Similarly, it was pretty well agreed upon that Smitty thought the world began with Nellie’s tiny feet and ended in the blond crown of her head, about five feet up.
But that didn’t keep the giant from being very pleased indeed at the prospect of having other pretty girls around, unless they were attached to some one else — as this Doris Jackson seemed to be.
The touring car had swung north on the avenue.
“Better take Seventh,” said Smitty, and Mantis nodded and drove to that broad street. Rather, he drove cross-town toward it. He never did quite reach it!
Just before they got to Seventh Avenue, there was a jam of trucks loading and unloading; this was the wholesale section.
Great vans were backed in to the curb at an angle, and the street was narrow. To traverse it, you had to thread a zigzag path between these monster trucks. And with three more vans to pass, one of the monsters moved.
A ten-ton closed truck roared like a bull elephant and pulled away from the curb just in time to block the path of the touring car.
“What—” began Mantis.
“Out of the car!” yelled Smitty. “Quick—”
The big fellow could move like a slim kid when he had to. And he had to, now! For with the suddenly closed path had come an attack on all sides.
Sun glinted on several gun barrels! There were half a dozen roaring shots. But none of them got Smitty because he had vaulted the side of the car and was abruptly behind still another truck down the street. And none got Mantis because Mantis had rolled out his side, too, and was under the truck that had barred their way.
Now, Smitty could see what he was up against.
In the cab of the truck that had moved were three men, two of them with machine guns. The three were not in the kind of clothes you’d normally use for truck driving; so it looked as if they’d captured the thing from the regular crew.
Lying flat on top of the next monster were two more men, with one of them holding an automatic and the other cupping his hand around a thing about the shape of a lemon but bigger and glinting metallically!
The man threw the thing even as Smitty spotted it. Threw it at the old touring car, in the tonneau of which it lit squarely.
Then there wasn’t any more touring car.
After a roar that shook the eardrums, and a clanging of metal and cloud of dust, there were a lot of pieces in the street looking like a kid’s puzzle — and that was all!
“You didn’t get him!” yelled the other man on the truck top, suddenly spying Mantis under the next truck.
He began shooting down at him. At the same time, the men in the blocking truck began shooting, too — at Mantis and at Smitty. Or, rather, at Smitty’s columnar legs.
So Smitty swung into action, too!
From his vest pockets, he jerked two little glass globes about the size of prunes. He snapped one at the cab with the three men in it and the other at the top of the neighboring truck. The two globes seemed to burst at about the same time.
After the thundering of the explosion and the deadly crack of guns, the soft plop of the two globes didn’t sound like much. But sound had nothing to do with efficiency, in this case.
Inside those little globes was a gas of the devising of Fergus MacMurdie, chemical expert of The Avenger’s band. The stuff couldn’t be seen or smelled; but it could sure act! A whiff of it would knock a man out for two hours.
The two on top of the truck whiffed — and promptly lay down as if suddenly very tired. One had been aiming a shot as he did so, and the bullet went glancing off the fender of the truck and wound up in the street.
But the three in the cab weren’t so much affected. They were farther from Smitty and at an angle that had made it difficult to aim precisely.
They must have gotten just a faint touch of it, for one of them clawed at his throat and the other had to prop his head up with his cupped hand as if he were extremely sleepy all of a sudden. But the man at the wheel was at least able to drive.
And did.
Up against something they couldn’t understand, with the first plain chance at the death of their quarry muffed, they got out of there, slamming over bits of the touring car on their way.
“Mantis!” yelled Smitty.
From all the business places along the street heads were poking and people were running. And the last thing Smitty wanted then was to be delayed by crowds. He wanted to get Robert Mantis — whose precaution in asking for a companion on the trip to the station to meet Doris Jackson had certainly been justified.
But Mantis wasn’t anywhere in view.
A squad car roared up, coming the wrong way down the one-way street. Two men came at Smitty with drawn guns.
Then they put the guns up.
The Avenger was fast becoming a legend in New York. All the cops knew him. And the whole force was rapidly beginning to know Benson’s aides by sight, too. To have seen gigantic Smitty once was to remember him for all time. And these two detectives had seen him before.
“These two,” jerked Smitty, pointing to the two on the truck top. “Put them on ice, will you? And if it’s all right with you, I’ll beat it. Work to do, fast. I’ll be at Bleek Street if you want me.”
He legged it to Seventh Avenue and hailed a cab. There was no use hunting around for Mantis. If the fellow hadn’t showed up by now, after Smitty’s two stentorian yells, it meant that he was way out of earshot and still going.
Which was suspicious.
Smitty was trying to puzzle out how the devil the men had known they were coming down that cross street on the way to Seventh Avenue, so that they could be there ahead of them to ambush them.
They could have been ahead of the touring car, and have been forewarned when Mantis pulled to the left to make a turn. And Smitty remembered they had waited for a long red light before turning. That would have given the gunmen time to prepare their trap.
Or they could have been tipped off, somehow, by Mantis that this was the street he was going to cross on. Only — it had been Smitty who suggested that street.
He finally decided the men must have been ahead and had anticipated their turn.
But the giant still felt pretty suspicious about that guy, Mantis!
CHAPTER IV
The Motor King
Smitty’s cab was down the ramp almost to the door that led from the taxi lane into the Pennsylvania Station when he saw the other cab.
It was just leaving the door, and there was a girl in it. Smitty looked at his watch. He was three minutes past the time Mantis had said he was to meet Doris Jackson.
He looked at the girl.
She had hair of the dark-gold shade that makes it hard to tell if a girl is blond or brunet. Her eyes, he thought, were deep-blue, though it was hard to see them close enough to be sure. Anyhow, Smitty decided to take a chance and follow that cab because he had an idea the girl was Doris Jackson.
“And an extra five if you keep it in sight,” he snapped to the cab driver, after other instructions.
The driver nodded, with a look announcing that for an extra five he’d keep a stratosphere plane in sight with that cab of his.
The taxi ahead pulled out of the ramp and wheeled north. Smitty followed. The taxi went to the left and, after a while, went up on the elevated Express Highway that leads to the Henry Hudson Parkway. Smitty still followed.
Up in the low Hundreds the cab swung off to Riverside Drive.
Here, relics of their kind, a few vast old mansions still frowned out over the Hudson River. And the greatest of these was a gray-stone castle, built by a railroad emperor in 1890 and now owned by Marcus Marr, who was similarly an emperor in business. The motor business, to be exact.