The Frosted Death

CHAPTER XIV Death Sentence!

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—”

The door of the luxurious log cabin opened suddenly. Sangaman didn’t even move. He knew who it was: Veshnir. He knew because he had heard the slight rasp of a key in the lock before the door opened; and only Veshnir had a key. But even if he hadn’t heard the preliminary rasp, even if the door had been pushed open by the police, Sangaman still would not have moved. He had gotten to the point where he didn’t care much if he were captured or not.

Mickelson whirled with his lips open as he heard the door. He half rose from the divan as he saw Veshnir, then sank down again. He glanced defiantly at the other partner.

Veshnir stared back in surprise.

“Well, Mickelson!” he said. Then: “You here! But I remember — you bought this place for me, didn’t you? So you would know of my ownership. But why are you here now?”

Mickelson was wary, but aggressive. He jerked his head toward Sangaman.

“I’m here because of him.”

“He wants blackmail money,” Sangaman said. “He guessed I’d be here, came and made sure; then he demanded hush money if I’m not to be turned over to the police,”

On Veshnir’s kindly face grew a look of shock. He looked like a benevolent deacon who had been kicked in the shins by a man he was only trying to befriend.

“Why, Mickelson! This from you?” he mourned.

“Why not from me?” snapped Mickelson.

“After all Sangaman and I have done for you—”

“What have you done for me, I’d like to know? You gave me a job, sure. At wages about the same as I’d get in anybody else’s laboratory. You paid me a little for a couple of dirty jobs I did for you. But damned little. I don’t owe you anything. But you owe me, now. One hundred thousand, or the police come here and get Sangaman. And things won’t be so hot for you, either. You’ll be a murder accomplice, hiding a murderer.”

“I’d never have believed there could be such ingratitude,” sighed Veshnir.

“Oh, stow it,” snarled Mickelson. “Do I, or don’t I, get the hundred thousand?”

Behind the countenance of Veshnir, “saddened” that any one could be so unkind, a shrewd brain was clicking out a solution — and a slight change of plan.

Mickelson had to be eliminated. An unexpected source of danger, he was as menacing to Veshnir as to Sangaman. Also, it had begun to look as if Sangaman would have to go, too.

He had been holding Sangaman in reserve, in a manner of speaking. He had meant to let the tired, elderly man live another few days — and then take the responsibility for the death factory in the woods. He’d have had Sangaman’s body found there, as if the man had been sole owner of the place and responsible for the frosted death. He’d have made it look as if Sangaman had been murdered by some double-crossing crook who’d been buying the white stuff.

It looked now, however, as though it might be risky to keep the old man alive that long. And, actually, it wasn’t necessary. Sangaman could be tagged with the whole affair, even if his body weren’t discovered in the plant. His mere disappearance would be enough. And if he were carefully buried here in the trackless woods—

“Speak up,” said Mickelson, with the arrogance of the little man who is for once on top. “Do you come through, or don’t you?”

“We’ll pay,” sighed Veshnir, shaking his benevolent head reproachfully. “Tomorrow night—”

“Tomorrow morning, as soon as the banks open,” Mickelson corrected him. “I’ll be at the laboratory. You can bring the money there, in cash.”

“How can you get back to New York from here so fast?”

“I’ll be going with you,” said Mickelson. “You came here by plane, of course. Well, I’ll go back with you — by plane. It will save a lot of trouble for me.”

Veshnir clicked that over, in that cold and cunning brain that functioned behind the benevolent face. It was quite satisfactory, he decided.

“All right,” he said. “You can come with me. I’m about due at the plane now. My pilot will be waiting.”

“Just a minute,” objected Mickelson. “I’ll have your two thousand here and now, Sangaman.”

Sangaman started to reply. But Veshnir cut in quickly, with a protective glance at the older man:

“I’ll get the money,” he said. “Just wait right here.”

Sangaman relaxed, without saying anything. It was odd how he had misjudged his partner. Or, rather, judged him too harshly. Veshnir had pulled some shady deals. But no man could be more loyal in a pinch than Veshnir was being. Even now, he was going to save Sangaman’s slender store of cash for him. Probably had money out in his plane. Going to give up two thousand of his own rather than see Sangaman, fugitive from justice, stripped of all resources.

But Veshnir did not go to the plane. He went quickly to the sinister, tarpaper building, and came quickly back to the cabin. Just before entering, he took two thousand dollars from a bulging wallet.

Veshnir had had buckskin gloves on before going back into the weird little factory. He still had them on. But now there was a slight difference. Under them, not showing, were rubber gloves.

Veshnir had held the right little finger of his gloved hand apart from the rest, so it would not scrape. He carefully rubbed the sheaf of bills over a part of this finger. Just a part.

Then he went in.

“Here is your money,” he said reproachfully to Mickelson. “Though you seem to have forgotten that money ill-gained will bring you to a bad end.”

“I’ll take a chance on that,” smirked Mickelson, counting the sheaf, and putting it in his inside pocket.

Veshnir turned to Sangaman in a stanch-and-true friendly way. He held out his right hand.

Sangaman took it in a thankful grasp.

“Keep your chin up,” Veshnir said. “Soon your troubles will be over. Come along, Mickelson.”

At the plane, the lean, scarred-faced man at the controls flashed a coldly surprised, deadly look at Mickelson when he clambered into the cabin after Veshnir.

“I did not know we were to have a passenger,” he said irritatedly.

“Neither did I,” Veshnir said. “But a friend of mine unexpectedly turned up.”

The foreign-looking pilot moved his hand ever so little toward his gun. Veshnir shook his head. He gave the man a long, reassuring look. The unexpected friend, that look said, doesn’t need bullets. He has been well taken care of.

Mickelson didn’t catch the side glance. He had his hand in his pocket, feeling those crisp bills. He was thinking of all the other bills his shrewdness would bring him in the morning.

In New York, with early morning breakfast, he went to his apartment from the plane. He didn’t watch behind him very carefully; so he did not notice that here and there men with square, erect shoulders and phlegmatically unmoved faces, gathered and followed him.

When his apartment door closed, the men, at least ten of them, took up stations all around the one building entrance. They stood there like guards.

Mickelson would not be allowed to leave the building. These watchmen were to see to that. But they had been told, in a furtive radio message from the plane that bore Mickelson, that their guard duty wouldn’t last long.

Mickelson opened his apartment door with his key, and stepped in. It spoke volumes of his ignorance of the magnitude of the game he’d unwittingly mixed in, that he reached for the light switch and clicked it on with never a thought of trouble.

Then he froze, where he was, with his arm still outstretched near the switch.

Sitting in an easy-chair, facing the door, was a man. The man had a curious little knife in his right hand.

Mickelson, with startled eyes, saw that the man’s face was heavy-featured and florid. Foreign-looking. In that face were incongruously set the iciest, most deadly, most colorless eyes he had ever seen in a human countenance. They chilled his spine. They made his voice come as a sort of broken squeak when he said:

“Who… who are you? What are you doing here?”

Then he turned to leap back out into the hall.

The hand of the man in the chair made a light, flicking motion. The little knife he’d held glittered in flight, and embedded itself with a soft swish in the door behind Mickelson.

Embedded itself an inch from Mickelson’s nose.

The chemist didn’t try to run any more.

“What do you… want?” he whispered, after licking lips that had gone too dry to utter words without being moistened again.

“Some information,” said the man with the icy, terrible eyes.

“About… what?”

“Where have you been since noon of yesterday?”

“Out with a fr-friend,” stammered Mickelson. “I — that’s all. Just out with a friend.”

He felt as if his legs had turned to rubber. Felt as if all will power were draining slowly from him — drawn by the awful, colorless eyes, and the florid, absolutely immobile face.

The Avenger, still with the florid tint of Molan Brocker’s face coloring his own dead-white skin, and in Molan Brocker’s clothes, stared with eyes like diamond drills. There was a shred of cotton still in Mickelson’s left ear. It wouldn’t have been seen by any other than Benson.

“You have just come from a plane,” The Avenger said. “Evidently it was a plane built more for speed than for refined passenger service. You stuffed cotton plugs in your ears to muffle the sound of the motor. Where have you come from in that plane?”

“I… I wasn’t in a plane!” stumbled Mickelson. “My ears are sensitive. I wear cotton plugs a lot, to keep out the roar of the city—”

“At five in the morning? There is very little roar, even in New York, at five in the morning. You came from up the coast, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

But The Avenger knew he had struck home. The phrase he’d heard in the office of the Klammer Importing Co. fitted in here precisely.

“You came from up the coast. Where?”

Mickelson moistened his lips again. He couldn’t get any words at all out, now. Nothing in life had ever frightened him as much as the colorless, icily flaring eyes.

The Avenger started to repeat the question, then stopped. Mickelson’s right hand had gone up to loosen his collar, as if it were suddenly choking him. Benson’s gaze riveted itself on the hand.

The thumb and the base of the forefinger—

His voice was a little different, as he said:

“Tell me all you know about the frosted death.”

“I… I don’t know anything about it,” stammered Mickelson. “Just what I’ve read in the papers. I have no firsthand knowledge of it.”

“I believe,” The Avenger said softly, almost gently, “you have.”

“No, no! I don’t know a thing about it!”

Benson hesitated a moment, then made his play. It would either kill the craven thing before him with pure terror, or break him so utterly that he would tell without further stalling, whatever he knew.

He bet on the latter — and he lost.

“Oh, yes, you do,” he said, in that gentle, almost sympathetic voice. “You know about the frosted death at first hand. The evidence is all too clear — on you!”

“What do you mean?” jerked out Mickelson.

“Look at your right thumb,” The Avenger said.

Mickelson raised his right hand, stared, then glared at it with eyes so widened that you could see a ring clear around each pupil.

“Why—” he panted. “Why—”

That was his last coherent word.

On the thumb was a small patch of something that looked like powdered sugar. There was a similar, smaller patch on the first joint of his forefinger.

Mickelson glared from the white stuff, to the man before him. But his eyes didn’t see that man. They saw death!

Choking, gagging, he tore the bills from his pocket, glared at them, then screaming he threw them from him. Still screaming, with white flecks on his lips, he began to batter his right hand against the wall, and to try to scrape the white stuff off.

The shock had been too much. There was stark madness in his eyes. And it was a madness that would endure the few short hours till death released him!