The Glass Mountain

CHAPTER XVIII Death of a God

There had been changes in the big cave since the man with the cold, pale eyes and the others had been herded from it into the cell.

There were six runways leading into the big space from other parts of the amazingly labyrinthine glass mountain. Four had been blocked solidly, tightly, with the basalt slabs cunningly carved centuries ago by the original occupants of the cavern.

One tunnel, leading, Benson knew, toward the new Mt. Rainod tunnel bore, was open.

The rift right across from it, leading back to where the swift stream powered the generator, was also open and unblocked.

These things the colorless, infallible eyes saw first. Then the pale, cold gaze went to the statue of the Rain God.

The thing was over twenty feet high. The head of the statue, with carved headdress, was as big as a rain barrel. And on the head stood a figure that was right in place, there.

The figure of an Indian seeming to be centuries old, and with a face that strangely resembled the statue’s.

“Masquerading to the last,” whispered Smitty. “Guess he doesn’t want even his own thugs to know who he is.”

“Of course not,” Josh whispered back. “That way lies future blackmail, what with murder and all the rest that’s been done around here.”

The figure on top of the statue spoke, then. The armed criminals who surrounded the prisoners were silent, and a little bit in awe, even though they knew enough of the layout here to realize there wasn’t anything supernatural about it. The measured, impressive tone of the man on the statue—

“Benson,” the man said, “you and your employees, and the Indian and the rancher’s daughter, are going to die in here. That’s the reward you get for meddling in affairs that are none of your business.”

The man’s voice had been impressive. It was made to sound futile and weak by the measured tone of The Avenger.

“Murder is my business,” the man with the dead face said. “I will always meddle with it. And so far, all the murderers in whose affairs I have meddled have somehow been destroyed by their own deadly greed. Take warning from that.”

The man on the statue quivered with anger, then relaxed and laughed. It was a harsh bark of sound.

“You pick a fine time to talk big,” he sneered. “You will find yourself talking to Death in a few minutes. Have you anything to say before you die?”

“Nothing, Fyler,” said Benson steadily.

There was a full minute of silence.

“What did you call me?” said the man so theatrically posed on the statue’s head, in a strangled tone.

“I called you by name,” said The Avenger evenly. “And that is — Arthur Fyler.”

The man laughed. But the sound was strained.

“A last guess, and a bad one,” he said. “I’m not—”

“The man who saw to it that the Central Construction Co. got the Mt. Rainod tunnel job, even though it had to bid millions under the next lowest estimate,” said The Avenger, voice like that of doom, “is the man who will presently meet his victims beyond the grave. And that man is you.”

The bizarre figure on the statue faced the motley crew of gunmen.

“He’s insane,” came his urgent words. “I’ve never heard of this Arthur Fyler. I—”

“You killed Masterson, impersonating me,” Benson said, voice not seeming loud and yet drowning the other’s out. “You killed the others with your power cable. You killed Crast when he came secretly to find out for himself what was wrong and when he actually discovered the gate-valve. You used a gun belonging to your other partner, Tom Ryan, to frame him if ever the murder should be discovered. You have a fast plane hangared on the other side of the mountain, that has shuttled you back and forth from Chicago to do all these things. Probably you plan to desert your men now, and leave them here while you fly back to reap the fifteen-million-dollar reward for all your murderous work.”

The men were looking at each other, and then at the man on the statue, with smoldering eyes. A grin touched Smitty’s lips briefly, Fyler might get away with this last mass murder, but it would do him small good. These thugs would bleed him of every cent he’d ever get, now that they knew his identity. The way they were staring at each other, greedily, speculatively, proved that—

There was a movement beside the giant so fast and so unexpected that even Smitty, used as he was to The Avenger’s lightning motions, gaped with surprise.

Like a leaping cougar, the gray steel man was across the cave and at one cleared entrance — leading toward the tunnel bore in Mt. Rainod’s flank — before anyone else could move.

“Get him!” yelled one of the men. “If he gets away—”

The leader on the statue’s stone head didn’t move. There was a curious smile on his lips. Instantly the reason for the smile came out.

Four men walked into the cave from the rift. And Benson came backing before them, because four guns were trained on his chest.

“I anticipated some such thing,” said Fyler. “So—don’t kill him!”

Benson hadn’t given up yet. With another of his incredibly fast moves, he was on the men, sweeping their guns aside, grappling with them.

But the outcome was the expected one when the odds are one to four. The men got him down on the floor, in the very entrance of the rift. Then they brought him roughly back.

“I’m glad you heard my orders not to kill him,” said the man on the statue. “That would have been too swift.”

Benson stood silent, basilisk-eyed.

“I was beginning to think nothing could beat that man,” whispered Ethel to Nellie.

Nellie waved her hand impatiently, and kept on staring at The Avenger. She still believed nothing could beat him — would keep on believing that right up to the moment when she gasped her last breath.

Fyler was climbing down from the statue. He went toward the open rift leading toward the tunnel bore. All the men with him retreated slowly, too, with guns on the prisoners.

Far off, down the other rift that was unblocked by the basalt slabs, could be heard a rumble. The rush of water. Many tons of it.

Smitty quivered for action, but still the cold gaze of The Avenger held him back. Josh was biting his lips, knowing he was to die and not liking it any more than any other man, but quite calm. Nellie’s head was high, and the dead rancher’s daughter was taking a bit of courage from her example.

Mac spoke, with his crazy reversal of pessimism coming to the fore, as usual, when there was no way out.

“I’d hate to be in Fyler’s shoes when the chief gets through with him,” he said. “I’ll pray a wee bit for him when we get out of this. He’ll be needin’ it.”

Fyler heard, and laughed once more. Then he was in the rift. The men crowded in after him, three abreast, guns holding the captives to the last. They were finally all out.

“Chief,” pleaded Smitty, “let me rush ’em. I could get at least three or four—”

“No!” said The Avenger, icy eyes on the tunnel entrance.

There was a scraping sound. Then one more of the great basalt slabs dropped from the top of the rift. The last man out had released it.

Now there was only one opening into the cave of the Rain God. That was the one down which sounded the furious rushing of water. A sound that was very near, now.

All the other exits were hopelessly blocked with tons of the glasslike basalt.

Suddenly the lights went out. They were in pitch darkness. And the sound of the flood was a booming roar in their ears.

Ethel screamed wildly.

Nellie said: “Oh! That’s worse than anything else. This darkness.”

“The water has flooded the generator,” said Benson, voice quiet in the dark. “The gate-valve from Cloud Lake has been fully opened, for the last time. Everybody, start climbing the statue of the Rain God.”

“Where is the statue? I can’t feel—” Ethel cried.

“Here,” said Benson, tone vibrant but calm.

He felt the girl’s hand, and guided her to the back of the statue where irregularities allowed a person to climb.

He guided them all, one by one, before starting up, himself.

And before them the flood had burst from the one rift left open. It came with a roar that was shattering to the eardrums, driven by all the hideous pressure of Cloud Lake, eight miles off and at least a thousand feet higher than this death trap.

“They’ve been gone about four minutes,” said Benson. “It will take at least twenty-five for them to get to the fissure dropping down into the tunnel bore, which is the only exit to that tunnel. The water in here is coming faster than a horse can run.”

The others listened to his voice in the dark, with a silence as blank as their faces no doubt were. Was The Avenger mad? What did he mean?

“I warned Fyler,” said Benson. “I told him that when I worked against a murderer, that murderer sealed his own fate in the end. But he would not be warned. He let loose the flood—”

The water had slammed clear across the cave of the Rain God. It curled in a great breaker up against the slab blocking the passage down which Fyler and all his thugs had gone.

Then there were sounds like half a dozen field guns in war — and the water went rushing on out of the cavern again.

After the men who had left them there to die.

Benson had left his flashlight in the cell. But Mac had one, equally powerful. Its beam split the darkness. It centered on the rift leading toward the tunnel bore, shifted in the opposite direction to the hole where the water gushed out as if from a gigantic hose, came back to the rift.

The water was roaring out the rift as fast as it came in from the other side.

“Chief! The slab they dropped after them!” came Mac’s cry. “It’s split in a dozen hunks, and the hunks are rrollin’ down the tunnel before the flood!”

“It was intended to split,” said The Avenger, voice as cold and calm as his deadly eyes.

“Whoosh! ’Tis the skullies, themselves, that’ll be drowned like rats in a trap — Fyler and all — not us!”

Ethel spoke up, eyes wide and fascinated on the white water roaring along under the flashlight’s white beam.

“Are you a wizard, Mr. Benson, that you can do such things?”

“Hardly a wizard,” said The Avenger. “It is quite simple. You know, awhile ago, I made a break for the mouth of the tunnel, there, and was driven back. But I wasn’t driven back until I had managed to leave something in the entrance, directly under the slab that could be dropped from the roof.”

Mac exclaimed suddenly.

“Whoosh, mon! Of course!”

“I see you’ve hit on it, Mac,” said Benson. “Thermite and sodium, set off by the pound of the dropped slab, burning fiercely when wet. It heated the slab, and the water cooled it again — fast. Exactly the principle that was utilized to crack a way into the basalt for the tunnel bore. The expansion and contraction did for the slab that was to seal us in forever—”

Far down the rift, it seemed as if men’s screams could be heard. But none in the Rain God’s cavern could be sure. Any more than you could be sure you heard the piping cries of birds over the tumult of waters in a storm at sea.

But whether or not cries could be heard, the fate of the killers in the passage, headed by the master killer, Fyler, was as clear and inevitable as if written by — well, by the old Rain God, himself.

“Turn out your flash, Mac,” said The Avenger, tone as calm and even as though nothing out of the way had occurred. “We mustn’t waste it. It will be hours before the lake is drained enough so that we can go out the rift. Meanwhile, everything is finished and all right.”

Everything all right.

When they got out, they could have the rest of the gunmen in the camp rounded up and jailed.

Work on the tunnel could be successfully resumed, with that secret gate-valve closed and sealed — though only one partner, Tom Ryan, remained to benefit.

As devilish a murderer as even The Avenger had ever met, was annihilated with several dozen of his cutthroat crew — destroyed by his own hand as Benson had warned he would be.

Everything all right.

But in the flare of Mac’s flashlight, before he put it out to conserve its power, The Avenger’s face and eyes showed no triumph.

The face, dead flesh with the brown-red tint on it that matched that of Yellow Moccasins, was, as ever, a deathly mask. The icy, colorless eyes remained terrible in their impersonal calmness, their lack of triumph.

The Avenger met and overcame the superkillers that dared to cross weapons with him. But the vanquishing of none of them could give him a feeling of triumph. Perhaps he would find triumph only in the death — inevitably to be his some day in his dangerous work — that should release him from a somber world and set him again beside the wife and child the criminal underworld had taken from him.