The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels Read Online Free PDF

man.
    Smitty’s big fist half swung, then stopped, because this could have been accidental.
    “That girl was being kidnaped, in broad daylight!” he boomed. “And you stuck your nose in. I think you’re one of the gang!”
    “Gang?” said the man. “Look here, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “You stay here!” snapped Smitty.
    He got into his cab. The street was clear enough to slide past the other taxi, now. He sped to the corner, on the thousand-to-one chance that he could still see the old cab.
    He couldn’t. He came back—to see the blockading one just beating it around the far corner.
    Smitty could have sat down and beat his huge chest.
    He felt that he had muffed a whole lot of things in a very few seconds; and the fact that, looking back, he couldn’t see what he’d have done differently, didn’t make him feel any better. Even the sight of the four unconscious thugs on the street didn’t help.
    He had been sent to escort a girl back to Bleek Street. He had followed her, instead, just to see if she was going directly to Justice, Inc. She hadn’t. So he had let her be taken away from him. So now what?
    He looked at the Marr mansion, up the circular little drive in front of which he had thought her taxi was going. He saw that the windows were not shuttered.
    Marcus Marr had many homes. This one in New York was the least occupied, used only on the rare occasions when the motor magnate was in the big city on some financial affair.
    He was in it, now, it seemed, from the unshuttered look of the place. So Smitty advanced toward the iron-grilled door. He wanted to have a talk with Mr. Marcus Marr.
    “That smooth-talking guy with the black eyes!” he was growling to himself as he rang a bronze bell, set in gray stone. He shouldn’t have given him a chance to duck—
    “Yes?”
    The door had opened and a dignified butler in knee pants looked in a snooty fashion at Smitty.
    “I want to see Mr. Marr,” rumbled Smitty.
    “I’m sorry, he’s not at home,” said the butler, starting to close the door.
    Next instant he picked it out of his face. Smitty had given a gentle shove and stood inside.
    “You can’t come in!” bleated the man. “You can’t—”
    Smitty’s left hand got his coat collar, and he held the butler up as one would hold up a kitten by the scruff of the neck.
    “Where is he?”
    Into the butler’s eyes came a look of cunning.
    “All right. Put me down. I’ll tell you where to get him.”
    Smitty put him down.
    “His den,” said the butler, rubbing his neck, “is on the second floor, at the rear of the hall.”
    So Smitty went up the broad, curved staircase, emerged onto the second floor—and then ducked far to the right and lunged forward.
    The duck got his head out of the way of a gun barrel that had been whistling toward it. The lunge presented his hands with a pair of ankles.
    The cunning look had been put into the butler’s eyes by the fact that two guards were at the head of those stairs, standing just around the corner, out of sight. As Smitty had ascended, they had crouched; and one had leaped when he topped the staircase.
    This one yelled as his ankles seemed to be detached from the rest of his legs by those tremendous hands. He dropped his gun. On the other side, his companion charged in and started kicking at Smitty’s head.
    Smitty was mad anyway, and this double-dealing didn’t put him in a more amiable frame of mind.
    He straightened up, bringing the ankles up with him, which dumped the owner of the ankles rather harshly on his head. He whirled the man like an Indian club, and a skull drove into an abdomen!
    Then Smitty left the two on the floor and walked, not toward the rear of the hall, but toward the front. It was not his experience to find the rooms inhabited by the master of any house in the rear. They were usually in front.
    At the end of this hall there was a door. Smitty opened that door. A man, so thin that he looked transparent and with