The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers (17 page)

“For a man who has murdered so many of his fellows,” said Benson, staring at the little fellow who sat on the floor and rubbed his shoulder, “you don’t look very impressive. Yet you’ve certainly earned the chair. Veck, Wencilau, Sodolow, the Henderlin detective, the vice president of Henderlin Corp. and his secretary—”

“What are you talking about? You’re crazy!”

“You’re the laboratory worker who killed the four Polish scientists, disguised as a different person each time. One of the disguises carried with it the name Xisco. Your ears give you away. There are other Bertillon measurements besides the ones for ears. Didn’t you know that? You shouldn’t have pinned such faith on four completely different sets of ears. The very coincidence of four small men with extremely distinctive ears gave you away.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

At the door, the questing finger came within a quarter of an inch of finding the bolt, missed, explored again. The Avenger, pale eyes flaring at Rann, went on.

“Four of Poland’s greatest scientists discovered a new product. A ‘life-saving drug,’ as Singer said? Hardly! It was bigger than that. They discovered a substance which would make fuel out of water. Some substance which would break down the hydrogen and oxygen of H
₂
O and make them explosive. Ordinary water! They would be the world’s greatest benefactors, producing light and heat and power almost for nothing. They came to America for money, and they got a promise of it from a wealthy New Yorker. But the man wanted to exploit humanity by charging high prices, and they wanted to benefit humanity by very cheap ones. Because he wouldn’t change his mind, they simply went off again and hid.”

Rann rubbed his shoulder and sneered. There was an odd air of triumph in his eyes.

“You came along. Disguised four ways, you had served as helper for each of the four men. You knew the share each had in the final product. You said you could produce it—and would sell the secret for a big price. But first, the four originators had to die. While they lived, they could always undercut the market by manufacturing the stuff themselves. So you murdered them!”

“I seem to remember something about indigestion in the death of each,” said Rann silkily.

“Yes. Caused by the very product they had invented. Water, made explosive by the chemical, became a poison as well as a fuel. You alone, knew the four scientists. You saw to it that some substance they took into their systems contained some of the chemical, of which you had a small supply. Tested for poison, the substances showed negative, because the chemical by itself isn’t poisonous. But combined with a glass of water, or wine, it became highly explosive in a man’s stomach. He dies in convulsions. If he chances to be smoking at the time, the fumes ignite and he breathes flame. And yet so volatile is the fuel that it loses all its combustive properties when exposed to air. So stomach contents of the dead man showed no trace of what happened unless tightly corked the instant they were withdrawn—as I corked the sample from Sodolow’s stomach, and as the Montreal police evidently did with Veck.”

The finger in the lock hole touched the bolt.

“You’re mad,” said Rann, voice tinny with excitement. He could see the finger even though Benson could not. “The discovery has nothing to do with fuel—”

“A car tested and destroyed. A plane tested and destroyed. A house heated and lighted with a pipe running to the clear water of an ordinary creek. It was obvious enough. The things that happened at the house told a lot about you, by the way, Xisco, Rann, whatever your name reaily is.

“You took your secret to Singer. You also took it to the Henderlin group. They promptly shut down—no use producing oil and coal when water might come in as universal fuel. They also tried to eliminate Singer. Till the end, you played them both. Meanwhile, you proved the value of the chemical to both. One proof was the house. At that time the Henderlin group thought you’d definitely rejected their offer. They wanted the discovery publicized and investigated. They couldn’t go to the police; so they sent a man to lead my group to it. They went—and then you decided to switch to the Henderlin interests. You raced there, killed the detective and burned the house.”

There was a click as the door bolt completed its opening, and a heavy voice spoke as the door snapped open.

“Quite interesting, Mr. Benson,” the voice said. “So interesting that I think it very fortunate you will not be left alive much longer.”

“Singer—” cried Diana, whirling as Benson did.

But it wasn’t Singer.

The man standing in the doorway with hands unexpectedly empty of all weapons, had heavy eyebrows, like little cupolas, a too-heavy jaw and a mole on the left side of his nose.

“My heavens, it’s
Henderlin,”
whispered the girl. “But Henderlin is dead—”

“Not in the bathtub when it exploded,” said Benson, eyes like ice in a polar dawn. “Rann went to kill him, when Singer guessed Henderlin was behind the wreck of his home. And it was then that Rann finally decided to throw in with Henderlin. A terrific price must have been offered. Rann helped Henderlin fake his own death; then he went to the New Jersey house. But he still, for the sake of appearances and to keep Henderlin informed, hung around Singer. And he trailed any Henderlin men he saw approaching Singer, to be sure
he
wasn’t double-crossed.”

“Quite fortunate that you won’t live much longer,” murmured Henderlin. “You know too much. Or can guess—which is just as bad.”

The Avenger’s eyes were bits of ice. His face was as expressionless as the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

“Too bad you weren’t astute enough to know that Rann did
not
know the final and completed process, Henderlin,” he said.

That was a bomb in the tense air. It jolted both Rann and Henderlin. They snarled together.

“You’re mad!”

“In the bottom of the vat in which was blended the work of the four men,” said Benson, “there was a certain amount of some unspecified chemical—before the four ingredients were mixed! You didn’t know that, did you?”

Rann and Henderlin stared at each other with slack jaws. Then Henderlin snorted:

“Rubbish! Rann
does
know the completed process and he and I will be the richest men on earth when you’re dead.”

“So?” said Benson softly. “And why don’t you kill me, Henderlin?”

“I ordered the removal of the four scientists, and of anyone interfering with the tests of the car and the plane,” said Henderlin. Diana cried out in quick fury at that. The coal and oil baron didn’t even look at her. “But I do not kill myself, Benson. Thus the electric chair will never get me. I—”

There was suddenly pandemonium on the stairs. The sound of blows and shots.

“What’s happening?” yelled Rann, paling. “Henderlin—trouble—”

The door snapped open and Josh, Smitty and Mac leaped in. Josh had a puffed eye that would have showed black around it. Mac had a lump on his jaw. Smitty was unmarred but ripped of coat and collar.

“Bunch of eggs on the stairs tried to stop us,” Smitty said. “So here we are. We’d better get out—”

Mac’s yell cut across his words. Mac was staring at Henderlin with popping eyes.

“Whoosh! It’s a ghost we have wi’ us! That mon’s dead—”

“I told you there was trouble,” wailed Rann to Henderlin. “Benson’s won—”

And Henderlin smiled.

“Oh, no! He hasn’t won. The men on the stairs had orders to let these three through.”

“They—what?”

“I had an idea Benson might send for his helpers,” said Henderlin. “So when a man of mine, warned by the hole in the door where a lock should be, reported to me, I got all the others and brought them here with me. They’re on the stairs now. And in here are the four men who are all that stands between us and the biggest fortune on earth.”

His eyes, under the cupola eyebrows, rayed over Mac and Josh and Smitty and Benson.

“You are going to call those men in to shoot us down?” said The Avenger evenly.

There were scuffing sounds and subdued steps in the hall.

“I am,” said Henderlin, quite calmly. “Lives are cheap when a billion dollars is at stake.”

“I wouldn’t call them if I were you,” said Benson.

Henderlin stared, then laughed.

“Every super-murderer I’ve encountered,” said The Avenger, eyes as cold as glacier ice, “has destroyed himself when thinking to destroy me. I would advise you to bolt that door and keep everyone out.”

“Do you think I’m a child?” jeered Henderlin.

He raised his voice in triumphant command. “You—out there in the hall—come in and get them!”

Thirteen men came into the room. Eleven had automatics in their hands. The other two had submachine guns.

“Make sure of all four of them,” Henderlin said. “And take the girl, too—”

His voice died as if it had been stuck back down his throat. He stared at the men, and the vein in his forehead pulsed like a living thing.

The two machine guns were trained on
him.
Not on the other four.

This was the wrong gang. These weren’t Henderlin’s men;
these were Singer’s men!

“Help!” croaked Henderlin. It was meant for a shout. It came out as a whisper. Then the vast chatter of the machine guns roared out.

They roared only toward Henderlin. But Rann, crazed with fear, leaped the wrong way, and the slugs sliced into him, too.

Benson and the rest were next. They knew that even as Henderlin and Rann were falling. The gang couldn’t leave them alive as witnesses, even if they’d wanted to.

The Avenger’s aides moved with the prompt and wordless efficiency that made them the greatest little fighting unit on earth.

They scattered.

Smitty leaped for the machine gunners, calmly pouring more lead into the dead men. The Avenger shot three times—the three slugs left in Mike’s tiny cylinder. Then he began clubbing, leaping from side to side like a shifting gray shadow.

Mac took a man with a bony right fist just as a bullet from the man’s gun creased his outstanding left ear.

Two of the men fired point-blank at Josh, from opposite sides, and got each other in the stomach and throat instead, as the Negro danced to the right and swiftly crouched.

Smitty had the two machine gunners, with a neck in each vast paw. They were jabbing at him with the guns, letting off short bursts of slugs when they thought the line was right, missing each time by a scant inch.

The Avenger ducked, bored in as a bullet went over his head. The room was a shambles, with the gang already half down, and the rest unable to fire freely for fear of killing each other—as two men already had.

Benson got a red-headed killer with a blow that must have broken his jaw.

Then it was suddenly over.

There had been a sound like two ripe melons hitting. That was when Smitty knocked the heads of the two machine gunners together. He stood, with one of their deadly guns in his big paws, weaving the muzzle slowly from side to side.

“It’s all up,” he bellowed. “Unless some of you want a taste—”

One man shot at the giant. And then he went down with six machine gun slugs through his thigh. The rest let their guns drop.

“Take them to the hall, Smitty,” said Benson. His dead, white face, expressionless even at this moment, was something from which the cowed gangsters shrank. His eyes were unholy, unhuman, in their colorless, cold ferocity. “You will find others there—the men Henderlin thought would come in when he called.”

In Smitty’s eyes a light dawned.

“That’s why you wanted us to leave Bleek Street openly! So this gang would trail us here—and tangle with the other—summoned by the guy who was tipped off by the hole burned in the door!”

“That’s right,” said Benson. “Fourteen men against eight—thirteen, taking out the one I hit on Bleek Street. The scuffling in the hall and on the stairs a while ago was when thirteen men sneaked up and slugged eight who had their backs turned, waiting for the call Henderlin gave.”

The girl with the black eyes, which were softer and more beautiful now stared at the white, still face with a look of awe.

“You worked it out that way!” she breathed. “You planned, like a chess player with death as the queen, to have that man destroy himself when he called for men to come and destroy you.”

Benson shrugged, eyes pale holes in his white face.

“I do not kill, myself. So I make the men I fight annihilate themselves. It saves the State the cost of fighting great wealth; yet it puts no blood on my soul.”

Smitty had the men herded to the stairs by now. The others, a few dead, the rest with cracked heads, were out there as The Avenger had predicted. Smitty felt as if ice were being drawn up and down his backbone. Long as he had worked for Benson, much as he esteemed him, The Avenger’s uncanny mastery over men and events was more than the giant could ever accustom himself to.

Benson stared at Henderlin’s corpse.

“A billion dollars! It was enough to make Henderlin forget everything else on earth—including his wife, killed in that faked-up explosion. Enough to make Singer quite willing to have done as much, save that Rann gave his enemy the upper hand. Enough for Rann to be a murdering monster for whom the chair was too good.”

He shook his head a little.

“What Rann knew, plus the secret chemical in the bottoms of the vats in Warsaw, could turn water into explosive fuel. With Rann’s death, a great invention dies. Light, heat, power, from water! The loss is a colossal defeat for mankind.”

Diana eyed him with a look that many women wore when they finally came to know this man a little. A baffled but breathless look.

“It is a great triumph for you, though,” she said. “You have brought to justice a man too powerful for any man-made laws to convict. And you saw the end of the murderer, Rann, too. A great victory, Mr. Benson.”

But The Avenger said nothing. It was doubtful if he heard her. Certainly in his pale, icy eyes there was no look of triumph.

No victory over the great crime syndicates he fought could bring him a sense of triumph. There was no room in his life for anything but more crime fighting—and more—till at last some super-killer should defeat him at his own game.