The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels Read Free Page B

the door:
    JUSTICE, INC.
    In other words, headquarters of The Avenger and his aides. In still other words, headquarters for trouble; it is to this door that more deadly trouble is brought than to any other in America.
    Benson was up in the great top-floor room, taking up the entire third stories of all three remodeled buildings, now. With him were Nellie Gray, Smitty, Josh and Rosabel.
    Nellie Gray was unobtrusively watching the chief, as he sat at his great desk checking over the final results of a multiple murder case he had just cleared up.
    A most unusual man, this Benson. And a glance at him indicated the reason why he was called by the somewhat theatrical title, The Avenger, and why the underworld walked in such awe of him.
    Though Dick Benson was only average in size, you knew from just looking at him that his body packed a whip-cord and steel-cable strength. His face was as dead as the frozen face of the moon, with the nerves so paralyzed by a previous nerve shock—the flesh so inelastic and immobile—that never could an expression register there.
    But The Avenger’s eyes were his most salient feature. They were so light-gray as to be almost colorless—so pale as to seem to be holes in his dead face into which you could stare down at an icy, deadly glitter.
    But Dick Benson was really a very young man. A very young man, even though the dead face below a shock of virile, snow-white hair made him seem much older.
    Nellie Gray, dainty, demure blonde bombshell, was thinking something she had thought many times before. She was thinking of a thing that was very feminine, and that most women thought at sight of The Avenger. He must have been strikingly handsome before the terrific shock had so altered his face and hair. What a shame that he—
    “Has that girl called again?” The Avenger asked, looking at Nellie so sharply and suddenly that she went slightly pink with the fear that he’d read her mind.
    “The one who left her name on the phone record?” said Nellie. “No.”
    “You’ve tried to trace her in Detroit?”
    “I tried three times,” Josh Newton cut in.
    Josh was a most amazing fellow. A tall and gangling Negro, he looked sleepy and dull-witted. But Josh was a highly educated and singularly intelligent man.
    “She checked out of the Detroit hotel from which she phoned,” amplified Josh. “And no one there knows where she went—”
    In the wall next to the door leading to the stairs suddenly glowed a pin point of red. At the same time, there was a soft buzz from a black box on a table.
    The red glow indicated that someone in the vestibule downstairs was pressing the bell for admission. The black box—about the size and shape of a shoe box—was a remarkably fine, small television set designed by the radio wizard, Smitty. It showed whoever was in the vestibule.
    The giant Smitty stepped to the box.
    “Young fellow, looks decent enough, no warning from the electric eye of guns or other weapons on him,” he said.
    The Avenger nodded his snow-white head, and Smitty pressed the vestibule lock release. In a moment their visitor was at the door. His eyes went curiously over the group, and then rested instinctively on Dick Benson’s awesome, dead face.
    “You are Mr. Benson?”
    The virile, thick shock of white hair nodded.
    “I am Robert Mantis,” said the young man pleasantly. “I’m calling in behalf of a girl named Doris Jackson.”
    It was typical of the absolute self-control and quick wit of all in that great room that no one showed an expression of any kind, though each knew that this was the name of the girl who had called so urgently awhile before.
    “We would be glad to have Miss Jackson, herself, call,” said The Avenger, pale eyes drilling the brown eyes of Robert Mantis as if going right through them to the back of his skull.
    “She intends doing just that,” said Mantis. “She asked me to come here first and make an appointment. I am to meet her at the Pennsylvania Station