Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

124 FRANK GRUBER Inside a voice called: “Yes?” “Despatcher,” Howard replied. There was a moment's pause and then the door was opened a few inches, by a man in a blue uniform. Howard put a big hand on the man’s chest and gave him a violent shove into the room. He followed—himself, but Parker swarmed around him and whipping the ig Navy Colt from under his coat laid it across the head af the railroad employee, The man went down to the floor without a sound, At a ticket window on the right, the seller turned around casually. Howard waved a gun at him, “All right, Mister, come back here and open the safe.” “And make it snappy,” Parker snarled, The ticket seller trembled violent! y. “But I ccan’t open the vault,” he gasped. “Tt's—it’s got a time lock on it.” Parker sent a bullet smashing into the floor at the ticker seller's feet. Pale time lock better not be working,” he said, “or your time’s up. Come—!” The trembling ticket seller hurried back toward the huge steel vault. He put his hand on the big dial and hesitated once more. “T—1 can’t—" “All right, Parker," said Howard. John Parker stepped up behind the ticket seller and rapped him sharply over the head with the long barreled revolver, but not hard enough to knock him unconscious. “Tl count three,” he said. “One; two—” *TIl open itl” screamed the ticket seller. At the far end of the ticket seller's compartments a couple of men were scrambling under counters. A small revolver banged and a bullet ricocheted off a desk near Parker. Howard answered the shot with one from his own gun and Parker, to hurry the man at the safe, raked the side of his face with the gunsight on the Navy Colt, “Hurry!” The terrified ticket seller spun the dial to the right and then to the left and again to the right. He gripped the wheel on the door, twisted it and pulled on the door. It came open. Parker struck him again with the revolver and the man fell forward on his Knees, into the vault. “The money,” Parker ordered. “And damn quick.” Behind him a pitched battle seemed to be going on, but Parker paid no heed. He was leaving all that to Howard. Gunfire wasn’t going to distract him from the main part of the job. FR-7 comichooks.com