The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

out of the room. He locked them in a cell that Houdini, himself, could not have escaped from, then hurried back.
    The fun was already commencing, short as the elapsed time had been. The man was so subjugated by the icily flaring eyes of The Avenger that he might as well have been Benson’s own hand.
    “You meant to kill us tonight,” Benson said, voice pitched in a monotone that was as compelling as the drone of a buzz saw. “Why?”
    “To keep you from talking to Doris Jackson.”
    “Who is this Doris Jackson?” said Benson.
    “I don’t know. We only know her name and what she looks like. We’re to get her, too.”
    “Then you haven’t done anything to her, yet?”
    “Not as far as I know,” said the man. His voice was like a phonograph recording, it was so mechanical and so without volition.
    “Why are you to kill the girl?”
    “I don’t know that, either.”
    “Do any of the others know?”
    “I don’t think so. None of them that I ran around with had anything to say about it.”
    “Where did you get that curious automobile you were riding in?”
    “Detroit,” said the man, voice dull and docile. “We got it yesterday morning, about dawn, on the east shore of Lake Michigan, but it came from Detroit. We followed the closed van that took it across the State, all night.”
    “What kind of car is it?”
    “I don’t know. But it’s some buggy. It’ll go away over a hundred, and takes a plowed field like it was a smooth road. And you can’t hurt it.”
    “You don’t know whom it originally belonged to?”
    “No.”
    “Or where it concerns Doris Jackson?”
    “No.”
    “Who is Robert Mantis?”
    “Never heard of a guy by that name.”
    Thus ended a period of an almost fruitless questioning. Dick Benson had gotten very little out of his carefully transported prisoners; just the one fact that Doris Jackson was concerned in some manner with a mystery car, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

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