The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder by Kenneth Robeson

window. They went up through the trap, dropped a floor to the roof of the yellow-front, and went through the trapdoor there.
    They stood in an upper hallway.
    The air of the place was one of mustiness, desolation and disuse. Also, there was not a sound. You’d swear no one had been in here for months.
    And perhaps no one had! The driver said he’d let Wight out here. He hadn’t said he had seen Wight go in.
    Nellie and Smitty glanced at each other and, without need of words, co-operated in searching the place.
    The stairs and halls here were in the center of the building instead of on the side, as in the narrower structure next door. They went downstairs. At the top hall, they went from door to door-Nellie going into the rooms on the left and Smitty taking the ones on the right.
    They covered the top floor and found nothing. They covered half the second floor and found nothing. Then Smitty felt the mild shock at his waist indicating a call on his belt radio. He put the receiver to his ear.
    “In here!” came the tapped message. Nellie had found something and didn’t want to raise her voice about it, just in case listening ears were around.
    The giant went across the hall into the room she’d last entered. She stood near the boarded-up window, and, in the faint gloom of daylight that penetrated cracks, Smitty saw what she’d found.
    There were several empty cans. Corned-beef cans. There were crumbs and three empty milk bottles. There was a box placed against a wall in such a way as to indicate that it had been used as a chair.
    The dregs in one of the milk bottles were fresh and not at all hardened. Someone had been in here for many hours, recently.
    Smitty’s glance, and Nellie’s, said the same thing. Take it easy. Be more careful than ever, from now on.
    They went to the door, Smitty looming colossal beside the tiny blonde. Smitty poked his head out warily, just a little, to see that the hall was clear.
    Instantly, he started to duck back, but he wasn’t quite quick enough. Something slammed down on his head like a falling brick chimney! He fell.
    Nellie’s hand darted for a special little pocket where she kept some of the anaesthetic pills. A man’s hand caught her wrist in time to prevent this.
    There were four men. The man who caught Nellie looked pretty confident about it. Why not? He was a burly fellow, weighing perhaps a hundred and ninety, and here was a fragile girl.
    He learned the next instant not to judge by weight.
    Nellie’s free hand caught the hand over her wrist. She twisted sharply, yanked up and forward, and bent her small body. The startled guy shot over her shoulder like a stone from a slingshot and smacked his chin on the floor.
    He sat up, shaking his head. The diminutive blonde, like an enraged hummingbird went for another of the four—the one who had conked Smitty.
    Nellie ribbed the big fellow every chance she got. She sounded as if she had no use for him at all. But let anyone else pick on the giant, and there was action!
    She grabbed the man by his coat lapels, pulled down hard with her left hand and swung up hard with her right. The right was doubled into a fist that was small and pink but very hard. It hit the descending jaw with a crack like that of a .22 rifle, and this man sat down also.
    Then three more men appeared from the gloom, which was hardly fair. Nellie had whittled down the odds till—for a minute, at least, when the floored two would be able to get up again—they were only two to one. Now, they were five to one again. It was annoying.
    Nellie ducked and went for a third man. But they’d had their lesson, now. Three of them piled on her, and she went down.
    But as she went down, Smitty came up. And that fixed that!
    Smitty was aggravated by the blow on the head, anyhow. He didn’t like to be hit on the head. When he saw Nellie being pawed around by three men, the aggravation changed to sinister fury. He roared out something or other that probably could not have