The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder (14 page)

He added regretfully, “Except Merto’s. I could never get access to his gun. I’m sorry, Josh.”

“It’s nothing, just a little hole,” said Josh, gritting his teeth. “Look! Miss Carroll—”

Molly Carroll hadn’t moved when the others did. She still lay where she’d fallen.

“The shock,” said The Avenger, kneeling down beside the girl. “It’s enough to stop a pretty good heart—to be sure you are to die, and then be spared. But Miss Carroll has only fainted.”

“All this blood—” said Nellie, shivering. Benson took from under his coat a deflated rubber bladder. And Nellie nodded, realizing she should have gotten it before.

It was frequently to the advantage of Justice, Inc., in its dangerous business, to let an enemy think he had killed or wounded one of its members. MacMurdie had concocted a red chemical that looked precisely like blood. Often, The Avenger or the others carried some in a bladder concealed under their clothes. “MacMurdie’s gore,” they called the stuff.

Benson had simply released about a pint of this at the proper moment, causing a flow that looked as if all were hit in a dozen places.

But Josh’s wound was no fake.

The Avenger said to Nellie, “Look after Miss Carroll.” And to Smitty, “The two out by the plane—”

“Got you,” said the giant. He slipped out into the night.

The Avenger bent over the wounded Negro, and cut the trouser leg from the wound. It was a clean hole in the thigh, just above the knee, no bones clipped.

Richard Benson was a brilliant surgeon and physician. He had invented many radically new first-aid devices. He took one from a pocket, now. Evidently, he had put most of his equipment into Gerry’s clothes when he changed methodically preparing for emergencies as he always did.

He unwrapped what looked like a little round cork made of tobacco. There were many things in it. Sulfanilamide as an antiseptic, a blood-clotting agent and a local anaesthetic to stop pain were a few.

He cut the plug in two and inserted half in the hole in the front of Josh’s leg and half in the back where the slug had come out. Then he bandaged Josh’s leg tightly above and below the spot.

Smitty came back in, carrying the two unconscious men. It was apparent that they were going to be unconscious for a long time. The giant had hit with enthusiasm. He carried them now by their belts, with their hands and feet dragging.

Molly Carroll was stirring now, in Nellie’s sympathetic arms. Merto’s attempted execution of the girl had, of course, absolved her of any real connection with the gang. Nellie was sorry for what she’d said.

Molly got up weakly and looked at The Avenger, looked at his disguise and Gerry’s clothes.

“I see now how I was able to phone,” she said. “You made that opportunity for me to slip off and get in touch with your Bleek Street place.”

The Avenger said, “You wiped out all your foolish ideas of trying to outwit a gang of seasoned criminals with that phone call. It was very helpful. Now, perhaps you’d be satisfied to withdraw from this affair—?”

Molly shuddered. “I’ll say I’d be satisfied! I thought I was smart. I never had a chance.”

“Josh,” said Dick, “you can drive with one leg, can’t you?”

“Sure,” said the Negro. “My clutch leg is all right. It’s the brake leg that’s shot. I can use the hand brake.”

“All right. Drive back to Bleek Street with Miss Carroll. She can take the wheel if you get tired. Have that leg looked after. Smitty, take Josh to the car you came here in.”

“But how will you all get to General Laboratories without a car?” protested Josh, looking pretty disappointed to be out of the running.

“We will take the plane outside,” said The Avenger calmly.

Smitty picked up Josh as effortlessly as if he had been a new-born babe and strode off toward the woods, toward where he had left the car. Molly trailed along beside him. The Avenger tied the two men tightly; then he and Nellie went out to the plane.

The tiny blonde had a million questions she wanted to ask, but this didn’t seem to be the time for them. They loosed the wheels of the plane and threw off what camouflaging branches and netting was necessary. Most of it was efficiently arranged to slide off by itself when the props whirled.

The Avenger started the motors and idled them. Smitty got back and climbed in. They took off.

It took a good pilot to get a plane that size off the pasture before reaching the trees at the end; but Dick was something more than just a good pilot. They cleared the trees easily, banked, turned, and roared toward General Laboratories.

The plane, though several years old, was a good one. It was not good enough, however, to do what was going to be required of it in a few minutes.

That was to land unharmed where there was no airfield to land on!

There wasn’t a flat field big enough to set the plane down anywhere near General Laboratories, and they all knew it. That meant an inevitable crash landing, but none mentioned this coming event.

The laboratory building was only about twenty miles away. The Avenger climbed as high as he could in about twelve miles, then cut the motors and glided.

“What happened to your wrists?” asked Nellie, unable to keep quiet any longer.

The Avenger told of the trick with the closet door.

“Why, those ghouls!” exclaimed Nellie, blue eyes flaming with rage in her angry white face. “Whatever they get will be too good for them!”

“How’d you get out of a mess like that?” said Smitty, more practically.

The Avenger showed the belt, his own, which he had transferred to Gerry’s clothes. Smitty saw two short steel prongs sticking down a couple of inches from the stout buckle, with blunt ends so that they wouldn’t injure the flesh beneath in any quick action.

“I designed these thinking they might be useful if a situation arose where I might need to hang from, say, a window ledge or roof parapet, and still have both hands free. I let the two men nail me into the closet door because I was pretty sure I could get loose again with the prongs.”

Smitty nodded. “I get it. You slipped them down over the doorknob and were able, with that grip, to pull and bend the door out enough to slip your hands free.”

“Yes.” The Avenger’s pale eyes were searching the dark countryside as the big plane settled. It passed near enough to the General Laboratories building for him to recognize it and went on under his deft hands.

A few miles ahead, he saw something that caused him to move the controls and head for it—a big haystack, nibbled away at the fringes by cattle. It was a small field.

Smitty said: “Seemed to me this crate left the field back there with a lot of buoyancy for a ship so big.”

“It did,” said Benson evenly. “That is because there is very little gas in its tanks. There is no more than enough for half an hour’s flight.”

“What? Then how did that gang expect to make a getaway?”

“I learned that Merto and Gerry planned to escape by themselves with the detector that is so valuable. They planned that their entire gang, impatient because they didn’t show up, should take off in the plane themselves and crash to their deaths when the fuel gave out.”

“What lovely double-crossers,” said Nellie. “But I’d have been almost disappointed if they hadn’t planned something like that. They’ve been so consistently rotten and ruthless that any other scheme wouldn’t have been like them.”

“You must have learned a lot in the last few hours,” Smitty said.

“Yes,” said The Avenger.

And then it was time to crack up.

Dick set the plane down on the very edge of the small field, and it jounced crazily and with terrific speed toward the hay stack. The field was slightly uphill, which cut speed some; but the plane was still going very fast when it struck.

Hay flew in fountains in all directions. The stack disappeared, scattered. The plane stopped, in the center of a mountain of hay, and did not catch fire.

None of them in it cared to think of what would have happened if it had, with all that hay around. They climbed out.

They were about three miles from General Laboratories. They set out, with The Avenger in the lead. Dick moved fast, soundlessly, effortlessly, as if he flowed along. He went with his pale eyes dead ahead on his goal, his face as expressionless as a mask of wood, his gait never varying.

There was something inexpressibly terrible about the way the man with the colorless, infallible eyes sped to his target.

Smitty and Nellie were put to it to keep up with him. They came along a little behind. The giant had Nellie’s hand in his. She felt a tremor touch him.

“I’d hate to have the chief after me!” the big fellow whispered. “He never quits, never gives up. If he is stopped in one direction, he backs up, looks around, and starts in another. He is as final as death itself.”

They traversed the three miles, over fields, through patches of woods, across streams, in a shade less than half an hour. They got to the road.

Here, Smitty and Nellie would have paused to reconnoiter, but The Avenger didn’t even slow up. He walked to the big gate, reached through the bars and felt all around the sides and bottom till his sensitive fingers found wires.

He disconnected the alarm, climbed the gate with three or four overhand heaves of his prodigious muscles, dropped on the other side, and opened up for Smitty and Nellie to come in. Then he shut the gate and connected the alarm wires again.

Throughout, there had been no signs of guards around.

“How could you be so sure that gang wouldn’t have men posted at the gate?” whispered Nellie.

“I was with Merto when orders were given,” The Avenger pointed out. “The men were to find and put out of the way all the guards, then all go to the lab. The whole crew. To be sure there would be no more obstacles in finally getting the detector, Merto decided to strike with all his force.”

“So they’ll all be in the lab building?”

“Yes.” Fifty yards from the dark door of the even darker building, Benson halted Smitty and Nellie.

“Have you got grenades?” he asked.

Both nodded.

“Cover the door, then,” said The Avenger. “It’s the only exit from the building. Keep everyone in. I’ll go on in alone.”

“Alone?” protested Smitty. “The odds are too heavy! You can’t—”

The Avenger was gone, slipping through the night toward the building.

Smitty whispered resignedly to Nellie, “Mac and Cole are around somewhere. They’ve been here for a long time; came in that trick new plane. Watch sharp so we don’t bomb them.”

However, Cole Wilson and MacMurdie were not outside, as all concerned were soon to find out.

Dick Benson went to within ten yards of the laboratory doorway, then veered off to the left. From the air, even in the darkness, his pale eyes had spotted the fact that, at the back of the building, there was a sort of bay in the trees, with a clear space almost like a natural avenue running several hundred yards nearly to the fence.

He went around the building wall, slowly, bent far down and looking hard at the ground next to the fountain stones as he went. He reached the cleared space.

He started down this, away from the building, not taking any step without first feeling forward with his foot. It was two-thirds of the way down the clear strip that his questing foot went through the surface of the ground as easily as if it had been thin ice.

He knelt and began clearing away twigs, grass and leaves from a strip of netting. When he was done, a curious arrangement was revealed.

There was a pit about two feet deep. At the bottom of this was an alarm clock. You could hear its industrious ticking now that the netting and leaves were off.

Fronting this little pit, toward the building, was a long, deep slot in the ground. It was about eight feet long by about eight inches wide. A cord ran from the alarm stem of the clock to a little pulley at one side of the slot.

The Avenger touched the pulley. From the slot, so well counterweighted that a touch of a finger started to raise it, a screen started to rise. It was like the automatic rising of a rifle target, except that this screen was much bigger than any target, and the cloth stretched over the frame was black.

Benson reached down into the pit so the flash could not be seen, and clicked on his tiny light. The ray centered on the alarm clock’s face.

The alarm was set for twelve o’clock. Exactly at midnight, it would go off. The turning stem would wind the cord, and the eight-foot screen would rise up from the slot.

The Avenger nodded a little, as though he had guessed that he would find something of the sort, though not knowing the exact nature of the contrivance. He reached down to the clock, straightened up, then went back to the building.

On a box against the rear wall in the center of the cleared space, something was set. It had evidently been placed there recently, after dark, because in daylight it would have been easily seen. It was a thing like a small megaphone, with the small end of the cone pointing down the cleared strip.

Dick was careful not to touch it. He was also careful to keep well away from the trailing wire that went from the metal cone to a near basement window, very small and very heavily barred, and in through this to the basement.