The Hate Master

CHAPTER X Strange Call

The Avenger was practically living in his laboratory these days, and only taking a few hours sleep now and then when even his steel frame was taxed beyond endurance.

Morel was a great scientist. And it had taken him a year and a half to produce finally the red liquid with which he had injected the guinea pigs just before he was taken from Maine. If he was taken and had not gone off of his own volition.

It was a commentary on The Avenger’s vast ability that he now had a little vial full of red liquid, like Morel’s, which he had managed to synthesize from scratch in only a couple of days. One of his innumerable tests with the blood of the mad pigeons had finally put him on the track.

He had duplicated the serum. Which, he figured, was about two fifths of the job he had cut out for himself.

There was a soft buzz as Nellie, in the top-floor room, called on the laboratory phone. Dick picked up the instrument.

“Yes?”

“Smitty talking, chief,” came the giant’s voice.

“Yes, Smitty. Where are you? What has happened?”

Smitty told briefly what had happened.

“Josh and I are morally sure, now, that Ritter is in this. He’s the head man. But there’s no proof of anything, yet. In the meantime, we’ve been buzzing around that blimp. We got a sample of dirt from the grappling hook, and a government soil-conservation man was able to tell us the approximate Michigan section it came from. We went around that spot till we found an old duffer in a village who swore he’d seen a balloon or something a couple of times at night, near there. Village called Knightstown. We’re here now, trying to find the hangar the blimp was kept in, if possible.”

“Good work,” said Dick, voice even and calm. “Keep in touch with me. Things are moving faster, I believe.”

He didn’t bother to explain, and Smitty knew better than to ask for explanations.

“O K,” said the big fellow. He hung up. And then Nellie’s voice came to Benson.

“Another call came in while you were talking to Smitty,” Nellie said. “I’m holding it on another wire. It’s for Lila Morel. Do you want to hear it?”

Dick hesitated. Every phone call into the headquarters was recorded. He could hear any conversation later. But he thought he’d better listen to actual voices; sometimes there were slight overtones which a recording missed.

“Yes,” he said. “Is Lila ready now?”

“She’s ready.”

“Then go ahead.”

So the call from outside sounded on the phone in the lab as well as on one of the battery of phones in the big room.

“Kinnisten, Maine, calling,” came the long-distance operator’s voice. “A call for Miss Lila Morel. Person to person.”

“This is Lila Morel,” came Lila’s voice over the phone.

“Go ahead, please,” said the operator.

A man’s voice sounded. “Hello. Lila?”

“Yes? Oh, Dad! It’s you! We were all so worried. What happened to you? Where are—”

“This is Dad, Lila,” came the man’s voice. “I’m at the Maine place. I don’t know just how long I’ll be here. I have to leave for the West. I can’t explain now.”

“Dad, what’s it all about?” pleaded Lila. “You—”

“I called to tell you I’m safe and well,” said Morel. “And to tell you not to try to find me.”

“But, Dad, I must see you—”

The voice went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

“I’m all right, but very busy. Just stop trying to find me, and I’ll see you soon. Good-by, Lila.”

“Dad — wait—”

But the line was dead. The scientist had hung up.

Dick Benson replaced his phone slowly on its cradle. His pale, infallible eyes held the icy glitter that was theirs when The Avenger was thinking out something that could not quite be explained at the moment, but which struck the man of genius as important.

There was something about that phone call; something peculiar.

He couldn’t place it; so he went back to his test tubes.

In the Michigan village of Knightstown, Smitty and Josh set out to find the place where that blimp had been kept hidden.

“You’d think it would be easy,” said Josh. “A blimp’s no atom. It’s as big as all outdoors. It would take a tremendous barn, or some such building, to hold one.”

Smitty nodded, and they started inquiring around. They had to seem not to be inquiring about anything in particular, however, because the headquarters of the acid-ruined blimp might also be the headquarters of a large gang.

It was about noon, and they were hungry; so they started with the biggest lunchroom in town.

Knightstown only had two lunchrooms, so the biggest was no Waldorf. It was a twenty-foot square room next to the town poolroom, with a few tables and a counter in it. Three or four men were at the counter when Smitty and Josh strode in.

“Hamburgers,” said Smitty.

A sad-looking man in a soiled apron took the order. He looked speculatively at Smitty’s vast size.

“How many?” the man said.

“How many would you say?” shrugged Smitty.

The man took in Smitty’s bulk again.

“I’d say about ten for you and two for your friend.”

“We’ll start with that,” said Smitty.

“Hey!” Josh said, injured at the difference in numbers.

Then both shut up as a few words from one of the men at the counter caught their ears. They seemed to have drawn something. It looked as if their luck was in.

“—bricks from that old car barn,” the man was saying angrily. “We used to get bricks there. Now, they chase us off the place.”

“Why don’t you try buyin’ bricks,” laughed one of the others.

“Bricks’re expensive. And there’s a great, big, falling-down building with all the brick you need, and nobody to stop you taking some. Anyway, there didn’t use to be. Now, some watchman or somebody is out there. He pulled a gun on me when I went around last week!”

The talk veered, since none of the men save the one talking seemed interested in bricks. Smitty looked at Josh, and then grinned at the counter man as he bit into his fourth hamburger.

“Car barn?” he said. “You still got streetcars around here?”

“Not for thirty years,” said the man behind the counter sadly. All his words, looks and actions were sad. The two couldn’t figure why, unless he’d been born that way. “We used to have interurban service all through these parts. Then they took the rails up and sold the cars, long before the cities began trading streetcars for buses.”

“Is the car barn in town?” said Smitty, making his voice sound disinterested.

“Nope. Out in open country. Along Sheep’s Nose River. Middle of no place.”

Smitty looked mildly surprised. The man said:

“Knightstown didn’t have no brains, forty years back. The interurban service wanted to put a car barn and power plant here because it’s a halfway point. The town council said, ‘No, sir! Not and spoil their beautiful town!’ So the car company put the buildings out on the river, miles away from anything. The power plant’s all dismantled and half falling down. The car barn’ll be the same way soon, the way everybody helps themselves to bricks when they need ’em.”

Smitty let the matter drop. But only till he and Josh were outside the lunchroom.

“That’s our baby,” said Josh.

Smitty nodded and they went to their car.

A car barn, unexpectedly out in the middle of no place because of an ancient feud with village elders! Car barns are big. Plenty big enough for a small blimp.

It took them well over an hour to find it because they didn’t want to ask any more questions of anybody, and because they went the wrong way along the river on their first attempt.

The car barn, it seemed, was in the opposite direction.

It was well along in the afternoon when Smitty stopped the car under a tree.

They had been following, not a regular road, but the old grass-grown twin roadbed where ties and rails had once been. The roadbed went on ahead of them, to end at the river — and something else.

“There she is,” said Smitty.

The huge old red-brick structure was on a leveled area among small hills along the river. Behind it were only bits of another building that had been a power house. The whole area was in a bay of thick woods.

It was a swell place in which to hide that almost impossible creation to be hidden — a blimp. And indications told that this was where it had been hidden, all right.

The building had a flatly arched roof. Wide doors had covered the front, but these had long since been ripped off by looters. In addition, now, as if it had just happened to fall at some time in the past, the section between the peak of the roof and top of the vast door sills had fallen in, leaving the whole end open. Even this building could barely take a small blimp since there was no room for door sills.

“So?” said Josh.

Smitty scratched his jaw. It was clear sunlight, broad daylight. No one could get to the car barn without being seen, if there was anyone inside to see. But the giant felt disinclined to wait through the long hours till night.

“Let’s just go right up to it,” he said. “Pick up any stray pieces of iron you see around. If anyone’s in there, he’ll think we’re gathering scrap to sell.”

It sounded pretty thin to Josh, but he didn’t feel like waiting, either. They walked openly forward; Josh saw an old piece of car spring and picked it up. Smitty, a few paces farther along, saw an iron rod and stooped for it. There wasn’t much around. For years kids must have come here for junk to sell in order to make a few cents for candy bars.

They got quite near. They could see through the vast open front of the building. It was cave-dark in there but not too dark for Smitty, finally, to see a man’s figure flit from shadow to shadow, within.

“I’ll be an ant’s grandmother!” he breathed.

“What’s the matter?” said Josh.

“That guy in there. That was Morel!”

“What?”

“I’m dead sure of it. I saw him in Maine, with Lila. She swore it wasn’t her father, but in such a way that I knew it was. And here he is again—”

A pretty thin subterfuge — to pretend they were a couple of junkmen out looking for scrap iron. They found out how thin before Smitty could finish his sentence.

There was a rattle of sound like that of a giant typewriter, and grass and bushes suddenly were sheared to their right! Another rattle, and the same thing happened to their left.

“Next time,” came a voice from near the open front of the building, “we’ll shoot straight ahead, unless you guys stick your hands up high and keep ’em there.”

Then they saw it, hugging the right-hand corner of the opening — the muzzle of a machine gun! And in a moment a dozen grinning men had come from left and right, where they had been out of sight of Josh and Smitty.

The men came toward the two, with a lane between them down which the machine gun could fire, if necessary. They got to the sides and behind the two aides of The Avenger.

One of them was the man who had mentioned the car barn at the lunch counter. Smitty and Josh had been supposed to hear that!

“Walk into the joint, you two,” the man jeered.

Smitty and Josh, by common consent, stayed where they were.

“Jack!” the man yelled to the gunner.

They saw his fingers move a little; so Smitty and Josh started forward.

“What are you going to do to us?” stalled Josh.

“You’ll find out,” said the man who had roped them in so neatly at the lunch counter.

But another of the men was more talkative.

“There are pits where they used to work under the old cars, see? Like grease pits in a garage. We’ll herd you guys into one of them, and pouff! No more guys.”

Josh and Smitty didn’t know just what the pouff meant. But they could guess at the result. The result would be death!

“Ritter,” said Smitty, “wouldn’t like that.”

“Oh, yeah?” jeered the man. “Ritter said we were to knock off you two, and some others he described, wherever we caught up with you. And here you’re nice enough to walk right into our mitts while we’re waiting for the blimp to come back.”

Smitty and Josh kept from looking at each other. The gang still didn’t know the blimp had been brought down and their pals jailed.

“So Morel is in on this, too,” said Smitty. “We got the word that he was kidnaped, but it doesn’t look so much like that, now.”

The man started to say something, then swore violently and shut up. He had realized that the big fellow was just trying to pump him for information.

The two prisoners were inside the big doorway, now. They could see one of the long, narrow pits the man had mentioned. Tracks had once run along the sides of the pit, where a car could be run so that mechanics could get at motors and axles from beneath.

The tracks had long since been ripped up. But one, at least, had not been carried away. The rusting length of rail lay athwart the end of the pit, down where the stairs into its depths were.

The machine gunner was turning his weapon to keep Smitty and Josh covered as they moved. What was going to happen to them when they had gone down the five steps to the bottom of the gravelike pit? What did that pouff mean?

Smitty decided not to wait to find out.

“You want us to get down in that thing?” he said, rebelliously.

“That’s right, big boy,” said the machine gunner.

His pals were bunched around him in a knot. All except Morel. Smitty had had no second glance of the inventor, missing for so long. It began to look as if the scientist had slipped out the back of the building as the two were marched in the front.

“Go on! Down!” snapped the machine gunner.

Smitty stooped, and his hands gripped the length of car rail as if to lift it aside from the stairs. But he didn’t do that.

He snapped erect with the rail in his vast hands and plunged like a human tank toward the machine gunner and the knot of men!

Few men can lift a length of rail, even light-weight material for streetcars. Smitty not only lifted it; he ran with it — and made time, too. He must have been an awesome spectacle, indeed, as he plunged for the gang. As he came, he yelled at the top of his lungs. And right after him, zigzagging to confuse aim, raced Josh.

“Crack down on him, you dope!” screamed one of the men.

The palsied machine gunner opened up! But it was too late. There were only a few yards between the men and the pit. They’d kept at close range to be sure and hit the two if they rebelled. Now, Smitty had covered this too-short distance in half a dozen bounds, with the iron rail held horizontally before him in his two vast paws.

Some of the slugs hit. And they hurt. But they did not penetrate. The Avenger and each of his aides always wore bulletproof garments of a substance called celluglass, which Benson had invented. It was as strong as steel and much lighter.

These garments saved Josh and Smitty, though they left bruises that would remain for many a day.

Then the bar smashed against the men, with all the force of its own weight and of Smitty’s three hundred racing pounds behind it.

Several of the gang had automatics out. These dropped as the men were mashed against the brick wall behind them. The machine gunner doubled over the bar and dropped his weapon—

“Josh!” roared Smitty.

But there was no need to call. Like a black streak, Josh was after the gun. He got it, leaped back a few paces, and leveled it. Then Smitty dropped the rail. The fact that a few toes were in the way was just dandy with him.

“Now,” he said pleasantly, “you guys can get into that pit, and my partner will hold you there with the gun while I go to Knightstown for a flock of deputies—”

There was an ear-shattering roar. Half the rear wall folded and began raining down its individual bricks. The great roof sagged.

Josh yelled and whirled around. Smitty glared toward the rear, too. Morel! It looked as if he hadn’t gone away, after all. He had exploded part of the building to rescue the gang.

Shots jerked the giant around again. Josh was just sending hasty slugs at the last of the gang, who was limping out the door and running to the right, where the corner hid him from sight.

The two leaped to the front. The men were in the woods, running in all directions. They’d thought they had cornered this giant and this black tiger, and they had been cornered themselves. They were having no more of them.

Smitty ran for the rear, where no more bricks were falling. There was no sign of the scientist. Morel had provided a distraction, during which the men had gotten away, and right afterward had fled himself.

“Hell!” said Smitty, looking at the empty bag they were now holding.

They went back to their car and Smitty got out his radio transmitter. If conditions were right, he could just get New York.

Conditions, it seemed, were right. A tiny voice came through the earphone. “Benson talking.”

“Chief,” said Smitty, “we found the hangar where that blimp was kept. And we had a bunch of prisoners and Morel, but they got away—”

“What?” came The Avenger’s voice, so electrically that Smitty jumped. It was rarely that that voice was raised. “You said Morel?”

“Yes. He was here, but he got away with the—” Smitty was talking to nothingness. There was no more from The Avenger; no sign of any kind. He had left the New York receiving end without a further word.