The Hate Master

CHAPTER III The Furious Rabbits

The drugstore looked like any other drugstore to the casual customer.

There were counters with everything carried in a modern pharmacy. There was a long marble soda fountain. There was a pharmacist’s desk.

But this drugstore was really unique. That was because of the back room.

The store part was only about half the size of this rear room, which couldn’t be seen. An iron door barred a casual entrance.

In the rear, there was something that looked like a dual laboratory. In fact, it was a dual laboratory.

Along one wall was ranged all the equipment ever heard of for conducting chemical experiments. Along the other was complete paraphernalia for electrical and radio work. The chemical side belonged to Fergus MacMurdie, set up here in this store bought for him by Richard Benson, better known as The Avenger. The electrical side was the property of Algernon Heathcote Smith.

MacMurdie and Smith were not in the rear room that morning. They were in the front, the store part, at the soda fountain.

Mac wasn’t having sodas. Sodas cost money, even when you owned the fountain; and the Scot was as reluctant to let a nickel go to waste as most men are to part with a toe or a finger. He stood at the end of the fountain, tall and bony and gangling, with bleak blue eyes. He scowled at Smitty.

Algernon Heathcote Smith — but call him Smitty if you didn’t want to be taken apart — was a dainty little figure of a man, six feet nine inches tall, weighing nearly three hundred pounds.

“There ye go,” Mac said to Smitty. “Sluppin’ up all the profits of my fountain.”

“It’s only my third sundae,” said Smitty mildly. “Josh is the guy you ought to talk to.”

Josh was the man next to the giant. Josh Newton, as tall as Mac and even skinnier, was a Negro who looked dull and sleepy but was actually an honor graduate from Tuskegee Institute.

John was now well along in his seventh sundae.

These three men were integral parts of the indomitable little band known as Justice, Inc., which was getting to be known as the most efficient crime-fighting organization in the country. Perhaps in the world. A little band apart from the police, but as feared by the underworld as ever the police were feared, they carried their lives lightly in their hands from day to day.

At that moment a fourth member of The Avenger’s band came into this store which was often a gathering place when there was no work on hand.

This fourth man was Cole Wilson, the newest recruit to The Avenger’s battle standard. Wilson was lithe, with dark hair and black eyes, and was almost too good-looking. If Smitty hadn’t seen Cole in action and known he was almost as good in trouble as The Avenger himself, he might have disliked the good looks. As it was, he paid no attention to them.

Wilson came in a hurry, as he did most things. He was the quickest moving and the most impulsive of all the crew. In his hand was a newspaper, folded to a back page. And as he walked in the door, he started talking.

“Mac, Smitty, Josh — what would you do if a ferocious rabbit came after you?”

“A ferocious — what?” said Smitty, jaw dropping.

“Rabbit,” said Wilson, leaning against the fountain with them.

“Look,” said Mac dourly, “there’s been enough kiddin’ around here without ye to add your two cents’ worth.”

“I’m not kidding,” said Wilson. He ran his hand through his dark hair. He always went bareheaded. “Look here, in the paper.”

“Read it, Mac,” said Josh. I wouldn’t trust Cole to read the thing. He’d have a rabbit biting a lion, if we let him.”

So Mac read, and Smitty and Josh looked more and more amazed.

“ ‘If it is news for a man to bite a dog,’ ” Mac read, “ ‘what would it be called if a rabbit bit a dog? Yet, this apparently has happened out in Scarsdale where rabbits are tough and like their dogs done rare for dinner. This morning Patrolman Swinnerton phoned in the report that he had just driven three rabbits off a Scotch terrier—’ ” Mac glared at the paper. “That’s a lie! A Scottie? Neverrr!”

“Go on with the account,” said Smitty impatiently.

“Drove three rabbits off a terrier,” Mac went on, omitting the breed, “ ‘but not in time to save the dog, which had been slashed almost to ribbons by the maddened bunnies. The dog died shortly after, Patrolman Swinnerton said, and—’ ”

Mac snorted. “Some reporter’s havin’ fun kiddin’ the public,” he snapped.

“It’s true,” said Wilson. “I called the paper. The reporter handled the story lightly, of course. But it actually happened.”

“Three rabbits attacked a dog?”

“Attacked it and killed it,” said Cole, black eyes blazing. “Two people saw it beside Swinnerton.”

“I think they’re all nuts,” observed Josh, getting back to his maple-nut sundae. But Smitty shook his head. His eyes were bland and china-blue, and he looked as dim-witted as he was huge. But the looks were deceptive; Smitty was a very shrewd guy.

Shrewd enough always to ask questions when something unnatural happened. And this was certainly not a natural occurrence!

“Could rabbits get rabies or go loco some way?” he asked Mac. As one of the world’s best chemists, and a wizard at pharmacology, Mac would know those things.

“It’s possible,” said Mac.

“These rabbits didn’t have rabies,” said Wilson. “The reporter asked that, too.”

“Ferocious rabbits,” mused Josh, grinning. “That’s about as rare as warlike doves.”

“So rare,” said Wilson, soberly, “that I thought I’d like to run out to Scarsdale and look at the dog and maybe look around the spot where he was killed. Anybody want to go with me?”

“Yeah, me,” said Smitty.

“Fine,” snorted Mac. “When ye get there, shoot a rabbit for me, if ye’re not frightened. I’ll mount its head on my library wall.”

But Josh, for one, had stopped grinning. It was the business of The Avenger and his aides to question things that didn’t seem to have normal explanations. Some very odd and deadly plans had been discovered more than once by such investigations.

Smitty and Wilson went out to Scarsdale to police headquarters — and went out fast.

The giant was getting well known as an aide of the mighty Avenger. The sergeant at the desk nodded a respectful greeting and talked freely when Smitty asked about the dog.

“Craziest thing you ever heard of,” the sergeant said. “Rabbits killing a dog! But I guess it happened, all right. The dog’s down at the morgue. Usually, we’d have it carted off, but we thought maybe we ought to keep this one awhile in case any highbrow wanted to investigate.”

“Has anyone done so?” said Smitty.

“One guy showed up half an hour ago and wanted the dog’s body. He said he was the owner; but he didn’t give a good description, so we chased him. He was pretty mad about it, too. Wanted the remains mighty badly.”

Smitty and Wilson quickly looked at each other, then chased to the morgue.

The giant whistled softly as he stared at the little corpse spread on a slab usually reserved for human remains.

“You kind of forget,” said Wilson, “that a rabbit has very big, very sharp teeth. This would remind you, though!”

It certainly would. The paper had said the dog was slashed to ribbons. That had not been literary exaggeration.

The dead dog was sliced as if it had been attacked by knives. Its throat was a red mass; its furry body looked as if a wild cat had had access to it, for a long time, without interruption.

“And rabbits did that!” said Wilson. “Where was it that Swinnerton picked this up?” he asked the morgue attendant.

The man named a street. Smitty and Wilson went out there, with the picture of the mangled, furry body in their minds.

It was a quiet, residential street; distinctly not the sort of street where you’d expect this type of thing.

Wilson’s black eyes, alert and alive, found it first: a stained spot, near the curb in the middle of the block, where blood had been. The dog’s blood. The two ranged around, themselves a little like dogs on a scent. Smitty called; he had found several drops, fifty or sixty feet down the street.

Wilson joined the giant, but there were no more drops to trace. It was impossible to tell from which property the dog had come. And at police headquarters, they’d been told that the animal hadn’t been traced yet. There was no license on its collar.

That seemed the end as well as the beginning of their minor mystery. They went back to Mac’s drugstore.

They had just entered the store when Mac, at the iron door leading to the significant back room, called out:

“The chief! On the television set! Better hustle back in a hurry. When The Avenger calls, somethin’ important is usually up.”

It was in this case.