Smitty kept on leaning forward, unconscious, with a spot on the top of his head that was going to be a turkey’s egg in a few minutes. And the four men laughed and slid his great bulk into the cab.
The man who had been in it in the first place sat up on the seat, with the unconscious Smitty crammed on the floor. The man said to the taxi driver:
“Get going. I’ll tell you where when we reach the Fifty-ninth Street bridge.”
“Yes, sir!” said the cabby. Awhile ago he had ducked out of his car, abandoning it because things had got so hot. Then he had fearfully returned, to wait behind the wheel for the giant to come out of Marr’s house, thinking it was safe. And now look what was happening!
Smitty, however, knew none of all this. He knew nothing of a long ride east and south. He was vaguely aware of having something smash on his head again. That was when the man in the seat above him saw a flutter of eyelids and swung his gun barrel in another vicious blow to keep the big boy out of this world.
Finally, he moaned and stirred, with no one to bop him for it. He opened his eyes and spent about ten minutes recovering from the physical illness that comes of such blows. His brain slowly cleared, and he began to be himself again.
But it didn’t look as if being himself was going to do him any good.
He was tied at wrists and ankles and knees. And his bound arms were further bound to his body by a coil of rope over his chest. A very little attempt at movement told him that.
He managed to sit up, and then was aware of a gag so that he couldn’t yell.
He had been socked while it was still daylight. It was dark now — or dusk, at least. He saw stars when he looked out a dirty small window from across the very wide room where he sat. And they were the stars of heaven and not from the smacks on the skull.
He was on a dirt floor, and there was no heat of any sort. But the night was warm. And the place was out in the open, for he heard no sound of cars or people. Instead, he heard the occasional twitter of night birds, and a whisper of the night breeze through weeds and tall grass.
Smitty’s hands had been bound behind him, and they would have to stay there, till the coil around his chest, binding his arms to his sides, was loosened.
So he proceeded to do something about it.
The men who had tied him had waited to tighten the loop until the unconscious giant had exhaled, in order to get the coil as tight as possible around him. That was ordinarily good tactics. But it was not so good when done to a man like Smitty. Not so good, that is, for the captors.
Smitty took a deep breath. His chest expansion normally was something hard to believe. When he exerted himself—
Around his vast chest, the stout rope creaked and protested. So Smitty took the deepest breath he was capable of, and his arms and shoulders strained as the body of a moth strains as it bursts from a cocoon.
The rope gave out a shrill zing, like a snapped piano wire. And that fixed the coil.
A good contortionist, with his hands bound at the wrists behind him, can work his body backward through the loop of his arms, so that his hands are in front. Smitty was a good contortionist for all his bulk.
With his hands at his waist, he proceeded to get in touch with Bleek Street.
Smitty was an electrical engineer almost without an equal. Among other things, he had designed a two-way radio set so small that it could be contained in a metal case scarcely larger than a cigar case. Each of The Avenger’s indomitable little band carried one of these concealed at his belt.
Smitty began tapping at his, now; and far off, in Bleek Street, the tappings came amplified from the big master set in the great top-floor room. They spelled a message in code.
Satisfied, the giant proceeded to shuck the rest of his bonds.
He had a little gadget in the way of a belt buckle that had tickled him like a kid when he had thought it up. And it came in handy now. It was an ordinary-looking buckle, though a little larger than most. But it had a tongue like an angry woman’s. Sharp.
The underside of the tongue was a knife edge. And when Smitty had fumbled it open with his middle fingernail, it locked out straight from the belt at his waist. Then it was just a matter of sawing the cords along the tiny, razor-sharp knife till they fell apart.
He untied his legs and got up, staggered a minute till dizziness passed, then walked around. He got it, now. He was in an unused hangar, and a glance out the window revealed a weed-grown level field that had once, in barnstorming days, been used as a landing field. Maybe it was used now, furtively, for all he knew.
He went to the wide doors, opened one enough to slide out, and closed it again. And not till then, as if the giant had a private Providence watching out for him, did the gang return.
He saw headlights of a car wobbling rapidly toward him as it came over the field, and he lay flat in the high grass and weeds. He saw men get out of the sedan and go to the hangar.
There was an enraged outcry when they found only cut and broken bonds in there. They came out like angry bees pouring from a hive.
Because it was so dark, Smitty couldn’t see that six men got out of the sedan and went into the hangar, and only four came out. All he knew was that a bunch entered and a bunch left.
He heard the men beating around the high grass, then saw them get into the car again, swearing, and saw the car drive off. Thinking he was alone in the field, he stood up and stretched his big arms.
CHAPTER VI
O. K. — Maybe!
It was Mac, at Bleek Street, who had heard Smitty’s tapped message.
Fergus MacMurdie had been with Benson a little longer than any other of The Avenger’s band. He was a tall, bony Scot with saillike ears, coarse sandy hair and bleak blue eyes. He had fists like bone mallets — and they could hit like mallets when Mac had a crook in front of him to smash.
And he lived to smash crooks.
“ ’Tis the big fella, Muster Benson,” the Scot said, after getting the code message. “He’s out somewhere, held by some mob. Somethin’ to do with this Jackson girrrl ye mentioned, no doubt. Ye said he had left here to get her at the Pennsylvania Station.”
“Yes,” said The Avenger, pale eyes staring thoughtfully at the big radio, lips barely moving with the word.
“I wonder where he’s held,” mused Mac. “We ought to dash after the overgrown lummox. But where do we dash to?”
“Clagget’s air field,” said Benson quietly. He had heard the taps as clearly as Mac, though he was many feet from the radio and the Scot was right next to it. Benson could hear a snake breathe a hundred yards away, Mac always said.
“How in the worrrld do ye know?” gasped Mac.
“Smitty’s thumbnail description of the big room with a dirt floor fits only one thing — airplane hangar. He says all he can hear is wind in weeds and high grass — open field — landing field. Probably abandoned or the weeds could not be allowed to grow. The directional finder points north, northeast. The range of his little radio is eighty miles or so, and this came in clear; so it couldn’t have been sent from much more than forty miles. The only abandoned field and hangar in that direction and at that range is Clagget’s.”
So the two went down to the basement, climbed into the heaviest sedan The Avenger had and rolled up the ramp and over the sidewalk. Behind them, steel doors automatically closed, making Bleek Street headquarters a fort again. And in the sedan, they were also in a fort. A small, rolling fort.
The car was so armored that it weighed close to four tons. Yet it had a motor that would tear it along at about a hundred miles an hour.