The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc. by Kenneth Robeson Page A

his attention on the man ahead, felt a gun muzzle bore into the back of his neck. He froze. One small move, and he’d have his head nearly blown off. He didn’t try to make a move. With one easy maneuver, they had him cold. It might have been expected where the odds were seven to one.
    No one said anything. No one moved hastily, now that the huge fellow with the futile hump on his back was caught.
    Very leisurely, the smiling man in front of Smitty turned with the handkerchief in his clenched fist. The girl with the hard line around her mouth looked on with wide eyes, but with no protest. The other man just grinned.
    The smiling man squeezed hard. The vial in the handkerchief broke, and the sickish smell of chloroform filled the cabin.
    “Pilot!” yelled Smitty suddenly. Yelling was all he could do. He could no more disregard the gun at the base of his skull by a physical move than he could fly without wings. “Somebody! Help—”
    The chloroform-soaked handkerchief was jammed over his mouth and nose. He did struggle then. But the struggle rapidly grew weaker, then died. The handkerchief was jammed tighter.
    The giant slumped in the seat.
    Two of the other men were opening the trapdoor. Cool air breezed up from the vacuum formed. They slanted the limp giant toward the oblong.
    Two thousand feet below, the ebony-black water of Lake Ontario presented a pavement-hard surface to anything dropped from such a height. Hitting water from there is like hitting granite.
    They dropped the big man through. He slid down the backward-slanting door like coal down a chute, and was gone.
    The big plane roared steadily on.
    The gray fox of a man for whom Smitty had made this supreme sacrifice—in vain, as these killers could have testified—had left the hotel only a few minutes after the giant’s departure.
    He went to the brokerage firm of Carney & Buell, who handled Buffalo Tap & Die locally and whose New York affiliate had floated the stock issue in the first place. Smitty had said that Leon had had him drive here just before his visit to John Lansing’s deserted house.
    When the flesh of Benson’s countenance had gone dead, it had removed him at a stroke from the world of normal men. But it had done something else, too. It had made him a man of a thousand faces.
    A few touches of his steely, sensitive fingers—and he was someone else, with the flesh staying in the place into which it was prodded.
    He walked into Carney & Buell’s place with his countenance sober and squarish and his hat on the exact center of his head. He was an impressive figure. When he asked to see one of the partners, Wallace Buell came out at once.
    “I am Mrs. Martineau’s legal adviser,” Benson said. “I came to inquire a little about her financial affairs.”
    Buell’s gimlet black eyes widened a little.
    “I don’t understand. We know Mrs. Martineau, and have had direct dealings with her. But I was not aware that she had retained a legal adviser.”
    “She hasn’t, exactly,” Benson said, the perfect picture of a sober, humorless corporation lawyer. “I did work for Robert Martineau before he died. When I read of his widow disposing of her Buffalo Tap & Die stock, which I regard as sound, I decided to investigate a little on my own. Why did she sell that stock, do you suppose, Mr. Buell?”
    Buell looked harrassed.
    “A dozen people, mainly reporters, have asked me that. Good Heavens, I don’t know why! We’re only Mrs. Martineau’s brokers, not her guardians. Why don’t you ask her?”
    “I’ve tried to. I can’t get in touch with her.” Benson’s pale and icy eyes were studying this man, turning him inside out. Was the agitation that of anyone hounded by reporters, or was it caused by fear?
    “We have been unable to get in touch with Mrs. Martineau, either,” Buell admitted. “Perhaps she has taken a trip without telling anyone. In any event, it’s none of our business.”
    “You won’t tell me why she sold?”
    “I