River of Ice

CHAPTER XI Disaster Calls

Nellie Gray was spoiling for action. To look at the lovely little blonde, you’d have thought she would never have an idea about anything more sinister than the latest lure in perfume, or the most modern thing in handbags. But Nellie’s ideas were confined, ninety percent of the time, to thoughts of guns and gangsters.

And now she was sitting around staring at her perfectly kept fingernails, trying not to bite them, while everybody but her was busy in this case of the ancient relics! As is often the case with people who wish for things, Nellie was about to have an overdose of that which she was wishing for.

It began with the tiny red glow on the wall, announcing that someone was in the vestibule downstairs and wanted to come up. She looked into the short-range television screen and saw the face and form of Lini Waller. “Uh-oh,” she said softly. “Whenever that girl shows up, trouble comes to call! The chief should be here, now. I wonder where—”

She went swiftly to the big radio set in the corner which was always tuned to the group’s special wave length. “Nellie Gray calling,” she said into it. “Chief, this is Nellie Gray. Answer, if you hear. I think you had better come back to headquarters. Chief, Nellie Gray calling.”

At that moment a machine gun was covering the approximate spot in Benson’s middle where the little belt radio he carried was located. But Nellie didn’t know that. All she knew was that The Avenger didn’t answer.

The giant, Smitty, was down in a second-floor room. She pressed a buzzer that sounded in the room. In about four seconds Smitty was upstairs with her. The giant moved fast when Nellie called. It was to be suspected that his main concern in life was this small, lithe, fragile looking blonde. It was to be suspected that the big fellow had a large spot in her heart too; but you could never do more than suspect: Nellie would have died rather than show it.

“Smitty! Lini Waller is downstairs! I think the chief would want to know that and be with her, as soon as possible. He’s out at the office of either Wittwar or Mallory or Werner. Get him, fast! Tell Lini to come up as you go through the vestibule. I’ll stall her here till he comes.”

Smitty went out in a hurry. In a moment Lini Waller came in the door of the great top-floor room. “Hello,” said Nellie, making the greetings sound as careless as she could. “Come in. We’ve missed you.”

Lini stood there. “I can’t come in,” she said. “I haven’t time. I must see Mr. Benson right away. I have important news for him.”

Nellie stared at her with carefully veiled curiosity, and sympathy. If Benson had deduced correctly, a dreadful thing had been done to this girl! At this moment she was walking around with a length of steel in her brain. But it seemed impossible to believe so fantastic a thing. Lini’s face showed little expression, to be sure. Her tone lacked a certain animation. But it was hardly enough to confirm that hideous statement of the chief’s.

“I’ve got to see Mr. Benson right away,” repeated Lini.

“He isn’t in,” said Nellie. “But he will be any minute. Come in and sit down.”

“I can’t. I must go at once, before they guess that I am here and come and take me.”

“No one can take you from this place,” said Nellie soothingly.

“Yes. They can. They can do anything. They are terrible! I must see Mr. Benson and tell him where they are.”

Whew! Hold everything! was Nellie’s thought. And with the thought went all ideas of just stalling the girl till the chief returned. “You mean, you know where the men who are after your secret are hiding?” she demanded.

Lini’s head nodded, slowly. “I think I do. I am sure I do! Within a block or so. Mr. Benson can find the exact place when I take him to the block in which they are.”

Yes, thought Nellie, the chief could do that easily. But she had another thought: So could I.

“You lead me to that block,” she said, reaching for a perky hat as she spoke. “Come on, let’s go!”

Lini hung back. “It was Mr. Benson I wanted.”

“When it comes to a thing like this,” said Nellie, “you can’t distinguish between Mr. Benson and anyone of us who work for him. Lead on!” Her blue eyes were wide and pleased as she followed Lini Waller down the stairs. This was going to be dandy.

The chief was expected back any minute with Smitty. When he returned, he would hear Nellie’s voice on the radio. By then she should have marked the precise building in which their enemies were located, after Lini had led her to the block. Then The Avenger could come directly to that address instead of having to waste time finding it himself. Meanwhile, she could lurk around the place and be sure that none of the men went out.

Lini a pitiful automation? Well, maybe she was. But it didn’t matter. One way or another, she was going to reveal an important thing: the location of the enemies’ headquarters. And Nellie wasn’t going to allow such an intention to cool! Anyhow, she had been pining so hard for something precisely like this that she jumped at the chance.

“It’s on or near Park Avenue,” said Lini, when the two girls were in the coupé Nellie usually used.

Nellie nodded. She was no dope. The chances that this was a trap were large. She had known that when she started, but she had not cared. Even if it was a trap, she could still lead The Avenger to a place where the enemy, lying in wait for her, could be located, couldn’t she?

Had Lini mentioned some dark or disreputable district, the trap possibility would have been confirmed. As it was, Park Avenue is not a typical place for gangsters to try to burn people down. Though it was still possible, of course.

“I think,” said Lini, when the coupé had raced to Park Avenue and the Forties, not far from the lordly Waldorf Astoria, itself, “that it is in this block, between Park and Lexington.”

The traffic light went red. Nellie dutifully stopped. From the opposite curb came a bellow: “Hey, you! In the coupé! Why don’t you stop when the fight goes red?”

Indignantly, Nellie looked toward the source of the noise, a burly traffic officer in blue. The man walked over to her coupé, shoulders swinging.

“You’re a foot and a half over the white line,” he said truculently, leaning close. Nellie was rolling down her window to protest. “How do you expect pedestrians to cross with the lights when you’re clear out in the next street like that.”

And this was all Nellie heard. From the dark, blue-clad bulk so close to the rolled-down window, a large hand jabbed forth. The hand caught her by the throat. Nellie could handle any two men, so expert was she at jujitsu. But she hadn’t a chance, sitting down, with the steering wheel cramping her and her assailant’s bulk outside the car and inaccessible. She tried to yell, and couldn’t. She tried to squirm free, and couldn’t.

“I think you’ll just take a little ride to the station house,” said the man loudly, for the benefit of a car waiting just behind Nellie’s. “Move over! I’ll drive.”

This fell on ears that couldn’t hear at all. Nellie was completely out. Her inert body was shoved over against the impassive form of Lini, and the man in cop’s clothing slid behind the wheel. The coupé sped smoothly from the desirable neighborhood of Park Avenue to another neighborhood almost as discreet and respectable. Lower Fifth Avenue.

But Nellie knew nothing of destinations. Once, when she stirred a little, the big hand jammed down on an already bruised throat, and she didn’t stir any more. She came to, finally, feeling nauseated with the pain of her aching throat. She stared around, thinking she was still out and wandering in some kind of nightmare.

From a little above her, and to her left, stared the glassy eyes of a lion. Or, rather, of a lion’s head, just the head. Above, was a queer, rough ceiling with exposed beams, as if she were in some very crude place. She could see the ceiling plainly because she lay on her back on something firm, yet yielding.

She moved to get off the thing and found that her arms and legs were tightly bound. Furthermore, she couldn’t even roll her head. She tried, and there was a firm pressure on her forehead that prevented it. After a moment she realized that adhesive tape passed over her forehead, binding it down to whatever she lay on. She could only move her eyes. Then she tried to scream!

Right over her was an awful thing with great horns, like a caricature of the devil himself. And this also stared at her out of glassy, immobile eyes, like a strange, deadly god staring down at a victim who lay on a sacrificial slab beneath its swollen snout. Nellie made a violent effort to get her arms free and failed. Her elbows were bound by cord that went around her arms and body several times; and her hands, folded at her waist, were clamped together by more adhesive tape.

“She’s prettier’n the other one, even,” said a man. There was regret in his tone but not too much regret. “Too bad the boss couldn’t pick ’em plainer lookin’.”

Nellie rolled her eyes to the side as far as she could. Now she saw four men, from about the chest up. The sight wasn’t any treat. The chests were scrawny. At the left armpit of each was a bulge indicating a shoulder holster replete with gun. And the four faces were those of rats more than of humans. A nice quartet of mobsters, Nellie decided. She tried again, frantically, to free her hands. But they could only flutter harmlessly at her waist.

“Here he comes,” said another of the four, in a low tone.

Nellie heard the door open, heard measured steps. Into her range of vision came the upper half of a body completely swathed by a loose overcoat so that you could not make out any single feature of it. There was a face, but because of upturned coat collar and low-drawn hat brim, you could see only the nose and eyes. And the eyes had dark glasses over them.

The man stood over the helpless girl, staring down at her. Nellie wished she could see the shielded eyes, then decided it was probably better that she couldn’t.

The man took a queer, divided thing from his pocket. Each leg of it had a needle point. A measuring compass, Nellie saw. The man leaned over her. His fingers experimentally parted her shining blonde hair from her scalp. He poised the measuring compass, with one sharp point just touching her left ear. The other point was lightly pressed at the exact top of her skull.

The man calculated a moment; then he drew a pen from his pocket. Nellie felt a slight sting as the point was pressed firmly against her head, and a fleck of ink released to dry almost instantly. The point marked was not quite halfway between left ear and center of the skull. It was a little nearer the ear than the top of the head.

Nellie’s hands began to beat wildly as, with sudden horror in her blue eyes, she sought to shift the binding adhesive tape. The tape didn’t shift. Her fingers could only flutter fruitlessly at her waist.

Richard Benson possessed two of the world’s oddest weapons. Pitted against criminals who went armed as heavily with machine guns and high-velocity short arms as was possible to obtain, The Avenger trusted to only these two. One was a little .22 revolver, silenced, so streamlined for compactness that it looked like little more than a blue length of slim pipe with a slight bend for a handle. This he called Mike; and Mike was holstered at the calf of his right leg, below the knee. The other weapon was an equally slim, razor-sharp little throwing knife. This he called Ike; and Ike was holstered at his left calf.

Faced with a submachine gun and two automatics in the doorway of Mallory’s office, The Avenger had wasted no time in words or false moves.

“Burn him down!” one of the three had said.

With the words, the machine gun began its deadly clatter. But just before, Benson had bent down like a court attache making a deep bow to royalty. The slugs went over his head. The man jerked to get the gun down; but a machine gun tends to tilt up and up, with the constant hammer of bullets passing from its muzzle. So that by the time the gun was lined down again, Benson was a yard to the right, with Mike and Ike in his hands.

The two men behind the machine gunner fired at the gray, shifting shadow that was The Avenger. Both hit!

But Benson stayed upright. The Avenger had devised a plastic, tougher than most steel, pliant as yarn, which he called celluglass. From this marvelous stuff, he had fashioned bulletproof garments for himself and his aides. The celluglass stopped the automatics’ slugs now.

The machine gun swung toward him again. Benson’s left hand flashed forward. Ike left the hand like a pebble from a catapult. The machine gunner screamed and tried to drop the gun and could not because his left hand was pinned to the hardwood stock like a butterfly pinned to a cork with a needle.

He flopped around, trying to get his hand loose, and screaming as each wrench at the knife produced more and more unbearable agonies. But no one paid attention to him. Mike’s silenced little muzzle had spat out a tiny leaden pea. And one of the two with automatics went down. But he wasn’t dead. The Avenger himself never took life. He deftly creased the gunman with Mike, slamming a small slug so that it glanced from the top of his skull, producing unconsciousness instead of death.

But the other man didn’t know that. He saw one pal trying to jerk his impaled hand from a machine gun, and the other lying on the floor, apparently dead. And this in a spot where the three of them were going to kill the one — the fellow with the dead-pan face and blazing, colorless eyes. The guy had on a bulletproof vest or something. The third man yelled hoarsely and sent three shots at the head with the virile white hair on it. But a head is a poor target, particularly when it is moving as rapidly as Benson was shifting his.

Mike spat a second time, and this third man went down. Then Mike served as a club, while Benson tapped the wildly screaming machine gunner where it would do the most good. The Avenger went to the telephone on the desk nearby, staring dispassionately with icy, pale eyes at three still forms as he did so. He reported to the police that they could pick up three burglars at this address and hung up.

He walked from the building to see Smitty sitting in one of their cars at the curb with a look of horror on his moon face. “Chief!” the giant gasped. “I came to get you. But just as I pulled up here, after missing you at the other two places, I began to get a message. It was from Nellie, chief! She’s in an awful mess.”

Benson listened to Smitty’s tiny radio. From it was coming, not a voice, but fluttering kind of tappings. Morse code.

“Nellie calling. S. O. S. Held in place with beam ceiling; thing with horns over me. Don’t know where. Come fast—”

The fluttering of her fingers at her waist had not been entirely fruitless. She had been tapping like that for minutes. Praying that it could be heard in time; that the man with the infallible brain would be able to figure out where she was and come to her.