The Devil’s Horns

CHAPTER VIII Official Frameup!

The cavernous loading platform of the White Transportation Corporation thundered with the motor of a big truck. There were six or seven giant trucks in there, ten-ton affairs, enclosed, big as boxcars. They performed the function of boxcars, too. They were designed to haul freight over long distances.

The White Transportation Corporation had a lot of night runs. All trucking companies have. There are shipments that must be rushed to factory or consumer so as to get there first thing in the morning. Also, roads are clearer at night and better time can be made by the big vehicles.

The White Corporation had lately abandoned all night runs made solely for their own convenience. The rush shipments, however, they could not refuse if they meant to stay in business. Though they’d have liked to refuse them. Odd and deadly things had been happening to their trucks at night.

The foreman came up to one of the drivers. The foreman was big, but he was dwarfed by the driver. For the driver was Smitty, looking more vast than ever in dungarees and sheepskin winter coat.

“There may be trouble, Smitty,” said the foreman. He chewed a worried lip. “This run to Youngstown takes you over a stretch of backroads detour where anything can happen.”

That suited Smitty. The giant had joined the company looking for trouble. It was his reason for being there. If the trouble came right away — the first night — that would be fine. Save a lot of bothersome waiting.

“You know your orders,” the foreman went on. “If anybody tries to stop you, duck, and jam the accelerator to the floor. There’s nine tons of stampings in the truck. We can’t afford to have them stolen or dumped in the river.”

“With a couple guns pointed at your head, it might not be healthy to keep on going,” said Smitty.

The foreman conceded that.

“Yeah, we don’t want any funerals.”

“You guys have got guts, to fight the racket like you’re doing,” Smitty said admiringly.

The foreman sighed. “Maybe. The old man’s a fighter from way back. He’s lost four trucks, now. Maybe it’d be better just to join the association and pay the dues. You can’t fight all alone. And that’s the way you have to fight in Ashton City.”

He swore.

“If jobs weren’t so hard to find, I’d pack up and move my family to another city. I hate to have my kids grow up in such a rotten hole.”

“Perhaps,” said Smitty, with The Avenger’s white, deadly face and the colorless, grim eyes, burning in his brain, “Ashton City will be a better place to live in, soon.”

The foreman shrugged.

The man who was to go with Smitty came from the lockers. The helper assigned him was a cheerful-looking red-headed youngster. He and Smitty climbed to the high cab of the monster truck.

The motor thundered as Smitty gunned it. Then he tooled the big thing out to the street, and turned west, toward Youngstown.

“You’re new, ain’t you?” the red-head said to Smitty.

“Yeah!” Smitty said, huge arms moving the steering wheel effortlessly.

“Did you know there might be trouble with this job? The racket’s after us.”

“So I heard,” said Smitty.

“You don’t seem very excited about it,” grinned the young fellow beside him.

“I’m a peaceable guy,” said Smitty. “But if anybody wants trouble—” He hunched vast shoulders.

“I’ll bet you’re good in a fight,” said the other man admiringly. “Look out—”

A small sedan had shot heedlessly from a side street. Smitty twirled the truck’s massive wheels as if they’d been a flivver’s. But still he couldn’t avoid the result of the sedan’s rash move. There was a clump as the right end of the truck’s bumper caught the left front fender of the little sedan.

“This is it,” Smitty heard himself say aloud.

The foreman had been worried about a dark detour far out in the country. But the racketeers’ plan hadn’t envisaged a country road. They’d laid their trap right in town.

Smitty reached for a gun.

“No, you don’t,” came a voice. And a gun muzzle jammed into his side.

The voice was the voice of the red-headed helper, and the gun was in his hand. Smitty turned toward him.

The youngster’s eyes were feverish, frightened, but resolute. His hand, Smitty could feel, was shaking a little. A shaking finger on a trigger is a deadly thing.

“So you’re in with the gang,” Smitty said.

“That’s right,” said the youngster, trying to bluster even while his voice trembled.

“Pretty new at it, aren’t you?” said Smitty calmly.

“Well, what the hell. You have to start sometime. I’m not going to drive a truck at forty per all my life.”

Two men came out of the sedan, with tommy guns. From a dark corner nearby, came four more men, also armed. They swarmed up the cab.

“Out, you two!” one snarled, poking his gun toward the giant.

“I’ve got him covered, Tony,” quavered the redhead.

“Oh, hello kid,” said Tony. “You get out, too. Pete, take the truck and go fast and far.”

Smitty got out, with a flock of guns on him. It was all right. He’d had orders to get himself captured. The Avenger had wanted him to, so that he could see who was in this racket crowd, and perhaps learn a bit about the higher-ups. The giant was fast and agile. He could have taken that gun from the shaking youngster beside him in the cab if he’d wanted to. He might even have beaten the situation here, with incentive enough.

The redhead got out, too. One of the men got into the truck, jammed it clear of the half-wrecked little sedan. It thundered down the street, veering off into darker streets at the next corner.

And the men with Smitty and the red-headed kid just waited. That was funny. Smitty couldn’t figure that one out.

“Where the hell are they?” snarled the one the kid had called Tony. Then he shot into the air.

From down the street came the answering wail of a police-car siren, as it rushed to investigate.

“Fade — Manks, Bert and Sling.”

Three of the five racketeers went back to the dark corner from which they had emerged. There was the purr of a motor, as they got away from there. Tony, and another, continued to hold guns on Smitty.

Covering him that way, Tony reached with his left hand into a side pocket and got out an automatic.

“Tony,” gulped the red-headed tyro in crime, “the cops! Don’t you think we ought to lam?”

“Nope,” said Tony. “That ain’t the plan.”

And he shot the kid through the heart with the automatic in his left hand.

It was the most barbarous, coldblooded, unexpected thing that could be imagined. Tony and his pal stared down at the dead youngster, so swiftly trapped in the crime net he had helped to fashion. Smitty stared, too, then roared.

“Why, you—”

The automatic was wrenched from Tony’s hand, and nestled in Smitty’s huge one. Smitty snapped the trigger at Tony.

And nothing happened.

“Thanks,” said Tony. “Nice prints on that gat, now.”

Then the cop car came up.

Two plain-clothes men jumped out. They covered the three, with special reference to the giant. Smitty was at sea. He couldn’t understand—

“This guy crashed my car,” Tony said calmly to the two detectives. “He was in a truck with this red-headed kid and another guy. He and the red-headed kid climbed down; then the other guy ran off in the truck. Hit-and-run. This big guy yanked a gun on us when we started to say it was his fault. The red-headed kid tried to side with us, so the big guy shot him. Then we covered him till the cops could come. Look! He’s got the murder gun still in his hand.”

Smitty dropped the automatic as if it had burned him.

“All right, you, come along with us,” said one of the detectives. He didn’t bluster. It would have sounded better if he had.

“You don’t believe a thin-air yarn like that, do you?” said Smitty hotly.

The detective looked at the gun on the pavement, and at the dead boy with the bullet hole in his heart.

“Come along!”

“These are the guys you ought to take,” snapped Smitty, pointing to Tony and his pal. “They rammed my truck on purpose to stop it. They got me out at gun point, and then one of them went off with the truck. These two must have criminal records—”

Smitty stopped, at a sudden unpleasant thought.

“Come along, I said!”

Inwardly raging, Smitty got into the squad car. He might have disarmed the redhead in the cab. He might even have gotten away from the gang, if he’d tried.

But he couldn’t beat these two steady, alert police guns.

The Avenger had said to get taken by the gang. But the gang had been much too smart. So now he was taken by the police, with a murder frame tightly tied around his neck. And in this town, where police and mayor seemed to be owned by the very element they were supposed to fight, the future looked black indeed.

Then there was that other thing that had Smitty so badly worried—

That came out in about three hours, after he’d been taken to headquarters.

Smitty had started his career as an electrical engineer, graduating with high honors from Massachusetts Tech. He had started with a big electrical corporation, working in their laboratory on television. Some platinum disappeared from the laboratory, and they nailed him for it. The real thief had managed to palm it off on the giant. He had spent a year in jail for another man’s crime, and afterward had been unable to get decent work until Benson met him and took him on as crime fighter.

So Smitty had a prison record, and it came out, from New York, with the first of the routine police wires to the headquarters of other towns.

Captain Harrigo nodded, very much pleased.

“Sent up for larceny,” he said. “Now caught after murdering a guy. We’ll have some action to give the folks who think we’ve been laying down on the truck racket.”

Smitty didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t have done any good.

The decent people of Ashton City had been raising the devil because the police force, for reasons best known to themselves, had gotten nowhere with the rackets. Now, here was a convenient goat. The papers would come out with an account of a racketeer held for murder. The police department would be white-washed a little. Everything would be fine.

Except for the man unfortunate enough to be the goat!

“Come along,” said Harrigo. “We’ll put you in a nice, comfortable cell. And then in a few weeks we’ll lead you out to a nice, comfortable chair, with electricity to keep you warm.”