“Not even locked?” he said softly. “Open to anyone that wants to push it?”
“That’s the cleverest part about it,” said Nellie. “It isn’t a trap, as it seems to be. Go inside, and you’ll see what I mean.”
So they all went in — with Smitty sliding the door shut behind them again — and they saw.
Ahead of them, as Benson’s flash rayed out, was seemingly nothing but an empty garage space, with a blank wall cutting off their view about thirty feet from the door.
“That’s it, see?” said Nellie. “Let anyone come in. There’s nothing to look at, nothing to give the show away.”
“Where’s the car?” said Jackson, anxiety in his eyes.
“Behind that wall — which seems to be the end wall of the garage. I sneaked in hours ago and learned all about the wall.”
Nellie went to it, with the others following. She touched the head of a nail, and a plank about eighteen inches wide suddenly came loose at the top. She lowered it.
There was a six-or seven-foot space between this fake rear wall and the real rear wall. And in there, packed tight with fenders almost touching on each side — was the Marr-Car!
Jackson leaped to it and literally stroked the steel of the thing, as if it were alive. He talked to it; patted it. Benson turned to Smitty.
“Stay on the door, Smitty. We’ll all get in the car and drive it out. When we get to the door, you slide it open for us, and then get in the car with us. There’s just a chance that there may be a guard somewhere around here who has seen us enter, and that there may be trouble. But these windows look pretty thick and shatterproof.”
He turned to Jackson. “Will they stop bullets?”
Jackson nodded, proudly. “They’ll stop anything.”
“Then we can roll out easily, trouble or no trouble.”
Smitty walked back to the street door of the garage, using his flash because of the boarded windows and the closed door, which made the place dark. He walked around a large metal sheet in the middle which looked like a trapdoor, and which he knew in a way was a trapdoor: It covered a greasing pit. Shallow iron runways at each side the iron sheet showed that.
The Avenger prepared to take the car from its closed, dark hiding place. His quick, pale eyes had already seen the way, without words from Nellie.
At the floor could be seen half a dozen heavy hinges. They were not to be seen from the garage side, but no one had bothered to conceal them on this side. They showed that the whole wall could be let down into the garage space, hinged at the bottom and free at the top where it met the ceiling. A heavily counter-weighted rope, attached to the wall at the top, further indicated how it worked.
Benson pulled a bar that fastened the thing, and pushed. The wall tilted away from the mystery car.
Mantis, and Mac, meanwhile, were looking at the unique thing so new in automotive circles. The perfect teardrop design. The lack of hood because the motor was over the rear side. The extra-large tires. Jackson in the meantime had the door open and was sitting behind the wheel.
The wall was flat on the floor, now, ready to be driven over on the way to the sliding street doors—
But suddenly those doors opened. And it was not Smitty who had opened them. The giant yelled: “Chief—”
And then they came in — a score of grinning, murderous-looking thugs with machine guns and automatics. And at their head, openly, triumphantly sure of himself, was a man frequently in the rotogravure section of Detroit newspapers. A man looked up to and respected, worth millions, with homes all over the country and owning one of the country’s biggest automobile plants.
Sigmund Ormsdale!
CHAPTER XVIII
The Trap Locks Shut!
Bright daylight was bathing The Avenger and those with him, now that the doors were back. They were in a motionless group, backed against the side of the Marr-Car — Dick Benson with his face a cold, grim mask and his pale eyes agate-brilliant; Smitty dark with fury at himself for not having spotted those gunmen sooner; Nellie, pale but composed as always in the face of danger; Mac, with his bleak blue eyes blazing at Ormsdale.
“Ye skurlie!” he hissed at the latter. “So the burning clothes in ye’r incinerator was the straight lead after all.”
Ormsdale looked a little puzzled at that, but not for long. There was too much ruthless triumph on his face for any other expression to show.
“Walked right in!” he said. “I knew, after we’d found the car, that it would be smarter to leave it right here as bait than to drive it off, and hide it ourselves. So we did — and the whole lot of you walked right in! Well, you won’t walk out again, I can assure you.”
Smitty was so furious that, in spite of the guns. he had taken a step toward the men. A hopeless step. And he reluctantly backed up again when Dick Benson said quietly: “Smitty.”
“There’s going to be an unfortunate accident,” said Ormsdale. “The garage is going to catch fire, and then be blown up. You know — a tank of gasoline carelessly left uncovered? It happens quite often. And if what’s left of you can be identified, why that’s all right, too. It will look as if your own carelessness, instead of some such thing as spontaneous combustion, caused the explosion.”
While he was talking, the gang had been edging closer, guns ready to blast their victims to pieces. Now, Ormsdale said:
“Get away from the car. Over to the side. Move!”
There was nothing to do but obey. Helpless, with death looking squarely into their eyes, the six moved to the side. Ormsdale went to the door of the Marr-Car, left open by Jackson in his scramble from behind the wheel. The inventor was white with frustration. To have been so close to victory and then have this happen! It was plain that the loss of the mystery car was more to Jackson than the loss of his life.
Ormsdale got in. He called to the men with the guns:
“As soon as I get out and down the street a way in this car, shut the street door and fasten them as I showed you how to do. Then one of you go to the roof of the warehouse next door and toss down on the garage roof the thermite and explosive bombs that are in the green sedan.”
The erstwhile pillar of Detroit society turned back to his prisoners, centering his gaze mockingly on Benson.
“Don’t try to rush the doors after they are closed. Even if you could force a way out — which you couldn’t — you would find a warm reception from these guns.”
The car door slammed. There was a deep whir as a starter turned over the new-type motor, and then an almost inaudible hum as its powerful pistons began sliding softly up and down. Jackson moaned.
Ormsdale cramped the front wheels, the teardrop-shaped machine turned at a short angle, and purred to the door.
A man there slid the doors back farther, and the car turned into the street. Then they couldn’t see it any more. Ormsdale was gone with the precious thing.
The gang were backing to the door, now. And there was no breath of a chance to rush them or follow them. Helplessly the six saw the doors slide shut, heard heavy clicks outside as some sort of fastenings were dropped into place.
Benson stepped to a wall-switch he had seen when the doors let in daylight. He snapped it on, and electric light flooded the empty garage space.
“Not much use in trying to keep from revealing our presence here by a light, now,” he said, voice as calm and cold as his eyes.
Nellie looked quickly at his face. It could register emotions, now. She wondered what emotion would show with death by fire and explosion due any moment.
But there was no emotion at all. The Avenger’s new face was under the rigid control of an iron will, so that it still made no confessions to even the most searching eyes. An amazing youthful and handsome countenance, now that the disfiguring paralysis was gone and the hair above was no longer white but growing in thickly black. But a masked countenance just the same.