It was lucky it was dark. Fine beads of sweat were on Lila’s forehead as death yawned for her.
Trapped in a coupé, sent into many feet of water, it might be days before her body was found. Maybe the car would never be found!
Gears clashed as the man beside her slammed into first without bothering to use the clutch. The car began to move slowly toward the place where the truck had battered down the railing to receive it.
Lila grabbed the wheel convulsively, but it was too late. Just then the front wheels slid over the edge of the twenty-foot embankment.
Down its steep slant, the coupé half rolled and half slid, then dove into the water with a great splash.
The blackness of night as well as the ebony of the river closed over the car and the graceful figure at its wheel.
The drugstore looked like any other drugstore to the casual customer.
There were counters with everything carried in a modern pharmacy. There was a long marble soda fountain. There was a pharmacist’s desk.
But this drugstore was really unique. That was because of the back room.
The store part was only about half the size of this rear room, which couldn’t be seen. An iron door barred a casual entrance.
In the rear, there was something that looked like a dual laboratory. In fact, it was a dual laboratory.
Along one wall was ranged all the equipment ever heard of for conducting chemical experiments. Along the other was complete paraphernalia for electrical and radio work. The chemical side belonged to Fergus MacMurdie, set up here in this store bought for him by Richard Benson, better known as The Avenger. The electrical side was the property of Algernon Heathcote Smith.
MacMurdie and Smith were not in the rear room that morning. They were in the front, the store part, at the soda fountain.
Mac wasn’t having sodas. Sodas cost money, even when you owned the fountain; and the Scot was as reluctant to let a nickel go to waste as most men are to part with a toe or a finger. He stood at the end of the fountain, tall and bony and gangling, with bleak blue eyes. He scowled at Smitty.
Algernon Heathcote Smith — but call him Smitty if you didn’t want to be taken apart — was a dainty little figure of a man, six feet nine inches tall, weighing nearly three hundred pounds.
“There ye go,” Mac said to Smitty. “Sluppin’ up all the profits of my fountain.”
“It’s only my third sundae,” said Smitty mildly. “Josh is the guy you ought to talk to.”
Josh was the man next to the giant. Josh Newton, as tall as Mac and even skinnier, was a Negro who looked dull and sleepy but was actually an honor graduate from Tuskegee Institute.
John was now well along in his seventh sundae.
These three men were integral parts of the indomitable little band known as Justice, Inc., which was getting to be known as the most efficient crime-fighting organization in the country. Perhaps in the world. A little band apart from the police, but as feared by the underworld as ever the police were feared, they carried their lives lightly in their hands from day to day.
At that moment a fourth member of The Avenger’s band came into this store which was often a gathering place when there was no work on hand.
This fourth man was Cole Wilson, the newest recruit to The Avenger’s battle standard. Wilson was lithe, with dark hair and black eyes, and was almost too good-looking. If Smitty hadn’t seen Cole in action and known he was almost as good in trouble as The Avenger himself, he might have disliked the good looks. As it was, he paid no attention to them.
Wilson came in a hurry, as he did most things. He was the quickest moving and the most impulsive of all the crew. In his hand was a newspaper, folded to a back page. And as he walked in the door, he started talking.
“Mac, Smitty, Josh — what would you do if a ferocious rabbit came after you?”
“A ferocious —
“Rabbit,” said Wilson, leaning against the fountain with them.
“Look,” said Mac dourly, “there’s been enough kiddin’ around here without ye to add your two cents’ worth.”
“I’m not kidding,” said Wilson. He ran his hand through his dark hair. He always went bareheaded. “Look here, in the paper.”
“Read it, Mac,” said Josh. I wouldn’t trust Cole to read the thing. He’d have a rabbit biting a lion, if we let him.”
So Mac read, and Smitty and Josh looked more and more amazed.
“ ‘If it is news for a man to bite a dog,’ ” Mac read, “ ‘what would it be called if a rabbit bit a dog? Yet, this apparently has happened out in Scarsdale where rabbits are tough and like their dogs done rare for dinner. This morning Patrolman Swinnerton phoned in the report that he had just driven three rabbits off a Scotch terrier—’ ” Mac glared at the paper. “That’s a lie! A Scottie? Neverrr!”
“Go on with the account,” said Smitty impatiently.
