The Frosted Death

CHAPTER XVIII Race Against Time

The Avenger went a quarter of a mile through the trees. It was miraculously done. No trained trapeze expert could have kept up with him. At the end of each swing, he seemed instantly to spot just the right branch, at the maximum distance ahead, and leap for it. So that his progress seemed one continuous flow of motion.

He could go faster on the ground, however; so he dropped the instant it seemed safe, and began running. He flitted through the woods like a gray streak, hurdling tree-trunks and underbrush, toward the coast.

Benson had to get to a short-wave radio transmitter. Fast! And the only one he could conceive of near here, was on the submarine.

The Avenger was acting on a theory that to him was just about accomplished fact. He knew men. In particular, he knew Mac and the rest of his aides. He was sure the dour Scot wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t left his drugstore. He was equally sure Mac would not have left his store if he hadn’t found the antidote for the frosted death. The Scotchman would have kept on at his laboratory bench till he dropped from fatigue.

So there was an antidote. And Mac and Josh had been taken with it. An antidote would be a priceless thing. So it was unlikely that it had been destroyed.

The sea was in sight, shimmering in the sun. Benson slowed his pace, stopped behind a big stump. He wasn’t even breathing fast from his prodigious effort. His body, it seemed, was made of metal instead of flesh and blood.

The point at which he had emerged was at the edge of one of Maine’s rock cliffs, about thirty feet above the water level. Beneath, the water pounded against the rock, quite deep clear up to the foot of the cliff. Its color told that.

Out a little way was the whalelike form of the submarine, under water to the conning tower. Over the edge of the tower hatchway, showed the head and shoulders of one of the sub’s crew. Left on guard. With how many others? The Avenger could not guess.

Benson’s hand went down to his leg, came up with the slim, blued butt of Mike, the .22, in it.

It was a long shot. Over a hundred yards, and down. It isn’t easy to shoot from an elevation. But Benson probably had no peer in marksmanship. The colorless, glacial eyes lined the sights up for about four seconds, and then he squeezed the trigger.

The man in the conning tower suddenly disappeared. There was no sound, no move. He simply slid down out of sight.

It seemed there was another man just below him. This one appeared like a jack-in-the-box, with a submachine gun poking inquisitively around over the hatch rim.

The fall of the first man must have seemed like a ghastly miracle to this man. No sound. No one near, as far as could be seen. Yet the first man had slumped down the iron rungs of the tower ladder, apparently clubbed on the top of his head!

Mike spat another leaden pea. The second man threw up his hands and fell back within. The gun he had held splashed into the water and sank.

Benson let a minute pass. No third head showed. He holstered Mike, fastened a waterproof hood over the holster. Then he straightened on the cliff edge.

Below, the surface next to the cliff was strewn with great rocks, over which water combed white. He dived, like an arrow, down the thirty feet, gliding into the water almost without a splash, with rocks to right and left so close that they almost grazed him as he passed.

He swam to the sub, lowered himself down the conning tower, and stepped over the two unconscious guards.

His steely white fingers flew at the task of altering the sub’s short-wave apparatus so that it could send to the special instrument in the Bleek Street headquarters.

“Smitty? This is Benson talking. Orders. Rush!

“Telephone Veshnir. Talk in the guttural tone and with the accent we’re familiar with. Tell him that it has been decided to cut the price to be paid him in half. When he protests, tell him he will take that or nothing at all, and that he is lucky to be getting that much. Then hang up. Repeat to me.”

Benson turned from the receiver, satisfied, as Smitty repeated the message.

He was betting that Veshnir had some of the antidote at all times. The man dealt with the frosted death. What more natural than that he should carry some with him, in case he was unexpectedly attacked by the mold?

Everything was being wagered on this, with the lives of Josh and Mac as the stake. Wagered on this — and on the time element.

The Avenger’s pale eyes probed around. From a locker he got a collapsible rubber raft. He took it above, inflated it, and tossed it into the water. Then he dragged the two men up, laid them on it, and floated them toward shore. He went down the iron ladder one more time.

Benson opened the submersion tanks of the underseas craft, and darted back up the conning tower. Water was just beginning to slide over the rim as he got out. The submarine lurched downward, settled at a crazy angle, and sank in forty-five feet of water.

At the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp., Veshnir tilted back in his swivel chair in a pleasant mood. He had never looked more kindly, more benevolent. He coughed. He’d caught cold or something, and it was bothering his throat. But aside from this minor detail the world was perfect.

Things could not have gone better. Mickelson, by incredible luck had gone mad when he discovered what had happened to him; so that even if he wished to tell what little he knew, before death took him, now he would be unable to do so. Soon Sangaman would be out of it, a victim of his own plotting, as far as the world knew.

He had a million. Vast additional sums were to come for the frosted death and later, for the antidote. There were Taylor’s millions to be paid into the coffers of the company when it was found that the insurance people would never be able to prove their claim against Sangaman. The company would be all his when he tended to Claudette Sangaman.

That had been Veshnir’s sole defeat so far. He hadn’t eliminated the girl who was to inherit her father’s share of the business. Eventually, he would. But for the moment that was the sole fly in the ointment—

Fate proceeded to hand him another one. For it was right then that his phone rang, and a guttural voice insolently informed him that the purchase price for the white death was to be cut in half and if he didn’t like it he knew what he could do about it.

Up in the north woods a man with icy, inhuman eyes and a brain that burned with the flame of genius, had pulled the wires of psychology. This man knew how to play on the basic emotions — fear, greed, hate. He had chosen greed as the organ stop, this time, and down here, several hundred miles away, the man named Veshnir danced to the music — exactly as The Avenger had foreseen.

When the phone clicked off, shutting from his ears the harsh, guttural insolence of that voice, Veshnir leaped to his feet. All his plans were crashing. It was incredible, but they were. And in his skull one big question mark burned and seared.

Why?

The arrangement had been concluded to everyone’s satisfaction. The price had been agreed on with no quibble at all. Now the country he had dealt with was welshing.

Why?

What had occurred to make that country think it could treat him like this? What had made them feel independent of him?

Veshnir was running while the thoughts coursed through his brain. For he knew the answers at once.

Fool that he was, he had come down here to New York, leaving his little factory in the woods unguarded. He had not dared to hire guards; he had felt he’d better be on deck in the city most of the time for an alibi. And he had taken a chance on leaving his plant alone, with a submarine full of men nearby.

They had stolen the capsules already made. That’s what they had done. It was probably all they really needed. Now, with what they wanted already theirs, they could slash the price on the balance! Perhaps they’d refuse all payment.

Veshnir was in his limousine now. The chauffeur, at the snapped order, raced down Fifth Avenue with the tires screaming under the acceleration.

They were double-crossing him! They were trying to gouge him out of some of his millions! But he’d stop that when he got up there. He had a weapon in reserve. The antidote.

The men from the sub would either bring back to the plant all the capsules they had taken and promise to go on with the payment, or he would release the antidote at once, in New York and to any European country who wanted it! That would show them!

Veshnir got to the airport in eighteen minutes. In another six he was up in the fastest plane available, with his own hands on the controls. He was not a very expert pilot; one of the many wealthy amateurs who could just barely handle a ship and that was all. But he was good enough to get about two hundred and sixty miles an hour out of the roaring motor as it headed for Maine.

It had all worked out as the man up in the north woods had planned — like a master’s chess game. But the man with the icy, colorless eyes, who had so deftly pulled the strings of psychology, was still sitting on a powder keg that might blow up under him at any moment.

He had sunk the sub. No wholesale death would cross the Atlantic in that vessel, at least.

But surrounding the death factory that was still the vital point of the whole game, and in which Mac and Josh lay dying, were almost the entire crew of the submarine, in full possession. Close to thirty of them, all skilled at fighting and military tactics, all picked men on a mission for which any one of them would fanatically give his life.