The Avenger 10 - The Smiling Dogs Read Online Free Page A

Washington just to talk about planting a certain bare area with trees?”
    Cutten’s eyes continued pleasant—and expressionless. “Aldershot is an enthusiast about the West. He has approached me before, and Burnside, too, about projects designed to beautify our section.”
    The Avenger’s colorless eyes were like stainless steel chips in his dead face. “Did the sheriff, by any chance, mention a crytogram to you?”
    On Cutten’s face was a fleeting expression of utter perplexity. “Cryptogram? No! He said nothing about cryptograms.”
    “He neither showed you one—nor got one from you?”
    Cutten frowned a little. “I have said there was no talk of such things. As for getting one from me, there are implications in that question that I don’t quite like. I know you by reputation, Mr. Benson, and know that your integrity is not to be questioned. But I don’t think that gives you the right to doubt my assertions.”
    The Avenger stared for a long time into the blue eyes of Cutten. Benson saw an iron will there, a determination not to be lightly shaken. But he also thought he saw fear. No, something deeper than fear—horror! As if the man stared through his questioner and saw ghosts.
    “Thank you, Senator Cutten,” Benson said smoothly. “Good night.”
    He went out, and the blue eyes followed his straight steely back with the fear growing in their haggard depths.
    Benson went back to the hotel suite he had engaged on coming to Washington a few hours before. His assistants were there, waiting for him.
    The Avenger’s aides were almost as remarkable, and as capable, as The Avenger himself. Four of them were with him on this trip.
    There was the huge giant, Smitty; the dour Scotchman, Fergus MacMurdie; the sleepy-looking but extremely intelligent Negro, Josh Newton; and Josh’s pretty wife, Rosabel.
    MacMurdie started fuming when Benson came in. “Whoosh , Muster Benson,” he greeted The Avenger gloomily. “I’m thinkin’ by now ye’ve probably found we’ve had a trip for nothin’. A couple of murders. ’Tis bad, of course, and I’m sorry for the lads that got killed. But ’tis not as important as the crrrooks we usually go after.”
    “You Scotch raven,” snapped the giant, Smitty, “is it up to us to judge whether or not a case is important enough to work on?”
    “Ye couldn’t judge, anyway, Algernon,” retorted Mac. “Yer head’s a long way up from the ground, but there’s nothin’ in it to make judgments possible.”
    The Scot was one of a few rare souls who could call the giant by his true name, Algernon, and not be instantly annihilated. But even from Mac, Smitty didn’t like it.
    “I’ll show you—” he growled, starting toward Mac.
    The Avenger paid no attention. His two men were always bickering back and forth, but Benson knew that such bickering stopped in a hurry and changed into efficient cooperation when there was work to be done.
    Something in his colorless eyes and the set of his gray steel bar of a body stopped the two. They watched him while he went to a case like a small wardrobe trunk and opened it.
    The big case was the most complete traveling laboratory imaginable. And Benson was probably the world’s finest chemist. Put the two together and you got results that any of the big commercial laboratories might have envied.
    Benson analyzed the scrapings from the left shoe of dead Sheriff Aldershot. In silence, the four watched him while his deft hands performed their miracles with microscope, acids, and retorts. At last, The Avenger straightened up from his meticulous task.
    “Sulphur and salt,” he said.
    “Eh?” gaped Mac. “What about sulphur and—”
    “From the welt of Aldershot’s shoe. What do you know about Bison National Park, Mac?”
    The Scot wrinkled his reddish, coarse-skinned forehead and his bleak blue eyes narrowed in thought. “ ’Tis a rather small one, as national parks go, and doesn’t get the tourists that the big ones do. It’s in