The Avenger said nothing. On and on, he sent the plane. And there was a glitter in his eyes, like ice under a polar dawn, hinting that he already knew many things from the scattered happenings of the past few hours.
CHAPTER VI
Wrecked Test Car
Dick Benson always carried with him a small but complete set of laboratory instruments so that, at a moment’s notice, he could conduct any but the most complicated tests.
To test for the presence of human blood is not very complicated. Nor is it complicated to test two specimens for similarity. At least, not to a genius like Benson.
Benson had tested the scrapings taken from the floor of the closed van where the wood was darkened in two different areas. Also, he had studied the bit of fused metal taken from the van; and he had decided that it was what was left of an upholstery button.
“The van,” he announced, “recently carried two bodies and what was left of that test car from the flat. These blood specimens are unlike, proving that they came from two people. So the two in the truck must have been badly wounded or they’re dead. Probably the latter.”
“ ’Tis nice work to decide all that, Muster Benson,” said Mac dourly. “But it doesn’t get us very far.”
The Scot was the most pessimistic soul alive. Unless he happened to be in a spot from which there seemed no possible escape from death. Then, with a crazy reversal of character, he was apt to be the most cheerful person on earth.
“We have no notion of who the two bodies in the van might have been,” he added gloomily.
“I think we have — on one, at least,” Benson said evenly. “The test car was wrecked deliberately. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that the driver was murdered to keep him from talking about the test. One of the bodies must have been that of the driver. The other? We can’t even guess, as yet. It couldn’t have been the pilot of the exploded plane. There were rather ghastly bits of evidence in the fragments I looked at that indicated the pilot met the same fate as his ship.”
Even Benson could not know of the newspaperman who had sneaked out to the flat and suffered the fate of the “jackrabbit.”
The Avenger picked up the phone and called the city motor bureau. Yes, they knew of a young fellow, test driver, who had been hired to drive a car yesterday. His name was Bud Reeder. He was good. No, they didn’t know if Bud had come back yet. They only happened to know about the test because the secretary of the motor club was slightly acquainted with him; the club had hired him once or twice to peg times and distances on advertised routes. He could usually be reached at Dutch Vassen’s garage.
Benson phoned the garage.
“No, Bud ain’t in,” came a coarse voice. “Yeah, he usually hangs around here, but I ain’t seen him since yesterday. He got a job yesterday, and mebbe he’s blowin’ his cash somewhere.”
“Do you know who hired him?” asked Benson.
“Nope,” came the voice. “But the landlady of his boarding house might.”
Benson called the number given. A woman answered in a vinegary voice.
“How should I know who hired him?” she shrilled. “He don’t tell me his affairs.”
Even over the telephone, The Avenger’s voice had the magic tone of authority. The woman calmed down after a moment.
“He might have gone to a place having something to do with somebody named Klaxon,” she admitted finally. “I heard him phone — just happened to, you understand. I ain’t the kind to listen to my guests when they answer the telephone. And I heard him repeat a name that sounded something like Klaxon when he first started talking.”
Smitty flipped through the phone book’s classified section of garages and automobile salesrooms. There was a Paxon Garage.
“We’ll try that,” said Benson, pale eyes like icy slits in his dead, white face.
It was approaching dusk. Paxon’s garage was a small building on the edge of town, designed to hold no more than twenty or twenty-five cars. It was a shabby looking place, and it seemed deserted at the moment.
However, Benson took no chances. He led the way to the rear of the building, moving shadowlike in the creeping dusk.
The garage was of planking, sheathed with imitation shingles of asbestos. Benson’s white, steely fingers ripped some of the asbestos pads off. Then he took two pellets from his pocket and a thing rather like an atomizer in appearance, save that instead of rubber bulb on it there was an open tube where a bulb should have been.
He partially crushed the two pellets together and dropped them into the receptacle of the atomizer. Then he put the end of the tube, opposite the small nozzle, into his mouth and blew.
The pellets began slowly to diminish in size as they gave off inflammable gases; and, with the oxygen of Benson’s breath mixing in, there was a spurt of blue flame from the nozzle. The apparatus was really a blow torch, so small that it could be carried, in parts, in two vest pockets.
Benson ran the intense tip of the flame in an oblong over the exposed planks of the garage’s back wall. The oblong tilted back in his hand like a door. It came out silently, and silently he laid it down.
Then he and Mac and Smitty stepped in.
Their wariness was justified. From somewhere in front of the dark building came a voice. A man was either talking on the telephone, or to some other person with him.
Mac’s hand suddenly found the arm of The Avenger. He pressed hard.
“Look, mon!”
Right next to where they had stepped in, at the rear of the little garage where it couldn’t be seen without a search, was a blackened twisted thing so fire-warped that you could hardly tell that it had once been chassis and motor block of an automobile.
“The test car,” whispered Benson.
He went to it, moving as only The Avenger could move, seeming to float swiftly over the concrete without sound. He started to examine it, but he seemed interested only in the rear end. His glance at the blackened motor block was very brief.
He was looking for traces of the car’s gasoline tank. And he wasn’t finding any. Yet there should have been traces. The metal shell of a tank shouldn’t disappear in even the hottest fire.
The three crouched quickly in the darkness. The voice of the man in front had stopped, and steps sounded. They saw him leave a tiny cubicle boarded off as an office. He came toward the rear of the place.
The three shifted a little as he came closer, trying to keep the test car’s chassis between them and him. He didn’t seem to suspect anything. He walked slowly, openly, toward the back, across the garage from them. Then he turned and seemed about to retrace his steps to the office.
There was a click and the garage was suddenly flooded with light! It struck the surprised three from every angle at once.
Smitty suddenly exclaimed aloud. He had turned, and had seen something.
“Oh-oh,” he said. “There’s that girl again.”
While they had watched the man drift aimlessly in their direction, another person had stolen silently toward them on the near side of the garage. They had been neatly flanked. And this other person, evidently the one to whom the man in front had been talking a moment ago, was the girl with the ink-black hair and the jet-black eyes who had gummed their play on the salt flat.
She stood facing them, in the glare of light, with the enormous gun in her steady small hand.
“Don’t move,” she warned. Then she raised her voice. “All right, Eddy, get the others.”
The man near the front reached into the first car at hand. He leaned on the horn button. Two short blasts and a long one resounded echoingly in the garage — and it also could be heard for some distance outside.
Benson’s hands commenced to stray innocently toward his collar. If a finger had touched a certain spot there, the garage would have been filled, in about four seconds, with an inky pall of smokelike gas that would have blinded the man and the girl. Most men would have allowed the move to be completed; you can’t hide a gun in a shirt collar.