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“You think that’s wise?” asked Robert Mantis. She frowned a little as he said the same thing to her that Cole had. Then the frown cleared. She knew Robert’s position in this, even if she wasn’t sure of Cole’s.

“I think it’s the only thing to do,” she said softly. “When in trouble — go to Justice, Inc. And — oh Bob! No girl was ever in more trouble than I am, now!”

CHAPTER III

Headquarters for Trouble

Bleek Street, in New York, is only a short block long, but it looms big in the city’s importance.

One side of the block is taken up by the blank back of a great concrete warehouse. On the other side, are three old red brick buildings thrown into one, flanked to east and west by vacant stores and small storage buildings. All are owned or under lease to the man who makes the street so important, Richard Henry Benson.

The middle entrance of the three-in-one red brick building has a small sign over the door:

JUSTICE, INC.

In other words, headquarters of The Avenger and his aides. In still other words, headquarters for trouble; it is to this door that more deadly trouble is brought than to any other in America.

Benson was up in the great top-floor room, taking up the entire third stories of all three remodeled buildings, now. With him were Nellie Gray, Smitty, Josh and Rosabel.

Nellie Gray was unobtrusively watching the chief, as he sat at his great desk checking over the final results of a multiple murder case he had just cleared up.

A most unusual man, this Benson. And a glance at him indicated the reason why he was called by the somewhat theatrical title, The Avenger, and why the underworld walked in such awe of him.

Though Dick Benson was only average in size, you knew from just looking at him that his body packed a whip-cord and steel-cable strength. His face was as dead as the frozen face of the moon, with the nerves so paralyzed by a previous nerve shock — the flesh so inelastic and immobile — that never could an expression register there.

But The Avenger’s eyes were his most salient feature. They were so light-gray as to be almost colorless — so pale as to seem to be holes in his dead face into which you could stare down at an icy, deadly glitter.

But Dick Benson was really a very young man. A very young man, even though the dead face below a shock of virile, snow-white hair made him seem much older.

Nellie Gray, dainty, demure blonde bombshell, was thinking something she had thought many times before. She was thinking of a thing that was very feminine, and that most women thought at sight of The Avenger. He must have been strikingly handsome before the terrific shock had so altered his face and hair. What a shame that he—

“Has that girl called again?” The Avenger asked, looking at Nellie so sharply and suddenly that she went slightly pink with the fear that he’d read her mind.

“The one who left her name on the phone record?” said Nellie. “No.”

“You’ve tried to trace her in Detroit?”

“I tried three times,” Josh Newton cut in.

Josh was a most amazing fellow. A tall and gangling Negro, he looked sleepy and dull-witted. But Josh was a highly educated and singularly intelligent man.

“She checked out of the Detroit hotel from which she phoned,” amplified Josh. “And no one there knows where she went—”

In the wall next to the door leading to the stairs suddenly glowed a pin point of red. At the same time, there was a soft buzz from a black box on a table.

The red glow indicated that someone in the vestibule downstairs was pressing the bell for admission. The black box — about the size and shape of a shoe box — was a remarkably fine, small television set designed by the radio wizard, Smitty. It showed whoever was in the vestibule.

The giant Smitty stepped to the box.

“Young fellow, looks decent enough, no warning from the electric eye of guns or other weapons on him,” he said.

The Avenger nodded his snow-white head, and Smitty pressed the vestibule lock release. In a moment their visitor was at the door. His eyes went curiously over the group, and then rested instinctively on Dick Benson’s awesome, dead face.

“You are Mr. Benson?”

The virile, thick shock of white hair nodded.

“I am Robert Mantis,” said the young man pleasantly. “I’m calling in behalf of a girl named Doris Jackson.”

It was typical of the absolute self-control and quick wit of all in that great room that no one showed an expression of any kind, though each knew that this was the name of the girl who had called so urgently awhile before.

“We would be glad to have Miss Jackson, herself, call,” said The Avenger, pale eyes drilling the brown eyes of Robert Mantis as if going right through them to the back of his skull.

“She intends doing just that,” said Mantis. “She asked me to come here first and make an appointment. I am to meet her at the Pennsylvania Station in”—he looked at his wristwatch—“just twenty-five minutes. She had intended taking a plane from Detroit to New York at first, but something changed her mind. Maybe she thought the airport would be watched.”

“She is in danger?”

“In great danger, I believe. In fact,” said Mantis, “I’m wondering if you can send someone to the station with me — in case of trouble.”

“You’re expecting trouble, then?” asked Benson, voice as cold and emotionless as his dead face was icy and without expression.

Mantis shrugged.

“They know where she is bound for. This place.”

“And who are ‘they’?”

“That I don’t know,” said Mantis. “Some enemies of Doris Jackson who evidently don’t want her to keep on living.”

“Go with him, Smitty,” said Benson, to the giant. “Then bring Miss Jackson here, at once, and we’ll hear what she has to say.”

Smitty and Mantis went out and down the stairs.

“Boy!” breathed Mantis, looking up at Smitty’s colossal spread of shoulders and the vast wall of his chest. “If there is trouble, I’d say you could take care of a lot of it!”

Behind them, Josh’s intelligent eyes went to The Avenger’s dead face.

“He certainly didn’t have much explanation to give,” said Josh.

The Avenger’s pale eyes were like diamond drills. He may have read a great deal from Mantis’s face and appearance. No one would ever know unless he chose to tell them.

* * *

At the street, Smitty said: “You came in a cab?”

“My own car,” said Mantis. “We can take that to the train.”

His car was a rather old touring job with the top down, and Smitty’s china-blue eyes clouded at the sight of that. The giant was used to riding behind bulletproof glass. The idea of having nothing but thin air between him and possible gun muzzles was one he didn’t like. But he got in beside Mantis.

First, though, he noticed that the car had a Michigan license.

Mantis backed around, because Bleek Street is a deadend street; then he started toward the north and south avenue on which Bleek Street opened.

“What’s Doris Jackson like?” Smitty asked.

“She’s young, about twenty-two. She has dark-gold hair and deep-blue eyes. She’s about the prettiest thing—”

Mantis looked embarrassed and shut up.

“You two?” said Smitty.

“Uh-huh, we’re going to be married.”

The giant looked sorely disappointed.

Tiny Nellie Gray, who looked as fragile as a porcelain doll and was actually able to throw strong men around like dumbbells with her knowledge of wrestling and jujitsu, was always ribbing Smitty, and a stranger might have thought she had absolutely no use for the big fellow. Friends, though, suspected that he was very close to her heart.