The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels Read Free Page A

And one of the men in the rear swung his gun viciously to club Doris down!
    But Doris wasn’t waiting for the blow to land. The driver already had the car in first again and was stepping on it. And Doris got the door open. She jerked far to the right to escape the downward arc of the gun barrel, and the jerk carried her out the door to land in the street on the back of her pretty neck.
    For just an instant the car hesitated; then one of the men in back yelled: “Step on it!” There were two vengeful shots, which missed the girl by a couple of inches.
    Then the car sped on, with the two cops racing futilely after it and waving guns as they tried for shots at the rear tires. But they had to give up the notion because of the people around.
    The man was out of the coupé, which had a twisted bumper but was otherwise undamaged.
    “In here. I’ll get you away.”
    It was the young fellow with the hair growing high on his forehead, and with the vital black eyes. The fellow she had met that dawn across the State. Cole Wilson.
    “Cole—”
    He had her in the coupé as if she’d weighed about a pound and a half and was sending the car toward the next side street. It swooped left and doubled back around the block.
    “Cole! What were you doing back there?”
    “I saw you leave your hotel,” Cole said, black eyes like polished onyx. “It looked fishy, so I followed you. Lucky I did.”
    “Yes, I suppose it was—lucky,” murmured Doris, staring at him with her lip caught between her teeth.
    “You sound as if you weren’t quite sure,” he said.
    “I’m . . . I’m not. I can’t figure out your position in all this.”
    “It ought to be easy,” said Cole. “You’ve known me a long time.”
    “I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all!”
    “Where were you bound for when those guys picked you up?” said Cole. “The airport?”
    Doris said nothing.
    “You mentioned once that you thought you might see this man, Benson, in New York. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”
    “Maybe not,” said Doris. She was beginning to shiver and feel hysterical from her recent escape. But she controlled it.
    “You’d better just go to another hotel and wait,” said Cole.
    Doris looked as if she were, by nature, frank and unconcealing. But if that were so, something seemed to have taught her a few lessons recently. For she said:
    “Maybe you’re right, Cole. You’d better let me out here, just in case you’re being followed. I’ll get a cab.”
    So he let her out, and she got a cab—
    But first she went to a phone booth with a handful of change and phoned New York again. This time to get in touch with a man named Robert Mantis.
    “Bob, this is Doris.”
    “Darling!” came a vibrant voice. “As if you had to tell me! But what’s up? Any news?”
    “Some,” said Doris wearily. “But not the kind we are interested in. Bob, I’m coming to New York to see Mr. Benson. Will you tell him that? I couldn’t get him on the phone. Then you can meet me at the station and go there with me.”
    “You think that’s wise?” asked Robert Mantis. She frowned a little as he said the same thing to her that Cole had. Then the frown cleared. She knew Robert’s position in this, even if she wasn’t sure of Cole’s.
    “I think it’s the only thing to do,” she said softly. “When in trouble—go to Justice, Inc. And—oh Bob! No girl was ever in more trouble than I am, now!”

CHAPTER III

Headquarters for Trouble
    Bleek Street, in New York, is only a short block long, but it looms big in the city’s importance.
    One side of the block is taken up by the blank back of a great concrete warehouse. On the other side, are three old red brick buildings thrown into one, flanked to east and west by vacant stores and small storage buildings. All are owned or under lease to the man who makes the street so important, Richard Henry Benson.
    The middle entrance of the three-in-one red brick building has a small sign over