The Frosted Death

CHAPTER VIII Silent Partner — Silenced

The residential section called Clapham, out on Long Island, is for the very rich. The estates are larger, the grounds of each better kept, and the servants more profuse, than in any other spot.

One of the biggest of these estates belonged to a man named August Taylor.

August Taylor, sixty-seven, a semi-invalid and a most irritable and unpleasant man, was remarkable for three things. One was that he possessed nearly twelve million dollars. Another was that no woman had managed to grab him as a husband; so he was a bachelor with his moneybags. The third was that he had four million dollars sunk in the Sangaman-Veshnir Drug Corp., which in a way made him a silent partner; and he also had himself insured for another three million with the corporation as beneficiary.

August Taylor did not often show up at the Sangaman-Veshnir Building. He let his millions represent him there. For the most part, he rarely stirred from his Clapham estate. And that was natural enough. The estate was a beautiful place in which to spend all one’s time.

At the moment, however, on the morning after the night raid on the Sangaman-Veshnir laboratory, old August Taylor was not enjoying the beauties of his surroundings.

August Taylor was dead!

Four doctors, distinguished specialists whose names were known wherever medicine was practiced, were gathered around the body.

Taylor had died of something that no one of the four of them knew anything about. It was something that made his body look like it had been covered with powdered sugar. They were busy examining the strange phenomenon now, fascinated as specialists always are by something new in diseases, and at the same time feeling a little afraid.

A gray-haired doctor with rimless spectacles scraped some of the white stuff from the dead millionaire’s cheek. In a moment the cheek was covered again, with no clear space showing.

“It’s a kind of mold,” he marveled. “But mold is usually bluish gray — this is white. And what is mold doing on human flesh?”

There was a silence; then a man named Caldwell said: “The mold evidently gets into the lungs, too. That accounts for the symptoms resembling those of pneumonia.”

They all looked pretty grim. The whitish mold, that looked like fine snow, or powdered mica, was pretty dreadful stuff. And they recalled reading about an odd fungus death in New York. As physicians, they had more than an inkling, now, of how terribly they had misjudged when they touched the whitish stuff.

As if on signal, they all turned and raced for the luxurious bathroom. They washed in carbolic solution, so strong that burns resulted. Caldwell suddenly looked at his right hand. It seemed that the middle knuckle of his second finger was whiter than it should be. But that might have resulted from the powerful disinfectant he had just used.

Fergus MacMurdie could have told them that carbolic did no good. He had experimented with every known germicide in an effort to get hold of something that would be an antidote for the frosted death. And as yet he had found nothing.

Any disinfectant strong enough to kill the fungus was more than strong enough to kill living flesh, too; to eat it away, burn it up, shrivel it.

The mold was a low-grade organism practically indestructible. You could freeze it at two hundred degrees below, Fahrenheit, and it didn’t hurt the spores. In this respect, it was not too unusual: there are several low-grade organisms able to stand even the absolute zero, and the airlessness, of outer space. But in addition, this whitish stuff could take treatment that would destroy any other known form of life.

Yet there must be an antidote for it. There must be something to combat it! MacMurdie dared not let himself think otherwise. There had to be — with the white death loose in the great city. If not — chaos!

So Mac, with eyes black-rimmed from lack of sleep, was working night and day in his drugstore laboratory to find the answer.

Meanwhile, The Avenger was tackling the thing from the human angle.

At the moment, he was in the anteroom of Veshnir’s big top-floor office. He had passed the door of the laboratory in which he had been so busy the night before, with his eyes impassive and inscrutable. He had given his name to Veshnir’s secretary, in the anteroom.

Veshnir came out himself, staring at the white, dead face and the colorless eyes of his visitor with his own face benevolent, sad and kindly-looking.

“I’ve heard a little about you,” he said. “And I’ve heard that you were interesting yourself in the tragedy we have had around here. I’m very glad to see you at such a time. Come in.”

He stood aside for Benson to go into his private office, then followed him in and closed the door.

“I can hardly realize all the things that have happened,” Veshnir went on, as he waved Benson to a chair, and seated himself behind his desk. “Terrible. Terrible!”

“Yes, they are,” said Benson, icily colorless eyes fastening on the man’s kindly face like diamond drills. “Especially the frosted death!”

“Frosted death?” repeated Veshnir. Then he nodded. “Oh, yes. The thing the papers have been hinting at. But — what is it, precisely, Mr. Benson?”

In a few words, Benson told him what it was. Veshnir’s face paled.

“But why do you connect that dreadful thing with this place? Surely you don’t mean—”

“It is almost certain that it originated here. In your laboratories.”

“Good heavens! But what makes you think that? What proof have you?”

The Avenger told him that, too, eyes like drills on Veshnir’s benevolent face.

“It simply doesn’t seem believable,” Veshnir breathed, after a moment of silence.

“You know nothing of such experiments, then?” Benson said quietly. “I had hoped you could shed some light on the white mold.”

Veshnir spread his hands. “I never even heard of it before. But that’s not so odd. I am in the sales and personal-contact end of the company. I have little to do with the laboratory — sometimes don’t go into the place for months at a time, even though it is right next door. So I wouldn’t necessarily know of their experiments. Sangaman—”

He stopped abruptly and looked confused.

“Your partner?” said Benson. “What about him?”

Veshnir slowly took a cigar out of a box, lit it, and exhaled a thin puff of smoke.

“I was about to say that Sangaman was in and out of the laboratory all the time. He did quite a bit of work in there himself, personally. He came up from the ranks — was a fine pharmacist. But I can’t believe he had anything to do with the horror you describe.”

“Could the murdered man, Targill, have perfected such a thing without its being known by you or Sangaman?”

“All things are possible, of course,” Veshnir said oracularly. “But I doubt it.”

“It is conceivable, wouldn’t you say, that Sangaman suddenly found out the terrible nature of Targill’s latest experiment, and killed him to prevent its ever leaving the laboratory — but killed him too late?”

Veshnir swung his chair till he was looking out the window. He stared out at the sky, smoking thoughtfully. Then he stared into the icy, dangerous eyes again.

“I have never believed that my partner murdered Targill,” he said firmly. “I don’t believe it now. But if he did it — and I say if—it would only have been for some such compelling motive as that.”

“Sangaman’s reputation in business circles is good,” Benson said evenly. “How is it with you — his partner?”

“I don’t like to say anything about that,” Veshnir replied, with a look of distress on his kindly face.

“I would much appreciate an answer.”

Few people could defy that tone in The Avenger’s voice. Veshnir didn’t try to.

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “Sangaman has always been inclined to practice… er… sharp dealing. I’ve covered for him several times. Nothing illegal, you understand. Just things that are slightly unethical. I’ve been going over the books since all this stuff has come out, and I’ve found quite a few traces of such dealings. There was one item about ‘crude drugs’ to a foreign power that can only have meant the shipment of war goods to that nation. I hadn’t known about that before.”

He shook his head a little.

“But when it comes to murder — and to a guilty knowledge of an experiment as destructive and awful as this frosted-death thing — I simply can’t believe it of him!”

Veshnir, it seemed, was outside the whole affair. There appeared to be nothing to get from him. The Avenger thanked him, in his even, quiet voice, and left.

Late papers were on the street as he came out of the building. The three-o’clock edition, with streaming headlines, announced:

Benson got a paper and skimmed the account with about three glances of his photographic eyes.

The newspapers, it seemed, did not share Veshnir’s firm refusal to believe in Sangaman’s guilt.

The police, in searching through the home of the dead man, August Taylor, had found one thing that did not belong there. That was a pair of rubber gloves. They had turned the gloves carefully inside out and found prints of the extreme tips of the fingers last in them.

The prints were those of Thomas Sangaman!

So there the authorities had it cold. Sure evidence on a human being who was beginning to show up as a fiend from hell.

He had been only a murderer with the first crime: for he had killed Targill more or less normally. But when he murdered Taylor, the accounts ran on, he revealed himself as a demon. Because he killed deliberately with the frosted death as a weapon!

These things were now clear:

Thomas Sangaman had killed Targill. There could no longer be doubt about that.

Sangaman had killed him, almost certainly, to get hold of the result of an experiment — the deadly whitish stuff.

With that as a lethal weapon, Sangaman had sneaked into Taylor’s home. Handling the stuff with rubber gloves, he had put some of it on the old man, and then fled.

Why?

The motive was crystal-clear, too.

August Taylor was a silent partner in the firm of Sangaman-Veshnir. That corporation, it had recently been revealed, was on the verge of bankruptcy. A partnership insurance policy of Taylor’s would now save the firm. That was why Sangaman had committed the second murder. It proved him to be either mad or stupid, as well as criminal. For if the murder could be proved against him, of course, the policy would never be paid out.

More significant than the news content, was the tone of the account. Never had Benson read in a newspaper such bitter, cold fury. Sangaman was a monster! He had helped invent a thing that might turn into an epidemic such as had never been seen in modern times. He had murdered to get sole possession of the secret of it. Then, with it, he had committed a second murder.

Sangaman was a cold-blooded beast. He didn’t even deserve the formality of a court trial. If he were ever caught, he should be taken out and lynched.

Looking at that account, The Avenger knew that everybody reading it would be infuriated to the point of insanity. If Sangaman ever were found, he would be torn to pieces by the first people who saw and recognized him.

Benson rolled the newspaper and tapped it reflectively as he went toward Bleek Street. In the lurid columns he had read one very significant thing. It gave meaning and clarity to the whole bizarre performance. It told him almost everything he needed to know.