The Avenger 21 - The Happy Killers Read Online Free PDF

plane.”
    “Oh. You thought your father had been hurt, and hurried because of that?” suggested Benson.
    “No. I didn’t hurry for that reason.” Edna Brown looked around almost as furtively as Harry Tate had. There were only Benson and Mac and herself in the room.
    “I hurried because I have an idea who might have done this,” she whispered. “I haven’t told the police. In fact, I don’t dare tell my suspicions. As soon as I heard you were on the case, I waited to tell you.”
    “Good,” said The Avenger, face expressionless but eyes as cold and pale as ice under a polar moon. “Who do you think it is?”
    She paused for so long that it seemed she wasn’t going to answer. Then she whispered, “I don’t think I’d better name names, even to you. I’ll do better. I’ll take you to a place where I think the contents of the safe might be hidden.”
    The Avenger nodded. Mac was bursting with questions, but didn’t ask them. The three went out to the old sedan.

CHAPTER V

False Guidance
    There’s a lot of length to Long Island. Far out are some pretty desolate stretches of beach, low and sandy, with a few summer cabins here and there, deserted save in mid-summer.
    It was to such a section, it developed, that Edna was leading Mac and The Avenger. Meanwhile, she was being as obstinate as she was pretty—obstinate about not telling them any more than she had at first.
    She had an idea that she knew who took the stuff from the safe, or caused it to be taken. But she wouldn’t say who. She thought she knew where it might be hidden, but she wouldn’t say how she’d come to her conclusions.
    “My suspicions might be wrong,” she said. “If so, and I named names, a lot of trouble could come of it.”
    Her stubbornness was maddening. To Mac, at least. The Avenger didn’t seem to be annoyed by it. His face was as masklike, his pale eyes as unreadable as ever, when, near the very tip of the island, Edna pointed and said, “There.”
    The thing she was pointing at was just a speck far down the lonely road. The Avenger stopped and looked at it through a small but powerful glass.
    The speck was pretty big through the glass. It was the wreck of a structure whose nature Benson guessed at a glance. It was a sort of small auditorium, in which at one time fights had no doubt been held, and which probably had a floor suitable for dancing or roller skating. The roof was half fallen in now, and boards were off the walls in spots.
    It was as deserted and gloomy-looking as could be imagined.
    “You think the things from your father’s wall safe are hidden there?” The Avenger said evenly.
    Edna nodded her ash-blond head.
    “And you don’t want to tell why you think so?”
    She shook her head. The Avenger sent the car forward again.
    The big low building was right on the water’s edge, which was one reason why it was disintegrating so fast: the waves of any big storm could work on it. On the bay side, the water seemed to extend under the building. Perhaps it had been a boathouse arrangement, once. On the other side there was windswept sand from road to building where once a drive and parking lot had been. The Avenger stared at this expanse of sand, roughened in many places, and his steel-strong fingers tightened ever so slightly about the wheel.
    He drove the sedan up the sand till it nosed almost against the building. He got out, and Mac noticed with a narrowing of his bleak blue eyes that The Avenger was moving with his arms held just a little from his sides, and tending to walk just a bit on the balls of his feet, like a great cat.
    He walked as if he expected trouble.
    If so, however, he didn’t express it in words. He spoke calmly to the girl. “Where inside do you think the loot will be hidden?”
    “I . . . I don’t know,” Edna Brown faltered. She had gone pale and was glancing nervously around. “We’ll have to look.”
    She was next to one of the places where some boards were off, making a kind of