Read Online The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc. by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online

words, ‘Old Ironsides?”
    “Yes,” said Benson. “I found out who Old Ironsides is. He’s Lawrence Hickock, a wealthy Buffalo businessman. He is president of a firm called the Buffalo Tap & Die Works. His nickname comes from his sideburns, old-fashioned, iron-gray, bushy.”
    He walked to the closet, a lithe gray wolf of a man with only his deadly pale eyes alive in his white, dead face. He put on the hat that was subtly reinforced with wire to take and hold any shape he chose to give it. He donned the light spring topcoat that, at a second’s notice, would be altered to look like an entirely different garment.
    “We progress, though slowly,” he told the Scot. “So far, we know this: The gang behind this has booked the Montreal plane several times to carry something no one is supposed to know anything about. That object or those objects—went in the trunk invariably accompanying the gang. At a certain spot it was taken from the trunk and dropped. Because they didn’t dare have my wife and child see what was dropped through the trapdoor, they . . . threw them out of the plane first, that night.”
    MacMurdie was no yes-man. He shook his dour head.
    “If they wanted to drop something some place, they would hire a private plane, wouldn’t they? Why take chances with a big public transport plane?”
    “There’s an answer for that, too. They had several things to drop. That meant several trips. A chartered plane, going out quite a few times to the same spot, could be observed and perhaps questions asked about it. But no one would ever question the regular flight of a regular plane over a commercial route. It was smarter and less traceable to use that transport than to hire a plane.”
    He went to the door. “Stay here for calls, Mac.” The brief agony that touched Benson’s eyes was a terrible thing. But the white, still face reflected no expression at all. “I’m still hoping there may be a ransom demand for Alicia and the girl. You’ll be here if it comes.”
    “Ye’re going to see this mon, Hickock?”
    “Yes,” said Benson, and went out with his lithe, smooth tread.
    A call to Hickock’s office had disclosed the fact that he was not there. So Benson went to the magnate’s home.
    Old Ironsides, named by the member of that gang! Was the man, so respected in town, so well-to-do, one of the powers behind this plot? Or was he a victim?

    It soon developed that he was the latter. A victim!
    A middle-aged woman with frantic brown eyes came to the door when Benson asked to see Mr. Hickock.
    “You have word?” she said, voice trembling near hysteria. “You have word from my husband?”
    “Isn’t he here?” countered Benson.
    Mrs. Hickock stared at the dead face, looked deep into the fog-gray eyes. Then over her own eyes a veil seemed to lower.
    “He isn’t at home just now,” she said, voice brittle and controlled with great effort.
    “Do you know when he will return?”
    “Soon, I imagine. I can take any message you have to give, and tell him when he comes. Is it personal or a business call?”
    Benson’s pale eyes were boring into the veiled brown ones. They could read closed books, those eyes. Though, at that, this human document was not too closed.
    Hickock not at home. His wife wild about it. Asking if he “had word” of her husband. It spelled a single sinister word—one that rends all the emotions and is usually hidden from the police till too late.
    Kidnap!
    “It’s a business call,” he said evenly. “I’ll come again, later.”
    No use trying to question Mrs. Hickock. She’d refuse to answer while she had her composure, be too hysterical to answer coherently if questioning were pressed. Benson left.
    But he only went as far as the corner.
    There, he took out a small mirror and altered the lines of the dead flesh of his face. He had come as himself. Now he became a man with lean cheeks and heavy jowls, lips straight and a little cruel over a jaw with a bulbous tip. He turned