Derr brushed past him casually, explaining, “If you do think it, next time you won't be so quick to say it.”
He stopped on the threshold of the small bedroom and dispassionately removed the knuckles and dropped them back into his pocket. It was an ordinary bedroom with the sort of furniture that comes with a rented house. The gray light of late afternoon came through a single window to illuminate the bed on which the girl lay.
She lay on her side with her face toward Derr, twisting and straining futilely against the belt buckled about her knees and the length of clothesline that bound her wrists behind her back. A bathroom sponge was jammed into her mouth for a gag, held in place by a soiled handkerchief bound around her head.
Disheveled dark hair was splayed about her face, and one brown eye blazed with anger at Derr and the other man in the room, who leaned negligently against the opposite wall, idly chewing on a matchstick and watching her struggles with the impersonal interest of a scientist observing an impaled specimen.
Her face was pale and thin and she looked like a sophomore in high school, but the breast that had escaped from the ripped print dress and lay exposed on the counterpane was as round and full as that of a mature woman.
The man leaning against the wall moved his head a fraction of an inch in her direction and spoke past the matchstick between his teeth. “Some nice stuff there, Chief. You want me and Al to unbuckle that belt?”
Derr said dispassionately, “She's sixteen years old, you fool.”
“Hell of a build for sixteen.” Charlie straightened up and yawned. “Way she yammered at Al and me in the car 'fore we slapped that sponge in her mouth, she figgered we'd grabbed her for some sport and wasn't fighting too hard to get away.”
Hake Derr moved forward two steps and looked down at the girl speculatively. Behind him, Al slunk into the room, retching and holding one hand over his mouth, talking around it fast and placatingly to the man who had just knocked half his teeth out:
“Charlie's honest-to-God right, boss.” The words were slurred and slobbery in his eagerness to re-establish good will with Derr. “I swear she ripped that dress open herself to give us an eyeful. Lotsa these here society dames are like that,” he went on sagely. “I recollect one that usta chase Fatso Golan 'round the room and try to grab—”
“Shut up,” Derr said wearily over his shoulder. “Both you lame brains listen close. It was bad enough the way you messed this job by jumping the gun, but by God, if either one of you lays a finger on her while I'm gone, I'll fix you so you'll never do it again in all your lives. Get that?”
Charlie spat out the matchstick and said aggrievedly, “Hell, Boss. We was just thinkin'—”
Derr said coldly, “Don't wear out what's left of your brains by trying to think. This girl's worth plenty, and she's going to be delivered back home just like she was when you grabbed her.” He paused thoughtfully. “Either of you ever hear the name Morgan Wayne?”
“Sure,” Al said thickly from behind his palm. “Ginzo from out west, Chi or somewheres, they say's casing around to move in on the racket. Been nosing around getting leads and talking to some of the boys.”
“From L.A.,” said Charlie positively. “I got it straight from Peewee Lampell. He's a big shot out there, but with stuff getting tight from over the border, he figures on hornin' in here.”
“No matter,” said Hake Derr curtly, “where he's from or how he figures. He's already horned in just this much too far.” He held his right hand up for both men to see, with thumb and forefinger widely extended. His round eyes seemed to protrude farther from the blandly boyish features and his voice became guttural as he stared directly in front of him at nothing and was pleased by the image his mind cast there.
“I'm headed for a messy kill,” he said, and both men shrank away from the distilled vitriol that dripped from his thick lips. “You know what I mean. The way I like it.” He paused and licked his lips and an anticipatory shudder traversed his heavy body. You didn't look at his boyish face now. You looked at his eyes and you heard his voice. “You boys wait for me here and keep the girl quiet till I get back. Lay one finger on her and you know what you'll get.”
He turned away slowly and went toward the door. Al drew aside to let him go by. Both men were silent until they heard the front door slam shut. Then Al said in an awed voice, “It was the Gingham Gal, Charlie. She's fingered this Wayne character, sure as hell.”
Charlie shrugged. He said, “Hake's been set to drink blood ever since we heard tell this Wayne creep was nosin' around.” He looked down regretfully at the bound body of the girl on the bed and muttered, “Damn if I don't feel sorry for her right now. I swear she's been givin' me the come-on ever since we tossed her there.” He stepped closer to the bed and cocked his head on one side. He pursed his thin lips and grinned down at her exposed breast.
“Hey!” said Al thickly. “You heard what Hake said if you laid a finger on her.”
“But this won't be no finger,” said Charlie.
Chapter Five
Priscilla Endicott had assured Wayne it would take Hake Derr at least half an hour to reach the Gingham Gardens from the place where she had telephoned him. The address was on the East Side near the Triborough Bridge, and while he whipped northward on East River Drive, Wayne wondered grimly if that was just wishful thinking on Priscilla's part, because she wanted to believe Derr couldn't make it in time to interrupt whatever was going on in her bedroom. Or was it another point against her? A come-on to lure him into hanging around until Derr could bust in on them?
He didn't know. Not yet. Not until he found out for sure that she realized Derr was hearing her whispered conversation while she held the phone pressed against her body.
One thing Morgan Wayne did know for sure: It wasn't going to take his Cadillac more than twenty minutes to make the trip. He had no plan of action worked out. All that would have to depend on what he found when he reached the address. Letty Hendrixon might not even be there, of course. But he thought she would be. It was evidently some sort of hideout of Hake Derr's. Certainly not his regular place of residence. A man like Hake Derr wouldn't be caught dead living out that far from the center of things. When he was finally run to ground he would almost certainly be found ensconced in a swanky apartment on Central Park West or a similar neighborhood.
No. This address had the sound of a place from which some of his boys might reasonably operate, and Derr's presence there at this time argued that Letty had been taken there directly after being grabbed on the Sawmill River Parkway—to be held, maybe, until dark before being transferred to safer quarters aboard the boat. Why?
Because the boat wasn't ready to put out immediately. Wayne's unremitting and day-long vigils from the window of his office proved that. And they wouldn't risk bringing her aboard to be held for long while it was tied at the dock.
But why had they jumped the gun? Why hadn't they waited to grab the girl until the boat was provisioned and staffed for a quick getaway to safety on the open seas? They needed time for lengthy negotiations on a thing like this. It wasn't as simple as a one-night stand while a demand for ransom was made and payment swiftly arranged. This deal was much more delicate and complicated. There were difficult details to be worked out before the girl could be released.
And that brought up further questions—questions that had bothered Morgan Wayne for the last three weeks while he pursued various devious lines of inquiry into Hake Derr's background and current business affiliations.
Derr wasn't the man to have figured this sort of really big-time proposition. It wasn't in his line. Oh, sure, he was the sort to handle the details of the snatch, all right, and maybe was good enough for a cover-up in the final ransom negotiations, but there had to be someone much higher up who had planned this bold coup and who was in a position to profit by it once it was successfully concluded.
Which it wasn't going to be, Wayne told himself grimly as he gunned the Cadillac around a taxi that was only doing forty, n
osed in through a crack in northbound traffic to hit a clear lane, and whipped up to seventy to slide past the next light just as it was turning against him.
Morgan Wayne's three weeks of vigilance had paid off this afternoon, even if Hendrixon, that stuffed shirt, had sneered at his warning a month ago and refused to take any action himself.
All in all, this snatch would make things a lot easier, Wayne reflected. It would throw the fear of God into Hendrixon, and by God, they'd have to listen to him now.
If he got the girl home safely.When he got her home safely, he corrected his thinking grimly as he put on another burst of speed and began looking for an exit from the Drive that would take him to the address in the shortest time. Every second counted now. Only God knew what sort of hoodlums Derr would leave in charge of the kidnaped girl while he beat it to the Gingham Gardens to confront the man he thought to catch fouling his nest.
That was bad. It would have been almost better if Derr had stayed around until Wayne arrived. He was a businessman, at least, playing for high stakes in this thing, and he'd take every precaution to see that the girl wasn't harmed. It might be different with his gorillas. Wayne had never met Letty, but he had seen pictures of her. Jail bait, of course, for any man who laid a finger on her, but a damned provocative girl. There was something about the overdeveloped lushness of her breasts that showed through in every picture Wayne had seen. That, and a short, pouting upper lip and a come-and-get-me-if-you-dare look in her eyes that would do things to the sort of hoods Derr would employ. She was the crazy sort of kid who might taunt them, Wayne told himself bitterly, braking hard and swinging on two wheels off the Drive, slowing now to search for street names and numbers.
Wrapped up in the inviolability of wealth, a youngster like Letty Hendrixon was completely unpredictable. She might even be getting a kick out of the whole thing. They got jaded early in life, these spoiled brats of New York society parents'. Following the unhealthy examples of their elders.
No time for more thinking about that now. Here was the street. The next block would be it. Get Letty Hendrixon out and then see what lengths she had driven the boys to.
Morgan Wayne slid past the intersection and slowed. It was a run-down neighborhood of long-ago elegance, one of those peculiar real-estate developments that mushroomed over a few connecting blocks in the Eighties when the city was rousing itself and stretching northward, when those small suburbs were as fashionable as Westchester is today.
The houses along this block on both sides were exactly uniform. Three-story brownstones, two rooms wide and two deep. Built with less than a foot of space between each one, with windows exactly similar and facing each other. A small porch in front with four stone steps leading up to a weathered front door that Wayne knew would open onto a tiny hallway with dining room on one side and living room on the other in front. A kitchen behind the dining room and library opposite. Four bedrooms and two baths on the second floor, servants' quarters above—for they had been built in the days when there were servants.
Wayne pulled past the number he sought and parked in front of the next house. He stepped out casually and glanced up to see a sleazy curtain drawn aside and a round-faced woman peering out at him and his Gad with unashamed curiosity.
He decided swiftly on a plan of action and went up the steps next door to the house in which he felt certain Letty Hendrixon was being held prisoner.
He didn't have to press the bell. The woman had seen him start up and was at the door before he reached it. She wore a dingy white cloth tied about her head and a faded cotton wrapper belted too tightly about her slovenly figure. Her eyes snapped with curiosity from between folds of fat, and Morgan Wayne knew his first impression had been right. If anyone in the block knew about the house next door and would be eager to share her knowledge with a well-dressed stranger, it would be this woman.
He smiled pleasantly and at the same time acted surprised to see her. “I'm looking for some friends of mine in this block. I thought the house was this number, but I guess I'm mistaken.”
“What name you want, mister? I know everybody in this block, 'cepting these new people next door.”
“They must be the ones I'm looking for,” Wayne said quickly. “When did they move in?”
“Just rented it a month ago.” Her voice and face showed sour disapproval. “Not one bit neighborly, they ain't. Too uppity for others that live right next door. You mark my words, I told John just last night—that's my husband—you mark my words, I told him, them folks aren't up to no good. Coming and going all hours, with their fancy automobiles and fancier women. Not that folks ain't got a right to fancy automobiles,” she went on grudgingly with a glance past Wayne at his convertible parked in front, “but when they think that makes 'em too good to pass the time of day with a body—”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Wayne threw in hastily.
“And drinking and all that,” she swept on, disregarding the interruption. “Staggerin' up the front steps right in broad daylight. It's a shame and disgrace to a decent neighborhood. I seen it with my own eyes not two hours ago—and her just a young girl, too. If they're friends of yours, mister, you can tell 'em plain out mat we're decent folks here and don't want to have no truck with such doings.”
Wayne said harshly, “They're not really friends of mine. I just told you that in the beginning to get a line on them. In fact, I came here looking for a young girl such as you describe, who I'm afraid is running around with them and learning to drink—and maybe worse,” he added, dropping his voice. “An innocent girl, ma'am. My own sister. If she's in that house now, I'm going in after her.”
“Lord bless you for a good brother,” said the fat woman. “She's in there, all right, with two of 'em. Another one drove away in his fancy car not more'n ten minutes ago.”
Morgan Wayne's face became very grave, his voice somber. “If I could be sure it's Annie,” he muttered, “I'd tear the place apart with my bare hands to rescue her. But they'll recognize me if I go to the door and they'll just deny she's there, and I don't want to call the police and have a lot of publicity if it is my sister.”
“You poor soul,” she breathed sympathetically. “Tell you what: I've been listenin' some to 'em moving around in there... you know, since seeing 'em bring her up the steps staggering drunk and wonderin' what was what. Well,” she dropped her voice conspiratorily, “best I could tell from listening at the windows, they got her up in the front second-floor bedroom on this side. There's a window right opposite my bedroom window, but it's closed tight an' the shade's pulled and you can't see in, but if you listen close at my window you can hear voices maybe, and that way you'll know if it's her or not.”
Wayne said, “That's a wonderful idea. If I justknew...” He pushed past the woman into a small unlit hallway that smelled dankly of boiling cabbage, and she wheezed after him happily, directing him in a hoarse whisper: “Up them stairs right straight ahead, mister. I'll come along and show you where.”
Morgan Wayne sprinted up the stairs while she followed laboriously. He whirled into the front bedroom she had indicated and to an open side window with a rusty screen on it that was separated by less than a foot of space from a similar window in the adjoining house. It was closed, as she had said, and the shade was drawn, but Wayne did not hesitate for an instant. Too much time had already been wasted in working out this opportunity for paying a surprise visit. If Letty Hendrixon weren't the girl in the next bedroom...
He sprinted across the twilit bedroom, lowered his head, and, shielding his face with both arms, dove headfirst through the two rusty screens and the glass of the other window.
He heard a faint scream behind him as he catapulted through the air and knew the hospitable fat woman was protesting his unorthodox exit, but her voice was immediately drowned by a crash of glass on the floor about him as his momentum carried him through the window and into the bedroom.
It was lighted by a dim ceiling bulb. Wayne slithered across the floor ami
d a clatter of glass and came to his feet in a half crouch as lightly as a cat, both hands diving into the side pockets of his jacket for the butts of short-barreled guns nested there.
In the single brief instant before the bedroom erupted into deadly violence, Wayne saw the naked and twisted limbs of a girl on the bed. Her face and torso were obscured from his view by the back and shoulders of a man on his knees beside the bed. Another man leaned over the foot of the bed looking down intently with sweat beading his forehead, a look of lascivious pleasure on his face despite smears of blood about his mouth and the absence of his upper front teeth.
For one instant of paralyzed shock, the tableau held its form. Then the kneeling man whirled with an inarticulate oath, and Al straightened up with a cry of fear.
Morgan Wayne coldly put a bullet in the center of his forehead before Al was fully erect. He crouched on the floor not two feet from Charlie's distorted face and slammed the solid weight of the smoking gun against the second man's jaw.
It made a solid clunk that shattered the jawbone, and Charlie's feral eyes glazed as his body slumped limply to the floor without a sound.
Through the smashed window Wayne heard the wailing shrill of the fat woman's voice raising the alarm, and knew he had only moments to get downstairs and away from the neighborhood.
He leaped to his feet and wasted only one glance at Letty's horror-stricken face, then swept her up roughly in his arms and tossed her over one shoulder like a bag of meal. He trotted out the door and down the stairs with her gagged mouth bouncing against his shoulder and one arm about her bare thighs in front of him.
The Avenger Page 4
