There was an excellent reason why The Avenger burst into action without even waiting for Smitty to finish his report.
The phone call from Morel, some hours ago!
The scientist had called from the Maine laboratory, it seemed, through the nearest exchange which was Kinnisten, Maine. He had said he was safe, but couldn’t take time to explain anything and would probably have to leave right away for the West.
Now, the very first thing that had happened after that call, of course, was Lila’s urgent request that she be allowed to rush up there and see if she could catch her father and have a few words with him before he left for another indefinite and unexplained period.
Benson had rather reluctantly agreed and had sent Mac along to guard her.
There seemed no reason not to do this, though Dick had been instinctively uneasy. After all, from the first, there had been no proof that Morel hadn’t left the clearing of his own free will.
Smitty’s work with the thermocouple showed how a kidnaping might have occurred from the air, where at first glance such would seem impossible.
But there was no proof of such a thing, and Morel’s call had cast further doubt upon it. And it had been Morel! Lila knew her father’s voice without a shadow of a doubt. So it had seemed all right. A man wouldn’t mislead his own daughter.
Now, Morel had been seen in Michigan, hundreds of miles from the spot from where he had ostensibly phoned. And many things had clicked into place in Benson’s brain.
The queer monotony of Morel’s voice over the phone! The way he had kept right on talking in spite of Lila’s questions and exclamations! Morel had answered none of those questions; had replied to none of her statements. The voice had just gone on.
Why? Because it wasn’t Morel! That phone call had been a recording of Morel’s voice, played in advance and run before a telephone in Maine when the owner of the voice was nowhere near there.
“Nellie!” The Avenger called, eyes like pale ice with cold flame behind them.
The elaborate scheme meant only one thing — a trap!
Their enemy had decided, for reasons of his own, that Morel’s daughter must know too much and must be killed. Morel had been drugged or tricked into making that phonograph record because the gang was shrewd enough to know that the girl’s first move, after hearing from her absent father, would be to hurry up and try to contact him. In which case she could be murdered at leisure.
“Nellie!”
“Yes, chief.”
The diminutive blonde appeared in the doorway. Her satin-smooth cheeks were pink, and in her blue eyes was the light of excitement.
“Mac and Lila Morel have left for Morel’s Maine laboratory, near Kinnisten,” said Dick.
“Yes, I know.”
“I find out now,” The Avenger went on, “that it is almost certainly a trap. They’ve been drawn up there by a false telephone call. Take the fastest plane and go after them.”
“And just bring them back?” said Nellie, looking disappointed.
“By no means!”
Dick Benson’s colorless eyes were something to scare the most hardened of crooks. A trap! Very well, Benson had a way with traps. Never avoid them, was his motto. Always walk right in, because in traps, you are apt to learn something you might otherwise have no opportunity to discover.
“Lila Morel and Mac will fall into the trap, as has been planned for them. Only — you will be Lila Morel.”
Nellie nodded complete comprehension.
“She’s quite a bit taller than I am, though,” she said.
“Take inch-and-a-half lifts and your highest-heeled shoes,” said Benson. “Put them on in the plane, don’t bother with anything, now. They may already be there. In that case—”
He didn’t have to finish. It is one thing to walk into a trap open-eyed. It is quite another thing to fall in unwarned.
And Mac and Lila were unwarned!
Nellie didn’t even stop to acknowledge orders. She was gone from there. It was a normal eight minutes fast driving to the river where, in an old loft building, some of The Avenger’s planes were secretly kept. She made it in five.
The fastest plane, Dick had said. That was a silver bullet with stubby wings and an impossibly big motor. An amphibian. It ripped up the water for a hundred yards, lifted, soared off.
“Mac, Nellie calling. Mac! Mac!”
She kept calling into the transmitter of her radio. And she kept hearing no answer.
“Mac. Come in. Nellie calling. Mac.”
She set the robot pilot and, while the plane shot north automatically guided and kept on an even keel, she put on a dark wig she had grabbed from the make-up kit and which somewhat resembled Lila’s hair in hue. She also put on a pair of shoes with ridiculously high heels and, in addition, inserted the maxim shoe lifts she could handle.
When she was through, she had the sensation of wearing stilts. But she had trained herself to walk naturally in such circumstances.
“Mac. Nellie calling. Oh, Mac, thank Heaven, I got you in time!”
“In time for what?” came the Scot’s burring voice, tiny in the receiver.
“Mac, the chief has found out you and Lila are walking into a trap. Where are you now?”
