The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (2 page)

Even so, people talk. All across the desert country rumors were spreading about the chariots and what they might be. Most people who’d seen them called them the black chariots. The things weren’t black, actually, more a dark gray shade. You would have hardly been aware of them up there in the night if it hadn’t been for the tail of yellow-red fire they gave off as they streaked overhead, blotting out the stars as they passed low over the desert.

This one, the one that would cause Lieutenant Stevenson’s death, was coming in extremely low. Not more than two hundred feet above him.

He heard it first, and looked up. Instinct made him throw himself flat out on the desert road. But this wasn’t a strafing plane.

“What the hell is that thing?”

The chariot was round. A flat-seeming disk about thirty feet in diameter. Spurts of flame were shooting out of the rear end of it. There was a sound, too, an odd humming that the disk made.

The chariot continued to drop. It couldn’t be more than fifty feet from the ground now.

“He’s going to crash!”

Stevenson scrambled to his feet, abandoned his duffel bag, and went running across the desert in the wake of the falling disk.

The electric fan behind the hotel desk rattled as it spun. There was very little breeze produced by the ancient mechanism, not enough to riffle the obviously false hair of the clerk who was slouched a few feet in front of it. He was a heavyset man, in his fifties, leaning with both elbows on the knotty-pine registration counter.

From outside came the enormous gasp of the last bus from Los Angeles. The fat clerk straightened, wiped perspiration from his forehead and neck, and adjusted his wig.

A big man, a giant almost, came in out of the warm, windy desert night. He was carrying two heavy-looking suitcases as though they weighed nothing at all. Dropping the luggage in front of the desk, the big man said, “I got a reservation.”

The clerk watched the door for a moment, wondering if any more guests for the Manzana Lodge were going to come in. The glass door didn’t open again. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Name, please?”

“Smitty,” said Smitty.

“First name?”

The giant hesitated. His full name was Algernon Heathcote Smith, but he never used it. Nor was he very fond of anyone who did. “A.H. Smith,” he told the clerk finally.

“Ah, yes, here we are. Mr. A.H. Smith of New York City.” The fat man had located a small file card in a dented tin box. “Yes, we’ve got you in room 213, right between your two friends.”

Smitty smiled. “That sounds okay,” he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was almost midnight. “Kind of late, but I guess I can knock on their doors when I get up there.”

The fat clerk, as he turned the hotel register toward Smitty, said, “I don’t believe Lieutenant Stevenson has checked in as yet, sir.”

“Huh?”

After consulting another card from his tin box, the clerk said, “No, although he was due to arrive between ten and eleven this evening, according to his original reservation.”

Smitty looked over his shoulder, at the dark outskirts of the desert town. “Well, these days and a guy in the Army, nobody arrives right on the button any more. When he does show up, no matter how late, tell him to stop in.”

“I surely will.”

Smitty signed the register, then took one more look outside. “You say Dipper Willet is here?”

“Yes, Mr. Willet arrived late this afternoon. You’ll find him in room 214,” replied the clerk. “I don’t suppose you’d like me to carry your bags to your room?”

“Naw, I can manage.” He held a huge hand out.

The clerk dropped a room key into it. “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in the desert, Mr. Smith. Some people, especially folks from back East, think our climate’s just too darn dull. Dry and hot, dry and hot . . . that’s about all it ever is.”

Smitty nodded. “Be sure to tell Lieutenant Stevenson to let me know when he gets in.” His big fingers closed over the room key, and he picked up his luggage. Walking toward the stairway, Smitty frowned.

With his training and background he should be the kind of person who operated entirely on facts and figures. But once in a while Smitty got a hunch. He had one now, about his friend Ralph Stevenson. He kept on frowning.

“There’s a war on, Smitty, nothing is on time any more, nobody.” The young man in the redwood chair was small and dark.

Smitty seemed even more gigantic in contrast. “Naw, Dipper, I got a feeling something’s wrong. Look, it’s almost one
A.M.
Ralph should have got here by now.”

Dipper—his real name was Charles Willet—drew a half-circle on his knee with the base of his highball glass. “Working for Justice, Inc., has made you overly suspicious,” he said. “Now myself, after three long years with TechNamics, Ltd., over in Hawthorne, I’ve lost all my imagination. That’s great, because with no imagination, you never worry.”

Smitty sat down on the edge of his bed, studying his friend’s face. “You’re not happy over there, huh?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? TechNamics pampers me, pays me an immense salary,” he replied, “and I’m helping the war effort.”

“You guys doing defense work there?”

Dipper said, “Forget I mentioned it, Smitty. I’m not supposed to talk about it. A slip of the lip can sink a ship, and so forth.”

“A guy with your brains,” said the giant, “you ought to be happy.”

The small young man laughed. “Still the same old Smitty. You’ve got the same view of the world as Shirley Temple.”

“Maybe so.”

“And you’re happy, Smitty?”

“Sure.” He stood up and walked to the window to stare once more down at the dark desert. “Do you know which way he was coming? Maybe we could go—”

“Haven’t any idea,” said Dipper. “Ralph called me yesterday at work and mentioned something about visiting relatives before he met us for the big reunion.”

“Which relatives? Do you know where they live? We could maybe call them.”

Dipper shook his head and took a sip of his highball. “No idea. Ralph may have mentioned the name, but it sure didn’t stick in my head.”

Smitty pressed one big hand against his stomach. “Something’s wrong.”

“Turn off your imagination,” Dipper advised. “We’ll be seeing Ralph any minute now.”

But they never saw him again. Not alive.

The highway patrolman was leaning way back in the swivel chair, reading a true detective magazine. A single fly was sneaking across a patch of morning sunlight on the desk top toward the glazed doughnut on the coffee saucer. “Help you?” the patrolman asked. He read to the end of the paragraph and steepled the magazine next to his cup. “That Dillinger was something, wasn’t he?”

Smitty came closer to the desk. “I’m trying to locate a friend of mine,” he said. “I understand you guys found an abandoned car near here early this morning. Maybe it’s his.”

The patrolman looked at his coffee cup, the doughnut, the skulking fly, but never at Smitty. “What did you say your name was?”

“It’s Smith.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Smitty got out his wallet and flashed his identification at the man. “What can you tell me about that car?”

The patrolman looked at the wall clock, which jumped ahead a minute, then at his cup. “Who exactly are you looking for?”

“This is no way to get answers,” said Smitty. “I ask a question, then you ask one back.” He put his huge fists on the desk edge and leaned toward the smaller man. “My friend’s name is Lieutenant Ralph Stevenson. He was supposed to meet us over in Manzana last night. He didn’t. Early this morning I started calling around. Now we’re following up leads. What about that car?”

The highway patrolman picked a slip of paper from his desk top. “Car belongs to a Nick Carr of Glendale.”

“Yeah? And where is Mr. Carr now?”

“We’re checking into it.”

“Was it an accident?”

“We don’t believe so.”

“Where’s the jalopy now?”

After a few seconds the patrolman said, “Over in Bockman’s Garage.”

“You don’t mind my having a look at it?”

“No, you can look all you want.” He reached for the phone. “You go on over, it’s down the street two blocks to your left, and I’ll call Bockman to tell him it’s okay.” When Smitty was in the doorway, the highway cop added, “I don’t think this has anything to do with your friend.”

The giant said nothing.

Bockman was old, way up in his seventies. He gave the impression when he bent down to squint under the pickup truck he was working on that he might never be able to rise up. “What?” he said.

“I’m the guy the patrol phoned about,” repeated Smitty. “I came to look at the car they found in the desert.”

“Okay, okay.” The old man pointed into the garage at his left. “Got her in there, the coupé.”

Smitty started for the shadowy oil-smelling garage. Old Bockman followed him.

“I know,” said Bockman, “what got him.”

“Huh?” Smitty turned and eyed the ancient mechanic. “Got who?”

“Whoever it was who was driving that car,” he said. “Oh, they don’t like to talk about it, the cops, but everybody knows, anyhow.”

“What do you mean? Something out in the desert?”

Bockman jabbed a gnarled forefinger skyward. “Something up there.”

“What—planes, you mean?”

“Nope, they ain’t planes. Haven’t seen one yet myself, but they ain’t planes.” The old man wiped his palms on the legs of his tattered overalls. “Not that I go along with Prester Ambrose, but—”

“Who’s Prester Ambrose?”

“A crackpot. But he might, just might, be right about them chariots.”

Smitty put a big hand on the old man’s thin shoulder, trying not to let his exasperation show. “What are the chariots?”

“Black chariots—those that’ve seen them call them that. Black chariots, from lord knows where. They come swooping down like—”

“Mr. Smith?”

A man was standing out in the bright morning glare. He was carrying a raincoat over his arm and a briefcase in one hand.

Smitty couldn’t make out his features. Blinking, he walked over to him. “Yeah?”

The man was young, neat, affable. “Like to talk to you.”

Smitty cocked his head. “You got that look. You government?”

The clean cut young man showed him his credentials. “Don Early, from Washington, D.C.,” he said. “Heard of you.”

“Yeah, and I’ve heard of you, too, Early,” growled the giant. “You’re always butting into our cases.”

Early smiled his boyish smile. “Depends on your point of view,” he said. “Walk over to my car.”

“You got something to tell me?”

Early’s face changed; all traces of the smile vanished. “Afraid it’s bad news.”

“About Ralph?”

Early stopped on the sidewalk beside his 1938 Plymouth. “He’s dead.”

Smitty reached out, steadying himself against the car. He felt as though he’d fallen from a great height. “No, he was going to—”

“That is the car he was driving, in there,” Early went on. “He was found about a quarter-mile from it.”

“What killed him?”

“We don’t know yet.”

A terrible look crossed the big man’s face. “Somebody killed him, though?”

“He was murdered, yes.”

“How? Who did it?”

“His body is being examined now.”

“You got to know whether it was a knife or a gun or what.”

Early put a foot on the running board. “You’re on vacation, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, we were all going to get together, Ralph and Dipper and me.”

“You’re not in California on Justice, Inc., business?”

Smitty scowled. “Up till now I wasn’t. But the way you’re talking, Early, makes me—”

“I know you’d like to do something, find out who killed him,” said the government agent. “But I’d like you to leave this to us. There are certain things involved that I can’t go into. Don’t investigate, don’t ask questions.”

“I’m not going to promise anything like that. Ralph was my friend and I—”

“This isn’t like the other times. You won’t be tolerated.”

“Tolerated? Hell, we cleaned up all of those other cases for you.”

“Only a friendly warning . . . now.”

Smitty took a step back. “Ralph just died, and you’re on top of this already,” he said, slowly. “That means you were probably already out here in the desert. This is part of something bigger, ain’t it?”