The Flame Breathers

CHAPTER III The Dying Man

Under the surface, the Montreal police force was seething over the death of Veck and the ensuing wreckage of their laboratory. The Avenger and his aides found that out in a hurry.

First thing in the morning Benson set down their fast cabin plane at the Montreal airfield, and they went directly to headquarters.

The police chief stared curiously at this man with the awe-inspiring face. Benson dressed habitually in inconspicuous gray. With the gray-white of flesh and hair, he looked like a figure made of gray metal rather than brawn and blood.

“We’ve arrived at a number of conclusions that we have kept from the reporters,” the police chief said. He was very respectful in tone. Every police executive on the continent knew about The Avenger. In addition, Benson carried letters of introduction from several State governors, the head of the F.B.I., and one short but very intimate one from the president himself.

“We haven’t let the papers in on this,” said the chief, “because we have no scrap of proof to back up the conclusions we’ve come to. Though the boys have guessed a little: the inference that Veck was poisoned was quite plain in their dispatches.”

“And your conclusions?” asked The Avenger quietly.

Mac tensed in his chair. The giant, Smitty, watched the Montreal police head with china-blue eyes that looked dull and were decidedly not.

“Veck was murdered,” said the chief. “There is no chance of natural death by acute indigestion. He was murdered in some way simulating poison. He was killed in some way by raw flame. Those things we’re positive of. Now, the wrecking of our laboratory: it is possible that the explosion, at just the time when our men were preparing to work on the dead man’s stomach contents, was a coincidence. But it is certainly not probable. Somebody knew that work was about to commence. Somebody got into the lab and threw a bomb—”

“You’re certain it was a bomb?” interrupted Benson.

The police chief shrugged, not realizing the significance of the question. But Smitty and Mac looked at The Avenger as men might look at a superhuman being. Dick Benson, they realized, was already formulating theories about this business far in advance of the wildest guesses of any of the regular police.

“We’re not certain,” said the police chief. “We found no fragments of bomb casing of any kind. But what else could have caused the explosion, save some sort of explosive in a handmade casing?”

The Avenger said nothing. His eyes took on their polar-ice glint. The man continued.

“As I said, we found no clues of any kind, either as to the cause of the explosion or the identity of the person or persons who killed Veck. But we’re sure of our deductions, nevertheless.”

“What have you discovered concerning the dead man, himself?” Benson asked.

“Very little. He was Polish. He has recently spent a good deal of time in the United States. He was a doctor or scientist or something of the kind. And he went in fear of his life.”

“The first you could find out from his effects, of course,” nodded Benson. “But how do you know he lived in fear?”

“From the testimony of the hotel employees. Veck almost never left his room. He ate in there. When anything was delivered, including meals, he had the messenger leave the stuff at the door. And only after a long time would he open up and whisk it into the room. Obviously, he was afraid of some such death as, in the end, he suffered.”

There was a little silence. The police chief stared at The Avenger as if debating whether or not to tell him one more thing. Finally he nodded a bit, and said,

“We may find out something on the explosion after all. One man in the laboratory at the time was not killed out right by the blast. In the lab when the explosion occurred,” said the chief, “was a plainclothes man with a bullet on which he wanted a simple ballistics test. He just happened to be there. The three men who work in the lab were all killed. But this man may not. He is dying now in Emergency Hospital, but he may regain consciousness and talk before the end.”

“The press dispatch—” Smitty began.

“I know,” the police chief nodded. “There was no mention of the dying man. But that was deliberate. We gave out the news to the reporters only of the three who died. We were afraid that if the world learned one man had not been instantly killed, attempts might be made to finish him off before he could talk.”

The man reached for his phone and gave a number. He talked for a moment, then said,

“Still no change in the man’s condition at the hospital, but there is hope that he may recover consciousness. May I suggest that you all meet me there in an hour, and we’ll wait, if you care to?”

“We’d care to very much,” said Benson. “In the meantime, I think we’ll have a look at the wrecked laboratory.”

The Montreal police laboratory was in a separate small wing of its own. It had been a fine one, well equipped and well staffed.

Now it was nothing but a pile of building debris with shining bits of metal and glass studded through it. Policemen stood around, guarding the wreckage from curious onlookers. They stood back respectfully when Benson showed up. And The Avenger began to walk through the piled wreckage, not seeming to stare hard at any one thing, but actually seeing all there was to be seen with his remarkable, pale eyes. They seemed to be both telescopic and microscopic.

“There was no bomb,” he said after a moment.

“Now how in the worrrld can ye tell that?” demanded MacMurdie. Smitty looked as though he was about to ask the same thing.

“A common type of explosion acts in the direction of greatest resistance,” said Benson. “In this case, it would expend its main energy downward. And this explosion did no such thing. It seems to have blown in all directions with about equal force. Some gases act that way, but no solids such as might have packed a bomb—”

He stopped and his eyes took on their diamond-drill look.

The police were doing a good job of keeping people back, but they seemed to have missed one person.

This was a little man with one outstanding feature: his ears. He had even bigger ears than MacMurdie, and they stood out at an even squarer angle from his head. They looked like rabbit ears, cut off and rounded a little.

Like an inquisitive rabbit the man was poking around the debris at the far end, and being careful to avoid the eyes of the cops.

Benson grabbed him by the arm.

“Ouch! Let me go!” the man said, in a foreign accent. “What do you want to squeeze my arm in two for?”

“What are you doing here?” The Avenger said.

“If you’re a policeman, I’m just looking around to get a souvenir,” said the little man with the big ears.

“And if I’m not?” said Benson, pale eyes seeming to go right through the man’s skull.

“Then I’m not a souvenir hunter,” admitted the man. He stared hard at the white, dead face. “I guess you aren’t a policeman. Don’t turn me into the regulars, please. Not, at least till I’ve had a chance to look around.”

“Why do you want to look around?”

“I want to clear up the death of Veck,” the little man said, with a purposeful look forming around his jaw. He had an amazingly forceful jaw. “I don’t think the police are ever going to clear it up; so I’m going to try it myself.”

“Why?”

The little man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“Because I thought Veck was the finest person who ever lived,” he said. “I used to work for him. He was a great man. Now I have just one desire in life — to get whoever is responsible for his death.”

“What did you expect to find here?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “But I’m familiar with laboratories, having helped Veck in his for so long. I just thought I might find something out of the way.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Xisco,” said the little man. “Pronounced Z, but spelled with an X. Charlie Xisco.”

Smitty and Mac looked at each other. There was a fishy smell somewhere here, they thought. But neither had a chance to say so. One of the guards came swiftly toward them, stared sternly at Xisco, but delivered his message without verbally chiding the little man with the big ears for being where he had no business to be.

“Just got a call from the hospital, sir,” he said to The Avenger. “The person there is regaining consciousness a little sooner than was expected. And he can’t last long because he was very badly hurt in the explosion.”

“I’ll go at once,” said The Avenger.

Xisco caught his arm like a drowning man.

“Somebody escaped from this wreck alive? Someone was here when it happened and may talk now? Let me go with you! Please! He’ll surely know something, and I must hear! Please!”

For about a second and a half the pale, deadly eyes raked the little man’s face.

“All right,” Benson said. “Come along.”

At the hospital there was feverish suspense. The chief of police was in the dying plainclothesman’s room. So were two captains and a lieutenant of detectives. When The Avenger came in with his two aides and Xisco, the room began to look like a convention hall. But it didn’t make much difference to the man in bed.

He was going to die anyway. The rattling of his breath and the terrible color of his face told that. The center of attention, with everyone staring intently at him, he didn’t know but what he was alone.

No man’s eyes were any more intent than those of Xisco, once Veck’s laboratory helper and now eager to avenge the scientist’s death.

“Has he said anything yet?” Benson asked the chief.

“No. He hasn’t really regained consciousness. He is delirious and very weak. He has rambled a little—”

“Water,” moaned the man in bed. “Water… that’s the stuff—”

“Does he want a drink of water, or what?” whispered the chief. Evidently the death of his man was cutting him all up. There was the look of a father in his stern eyes.

“But no… water could—” mumbled the dying man. “I don’t understand… nuts… if you can take time… this slug I picked up—”

“I told you he went there with a bullet for a ballistics test,” whispered the chief to Benson. “But the other words — about water — they can’t have any meaning. Unless he means that he’s thirsty.”

The man moistened his lips.

“I… but, water… no… look out!”

“Pass that pitcher,” said the chief, nodding to water on a night table. “If he’s thirsty he can have a drink. He won’t have many more.”

The man happening to be nearest the water was Xisco. He passed the pitcher. The police chief poured a glass and held it toward the dying man’s lips—

“No!”

The voice of The Avenger positively crackled with the monosyllable. In his colorless eyes was a pale fire of comprehension. His hand went out. He slapped the glass from the man’s lips before a drop could get to them!

The glass crashed against the wall near the lieutenant of detectives, who had been watching proceedings with a cigar clamped grimly between his lips.

They never heard the crash of the glass. It was drowned in a roaring explosion that took out that wall, brought down most of the plaster on the ceiling and stunned the lot of them!

The police chief’s hand was still shaped to the glass The Avenger had dashed from his fingers. His coat had been shredded, but he was all right.

“What—” he began, dazed. Then he bellowed, “Grab that pitcher!”

The man on the bed, far past realization of even such events as the explosion, suddenly writhed and was still. He was dead.

“Somebody was going to make sure he wouldn’t talk by poisoning him right in front of our eyes!” the chief barked. “Hold the pitcher. And that man who passed it. He must have put something in it. Hold him, too.”

The men stared at each other, bewildered. Then the chief grated,

“The man who passed the pitcher. Where is he?”

Xisco, the little man with the big ears, had vanished.

“Search the building. Get him!”

But Xisco was not to be found. He had sneaked out with marvelous rapidity during the after effects of the explosion.

The chief turned grimly to The Avenger.

“Sorry. You and your two friends will have to be held till we’ve analyzed the water in the pitcher. You and the others were the only men here not on the regular force.”

Benson’s paralyzed, death mask of a face was as unmoved as the still white face of the moon. Swift death had struck here. And an explosion where it would seem impossible for an explosion to occur. But his countenance was as expressionless as carved chalk. The rest stared at him in awe.

“Of course you must hold us,” Benson nodded, voice quiet but strangely vibrant with power. “I’d like to ask a favor, however. I am fairly familiar with routine laboratory tests myself.” Mac snorted. Benson was probably the world’s greatest chemist. “I would like to watch while the water is analyzed.”

The police chief chewed his lip and finally nodded. The man with the colorless eyes could be watched so that he’d have no chance of tampering with the work.

They went to the biggest industrial laboratory in the city, since the police lab was now in ruins. Every test known to science was given the water from the pitcher.

And all came out negative!

There was no trace of any kind of poison in the water. There was nothing whatever that should make it explode as it seemingly had when the water tumbler hit the wall. In conclusion, the testing chemist drank some of it, with a shrug, to prove his point. It harmed him not at all.

Benson had watched every test. He knew the verdict was right. The water was — just water.

“I guess I have no charge against you or your friends, Mr. Benson,” said the chief reluctantly. “Or even against the man with the big ears. Since there’s nothing in the water, he couldn’t have put anything there as he passed it. I suppose he ran because he knew he’d be suspected when the explosion occurred.”

The Avenger only nodded. But his eyes were flaring in their colorless depths with thoughts and conclusions known only to himself.