“Only that he’s an inventor,” Benson said. “Come on. I’ll go with you to the Red Dragon.”
“Alone?” said Mantis curiously.
“Yes. It’s better not to have too many on such an errand. Someone in the place would be sure to see a lot of people approaching — and be warned. Just the two of us have a large chance of getting in unnoticed.”
Benson called police headquarters.
“Richard Benson talking. Have you a gangster’s bullet-proofed car in your police garage?”
“Yes,” was the respectful reply. “We’ve got a sedan that Frankie Geraldi had done over. That’s the guy that got knocked off a couple weeks ago. It’s a regular fort on tires.”
“I’d like to use it, if I may.”
“Right. There’ll be some red tape with the D. A.’s office, but we’ll snap the car over to you first and go through the red tape later. Want any men, Mr. Benson?”
“No, thank you. Just the car.”
“You’ll let us in on — whatever it is you’re working on — as soon as you can?”
“Yes,” said Benson. “As soon as possible.”
In the nine-thousand-dollar job of Frankie Geraldi, deceased now and not needing any automobiles, The Avenger and Mantis rolled smoothly and ponderously down the Ann Arbor road.
“So Doris Jackson’s father,” said Benson quietly, “is the inventor of the steel processing in the new Marr-Car.”
Mantis stared quickly at him.
“You seem to know a lot. Yes, he is.”
“And you,” said Benson, “until just recently, worked for Ormsdale, in his competing plant.”
“Why, yes. That’s right.”
“Why did you leave him?”
Mantis shrugged.
“I wasn’t getting anywhere, with Ormsdale. I’m ambitious. I want to better myself. So I left his employ.”
There was silence, then, with The Avenger staring straight ahead with pale eyes that reflected no emotion whatever, and with Mantis jerking quick looks sideways at him now and then.
“I think the Red Dragon must be within a mile or so of here,” he said finally.
The Avenger nodded, paralyzed face as cold and moveless as glacier ice. He knew where the Red Dragon was. It was a hotbed of crime, and such spots were usually known to him pretty precisely.
He went on a half mile, and then stopped. There was a rutted lane leading off the highway into an orchard, used by the man owning the place only now and then when he wanted to drive his truck in and load it with apples.
Benson opened the gate, parked Frankie Geraldi’s car in the dark orchard and closed the gate again. Then the two climbed the inner-orchard fence and started across the fields to the Red Dragon.
They came to the back of the place.
There was a lot of light coming from the many windows of what was really nothing but a huge old farmhouse, turned into a country night spot. A lot of noise came from the windows, too — a nickel phonograph going full blast; loud voices and shrill laughter.
The Avenger mused aloud as the two crouched beyond the rear parking lot in the shadow of a car.
“The basement of such places is usually a storage space. With waiters and busboys going down constantly for liquor and other supplies, it is unlikely that a prisoner would be kept there. The first floor will have the bar and cafe room and kitchen. The second will have private rooms. That’s a possibility. But the attic rooms would be the most logical place—”
He took from his pocket a small round object like a dollar watch. But the stem of the watch was hollow. He gave this to Mantis.
“Stay out here. If you hear shooting or other disturbance, blow into this, and then run as fast as you can for the car. If you are pursued, lock the doors and sit tight. The body of that car should shield you from anything up to a full-size army machine gun.”
“You’ll need help—” began Mantis.
“I work best alone,” said The Avenger. And his voice brooked no back talk.
“What’s this thing?” said Mantis, looking at the watchlike arrangement.
“Siren,” said Benson. “When you blow into it, it makes a sound quite convincingly like a squad car. It should provide enough distraction to help, if I run into difficulties in the Red Dragon.”
He was gone, then. And Mantis stared wonderingly. Not once did he see The Avenger’s whip-cord body as he slid among the cars across the parking lot to the wall of the building. Few men alive could move more unnoticed than he.
There was no tree near enough to climb. There was no rain pipe strong enough to bear his weight to the attic or third floor.
Benson drew from around his waist a length of something that looked like catgut. It was a length of fine cable, made from steel-strong, specially treated silk. On the end of it, he attached a thin steel bar from which four smaller steel bars unfolded like four ribs of an umbrella when it is raised. It formed a nice little grappling hook, with a sheath of silk over the steel to keep it from making too much noise.
Surely, deftly, he tossed the hook up.
One of the grapples caught on the gutter of the roof, and an instant later he was going up the thin cable, hand over hand.
On the roof, he went to a dormer window that showed a dim light through a carefully drawn shade.
His deductions had been right. There was a crack in the shade, and through this he could see a pair of silk-clad ankles with rope around them. Doris Jackson was held prisoner in this room.
The Avenger put his forehead lightly against the pane. In this manner, the frontal bone became a sort of sounding-board to amplify any sounds in the place. But all he could hear was the breathing of one person — the girl. He slowly raised the window and held the shade aside.
A girl’s deep-blue eyes stared at him in terror and dawning hope. But a strip of adhesive tape gagged her cry. He stepped into the room.
Only then did he see that there were two prisoners there. The other was the man with the scraggly beard, Will Willis. He was gagged and bound, too.
The Avenger stepped to the door and listened. No sound. He went to the girl.
“I’m going to untie you and take the gag off,” he whispered. “Make no sound.”
She nodded, and her eyes showed that she was gaining her self-control again. Benson ripped the gag off and bent to unfasten the rope at her wrists and ankles.
And a voice said: “All right, monkey, just stand perfectly still, or I’ll put a coupla holes in your head.”
The door was shut, the window shade was motionless over the open window, there was no one in the room besides Benson and the two prisoners. He stayed the way he was, in a crouch over Doris Jackson, but his right hand furtively was touching his leg.
He saw the speaker, then.
There was a hole in the wall, up high — a little square section that hinged like a small trapdoor. This was open and a man’s head showed. And a gun was trained on The Avenger!
The man yelled: “Hey! Downstairs! Come up here, somebody!”
And from a slim holster on The Avenger’s leg below the knee flashed one of the world’s most curious guns.
It was a .22-caliber, with a butt so streamlined that the whole length seemed like a slightly bent section of slim blued pipe. There was a silencer on it of Benson’s own invention. He called the little gun Mike, and he could hit a fly with it at thirty feet.
The move was as fast as the dart of a snake; but no move could come entirely before the trigger-pressure of a man alert for one.
There was a yell and the roar of the man’s gun, and The Avenger staggered backward as a slug hit him in the chest just one inch below the top of the bulletproof garment. In that one inch lay the difference between life and death.
Lost in the echoing roar of the man’s gun came the whisper of Mike. And the fellow’s head suddenly disappeared from the opening, with a shallow gash on the top of it.