The move that had caused the grab was so deftly performed that it was over before he realized it.
The driver of the taxi that had conveniently picked him up with his burden near the warehouse door, had swirled the cab into a one-way street going east and stopped. Just like that. Smitty had been thrown forward, which had delayed the gun-grabbing. And now he couldn’t draw because he was looking into a gun muzzle himself!
The gun was one that swung its yawning muzzle toward him before. A .45 looking like a battleship cannon. It was in a hand that had wielded it before — a small hand, but one that held the big gun very competently, indeed.
The driver was the girl with the coldly beautiful black eyes and the ink-black hair. The hair had been tucked cleverly into her driver’s cap; but Smitty felt like a fool, nevertheless. He should have spotted something funny the instant he looked at the figure at the wheel.
Trouble was, he hadn’t looked. Waiters and taxi drivers are people you don’t tend to notice individually without reason. And there hadn’t seemed to be any reason for Smitty’s giving an inquisition to a casual cab driver.
“You again!” he said bitterly. “And I once said you were kind of pretty. You’re no more pretty than a Gila monster—”
“Get out!” said the girl.
“Huh?” gasped the giant. The last thing he’d expected was to be captured by this gummer-upper of well-laid plans and then be turned loose again.
“I said, get out!” she snapped.
Smitty started to gather up the little man.
“Oh, no. Leave him right where he is.”
Smitty said things under his breath that would have burned the dainty ears off the girl if they’d been a little louder.
“Stop mumbling,” said the girl. “Get out of this cab, at once, or I’ll shoot.”
She would, too! There was no hesitancy in those jet-black eyes.
Feeling as impotent as three hundred pounds of angry jellyfish, Smitty clambered out of the cab. It sped off with a scream of tires. There were no cabs around here in which the giant could follow.
As easily as rolling off a ridge-pole, the girl had rescued the little man Benson had ordered taken to Bleek Street.
But it seemed that rescue was the wrong word.
The taxi went along for only half a mile or so; then it stopped in front of a loft building, each of the five floors of which was taken up by a small manufacturing company.
The girl stepped back to the body of the cab. The little man was stirring now, and moaning. She held an opened vial of ammonia under his nostrils. He coughed, looked up dazedly.
“Hello, Mr. Rann,” said a man in janitor’s clothes as the little man went into the door with the figure in cab driver’s worn garb beside him.
Rann bit his lips, said hello stiffly and went on in and up the stairs. There was a gun cleverly concealed, poking against his ribs.
He stopped on the top floor and opened a door marked: Krakow Distillate Co. He went in, with the girl behind him. The girl shut and locked the door without taking gun or eyes off Rann.
It seemed there was nothing to the Krakow Co. but several chairs and a bed. There were no machinery, no light workbenches, as on other floors of the loft building. It was only a hide-out for the man called Rann.
The girl took off her man’s cap and shook out her thick, black hair. She looked like an avenging fury, in worn black whipcord and with gauntlets disguising the telltale feminine daintiness of her hands. “This is what I’ve waited for,” she said. And with the words, Death fanned the air of the big, almost empty room with sable wings!
CHAPTER XVI
The Avenger Unmasked
Benson hadn’t even been carried to the factory when it became known that he was not Rann. The discovery was made through the thing that was at once one of his greatest crime-fighting aids — and his most dangerous weakness.
His face!
That dead, white countenance of his could be prodded into any shape desired. And that was a potent weapon.
But it could never express emotion; and, if pressed out of shape, it stayed that way — which was a constant menace to The Avenger when he went disguised.
It gave him away when the car he was in drew near a one-story brick building a half an acre in extent, with broken, boarded-up windows and an air of desolation. It was when the car crossed interminable tracks on a cinder cross that it happened.
“Seems to me this guy has been out a long time from just one poke,” said the man in the back seat with Benson.
“It was a good, hard poke,” said the man at the wheel.
“Yeah, but even at that—” muttered the other.
Benson hadn’t been out at any time.
The average man has a very thin sheet of muscle over his ribs, under the slab of the breast muscle. It offers no protection at all from a hard blow under the heart. But The Avenger was not an average man.
In any part of his body, Benson could make hard muscle lump and writhe at will — even in that normally unfleshed section. So that when the man’s fist had smashed there, it had crashed a sheath of iron-hard flesh ridged to meet it and hadn’t even staggered The Avenger. Benson had pretended unconsciousness to find out more of Singer’s plans.
It was about time now to open his eyes unexpectedly and overpower these two. Then he could wait here for Singer, and confront him—
His head rocked from a blow as unexpected as it was terrific. The man muttering beside him had suddenly, without a word or move of warning, crashed his fist against the side of Benson’s jaw.
It was like clubbing a man in his sleep. So unprepared was he for the cowardly, treacherous blow that even Benson found himself almost knocked out by it.
He swayed dizzily, rallying his strength—
But more damage than the impact of the blow had been done. He saw the man staring open-mouthed at his jaw. Then Benson’s brain, flash-quick even after such a blow, got the meaning of the look.
The blow had flattened and distorted the dead flesh around his mouth. And the flesh had stayed that way, like putty. A complete give-away!
His gray steel body snapped toward the man. But the unlooked-for smash in the jaw had undone him. With a yell, the man brought the barrel of a gun down over Benson’s head.
The car went on into the factory yard. Benson was carried into a gloomy den of rusting machinery and desertion. Five minutes later another car turned in, with five men in it.
Nearly an hour later, a third car came, and from it stepped Singer.
Benson wasn’t aware of any of these things. He was still out. The first thing he heard, long after that, was a voice that was strangled with fury.
“If you’ve killed him, you confounded fool — if he never comes out of this — well, you won’t be able to run fast or far enough to get away from me!”
“He ain’t dead,” came another voice, whining, placating. “I felt his ticker beat a minute ago.”
“It looks to me as if he’s going to pass from unconsciousness right into death. And then, where’ll I be?”
Benson lay just as he had been before returning consciousness sent the voice to his brain. He breathed shallowly, but often, getting back his strength. Power began to flow slowly back into his lax, sprawled limbs.
“I’m tellin’ you,” said the whining voice, “this guy ain’t Rann. I’ve told you a dozen times now—”
“Not Rann? Nonsense! You can see he’s Rann.”
“The way his face stayed lopsided where I hit it—”
“Rann’s face must have some peculiar quality we never suspected before, that’s all.”
“O.K.,” said the other voice, with less whine in it, “Let’s find out, right now!”
Steps neared Benson. He still lay with closed eyes.