The features of the immaculate Darcey remained immobile.
“You’re being a little ridiculous, I think,” came his calm, cold voice.
“Yes?” Carlisle said softly. “Well, I don’t think so. Go on! Grin, scowl, whatever you like.”
The silence seemed to build up on itself in the hangar like a set of building blocks. Then one of the gang yelled:
“That must be Benson! Jump him!”
At least five leaped for the man who had come here first as Darcey. But in the moment of their leaping — he was no longer there.
If the gang had had any doubt as to his identity before, they’d have had none now. Only one man alive could move that fast, and that was The Avenger.
With the five men knocking into each other in their murderous eagerness, the man with Darcey’s face eluded their reaching hands with lightning quickness, and flashed behind one of the big vats.
Shots came from behind the vat. They were whispering, sibilant spatts of sound, as Mike, Benson’s special .22, spoke from its silenced little muzzle.
A man fell with a gash on the exact top of his head where the bullet had ceased him into unconsciousness. Another howled and clutched his shoulder. But the rest got around the vat, and found their quarry gone, shadowlike, again.
The next glimpse they had of him was on the plane.
They saw his body through the transparent substance, saw him climb a wing that seemed nonexistent, and enter the fuselage.
“If he starts that motor—” screamed the real Darcey.
“He can’t get away in the plane,” snapped Carlisle. “He can’t get the doors open as long as we have the controls, out here.”
“He could bang the plane forward, smash it up!”
“Not without gas, he can’t,” said Carlisle coldly.
Smitty literally groaned, at that. Benson’s move had been so beautifully swift and well-timed that it certainly deserved success. But it wasn’t going to succeed with empty Glassite gas tanks in the plane!
Four of the gang were in the fuselage now. They jumped for the man at the controls.
Benson’s aides, through the side of the fuselage, saw their chief’s hands whip to his eyes swiftly. They knew why. Over his eyeballs he had cupped thin glass lenses, of the color of Abel Darcey’s eyes, when he made up to resemble the man. Those could be broken in a fight and could blind The Avenger. So he took them out.
He turned just in time to meet his leaping attackers.
Four against one. And that one was only an average-sized man, five feet eight or so, and certainly weighing no more than a hundred and sixty pounds. But in Benson’s unspectacular body there was a muscular power almost as great as that which the giant Smitty, himself packed in his vast frame. And there was more than Smitty’s speed and deftness.
The first man went flying over Benson’s suddenly crouching form, to bang headfirst against an almost unseen control board.
The second and third found themselves tripping together and falling almost without knowing how it had happened. But the fourth got squarely on Benson’s back, in spite of The Avenger’s breathless speed of movement. And he managed to hold Benson till the other three could get up and join him.
One raised his clubbed gun and banged it down. Benson sagged a little. There was a second murderous blow. Benson fell to his knees, still fighting. One of the men hit him from behind.
“If I ever get my hands on them—” Mac groaned.
Benson went limp. His superhuman fight in the pilot’s cramped compartment was over, and he was beaten.
The four carried him out and dumped him next to their other captives.
The real Abel Darcey came over, and anxiously watched the men tie Benson, making sure he couldn’t possibly work loose.
“That was a narrow squeak,” Carlisle admitted. “The guy almost was too smart for us. But it’s all over now. Except our part of it. Still want to go through with that, boss? Still want to knock one more building down?”
“Of course,” said Darcey. It’s important to give the Middle West one more scare to think about. But even if I hadn’t planned to do it before, I’d do it now.”
He stared at Benson, rubbing his hands slowly and thoughtfully together.
“We have kept our skirts pretty clear through all of this,” he said to Carlisle. “Right now, save for this plane which was ordered in sections by men working for me, and the Gant destructor aboard, there is nothing to implicate any of us in the wrecks and collapses later. Just the same, it is well to make sure. And we’ll do it this way.
“We’ll leave these people tightly bound. We’ll set a slow fire that will destroy them and the ferry several hours after we’ve taken off and are safe, ourselves. We’ll plant the blueprints of the Gant destructor in one of the cars outside, together with some of Benson’s personal possessions.
“After the fire, there will be ample evidence in the debris to prove that it was from here that the invisible plane operated. Benson’s remains can be identified by dental and skeletal formation. The blueprints will prove that he was behind the plane’s destructive trips. Benson, it seems, is a man of some mystery, so the police will take the circumstantial evidence as gospel. Then, later, when it comes out that I benefit from what happened, no one will think to connect that fact with the crimes because the world will be sure Benson did it all.”
“Boss,” said Carlisle, almost humbly, “you’re good! I’ve said so from the start, and I say it again.”
He stepped to a small steel locker, and took from it a little roll of blueprints. He walked to the unconscious Benson, and pressed Benson’s hands to the blue paper in half a dozen places. The Avenger’s fingerprints were on record, of course, and these would doubly prove his original theft of the Gant brothers’ invention.
He handed the prints, and a gold pocketknife and the little .22, Mike, to one of the gang.
“Put this in the blue sedan. That’s the hot car. Then get in the other, the gray convertible, and drive back to Chicago and ditch it somewhere.”
The man left. Those in the ferry, dimly through the thick old hull, heard a starter sound out in a few minutes. The man was planting proof that Benson was to blame for the deaths and destruction, in the one car, and driving the other off to conceal it.
“Now the fire,” said Darcey.
“Easy,” said Carlisle. He pointed to the drums of aviation gasoline. “Those’ll make a fire like nobody’s business.”
“But we don’t want it that fast,” objected Darcey. “We don’t want the first to really start for at least two hours, so that when they start figuring it out later, Benson will have had time to crash this one last building and then return.”
“Rope,” said Carlisle, “makes a good slow fuse. I’ll soak fifty feet in gasoline, put one end in a half-empty gas drum, and light the other end when we leave. It’ll take about two hours for the rope to burn to the drum. Then we’ll have an explosion of flaming gas that’ll catch the whole ferry almost at the same minute. After that — zing.”
Carlisle had carefully poured some gasoline in an open pail. The fumes were acrid in the inclosed place. He set a coil of half-inch rope in the stuff to soak.
“Fuel the plane,” he called to the men. “Come on. Snap into it. This is the last job — then we’re all done — and all safe.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Backfire!
Fifteen minutes later, one of the men threw the switch that opened the hangar doors cut into the end of the ferry’s hull. The little motor moaned and the doors slowly opened. The man stopped the diesel motor, and the lights went out.
Through the big doorway came bright moonlight. This was the first time the strange plane had soared the skies save in sunny daylight. But so bright was the moon that the effect would be the same. You’d hear the weird droning sound in the sky — made by a motor a little higher speed than most and hence emitting an angrier, shriller snarl. You’d hear an eerie whistling — made by wind shrieking over wing surfaces when the planes motor was cut and she drifted down. You’d look up into a sky so moonlit that even a bird could be seen at a thousand yards.