Merto’s ponderous weight around seemed to hold a dreadful fascination for the gangsters.
    Nellie shut the door on them and shot a heavy, iron bolt.
    Then they walked out of the house, with Merto ahead of Smitty.
    “We’ll add him to our collection,” said the giant. “I think we ought to stuff him.”
    “He’s stuffed already,” said Nellie venomously. Then, “Smitty, I think we’d better hurry. Our fat friend looks too smug and satisfied, somehow. I have a hunch—”
    Her hunch was too quickly verified. Shots rang out behind them and from across the street. Bullets swept around them in a leaden hail. Two got Smitty and one knocked the breath from Nellie, under her celluglass protection.
    Like good generals, Merto and Gerry hadn’t had all their men in the one place. There were others in the house next door and in one of the houses across the street.
    “Beat it!” Smitty roared.
    He thrust Merto, who had turned from protection to handicap, hard from him and raced for the corner with Nellie. They rounded it and got into their car.
    “Now let them shoot,” said Nellie behind the bulletproof glass. “I’ll get Bleek Street and then the police. We’ll round up the whole lot of them. We’ll wait here and trail them if they try to get away—”
    Car after car roared out of the driveway of Merto and Gerry’s place. Five in all. They went west, and Nellie and Smitty raced after them, with Nellie calling Bleek Street. But they were never to trail the gang. Again the generalship of Gerry and Merto showed up.
    One of the cars dropped behind. Smitty fought the wheel of the coupé to try to duck it. But the car backed in a screaming half circle that blocked the narrow residence street, and Smitty couldn’t avoid the crash.
    You could have heard it for a block. It fixed the coupé up, heavy as it was, so that it wouldn’t follow anything anywhere till a thorough repair job had been done on it.
    The driver of the other car was out just before the crash and was running after the other four. There had been just the one man in it; the car was a sacrifice job only. The man leaped into the last car, and the procession roared away.
    “Something tells me we won’t see any of them around here again,” said Smitty, sighing.
    “And I did so want the big fat one for a desk ornament,” mourned Nellie.
    “You’ll get him,” Smitty said. “Something also tells me they won’t be so indifferent about Justice, Inc., again!”

CHAPTER VIII

Imported Death
    The Avenger hung up the phone with pale glints in his awesome eyes. He had just telephoned Robert Spade, at the General Laboratories. He had phoned to ask if the