The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs Read Online Free

wearin’ ’em when I took him to the train.”
    “They are not the clothes he usually wore in Bison?”
    “Nope. He only wears ’em to weddin’s and funerals and State occasions.”
    “Then he had on no articles of that costume during the few days preceding his trip here?”
    There was a slight pause.
    “The boots, maybe,” said Phelps. “Yeah, I think he was wearin’ his regular old boots. He didn’t change much. His feet kinda hurt him when he tried store shoes.”
    The Avenger thanked him, hung up and turned to a mystified chief. “Is Aldershot’s body still at the morgue?” Benson asked.
    “Yes,” said the chief.
    “I’d like to look at it,” said Benson.
    But when he got to the morgue, he paid little attention to the body itself. Instead, he concentrated on the shoes—the hide boots which the deputy thought were the ones he wore out West, too; had probably worn in the few days before his sudden trip from Montana to confer with Senators Cutten and Burnside.
    The Avenger took out a keen-bladed little knife and two small envelopes. He carefully scraped the upper part of the dead sheriff’s left shoe, and put the minute scrapings in one of the envelopes.
    Then he inserted the point of the knife along the groove between sole and upper. From this welt he got more fine scrapings which he put into the second envelope.
    The chief nodded, at that, with understanding in his eyes. “Going to see if dust from his shoes will tell where he has been recently, huh? It’s a good stunt. But I can tell you that. He came direct from the train to the Capitol Building when he got to Washington. I’ve traced his path from the depot. No side trips.”
    Benson wanted to go farther back than that. He wanted to know, not where the sheriff had gone since hitting Washington, but where he might have gone in his own country before ever getting on the eastbound train. However, he didn’t explain that.
    “Thanks very much,” he said quietly. “I’ll get in touch with you if anything interesting results from an examination of these scrapings.”

    He went from the morgue and to the home of Senator Cutten. Burnside’s fellow senator from Montana lived in a large cottage out in Georgetown. Cutten was a pleasant-looking man of fifty or so, with tired lines bracketing an orator’s mouth. However, there was steel in his blue eyes and granite in the firm line of his jaw. The Senator was a strong man.
    In a tastefully decorated living room, Cutten stared expressionlessly at the man with the white, still face and the colorless, deadly eyes. More and more people were hearing of The Avenger. It was obvious that Cutten knew a little about Benson by repute.
    “I came to talk to you a little about the death of Senator Burnside’s secretary and of Sheriff Aldershot of Bison, Montana,” said Benson.
    Cutten spread strong, thin hands in a frank and open gesture that was not quite matched by his eyes.
    “The police have already talked to me about that,” he murmured. “And I’ve told them all I know, which is little enough. But I’ll be glad to go over it again, if you like.”
    Benson nodded his thanks. “Aldershot had quite a talk with you—and with Senator Burnside—I understand,” he said. “What did he come to see you about, Senator Cutten?”
    “As I’ve told the police, he came to see me about reforestation. An impossible plan. Like many laymen, Sheriff Aldershot seems to think trees will grow wherever they are planted. Take a bare, desert stretch that is arid and ugly and of no use to anyone, plant seedlings—and in ten years you have a beautiful young forest! Only it doesn’t work out that way. The district he had in mind has never known trees and wouldn’t support them if they were planted. I told him so, but he was rather persistent.”
    “Doesn’t it seem strange,” said Benson, pale eyes like diamond drills, “that the sheriff should have packed in a great hurry, dropped everything and traveled to