The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels (13 page)

Where it
had
been.

It wasn’t there, now! There was no hair at all, any more.

In the invisible cyclonic bombardment of that big box, something had happened to the hair roots, so that all his hair had fallen out. That was why his head had felt cold, back at the plant. That was why the watchman had stared so hard, for it is unusual to see a man with no trace of hair at all on his head.

Experimentally, Benson smiled. And Nellie gasped aloud. Never once had she seen a movement of that dead, but now, somehow, revitalized face. And now it was
smiling!

The rest were in Nellie’s state of mind. Of them all, only Mac had seen The Avenger in the beginning, with a normal man’s face and a normal man’s look in his eyes. And Mac had gotten just a glimpse of him.

That was at an airfield.

Mac called it to mind. The man with jet-black hair and flaming, colorless eyes in a lean, square face, striding along with a lithe swing of his body, talking warmly and contentedly to companions. No more like The Avenger, that cold machine for fighting crime, than if he had been an entirely different person.

Then that man had, in a sense, died, when his face had died, after the appalling injury a crime ring had done him because he happened to get in their way.

Here was a man with a vital, tense,
live
face again! Save for the fact that there was no hair—and that other man had had jet-black hair—this person was like that other—

No, not quite. For this man, while once more resembling that other in looks, still had the cold hatred in his pale eyes for anything criminal or murderous. So he was a kind of blend of the two—

All of which Mac could express in only one word—or Scottish gasp, if you like.

“Whoosh!”

“What on earth happened to you, chief?”

That was Smitty, who had never known Benson save as the man with the dead face, whose flesh could be prodded into any likeness and would stay that way like putty. As it had last night, when Dick Benson had adopted the likeness of the stockroom employee. But his features then had been artificial—independent of his facial muscles. So that, upon the revitalization of those muscles, that guise gave way to his natural, normal countenance.

“It seems I got tempered, like any bar of old iron, at the Marr plant,” said Benson with grim humor. “It also seems that I’ll have to wear one of the wigs from my make-up kit permanently.”

Nellie’s eyes reflected the thought that would have come to any woman, as they went over the altered appearance of The Avenger.

He was certainly good-looking. That was her opinion. In spite of the handicap of no hair, he was about the handsomest man she had ever seen.

She had always suspected that he must once have been a very handsome man, till the dead facial muscles took on that masklike appearance. Now the dead mask was gone, and with it had gone, apparently, about twenty years.

Dick Benson looked so
young!
Good heavens, Nellie thought, he is very young!

And then The Avenger proved that changes like this are only skin-deep. White haired and with a face like a death mask, or young and classically featured—he was still The Avenger. He was still the man of cold genius who was concentrated on just one thing:

The destruction of crime and of the men who made their livings from crime.

“Mac,” he said, and his voice was as cold and even as ice water. “A workman who stayed in the Marr plant all night is the one responsible for this—and was almost responsible for my death. I want you to check on every man who was in the plant yesterday; trace their movements after working hours till you find which did not come home. If you do locate him, be careful. He is unusually clever and incredibly strong. In fact, the most dangerous person I have ever encountered.”

All of them drew deep breaths. The face had altered, but this was still their chief—indomitable, centered on just one thing, brilliant, glacially cold.

“Josh, I want you to check on the man, Cole Wilson, who gave his address as the Shelton Arms, on Jefferson Avenue. Smitty—”

It was then that the phone rang.

Every eye turned to that phone. They all felt that it was important. The Avenger picked up the instrument.

“Hello, Mr. Benson?”

The voice was high-pitched, yet almost a whisper, as if the speaker were afraid of being overheard by someone.

Also, the voice was faintly familiar.

“This is Benson.”

If you closed your eyes, you could see the white, dead face by which The Avenger was known, because the voice was the same. Then you looked at the taut, alert new face and got kind of a shock.

“This is Will Willis talking,” came the faint voice.

And now it was seen that while the face of The Avenger was once more capable of expression, it wasn’t going to be wasteful with it. The others looked surprised. Will Willis! But not a muscle of Benson’s face moved. An iron self-control was taking the place of the former paralysis to keep his countenance from revealing his feelings.

“Yes, Willis?”

Benson looked at Nellie, and his right hand made a fast, significant motion. Thumb and second finger joined tips, and forefinger stood out straight. It meant:

Trace this call, and trace it fast.

Nellie slipped out of the room, and the far voice went on.

“I’m calling about Doris Jackson, Mr. Benson. She is in trouble.”

There was a glitter almost of anger in Benson’s pale, deadly eyes for a moment; his lips thinned a very little. Smitty shook his big head. He simply couldn’t get over that face
expressing
things.

“Miss Jackson has no one but herself to blame for being in trouble,” Benson said crisply. “She was safe here with us. She was indiscreet enough to leave sanctuary—”

“She had a reason,” came Willis’s voice pleadingly. “She got a call from her father, Phineas Jackson. At least she thought it was from her father. Actually it was from a member of the gang pretending to be her father—”

“What gang?” Benson cut in.

But Willis ignored that.

“This man fooled her. He said he was in trouble, and would Doris come to help him—alone and secretly. She sneaked away from your place because she thought her father’s life was in danger and she could save it. Then, when she got out there, the trap was closed and she was caught—”

“Out where?” snapped Benson.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Willis plaintively. “She is being held near Belle Isle on an old coal scow. About eight miles up the river. Dock 13, not used now. There are several abandoned barges near there, but this is the only one pointed bow and stern. The others are square-ended. You’d better hurry out there. She is in terrible danger!”

“Suppose I meet you at Belle Isle and you guide me—” The Avenger began.

But Willis had hung up. The old man with the wild and woolly hair was harder to pin down than a flea.

There was the sound of a door, slamming in the next room. Nellie had found where that call came from and was racing to get there on the slight chance that she could pick up Willis’s trail before he got too far away.

Mac and Josh had already gone on their errands.

The Avenger was getting out of his workman’s clothes almost before he had hung up the phone. He extended them to Smitty to take in to the stock-room employee in another room of the suite, and was dressed in one of his own gray suits as the giant came back.

“You want me with you?” said Smitty.

Benson nodded.

“Swell!” grinned the giant. “I’m spoiling for a bit of action. This thing has been like fighting clouds, so far. I’d like something solid to hit.”

This wish was to come truer sooner than Smitty might have anticipated.

Dock 13, up the Detroit river, looked as if the number had brought it bad luck, all right. It was a junk dock with only junk water craft near it.

The wharf had rotted, broken planks that made it dangerous for anyone to walk out on it. Though, of course, nobody
should
be walking out on it; it was private property and there was a high board fence between its entrance and the road.

The pilings were ancient and slimy with green water growth. The whole structure sagged a little to the left. And it was on that side, more secure because it was half on the bottom than because of rotting rope securing it, that there was a scow with pointed instead of squared ends.

From Benson’s and Smitty’s vantage point, it looked like a great big wooden shoe.

That vantage point was the other side of the high board fence, where there were a couple of knotholes that they could look through.

“Now what?” said Smitty, pitching his heavy voice low. “Do we just climb over and go after that scow?”

Benson shook his head. His hat concealed his startling lack of hair, but his complete baldness was still hinted at by the hairless bit of scalp between hat brim and ears.

“If anyone on the scow is watching—and there surely must be someone on guard—they’ll see us. Then they might kill the girl—if she’s there.”

That last sentence had been echoing in Smitty’s mind, too. If she’s there!

This might be a trap—someone of the gang pretending to be Willis—just as Willis had said someone had pretended to be Doris Jackson’s father, in trouble, and had drawn her to doom that way.

“I have a float-tube,” said Smitty. “We could go up to that depression in the bank, there, slip into the water, then come up to the scow from the water instead of out the dock.”

Benson nodded again. They left the fence, went to the place Smitty had designated, where high wire took the place of boards, and climbed over. They did it as quickly as they could, for it was ten o’clock in the morning, now, and sunny. They could all too easily be seen.

In a tiny bay, about twenty yards across, they slipped into the water. The Avenger and Smitty each took out one of the float-tubes Smitty had referred to a moment ago.

These were flexible, small rubber hoses with a mouthpiece at one end and a cork ring at the other. Simple but efficient devices with which they could breath while walking or swimming, out of sight, a few feet beneath the water.

The two dipped under the surface and walked out into the river till it deepened. They kept flipping up with their hands, to keep their bodies down under the surface against the natural tendency to float.

It took about twenty minutes to go a hundred yards. Above them two small bits of cork, like stray and innocent pieces of driftwood, moved slowly toward the scow. Not one person in a thousand could have looked at them and realized that men were in the water beneath.

Dick Benson saw a wall of ancient wood in front of him, and stopped. Beside him, Smitty stopped, too. It was the coal scow.

Now came the most dangerous point; they must come up and crawl onto the thing in broad daylight.

The Avenger nodded to Smitty, and the two came up at the stern.

They had seen through the fence that there was no sign of life on the deck of the scow. If anyone were aboard, they must be in the hold. Though you could hardly call it a hold; it was simply a space. For, in effect, these scows are great hollow rafts, on top of which, not inside which, cargoes are floated.

Near the stern they had seen an oblong hole, leading down into the cavernous interior; so, with that in mind, they slid aboard.

Smitty could fairly feel slugs smashing into him as he and Benson slipped over the solid boarding which formed a rail. But they got aboard, and to the oblong hole, without seeing anyone.

They lowered themselves down and crouched in darkness.

Smitty suddenly remembered an old-fashioned rat trap his dad had once had on the farm. It was the kind that consists of a thick, round piece of wood with holes bored in the rim. In the center, cheese was placed. Then a rat would stick his head in one of the holes—

The scow struck Smitty as being like that trap, with a girl as bait. And they had stuck their heads down this dank black hole—

The Avenger’s light rayed out.

There was a bulkhead in the middle of the black oblong cave, cutting it in two. The flashlight showed that if anyone were down here, at least they weren’t in the rear half. It was completely empty.

There was a door, shut tight, in the middle of the bulkhead. They went to that. Benson listened, heard nothing behind it. That might mean there was nobody in the front half, either; or it might mean that the bulkhead door was so thick and tight-fitting as to be soundproof even to his amazing ears.

Smitty pressed the door, and it sagged heavily back. The Avenger had his flash off, of course. If somebody were lurking in there, with a gun, it would be silly to present him with the perfect target a flashlight would have afforded. Better darkness.

But the darkness lasted only till the two had warily passed the bulkhead and were standing several yards inside the front half of the old hull.

Then three or four flashlights flipped on at once, the bulkhead door was slammed behind them and five men leered at the two.

And each of the five, not just one or two of them, held a submachine gun.