The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lease to Doomsday, by Lee Archer

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Title: Lease to Doomsday

Author: Lee Archer

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release Date: December 2, 2008 [EBook #27392]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LEASE
TO
DOOMSDAY

By LEE ARCHER

_The twins were a rare team
indeed. They wanted to build
a printing plant on a garbage
dump. When Muldoon asked them
why, their answer was entirely
logical:_

_"Because we live here."_

It was the lack of sense in the ad that made him go back to it again. He
was having his breakfast coffee in the cafeteria next to the midtown
hotel where he lived. The classified section of the New York _Times_ was
spread before him.

WANTED: Live wire Real Estate broker--No selling--30-40. Room 657
Silvers Building--9-12 Monday morning.

The ad made no sense for several reasons. One: you just don't go around
advertising for brokers with four pages of them in the classified phone
book. Two: how can one be a live wire broker, without having to sell?
Kevin Muldoon shook his head. Just no damn sense. The Silvers
Building--H'm! Not too far off. He looked at his strap watch. Fifteen
minutes of nine. He could walk it in that time.

"Don't be a fool," he said to himself. "It's obviously a come-on of some
kind."

He got up, paid the check and went out. It wasn't till he was on Third
Ave. that he was conscious he had started to go crosstown when his
office was in the opposite direction. He smiled wryly. Might as well
investigate, he thought. Can't do any harm, and it won't take long.

There were four others waiting in the small anteroom. The outer door
bore no legend other than the room number, and the inner door was blank
altogether. Muldoon made a quick appraisal of those waiting. Three
were obviously past middle-age, the fourth about Muldoon's age. The
inner door opened and Muldoon looked up. A tall man came out first, a
man in his early sixties, perhaps. Immediately behind him came a