The Avenger 23 - The Wilder Curse Read Free

night, and he had met death in the attempt. But Myra did not know that. She only knew that she’d heard vague but confidence-inspiring stories of this man, and that he had his headquarters on a little avenue called Bleek Street, which was in lower Manhattan.
    Pale and with ghosts in her eyes, she took a subway to get to this place and tell someone about that foot and leg.

    Bleek Street, in downtown Manhattan, is only one short block long. One side is occupied entirely by the blank wall of a windowless warehouse. The other side has small stores, small warehouses and, in the center, three old three-story brick buildings. All of these are leased or owned by Dick Benson. In effect, The Avenger owned the block.
    The three brick buildings, behind their unimpressive facades, are thrown into one. The entire top floor of the resulting unity is one vast room, and this was where The Avenger and his associates were most frequently to be found when not working on bringing criminals to justice.
    A big man entered the door of the place now, at a bit before one o’clock in the morning. Big? He was gigantic!
    He had a big moonface in which light-blue eyes twinkled in a disarmingly good-natured way. This was Algernon Heathcote Smith. But anyone who knew him called him Smitty, carefully avoiding the two first names, which he detested.
    Smitty passed under the small sign, “Justice, Inc.,” over the doorway. He went into a vestibule, waved his hand twice in front of a certain spot in the tiled wall that looked like any other spot, and the inner door opened.
    Smitty knew all about that photo-electric-cell opener. An electrical and radio wizard, he had installed it himself.
    He went up to the huge third floor, walked in, and was greeted by an insult. The insult came from another of The Avenger’s aides—one of his most valued, in fact, though you’d never think so to look at her.
    Nellie Gray was a bare five feet high, weighed about one hundred pounds and looked as fragile as a Dresden china doll. She was so pink and white and dainty in appearance that you’d feel sure the sight of a spider would make her scream.
    Little Nellie Gray, however, was a dead shot, an expert at boxing, wrestling, and jujitsu and had made more than one two-hundred-pound thug sorry he’d underestimated her abilities.
    “Hello, amateur,” she said to the giant Smitty.
    “Amateur what?” snapped Smitty.
    “Amateur electrician,” Nellie snapped back.
    Smitty was justifiably suspicious of brickbats. Tiny Nellie and the giant Smitty were more than associates. Either would have let himself be cut to ribbons for the other. Nellie had a soft place in her heart for the giant. But she never let this be apparent. She was all prickles, it seemed, where Smitty could see.
    “Amateur electrician?” roared Smitty. He could take a lot, but aspersions cast on his vast electrical ability stung hard. “You half-pint—” He calmed down. He concluded resignedly, “What’s wrong now?”
    “The electric-robot thing you designed to answer the phone when nobody’s here,” said Nellie. “The gadget that talks and records messages. That’s what’s wrong. Look at this.”
    Smitty dutifully looked at the thin recording tape, a length of which Nellie held in her fragile-seeming little hands.
    The tape had a hairline, regularly broken by tiny hills and valleys like the circular lines of phonograph recordings. Then this went off into an irregular line.
    “Now, listen,” said Nellie, playing the tape.
    Smitty heard a man’s voice say, “Justice, Inc.?”
    There was a metallic, “Yes,” as his robot phonograph voice caught the “Justice” vibrations and responded. Smitty swelled with pride. In all the world, there was only one apparatus like this, and it was his own child.
    “I want to talk to Mr. Benson,” came the man’s voice. “I want—” That was when the sputter occurred.
    There was a sort of thud, a splintering noise, then silence.
    Smitty played the tape