Read The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels for Free Online Page B

Avenger’s band. He was a tall, bony Scot with saillike ears, coarse sandy hair and bleak blue eyes. He had fists like bone mallets—and they could hit like mallets when Mac had a crook in front of him to smash.
    And he lived to smash crooks.
    “ ’Tis the big fella, Muster Benson,” the Scot said, after getting the code message. “He’s out somewhere, held by some mob. Somethin’ to do with this Jackson girrrl ye mentioned, no doubt. Ye said he had left here to get her at the Pennsylvania Station.”
    “Yes,” said The Avenger, pale eyes staring thoughtfully at the big radio, lips barely moving with the word.
    “I wonder where he’s held,” mused Mac. “We ought to dash after the overgrown lummox. But where do we dash to?”
    “Clagget’s air field,” said Benson quietly. He had heard the taps as clearly as Mac, though he was many feet from the radio and the Scot was right next to it. Benson could hear a snake breathe a hundred yards away, Mac always said.
    “How in the worrrld do ye know?” gasped Mac.
    “Smitty’s thumbnail description of the big room with a dirt floor fits only one thing—airplane hangar. He says all he can hear is wind in weeds and high grass—open field—landing field. Probably abandoned or the weeds could not be allowed to grow. The directional finder points north, northeast. The range of his little radio is eighty miles or so, and this came in clear; so it couldn’t have been sent from much more than forty miles. The only abandoned field and hangar in that direction and at that range is Clagget’s.”
    So the two went down to the basement, climbed into the heaviest sedan The Avenger had and rolled up the ramp and over the sidewalk. Behind them, steel doors automatically closed, making Bleek Street headquarters a fort again. And in the sedan, they were also in a fort. A small, rolling fort.
    The car was so armored that it weighed close to four tons. Yet it had a motor that would tear it along at about a hundred miles an hour.
    “Looks like ye’re expectin’ trouble, Muster Benson,” was Mac’s comment.
    The Avenger nodded, face as cold and calm as ice under a polar dawn, colorless eyes like agate.
    “There is still not the faintest clue as to why the girl, Doris Jackson, wants to see us so badly. But there are plenty of indications that it’s on some affair that’s very important. So important that murder means nothing to somebody opposing her. That means that it’s only good sense to take the heaviest car.”
    Mac didn’t say anything more for forty-five minutes; he just set back in awe while The Avenger drove like an inspired race-track expert. And at the end of that forty-five minutes both saw the same thing at the same time.
    They were in the open country, though so many small towns and scattered dwellings were around that it looked almost suburban. Lights were everywhere, for it was about nine-thirty at night, by now.
    Against a cluster of lights ahead and to their right, they saw the outline of this black thing. It was in a lane or small side road, just standing there.
    “What in the worrrld,” began Mac. “The thing’s a car!” he added suddenly.
    But it wasn’t like any car he had ever seen before.
    Of course, they could see just the black silhouette against the distant lights, but that gave a fair view: a car so streamlined that it was almost a perfect teardrop shape. It was a foot lower than most cars, and with glints advertising the fact that there was far more glass in it than in most automobiles.
    Mac and Benson were near the entrance of the lane, and then the car moved. How it moved! Without one sound, it seemed fairly to leap toward the highway—and toward the car Mac and The Avenger were riding in! It was like a lurking monster that lets its prey get within striking distance and then pounces.
    “Look out!” yelled Mac. The yell was instinctive, for he knew very well that The Avenger would see any given thing even faster than he would.
    Dick