The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

miserably.
    “So you don’t have any idea what you did when you went into the next room?”
    “No—I don’t.”
    “But if the door was open so Mr. Jenner could see you lie down, then he must have seen whether you stayed down or not.”
    Wainwright looked at Jenner.
    “The door,” Jenner said, dragging the words out, “didn’t stay open. I walked over and closed it, so Mr. Wainwright could get a complete rest for a few minutes. But whatever you’re thinking—”
    “I’m thinking,” said the detective, “that anything could happen, even with a man like Mr. Wainwright, while his mind was a blank.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, man!” snapped Jenner.
    “He isn’t being ridiculous,” said Wainwright, with a wan smile.
    “Glad you take it that way,” said the homicide man. “You won’t mind if I search you, then?”
    “Not at all,” said Wainwright. “You’d have to, of course.”
    So the homicide man searched him. And found nothing. But in the next room, under the cushions of the chaise-longue where the promotor had lain, he found a silenced .32 revolver with two shots gone and fingerprints all over the butt.
    The bullets in the gun matched the slugs that had drilled the skulls of Blandell and Sessel. And the fingerprints matched the fingertips of Allen C. Wainwright.
    One of the wealthiest, most respected magnates in the State had killed two men—just after a dog had howled weirdly—while his mind was “a blank.”
    It wasn’t possible, but it had been done.
    Thus, three eminent men in Garfield City had done mad and violent things in a space of twenty-four hours. Were all the prominent citizens of the ill-starred town to go insane? The humbler citizens began to wonder.

    On Route 232, the huge sedan with the white-haired man at the wheel slowed suddenly. It takes eyes like telescopes to drive a car at ninety and ninety-five miles an hour on an open highway and see things far enough ahead to slow for them if necesssary. The Avenger’s colorless, flaring eyes were equal to the task.
    About a half mile ahead he saw the sawhorse across the road, and the sign on it. He even read the sign at that distance.
    TURN RIGHT FOR GARFIELD CITY
    He had the great car rolling slowly by the time the sign was reached. A car and a light van came past them from the opposite direction. From Garfield City.
    “Say, maybe the road’s still open,” said Smitty. “Maybe the sign’s just been put up and work hasn’t started, yet. Those cars are coming from town as if things weren’t blocked off.”
    Benson turned the wheel, and the sedan angled with a noiseless little drop onto the narrow dirt road leading to the right through thick woods.
    “We’ll do as the sign says,” Benson said quietly.
    “But—” began Mac uneasily.
    He stared at the chief’s profile, and stopped. The dead, white face was like something cast in metal. You didn’t argue with the owner of that awesome countenance.
    Mac changed the subject hastily. “Ye say ye got some dope on Cranlowe, as well as Blandell, in your investigations last night?”
    “Yes,” said Benson. “Cranlowe is just as eccentric as you’d expect a man to be who would give such a story to the newspapers. He is about sixty, looks like Edgar Allen Poe, and is tyrannical, tempestuous and honest as daylight. His wife is much younger. Second marriage. She lives in a town apartment most of the time. He has a son who is fundamentally all right, according to reports, but inclined to be wild.”
    Benson was sending the car along the rutted road at thirty-five. He slowed for a sharp bend to the left.
    “Cranlowe has made a great deal of money from his inventions. But he hasn’t kept any of it. He is a fool with money—always spending before taking it in. Thus, he is chronically without a cent, and deeply in debt. That’s where Blandell has come in, in the past. He has financed Cranlowe, and he has taken the perpetual chance that Cranlowe wouldn’t be able to invent