Free The Avenger 24 - Midnight Murder by Kenneth Robeson Page A

mechanic was out there—the one who had checked over the plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania field.
    Spade had said the mechanic had not shown up for work since that time and that he was worried about him. Benson was concerned about him, too. But he did not immediately go to the address Spade had given him.
    He went to the second floor of headquarters. The rooms down there were fitted up luxuriously into suites. In one of these suites was the girl he had brought in from General Laboratories. The one called, by the gang, Molly.
    When The Avenger entered her suite, the girl looked as defiant as she was pretty. She began to protest at being held here, threatening all sorts of dire things. The Avenger’s calm voice cut across the protests:
    “Your full name, I believe, is Molly Carroll.”
    “I will tell you nothing,” she flared.
    “Your brother is, or was, Wayne Carroll. Captain Carroll, who piloted the plane in which died Aldrich Towne, of General Laboratories, and two army procurement officers.”
    The girl said nothing.
    “You are very much of an amateur in crime, Miss Carroll, to use your own car in your trip out to General Laboratories. At least, if you had to use your own car, you should have put on stolen plates. I am inclined to think you are not a crook at all, in spite of your friends.”
    The girl said nothing.
    “It is going to look bad for you,” said Benson quietly. “Your brother is under a cloud. Your actions brand you pretty definitely.”
    The girl bit her lip hard.
    “And yet,” The Avenger’s even voice went on, “I think there may be a great deal of circumstantial evidence here. Your brother was found in such a way as to indicate that he was trying to escape by parachute from the plane, with the secret invention, leaving the rest to go on to their deaths.
    “But there is another possibility. Your brother may have seen that the crash was inevitable in spite of all he could do, and may have tried to get away with the device to save it; to turn it over to the army and be sure no one got it from the wreckage and ran off with it. That would make him a quick-thinking hero instead of a traitor. After talking with several of his superiors, I am inclined to think that this last is true.”
    Molly Carroll began to cry. This had cracked her where fear had not.
    “It is true,” she said after a minute. “I know it is true, because I knew Wayne. He was no thief or traitor. As for murdering anybody—”
    She dabbed at her eyes.
    “The newspapers got it all wrong. Everybody did. Every one was condemning him. So I went to General Laboratories to see if the men out there couldn’t set the world straight about my brother. I spoke to Mr. Grace first; he was there at the field.”
    Her eyes flamed.
    “He said he believed that rotten story, too. He said he was sure my brother had crashed the plane deliberately; that there was no other reason why it should have crashed. I went to another man there; I believe he manages the place.”
    “Spade?” said The Avenger.
    “Yes, that’s the one. He was nicer than Mr. Grace, but he offered no hope. He said my brother was dead anyway, and he didn’t see that it made much difference what people thought of him. That didn’t satisfy me. I was out to clear his name. And I began to think there was something odd about General Laboratories. Odd that everyone should be very certain it was all Wayne’s fault. Then Mr. Spade said something that scared me a lot—”
    “He said if you weren’t careful you might be arrested yourself and held while your brother was being investigated?” asked Benson.
    “Why, yes—he did.”
    “So you left rather in a hurry. And at the gate, you were seized and held by some men.”
    Molly Carroll nodded.
    “There were a dozen or more,” she said. “Leading them was a monstrous fat man.” This was news to The Avenger as Smitty and Nellie hadn’t gotten back, yet. “The way they looked, I thought they were going to kill me. Then