The Avenger 29 - The Nightwitch Devil Read Online Free PDF

MacMurdie mentioned him. What does he have to say about the situation?”
    “Got no idea. Ruyle’s missing, too. So’s his housekeeper. Found that out ’bout an hour ago.”
    “Baffling,” said Cole.
    The chief of police looked from Cole to Smitty. He twisted his finger around in a vest pocket, saying finally, “Show you his room now. Come along.”

CHAPTER VIII

Premature Burial
    “By the tartan of old Rob Roy MacGregor,” said Mac, “they gulled me good and proper.”
    He shook his head again and blinked his eyes.
    There was almost no light in the room he’d found himself in. A sliver of sunlight found its way in by way of a thin crack in the vaulted marble ceiling.
    “Whoosh,” remarked the Scot, “I ne’er thought I’d get a look at the inside of me own tomb.”
    For that’s where he was, in a crypt. The thick walls were of real marble. There were marble shelves on three of the walls, no windows. Five coffins, ornate, of ebony and gold, sat on the shelves.
    MacMurdie had come to fifteen minutes before. From the look of the feeble light seeping in, it was morning. There was a sore spot at the base of his skull. Mac remembered doing battle with at least three cloaked figures there in the woods. The woman had laughed, then the three had jumped him. Three to one didn’t faze the belligerent Scot, and he’d felled one of the cloaked men when someone hit him from behind with a blackjack.
    “I wonder if ’twas the laughing lass who sapped me.”
    Across the tomb, up three marble steps, was a heavy metal door. It was locked, Mac had discovered that already. He also found that everything he’d had in his pockets was gone. He had nothing on him with which to pick the lock. They’d even taken his belt, the buckle of which contained a compact two-way radio.
    “Well, I’m still pretty lively, for an inmate of a tomb,” said MacMurdie. “I’ll nae give up yet.”
    He began another slow, careful circuit of the room. There were two copper lamps bolted to the wall. “Might be able to unscrew those and use them as a weapon on whoever comes to look after me.”
    That was only an assumption, Mac reminded himself. No one might ever come to him again. They might have left him here to die of starvation.
    Mac moved to the nearest coffin. He should be able to fashion a piece of one of those hinges into a lockpick. First, though, he’d have to get it loose from the coffin lid.
    Crouching, Mac scanned the floor to see if anything had been dropped there.
    “Hoot,” he exclaimed, “what do ye make of that?”
    There were numerous muddy footprints on the marble floor. Some looked quite fresh; others were weeks old. There were prints from different-size shoes and from boots.
    “For a tomb, there’s quite a bit of traffic.”
    Mac followed the freshest set of footprints. They led him to the blank wall. All the other prints seemed to dead-end there, as well? Several of the muddy prints were cut in half by the marble wall.
    “Unless these lads have picked up the handy knack of walking through walls,” observed Mac, “there’s a way to swing this wall open.”
    He decided to find it.

    “I’m worried about her,” said Sam Hollis. The newspaper editor was standing near his potbellied stove, which was cold today.
    “For a small town,” observed Cole, “you have a lot of missing persons.”
    “Oh, Anne’s probably not missing,” said Hollis with a nervous chuckle. “But . . . well, I don’t really know where she is. That is, I only know where she isn’t.”
    “You said,” said Smitty, “you were worried.”
    “I have a feeling Anne’s mixed up in something,” answered Hollis. “Some odd things have been going on in Nightwitch lately. John Ruyle’s disappearance, followed by MacMurdie’s. Anne knows more about that than she’s told me, I’m pretty sure.”
    Cole asked him, “Where was she supposed to be?”
    “Well, she came in here about three hours ago,” said the editor. “Looked sort of