The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels (17 page)

Sigmund Ormsdale!

Bright daylight was bathing The Avenger and those with him, now that the doors were back. They were in a motionless group, backed against the side of the Marr-Car—Dick Benson with his face a cold, grim mask and his pale eyes agate-brilliant; Smitty dark with fury at himself for not having spotted those gunmen sooner; Nellie, pale but composed as always in the face of danger; Mac, with his bleak blue eyes blazing at Ormsdale.

“Ye skurlie!” he hissed at the latter. “So the burning clothes in ye’r incinerator was the straight lead after all.”

Ormsdale looked a little puzzled at that, but not for long. There was too much ruthless triumph on his face for any other expression to show.

“Walked right in!” he said. “I knew, after we’d found the car, that it would be smarter to leave it right here as bait than to drive it off, and hide it ourselves. So we did—and the whole lot of you walked right in! Well, you won’t walk out again, I can assure you.”

Smitty was so furious that, in spite of the guns. he had taken a step toward the men. A hopeless step. And he reluctantly backed up again when Dick Benson said quietly: “Smitty.”

“There’s going to be an unfortunate accident,” said Ormsdale. “The garage is going to catch fire, and then be blown up. You know—a tank of gasoline carelessly left uncovered? It happens quite often. And if what’s left of you can be identified, why that’s all right, too. It will look as if your own carelessness, instead of some such thing as spontaneous combustion, caused the explosion.”

While he was talking, the gang had been edging closer, guns ready to blast their victims to pieces. Now, Ormsdale said:

“Get away from the car. Over to the side.
Move!”

There was nothing to do but obey. Helpless, with death looking squarely into their eyes, the six moved to the side. Ormsdale went to the door of the Marr-Car, left open by Jackson in his scramble from behind the wheel. The inventor was white with frustration. To have been so close to victory and then have this happen! It was plain that the loss of the mystery car was more to Jackson than the loss of his life.

Ormsdale got in. He called to the men with the guns:

“As soon as I get out and down the street a way in this car, shut the street door and fasten them as I showed you how to do. Then one of you go to the roof of the warehouse next door and toss down on the garage roof the thermite and explosive bombs that are in the green sedan.”

The erstwhile pillar of Detroit society turned back to his prisoners, centering his gaze mockingly on Benson.

“Don’t try to rush the doors after they are closed. Even if you could force a way out—which you couldn’t—you would find a warm reception from these guns.”

The car door slammed. There was a deep whir as a starter turned over the new-type motor, and then an almost inaudible hum as its powerful pistons began sliding softly up and down. Jackson moaned.

Ormsdale cramped the front wheels, the teardrop-shaped machine turned at a short angle, and purred to the door.

A man there slid the doors back farther, and the car turned into the street. Then they couldn’t see it any more. Ormsdale was gone with the precious thing.

The gang were backing to the door, now. And there was no breath of a chance to rush them or follow them. Helplessly the six saw the doors slide shut, heard heavy clicks outside as some sort of fastenings were dropped into place.

Benson stepped to a wall-switch he had seen when the doors let in daylight. He snapped it on, and electric light flooded the empty garage space.

“Not much use in trying to keep from revealing our presence here by a light, now,” he said, voice as calm and cold as his eyes.

Nellie looked quickly at his face. It could register emotions, now. She wondered what emotion would show with death by fire and explosion due any moment.

But there was no emotion at all. The Avenger’s new face was under the rigid control of an iron will, so that it still made no confessions to even the most searching eyes. An amazing youthful and handsome countenance, now that the disfiguring paralysis was gone and the hair above was no longer white but growing in thickly black. But a masked countenance just the same.

Dick Benson continued to be completely poker-faced when he stared at the iron sheet over the grease pit and called, to the surprise of all.

“You might as well come out, now, Wilson.”

“What in the worrrld—” burred MacMurdie.

The sheet-metal trapdoor rose, and Cole Wilson came into view. His face was almost as well controlled as The Avenger’s, but a trace of surprise was permitted to show.

“I’d heard you were smart,” he said to Benson. “But how did you know—”

“You fled from the Shelton Arms because you knew pursuit had almost come up to you,” said Benson swiftly. “Knowing that, it was natural to suppose that you would go at once to the object most valuable to you, and see that it had not been disturbed. Here, to look after the mystery car, to be exact. Even when Miss Gray reported the entrance of no one recently, I was still sure you must have slipped in past her guard and have hidden here. And there’s only one place to hide.”

The pale eyes went to the grease pit.

“But how did you guess I knew where the car was?”

“There isn’t much time for talking,” said Benson. “You must have heard the plan to blow up and burn this place. We had better do something about it.”

“Oh, that,” said Wilson, with amazing unconcern. “That’s easy. I was going to come up, anyhow, when you guessed where I was and called, to lead you to a safe spot.”

He led the way to the pit. And down there they saw a four-foot, roughly round hole in the side of the cement wall.

“Follow me.”

The hole was a fairly lengthy tunnel, maybe twenty feet of it. It went steeply down, and toward the rear. It ended in a sort of vault that would hold all seven of them, if they stayed close together.

“We can lie low in here till danger is over,” said Wilson. “This is the old gasoline-storage tank of the garage.”

Smitty was looking unhappily first at him and then at Nellie. Whenever an extra handsome male came around, the giant got all forlorn about his own lack of sleekness and handsomeness and watched Nellie for fear she’d show she liked the guy. And this Cole Wilson was too darned good-looking, with his dark hair straight back from his forehead, and his black, alert, intelligent eyes.

“You seem to know quite a lot about—everything,” Wilson said to Benson.

“I think I do,” said The Avenger quietly. “I will admit frankly that it’s all guesswork. You seem to have been too clever to have left clues, save for the prisoning of Jackson in your own building. Also, Ormsdale has been smart in keeping his skirts clear. But I believe the guesswork comes close to the mark.

“It was plain, some little time ago, that there were two criminal plots at work here. One was the theft of the Marr-Car, with murder no object. The other was the sabotaging of the Marr plant, with a strange lack of violence accompanying it, and with blackmail as the goal. After some thought on the subject, based on a few facts we managed to bring to light, it was possible to separate the two.”

Wilson was staring hard at The Avenger, but not letting any expression show on his face.

“The Marr-Car was wanted by Ormsdale. He was afraid that if it were brought out, it would ruin his own business. So he contacted the underworld and had it stolen, and then went after Jackson, to kill him so he couldn’t duplicate it. He is due for a disappointment when he tries to analyze that steel, however. I’m pretty sure no regular metallurgical test will reveal the secret of the ray tempering.”

Jackson nodded emphatically, and Benson went on.

“You, Wilson, were not in this for your own gain. Reports show that you have always been idealistic and have helped, as much as possible, anybody you thought needed help. You are deeply indebted to Phineas Jackson, and he didn’t get anything from Marr for his revolutionary inventions; so you decided to get a million for him. Whether he thought he deserved it or not. Not knowing of Ormsdale’s plans, you thought up the sabotage idea of tempering a few automotive parts secretly, so that when they were put in Marr’s machines they’d break the machines. You thought Marr would be brought to terms by this.”

“Cole!” said Jackson sadly. “Why on earth—”

“Then the mystery car was stolen,” Benson said. “And you dropped your own plan till you had followed and recovered it. Because the recovery was to help Jackson, too. Right, Wilson? Well, you needn’t answer if you don’t want to. As I’ve admitted, I have no real proof of any of this.

“You knew Robert Mantis well. He finally suspected his boss, Ormsdale, was behind the theft of the mystery car. He quit at once, and told you his suspicions—”

“And I was sorry I talked, too, Cole,” Mantis cut in. “I suspected you of all sorts of things, shortly after that. I guess Doris did, too.”

“Your guesses are not all true, Mr. Benson,” said Wilson, with a glint of humor deep in his black eyes. “But they’re quite interesting, I’ll confress.”

“You went after Ormsdale at once to get the car,” Benson said calmly. “It was you who slugged him in his home when I showed up, trying to force him to talk. He was afraid to call the police and have you arrested. Then you got the car in the East and drove it back here, killing two birds with one stone: You defeated Ormsdale and his thugs, and got a further hold over Marr in behalf of your old friend Jackson, by having possession of the most valuable thing Marr owned. But in the meantime you weren’t through with Ormsdale.

“You spotted my man following you in the workman’s clothes that had admitted you to the Marr plant; so you went to Ormsdale’s home and burned the disguise in Ormsdale’s incinerator—planted a clue that might damage him. And you mailed the pencil, with which you’d written notes to Marr, to the leader of Ormsdale’s hired killers, in the hope that it could be found in his pockets and incriminate him.”

Old Phineas Jackson looked as if he were about to cry.

“It’s true, Mr. Benson,” he moaned. “I feel it is all true. Because it is exactly in character for Cole to have done these things. What a pity! I didn’t want a fortune, Cole. I invented those things in Marr’s laboratory, on Marr’s time. I’m well paid by him. I’ll have a place with him, as long as I live. Couldn’t you understand that?”

“Mr. Benson is just telling us stories to while away the time,” said Wilson, face solemn but with the humor—and admiration for The Avenger—clear in his black eyes. “With no shadow of proof to go on, this must be, of course, just a bedtime tale.”

The Avenger smiled a little.

“You have done no physical harm to anyone,” he said, “save perhaps to some of Ormsdale’s murderers when you got the car back. The Marr plant damage is more than taken care of by Jackson’s steel-tempering process. I don’t think anyone would press charges against your rather misdirected Robin Hood attempt to get a million dollars for your benefactor, even if proofs were at hand. But it’s a pity about Ormsdale. You’re a very intelligent person. You almost had him when this trap of his was sprung on us.”

“I still have him,” said Cole Wilson, seeming very calm and sure about it. “I can pick him up whenever I—”

A terrific explosion rocked the very earth around the deeply buried gas tank. They’d all have been hurled off their feet if they hadn’t been seated and waiting for it. The tank ruptured in several places, and earth trickled in through the cracks. But while it would never hold gasoline again, it continued to be an excellent underground shelter.

Wilson turned the beam of his flashlight toward the end of the tank. There, the rest saw a whitish bundle of what seemed to be thick cotton cloth on the floor. Wilson went to it; picked it up.

Then they saw that it was an all-enveloping garment of some kind.

“Asbestos,” said Wilson unexcitedly. “I’ll go up, now, and when the fire department comes I’ll have them clear a passage around the grease pit first, so you can come up—”

“Wait a minute!” said Mac. “Are ye a magician, mon, to have just the proper thing here at the proper time?”

Wilson shrugged almost carelessly.

“Naturally, it occurred to me, when I hid the car in this deserted building, that Ormsdale and his gang might locate it again. If they did, what would they do? Almost certainly leave it here as bait and try to kill me when I came back to it. If they tried to kill me, how would it be? The easiest way would be either to burn the place down or blow it up while I was in it. So it seemed only common sense to cache this asbestos suit down here.”

“Whew,”
said Smitty in an aside to Mac. “This guy is good!”

Wilson, bundled in the awkward, thick asbestos garment, with gloves of the same stuff and an asbestos mask ready to fit over his head, said to Benson:

“I started to say before, Ormsdale is not going to get away. He will be waiting conveniently near here, ready for the police to pick him up red-handed in the car he stole.”

Cole Wilson laughed a little, vibrantly, calmly.

“You see, I fixed the car up a little just on the chance that Ormsdale would lay hands on it. When he closed the door on himself—as he has by now found out—he dropped a pin in the locks of each of the other doors so that they, too, were locked. They also jammed, so that they can only be opened again with blowtorches and crowbars! Also, I shut off the fuel line so that the motor will die after about three minutes of running. We’ll find him, caught in his own web, somewhere within half a dozen blocks of here.”

“This guy, said Smitty more loudly, “is
very
good.”

Mac and Nellie murmured the same thought. Here was a young fellow with ability, method, forethought almost equal to their leader’s own. Also, he had a terrific desire to right wrongs and fight crime—even though the trait was a little out of place in the case of Phineas Jackson, who hadn’t really wanted to be helped.

“There’s only one place for this mon,” said Mac softly. “That is, with us. If we can persuade him to join us.”

Cole Wilson’s head went up, and his eyes were black pits of eagerness.