This third speaker was Nellie Gray.
Nellie was as valued an aide of The Avenger as Smitty himself. But at first glance a person would be apt to wonder why.
She was as slim and dainty-looking as a Dresden doll. Actually, she had been known to throw large men around like Indian clubs. She was past mistress of jujitsu, skilled at boxing and wrestling, and an expert marksman. Furthermore, she had more cold nerve than most men.
The Avenger’s black head was nodding at her words.
“It would look more as if the man who had killed Morley had also killed Simon,” Dick said, voice quiet but vibrant.
“It might have been this way,” mused Nellie. “Milky Morley robbed a man. He got something pretty valuable, and took it to this fence, Simon the Grind — shooting a policeman in his getaway. We’ll say he was followed. The follower broke into Simon’s after Morley had gone, killed the fence, and hunted for whatever it was Morley had taken. He didn’t find it; so he went to Morley’s place and killed him, too. Maybe he got the thing he was after there, maybe not.”
“Except for one nice big hole, that might be the way of it,” said Smitty, his tone condescending.
The giant held the diminutive blonde in very high esteem. It was suspected, indeed, that he was pretty crazy about her. To disguise it, he usually spoke to her as if she were a dull child of twelve.
In return, Nellie, who often gave indications of having a secret soft spot in her heart for the mountainous Smitty, addressed him as if he were an overgrown babe with only half a brain.
“What,” demanded Nellie, “is the hole?”
“Morley’s gun,” said Smitty, still condescending about it. “If the same guy killed them both, he must have killed Simon last, not Morley. Because he probably got hold of the gun off Morley’s dead body.”
Nellie shrugged alluring shoulders. “Morley first, Simon first — what difference does it make?”
The Avenger’s calm, compelling voice stopped the incipient argument as a window shade, suddenly drawn down, stops a glare of fight.
“Phone headquarters, Josh. See if there are any developments not yet put on the teletype. I have an idea this business might conceal something interesting.”
Josh Newton was the fourth of the little band at present in the huge room. Josh was the longest, lankiest, sleepiest-looking Negro in New York City.
When among friends, Josh talked as crisply and precisely as any college professor. An honor graduate of Tuskegee Institute, as was his attractive wife, Rosabel, Josh was as alert and quick as a steel trap.
Josh was over near a desk on which sat a battery of telephones. He picked one up, started to dial headquarters, then set it down as a soft buzz and a little light showed that somebody was trying to get them on another phone.
Josh picked up this phone.
Over the doorway downstairs was a small black sign with faded gilt lettering on it. The sign said:
JUSTICE, INC.
A small sign, inconspicuously lettered, but mighty in its import. Justice, Inc. Here, ye who are in need may receive help. Here, ye who are in peril may apply for safeguarding.
Josh quoted the sign: “Justice, Inc.” into the phone, as a telephone switchboard operator might have said, “A. B. Richardson Co. To whom do you wish to speak?”
A girl’s voice came over the phone, agitated and tense, yet cultured and pleasant.
“I would like to speak to Mr. Richard Benson. Is he there?”
“Yes,” said Josh pleasantly. “Just a minute, and he—”
There was a scream over the phone! It ripped into the transmitter at the other end with such frightened, horrible shrillness that Smitty and Nellie and Benson heard it twenty feet away.
Then there was silence. Josh jiggled the receiver. The line was dead; only the dial sound could be heard.
Without one word spoken, the four went into action.
Josh got the location of the phone over which the call had been made: a small hotel over near Gramercy Park. Nellie called headquarters to have a squad car rush there and place a man at front and back to guard the place and see that no one got away. Smitty and The Avenger raced for the automatic elevator and went to the basement.
A fleet of fifteen or twenty cars was there, each designed for a different, specific use. They got into a coupé that could do a hundred and twenty miles an hour and shot up a ramp and over the sidewalk.
The dark beauty, registered as Carol Haynes in the small hotel near Gramercy Park, had dragged her bureau across the door before phoning The Avenger. She had forgotten the window.
It is a common thing for people to forget windows when they are on the third floor or higher. And yet more windows than not have ledges or ornamental brickwork under them which make it quite easy to climb in, whether they are on the third floor or the thirtieth.
A man had climbed in the girl’s window while she was at the phone!
The man moved with a skill that would have been admirable in any other line of endeavor. He slunk up behind the girl at the phone with a silence unbroken even by the rustle of his clothes; he took good care that there was no such rustle. He even watched his breathing, making it slow and even, to avoid giving his presence away.
If it hadn’t been for just one thing that he forgot to watch, the girl would never have known what struck her.
That one thing was his shadow.
There was a lamp on the table near the window. It was by its rays that the girl had been studying the gold coin. That lamp, behind the skulking man, gave him away.
The girl saw a moving shadow, screamed wildly, and tried to turn. His hand snaked down with a blackjack, and she fell! The man picked up the phone and set it in place. Then he went to the door, rolled the bureau back, shouldered the girl, and went to the freight elevator.
Not for six minutes did the squad car, summoned by Nellie, get to the hotel. By that time, the man was four minutes gone, driving off with another man in a dimly lighted black sedan with the limp body of the girl in the rear.
And by that time Dick Benson had reached there, after a faster trip than any ambulance or police car could have made.
“Find out who called from what room,” he said to the giant. “By this time, whoever she screamed at is gone. Find out what you can.”
Smitty went into the hotel. Benson went to the curb east of the entrance. There was no doorman at this hotel, but a cab sat there at the curb with a driver in it.
“A car may have come out of this driveway, after picking up something brought down in the freight elevator back there,” he said.
The man looked at the small police insignia on The Avenger’s car, and then stared into the glacial depths of those colorless eyes. He was an intelligent man, and he promptly decided that this was a time to come clean.
“Yes, sir,” he nodded, “four or five minutes ago a car came out. Black sedan, Connecticut license, not going very fast. It went over to Fifth Avenue, and I just happened to see that it turned north. Two men in front, nobody in the rear as far as I could see. Right rear fender dented.”
The man earned a twenty-dollar bill for his fast description.
Dick Benson stepped to the man at the wheel of the squad car.
“Phone the bridges. Stop any black sedans with two men riding, Connecticut license, dented right rear fender.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man. But it is doubtful if Dick heard him. He was already stepping into the coupé. And at seventy miles an hour he headed north.
He had reserved for himself the most probable way out of the city to be taken by any car with a Connecticut license. That was via the Henry Hudson Parkway, which was reached at the north end of the Express Highway.