Josh and Smitty didn’t know just what the pouff meant. But they could guess at the result. The result would be death!
“Ritter,” said Smitty, “wouldn’t like that.”
“Oh, yeah?” jeered the man. “Ritter said we were to knock off you two, and some others he described, wherever we caught up with you. And here you’re nice enough to walk right into our mitts while we’re waiting for the blimp to come back.”
Smitty and Josh kept from looking at each other. The gang still didn’t know the blimp had been brought down and their pals jailed.
“So Morel is in on this, too,” said Smitty. “We got the word that he was kidnaped, but it doesn’t look so much like that, now.”
The man started to say something, then swore violently and shut up. He had realized that the big fellow was just trying to pump him for information.
The two prisoners were inside the big doorway, now. They could see one of the long, narrow pits the man had mentioned. Tracks had once run along the sides of the pit, where a car could be run so that mechanics could get at motors and axles from beneath.
The tracks had long since been ripped up. But one, at least, had not been carried away. The rusting length of rail lay athwart the end of the pit, down where the stairs into its depths were.
The machine gunner was turning his weapon to keep Smitty and Josh covered as they moved. What was going to happen to them when they had gone down the five steps to the bottom of the gravelike pit? What did that pouff mean?
Smitty decided not to wait to find out.
“You want us to get down in that thing?” he said, rebelliously.
“That’s right, big boy,” said the machine gunner.
His pals were bunched around him in a knot. All except Morel. Smitty had had no second glance of the inventor, missing for so long. It began to look as if the scientist had slipped out the back of the building as the two were marched in the front.
“Go on! Down!” snapped the machine gunner.
Smitty stooped, and his hands gripped the length of car rail as if to lift it aside from the stairs. But he didn’t do that.
He snapped erect with the rail in his vast hands and plunged like a human tank toward the machine gunner and the knot of men!
Few men can lift a length of rail, even light-weight material for streetcars. Smitty not only lifted it; he ran with it — and made time, too. He must have been an awesome spectacle, indeed, as he plunged for the gang. As he came, he yelled at the top of his lungs. And right after him, zigzagging to confuse aim, raced Josh.
“Crack down on him, you dope!” screamed one of the men.
The palsied machine gunner opened up! But it was too late. There were only a few yards between the men and the pit. They’d kept at close range to be sure and hit the two if they rebelled. Now, Smitty had covered this too-short distance in half a dozen bounds, with the iron rail held horizontally before him in his two vast paws.
Some of the slugs hit. And they hurt. But they did not penetrate. The Avenger and each of his aides always wore bulletproof garments of a substance called celluglass, which Benson had invented. It was as strong as steel and much lighter.
These garments saved Josh and Smitty, though they left bruises that would remain for many a day.
Then the bar smashed against the men, with all the force of its own weight and of Smitty’s three hundred racing pounds behind it.
Several of the gang had automatics out. These dropped as the men were mashed against the brick wall behind them. The machine gunner doubled over the bar and dropped his weapon—
“Josh!” roared Smitty.
But there was no need to call. Like a black streak, Josh was after the gun. He got it, leaped back a few paces, and leveled it. Then Smitty dropped the rail. The fact that a few toes were in the way was just dandy with him.
“Now,” he said pleasantly, “you guys can get into that pit, and my partner will hold you there with the gun while I go to Knightstown for a flock of deputies—”
There was an ear-shattering roar. Half the rear wall folded and began raining down its individual bricks. The great roof sagged.
Josh yelled and whirled around. Smitty glared toward the rear, too. Morel! It looked as if he hadn’t gone away, after all. He had exploded part of the building to rescue the gang.
Shots jerked the giant around again. Josh was just sending hasty slugs at the last of the gang, who was limping out the door and running to the right, where the corner hid him from sight.
The two leaped to the front. The men were in the woods, running in all directions. They’d thought they had cornered this giant and this black tiger, and they had been cornered themselves. They were having no more of them.
Smitty ran for the rear, where no more bricks were falling. There was no sign of the scientist. Morel had provided a distraction, during which the men had gotten away, and right afterward had fled himself.
“Hell!” said Smitty, looking at the empty bag they were now holding.
They went back to their car and Smitty got out his radio transmitter. If conditions were right, he could just get New York.
Conditions, it seemed, were right. A tiny voice came through the earphone. “Benson talking.”
“Chief,” said Smitty, “we found the hangar where that blimp was kept. And we had a bunch of prisoners and Morel, but they got away—”
“What?” came The Avenger’s voice, so electrically that Smitty jumped. It was rarely that that voice was raised. “You said Morel?”
“Yes. He was here, but he got away with the—” Smitty was talking to nothingness. There was no more from The Avenger; no sign of any kind. He had left the New York receiving end without a further word.
CHAPTER XI
Into the Trap
There was an excellent reason why The Avenger burst into action without even waiting for Smitty to finish his report.
The phone call from Morel, some hours ago!
The scientist had called from the Maine laboratory, it seemed, through the nearest exchange which was Kinnisten, Maine. He had said he was safe, but couldn’t take time to explain anything and would probably have to leave right away for the West.
Now, the very first thing that had happened after that call, of course, was Lila’s urgent request that she be allowed to rush up there and see if she could catch her father and have a few words with him before he left for another indefinite and unexplained period.
Benson had rather reluctantly agreed and had sent Mac along to guard her.
There seemed no reason not to do this, though Dick had been instinctively uneasy. After all, from the first, there had been no proof that Morel hadn’t left the clearing of his own free will.
Smitty’s work with the thermocouple showed how a kidnaping might have occurred from the air, where at first glance such would seem impossible.
But there was no proof of such a thing, and Morel’s call had cast further doubt upon it. And it had been Morel! Lila knew her father’s voice without a shadow of a doubt. So it had seemed all right. A man wouldn’t mislead his own daughter.
Now, Morel had been seen in Michigan, hundreds of miles from the spot from where he had ostensibly phoned. And many things had clicked into place in Benson’s brain.
The queer monotony of Morel’s voice over the phone! The way he had kept right on talking in spite of Lila’s questions and exclamations! Morel had answered none of those questions; had replied to none of her statements. The voice had just gone on.
Why? Because it wasn’t Morel! That phone call had been a recording of Morel’s voice, played in advance and run before a telephone in Maine when the owner of the voice was nowhere near there.