thereon.
CHAPTER VIII
Will Willis
The farm was abandoned and for sale, which allowed its location to be quickly learned from a real estate company. It was beautiful, along the Hudson, with a tumbledown boathouse in the midst of trees.
A form suddenly appeared in the branches of the trees nearest the back of the boathouse and dropped lightly to the ground, where high underbrush, and the rear wall of the boathouse concealed it nicely. It was Dick Benson.
The Avenger leaned close to the wooden wall, and listened. He heard the breathing of two men. Two only, in the place. Then he heard a strangled curse; the voice of Smitty.
He looked down.
About two feet up from the ground, two holes had recently been bored. They were on each side of a row of nails indicating one of the main supporting upright beams of the weathered but stout old building.
Through these holes came the two ends of a steel cable, which had been twisted and fastened together. The Avenger’s eyes showed fast comprehension as the cable moved, and there was a curse from inside again.
Smitty had broken an ordinary rope. So the second time he was taken, his captors had used steel cable. They had passed a loop around the giant’s seated body, had run the ends back of him through the wall on each side of a big beam, and there had fastened the ends, binding him with a coil of steel. And let him break that!
The ends had been spliced with powerful pliers. But The Avenger’s slim fingers had strength unbelievable. They managed to twist loose the steel wires composing the cable, one by one, without tools, till the ends hung free.
There was another straining at the cable a moment later, the ends whisked through the holes, and Smitty rumbled on the other side of the wall:
“Hey! I’m loose. Those chumps must not have fastened the cable as tight as I thought— Chief!”
Smitty had looked through one of the holes and seen an eye as icy and pale as ice in moonlight.
Benson went around and into the boathouse. Smitty was stretching his great body. Then he untied another man, who had been bound only with rope.
The man was elderly, with straggly gray whiskers and a sparse mop of gray hair that could well have stood barber’s shears. The hair and the wide stare in his eyes made him look like a mildly insane man.
“Will Willis,” Smitty said, jerking his head toward his companion. “I caught him sneaking around Clagget’s field last night. I mean, he caught me. I’d just finished telling you I was all right when I turned and looked into this guy’s gun. He even fired at me—but missed.”
“They stole my inventions,” muttered the elderly man, eyes staring.
“A minute later,” said Smitty, “a couple of guys, who’d hidden in the hangar without my knowing it, came out and got the drop on both of us. I’d have bopped them, but this guy, who says his name is Will Willis, fell against me. I think he did it on purpose.”
Smitty glowered at the man, who only ran his hand through his wild hair and said:
“My inventions. They stole them.”
Benson’s eyes, like pale diamond drills, were on the wide, staring ones.
“What inventions, Willis?” he said.
“They stole them,” Willis said, as if he hadn’t heard The Avenger.
“Who stole them?”
He heard that a little better. “I don’t know. Somebody. Somebody stole them all.”
“You mean, the new features of the mystery car?”
“How do you know that?” The wide eyes dilated even more. “Who are you? What do you know?” The tone dropped again. “Can you tell me where my inventions are?”
“You’re not well,” The Avenger said.
Suddenly his hand went out, and a deft thumb rolled the man’s upper eyelid back. For an instant, before Will Willis jerked away, Benson stared at the exposed eyeball. His own eyes glittered a little more brightly, but he only said again:
“You’re not well. You had better come with us to my place, where we can help you.”
The three went out of the
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