The Avenger 5 - The Frosted Death (13 page)

And he was the Man of a Thousand Faces.

He could deftly mold his countenance into the exact resemblance of almost any other face; and when proper color eyes and facial tinting were added, he was that other man.

He prepared to become somebody else now.

He propped up the unconscious man he had brought in from the roof. Beside the man’s face, he placed a small mirror. By looking into the mirror, Benson could see his own wax-white countenance close beside the other man’s florid face.

He opened the case.

It was a make-up kit such as couldn’t be duplicated anywhere outside of a large Hollywood studio. There was a tray in which dozens of tissue-thin glass shells reposed. The shells were tiny cups, designed to fit over Benson’s colorless eyeballs. On each pair was painted a slightly different colored pupil. Thus, by selection, The Avenger could acquire brown eyes, or blue, or amber, or any other color.

He slipped a pair of shells with gray-brown pupils over his eyeballs, holding the unconscious man’s eyelids open for an instant, to check the color again. Then he began to manipulate the modeling-clay texture of the flesh of his face.

The nose flattened, broadened, became slightly bulbous at the tip. The cheeks became shallower, fleshier-looking. With a careful hand, Benson tinted the result to the high, florid color of the man. Then over his shock of snow-white hair, he drew a wig with close-cropped, light brown hair.

He estimated the height of the man.

“Shoes,” he said to Nellie, “with two-and-one-quarter-inch lifts.”

He was in the unconscious man’s suit when Nellie Gray got back. He put on the height-adding, special shoes and the man’s derby, with the two little holes in it where Mike’s venomous small bullet had gone in and out again.

And The Avenger was that man!

Benson went through the pockets of the garments he wore. He was, he discovered, a man by the name of Molan Brocker. There was a recently stamped passport in his coat pocket, from a powerful European nation, announcing that fact.

Beside the passport, there was a little money. But there was only one bit of paper of any kind. That was the torn-off corner of an envelope. The corner contained a printed return address. The address read: Klammer Importing Co., Fifth Avenue.

Benson went back down to the second floor and out onto the roof. The other man was still lying there, deeply unconscious. It was possible that he had a mild concussion from the bullet’s crease; but his life was in no danger.

Benson went to the edge of the roof. There was a heavy rainpipe there; and it was up this that the two men had climbed in the first place. The Avenger went down the pipe and along the areaway to the street on which the garage fronted.

Two men promptly wheeled toward him from across the street, unconsciously marching in exact unison. Two more came toward him from down beyond the garage. It was so precisely and mechanically done that it was like the changing of the guard.

Benson was so good at judging men that he was almost psychic about it. At a glance he picked the one of the four with the most authority in the set of his jaw. This one he approached at once.

“Brocker!” the man said. “Why do you leave your post? Do you not know—”

The Avenger knew a dozen languages, and knew them so well that he had no accent in any. The knowledge was advantageous, now; the man spoke in the tongue of north Europe.

“There has been trouble,” Benson replied in the same language. He had had no chance to hear the real Brocker speak; so he could only guess at the proper, guttural intonation. “The man with the white hair—I believe he has gotten away.”

“Impossible!” snapped the authoritative-looking man. “All have been in place in front. And if you and Vogg have been properly on duty in the rear—”

Benson had only been waiting to learn the name of the other man.

“Vogg has been hurt.”

“Hurt! There was a fight?”

“No! I don’t know what happened. I turned, to see that Vogg was down. I ran to the areaway and looked down. There was a sound that I could hardly hear. I leaped back from the edge with these holes in my hat.” He pointed at the bullet holes. “Some one had shot me.”

“You saw no one?”

“I was not sure. I leaped back with my own gun out. I thought I saw a man running this way. A man, it seemed, with white hair showing under the rim of his hat.”

“No one, of any color hair, has come into this street. I am positive. But this is serious!”

“What shall I do now? Return to my post?”

“Of what use?” said the man bitterly. “If you and Vogg were attacked, it must have been that during the distraction our enemy did, indeed, manage to slip away. Is Vogg badly hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then leave him to look after himself. You—report to our superiors immediately. I shall get the rest, and we will comb the neighborhood before we accept, as fact, the white-haired man’s escape.”

He turned away, and Benson, walking with a stiff and military gait on his high-lift shoes, went down the street.

Report to our superiors!

He had intended only to get away from his headquarters. But with a glance at the men on this street, he had had a swift change of plan. It had seemed like an excellent time to find out a bit about this foreign, efficient corps on United States soil.

Klammer Importing Co., Fifth Avenue.

That might or might not be the headquarters for this ruthless crew. He could only chance it.

The Klammer office building was old, part apartments and part offices. The Klammer Co. was on the fourth floor, walk-up. Benson opened the door there.

He could not make his face express agitation—or anything else. So he did it by the swift pace of his entrance and his hurried tone to the young lady at a desk near the door.

“I must report at once! Important!”

“To whom?” asked the girl, in the same European tongue.

“To whom do you suppose, stupid?” Benson snapped. “Be quick—”

An inner door opened. A man with a paunch and a square-looking head stepped out.

“Very well, Brocker. Make your report.”

“The man with the white hair,” The Avenger said, making his voice urgent and wishing he could do the same with his moveless face, floridly made up in another man’s image. “He has gotten away from us.”

“Fool!” rasped the paunchy man. “Do you know how serious that is?” He stepped forward. “Where did he go? Did you follow? Have you any idea?”

“We didn’t have the chance to follow. He was too swift.”

The paunchy man paced up and down, hands twisting behind his back.

“Who can say where he has gone, now! Who can tell what harm he can work! We have just gotten the last of our reports on the meddler, Benson. They are most disquieting. You pack of fools!”

“We admit it, sir,” said Benson meekly, timidly. “And now—your orders?”

“Be at ease. Go where you like, you—” he searched for expletives and couldn’t seem to find any strong enough. “You and the others shall pay for this when we get back to the homeland. You know how you will pay.”

Brocker gave the salute of the land whose language he was talking and started for the door. He didn’t appear to do so, but he moved a little more slowly than he might have. Before he had gotten the door open, the paunchy man whirled to the girl.

“The telephone!” he rapped out. “They must be warned up on the coast—”

Benson went out.

“They must be warned up on the coast.” It told him a lot.

The ultimate use for the frosted death had become increasingly obvious, in the last twenty-four hours. It was to be a ghastly war weapon, to be shipped abroad. To the country from which had come these heavy-shouldered, phlegmatic-looking men who worked like a military machine rather than a gang.

Very well, but to be used by that country, it would have to be shipped there first. That meant two things.

The terrible white stuff was being cultivated somewhere in large quantities, and packaged somehow for handling.

It could not be shipped openly. Nor would anyone even try to smuggle it, on a large scale, on regular ships. Too much chance of its being discovered.

What craft could bear it most secretly? An undersea boat. Where would it head in to an obscure port?

“Up
the coast,” the paunchy man had said.

Somewhere north of New York a submarine would be stealing in—if it had not anchored already. Almost certainly near there, some kind of hidden plant would be located, turning out the shipment for the sub.

But Benson shelved this valuable thought for the moment. At the time, that day, that Claudette Sangaman had almost been killed, a chemist at the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp. named Mickelson had been absent. He might have been the one to toss the glass capsule at her—though this would have upset considerably, the theories Benson had formulated. Or his absence might be a coincidence meaning nothing—or a lot.

Benson set out to discover what it did mean.

Andrew Mickelson, of the Sangaman-Veshnir laboratory, had had nothing to do with the glass capsule tossed at the feet of Claudette Sangaman. He hadn’t even been in New York at that moment. From an early lunch hour on, Mickelson had traveled, all afternoon and evening, on train, bus, hired car and finally afoot, to get where he was, now.

That place was the forest hide-out of Thomas Sangaman. And Mickelson grinned insolently, menacingly, as he sat on the rustic divan in the pine-wailed living room.

Sangaman hadn’t met Mickelson with a gun. Veshnir, as far as Sangaman knew, was still around. He had only gone out of here a half hour before. He had thought it was Veshnir coming back, when Mickelson knocked.

However, Sangaman didn’t think of it, now, as Mickelson’s tap at the door that he had heard. It was the knock of doom itself. That much had come out in a short time.

“So!” Mickelson said, grinning at the lined old face of his former employer, and then grinning at the rustic room. “This is the hide-away! And that puts Veshnir in cahoots with you! I had an idea it would be like that. I’d have bet you were up here.”

“How did you know of this place?” asked Sangaman wearily. He wasn’t particularly curious about the answer. He felt completely beaten down. “I thought Veshnir had kept it a close secret—”

“Sure! So close that nobody knows he owns a place in Maine—but me. I know it because he wanted it kept secret. I let him use me as dummy. I bought the place, giving still another name, and paying cash Veshnir handed me. I never thought it would mean anything to me. Then you disappear, and I put two and two together and find it does mean something to me.”

“What?” sighed Sangaman. “The notoriety of being the man who found me? But if that was all you wanted, you’d have come here with police.”

“That’s right,” smirked Mickelson. He was a spindly man with eyes that could bully, even though they were inherently those of a coward. “It’s not fame I want.”

Sangaman stared with dawning comprehension.

“It’s money,” Mickelson said. “And believe me, I want plenty.”

“I don’t quite understand—”

“Oh, yes, you do!” said Mickelson. “You are wanted for murder. And for a lot more. As long as you stay here you’re safe. But if the cops ever get you, you’ll go to the chair. That is, you’ll go to the chair if you live that long. You’re apt to be lynched if the public gets hold of you.”

“Well, that is all true.”

“Sure it’s true! So that’s where I come in. You give me one hundred thousand dollars, or I turn you in to the police.”

Sangaman sat with his head in his hands. His voice was that of a thoroughly beaten man when he said without looking up:

“I was rich last week. I could have given you that much money. But not now. I fled from New York too abruptly to have been able to bring much money. I have only two thousand dollars with me.”

“You can get the rest,” said Mickelson threateningly. “And believe me, you’d better.”

Sangaman only sat with his head in his hands. Mickelson went on:

“I’ll take what cash you have as a first payment. Then you get in touch with Veshnir. He wouldn’t have hidden you here if he wasn’t willing to help you. Get the rest from him. I’ll give you twelve hours—”