The Avenger 31 - The Cartoon Crimes Read Online Free PDF

Walling would like to knock him off. He was a real . . . well, never mind. I guess you ought to speak well of the dead.” He got up. “You don’t think Gil killed him, do you?”
    “I don’t have enough facts to make one of my famous predictions. What do you think, Leo?”
    “You know, there aren’t many real geniuses in this business, though a lot of guys will try to convince you otherwise,” said Leo as he grabbed his jacket off a wall hook. “Gil, though, he’s really got some talent. Guys with real talent . , . sometimes they can get pretty strange. When Gil used to work inside the shop here, before the war and before he really hit with Wonderman, he was pretty high-strung. I remember one time he threatened to throw Carlotsky down the stairs.”
    “And did he?”
    “No, Gil was mostly threats and not follow-through,” said the cartoonist. He shrugged into his coat. “I hope you fellows can do something to clear up the murder. Though for the life of me I don’t see how that list of people who handle the Wonderman artwork can help.”
    “You must keep in mind, Leo, that Dr. Watson often didn’t comprehend what Holmes was up to,” said Cole, heading for the door. “Nevertheless, he served a noble purpose.”
    The hallway was still and shadowy. But the box of discarded art was gone.
    “Your janitor work on Sundays, Leo?”
    “No, why do you—”
    Two men in suits the color of the shadows came up out of the stairwell. They’d apparently gotten rid of the box so they’d be able to move more freely. The dusty sunlight hit the silver handle of one of their .38 revolvers. They had four of them. One in each hand.
    The man on the right—they were both big and bulky—had a tiny red feather in the band of his dark hat. He gestured with the gun in his right hand. “Out of the way, boy,” he ordered Josh. “We want these other two chumps.”
    “You ain’t gwine to shoot me, is you, boss?” drawled Josh.
    The other gunman said, “Wait a sec. One of the chumps we want is a colored boy. Okay, which one of you is Cole Wilson?”
    Cole Wilson said, “What a coincidence. We’ve just had an interview with Cole Wilson. You’ll find him in that office over there, a balding chap with an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth.” He suddenly turned his head. “Oh, here he is now.”
    Automatically the two gunmen turned their heads in that direction.
    Cole moved swiftly, almost as swiftly as one of the supermen whose pictures hung in Leo’s office. He was sailing through the air toward the one with the red feather. He tackled the gunman just below the knees.
    “Hey, you chump!”
    Cole tightened his grip, flipping the man over backwards. The two pistols went off, a second apart.
    The other gunman swung around, raising the butt of his gun to smash down on Cole’s head. “Hold still, Jocko, so I can bean this chump.”
    Josh made his move then.
    His tackle was a bit better than Cole’s, and it carried the number-two gunman back to the edge of the stairway down.
    Josh shoved, then dropped clear.
    “Hey!” yelled the gunman. He teetered, then toppled and went down the stairs, executing a ragged backwards somersault. Only one of his .38 revolvers went off as he went spinning downward.
    He landed at the landing below with a thunk.
    Josh looked down at him with narrowed eyes. “Out cold,” he decided.
    “Josh, he’s doing something to Cole,” warned Leo.
    Josh spun to see the red-feather man sitting on top of the sprawled Cole. He was slamming Cole’s head against the ancient linoleum.
    The two men had rolled across the hall and were struggling in front of a door.
    The black man ran across to them and made a grab for the gunman.
    “What kind of a hullabaloo is this, I ask?”
    Oppenheim shoved his door open to stick his bald head into the corridor.
    The doorknob hit Josh hard in the elbow and tipped him over onto the pile-up.
    “Jocko, let’s scram,” called the other gunman from down in the