Read The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots for Free Online Page B

parking lot.
    The attendant was talking to a waiter at the far side of the parking area. The waiter was a thin, gray-haired man, holding a round tray with two highballs on it.
    Cole frowned. “Something deucedly familiar about the lad with the portable drinks.” He turned off the engine.
    “Hey, no!” called the attendant. He left his conversation to come running in their direction.
    “Something amiss?” Cole eased out of the car.
    “We’re full up here at the Oasis, sir,” the thickset attendant told him. “Sorry, this is our busy time. No use you parking. Sorry.”
    “Surely there’s something,” said Cole. “I’m Cole Wilson, III, of East Coast Aviation and I—”
    “Nothing,” said the attendant. “Sorry.”
    Cole was watching the waiter, who still stood at the far side of the parking lot. “Well, then, Miss Gray and I will have to try elsewhere,” he said, climbing back behind the wheel.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “So you said.” Cole started the machine, backed out, and resumed the road.
    “We picked too popular a place,” said Nellie. “Why that scrunched-up expression on your face?”
    “It signifies cogitation, my dear Watson,” said Cole. “That waiter . . . I’ve encountered him somewhere before.”
    “So?”
    “Not as a waiter, and not at a hotel or restaurant. It was someplace much more unsavory.”
    “You’ve probably been to a good many of those.”
    “Exactly, princess,” said Cole, grinning. “Now I have to narrow it down.”

CHAPTER XI

“It All Comes Back To Me Now!”
    “Uncle Val,” repeated Jennifer, “why . . . ?”
    A man held her right arm tightly; another stood at her left with a pistol pressed to her side. The third man, whom the girl recognized as the thin dark man who had appeared in the background when she checked into the Oasis, stood to one side watching her.
    “Uncle Val, tell them to let me go.”
    Her uncle turned his back on her and left the room by way of a rear door. He said nothing.
    “Now, then, Miss Hamblin,” said the thin dark man.
    Her eyes were still on the door her uncle had left by. “What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he—”
    “What brought you here?”
    “I . . . came to the desert to look for my uncle.”
    “To this particular place, to the Oasis. Why did you select this resort?”
    “I didn’t know Uncle Val was here, if that’s what you mean,” Jennifer said. “The travel agency I used in Boston told me it was . . . a nice place.”
    The thin, dark man watched her face for a full minute. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “And why are you in southern California at all, Miss Hamblin?”
    “I told you, to look for my uncle.”
    “The United States is a vast country. Why select this one particular area?”
    “Because of the black chariots, obviously,” she answered.
    The man who was holding her arm relaxed his grip for a few seconds.
    “You associate your unde with those?” asked the thin dark man.
    “He was working on something very similar before he . . . vanished,” the girl said. “I assume you must know something about that, too.”
    “Yes, we do.” He watched her, silent, for another minute. “It is most unfortunate for you, Miss Hamblin, that you have knowledge of the observation ships. I’m afraid you will have to stay with us for a while.”
    “As a prisoner.”
    “Let us say as a guest with some restrictions placed upon her.”
    “I don’t see how you can keep me here,” said Jennifer. “After all, people back in Boston know I’m out in California. The travel agency knows I was booked here.”
    “We can arrange things so that no one will miss you for quite some time, Miss Hamblin.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “In fact, if it becomes necessary we can even arrange your . . . death.”

    Cole sat up on his still-made bed. “Eureka!” He tugged his shoes back on and hurried across the room and into the hall.
    He and Nellie had taken adjoining rooms in a desert resort calling itself the Seven