The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain (19 page)

Nellie Gray’s lovely eyes were reflecting doubt.

“That green pillar of fog the Rain God walks in,” she said, “and the lightning bolts that killed people—they looked like more than mumbo-jumbo!”

The Avenger’s icily flaring eyes glittered.

“The green cloud was quite simple. With water available, a little of it was atomized through a hose under pressure. In this hot, dry air of Idaho, the moisture instantly formed into a mist. The greenish color was the key to the riddle. Cloud Lake, unlike most crater lakes, is not crystal-clear. Its water is greenish from water growth and algae. Hence the color of the cloud formed to hide whoever wanted to kill from it.”

“And the lightning?” said Ethel breathlessly.

“Simply a high-tension wire carried by the killer in rubber-gloved hands. There’s an excellent generator in here. It could easily deliver a lethal shock through wire cable trailed off from it. And the presence of the electric cable was indicated clearly when I fired into the cloud and twice there were blue arcs in answer: the bullets struck the wire.”

“Mon, ’tis incrrredible,” burred the Scot. “And yet, it all ties together. For instance, when I got away from the Rain God in his cloud by simply climbin’ the dead tree.”

The Avenger nodded.

“The man playing god in the cloud couldn’t see in it any better than anyone else. He could simply grope till he touched his enemy with the bared end of the cable. You were up out of his reach; so the man didn’t find you.”

“The man who walks in the green cloud, and the man who is made up as our friend, Yellow Moccasins, is the same?” said Josh slowly.

“Yes,” said Benson.

“He is the murderer of my father?” asked Ethel.

“In all probability.”

“And he is the one behind the flooded bore and the installation of generators, and the trick with the atomized water, and the rest?” demanded Smitty.

“Whoosh!”
said Mac hotly. “If I ever get my hands on the skurlie—”

“He’s mine,” said Josh quickly. “He killed me, didn’t he? At least for half an hour till the chief brought me back.”

“I’ll take him,” rasped Smitty, giant hands clenching. “Just one crack at him—”

Ethel Masterson’s laugh rang out. It was cracked, hysterical.

“How you all talk,” she half-laughed, half-sobbed. “Here you face hopeless death—and you talk of dealing justice to this murderer! Why, you don’t even know who he is—who’s hiding under the Indian disguise!”

Benson’s voice was a quiet dam in the swirling path of her hysteria.

“But we do know,” he said. “I suspected it from the first—the moment I heard the successful bid of the Central Construction Co. was a full four million dollars lower than the next lowest price—”

The slab at the cell opening was rolled back. A harsh spotlight, not a flashlight but a regular reflector with an electric cable trailing back from it, stabbed within.

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” gasped a man. “They’re loose. The white-headed guy untied himself, again!”

“It don’t matter,” said another, indifferently. He raised his voice. “Come out, you apes in there. Out into the Rain God’s cave.”

Smitty’s enormous shoulders bulged with a resolve to smash out of the cell like a tank and take as many men as he could with him to the death that was so certain for all.

Benson’s steely, slim hand touched his shoulder in a restraining gesture. There was a calmness in the hand that was incredible under the circumstances.

“Come out, I said!” the man repeated insolently. “And come one at a time, with your hands up. This is the last act for you all. You can take it now, with slugs, or you can live a little longer by doing as you’re told.”

There had been changes in the big cave since the man with the cold, pale eyes and the others had been herded from it into the cell.

There were six runways leading into the big space from other parts of the amazingly labyrinthine glass mountain. Four had been blocked solidly, tightly, with the basalt slabs cunningly carved centuries ago by the original occupants of the cavern.

One tunnel, leading, Benson knew, toward the new Mt. Rainod tunnel bore, was open.

The rift right across from it, leading back to where the swift stream powered the generator, was also open and unblocked.

These things the colorless, infallible eyes saw first. Then the pale, cold gaze went to the statue of the Rain God.

The thing was over twenty feet high. The head of the statue, with carved headdress, was as big as a rain barrel. And on the head stood a figure that was right in place, there.

The figure of an Indian seeming to be centuries old, and with a face that strangely resembled the statue’s.

“Masquerading to the last,” whispered Smitty. “Guess he doesn’t want even his own thugs to know who he is.”

“Of course not,” Josh whispered back. “That way lies future blackmail, what with murder and all the rest that’s been done around here.”

The figure on top of the statue spoke, then. The armed criminals who surrounded the prisoners were silent, and a little bit in awe, even though they knew enough of the layout here to realize there wasn’t anything supernatural about it. The measured, impressive tone of the man on the statue—

“Benson,” the man said, “you and your employees, and the Indian and the rancher’s daughter, are going to die in here. That’s the reward you get for meddling in affairs that are none of your business.”

The man’s voice had been impressive. It was made to sound futile and weak by the measured tone of The Avenger.

“Murder is my business,” the man with the dead face said. “I will always meddle with it. And so far, all the murderers in whose affairs I have meddled have somehow been destroyed by their own deadly greed. Take warning from that.”

The man on the statue quivered with anger, then relaxed and laughed. It was a harsh bark of sound.

“You pick a fine time to talk big,” he sneered. “You will find yourself talking to Death in a few minutes. Have you anything to say before you die?”

“Nothing, Fyler,” said Benson steadily.

There was a full minute of silence.

“What did you call me?” said the man so theatrically posed on the statue’s head, in a strangled tone.

“I called you by name,” said The Avenger evenly. “And that is—Arthur Fyler.”

The man laughed. But the sound was strained.

“A last guess, and a bad one,” he said. “I’m not—”

“The man who saw to it that the Central Construction Co. got the Mt. Rainod tunnel job, even though it had to bid millions under the next lowest estimate,” said The Avenger, voice like that of doom, “is the man who will presently meet his victims beyond the grave. And that man is you.”

The bizarre figure on the statue faced the motley crew of gunmen.

“He’s insane,” came his urgent words. “I’ve never heard of this Arthur Fyler. I—”

“You killed Masterson, impersonating me,” Benson said, voice not seeming loud and yet drowning the other’s out. “You killed the others with your power cable. You killed Crast when he came secretly to find out for himself what was wrong and when he actually discovered the gate-valve. You used a gun belonging to your other partner, Tom Ryan, to frame him if ever the murder should be discovered. You have a fast plane hangared on the other side of the mountain, that has shuttled you back and forth from Chicago to do all these things. Probably you plan to desert your men now, and leave them here while you fly back to reap the fifteen-million-dollar reward for all your murderous work.”

The men were looking at each other, and then at the man on the statue, with smoldering eyes. A grin touched Smitty’s lips briefly, Fyler might get away with this last mass murder, but it would do him small good. These thugs would bleed him of every cent he’d ever get, now that they knew his identity. The way they were staring at each other, greedily, speculatively, proved that—

There was a movement beside the giant so fast and so unexpected that even Smitty, used as he was to The Avenger’s lightning motions, gaped with surprise.

Like a leaping cougar, the gray steel man was across the cave and at one cleared entrance—leading toward the tunnel bore in Mt. Rainod’s flank—before anyone else could move.

“Get him!” yelled one of the men. “If he gets away—”

The leader on the statue’s stone head didn’t move. There was a curious smile on his lips. Instantly the reason for the smile came out.

Four men walked into the cave from the rift. And Benson came backing before them, because four guns were trained on his chest.

“I anticipated some such thing,” said Fyler. “So—
don’t kill him!”

Benson hadn’t given up yet. With another of his incredibly fast moves, he was on the men, sweeping their guns aside, grappling with them.

But the outcome was the expected one when the odds are one to four. The men got him down on the floor, in the very entrance of the rift. Then they brought him roughly back.

“I’m glad you heard my orders not to kill him,” said the man on the statue. “That would have been too swift.”

Benson stood silent, basilisk-eyed.

“I was beginning to think nothing could beat that man,” whispered Ethel to Nellie.

Nellie waved her hand impatiently, and kept on staring at The Avenger. She
still
believed nothing could beat him—would keep on believing that right up to the moment when she gasped her last breath.

Fyler was climbing down from the statue. He went toward the open rift leading toward the tunnel bore. All the men with him retreated slowly, too, with guns on the prisoners.

Far off, down the other rift that was unblocked by the basalt slabs, could be heard a rumble. The rush of water. Many tons of it.

Smitty quivered for action, but still the cold gaze of The Avenger held him back. Josh was biting his lips, knowing he was to die and not liking it any more than any other man, but quite calm. Nellie’s head was high, and the dead rancher’s daughter was taking a bit of courage from her example.

Mac spoke, with his crazy reversal of pessimism coming to the fore, as usual, when there was no way out.

“I’d hate to be in Fyler’s shoes when the chief gets through with him,” he said. “I’ll pray a wee bit for him when we get out of this. He’ll be needin’ it.”

Fyler heard, and laughed once more. Then he was in the rift. The men crowded in after him, three abreast, guns holding the captives to the last. They were finally all out.

“Chief,” pleaded Smitty, “let me rush ’em. I could get at least three or four—”

“No!” said The Avenger, icy eyes on the tunnel entrance.

There was a scraping sound. Then one more of the great basalt slabs dropped from the top of the rift. The last man out had released it.

Now there was only one opening into the cave of the Rain God. That was the one down which sounded the furious rushing of water. A sound that was very near, now.

All the other exits were hopelessly blocked with tons of the glasslike basalt.

Suddenly the lights went out. They were in pitch darkness. And the sound of the flood was a booming roar in their ears.

Ethel screamed wildly.

Nellie said: “Oh! That’s worse than anything else. This darkness.”

“The water has flooded the generator,” said Benson, voice quiet in the dark. “The gate-valve from Cloud Lake has been fully opened, for the last time. Everybody, start climbing the statue of the Rain God.”

“Where is the statue? I can’t feel—” Ethel cried.

“Here,” said Benson, tone vibrant but calm.

He felt the girl’s hand, and guided her to the back of the statue where irregularities allowed a person to climb.

He guided them all, one by one, before starting up, himself.

And before them the flood had burst from the one rift left open. It came with a roar that was shattering to the eardrums, driven by all the hideous pressure of Cloud Lake, eight miles off and at least a thousand feet higher than this death trap.

“They’ve been gone about four minutes,” said Benson. “It will take at least twenty-five for them to get to the fissure dropping down into the tunnel bore, which is the only exit to that tunnel. The water in here is coming faster than a horse can run.”

The others listened to his voice in the dark, with a silence as blank as their faces no doubt were. Was The Avenger mad? What did he mean?

“I warned Fyler,” said Benson. “I told him that when I worked against a murderer, that murderer sealed his own fate in the end. But he would not be warned. He let loose the flood—”

The water had slammed clear across the cave of the Rain God. It curled in a great breaker up against the slab blocking the passage down which Fyler and all his thugs had gone.

Then there were sounds like half a dozen field guns in war—and the water went rushing on out of the cavern again.

After the men who had left them there to die.

Benson had left his flashlight in the cell. But Mac had one, equally powerful. Its beam split the darkness. It centered on the rift leading toward the tunnel bore, shifted in the opposite direction to the hole where the water gushed out as if from a gigantic hose, came back to the rift.