"coffinfortheavenger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepperman Emile C)

Here is your friend, Crawford, with my compliments. He signed
his death warrant when he sent for you. Will you take a bit of
advice, Mr. Avenger? Go home. Go back at once, and forget what
Crawford told you. Otherwise, I shall wipe you out--and all those
associated with you in Justice, Inc. Believe me, Mr. Richard Ben-
son alias The Avenger, I can destroy you as easily as I destroyed
Crawford.


There was no signature to the note. But attached to the card by its stem, just below
the message, there was a single dwarf tulip. It had just begun to open. Its petals were
of the deepest black, flecked here and there with blobs of red, which resembled nothing
so much as drops of blood.

Somehow, though the flower was in itself satanically beautiful, its appearance
afforded no sensation of pleasure, but rather one of horror. For no tulip had ever been
grown so small, or with black leaves.

Some monstrous horticulturist must have taken a keen and evil joy in thus producing a
horrid perversion of nature; perhaps the same kind of twisted mind which had devised the
hellish scheme of sending Crawford hurtling to his death in a strait jacket.

Nellie Gray stared wide-eyed at the strange and startling flower which comprised the
only signature to the note.

"The Black Tulip!" she said in a low, tense voice.


CHAPTER II.
THE COFFINS.


In the squalor of one of New York's few remaining slums a truck moved through the night.
Of itself the vehicle was not worthy of a second glance, for it was merely a truck with
slatted sides.

But its freight consisted of seven coffins.

The lettering on the side said:

BRODERICK CASKET C0.


The business of the Broderick Casket Co. was ostensibly the sale and delivery of coffins
to undertakers.

The truck moved quiet]y through the streets, and if people noticed it at all it was to
comment on its depressing cargo.

But as the truck swung into Pelham Street, a girl of about eleven, with long black braids,