The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels (15 page)

“You don’t know who is behind the theft of the Marr-Car, and the sabotage at the Marr plant?”

“No.”

Benson had apparently gotten from the man all there was to get. He left him, and went to the next room. There, as he sometimes did on a case, he summed up what he had both learned and deduced, to date, speaking in a low tone.

“It’s puzzling. Somebody managed to steal the Marr-Car to get the trade secrets incorporated in it—particularly some hint as to how the steel was processed—because those secrets are immensely valuable. Now, that person wants the inventor out of the way, so he can’t put out another Marr-Car and make the theft of the first useless. That’s clear.

“But the extortion note to Marr, the expensive destruction of his plant for the sake of blackmail—that doesn’t tie in at all. The mystery car is worth so much that it makes a million look like small change. Therefore, the sabotage at the Marr plant to make Marr pay out a million to ‘the party named’ would seem to have no connection whatever with the theft.

“On the one hand, the plotter murdered for the car was holding Doris to get the father and kill him, and all through has shown ruthless willingness to kill and do anything else necessary to his plan. Among others, they have tried to kill us, when it began to look as if we might find out something. Yet, on the other hand, last night, all the plotter had to do to kill me was to leave me in the ray chamber just a little longer. And he didn’t! He carefully turned the ray off and carried me from the box—saved my life.

“On the one side there is straight theft of a priceless industrial secret and willingness to murder. On the other, sabotage and blackmail and an unwillingness to take life. It would almost seem as if not one plot were involved here—but
two”

Smitty spoke, softly, so as not to break the thread of thought too abruptly.

“Yet the pencil that wrote the extortion note was in the pocket of one of the men who stole the car and planned the murders.”

“That’s right,” nodded Benson. “With the explanation that the pencil simply came to him in the mail from an unknown sender. A ridiculous-sounding explanation, but one that I’m inclined to think is true.”

His eyes glinted and he stopped his musing aloud. It told that he had speculated about as much as the facts warranted, and was ready for action again.

“Nellie, please bring Miss Jackson in.”

In a moment Nellie Gray came from another of the rooms in the suite, with Doris Jackson in tow. Doris, beautiful and slim and tall, tried to look dumb, grateful for what The Avenger had done for her and outwardly willing to help, all at one time.

Benson’s pale, infallible eyes stared at her face for a full moment, studying jaw line, set of ears, shape of nose and chin. Then he said evenly:

“Will Willis is your father, isn’t he?”

The rest gasped, and Doris’s pretense at being dumb and willing to help but unable to supply real information crumbled like sand.

Her hand went to her throat and her eyes went wide.

“Why . . . no—” she faltered. “He isn’t—he is just an old friend of—”

“He is your father. The cast of your countenance shows it. Though I got it back at the river when you held a gun on us so he could get away.”

Doris stood breathless before him.

“He disguised himself a little and took another name,” said Benson, “so he could work at tracing his mystery car and not be recognized by the gang as the inventor. Also, it allowed him more leeway in trying to help you out of a jam after they caught you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The defiance went out of Doris’s face.

“Yes—that’s right,” she admitted slowly.

“Where is he, now?”

“I don’t know,” said Doris. And her voice rang true.

“You don’t know where he went after leaving Dock 13?”

“No.”

“Why did you keep me from taking him with me and guarding him here?”

Doris caught her lip between her teeth.

“His life is in such danger from so many people,” she admitted finally, “that we didn’t think it wise for even you to have him at your mercy. There was one chance in a thousand that you might sell him out. I think, now, that probably that was a foolish mistake. But it didn’t seem so, then.”

“You don’t know where to reach him, now?” persisted The Avenger.

“No, I don’t. All through this, I haven’t known where he was or been able to contact him. He went away from home several weeks ago; just disappeared. I guess later, when I heard the Marr-Car was stolen, that he was on the trail of it. But at first I didn’t know. And I tried every way I knew to find him. I learned when and where the mystery car was to be tried out and hid there to see if he would be among the men with it. He wasn’t. Later, in New York, on my way to your place, I went toward Marr’s house to see if he knew where dad was. I never got there, I was kidnaped.”

“Apparently you don’t think he has much chance of getting the car back by himself.”

“Heavens, no,” said Doris. “He’s an absent-minded, dreamy, brilliant, impractical man. He has no more business chasing after gangsters than a baby.”

“You have told me all you know of this?” The Avenger demanded.

Doris hesitated a moment, then said steadily, “Yes, that is all I know.”

At the door, Smitty made silent lip-motions which Benson read as easily as print:

“Josh is back. I think he has some dope on young Cole Wilson.”

Josh Newton had dug up a remarkably complete book of facts on the past life of Cole Wilson. So many, in fact, as to hint that Wilson didn’t try to hide his past in any way, and hence was perhaps a respectable citizen.

Wilson had gone to one of the best engineering schools in the country, where he had had a brilliant record. He had graduated directly into a job with Marcus Marr, where he had helped Phineas Jackson.

One reason for the job was that he was almost a member of Jackson’s family. Phineas, Josh had found out, had practically adopted Cole Wilson when Wilson was a homeless boy of twelve. Wilson had lived with the Jacksons ever since, till about a year ago when he had taken the apartment in the Shelton Arms.

The only dubious part of Wilson’s past was a repeated tendency to radical political ideas. Though even these were of no particular line. He didn’t seem to hold any particular political belief, but he was always popping off in radical ways.

“Kind of for the underdog,” Josh put in thoughtfully.

“If he heard of anybody working for practically nothing, he was apt to go hotly off and soap box around to help them get better wages. If Wilson heard of somebody in trouble through no fault of his own, even if he didn’t know the person, he’d go out and get into all kinds of a mess trying to help. Kind of a baby Robin Hood.”

Smitty shook his head.

“He seems to have gotten away from that, now! There’s murder in this Marr mess. And he’s mixed up in it as sure as there’s a sun in the West.”

“Go on,” was all The Avenger said, pale eyes like polished agate.

But it seemed that was all to report. Josh had been unable to trace Wilson’s moves for the past few weeks.

“It doesn’t seem to me I got hold of anything very helpful,” said Josh apologetically.

But The Avenger’s face, so newly able to express thoughts, showed that he considered some part of that report quite useful indeed. Though he didn’t talk about it.

And then Nellie phoned in. She had finally traced the call yesterday, and since then had been nosing around the neighborhood. Her tone of voice indicated that she’d found something pretty interesting.

“I’m talking from the booth Willis used yesterday,” she said. She didn’t know yet that Willis and Phineas Jackson were one and the same person. “You know, out on Jefferson Avenue. I’ve been looking and inquiring around again to see if anybody knew anything about Willis. And I got no answer to that. But I did get something else. Something about the mystery car.”

Blonde Nellie’s voice held a triumphant note.

“I was talking to a newsboy near here, and he said he saw a funny-looking car driven past, late last night. A very funny-looking car! And it had no lights and was going like the wind. Then it slowed up, right near the drugstore where this phone booth is, and he didn’t see it any more. After that, I tried a new angle of investigation. Instead of looking for traces of Willis, I tried to trace the car. And, chief, I did! It’s in a garage, a block west of here. I sneaked in and got a look at it. Almost got caught at it, too. It is the mystery Marr-Car, sure enough!”

“Great work,” said Benson. “Stay where you are, and we’ll be out at once—wait a minute!”

For Josh was motioning that Mac was on another phone with an urgent message for The Avenger.

Benson exchanged phones and after just a moment he said into Nellie’s wire:

“We won’t be out for a little while, at that, Nellie. Stay around there and see if the mystery car is driven out. It probably won’t be. They’d only try to move that, late at night. But if it is, trail it. I’ll get in touch with you quite soon.”

For what Mac had said, that which had decided The Avenger to go to join him first, concerned the fellow who had shut Benson in the ray box.

“I found which mon on the skeleton force in the stock room wasn’t home night before last, Muster Benson,” Mac had said. “I was hangin’ around his roomin’ house and saw him come out, awhile ago. I trailed him, thinkin’ he’d be goin’ to work at the plant. But he didn’t. He went to the Grosse Pointe home of Sigmund Ormsdale, and as far as I can tell he’s in there now.”

An ordinary workman—in working clothes that had led Mac to think he was going to the plant—had called on a multimillionaire and apparently had been admitted freely! Mechanics don’t call much on millionaires. Especially when the mechanic is employed by a rival manufacturer.

It was this inconsistency that had narrowed The Avenger’s colorless but brilliant eyes.

“We’ll be out as soon as we can make it, Mac. Stay where you are and see if the workman leaves.”

“O. K., chief,” said Mac. “But here’s somethin’ funny. It looks like the servants are all gone from the place. I guess Ormsdale, himself, must have let the mon in.”

That
was
funny. Benson looked very thoughtful about it, all the way out to Grosse Pointe.

Mac stepped from a doorway, sunk in a high stone wall, as they neared the Ormsdale place. Smitty parked the car, and they went on foot from there.

“He’s still in the house?” asked Benson. Smitty looked at the colorless, deadly eyes and found himself glad he was not the man who had locked Benson in the ray box. Not if The Avenger ever got his hands on him.

“As far as I know, he is,” said Mac. “But, of course, it’s hard to watch four sides of a place at once. I think, though, that only one mon came out. A chauffeur drove out in a town car a few minutes ago—”

Benson’s eyes flared. Mac said hastily:

“I
think
it was a chauffeur. The getup was all right. Should I have traced him?”

“You couldn’t have, Mac,” said Benson. “Not and watch the house at the same time. But I have a hunch we won’t find our man.”

Mac had been right about the servants. There were none in evidence. Benson and Mac and Smitty went to the rear door, where Benson opened the lock in short order. They went in.

Not only were there no servants there. Nobody at all was in the place, including Ormsdale. Yet, just before they had entered, Benson’s quick eyes had seen a trace of life.

A faint plume of smoke came from one of the chimneys.

He set out to find the source of that plume, searching through the basement. They found it by feel—one of several metal cases enclosing such things as furnace and air-conditioning unit and water heater and incinerator.

The one that was hot was the latter. Benson opened the incinerator door, and there still were sparks in its bed. Sparks and ashes and a couple of metallic things.

The ashes had a barely perceptible stripe through a few sections large enough to tell what the burned stuff had been. The thing burned had been striped fabric—such as material from which a shopman’s dungarees are made. And the metallic things were buttons.

“Well!” said Smitty, eyes bulging. “This would seem to tie Ormsdale into the thing! A man from Marr’s plant comes here like he’s an old friend, burns a suit of dungarees in Ormsdale’s furnace, and then takes Ormsdale’s car and drives away in Ormsdale’s chauffeur’s livery to safety.”

“Whoosh!”
said Mac. “But Ormsdale’s a big mon.”

“What’s the burned clothes doing here if he
isn’t
part of it?” snapped Smitty.

But then both looked at Benson, who had said nothing. The Avenger’s eyes, like chromium chips in his face, were brooding, almost veiled.

“Say Ormsdale is mixed up in it,” he said slowly, at last. “Say he has that Marr man in his secret employ. It certainly wouldn’t be smart to let the man come here in broad daylight, and then to let him burn his disguise in his own furnace.”

“Maybe ’tis not smart,” said Mac, “but that’s what seems to have been done. The case is closed, I’d say. Ormsdale is our mon, and he ought to be jailed for life.”