The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder (9 page)

The Avenger hung up the phone with pale glints in his awesome eyes. He had just telephoned Robert Spade, at the General Laboratories. He had phoned to ask if the mechanic was out there—the one who had checked over the plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania field.

Spade had said the mechanic had not shown up for work since that time and that he was worried about him. Benson was concerned about him, too. But he did not immediately go to the address Spade had given him.

He went to the second floor of headquarters. The rooms down there were fitted up luxuriously into suites. In one of these suites was the girl he had brought in from General Laboratories. The one called, by the gang, Molly.

When The Avenger entered her suite, the girl looked as defiant as she was pretty. She began to protest at being held here, threatening all sorts of dire things. The Avenger’s calm voice cut across the protests:

“Your full name, I believe, is Molly Carroll.”

“I will tell you nothing,” she flared.

“Your brother is, or was, Wayne Carroll. Captain Carroll, who piloted the plane in which died Aldrich Towne, of General Laboratories, and two army procurement officers.”

The girl said nothing.

“You are very much of an amateur in crime, Miss Carroll, to use your own car in your trip out to General Laboratories. At least, if you had to use your own car, you should have put on stolen plates. I am inclined to think you are not a crook at all, in spite of your friends.”

The girl said nothing.

“It is going to look bad for you,” said Benson quietly. “Your brother is under a cloud. Your actions brand you pretty definitely.”

The girl bit her lip hard.

“And yet,” The Avenger’s even voice went on, “I think there may be a great deal of circumstantial evidence here. Your brother was found in such a way as to indicate that he was trying to escape by parachute from the plane, with the secret invention, leaving the rest to go on to their deaths.

“But there is another possibility. Your brother may have seen that the crash was inevitable in spite of all he could do, and may have tried to get away with the device to save it; to turn it over to the army and be sure no one got it from the wreckage and ran off with it. That would make him a quick-thinking hero instead of a traitor. After talking with several of his superiors, I am inclined to think that this last is true.”

Molly Carroll began to cry. This had cracked her where fear had not.

“It is true,” she said after a minute. “I know it is true, because I knew Wayne. He was no thief or traitor. As for murdering anybody—”

She dabbed at her eyes.

“The newspapers got it all wrong. Everybody did. Every one was condemning him. So I went to General Laboratories to see if the men out there couldn’t set the world straight about my brother. I spoke to Mr. Grace first; he was there at the field.”

Her eyes flamed.

“He said he believed that rotten story, too. He said he was sure my brother had crashed the plane deliberately; that there was no other reason why it should have crashed. I went to another man there; I believe he manages the place.”

“Spade?” said The Avenger.

“Yes, that’s the one. He was nicer than Mr. Grace, but he offered no hope. He said my brother was dead anyway, and he didn’t see that it made much difference what people thought of him. That didn’t satisfy me. I was out to clear his name. And I began to think there was something odd about General Laboratories. Odd that everyone should be very certain it was all Wayne’s fault. Then Mr. Spade said something that scared me a lot—”

“He said if you weren’t careful you might be arrested yourself and held while your brother was being investigated?” asked Benson.

“Why, yes—he did.”

“So you left rather in a hurry. And at the gate, you were seized and held by some men.”

Molly Carroll nodded.

“There were a dozen or more,” she said. “Leading them was a monstrous fat man.” This was news to The Avenger as Smitty and Nellie hadn’t gotten back, yet. “The way they looked, I thought they were going to kill me. Then the fat man asked my name, and I told him. Things changed at once.

“Those crooks believed my brother died trying to steal that invention, too,” she said bitterly. “The fat man said, ‘So you are trying to pick up where your brother left off. You are after it, too. Well, so are we. And there are profits enough for all. You may be useful to us. Why don’t we throw in together?’ ”

Molly shivered.

“I had a sudden idea. A crazy one, I guess. I thought if I worked with this gang I might find out something that would clear my brother’s name. And if they got the invention, there was a chance that I could steal it from them and turn it over to the government—and turn them in, too.”

“Young lady, you have more courage than sense,” said The Avenger. “They fell for your story?”

“Yes. The fat man laughed a little and said, ‘Boys, Molly will take over. Do what she says. Between you, I expect you to get into that building and out again with what we want.’ Then he drove away. I went on with the rest, over the fence on a special ladder and into the grounds.”

The Avenger shook his head.

“You were committing suicide,” he said. “There was a slight chance that you could help, as the fat man was shrewd enough to see. For one thing, you might have gotten those in the laboratory to open the door where a man couldn’t. But if the raid had been successful, they’d have killed you at once.”

“I guess I was crazy,” said Molly, humbly. “But—you believe me?”

Dick Benson didn’t answer that. He said, “Did you gain admission, either before we got there or afterward?”

“No,” said Molly.

“Were you the one who unlocked the door for those prisoners and untied them?”

“Why, no! I helped them get away but I didn’t turn them loose,” she said.

The Avenger was silently thoughtful for a moment. Then he asked her: “What did you make of those crooks? Particularly the fat man? Is this the usual spy game?”

“I don’t think so,” Molly said. “I think the fat man is just a clever crook, out to steal anything of value. The rest are just cheap gunmen.”

“You don’t think they had anything to do with the plane crash?”

“I’m quite sure they didn’t,” said Molly. “Mr. Benson, do you think my brother’s name can ever be cleared?”

“Yes, if we can find out why that plane crashed. I am going to talk to the General Laboratories mechanic who checked the plane just before it took off. He may have something interesting to say. Would you like to come with me?”

“Oh, yes! Very much!” Molly said: Then: “But if that gang didn’t make the plane crash—who did? And, if it wasn’t for the invention, why?”

It was Dick Benson’s turn to say nothing in answer to a question. He led the way to the basement and got into a car with Molly. It was a big sedan, heavy with armorplate and equipment.

The mechanic, Spade had said over the phone, was a widower. He lived alone in a small house on the Jersey side of the Hudson River, in a rather secluded and suburban spot.

Dick stopped the car in front of the place. It was secluded, all right; the nearest house was fifty yards away. This neighboring house was untenanted. There were no others near, although the bulk of Newark lay in a crescent all around.

It was obvious at a glance why this particular small section was practically deserted.

It backed up to what had been a large, low hill. But the hill was sliced in two in the middle, now, with two-thirds of it carted away. For the hill was composed of excellent gravel. It had been worked a long time, from the evidence presented by its sheer, man-made face. Then it had been abandoned; small trees and bushes grew in a scraggly way right up to the foot of the unstable drop.

Now, it seemed to be working again, in a small way. Several big gravel trucks could be seen up on the brink of the hill, and a lane wound down and around the side where trucks had passed to get to the main road.

The mechanic’s house was way back from the street, so near the gravel pit that it told its story at a glance. It had been the office structure of the place. The mechanic had bought it cheap when the workings were abandoned; had tacked a porch onto the structure and had moved into a first-class shelter, all by itself, at a fourth-class price.

The Avenger’s pale, expressionless eyes examined the general layout of the place for a moment before he got out of his car. Molly said:

“For a mechanic, he seems to drive an excellent auto.”

He certainly did seem to. Parked next to the house—there was no garage—was a long, glittering, new car, with more cylinders than most. That is, it was not actually a new car, for these are impossible to get. But it was not much used, and the fact that it was new to the mechanic was indicated by the fact that it had dealer’s plates on it instead of regulation license plates.

The man seemed to have come into money lately.

“If you find out that he had anything to do with that plane crash,” said Molly Carroll, “let me get my claws into him for about one minute!”

The Avenger said nothing. He was looking at the gravel hill and the trucks up there. In this newer, smaller operation, they were surface-digging, instead of blasting the whole hill down a section at a time. A steam shovel was loading the trucks.

“What is this invention, do you suppose?” asked Molly. “It certainly seems much wanted by a lot of people.”

The Avenger said evenly, “I had a man, Josh Newton, telephone the war department about it, and no one in Washington seemed to know the nature of the device.”

He got out of the car.

“Stay here,” he said.

He traversed the eighty yards or so from the highway to the small, square structure that had once been the management shack of the gravel company. He knocked at the door, heard no answer and tried the knob.

The door was locked. The Avenger simply kept on turning the knob in those steel-strong fingers of his, backed up by the rare quality of muscular power that lay in his average-looking arms and shoulders.

There was a sound within the lock like the grating of bone fragments in a compound fracture, and the door opened.

Robert Spade had told Benson that the mechanic’s name was Vogel. He had said that Vogel was a taciturn, discourteous man, but strictly honest. “Absolutely dependable, Mr. Benson, naturally, or I would not have chosen him to make that last check-up of the plane.”

“Vogel,” Benson called.

There was no answer. And the place was not so big but what the call could have been heard everywhere in it.

Benson looked around the small living room into which he had stepped. It ran the width of the house, and halfway to the rear. He went to a rear door and looked in.

This was a kitchen, compactly installed but full of dirty dishes and debris of bachelorhood. Benson went to the next door and saw why there had been no answer.

Vogel was here all right, as the presence of his shiny new car would indicate. But Vogel wouldn’t answer anybody, ever, again.

This third and last room was a tiny bedroom. In it, there was a narrow iron bed, a scarred dresser and a straight-backed chair. There was a brand-new and expensive suit on the chairback.

Vogel was on the bed.

He was a wiry man of forty or so, with the grime of his expert trade ground deeply into the skin of his hands. His dark, sullen face looked as peaceful as though he were asleep.

He was in pajamas. The jacket was stained a rust-red in front with blood that had been dry for many hours. The source of the stain was a knife wound expertly placed over the heart.

He had been killed in his sleep, probably, at least a dozen hours ago.

A sound, so faint that no one else would have heard it, came to Benson’s ears. He turned like light, hand darting for his pocket.

He stopped the hand movement halfway.

In the doorway to the living room stood a man who filled the frame completely, and seemed to bulge a little at the sides. A fat man, weighing close to three hundred pounds. He had a placid smile on his jowled face, and a .45 automatic in his hand. The fat hand was rock-steady, with the gun lined on the bridge of Benson’s nose.

The fat man walked into the small bedroom a step, remaining well back from Benson so that a spring could be anticipated and stopped. Following the fat man came a young fellow with an indolent, aristocratic step, dressed in expensive tweeds, with a long cigarette in a longer holder.

“This would seem to be Richard Benson, Gerry,” the fat man wheezed cheerfully. “The fabulous Avenger.”

“Yes,” nodded the younger man. His voice was drawling, arrogant in a lazy way. “Apparently, he is not as clever as that man-mountain helper of his who managed to get away from us in Westchester. Though I still maintain that was sheer good luck on his part.”

The Avenger said nothing. He stared at the two men, new elements to him in this affair, with colorless eyes, unreadable.

“Haven’t you learned, yet, Mr. Benson,” said the fat man reprovingly, “that one should always search the basement of a strange building first before going on to the rest?”

“Odd how these legendary figures collapse at actual contact,” drawled the young man.