The Avenger 13 - Murder on Wheels Read Online Free PDF Page B

deep-set gray eyes like faint torches far back in his head, stared calmly at him.
    “I’m Marr,” the elderly man said. “Who are you? Why have you forced your way in like this?”

CHAPTER V

Captive Giant
    In the face of this courteous but blank reception, Smitty had nothing to say for a minute. He stood on the threshold, marshaling his thoughts. Then he stepped in.
    “I work for Richard Benson,” he said.
    Marr didn’t pretend not to know that name. He nodded.
    “I know of Mr. Benson. A power in the financial world at one time, I believe. And still extremely wealthy the rumor has it.”
    The rumor was right. Benson had access, from a former adventure, to all the gold of the Aztecs, their main hoard, hidden from the Spanish invaders centuries ago. It was possible that he could lay his hands on more wealth than any other man on earth. But Smitty didn’t bother to say any of that.
    “What interest,” said old Marr, “would Benson have in me, that he should send a man of his here?”
    “He didn’t send me,” said Smitty. “I just came in. I came because a girl I was after seemed about to enter here, and then was kidnaped.”
    “I thought I heard a shot a moment ago,” said Marr. “So a girl was kidnaped. Who?”
    “All I know is, her name is Doris Jackson,” said the giant Smitty.
    “Why was she kidnaped?”
    “I don’t know that. She is supposed to have some message to give Mr. Benson. But we don’t know what message, because she has never gotten through to him. Now, she has been taken away—to shut her up, I guess.”
    He glowered at Marr, and Marr stared evenly back, quite a gentle-looking old man for one so powerful.
    “Who is she, anyway?” Smitty snapped. None of Benson’s aides were impressed much by wealth or the owners thereof. “Why was she coming here?”
    “I have never met anyone named Doris Jackson,” said Marr. And Smitty was reluctantly persuaded that there was truth in his voice. “I have no notion why she should have been coming here. If, indeed, she was. Are you sure of that?”
    Smitty wasn’t sure. She might have been going any place along here.
    “Well,” he rumbled, feeling awkward, “do you know a guy named Robert Mantis, then?”
    “Never heard of him,” replied Marr. And again Smitty was grudgingly convinced he was telling the truth.
    He tried one more thing, on the slightest of hunches. He was still wondering about the man in the cab who had so innocently blocked his path, during the chase of the taxi with the girl in it.
    “A young fellow,” he said, “with very black and very live-looking eyes. Has hair that grows back from his forehead on each side and down in a wide peak in front. He’s a little bigger than average, and he walks and moves like he’s powerfully strong. Kind of handsome. Know him?”
    Now, the other two he had asked about, he had designated by name. Marr had denied knowing of them, and Smitty had believed him. This third party, Smitty could only describe—and not too completely at that.
    Yet, he did not quite believe Marr, when the auto magnate said: “No, I don’t think I have ever seen a man like that.”
    The giant couldn’t have told you why he got a different reaction from this denial.
    Not a muscle of Marr’s face changed a line. His eyes didn’t waver or have any different shading. But Smitty had felt inclined to believe him before, and this time he didn’t feel so inclined.
    But he didn’t know what he could do about it. You don’t wring answers from a man like Marcus Marr, and then call him a liar and cuff him around when you don’t feel like believing the answers.
    “Thanks for letting me have a few minutes of your time,” Smitty said, baffled.
    “Not at all,” said Marr courteously. He stared at the giant’s tremendous torso. “Do my guards need . . . er . . . hospital attention?”
    “Who?” said Smitty absently. “Oh—the guards. I don’t think so. I was pretty easy on them.”
    Which, the guards might