“But how,” puzzled Josh, “could a kidnap gang get into and out of a place which is without entrance or exit?”
“That,” suggested Dick quietly, “may probably not be cleared up till the rest of this odd business can be explained. Go on, Lila.”
“I wanted to do something right away to help Dad,” said the girl, “but I didn’t know which way to turn. Then I remembered that Edwin Ritter, the well-known politician, is one of Dad’s closest friends. I went to Mr. Ritter’s Hudson River home to see if he had heard anything from my father. He had not. I left the place, drove several miles along the river toward New York and found I had been trailed to Mr. Ritter’s. A gang caught me and almost killed me. They drove my coupé into the river, with me at the wheel. They thought I was unconscious, but I wasn’t. I swim pretty well; so I managed to get out of the car, underwater, and swim away in the dark.”
Smitty’s vast hands clenched, giving some slight hint of what would happen should he ever catch any of the members of a gang that would do such a thing.
“After I got away,” said Lila, “I hurried and got my dog, Prince. I brought it back to the spot where the gang had left me; thinking Prince might be able to trail the men to their hide-out—”
“They were on foot?” interrupted The Avenger, pale eyes like ice in moonlight.
“No, they were in a truck. Of course, Prince couldn’t trail that. But I thought it barely possible that one or more of them might have gone to the gang lair on foot, if the place happened to be nearby. And I guess that must have happened because Prince led me to a house in Scarsdale, a short distance away. And it was there that… that—”
“That it was killed,” nodded The Avenger. “Did you get into the house?”
“I just got the door open. It was unlocked. The… the rabbits jumped out and went for Prince. I thought I was seeing things or going crazy.”
“You have the address of the place?”
Lila told it to him. Dick turned to Mac, with the unspoken command to go out and look the place over. Mac left. The Avenger turned to Lila again.
“You said you’d sent for Packer, your servant, to come down from the Maine laboratory to your town apartment?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Lila. “He should be there by now.”
“Bring him here, Cole,” Dick said to Wilson.
And then the door opened and Nellie Gray came in.
Nellie Gray was another of The Avenger’s aides. She was tiny — barely five feet tall and weighing a little over one hundred pounds. You’d never dream, to look at her pink and white blondness that she was as valued a crime fighter, in her way, as even the giant Smitty was in his.
“What goes on?” demanded Nellie indignantly. “Are you leaving me out of some excitement? Can’t a girl go out to get a new hat without being shoved in the discard?”
“Yeah,” said Smitty, “if you thought less of excitement and more of your neck you wouldn’t always be getting into messes and make me come and get you out again.”
“Why, you,” gasped Nellie, “you ten-ton truck! If I had a nickel for every time I’ve saved
“Tell her about the rabbits,” Josh broke in impatiently.
So Nellie was brought up to date, and she fussed sympathetically over Lila Morel. Then Wilson came back with the Morel servant, Packer, in tow.
And Packer disagreed with Lila.
“I think your father left the laboratory of his own free will, Miss Lila,” he said mildly. As always there was the faint smile on his lips. “I don’t think there is anything wrong.”
“But we haven’t heard from him, and there was that attack on me,” said Lila.
Packer shrugged.
“Do you remember last year when he left the New York apartment without explanation and was gone for six weeks?”
“That was different,” said Lila miserably.
Dick Benson took over, pale eyes on Packer’s.
“Do you happen to know what Morel was working on at the time he disappeared?” he asked. “Miss Morel doesn’t know.”
“Neither do I, sir,” said Packer. But Benson’s pale, infallible eyes caught a flicker of the man’s pupils.
“You do not
Packer hesitated, looking into the pale orbs. Then he nodded. “I have come to tentative conclusions.”
“And they are?”
“I think Mr. Morel was working along bio-chemical lines. Something requiring the use of live animals. He injected something into guinea pigs just before he left the laboratory that night.”
“What effect did the injections have?”
“None that I could see, at the time,” said Packer. “But I left shortly after that, at Miss Lila’s bidding, to inquire around the country for Mr. Morel. Then I came to New York.”
Benson nodded and stopped questioning the man. The Avenger seemed satisfied as to his complete innocence, as far as you could tell from his icy, inscrutable eyes.
Mac came back after awhile. He shook his sandy head.
“The place at Scarsdale is cleared out,” he said. “My guess is that it wasn’t lived in for a long time. These men who tackled Miss Morel must have been in only once or twice, using it as a temporary headquarters.”
