The Avenger 23 - The Wilder Curse Read Online Free PDF Page B

You’re mad, Andrew!”
    “I just asked,” said Sillers hastily. “I’ve heard that sometimes people keep chickens in city backyards, or pigeons in city attics. I just wondered—”
    “What do you think this is?” said Marsden. “A farm—or a city sub-division?”
    At a strangled sound from beside him, Marsden whirled quickly.
    “What on earth’s wrong with you?” he snapped to Jones.
    The bland, pink man had his mouth open, and his face was paler than the other two partners had ever seen it. His eyes were wide and sightless for a moment, and his hand went to his lips as Sillers’s had done a moment ago.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Marsden repeated.
    “Eh?” said Jones, in a high falsetto. Then he laughed a little, eyes still wide. “Wrong with me? Nothing. Why?”
    “You certainly look like something’s wrong. Did I say something to upset you?”
    “Upset me?” parrotted Jones. He laughed again. “No. Of course not. I . . . I felt queer for a minute. I think my heart’s not what it ought to be. I think I’d better see a doctor about it. Have a little spell once in a while.”
    Marsden looked in a puzzled way at Sillers, then impatiently looked away. There were two terrified men here, now, where there’d been but one before. And the expression on Marsden’s face was one of bewilderment that there should be any terror at all.
    Fear, yes. Two men had been murdered in this exclusive seven-block square. But not naked terror such as had ridden in Sillers’s eyes and now showed also in Jones’s.
    Sillers, for his part, didn’t notice Marsden’s glance at all. He was staring at Jones.
    Amos Jones had a heart as sound as a new dollar watch. Sillers knew that. There was nothing the matter with his heart. Therefore, he had been seized that way because of something Marsden had said.
    Sillers knew what that was!
    Marsden jerked the attention of his two partners back to the matter in hand.
    “There have been two particularly nasty murders here in Thornton Heights,” he said tartly. “This has always been a most respectable neighborhood. We have a high grade of tenants. They won’t like this. One more such occurrence, and some will start moving out.”
    He sounded like a schoolteacher scolding a bad child. Murder, it seemed, was most annoying to Marsden.
    “The question is, what can we do to prevent more trouble? That’s what I came here to talk about, Andrew. I suppose that is what Amos came for, too.”
    Jones nodded his head.
    “So—what do we do?”
    They talked it over at length, and finally, at Marsden’s suggestion, it was decided to hire fifty men out of a well-known private-detective agency as special police.
    Sillers gave the matter his approval, but in his eyes was a look of somber skepticism. He looked, in brief, as if he believed that fifty thousand special police would not be able to prevent more trouble.
    Amos Jones looked the same way. Sillers kept glancing at him out of the corners of his eyes. Had he heard that noise, too, when he turned so pale? Sounds that might have been made by pigs?
    Sillers decided he had not. Even in Sillers’s imagination, the noise had not sounded at that particular moment. No, it was what Marsden had said that had drained the blood from Jones’s face, though Marsden himself hadn’t seemed to be affected by its significance.

CHAPTER V

Widow and Nephew
    Josh Newton was another of The Avenger’s aides. He was a tall, gangling, sleepy-eyed Negro. He looked as if he didn’t have wit enough to come in out of the rain. Actually, he had a brain as sharp as a scalpel and was an honor graduate of Tuskegee Institute.
    His voice was crisp and incisive as he picked up the phone at the big desk in Bleek Street and dialed a number.
    “Acme Exterminator Co.?” he said. Then: “I would like to speak to the representative of your company who takes care of Thornton Heights.”
    Nellie and Smitty were in the vast top-floor room, too. They looked at each