The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers (13 page)

The taxi driver turned in the front seat, and grinned back at Benson. But under the grinning face, hidden from passersby by the man’s body, a gun poked over the back of the front seat! And the words that came from the man’s lips had nothing to do with his disarming grin.

“Listen, you, and listen hard, if you want to keep on livin’. Get out of the cab and walk to the nearest doorway, there. The storage building doorway. Don’t try to run away, and don’t try to yell for help or I’ll drill you. I’ll be at the wheel here, and I’ll have this rod on you every second. Understand?”

“I understand,” said Benson evenly.

The driver suddenly looked a great deal less sure of himself. He had seen many men with guns threatening them—death threatening them. The men had looked either scared or angry. Usually scared to death. But
this
man didn’t show any emotion at all.

His white, awesome countenance was as unmoved as a thing of wax. His eyes were as empty of human emotion as pools of ice water. His voice was even and calm.

The driver began to sweat a little. It was as if the man had some help near at hand—or some hidden source of strength that the driver didn’t know about. To hide his sudden fear, he snarled more savagely:

“Remember, one funny stunt and you get six or eight slugs around the spine!”

“Of course,” said The Avenger, voice seeming almost indifferent.

He got out of the cab and walked across the concrete to the designated doorway. The girl with the black eyes and hair got to him just as he did so. She didn’t look troubled or frightened any more.

She looked triumphant!

“Open the door,” she said, with a sweet smile for the benefit of any pedestrians who might glance their way, “and go in. I have a gun in my purse, and my hand is on the gun. I’ll shoot through the purse in a minute, if I have to.”

Benson only nodded. He opened the door and walked in as commanded. And, smoothly, the girl’s gun covered him as his movements took him out of range of the cab driver’s automatic.

The girl slammed the door. Benson was in the dimness of a huge room with no windows to let in daylight, and with only a few electric bulbs giving illumination.

The room was the receiving chamber of the storehouse. Here, furniture was covered and papered before being sent upstairs to rest in cool darkness till its owners wanted to get it out of storage again. There was a long, low workbench, among other things. Lined along this bench, grinning at the white-haired, dead-faced Avenger, were a dozen men.

Several of the men Benson recognized as among the gang in Utah. Notably the one who seemed to be the leader—a man so thin and tall and smooth-moving that he looked like a snake. He looked so much like a snake that you expected him to hiss instead of talk.

“Good work, kid,” said the man at the thin fellow’s right, directing his words to the girl with her purse jammed against Benson’s back.

The thin, snaky fellow nodded.

“As easy as that,” he murmured.

“Yes,” said the girl triumphantly. “As easy as that. I let him see me with a worried look on my face, and he came right after me—in the planted cab. I don’t think he’s so very smart.”

Benson stared at the men. They all had guns out. He couldn’t make a move, now.

However, he could have, either in the cab or on the way across the sidewalk.

The Avenger knew a trap a mile away. He spotted them infallibly.

And he usually walked right into them.

It was an axiom of Benson’s that in traps you often learn valuable things. Therefore, he rather sought traps than avoided them. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion that some day he was going to get into one he couldn’t get out of. Some day a trap would kill him.

It looked as if this might be that day!

The warehouse wall would cut off the sound of shots from people in the street. There were twelve or thirteen guns covering him. There’d be a chance if they left him Mike and Ike. But if they didn’t—

“Stand facing the wall,” said the thin, snaky thug. “Back to the room.”

Benson did as directed. Steps sounded behind him. Then a hand felt over him.

Out of the corners of his pale, deadly eyes, The Avenger saw men moving to right and left to cover him at all angles, so that the person searching him could not be held suddenly as a shield.

The searching hand covered body, throat, thighs—and kept on going down. And they found Mike and Ike!

Benson had two of the world’s oddest weapons.

One was a small throwing knife of his own design, with a point like a needle and an edge that could shame a razor for sharpness. It had a hollow tube for a handle so that it hurtled point-first like an arrow when he threw it. This was Ike.

The other was a little special .22 revolver, silenced, so streamlined that it looked like a slim bent length of blued pipe rather than a gun. The handle was the bend. The cylinder held only four cartridges. This was Mike.

He kept the two little weapons holstered at the calves of his legs, for the reasons that few searchers ever felt for guns below a man’s knees.

But this man had; and he had found the two.

“A pea-shooter, and a knittin’ needle!” the man said, staring at Mike and Ike. “What’s this guy think he could do with
those,
in a real battle?”

He’d have been surprised could he have seen some of the things The Avenger had done with Mike and Ike. But naturally Benson didn’t choose to enlighten him.

“So now what?” said the man who had searched.

“Toss him into the tank and leave him there till the big shot comes and tells us what to do with him,” said the man who, in his dark suit, looked like a particularly vicious black snake.

Every large storage building has a disinfecting tank. It is a steel chamber usually about six feet by twelve, with a hermetically sealed steel door. Into this are put pieces of furniture that are upholstered. Then poison gas is shot into the tank under great pressure, to kill moths and other vermin.

“That’s airtight,” pointed out the man who stood with Mike and Ike in his hands. “He’ll croak, without air.”

The black snake actually seemed to hiss it.

“So what? Maybe that’s what the boss intends. Maybe he’ll fill him full of chlorine under sixty pounds pressure. Who knows? And who cares?”

The safe-like door of the disinfecting tank was opened. Benson was thrust in. The door clanged, and he heard half a dozen big wingnuts screwed down hard on heavy bolts.

You learn a lot in a trap, sometimes. But there is always the chance that a trap will beat you, some day—

Benson’s slim, steel-strong hands went to his belt.

Smitty, radio electrical engineer par excellence had designed tiny radio receiving-and-transmitting set for The Avenger and his aides.

They were in thin, curved cases that fitted the waist.

The most observant eye could not discern them under normal clothing.

But a searching hand would be sure to feel one.

The man who had searched Benson had been astute enough to cull Mike and Ike from their hiding places. Yet he had not investigated the curved metal length under Benson’s belt. It seemed odd. You’d have thought he would at least have investigated it.

To The Avenger, the answer seemed plain enough, however. The gang
wanted
him to retain possession of the radio. They
wanted
him to call for help.

It would be an excellent way to trap not only The Avenger, but all his helpers!

In the Bleek Street headquarters of Justice, Inc., the giant Smitty suddenly began fumbling at his belt.

“What’s wrong with ye, mon?” said Mac dourly. “Is it wee wild life ye’re entertainin’ now on that overgrown carcass of yours?”

“Wild life, nothin’!” snapped Smitty. “There’s a radio call. From the chief, most likely.”

He tuned in the ingenious little belt set.

“Smitty talking.”

The voice that came was as calm and cold as glacier water.

“This is Benson, Smitty. Listen carefully and get everything right the first time, for I may not have a chance to talk long or to repeat. I’m in the disinfecting tank of a storage warehouse on Second Avenue near Thirty-fourth Street. A white stone-front building next to a wholesale paper office—”

“You’re in
what?”
yelled Smitty, quick brain taking in at once the dreadful possibilities of such a prison. Then he bellowed, “We’re practically on our way. We’ll be there in ten minutes, chief—all of us—”

“No!”
The voice of The Avenger seemed to crackle like an electric arc. “That is precisely what I do not want you to do. I believe the gang here has planned just such a move. Instead, you are to go to the hotel where Lorens Singer is temporarily located. You are to find a man I have reason to believe lurks around there a lot. The man is small, has peculiarly pointed ears. When I saw him last, he wore a dark-brown suit, light-brown felt hat and dark-tan shoes. His tie is wine-colored, with a slightly larger knot than most. Get that man and bring him to the warehouse. Keeping him covered, but keeping out of sight yourself, make him command the men here to leave. Then—and not before—open the tank and let me out. Understand?”

“Sure, I understand,” said Smitty breathlessly. “But who is the little guy with the sharp ears?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Is he in with this crew? Would a command of his make them obey?”

“I think so.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“Not entirely,” came the quiet, emotionless voice.

“Sweet Samuel, chief! If I show up there with my gun on a guy that gang never even saw before and try to make the stranger tell them what to do—”

“It will be unfortunate,” said Benson crisply. “But it is a chance we must take. My calculations indicate that this man can make the gang do as he says. If my calculations are wrong . . . Bring him here as swiftly as you can, Smitty. And Smitty—bring my kit.”

The clever little radio went dead.

“My kit,” Benson had said. There had been no need for further explanation, such was the swift coordination between The Avenger and his aides. Smitty went into Benson’s office and grabbed what seemed to be an ordinary overnight bag.

He raced out bareheaded and got into Benson’s special sedan, which was usually at the curb waiting for anyone needing particularly fast transportation.

The sedan looked like a sedate old thing that should belong to some elderly couple from a tank town where twenty miles an hour was real speeding. But the car actually was armored like an army truck, and had well over a hundred an hour in its purring motor.

Smitty got to the hotel in ambulance time, parked half a block from it and entered a drugstore. He walked in leisurely and sat at the soda fountain.

“A coke,” he said, staring not at the clerk but out the window. The window let him see the hotel entrance.

Benson in a steel tank, helpless, as subject to death at the whim of a murder gang as any chained prisoner lying helpless under a guillotine! And all Smitty could do about it was hang around here and watch for a man with sharp ears! The man might or might not show up within the next twelve hours. He might or might not be able to save Benson. It was a thousand to one that the pale-eyed Avenger had come to the end of the trail—

Smitty was off the stool and out the door. He could move like a flyweight boxing champion when he had to, for all his great size.

A man had left the hotel doorway. The man, had Smitty known it, was Roger Bainbridge, of The Henderlin Corp. He had been with Lorens Singer for over an hour.

The man had stepped into a limousine. The sleek car had rolled off, and a taxi had suddenly darted after it. Smitty had one glimpse of a man in the cab—a fellow who looked small, though it was hard to tell because of the sitting posture, and who had queerly sharp ears.

The man the chief wanted was trailing this other fellow, who had been one of dozens going in or out of the hotel entrance and who looked like a perfectly respectable citizen.

Smitty started to hail another cab, saw the lights at the near corner go red and changed his mind.

He walked toward where the cab had stopped, three cars behind the limousine, getting there as the lights went green again.

The giant timed it beautifully. The little man’s cab was just beginning to roll when Smitty jerked open the door and slid in. He grinned at the driver, who turned when he heard the door slam. The driver, sure the giant was a friend of his passenger, turned front again and kept on going.

“Hello,” said Smitty, to the man with the pointed ears.

Then the giant dropped the persiflage. A gun had suddenly appeared in the man’s hand. But even more swiftly Smitty’s vast paw went out and grabbed the wrist behind the gun.

In such cases, Smitty had a very simple way of disarming a person. He just squeezed!

He did so now with his left hand darting out and over the man’s mouth to shut off the resultant yell of agony.

The gun dropped cozily into Smitty’s lap. He pocketed it and stared into the little fellow’s raging eyes.

“I usually take somebody as near my size as I can find,” he said. “But this time has to be an exception. Tell your man to go to Second Avenue near Thirty-fourth Street.”