The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

fail in his mission. Yet, he knew the picture was valueless; he showed no surprise when I told him. One thing is certain. No criminal would risk his life like that even for a genuine painting worth a hundred thousand dollars. That means that whatever this picture business may be, it is not an ordinary racket.”
    “But that only means that, somehow, the thing has great importance,” mourned Smitty. “And we had to let him get away!”
    For an instant something that might almost have been a smile touched the corners of Dick Benson’s lips.
    “Stand where I was standing, at that table on which the picture rested,” he said to Smitty.
    Wondering, the giant took his place there.
    “Now, look behind you.”
    Smitty looked and exclaimed aloud. He had forgotten something that rested behind that table; and it was odd that he should have forgotten it was because he was its inventor.
    There was a cabinet there, and the front of the cabinet was a screen over which soft fluorescence played constantly, though it was almost unnoticeable in the brilliant illumination of the daylight bulbs. The cabinet was the container of the last word in television sets, as far beyond the standard commercial sets as they, in turn, are beyond the old crystal sets.
    The power was on and had been on all during the deadly interview. And most of the action had taken place where the transmitter would catch it all.
    “I signaled Mac’s drugstore with my toe against the floor switch when Harris drew out the flask,” Benson said. “Someone must be following him, now.”

CHAPTER IV

Apology for Murder
    At first glance the store seemed just what it appeared to be—an ordinary drugstore. And so it was, in front. But the rear room, which was twice as big as the store part and which was partitioned off in steel, was not at all what you’d have expected to find in the back of a drugstore.
    It was a huge dual laboratory. One side was taken up with electrical and radio apparatus, and it was here that Smitty conducted his experiments.
    The other half was for chemical experiments. Here worked the proprietor of the store, Fergus MacMurdie.
    MacMurdie had been about to close up the shop when the signal came for him to stand by for a television message from the Bleek Street headquarters.
    Benson was the one who had set Mac up in this store. Benson was Mac’s chief, whose orders he obeyed instantly and without question. Mac would have died for Dick Benson.
    So he almost dropped a vial of concentrated sulphuric on his toes in his haste to get to the screen when the signal light glowed.
    Mac was tall and bony and had bleak blue eyes. His hair was coarse and reddish and so was his skin. He had ears that stood out from his head like sails, and a pair of the biggest feet in captivity. But no one ever laughed at Mac. Not twice, anyway.
    His dour blue eyes took in about five seconds of the tableau on the television screen, and then he yelled: “Cole! Cole Wilson!”
    Cole was the newest member of Justice, Inc. He was magnetic, husky, with wavy dark hair and romantic eyes. He was almost too good-looking; but his friends paid no attention to his good looks because they knew that he was a devil on wheels in any fight.
    Cole was in the front of the store. Something in Mac’s voice told him there’d be no more routine business that night. He jumped to the store door and locked it, then clicked off the lights. No customers were in the store. This would keep any would-be customers out.
    He raced back to the rear room to find Mac standing, fascinated, at the television screen. So Cole stared, too, and he heard and saw most of what had gone on at Bleek Street.
    “My gosh!” he kept breathing as the play unrolled. “With a whiskey bottle full of nitro, this guy walks right in, and I guess he’s going to walk right out again with the picture. Look at the chief’s right hand!”
    Both saw it—the little move of the thumb and third finger of Benson’s right hand. That was a