Murder on Wheels

CHAPTER VII Clagget’s Field

First thing next morning, Josh Newton and Mac stood before The Avenger’s big desk and stared into the icy, colorless eyes of their chief.

They could still be awed and disquieted by those eyes. They never quite got used to them.

“Take the small plane,” said Benson, voice quiet but vibrant with authority, “and go to Detroit. See if any manufacturer either there or in Flint has put out a mystery car lately. Some machine that has grown in a guarded laboratory and was recently sneaked out into the country for a secret test.”

“ ’Twill not be easy,” said Mac gloomily. The dour Scot was the world’s worst pessimist. “A manufacturer wouldn’t report even the theft of such a car; he’d be anxious to avoid publicity.”

“You can find out,” said Benson, voice so quietly confident that it made the two feel they could accomplish any miracle. Which is one of the qualities of leadership.

Josh and Mac turned and went to the door. Near it, was Rosabel, Josh’s pretty wife, who was as well-educated and as mentally sharp as her husband.

Josh kissed her, said: “So long,” and went out. But the way he did it told how close the two were. And Rosabel’s smile showed that she knew, as she always did when Josh left her, even on a seemingly safe assignment, that he might never come back alive.

The Avenger’s icy eyes rested on Rosabel.

“Take care of things here,” he said. “Above all, if this Doris Jackson calls, get her to come here if she feels she can do so safely. Find her exact location if she thinks she’d better not risk it. I’m going after Smitty. It’s odd he hasn’t showed up by now.”

He went to the basement and got into one of his cars, a coupé that looked old and sedate but which had a motor like a locomotive. He started again on the trip to Clagget’s airfield which had been interrupted last night.

Nearly nine hours had passed since the giant had said he was O. K., and there had been no sound from him. It was possible, of course, that some emergency had arisen calling for instant action on his part — trailing someone to some distant part, perhaps. But this was not probable because he would almost certainly have reported the fact. And there had been no radio or any other kind of message from him.

So Benson thought it was high time to try to find out what had happened.

The brain behind the colorless eyes was like a filing cabinet, in which maps were stored as well as facts. Dick Benson knew the section of the country around the abandoned airfield so well that he was able to pull into a back road a mile from it without hesitation, though he had never chanced to set foot on the field before. And he made his way over open fields and through woods to the spot without a moment’s uncertainty.

There were woods around the field, which does not make a landing spot ideal, even when the field is large, as this one was. Perhaps it was one of the reasons why it had been abandoned: crack-ups by amateurs in those fringing trees.

The weeds were eyed by Benson with approval. Through them, he started for the desolate-looking small hangar at the side of the field.

Looking directly down on the spot, from a low plane, perhaps, you could have seen The Avenger’s body slowly advancing. But from the eye level of a man standing, he couldn’t be seen at all. He was a past master at traveling through such cover, as many a jungle head-hunter could have testified. He slid through the tall weeds and grass with scarcely a ripple betraying the fact that anyone was approaching the building.

At the door, he paused, then went to the side instead of risking the opening of the big portal. The hangar was of wooden planking.

He took a thing like an atomizer from his pocket, put a couple of grayish pellets in it, and screwed on a tiny nozzle. The pellets were an invention of MacMurdie. They held more than acetylene heat; made the little atomizer contraption a tiny but marvelous blowtorch.

With a thin needle of flame, The Avenger traced an oblong in the wood planks, still under the level of the weeds. The oblong fell out, and Benson crawled in.

So far, his precautions had been unnecessary. There was no one in the hangar. But there was always the chance that somebody might be watching the place from a distance. If so, the watcher wouldn’t dream that a person had crossed the field and entered the hangar, due to Dick Benson’s methodical care.

It was such careful methods that had kept The Avenger alive through adventures that might have done for a score of less coldly thoughtful men.

The big hangar was gloomily dark, save for the space by the one window, Benson’s powerful little flash clicked on, sent a white beam through the gloom.

He found it several minutes later, in a corner of the hangar not quite tucked out of sight under some rubbish; a section of rope with broken ends.

The cold eyes glinted. This was evidence of Smitty’s presence here at sometime in the past. The Avenger knew of no other man who could have snapped a new half-inch rope like that. It was more of a feat than the snapping of iron chains as circus strong men do with chest expansion.

Benson left the rope where it was, started to look around some more and heard voices.

There were at least four men coming across the field to the hangar; he had counted four voices! Then the big sliding door quivered as somebody laid a hand on it to slide it open.

With the opening of the big door, the hangar would be bathed with light. Even a cat couldn’t have remained unseen! And there was nothing in the empty building to hide behind.

Fifteen feet up, were the crossbeams bracing the tin-sheathed roof. Dick Benson leaped to the window sill, up from that, caught a beam and drew his body onto it in one long move.

And then the door opened, and was left open, with sunlight streaming in.

Four men entered. The one in the lead, Benson saw, was quite an average-looking person. The Avenger’s keen eyes picked up, at once, the one small, peculiar detail about him that others would not notice till they’d watched him for some minutes.

That was an oddly enlarged vein on his forehead that seemed to move and pulsate with a life of its own, like a slim blue worm.

“We ought to stay away from here,” this man said. “We got to use the joint once in a while for landing a plane. Other times, we ought to keep as far away as possible, or some apple-knocker won’t tumble to the fact that people are using a place supposed to be abandoned.”

“Aw, nobody’s going to find out,” mumbled one of the others. The three men with the leader were all large, bigger than he was, but not very bright-looking.

“We’ll take no chances,” said the man who had first spoken. “Comb over the place, now, and see if anything’s lying around that might show the place has been used recently. Then we’ll beat it, and we won’t come back unless we have to have a place to sneak a plane in at night.”

“We won’t have to do that any more,” growled one of the others. They were fanning out, looking around. “This is about all cleared up, with the girl on ice.”

“It’s not cleared up yet,” said the leader.

The four were prowling around. Only a couple of yards over their heads, The Avenger lay along the bracing beam, like a serpent watching its prey from an overhanging tree branch. He was in plain sight if anyone of them looked up, but there was a good chance that none would. It is amazing how seldom a person’s gaze lifts above eye level, unless something occurs to pull it up.

The biggest of the four, a hulk of a fellow with a scar from ear to jaw on the left side of his face, suddenly swore and lifted something. He was next to the pile of litter carelessly thrown in a corner by the last legitimate users of this hangar.

“Hey!” he said. “Look!”

The other three looked.

“Well,” said the leader, the little vein squirming on his forehead. “So what? You got a hunk of busted rope. What about it?”

“It’s the rope busted by that big rhino we were telling you about. The big guy we caught — along with the old crazy guy — and salted down in the boathouse at Wyler’s farm.”

“I still don’t see what you have to be excited about.”

“I hid this hunk of rope under this rubbish,” said the man. “I’m dead sure of it. Now, I find it on top, in plain sight. I think somebody’s been in here since we left.”

“Yeah?” said another of the men, silent till now. “You’re nuts, Beanie.”

The man with the repulsive, quivering vein in his forehead stared at the last speaker.

“You were watching the joint from the west side of the field, weren’t you?”

“Sure, I was,” said the man.

“Nobody came in?”

“Nobody showed. And I know! You think a guy could get across the whole field, and into this hangar, without me seein’ him?”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” admitted the leader. “I guess you just forgot where you put that rope,” he added to the man called Beanie.

Beanie muttered and mumbled around, but looked uncertain. And up on the beam, the basilisk eyes of The Avenger were like cold jewels.

The man had stuffed the rope into his pocket, along with a couple of cigarette butts that would have showed a prowler that men had been in here lately. The four started toward the door.

“You say this ain’t finished yet?” Beanie said to the leader. “Even with the girl and this Robert Mantis guy safe out of our way.”

“That’s right,” said the leader. The vein in his forehead was going through even more quivering antics. And the cold eyes of The Avenger, lying silent on the beam overhead, watched it closely. Also, those eyes noted a slight tensing of the man’s right arm.

“There’s somebody else poking around in the business,” said this man. And it seemed that his voice was just a little different than it had been a moment before. The four were almost directly under The Avenger, now!

“You think maybe it’s this Benson?” said Beanie. “You think maybe the Jackson dame got a chance to spill a little to him.”

“Maybe,” said the leader.

And as quick as a cobra he snapped a gun from his shoulder holster, turned and crouched and sent three shots roaring up at the figure on the beam!

Sometime during the last sixty seconds a casual glance had flicked up far enough for him to get a glimpse of Benson out of the corner of his eye. He had pretended not to have seen him, till he opened fire.

It was clever work. Probably any other man would have been taken in by it. But not the man with the paralyzed face and the icy, colorless eyes.

Those eyes had particularly noted the agitated squirming of that vein, indicating sudden mental activity. And with that as a guide, those eyes had caught the faint move of the right arm, preliminary to a fast grab for a gun.

So Benson was not caught unprepared.

A fraction of a second before the first shot, his body moved with a swiftness that made the mob leader’s fast moves seem like slow motion. Off the beam, down in a grim plunge like the leap of a jaguar from a tree.

He lit on the shoulders of a man called Beanie, who happened to be nearest. Beanie yelled and was bowled over — with The Avenger underneath! Benson had seen to that.

A fourth shot lanced from the leader’s gun. It was a cold gamble with the life of his own man at stake if he lost. And he did lose.

The bullet didn’t get the Avenger; it tore away half of Beanie’s throat instead!

There was a scream that registered something new in the way of bubbling horror. Beanie jerked, dying as he did so, not aware that he was still being used as a screen when Benson rose.

The Avenger hurled the jerking body toward the man with the leaping vein in his forehead. At the same time, he jumped to the right where the other two men stood with their guns poking uncertainly around as they tried to get a clear shot at the man with the thick white hair.

Now and then a person appears whose muscles seem to have twice the power, ounce for ounce, of average muscle. The Avenger was that type of person; as these men swiftly found out.

The two men fired as Benson twisted toward them. And missed. Then one was reeling back from a terrific blow to the jaw, and the other was trying to run.

The Avenger’s steel-strong hand got him by the neck. He was jerked back. At the same time, Benson’s foot arced out and forward; and the gun in the hand of the leader, who was working himself free from the hideous embrace of dying Beanie, flew from his hand and slammed against the plank wall of the hangar.

The man Benson had by the neck was over six feet in height and weighed well over two hundred pounds. In addition, the look of the cartilage of nose and ears told that he had been either a professional boxer or wrestler.

The Avenger was about sixty pounds lighter and six inches shorter.

Which meant that it took Benson about twenty seconds to subdue him instead of five or six. Which was lucky for the leader of this deadly crew. For it gave him just time to scramble to his feet, run like a scared rabbit to the door and escape, before The Avenger’s fingers could settle on the nerve centers in the back of his opponent’s neck and put him to sleep.

Benson dropped the third man and was after the fourth like a mongoose after a deadly snake. But the man was halfway across the weed-grown flying field by now; and before even Benson could get near him, he had burst into the fringing woods. Then there was the sound of a car motor started with frenzied speed.

The Avenger stopped his running, but kept on going — away from the field and across country to where his own coupé was parked. He had learned one thing anyhow. A thing he didn’t believe any of the men knew they had given away, so brief had been the mention of it.

The place where Smitty had been taken. Smitty and “the old crazy guy,” whoever that was.

Wyler’s farm and the boathouse thereon.