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“Sorry,” he snapped, when Benson asked to see Marr. “Mr. Marr is very busy this morning. He can see no one. No one at all — what did you say your name was?”

The Avenger gave it again, voice even, eyes on the secretary’s face in a gaze that was hard to bear if you had disobedience in mind.

“Mr. Richard Benson? Oh!” The secretary nervously pulled at his fingers till the joints made little cracking noises. “I was told to let no one — absolutely no one — into Mr. Marr’s office. Something has happened at the strip mill — I’ll tell him you’re here.”

He came out in a minute, looking even more shaken. Evidently Marr had handled the secretary pretty severely for disturbing him, before he found out who was calling.

“He’ll see you.”

Benson went in, and walked across a vast room to a huge desk behind which sat a man who looked small and a bit shrunken in contrast. Marr stared up at The Avenger with veiled eyes.

“If you can make this brief?” he suggested. “I am extremely busy.”

“I’ll be brief,” said Benson. His colorless, awesome eyes bored into Marr’s. “A criminal ring has hatched up a scheme that concerns you and has a direct bearing on your recent troubles. My job is to fight crime. I came to ask you to tell me a few—”

“I’m afraid you have come under a misapprehension, Mr. Benson,” Marr said easily. “I have no troubles, save the regular ones of any man in business.”

“You’re sure of that?” said Benson, eyes like stainless steel chips in his paralyzed face.

“Very sure,” said Marr.

“You have worked for months, with brilliant inventors and mechanics, to turn out a new automobile embodying many revolutionary new principles. Now, this mystery car has been stolen — and all your trade secrets with it. I would call that trouble.”

Marr said nothing; he only looked at the white, still face with tired eyes.

“The man who invented the most important thing about the mystery car — the new steel processing — is missing and you don’t know where he is. Phineas Jackson. For all you know, he is negotiating with rival manufacturers and means to sell you out to them. I’d call that trouble, too.”

Still Marr did not reply.

“Now, only a few minutes ago, your strip mill was put out of commission. Some of the new process steel was run through, and it was too hard for the rolls—”

“That wasn’t the new process steel,” Marr blurted. “We’re not in production on that yet, and besides the hardening comes after—”

He stopped, looking confused, and evidently angry at himself for having said that much.

“Comes after the final machining of the product?” said Benson quickly. “Is that what you meant to say?”

Marr was obstinately silent.

“Do you have any idea where Jackson is, now?” said The Avenger.

Into Marr’s eyes crept a glint of fury. His hands clenched on the desk top. But he was through talking.

“You’re doing yourself an injury by not helping me,” said Benson. “But if you don’t care to help — that is your affair. Good day.”

He went back to the hotel — and to a grim-faced MacMurdie, whom he had left in charge of Doris Jackson to see that nothing happened to her.

“She’s gone!” Mac burst out, as Benson entered.

The pale eyes rested on him with the force of a physical blow.

“The little fool!” rasped Mac. “She went to the lobby to telephone somebody—”

“Why didn’t she phone from these rooms?”

“She said frankly that she didn’t want even us to hear who she was talking to or what number she called,” said Mac. “I thought that was all right. You didn’t say anything about treating her like a prisoner. So I went down to the lobby with her, and she went into a phone booth. I saw her talking to somebody, and then I didn’t look any more because I saw a guy hanging around the lobby that looked suspicious. He turned out to be the house detective. When I looked back at the booth, Doris had sneaked out. I waited for her to come back, and she never did.”

Something almost like cold anger came to Benson’s colorless eyes. But not directed at Mac.

“She was just barely rescued from one muddle,” he said. “And now she is foolish enough to leave our guardianship and risk her life again. Didn’t she know it was dangerous for her to go out alone?”

“Sure she did,” said Mac, looking miserable. “She said nothing would drag her away. And then she stole out like a little thief. And I thought she was such a nice girrrl, too.”

The anger had gone from the cold, pale eyes. A look of thoughtfulness was there instead.

“Something very important to her must have developed during her phone call. Well, we’ll hope nothing happens to her. But I’m afraid—”

CHAPTER XI

The Hidden Note

Nellie Gray entered the hotel suite that had become temporary headquarters for The Avenger, and Smitty said:

“Hey! I thought you were in New York.”

“I was,” shrugged Nellie. “After I told you over the phone that Will Willis had boarded a westbound train, the chief radioed that he’d seen Willis here in Detroit. So I took a plane and here I am.”

“Too bad,” rumbled Smitty. “We weren’t having much luck as it was. Now, with you here to have to be rescued from some jam or other every few hours—”

“Why, you light-brained dinosaur,” said Nellie, for once letting Smitty’s kidding rile her. “You’re the one who is all the time getting in over your head. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve saved your carcass—”

Smitty was grinning. She stopped, and said with dainty dignity: “Where’s the chief?”

“Next room,” said the giant, still grinning. So Nellie flung over her slim shoulder as she walked:

“Remind me to give you the messages of four or five of your brunette friends in New York, when I have time.”

Smitty’s grin changed to a splutter. In the first place, he was very conscious of the fact that he was no lady’s man. In the second, the only girl in his world was not a brunette, she was blonde Nellie Gray. And Nellie knew it.

The Avenger’s pale eyes glinted as Nellie came in. But he only nodded to her, told her to wait in the suite with the rest and hurried out.

There had been more trouble at the Marr factory.

Before an alarmed working staff could stop the rolls, they had been broken by a bloom too hard to be flattened out. That had been in the morning. Now, in the early afternoon, an even more serious thing had occurred. Rather, a lot of more serious things.

Suddenly, trouble broke all over the vast plant.

Drills snapped, as plates were put into the drill presses too hard to be drilled. Punch presses buckled, or the dies in them broke, with metal too hard to be machined. Cutting bars screamed and blunted; milling machines jammed out of line. There was hell to pay!

In every process of making an automobile, now and then a part cropped up that looked just like all the other parts, but it proved mysteriously to be too finely tempered and too hard to handle. So Benson’s friend at the plant had phoned in a hurry. The entire gigantic enterprise was shut down — at a standstill!

* * *

So The Avenger went to see Marr once more.

This time the magnate was not at his office. He had been driven to the plant, his secretary said when Benson phoned. He had looked over the rolls, and then, saying nothing, had gone home.

The Avenger went to Grosse Pointe, which was where Marr had his Detroit mansion. It was not far from Ormsdale’s palatial place.

This time Marr wasn’t going to see even Benson. But The Avenger disposed of those orders to the servants in a hurry. He had anticipated that.

The moment a man — not a servant, evidently another of the magnate’s secretaries — opened the front door, Benson’s hand shot out and his thumb and second finger moved. It was as if he were merely snapping them under the man’s nose.