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them. Didn’t she lead us right into their hands? Take us to where her father’s valuables were hidden, huh!”
    But even as he spoke, the Scot knew he was off the track somewhere. If the girl had been in with this crew, why had she screamed in such deadly fear when she was confronted by one of them?
    They were yards from the building, but the heat of its burning made them uncomfortable. They hurried to the opposite side, where the car was. The slight wind was blowing away from this side, fortunately. At the expense of singed eyebrows, they rolled the sedan back out of danger. It wasn’t long after that when the building fell in, a mass of flaming embers.
    The Avenger started rolling down the road away from it, a calm, enigmatic figure over the steering wheel.
    “I don’t get it,” Mac repeated helplessly. “She couldn’t be in with the gang that robbed her father. Yet, she turned us over to them. And it must be the same gang because of the laughin’. They’ve already started to use Tate’s drug to make them brave and immune to pain.”
    Dick said nothing.
    Mac went on: “Say! Maybe it wasn’t any maid that let the gang into Brown’s house last night. Maybe it was Brown’s own daughter.”
    Benson said nothing.
    “Ye can see now why she wouldn’t tell us anythin’,” Mac said experimentally, looking sideways at the immobile face. “She couldn’t, without givin’ her own crooked partners away.”
    Still, The Avenger said nothing, so Mac gave it up. When the man with the colorless, terrible eyes didn’t choose to talk, no power on earth could make him.

CHAPTER VI

Cold Trail
    It was about dusk, with Manhattan’s towers not far ahead, when the car radio broke in on Mac’s perplexed thoughts. The radio was tuned to Justice, Inc.’s own private wave band. The voice of Cole Wilson sounded.
    “No sign anywhere of Brown’s stocks and bonds. Maybe the crooks are going to wait awhile before trying to dispose of them. Maybe they’re too smart to do anything with them at all.”
    Wilson’s voice snapped off, and the big, shabby-looking sedan rolled on in more silence. Then Mac tried again. He couldn’t get answers from The Avenger on important questions. Maybe he could start him talking with minor matters.
    “How did ye know there was someone in the old buildin’?” he asked. “Ye walked in there ready for a fight. Inside, before we saw or heard a thing, ye told me in code, ‘Others are here.’ ”
    “Tracks in the sand,” Benson said. “They’d been swept out, but not well enough.”
    “What do ye think, Muster Benson? Was the girl in with that gang, or was she really scared of them and kidnapped by them?”
    Silence.
    Mac sighed and gave it up permanently. The Scot had a hunch that for once The Avenger didn’t know any of the answers. He certainly hadn’t revealed anything to Mac. And that, too, was a source of bitterness.
    They’d come all the way out to the end of Long Island; they’d been jumped by a gang of laughing monsters and left to die in a burning building. And from all this they had learned nothing!
    Again the car radio broke in on Mac’s pessimistic thoughts. This time it was Josh talking, and this time there was a message of real importance.
    “Mr. Benson, news just came from Dillingham Brown’s house. The detective in charge there says that Harry Tate has disappeared.”
    With eyes like pale, lambent jewels, The Avenger flipped on the transmitter.
    “Go on, Josh. How do you mean, disappeared?”
    “According to the detective, he lowered himself from a window and sneaked off the grounds. Headquarters is sore about it. Tate was not actually under arrest for the murder and robbery, but he was very much under suspicion. Orders were to keep an eye on him. But he managed to sneak away. That makes it look as if he had some guilty part in it.”
    Benson didn’t comment on this. He said: “Go out there, Josh. See if you can find a clue as to where he went. In particular, see if