The Frosted Death

CHAPTER XVII Two To Die

Some hours before, Mickelson had sat on one end of that rustic divan with Sangaman on the other. Now, The Avenger’s gray-steel body reposed where Mickelson had been.

Before, Sangaman had sat with his head in his hands, a beaten man. Now he sat erect, chin up. And this in spite of a thing of pure horror that he had discovered a little while ago, just before this man with the awe-inspiring, colorless eyes had arrived.

That thing concerned his right hand — which he kept in his coat pocket, deep down so that even the wrist should not show.

Benson had come first to the one building he had seen from the plane: the log cabin. And there he had found this elderly man for whom all the police of all the nation were searching.

“All right,” the tired fugitive had said. “You’ve got me. I surrender. Take me where you wish. It won’t last long, for me, anyway.”

“I’m not here to arrest you,” said Benson. “I’m after the guilty man.”

Benson had listened to Sangaman’s account of all that happened to him, with his mind clicking into place the few details he hadn’t as yet known.

“Veshnir, of course,” Benson snapped. “I have known it since the day before yesterday, with the murder of August Taylor.”

“Veshnir, of course,” Benson snapped. “I have known I was sure it was he, at first. Then I didn’t know. Recently I have been more and more sure it wasn’t. But always I was too confused to think. Why do you say the murder of August Taylor convinced you of his guilt?”

“Taylor’s death releases millions in business insurance to prop up the sagging finances of the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp.”

“But,” said Sangaman, “since they think I did it, there will be no payment made. Insurance companies do not pay to murderers.”

“Exactly,” said The Avenger. “But at present they only think you did it. Unless they prove in court that you are the murderer, the payment must be made to the firm. And if you disappear forever, which was undoubtedly Veshnir’s plan, there could never be such proof. Therefore the payment would some day be made — and greatly enrich Veshnir’s company.”

Sangaman shook his head.

“It would not all be his. Even with me dead, my daughter, Claudette, would get my share; so he would still own less than half. He would have to kill her, too, before it would all revert to him—”

The old man stopped, with his hands beginning to tremble. He was still keeping the right one in his pocket.

“Precisely,” nodded Benson. “And the attempt to kill your daughter was made, which again nailed it all to Veshnir; only he could have profited.”

“An attempt?” babbled Sangaman. “A murder attempt on my… on Claudette?”

“Don’t worry. She wasn’t hurt. And she’s safe now, at my headquarters.”

Benson, icy eyes glittering their pale flame, picked the story up again.

“Veshnir killed Targill in some quarrel concerning the frosted death. It does not matter what difference arose between them. It was either you or he, slated for the murder; so he framed you. Undoubtedly he slipped a drug in the thermos of black coffee you say was on your desk the night you went over the books. He went through the rigmarole of your killing Targill, in a coma from overwork, and brought you here. He killed Taylor, for the insurance millions, and left a pair of your rubber gloves from the laboratory at Taylor’s house. Then he killed Mickelson because his blackmail demands threatened him as well as you—”

“Mickelson, too?” gasped Sangaman. “He is dead?”

“He’s as good as dead,” said Benson. “The white mold. It had almost covered his right hand when I left him. Last night Veshnir evidently managed to deposit some of the stuff on his hand. Perhaps he did it via the money Mickelson had in his pocket—”

Benson stopped. His immobile face seemed to grow more immobile, and intent, than ever. His eyes were like burnished steel as he stared at Sangaman.

“Did Veshnir touch you last night?” he said. “At any time? In any way?”

“No!” said Sangaman, voice level.

“Why are you keeping your right hand in your pocket? You’ve had it in there since I’ve been here.”

“Just a mannerism,” shrugged Sangaman. “I’m perfectly all right.”

“Let me see—” Benson began.

Probably only one thing could have swerved The Avenger from his insistence on seeing that hand. That was the kind of break which occurred then, and which Sangaman noted because he was staring out a window instead of into the pale, probing eyes.

“Look!” he said. “A fire! In the woods! If that gets to the cabin—”

The Avenger was at the door before Sangaman realized he had moved. And it was not through apprehension concerning the cabin. He wasn’t thinking about that.

Submarine just off this coast. Cabin here, belonging to Veshnir. Huge tract of virgin woods. It was a certainty that somewhere near here was located the death factory Benson knew must exist.

Possibly the smoke was rising from that. In any event, it was something that demanded investigation, with terrible urgency.

So he raced from the cabin, without having pressed his insistence on seeing the older man’s hand. And in leaving Sangaman, he left a hero.

Sangaman was an intelligent man. He had known the dynamic power of this average-sized man with the thick white hair and the stainless-steel eyes. If anyone could solve the riddle of the frosted death, and quickly, it would be this man. Hence the less he was distracted with details the more swiftly he might deliver thousands from death.

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.