"The Smiling Dogs" is the 10th pulp magazine

Pulp magazine

Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...

 story to feature The Avenger. Written by Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst (Avenger writer)

Paul Frederick Ernst was an American pulp fiction writer. He is best known as the author of the original 24 "Avenger" novels, published by Street and Smith Publications under the house name Kenneth Robeson.-Biography:Paul Ernst was born between 1899 and 1902, and "[took] up fiction writing in his...

, it was published in the June 1, 1940 issue of The Avenger magazine.

Publishing history

This novel was re-published under its original title by Paperback Library on March 1, 1973.

Summary

A gang murders and schemes to control a remote Montana national park with resources (apparently helium) that will be vital in any upcoming war. The mastermind's strategy is to convince key figures, including Congressmen, that they are seeing things, and to threaten to publicly expose this apparent insanity. The apparition is a remarkably uninvolving small red man leading a smiling green dog, etc.; one of the blackmail targets throws a chair at the small man, which seems about right. Benson must break a code, the team does detective work, Benson impersonates powerful men and infiltrates Congress. He ignores his team's peril out of patriotic duty to protect the country. Nellie escapes from a deathtrap, but is trapped again, and manipulated by the master mind to trap the team in a tunnel under the Potomac. The mastermind and his gang die, with Benson's help, in their own flooding death trap, from which the Justice, Inc. team escapes with a quite small margin for error. The real reason for the scheme: deposits of pitchblend (radium ore).