The Avenger 5 - The Frosted Death (17 page)

Sangaman had refused to present The Avenger with one detail that would have been sure to distract him for at least a little while, and about which nothing could be done anyhow.

That was the appearance of the hand that Veshnir had taken in his own gloved hand some hours before.

The hand looked as if covered with powdered sugar. So did the wrist and arm it was attached to.

Sangaman’s right arm looked like a snow limb almost to the shoulder.

The smoke was ceasing as Benson ran toward it. But there was still enough to guide him till his quick eyes caught the subdued black of the tarpaper building in the gloom of the woods. He got to the door of the place just as the first of the eight men inside began to come out with several trays of capsules.

And just as the crew of the submarine rushed up behind him. There were eight men in front of him and nineteen behind.

The Avenger turned, marched up to the sub captain, and gave the stiff salute of his country.

“Molan Brocker reporting,” he said. “I am of the New York organization.”

He hoped fervently that none of the sub crew knew Molan Brocker. Some of the florid facial tinting was wearing off by now. And besides, there was always one cardinal danger that threatened Benson when he was disguised as another person, like this.

That was the movelessness of his paralyzed face.

But his luck was out, here.

“Brocker?” said the sub’s commanding officer. “I know no Brocker.”

“I have passport and credentials,” said Benson.

Then one of the eight from within spoke up.

“He is Molan Brocker, as he says. Of the New York unit. I know him well.”

The Avenger nodded formally to the speaker, meanwhile studying him without seeming to do so.

It was the man who had broken the capsule between Mac and Josh, though Benson did not know that. The man who had a spark more imagination and intelligence than the rest.

“Very well, Brocker, what have you to report?” the sub captain said.

“Possible danger,” said Benson, playing out the part he had begun with the plane pilot, lying unconscious at the controls now. “I have been commanded to give you the message to leave your present anchorage and submerge down the coast. And you are to remain submerged during daylight hours.”

The man who had said he knew Brocker was looking at Benson with a curious fixity. The Avenger didn’t quite like his expression.

The sub captain’s reaction was the same as the plane pilot’s.

“Why did you not radio this message? Why was the risk taken of coming up here in person?”

“It was feared that the code and wave lengths might be known to the authorities—” began Benson.

The stare of curiosity with which the man who knew Brocker was regarding him, was becoming fixed and icy. Something was wrong! Benson could not guess what.

“You have had medical treatments in New York, Molan?” the man said suddenly.

“Medical treatments?” Benson repeated.

“Why do you not call me by my name, Molan?” the man said softly. “Surely you have not forgotten my name?”

Benson said nothing to that. Every muscle of his gray-steel body was as taut as a violin string. His brain was racing to fathom the reason for this sudden suspicion.

The crew of the sub were instinctively gathering a little closer.

“Do you remember, Molan,” the man went softly on, “the time in Kolmogne when we went swimming and you saved my life?”

A trap, likely. If Benson said yes, the man was apt to say there had been no such occurrence.

“I’m afraid I do not,” Benson said. “In fact, I do not remember ever having been in Kolmogne—”

“Seize him!” the man screamed. “Brocker has a twitching of his right cheek muscles. This man has not. And he does not remember our childhood in Kolmogne.”

The Avenger had overestimated his man. The question had been a straight one and not a trick.

The crew leaped toward him.

The muscles of The Avenger’s body seemed to have more power, pound for pound, than any normal muscle should have.

As the crew leaped toward him, he jumped straight up and forward.

His hands hooked over the edge of the tarpaper roof of the shack.

“Kill him! Our country’s future is at stake!” roared the sub captain.

Pistols were whipped out with a speed indicating long hours of barrack practice. Shots were snapped with a precision hinting at days of practice on range and field. But The Avenger, with one catlike motion, had pulled himself over the edge of the roof so that he could not be seen. Half a dozen bullets struck the spot where his body had been—but no longer was.

He raced back across the roof, and jumped from the edge of it far out into space. His hands caught a tree branch. He swung again, to the crotch of a big maple.

“He’s getting away through the branches! Follow him!”

The Avenger, never cooler than when danger was at its height, had Brocker’s coat off. Just as the first of the men rounded the building, Benson tossed the coat.

It lit ahead, in another tree. That tree was hollow. He could see the hollow from where he was; but from the ground it did not show.

The coat struck the hollow accurately and fell into it. But the running man at the corner of the shack couldn’t see that. He saw a hurtling form in the air, got a glimpse of it landing in a great tree fork, then saw it no more. And, of course, he assumed it had swung on farther into the woods.

“This way!” he yelled. “He is going this way!”

He ran forward with the rest streaming after him. All had guns in their hands now. They fired at random into the branches as they went, methodically sweeping the leafy ambush up there with searching lead fingers.

The Avenger waited till the last had gone into the woods, then calmly turned back. He lit softly on the roof of the building, walked warily so that he would not rustle the drying leaves of the branches piled there to camouflage the place from the air.

A guttural sentence indicated that not all of the men were scattered on the false scent. At least two had been left behind.

Benson felt along the tarpaper of the roof, till he found a soft spot. Here there was a knothole in the planks under the paper. He punched through it and looked down.

For an instant he was as motionless as a block of ice. His eyes, colorless, glaring, were as terrible as drawn knives. He was looking straight down at Josh and Mac.

They were sprawled on the floor, deeply unconscious. But it was not their unconsciousness that brought that look into Benson’s eyes.

Over the features of the two men was forming a whitish fine film, as if snow were sifting gently down on them as they lay.

The frosted death. It had them!

Benson faced toward the coast, leaped once more from the roof, soundlessly caught a branch, and began swinging like a gorilla toward the sea.

The Avenger went a quarter of a mile through the trees. It was miraculously done. No trained trapeze expert could have kept up with him. At the end of each swing, he seemed instantly to spot just the right branch, at the maximum distance ahead, and leap for it. So that his progress seemed one continuous flow of motion.

He could go faster on the ground, however; so he dropped the instant it seemed safe, and began running. He flitted through the woods like a gray streak, hurdling tree-trunks and underbrush, toward the coast.

Benson had to get to a short-wave radio transmitter. Fast! And the only one he could conceive of near here, was on the submarine.

The Avenger was acting on a theory that to him was just about accomplished fact. He knew men. In particular, he knew Mac and the rest of his aides. He was sure the dour Scot wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t left his drugstore. He was equally sure Mac would not have left his store if he hadn’t found the antidote for the frosted death. The Scotchman would have kept on at his laboratory bench till he dropped from fatigue.

So there was an antidote. And Mac and Josh had been taken with it. An antidote would be a priceless thing. So it was unlikely that it had been destroyed.

The sea was in sight, shimmering in the sun. Benson slowed his pace, stopped behind a big stump. He wasn’t even breathing fast from his prodigious effort. His body, it seemed, was made of metal instead of flesh and blood.

The point at which he had emerged was at the edge of one of Maine’s rock cliffs, about thirty feet above the water level. Beneath, the water pounded against the rock, quite deep clear up to the foot of the cliff. Its color told that.

Out a little way was the whalelike form of the submarine, under water to the conning tower. Over the edge of the tower hatchway, showed the head and shoulders of one of the sub’s crew. Left on guard. With how many others? The Avenger could not guess.

Benson’s hand went down to his leg, came up with the slim, blued butt of Mike, the .22, in it.

It was a long shot. Over a hundred yards, and down. It isn’t easy to shoot from an elevation. But Benson probably had no peer in marksmanship. The colorless, glacial eyes lined the sights up for about four seconds, and then he squeezed the trigger.

The man in the conning tower suddenly disappeared. There was no sound, no move. He simply slid down out of sight.

It seemed there was another man just below him. This one appeared like a jack-in-the-box, with a submachine gun poking inquisitively around over the hatch rim.

The fall of the first man must have seemed like a ghastly miracle to this man. No sound. No one near, as far as could be seen. Yet the first man had slumped down the iron rungs of the tower ladder, apparently clubbed on the top of his head!

Mike spat another leaden pea. The second man threw up his hands and fell back within. The gun he had held splashed into the water and sank.

Benson let a minute pass. No third head showed. He holstered Mike, fastened a waterproof hood over the holster. Then he straightened on the cliff edge.

Below, the surface next to the cliff was strewn with great rocks, over which water combed white. He dived, like an arrow, down the thirty feet, gliding into the water almost without a splash, with rocks to right and left so close that they almost grazed him as he passed.

He swam to the sub, lowered himself down the conning tower, and stepped over the two unconscious guards.

His steely white fingers flew at the task of altering the sub’s short-wave apparatus so that it could send to the special instrument in the Bleek Street headquarters.

“Smitty? This is Benson talking. Orders. Rush!

“Telephone Veshnir. Talk in the guttural tone and with the accent we’re familiar with. Tell him that it has been decided to cut the price to be paid him in half. When he protests, tell him he will take that or nothing at all, and that he is lucky to be getting that much. Then hang up. Repeat to me.”

Benson turned from the receiver, satisfied, as Smitty repeated the message.

He was betting that Veshnir had some of the antidote at all times. The man dealt with the frosted death. What more natural than that he should carry some with him, in case he was unexpectedly attacked by the mold?

Everything was being wagered on this, with the lives of Josh and Mac as the stake. Wagered on this—and on the time element.