Murder on Wheels

CHAPTER XIV The Warning Voice

Every eye turned to that phone. They all felt that it was important. The Avenger picked up the instrument.

“Hello, Mr. Benson?”

The voice was high-pitched, yet almost a whisper, as if the speaker were afraid of being overheard by someone.

Also, the voice was faintly familiar.

“This is Benson.”

If you closed your eyes, you could see the white, dead face by which The Avenger was known, because the voice was the same. Then you looked at the taut, alert new face and got kind of a shock.

“This is Will Willis talking,” came the faint voice.

And now it was seen that while the face of The Avenger was once more capable of expression, it wasn’t going to be wasteful with it. The others looked surprised. Will Willis! But not a muscle of Benson’s face moved. An iron self-control was taking the place of the former paralysis to keep his countenance from revealing his feelings.

“Yes, Willis?”

Benson looked at Nellie, and his right hand made a fast, significant motion. Thumb and second finger joined tips, and forefinger stood out straight. It meant:

Trace this call, and trace it fast.

Nellie slipped out of the room, and the far voice went on.

“I’m calling about Doris Jackson, Mr. Benson. She is in trouble.”

There was a glitter almost of anger in Benson’s pale, deadly eyes for a moment; his lips thinned a very little. Smitty shook his big head. He simply couldn’t get over that face expressing things.

“Miss Jackson has no one but herself to blame for being in trouble,” Benson said crisply. “She was safe here with us. She was indiscreet enough to leave sanctuary—”

“She had a reason,” came Willis’s voice pleadingly. “She got a call from her father, Phineas Jackson. At least she thought it was from her father. Actually it was from a member of the gang pretending to be her father—”

“What gang?” Benson cut in.

But Willis ignored that.

“This man fooled her. He said he was in trouble, and would Doris come to help him — alone and secretly. She sneaked away from your place because she thought her father’s life was in danger and she could save it. Then, when she got out there, the trap was closed and she was caught—”

“Out where?” snapped Benson.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Willis plaintively. “She is being held near Belle Isle on an old coal scow. About eight miles up the river. Dock 13, not used now. There are several abandoned barges near there, but this is the only one pointed bow and stern. The others are square-ended. You’d better hurry out there. She is in terrible danger!”

“Suppose I meet you at Belle Isle and you guide me—” The Avenger began.

But Willis had hung up. The old man with the wild and woolly hair was harder to pin down than a flea.

There was the sound of a door, slamming in the next room. Nellie had found where that call came from and was racing to get there on the slight chance that she could pick up Willis’s trail before he got too far away.

Mac and Josh had already gone on their errands.

The Avenger was getting out of his workman’s clothes almost before he had hung up the phone. He extended them to Smitty to take in to the stock-room employee in another room of the suite, and was dressed in one of his own gray suits as the giant came back.

“You want me with you?” said Smitty.

Benson nodded.

“Swell!” grinned the giant. “I’m spoiling for a bit of action. This thing has been like fighting clouds, so far. I’d like something solid to hit.”

This wish was to come truer sooner than Smitty might have anticipated.

Dock 13, up the Detroit river, looked as if the number had brought it bad luck, all right. It was a junk dock with only junk water craft near it.

The wharf had rotted, broken planks that made it dangerous for anyone to walk out on it. Though, of course, nobody should be walking out on it; it was private property and there was a high board fence between its entrance and the road.

The pilings were ancient and slimy with green water growth. The whole structure sagged a little to the left. And it was on that side, more secure because it was half on the bottom than because of rotting rope securing it, that there was a scow with pointed instead of squared ends.

From Benson’s and Smitty’s vantage point, it looked like a great big wooden shoe.

That vantage point was the other side of the high board fence, where there were a couple of knotholes that they could look through.

“Now what?” said Smitty, pitching his heavy voice low. “Do we just climb over and go after that scow?”

Benson shook his head. His hat concealed his startling lack of hair, but his complete baldness was still hinted at by the hairless bit of scalp between hat brim and ears.

“If anyone on the scow is watching — and there surely must be someone on guard — they’ll see us. Then they might kill the girl — if she’s there.”

That last sentence had been echoing in Smitty’s mind, too. If she’s there!

This might be a trap — someone of the gang pretending to be Willis — just as Willis had said someone had pretended to be Doris Jackson’s father, in trouble, and had drawn her to doom that way.

“I have a float-tube,” said Smitty. “We could go up to that depression in the bank, there, slip into the water, then come up to the scow from the water instead of out the dock.”

Benson nodded again. They left the fence, went to the place Smitty had designated, where high wire took the place of boards, and climbed over. They did it as quickly as they could, for it was ten o’clock in the morning, now, and sunny. They could all too easily be seen.

In a tiny bay, about twenty yards across, they slipped into the water. The Avenger and Smitty each took out one of the float-tubes Smitty had referred to a moment ago.

These were flexible, small rubber hoses with a mouthpiece at one end and a cork ring at the other. Simple but efficient devices with which they could breath while walking or swimming, out of sight, a few feet beneath the water.

The two dipped under the surface and walked out into the river till it deepened. They kept flipping up with their hands, to keep their bodies down under the surface against the natural tendency to float.

It took about twenty minutes to go a hundred yards. Above them two small bits of cork, like stray and innocent pieces of driftwood, moved slowly toward the scow. Not one person in a thousand could have looked at them and realized that men were in the water beneath.

Dick Benson saw a wall of ancient wood in front of him, and stopped. Beside him, Smitty stopped, too. It was the coal scow.

Now came the most dangerous point; they must come up and crawl onto the thing in broad daylight.

The Avenger nodded to Smitty, and the two came up at the stern.

They had seen through the fence that there was no sign of life on the deck of the scow. If anyone were aboard, they must be in the hold. Though you could hardly call it a hold; it was simply a space. For, in effect, these scows are great hollow rafts, on top of which, not inside which, cargoes are floated.

Near the stern they had seen an oblong hole, leading down into the cavernous interior; so, with that in mind, they slid aboard.

Smitty could fairly feel slugs smashing into him as he and Benson slipped over the solid boarding which formed a rail. But they got aboard, and to the oblong hole, without seeing anyone.

They lowered themselves down and crouched in darkness.

Smitty suddenly remembered an old-fashioned rat trap his dad had once had on the farm. It was the kind that consists of a thick, round piece of wood with holes bored in the rim. In the center, cheese was placed. Then a rat would stick his head in one of the holes—

The scow struck Smitty as being like that trap, with a girl as bait. And they had stuck their heads down this dank black hole—

The Avenger’s light rayed out.

There was a bulkhead in the middle of the black oblong cave, cutting it in two. The flashlight showed that if anyone were down here, at least they weren’t in the rear half. It was completely empty.

There was a door, shut tight, in the middle of the bulkhead. They went to that. Benson listened, heard nothing behind it. That might mean there was nobody in the front half, either; or it might mean that the bulkhead door was so thick and tight-fitting as to be soundproof even to his amazing ears.

Smitty pressed the door, and it sagged heavily back. The Avenger had his flash off, of course. If somebody were lurking in there, with a gun, it would be silly to present him with the perfect target a flashlight would have afforded. Better darkness.

But the darkness lasted only till the two had warily passed the bulkhead and were standing several yards inside the front half of the old hull.

Then three or four flashlights flipped on at once, the bulkhead door was slammed behind them and five men leered at the two.

And each of the five, not just one or two of them, held a submachine gun.

Smitty’s rat-trap simile was now complete. He and Benson had stuck their heads in here. Now they weren’t going to be able to take them out again!

The flashlights gave dim illumination even to the far corners, there were so many of them. Among other things, they outlined Doris Jackson. So at least she was here, where Willis had said she was.

She was sitting on the filthy floor, thick with the coal dust of previous trips of this old scow. She was bound, again, and gagged. This time, instead of adhesive tape over her mouth, a dirty rag was used.

Three men with flashlights in one hand and guns in the other. Five with submachine guns! The leader of the cutthroat band, grinned with plenty of confidence at the giant and The Avenger.

Then his grin faded as his eyes rested on Benson. In his forehead, a slightly enlarged vein squirmed restlessly with bewilderment.

“Hey,” he said. “The big guy’s one of ’em, all right. But who’s this other one? We wanted the fella called Benson.”

“That’s him, ain’t it?” said another, staring at Benson.

“No. Benson’s got white hair — and a dead face. This guy ain’t got any hair at all, and his face moves.”

The Avenger’s features hadn’t moved much — had just become thinner-lipped and grimmer; but it was enough to reveal the difference from former days.

“Aw, that’s him, all right,” still another said. “Look at his eyes. No color in ’em. Like holes in his face. I’ve only seen one pair of eyes like that, ever.”

The Avenger spoke, quietly, confidently, as if there were an army unseen behind him.

“If it will rest your minds any, it is I, Benson. I don’t think you’d better use those guns.”

The men looked at each other in quick doubt. Benson seemed so calm, so sure. They had never seen any other man, faced with certain death, act like that. Even the big guy, Smitty, courageous as he was, had his eyes narrowed and was sort of waiting with bated breath for slugs to blast through him. But not the man with the pale eyes.

Then they rallied.

“Get it over with!” growled the leader, vein in his forehead jumping around. “Hey—”

The bulkhead door had opened a foot, and shots poured from the crack!

“What the—”

“The cops!”

“Douse the lights—”

One of the men dropped his machine gun and grabbed for his left arm, which was spouting red. Then the lights went out, and Benson and Smitty leaped — for the men, not away from them.

They had noted that all the shots came from just one gun. And whoever was at the door, as one lone person, was not going to be a factor in keeping these men cowed for very long. The odds were too great.

So Smitty and The Avenger began to whittle those odds down.

The big fellow felt a thigh, and compressed his fingers. A dreadful scream sounded out! Smitty could easily bend a silver dollar in his fingers, and flesh doesn’t offer the resistance that metal does.

He went on to somebody else, feeling around with his vast paws till they felt something. As he moved, he heard two smacking blows, like hitting a pillow with a whiplash, and then heard two men fall.

He knew that neither was Benson. The Avenger was demonstrating one of the many incredible abilities of his pale, deadly eyes. This was, an ability to see a little in the dark, like a feral animal. It gave him an immense advantage.

He saw, for example, that one of the men was thrusting a flashlight in front of him to take a chance and snap it on again. So he clipped that man just once in the side of the head. That once was enough!

He tripped another, saw Smitty with the neck of a man in each hand, and then Benson went on to where the girl was.

He picked her up and carried her to the bulkhead door. On the way he poked Smitty in the back twice. It was a signal meaning: Clear out with me, it’s all over.

Smitty flung from him the two he had been so enthusiastically working on, and darted to the door. Benson threw several of Mac’s little glass anaesthetic pellets into the space they had just quitted; then he slammed the door shut.

There were yells, then groans, then the thuds of bodies falling. The men in there would be no trouble to anyone for at least an hour.

Benson’s flash snapped on. He held it while he cut the girl’s bonds with his left hand. Then the flash rested on the wide eyes and thin face and wild hair of the man whose bullets had provided the distraction that saved them.

Will Willis.

Doris Jackson was sobbing and shivering, trying to control the hysteria rising from the relief from danger. Even at that she was beautiful, with her dark-blonde hair and her deep-blue eyes.

Smitty was looking at her admiringly. But Benson was not. His pale eyes were noting that Willis’s gun was being held in a peculiar way, half leveled, as if on the slightest provocation he would point it at them!

“This time,” said The Avenger quietly, “you’ll come along with us. We have things to ask you—”

And the gun did level — at Benson’s hairless head.

“Sorry,” said Willis. And his wide, erratic eyes were frightening. “I’m not going anywhere with anybody. Stay just as you are while I leave—”

Benson’s foot shot out and up like the toe of a dancer.

It caught Willis’s wrist, and the gun spun up in an arc and came down again.

“Somebody,” said Benson evenly, lips a grim line, “is going to say something. We’ve been working in the dark on this case too long.”

“Put your h-hands up, M-Mr. Benson,” came Doris’s fear-trembling tone. “You t-too,” she said to Smitty.

She had picked up Willis’s gun and was aiming it at their heads. It was a terrifying thing to see how it shook in her hysterical hands and yet remained in a killing line. The two were probably in greater danger than they had been a moment ago.

Willis promptly turned and ran for the square of light coming in the open hatchway. He leaped, caught the edge and drew himself up and over. The sound of his steps died, and the girl kept on holding the gun till it was too late even to think of following Willis. Then she let the gun sag.

Smitty promptly grabbed it, and his great hands were impatient on her slim shoulders. Her good looks didn’t impress him at all, then.

“You little dope!” he raged. “Why did you do that? Don’t you know we might have learned something helpful to all concerned if we’d had a chance to talk to him?”

Doris made an even more maddening reply. That was, to burst into tears and cling, sobbing, to Smitty’s arm.

The Avenger, pale eyes icy in his newly normal and regular-featured face, went back into the other compartment. He bent over one gassed man after another, going through pockets in search of some helpful clue.

In the coat pocket of the leader, the man with the uneasy vein in his forehead, he found something that narrowed his colorless eyes and formed a harsh square of his jaw.

That was a stub of an indelible pencil. Blue. Benson whipped out the extortion note he had taken from Marr’s house without Marr’s knowing it.

The pencil was almost certainly the one that had written the note. So they took that man back to the temporary headquarters in Detroit for questioning.