"Avenger - 4303 - Calling Justice, INC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Avenger)

sent us, when we designed the gun assembly for the wings. It'll do three hundred cruising."

Smitty nodded and got on the phone, swiftly gave instructions. "Warm it up fast," he ordered.
"We'll be taking off in twenty minutes!"

Just as he hung up, Dick Benson got a hairline tuning on a Miami station. They both became tense
as they heard a news announcer:

". . . that the police are not sure whether the incredible battle of the Sunset Hotel is
linked with the auburn-haired girl who is being sought as the murderer of the unknown man
at the Daytona Beach bus terminal. There is reason to believe that the men who boldly posed
as F.B.I. agents in that battle were in reality a contingent of the Royce Haggard gang. It
boils down to the fact that they abducted a girl from the Sunset Hotel--a girl who may or
may not be the one wanted for murder."

With a muttered oath, Dick Benson snapped off the radio and sprang up.

Smitty uttered an ejaculation of dismay. "She's tangled up with the Haggard crowd! And all
alone! Good Lord, she hasn't a chance!"

They both sprang to a desk in a far corner of the room and each took an extra gun--a heavy
.45 caliber automatic. In addition they helped themselves to several other accessories which had
been developed in The Avenger's laboratories for the specific purpose of fighting fire with fire.

"Let's go!" Dick Benson said. "And God grant that we aren't too late!"

As they hurried down the back way to their secret garage, Smitty groaned. "It'll take us
almost five hours to make Miami. If she's in Haggard's hands she won't live that long--unless
she's got an ace up her sleeve!"

It was exactly four hours and seven minutes later that Dick Benson put the Beaufort down on
the airfield just outside Miami. He had pushed the ship as she had never been pushed before--even
by test pilots. She was whining in every strut and for the last hundred miles they had thought
that the port wing would tear itself off. But the ship held together by a miracle and they hopped
out of it and raced to the waiting car for which they had radioed. Sixteen minutes later they
were outside the Sunset Hotel. Over the radio, while flying south, they had caught further news
reports, and they now had most of the story pieced together. Benson had decided to start from the
Sunset Hotel on the theory that it was Nellie who had been kidnaped by the men posing as Federal
agents. They left their hired car a block away and walked past the Sunset Hotel on the opposite
side of the street. It was almost four a.m. and the city was as quiet as a tomb, with the heat
hanging heavy in the air. The semitropical dawn would break in a short while' but now the moon
was overcast and the night was dark.

It was Just as they were almost abreast of the hotel that Benson suddenly seized Smitty's arm
and dragged him in under the shelter of an overhanging balcony. He was not s moment too soon, for
a black limousine which had swung into the street with dimmed-out lights stopped at the entrance
of the hotel. Three men emerged and a uniformed patrolman who was evidently on guard, came
forward to meet them, half drawing a revolver from his holster. But he had no chance to get it
all the way out for there was a spurt of flame from a silenced gun in the car and the policeman
went down, dead before he hit the sidewalk. Then three more men came out of the car. One of them