The Avenger 18 - Death in Slow Motion Read Online Free PDF Page A

grilled radiator shield came a blinding white cloud. It was an anaesthetic. It enveloped the town car and the struggling men. Most of them fell, including Mac and Smitty. But a few reached the three waiting sedans.
    The cars roared off, leaving a dozen men behind.
    There was the distant scream of police sirens. The cops were coming; the four rubber barons were safe. And that was all Smitty and Mac knew as they sank into the deep sleep induced by the white mist The Avenger had ejected from the front of his car.
    At Mac’s drugstore, hours later, they were feeling fine again, save for some lumps raised by the deaf-and-dumb crew. Feeling fine—and very thoughtful.
    Both were thinking the same thing, as both remembered the way that workman had looked in the Bleek Street headquarters. The unfortunate fellow who had been shot by the gang.
    “Shiverin’,” mused Mac aloud. “The mon was tremblin’ all the time. And verra weak. That colorin’, and the draggy way he moved—”
    “Seems to me I’ve seen somebody like that before,” said Smitty.
    It was obvious from Mac’s look that he’d gotten precisely the same thought at precisely the same time. The men stared at each other, bleak blue eyes into china-blue eyes.
    “That old tramp!” breathed Smitty.
    Mac nodded emphatically.
    “The same colorin’. The same shiverin’, though not quite as noticeable a slow motion. Smitty, we may have something here. Do we call the chief?”
    Smitty thought a minute, then shook his head.
    “It’s a pretty thin hunch, Mac,” he said. “Why in the world would there be any connection between an old bum in New York and a couple of rubber factories in Akron, Ohio? Let’s just nose around a little on our own hook. We’ll almost surely find nothing at all—but it’s an idea.”

    They went on foot to the place where Smitty had taken the aged hobo a couple of days ago, because it was only a few blocks from the store. It was getting dark as they reached the mouth of the dismal, narrow alley. They stared down at the front of the shabby, leaning rear-house.
    “Poor old guy,” said Smitty. “Pretty bad to have to live in a joint like that.”
    He gnawed at his lip. “And yet,” he went on, “there must be something worth while looking after in that place, or else somebody’s crazy.”
    “Huh?” said Mac.
    “The locks,” said Smitty, pointing to the door on the left of the old man’s door. “Those great big, heavy new locks on that door. They weren’t put on there for nothing.”
    Mac shrugged, and the two went to the aged tramp’s door.
    Smitty knocked. The frail door rattled back and forth as if just the giant’s tap would break it in. But there was no answer. Smitty tried the door and found it locked, though the lock on this door was not at all like the complicated devices on the other alley door.
    “Not at home,” said Mac. “So now what?”
    “We might wait for him a few minutes,” rumbled the giant.
    On each side of the miserable shack was the back end of a large, cheap apartment building, running from street in front to alley in the rear. But on each side, between rear-house and apartment house, was a very narrow runway.
    Mac and Smitty waited in the left one, and then they suddenly heard steps from behind them.
    They turned. A woman was coming toward them. It was necessary for the two to go out into the alley so the woman could get down the narrow runway.
    They saw her for a moment as she came out. An elderly woman, heavy-set, squat, large-footed, dressed in clothes that must have been worn for a long, long time, and yet were reasonably clean. Thousands of her kind patiently clean the city’s many office buildings, trailing scrub brushes and pails full of gray water behind them.
    She glanced heavily, incuriously, at them and went down the alley to the street. Mac and Smitty stepped back into the narrow passageway.
    They waited quite a little while.
    “We might as well come back again tomorrow,” growled