“Another call came in while you were talking to Smitty,” Nellie said. “I’m holding it on another wire. It’s for Lila Morel. Do you want to hear it?”
Dick hesitated. Every phone call into the headquarters was recorded. He could hear any conversation later. But he thought he’d better listen to actual voices; sometimes there were slight overtones which a recording missed.
“Yes,” he said. “Is Lila ready now?”
“She’s ready.”
“Then go ahead.”
So the call from outside sounded on the phone in the lab as well as on one of the battery of phones in the big room.
“Kinnisten, Maine, calling,” came the long-distance operator’s voice. “A call for Miss Lila Morel. Person to person.”
“This is Lila Morel,” came Lila’s voice over the phone.
“Go ahead, please,” said the operator.
A man’s voice sounded. “Hello. Lila?”
“Yes? Oh,
“This is Dad, Lila,” came the man’s voice. “I’m at the Maine place. I don’t know just how long I’ll be here. I have to leave for the West. I can’t explain now.”
“Dad, what’s it all about?” pleaded Lila. “You—”
“I called to tell you I’m safe and well,” said Morel. “And to tell you not to try to find me.”
“But, Dad, I must
The voice went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“I’m all right, but very busy. Just stop trying to find me, and I’ll see you soon. Good-by, Lila.”
“Dad — wait—”
But the line was dead. The scientist had hung up.
Dick Benson replaced his phone slowly on its cradle. His pale, infallible eyes held the icy glitter that was theirs when The Avenger was thinking out something that could not quite be explained at the moment, but which struck the man of genius as important.
There was something about that phone call; something peculiar.
He couldn’t place it; so he went back to his test tubes.
In the Michigan village of Knightstown, Smitty and Josh set out to find the place where that blimp had been kept hidden.
“You’d think it would be easy,” said Josh. “A blimp’s no atom. It’s as big as all outdoors. It would take a tremendous barn, or some such building, to hold one.”
Smitty nodded, and they started inquiring around. They had to seem not to be inquiring about anything in particular, however, because the headquarters of the acid-ruined blimp might also be the headquarters of a large gang.
It was about noon, and they were hungry; so they started with the biggest lunchroom in town.
Knightstown only had two lunchrooms, so the biggest was no Waldorf. It was a twenty-foot square room next to the town poolroom, with a few tables and a counter in it. Three or four men were at the counter when Smitty and Josh strode in.
“Hamburgers,” said Smitty.
A sad-looking man in a soiled apron took the order. He looked speculatively at Smitty’s vast size.
“How many?” the man said.
“How many would you say?” shrugged Smitty.
The man took in Smitty’s bulk again.
“I’d say about ten for you and two for your friend.”
“We’ll start with that,” said Smitty.
“Hey!” Josh said, injured at the difference in numbers.
Then both shut up as a few words from one of the men at the counter caught their ears. They seemed to have drawn something. It looked as if their luck was in.
“—bricks from that old car barn,” the man was saying angrily. “We used to get bricks there. Now, they chase us off the place.”
“Why don’t you try buyin’ bricks,” laughed one of the others.
“Bricks’re expensive. And there’s a great, big, falling-down building with all the brick you need, and nobody to stop you taking some. Anyway, there didn’t use to be. Now, some watchman or somebody is out there. He pulled a gun on me when I went around last week!”
The talk veered, since none of the men save the one talking seemed interested in bricks. Smitty looked at Josh, and then grinned at the counter man as he bit into his fourth hamburger.
“Car barn?” he said. “You still got streetcars around here?”
“Not for thirty years,” said the man behind the counter sadly. All his words, looks and actions were sad. The two couldn’t figure why, unless he’d been born that way. “We used to have interurban service all through these parts. Then they took the rails up and sold the cars, long before the cities began trading streetcars for buses.”
“Is the car barn in town?” said Smitty, making his voice sound disinterested.
“Nope. Out in open country. Along Sheep’s Nose River. Middle of no place.”
Smitty looked mildly surprised. The man said:
“Knightstown didn’t have no brains, forty years back. The interurban service wanted to put a car barn and power plant here because it’s a halfway point. The town council said, ‘No, sir! Not and spoil their beautiful town!’ So the car company put the buildings out on the river, miles away from anything. The power plant’s all dismantled and half falling down. The car barn’ll be the same way soon, the way everybody helps themselves to bricks when they need ’em.”
Smitty let the matter drop. But only till he and Josh were outside the lunchroom.
“That’s our baby,” said Josh.
Smitty nodded and they went to their car.
