Josh got a double handful of the slack in the seat of the man’s pants with his two bound hands. He heaved up hard.
The man yelled, and pitched forward out of the cabin on his face. There was one more resounding blow outside, then the sound of panting as loud and heavy as that of a locomotive that has stopped to take on water.
When Josh had gotten out of the window, after loosening his bonds, a man’s body blocked out the night sky to his right. Only one body that Josh knew anything about was that big.
“Smitty! What— How’d you get here?”
“Just… puff… a minute… puff, puff,” gasped Smitty. “I… uh—”
He drew great breaths into his bellowlike lungs for a couple of minutes, and then was in better shape. Meanwhile, the three men who had been downed by the big fellow’s blows, lay right where they had fallen. When Smitty hit ’em, they stayed hit.
The giant had his wind back and was shaking his head reproachfully at Josh.
“Couldn’t you have gotten tossed into something a little easier to follow than a blimp?” he demanded. “Phew! Try following one, drifting with an eight-or nine-mile wind, straight across country, over fences and up and down hills. I got in about four miles on somebody’s bicycle I commandeered from in front of a farm house, when the bag drifted along a road. But the rest was on foot.”
Josh said just one word.
“Thanks.”
They didn’t make much fuss about saving each other’s lives, these members of The Avenger’s indomitable band. In their perilous business, somebody was always getting into deadly danger and needing a helping hand.
Josh was curious, though.
“How’d you do it?” he demanded. “Bring the blimp down, I mean. Or did it just happen?”
“Mac would explode over that,” chuckled Smitty. “Saying it ‘just happened,’ I mean. Mac’s responsible. I had one of his acid bullets in a compressed-air gun in the car. I got out, after turning where you dropped your hat, just as the blimp was taking off, and I had a chance to send that bullet at the bag. It took all this time for the acid to eat a big enough hole.”
“Ritter?” said Josh.
“I couldn’t follow his town car and the blimp, too; so I went after the blimp, because you were in it. There’s one thing, though. We know Ritter’s up to his ears in this business — whatever it is. He either got some message from these three in the blimp or gave them one. Then he hit back for town.”
“It begins to clear up a little,” said Josh thoughtfully. “We can make some close guesses. Morel invented some kind of drug up in his Maine laboratory that makes creatures fight. Men, too. Ritter got hold of it and of Morel. Now Ritter is using that serum — kind of a hate serum you’d call it — to make trouble which he later can smooth down.”
“Looks like it,” nodded Smitty.
“The blimp tells how Morel was taken from his Maine place, too. It just drifted over the clearing, with no noise; then men went down a rope ladder, knocked Morel cold and hauled him back up.”
Smitty didn’t say anything to that. He had known it before. He had guessed, when he and Lila were at the Maine place, that exit and entrance must have been by air. That was why he had asked for the thermocouple. And the thermocouple had revealed the heat presence of motors nearby. The motors couldn’t have been plane motors or car motors; hence there must be a silent, lighter-than-air ship around.
There was a road not far away. Smitty picked up two of the unconscious men, Josh took the other, and they went to the road.
“We’ll turn these guys over to the local police,” said Smitty. “Then we’ll trace that blimp if we can.”
CHAPTER X
Strange Call
The Avenger was practically living in his laboratory these days, and only taking a few hours sleep now and then when even his steel frame was taxed beyond endurance.
Morel was a great scientist. And it had taken him a year and a half to produce finally the red liquid with which he had injected the guinea pigs just before he was taken from Maine. If he was taken and had not gone off of his own volition.
It was a commentary on The Avenger’s vast ability that he now had a little vial full of red liquid, like Morel’s, which he had managed to synthesize from scratch in only a couple of days. One of his innumerable tests with the blood of the mad pigeons had finally put him on the track.
He had duplicated the serum. Which, he figured, was about two fifths of the job he had cut out for himself.
There was a soft buzz as Nellie, in the top-floor room, called on the laboratory phone. Dick picked up the instrument.
“Yes?”
“Smitty talking, chief,” came the giant’s voice.
“Yes, Smitty. Where are you? What has happened?”
Smitty told briefly what had happened.
“Josh and I are morally sure, now, that Ritter is in this. He’s the head man. But there’s no proof of anything, yet. In the meantime, we’ve been buzzing around that blimp. We got a sample of dirt from the grappling hook, and a government soil-conservation man was able to tell us the approximate Michigan section it came from. We went around that spot till we found an old duffer in a village who swore he’d seen a balloon or something a couple of times at night, near there. Village called Knightstown. We’re here now, trying to find the hangar the blimp was kept in, if possible.”
“Good work,” said Dick, voice even and calm. “Keep in touch with me. Things are moving faster, I believe.”
He didn’t bother to explain, and Smitty knew better than to ask for explanations.
“O K,” said the big fellow. He hung up. And then Nellie’s voice came to Benson.
“Another call came in while you were talking to Smitty,” Nellie said. “I’m holding it on another wire. It’s for Lila Morel. Do you want to hear it?”
Dick hesitated. Every phone call into the headquarters was recorded. He could hear any conversation later. But he thought he’d better listen to actual voices; sometimes there were slight overtones which a recording missed.
“Yes,” he said. “Is Lila ready now?”
“She’s ready.”
“Then go ahead.”
So the call from outside sounded on the phone in the lab as well as on one of the battery of phones in the big room.
“Kinnisten, Maine, calling,” came the long-distance operator’s voice. “A call for Miss Lila Morel. Person to person.”
“This is Lila Morel,” came Lila’s voice over the phone.
“Go ahead, please,” said the operator.
A man’s voice sounded. “Hello. Lila?”
“Yes? Oh, Dad! It’s you! We were all so worried. What happened to you? Where are—”
“This is Dad, Lila,” came the man’s voice. “I’m at the Maine place. I don’t know just how long I’ll be here. I have to leave for the West. I can’t explain now.”
“Dad, what’s it all about?” pleaded Lila. “You—”
“I called to tell you I’m safe and well,” said Morel. “And to tell you not to try to find me.”
“But, Dad, I must see you—”
The voice went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“I’m all right, but very busy. Just stop trying to find me, and I’ll see you soon. Good-by, Lila.”
“Dad — wait—”
But the line was dead. The scientist had hung up.
Dick Benson replaced his phone slowly on its cradle. His pale, infallible eyes held the icy glitter that was theirs when The Avenger was thinking out something that could not quite be explained at the moment, but which struck the man of genius as important.
There was something about that phone call; something peculiar.