The Avenger 3 - The Sky Walker (16 page)

As in all such movements of extreme stress, action seemed to be slow—though you knew it was proceeding, really, with appalling speed.

Slowly, it seemed, the five cars of the train looped to right and left off the tracks, and hurled themselves like five mad beasts on the wounded locomotive. Slowly the cars and engine piled over each other like jackstraws. Slowly the whole dreadful mess came to a halt in a cloud of dust and splinters.

There was silence, in which the last remnants of the droning noise in the empty sky sounded out. Then that, too, was gone, and a chorus of screams and of hissing steam rose from the wreckage ahead.

Mac and Smitty skidded to a stop on the road beside the wreck, and ran across sandy waste from road to track.

“The murrrderin’ skurlies!” Mac ground out, as he saw a man crawl from the wreckage, stare blankly around, and then collapse. The bitter-eyed Scot shook his fist at the empty sky, from which had come the noise. “They’re fiends, no less, to do these things!”

He began hauling debris aside in a feverish search for passengers who might still be alive. Beside him Smitty, with the strength of a bull elephant, did the same.

But both, in the midst of the work, could see at a glance, all too clearly, what had caused the wreck.

The car wheels had caved under the cars and locomotive.

Every wheel they saw was cracked and flawed and broken like brittle glass that has been dropped on hard tile. The wheels had simply pounded to pieces under the speeding train, dropping cars and engine and all to slide wheelless along the track till the snout of the locomotive caught in the ties and telescoped the whole mess together.

As Carlisle had said, he intended to ride with the girls on the train to the last stop before Ludlow. Nellie and Rosabel saw, as the train slowed for that stop, that it was a small depot unused and shut up during most of the day. The name of it was Larchgrow, and there wasn’t a house or building of any sort in sight of it over the sandy dunes.

“We get off here,” Carlisle said softly, as the train slowed. “You go first. Get up and walk ahead of me to the vestibule of the car. Take your bags with you so it’ll look natural.”

On this, a commuters’ train, there was no porter. Nellie took her small bag from the rack, and Rosabel took the larger one they’d brought.

They walked down the aisle.

Behind them walked Carlisle, face pleasant and smiling. He had his newspaper rolled and in his right hand. He slapped it idly against his thigh as he walked. Had anyone stared closer he might have seen the gun in the inside of the roll. No one, however, stared at all.

The two girls got off. Carlisle followed and stood a few feet from them, smiling amiably. The train rolled off, gathering momentum swiftly.

Carlisle dropped the smile.

“O.K.,” he said. “Walk ahead of me to the road— Wait! Back behind the building!”

A car had appeared on the road, and Carlisle forced the two girls to hide behind the depot till it had passed. It went by in a hurry. And then Nellie and Rosabel heard the sound that had sent Mac and Smitty, in that car, ahead so fast to try to catch up with the train.

The eerie noise from the sky.

Carlisle, blond and sleek and well-groomed as any prominent young clubman, smiled at the sound. But Nellie Gray and Rosabel stared at each other in dawning horror.

“The train!” gasped Nellie. She stared at Carlisle.

“Is that noise—does that mean—is the train going to be wrecked?”

“Probably,” said Carlisle, as indifferent about it as though discussing the weather.

“You’ll pay for these things! You’ll all pay!”

“Oh, come now,” said Carlisle affably. “I think it was very considerate of the boss not to come around while we were on the train. Don’t you?”

“The boss?” Nellie echoed him. “What unspeakable person is behind this? Or—is it
you?”

“You flatter me,” said Carlisle. He prodded the two ahead of him, toward the road, distant here. “I haven’t the money it takes to hatch up a scheme like this. No, I’m not the one. But you know who the one is. You’ve all been fluttering him for forty-eight hours.”

“You mean Vanderhold? Darcey? Colonel Ringset?”

“I don’t necessarily mean any one of the three,” said Carlisle.

“Who, then?”

“My dear young lady,” Carlisle said with ghastly pleasantry, “suppose you think that just possibly you might escape. So you want to get information from me first. You haven’t a chance of escaping. But on the million-to-one possibility that you might, I shall tell you—nothing.”

“How did you know we were to be on that train?” persisted Nellie. Rosabel was looking straight ahead as she walked, by Nellie’s side, in front of the man. She was looking like a very badly scared, utterly helpless Negress. And while she looked that way, she watched for the slightest opening to act against Carlisle.

“It was reasonable to suppose that some of you would ride the train, eventually, so I rode it, too, to pick up whichever of you should board it for points north. I’ve been going back and forth all day. And finally you two get aboard.”

They went in silence, then, the rest of the way to the road. There was nothing in sight when they got there.

Carlisle shouted, “Shad!”

There was the snarl of a starter not far away, and a car wobbled over the matted growth and bumps from behind a dune where it had stopped till the car bearing Mac and Smitty had gone by.

“In!” said Carlisle, nodding to the car.

There were two men in the driver’s compartment. They were tough-looking thugs whose grins were worse than threats.

Nellie and Rosabel got in the back. Carlisle piled in front with the other two. He rode there, turned around so that he could cover the girls at every instant. Not for a second was there a gun off them.

The car drove slowly, drifting along at about thirty miles an hour. And in the sky above them the eerie droning noise began to sound again. It settled down toward them, louder and louder, nearer and nearer—

In Ludlow, Mac and Smitty delivered three badly injured persons from the wreck to the emergency hospital. The rest were coming in farmers’ cars and ambulances.

For the moment there was nothing more Smitty and Mac could do to help, so they drove to the Ludlow Hotel, where Nellie and Rosabel were supposed to come from an afternoon train. Both men resolutely put from their minds a hideous thought.

Possibly the two girls had been on that train, in the wreck, and had been so hidden by debris that their bodies hadn’t emerged during the first rescue work.

“They’ll probably show up about six o’clock, on a train routed around that point on another track,” Smitty said firmly.

“Of course,” said Mac, a little too loudly. “In the meantime, we’ll wait in the lobby.”

Ludlow was not very big, but the hotel was large and elaborate. It was supported by resorters from the city who spent a week to a summer along the beach. The lobby was as full of plush as a big city hotel.

It was not very big, for the size of the hotel, however. Mac and Smitty, sitting not far from the door, could hear what went on at the clerk’s desk.

A man came in whom Nellie Gray would have recognized, though Mac and Smitty didn’t. He was about sixty, with clear, pinkish skin, and light, clear eyes.

He went to the desk, and the clerk there was very respectful indeed. He knew this man—as did most people all around that district.

“Yes, Mr. Darcey,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Mac and Smitty stared swiftly at each other.

“Whoosh!” the Scot whispered. “Abel Darcey! President of Catawbi Railroad, and general big-shot. What’s
he
doin’ here in Ludlow?”

They soon found out. They heard Darcey say:

“I came in to inquire about a young friend of mine. That wreck down the line—I’m so afraid she was caught in it. She was coming here for a few weeks’ stay with her maid.”

“Her name, Mr. Darcey?”

“Gray. Miss Nellie Gray. She is blond, blue eyes, rather small.”

The clerk looked through the registration cards.

“There is no Miss Nellie Gray and maid registered,” he said. “And since I’ve been on the desk, no one of that description has come in. I’ve been on since eleven this morning, too.”

“How,” muttered Smitty fiercely, “did he know Nellie and Rosabel were coming here? Is there a dictaphone planted back at our hotel?”

“I think we’d better find out how the mon knows,” Mac said grimly.

“I’ll be back in a half-hour or so to inquire again,” the two heard the man at the desk say to the clerk.

Then, before Darcey could turn, they were on their feet and walking out of the hotel door. But they didn’t go far. Mac stood against the building wall to the right of the doorway, and the giant Smitty to the left.

Darcey stepped out—and they moved to each side of him.

“Just a minute, Mr. Darcey.”

Darcey stared up at Smitty’s moon-face, with eyes in it that were not quite so blandly harmless-looking as usual. Then he looked into Mac’s bleak blue eyes. His own eyes were apprehensive, but his face was admirably controlled.

“Well?” he said sharply. “I don’t believe I know you two men. Why are you approaching me?”

“We want you to take a little ride with us,” said Mac, nodding toward their rented car, parked nearby.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Darcey. “Naturally I wouldn’t get into a car with two strangers—”

His voice trailed to a halt as Smitty’s vast hand was laid very lightly, as if in affection, on his right shoulder. The hand was very near Darcey’s throat.

“I can break your neck,” said Smitty, smiling for the benefit of passers-by who were staring at him because of his great size, but who hadn’t any notion of what he was up to, “with one twist of my fingers. As fast a death as one from a bullet. I will break it, too, if you don’t stroll to the car with us.”

Darcey looked as if he were going to risk everything in a shout for help. He stared into Mac’s bitter blue eyes, then into Smitty’s lighter, china-blue ones—and didn’t yell.

“Where are you taking me?” he demanded, after getting in the car.

Mac, at the wheel, drove off without replying. Smitty, beside Darcey in the back seat, said, “Oh, not very far. Just out of town enough to be able to ask you a few questions without being interrupted.”

“What questions?”

“The most important is—how did you know Nellie Gray and Rosabel were due at the Ludlow Hotel?”

“Oh, that! Of course. You’re MacMurdie and Smith, aren’t you? I’m stupid, not to have recognized you at once, from Benson’s description. But even after that, I wasn’t prepared for a man quite so big as you.”

His eyes went over Smitty’s giant frame.

And Smitty stared back with dawning dismay in his full-moon face.

“Benson?” he said, in a different tone. “He told you the girls were coming to Ludlow? And he said we were coming, too, and described us?”

“That’s right,” Darcey nodded.

“Watch yersel’,” Mac burred, not taking his eyes from the road. The car was at the town limit, now, and rolling into the open dunes country. “The mon may be puttin’ on an act.”

“An act?” Darcey repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“Why would Mr. Benson tell you any of our plans?” Smitty demanded.

“Your employer,” said Darcey, “seemed to think my life was in danger. So he called on me.”

The car rounded a bend in the road. Ahead a few hundred yards was a lane going into the scrubby but thick woods growth typical of spots of the dune country.

“Would you mind turning around and driving me back to town?” said Darcey politely.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” he added.

Mac rather mechanically turned into the lane to back around in the road. Then he stopped the car, nose in the trees.

“We’ll not be goin’ back,” he said, “till ye do some explainin’—”

The Scot stopped, exclaimed aloud, and tried frantically to back out. But it was too late, then!

A man had stepped from the thick growth to the right. He had a submachine gun in his hands. Another man, similarly armed, appeared on the left side of the car. And two more stood, as though risen from the ground, directly in front.

Mac stopped trying to get away. They weren’t in one of The Avenger’s special bullet-proofed cars. They were in this rented thing that could be riddled by bullets like a tin can.

“Ye double-crossin’ devil,” Mac grated, glaring at Darcey.

The railroad man’s face remained inscrutable. Only his eyes showed a humorless smile. He didn’t even answer. He got out of the car and greeted a fifth man, who appeared at that moment with an automatic rather negligently hanging in his right hand.

The man was the ubiquitous Carlisle.

“Well, boss!” Carlisle said, mild surprise in his smooth face. “I didn’t quite expect to see you show yourself openly to us all, no matter what the occasion.”

“It’s quite safe now,” Darcey said to Carlisle. “No one here can ever say anything without sending himself to the chair. And with the capture of these two,”—he stared at Mac and the giant, who both trembled with impotent fury—“our roundup is practically complete. When we get the altruistic gentleman at the head of things who calls himself The Avenger, we’ll be through. And I have an idea he is on his way up to our headquarters right now, thinking himself very safe indeed.”

Dick Benson had guessed the ferry’s new location right on the nose.

The big scow had been towed north, to a point a little above Ludlow where scrubby woods bordered the lake for several miles. There, it had been beached in a small cove. Branches had been cut and strewn on its top so that a cursory search from the air would not have revealed it.

The giant thing was sure to be located in a few days; but the gang using it had every reason to expect that it wouldn’t be found till after they were through with it.

The ferry’s hold was brilliantly lighted by the electric plant run by the diesel. You could see the drums of oil and aviation gasoline, and the small machine shop, and the mysterious vats of water quite plainly. Also, you could see something else, the like of which had never been seen before.