The Avenger 1 - Justice, Inc.

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the brim of his hat down in front, up high at sides and rear, so that it looked like something a fisherman ashore on a vacation might wear. He slipped into the topcoat wrong side out and presented a gaudy check to the world.
    He went back to the Hickock grounds, and passed by the house. A groundsman was working at a flower plot near the garage. He went up to the man. At the rear window, the servant who had admitted Benson to see Mrs. Hickock looked out and saw him, but didn’t recognize him at all as the fellow who had just left.

    The groundsman glanced at him, eyes curious at the interruption to his work.
    “Well?” he said.
    Benson said: “I came out here to get a little more information, if I can, about your employer, Mr. Hickock.”
    The man just stared at him, face secretive. It was plain that he could keep his own counsel, and that of his employer.
    “They tell me,” Benson went on, “that you were one of the last around here to see Mr. Hickock before he left the other day—and didn’t come back.”
    “Who told you?” said the man suspiciously.
    Benson jerked his head toward the big house. The man drew the natural conclusion. His face lost its guarded secretiveness. Something like relief came into his eyes.
    “Oh! So they’ve decided at last to tell the cops, and you were sent out! That’s good. I don’t think people ought to keep these things quiet.”
    “Very dangerous to,” agreed Benson. “Tell me what you know of the disappearance, will you?”
    “I suppose they’ve told you most of it in the house,” the man said, shrugging his shoulders. “Three mornings ago, Mr. Hickock left for the office. But on the way he was going to stop off at the home of Mr. John Lansing. Mr. Lansing called at breakfast and asked him to. Anyhow, that’s what the second maid says. Mr. Hickock left, driving his own car, and that was the last of him.”
    “He didn’t get to the office after the call to Mr. Lansing?”
    “Nope. He left here—and disappeared, that’s all. But the call from Mr. Lansing must have been a stall. I hear they’ve called there a dozen times. There’s nobody home. Mr. Lansing himself is down in Florida, and has been for three months. His house seems to be all shut up.”
    “They certainly delayed about calling the police,” said Benson expressionlessly.
    The man shrugged again.
    “You know how it is. His family’s wild. His friends and the guys who work for him are nuts. But everybody’s afraid to say a word to the cops for fear it’ll go hard with Old Ironsides. They’re just sittin’ around waiting for a ransom demand, I guess. Far’s I know, none has come yet.”
    “So he went to John Lansing’s home,” Benson repeated.
    He left, to go there himself.
    He arrived just as a big town car with a giant of a man in chauffeur’s livery at the wheel, swirled out of the drive and began going like a comet away from the place. He took the car’s number.
    Five minutes later, after observing the wrecked front door of Lansing’s place and confirming the report that the place was closed and tenantless, he phoned the motor bureau and found that the town car belonged to Arnold Leon.
    Fifteen minutes later his car, a fast roadster he’d bought early that morning, slid to a stop in front of the Leon residence. He saw the town car in front of the garage and as he went toward it, he saw the huge chauffeur hurrying from the rear door of the house, shedding his livery coat as he walked.
    Benson stopped in front of him. “Just a minute,” he said.
    The man stopped and stared down at him.
    Thirteen years before, in Alaska, Benson had known a man called Bull Red. He was just under seven feet tall, with a leonine mane of red hair, and bent crowbars with his bare hands without bothering to brace them over his knee. Not since the days of Bull Red had Benson seen such size as he saw now, in this chauffeur.
    “All right, what do you want?” snapped the huge fellow, holding his coat over his

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