Read Online The Avenger 3 - The Sky Walker by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online
Authors: Kenneth Robeson
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said, wringing at his wet coat sleeves and scowling bleakly. “We’re through now. Ye know, we’ll catch our death of colds in this water if we don’t watch out.”
Benson had the map of the railroad’s course in his mind.
“Rosemont is about five miles up,” he said. “It’s one of the bigger shore towns. We can get a car there—maybe a plane.”
But they weren’t to get to Rosemont without a short delay.
They saw the great dark bulk of the shore when they’d rounded a headland about a mile up. A huge thing like a long, flat box with the ends undercut, weather-beaten and shabby.
It was a car ferry. On the sides were still the letters, “Catawbi Railroad.” It was high on the beach, but such was its length that the far end extended quite a distance out into the water. Its condition suggested that it had long outlived its usefulness, and hence had simply been beached and abandoned. So there the great scow stood, like a tremendous cake of soap half in and half out of the lake.
Benson’s icy, pale eyes probed the vast hulk as they approached it. When they were even with it, Smitty and Mac started to swing on, but Benson stopped them.
“I think we’ll have a look at that,” he said.
They covered the hundred yards from track to water, and walked around the part on the beach.
At end and sides, the heavy timbers rose like an unbroken cliff, offering no way into the thing. It was just what it seemed, an abandoned barge on the beach. But Benson still was not satisfied. The opposite end, out in the lake, was out of sight of anyone standing at any point on the shore.
“We’ll wade out,” he said.
They waded, then swam. And Benson’s thoroughness was justified. In the lake end of the ferry, which loomed up at least twenty feet from the water, was a thin crack which ran on and on till the eye took in the fact that it was the edge of a gigantic door.
A portal taking up almost the whole end.
Down at the side, near the water, a plank was broken in what seemed an innocent way. But as they swam nearer they saw that the jagged resulting hole was ample to take a man’s body.
The broken plank made a little door beside the huge one.
The three went in, with Smitty having a little trouble forcing his great bulk in the small opening. Inside, the feeling was that which you get in a big cave. All was darkness; the fragment of light coming in where the plank was broken away did not extend for more than a few yards.
Benson took out a small flash whose case was waterproof and whose bulb had withstood the shock of hitting the water. He played it around.
The tiny ray didn’t begin to penetrate the length and breadth of the ferry. But it did light on something that brought instant identification to all three men.
That object was a length of small, narrow-gauge track running at a slope down into the water at the lake end of the ferry. On the track was a small wooden cradle mounted on flanged wheels. It was the sort of runway which is used to haul surfboats out of the water and up on a drydock.
Or amphibian planes.
“This may have been abandoned once,” said Smitty. “But it isn’t any more. It’s being used as an airplane hangar now.”
“For once, ye’re right,” said the Scot. Between him and the giant had developed a habit of biting repartee that might have made a stranger think they disliked each other very much. But the stranger would have been wrong.
Benson eyed the track with thoughtful, pale eyes. In the icy clarity of those eyes was grim urgency. Many lives had been lost in the affair of the man who walked the sky. Every fiber of the dynamic body impelled Benson to fast action lest many more be lost.
“I’ve got to get back to the city,” he said, dead lips, as usual, barely moving in his paralyzed face. “But just the same, this place ought to be investigated thoroughly. Smitty, you look around and come back to me with a complete report. Mac, you’d better come with me.”
The gray fox of
Benson had the map of the railroad’s course in his mind.
“Rosemont is about five miles up,” he said. “It’s one of the bigger shore towns. We can get a car there—maybe a plane.”
But they weren’t to get to Rosemont without a short delay.
They saw the great dark bulk of the shore when they’d rounded a headland about a mile up. A huge thing like a long, flat box with the ends undercut, weather-beaten and shabby.
It was a car ferry. On the sides were still the letters, “Catawbi Railroad.” It was high on the beach, but such was its length that the far end extended quite a distance out into the water. Its condition suggested that it had long outlived its usefulness, and hence had simply been beached and abandoned. So there the great scow stood, like a tremendous cake of soap half in and half out of the lake.
Benson’s icy, pale eyes probed the vast hulk as they approached it. When they were even with it, Smitty and Mac started to swing on, but Benson stopped them.
“I think we’ll have a look at that,” he said.
They covered the hundred yards from track to water, and walked around the part on the beach.
At end and sides, the heavy timbers rose like an unbroken cliff, offering no way into the thing. It was just what it seemed, an abandoned barge on the beach. But Benson still was not satisfied. The opposite end, out in the lake, was out of sight of anyone standing at any point on the shore.
“We’ll wade out,” he said.
They waded, then swam. And Benson’s thoroughness was justified. In the lake end of the ferry, which loomed up at least twenty feet from the water, was a thin crack which ran on and on till the eye took in the fact that it was the edge of a gigantic door.
A portal taking up almost the whole end.
Down at the side, near the water, a plank was broken in what seemed an innocent way. But as they swam nearer they saw that the jagged resulting hole was ample to take a man’s body.
The broken plank made a little door beside the huge one.
The three went in, with Smitty having a little trouble forcing his great bulk in the small opening. Inside, the feeling was that which you get in a big cave. All was darkness; the fragment of light coming in where the plank was broken away did not extend for more than a few yards.
Benson took out a small flash whose case was waterproof and whose bulb had withstood the shock of hitting the water. He played it around.
The tiny ray didn’t begin to penetrate the length and breadth of the ferry. But it did light on something that brought instant identification to all three men.
That object was a length of small, narrow-gauge track running at a slope down into the water at the lake end of the ferry. On the track was a small wooden cradle mounted on flanged wheels. It was the sort of runway which is used to haul surfboats out of the water and up on a drydock.
Or amphibian planes.
“This may have been abandoned once,” said Smitty. “But it isn’t any more. It’s being used as an airplane hangar now.”
“For once, ye’re right,” said the Scot. Between him and the giant had developed a habit of biting repartee that might have made a stranger think they disliked each other very much. But the stranger would have been wrong.
Benson eyed the track with thoughtful, pale eyes. In the icy clarity of those eyes was grim urgency. Many lives had been lost in the affair of the man who walked the sky. Every fiber of the dynamic body impelled Benson to fast action lest many more be lost.
“I’ve got to get back to the city,” he said, dead lips, as usual, barely moving in his paralyzed face. “But just the same, this place ought to be investigated thoroughly. Smitty, you look around and come back to me with a complete report. Mac, you’d better come with me.”
The gray fox of
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