his call rang out.
Then there was a sickening thud, and he said no more. Mac didn’t say any more, either, or do any more. Because at about the same time a blow from a club or something at last caught him squarely. It was as if the roof had fallen on his skull.
Mac was not quite out. From a far distance he heard the cackling, maniacal laughter. Faintly he felt something being done to his ankles and wrists. Then he heard a roar, seemingly from right underneath him. The roar was swiftly muted and then there was silence.
The silence, after a while, with his wits returning, was broken just a little by a curious crackling noise.
Mac stirred on the floor and sat up. He did this with difficulty, because his hands and feet were bound; it was the tightening of ropes he’d felt faintly a moment ago at wrists and ankles.
He looked around. To his left was a figure that, in a moment, he recognized as Dick Benson’s. The others lying around had been carried off.
He wondered for a minute why he could see Dick so clearly in this darkness. Then he realized that there was a little light that hadn’t existed before. And he realized the light was reddish and unsteady.
“Muster Benson!” he yelled. “Chief!”
The place had been fired. Tongues of flame were beginning to catch all around them.
Benson stirred. Mac inwardly thanked heaven for that, although he should have known that The Avenger was not dead, as he had feared at first. Veteran fighters such as these two can almost always half-see, or sense, a head blow coming and can roll with it so that they receive minimum damage. Dick had done this, obviously, even as Mac had, with the result that they were knocked out for a minute but not killed.
The Avenger snapped to consciousness in almost the same way he habitually awakened—with all his senses alert and full comprehension of what had just gone on. A glance of the pale eyes at the ring of flame, a tentative move to reveal bonds at feet and hands, and The Avenger was in action.
All Benson’s clothes were specially made, with scores of tiny pockets all over them in which were tiny weapons, chemicals, gadgets of a dozen kinds useful in attack, defense or escape. In this case, escape.
Mac saw Benson’s little shoulders move, and then saw a glitter as The Avenger’s bound hands worked his left trouser leg up. The glitter was caused by Ike.
Dick Benson habitually went armed only with two small and unimpressive-looking weapons. One was a small .22 revolver of his own design, equipped with a special silencer, and which he called, in grim affection, “Mike.” The other was a slender throwing knife with a hollow tube for a handle, which he called “Ike.”
He wore Mike in a narrow holster at his right calf, and Ike in a sheath at his left. Since captors seldom bother to search men below the knees, these two sleek little weapons were seldom discovered.
They hadn’t been discovered this time, either. And it was Ike that The Avenger was working to get. His supple fingers closed over the razor-keen blade, and he crawled to where Mac was. He pressed the knife against Mac’s bonds, and a moment later was free himself.
“So we were left to toast!” Mac rapped out. “The murderin skur—”
The Avenger didn’t waste time on recriminations. He leaped to the plank opening and out. There was nothing in sight down the road. He ran to the beach side of the building, stared out toward the mainland shore, then whipped out the small telescope.
“Power boat,” he said to Mac, voice as calm as if he had not just been condemned to burn to death. “They got away in a boat.”
It told Mac the source of the roar he’d heard underneath him while his senses had been swimming from that blow. There still was a boathouse arrangement under the building, then. And a fast boat had been concealed there for a getaway.
“They’ve got the girl with them,” Dick said, looking through the glass.
“Why not?” snarled Mac. “She was one of