The Avenger 3 - The Sky Walker by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

the headlines, the city might have paid more attention to them. But they appeared only in a sensational sheet whose owner was notorious for getting news scoops by the simple process of making up his news as he went along.
    Because of that, most people smiled at the screaming headlines. But under the smile there was uneasiness, too. After all, a pavilion at the south end of Lincoln Park had collapsed.
    IS WAR DECLARED ON THE
UNITED STATES?
    That was the idiotic headline in the sensation sheet. The account went on even more idiotically.
    It seemed, according to the correspondent who had gotten his news from a source that “cannot be divulged,” that an unnamed foreign power was going to hold up the United States for some vast bit of international booty, as yet unspecified. Perhaps for the rich province of Alaska. Perhaps the demand would even include the Western coast with the States of Oregon, Washington, and California.
    This unnamed enemy was going to invade the interior of the United States. Chicago and vicinity, to be precise. The enemy claimed to be able to destroy at will, with no man able to learn the source of the destruction. There would be no way of fighting back; the country would have to give up whatever territory was demanded, or see its rich inland cities turned into collapsing charnel houses.
    The managing editor of the Chicago Record studied his rival’s scoop and finally relaxed.
    “Hooey!” he said. “No enemy nation can strike unseen. And if one could strike, the East coast would be the target, not the Middle West. The intimation is that the Lincoln Park pavilion was a sample of the destruction. But we all know that the reason for that collapse was structural failure of the girders. The steel corporation sold the city bum goods, that’s all.”
    The city editor agreed with him. It was good policy, of course, to agree with him; but in this case the city editor could nod wholeheartedly.
    “For thirty years that rag has pulled a phony war scare every so often to jack up its circulation. It’s just doing the old trick again.”

    Up in the Avenger’s temporary headquarters, Nellie Gray and Josh and Rosabel Newton studied the sensational headlines.
    “I wish Mr. Benson were here,” Nellie said, her pink-and-white face twisted with worry. “An enemy invasion? It doesn’t sound right. But he could probably read a meaning in the account that no one else could.”
    “He’s a great man,” said Josh. White-jacketed as a standard servant would be, he was now moving at his normal pace—which was very slow. And his thin, dark face had taken on the deceptive, somnolent look that had caused him to be nicknamed Sleepy.
    “You feel, when you’re near him, like you feel in a powerhouse, standing next to a dynamo,” nodded Rosabel.
    “I’m almost afraid of him,” Josh mused. “Yet I’d do about anything he asked me to do.”
    “He’ll never ask you to do anything unreasonable or that he wouldn’t try himself,” Nellie said. “You can depend on that—”
    There was a buzz of the telephone. She picked up the receiver. On her lovely face was a look of extreme wariness.
    Dick Benson interested himself only in cases beyond the powers of the police to handle. Such cases necessarily meant that men were involved who were far more intelligent than the usual criminal. And such men were quick to find out precisely who was fighting them so efficiently—and to try with every sinister means at their command to wipe out The Avenger and his helpers before they, themselves, were wiped out.
    Every ring at phone or doorbell might be the preliminary to some murder attempt.
    This ring seemed all right, however.
    “A Mr. Carlisle to speak to Miss Gray,” came the voice of the hotel’s switchboard operator. “Concerning Mr. Benson,” she added.
    Then the voice of the man in question.
    “Miss Gray?” He spoke urgently, hurriedly. “May I come up for a moment? I have an important message for you, from Mr. Benson.