The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

looked at that indicated the pilot met the same fate as his ship.”
    Even Benson could not know of the newspaperman who had sneaked out to the flat and suffered the fate of the “jackrabbit.”
    The Avenger picked up the phone and called the city motor bureau. Yes, they knew of a young fellow, test driver, who had been hired to drive a car yesterday. His name was Bud Reeder. He was good. No, they didn’t know if Bud had come back yet. They only happened to know about the test because the secretary of the motor club was slightly acquainted with him; the club had hired him once or twice to peg times and distances on advertised routes. He could usually be reached at Dutch Vassen’s garage.
    Benson phoned the garage.
    “No, Bud ain’t in,” came a coarse voice. “Yeah, he usually hangs around here, but I ain’t seen him since yesterday. He got a job yesterday, and mebbe he’s blowin’ his cash somewhere.”
    “Do you know who hired him?” asked Benson.
    “Nope,” came the voice. “But the landlady of his boarding house might.”
    Benson called the number given. A woman answered in a vinegary voice.
    “How should I know who hired him?” she shrilled. “He don’t tell me his affairs.”
    Even over the telephone, The Avenger’s voice had the magic tone of authority. The woman calmed down after a moment.
    “He might have gone to a place having something to do with somebody named Klaxon,” she admitted finally. “I heard him phone—just happened to, you understand. I ain’t the kind to listen to my guests when they answer the telephone. And I heard him repeat a name that sounded something like Klaxon when he first started talking.”
    Smitty flipped through the phone book’s classified section of garages and automobile salesrooms. There was a Paxon Garage.
    “We’ll try that,” said Benson, pale eyes like icy slits in his dead, white face.

    It was approaching dusk. Paxon’s garage was a small building on the edge of town, designed to hold no more than twenty or twenty-five cars. It was a shabby looking place, and it seemed deserted at the moment.
    However, Benson took no chances. He led the way to the rear of the building, moving shadowlike in the creeping dusk.
    The garage was of planking, sheathed with imitation shingles of asbestos. Benson’s white, steely fingers ripped some of the asbestos pads off. Then he took two pellets from his pocket and a thing rather like an atomizer in appearance, save that instead of rubber bulb on it there was an open tube where a bulb should have been.
    He partially crushed the two pellets together and dropped them into the receptacle of the atomizer. Then he put the end of the tube, opposite the small nozzle, into his mouth and blew.
    The pellets began slowly to diminish in size as they gave off inflammable gases; and, with the oxygen of Benson’s breath mixing in, there was a spurt of blue flame from the nozzle. The apparatus was really a blow torch, so small that it could be carried, in parts, in two vest pockets.
    Benson ran the intense tip of the flame in an oblong over the exposed planks of the garage’s back wall. The oblong tilted back in his hand like a door. It came out silently, and silently he laid it down.
    Then he and Mac and Smitty stepped in.
    Their wariness was justified. From somewhere in front of the dark building came a voice. A man was either talking on the telephone, or to some other person with him.
    Mac’s hand suddenly found the arm of The Avenger. He pressed hard.
    “Look, mon!”
    Right next to where they had stepped in, at the rear of the little garage where it couldn’t be seen without a search, was a blackened twisted thing so fire-warped that you could hardly tell that it had once been chassis and motor block of an automobile.
    “The test car,” whispered Benson.
    He went to it, moving as only The Avenger could move, seeming to float swiftly over the concrete without sound. He started to examine it, but he seemed interested only in