The Avenger 11 - River of Ice (10 page)

He went to the desks, a huge one for Wittwar and a smaller one for a secretary. In the top drawer of Wittwar’s desk was a large tablet of blank paper, with the top dozen sheets covered with lines of figures. The numbers were quite common. They related to the electric-power companies on the North American continent: output per year, gross income, net profits, et cetera. The Avenger replaced the big pad of paper and continued his search. And found nothing!

He left the building the way he had come in and went to Werner’s office. There was not one thing in the office that even the genius of The Avenger could connect with the kidnaping of Lini or the theft of age-old relics.

Benson went on to Mallory’s office. The vice-president and general manager of Wittwar’s big company had his office in the uptown branch of the company, not in the main office building where Wittwar’s was located. The branch was over on Tenth Avenue; and the neighborhood was dark even at this early hour. Dark and deserted.

The Avenger stopped his car a block from the address and went on foot to the building. He seemed to be walking normally, but such was the inconspicuousness of his tread that you probably would not have noticed him. Indeed, from the way he managed to keep within what shadows there were along the fairly lighted sidewalk, you probably would not have seen him at all. Benson was a master at taking advantage of cover where there would seem to be no cover. Enemies sometimes swore he could make himself invisible.

At any rate, the man in the car a hundred feet down from the branch entrance did not see Benson. But The Avenger saw him. A long dark sedan, with the smooth motor idling; a man at the wheel who could be distinguished only as a dark shadow at the top of which a little red glow now and again indicated the puffing of a cigarette.

Benson came as near the car as he could along the sidewalk, then took to the street. He moved in a line that would keep his body hidden from the rear-view mirror by the blind spot caused by the upright between glass windows at side and rear. At the tail of the car, he crouched and looked around. There was no one near enough to see what went on. He moved, head low, along the side of the car.

The first thing the man at the wheel knew of the presence of someone else in the night was when a hand, not large but strong as a steel cable, whipped up from the side of the car and slapped over his mouth. The next thing he knew, as he flopped in the seat and tried to get away from the hand and yell, was that another hand was compressing the back of his neck.

It was the strangest attack. First, there was a feel of terrific pain, making him squeal behind the sound-deadening hand over his lips. Then there was a sort of swift fadeout of the surrounding neighborhood. And finally, the man was falling into a world of fog that got blacker and blacker and had no bottom.

The Avenger released the pressure on the great nerves at the base of the skull that could kill if held long enough. He left the man still slouched in a fairly upright position behind the steering column and went back to the entrance. The door was locked. Apparently the man was a guard, to prevent anyone from going in, not a lookout for someone who had already entered.

Benson softly forced the lock and went in. He went to Mallory’s office on the second floor of the two stories of the branch housed in the five-story warehouse structure. The Avenger had heard no sound as he went up the stairs, but he found his ears straining for any noise.

Danger! He felt it, instinctively, with the sixth sense that animals of prey develop. He moved by memory to the door of Mallory’s office, not showing the flashlight. He went in, closed the door, and only then did he turn on the beam.

There is a technique of searching. An ordinary man could take a day to search one room as it should be searched. The police could do the same job in an hour or less. The Avenger could do it in about eight minutes. In six, he had found more than had turned up in all the rest of his investigations to date.

First, at the rear of the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, there was a ragged corner of something that seemed to have been torn from a parchment page. But it was not parchment. Benson studied it in the white beam of his flashlight. It was thin hide, strange looking, obviously very old and yet well preserved. It was a corner from one of the thin hides making up the ancient volume Lini had brought from the ice caves.

With his eyes glittering like chromium slits, Benson recalled his conviction that from the manuscript he had studied in the Foundation office, one page near the front was missing. This corner, it seemed, had been inadvertently torn off that missing page. And on the corner were the ends of three jagged lines tooled in the thin, queer leather.

In the top drawer of Mallory’s desk was a measuring compass. Quite a large one. Experimentally, The Avenger drew a half circle on a large letterhead from the drawer. The half circle was the approximate size of a human skull from the ears up. He tried the compass on it. It was large enough to span the half circle easily, and large enough to measure off a given segment of it.

There was still another thing. A section of the wash-stand paneling sounded loose under a soft tap. Benson’s deft, steely fingers found the end, pulled it forward. A flat space showed between panel and rough plaster. In the space was a hammer. It was a curious hammer, with a narrow, long striking head, and with sharp prongs on the opposite end. Benson nodded. An archaeologist’s hammer, used for the delicate chipping away of stone and hard earth from valuable objects long buried.

A hammer, a piece torn from the lost page of the ancient book and a measuring compass large enough to be used on a human skull . . .

The door of the office swung softly open as Benson stood with his back to it. Light flared on! Benson whirled.

“Just keep where you are, with your mitts in sight,” said the man in the doorway. The man had a machine gun trained on Benson’s body. Behind him, two men had automatics also trained on the same target.

“Burn him down,” snarled one of the men behind the machine gunner. “What’re you waiting for, Nick? Burn him down!”

Nellie Gray was spoiling for action. To look at the lovely little blonde, you’d have thought she would never have an idea about anything more sinister than the latest lure in perfume, or the most modern thing in handbags. But Nellie’s ideas were confined, ninety percent of the time, to thoughts of guns and gangsters.

And now she was sitting around staring at her perfectly kept fingernails, trying not to bite them, while everybody but her was busy in this case of the ancient relics! As is often the case with people who wish for things, Nellie was about to have an overdose of that which she was wishing for.

It began with the tiny red glow on the wall, announcing that someone was in the vestibule downstairs and wanted to come up. She looked into the short-range television screen and saw the face and form of Lini Waller. “Uh-oh,” she said softly. “Whenever that girl shows up, trouble comes to call! The chief should be here, now. I wonder where—”

She went swiftly to the big radio set in the corner which was always tuned to the group’s special wave length. “Nellie Gray calling,” she said into it. “Chief, this is Nellie Gray. Answer, if you hear. I think you had better come back to headquarters. Chief, Nellie Gray calling.”

At that moment a machine gun was covering the approximate spot in Benson’s middle where the little belt radio he carried was located. But Nellie didn’t know that. All she knew was that The Avenger didn’t answer.

The giant, Smitty, was down in a second-floor room. She pressed a buzzer that sounded in the room. In about four seconds Smitty was upstairs with her. The giant moved fast when Nellie called. It was to be suspected that his main concern in life was this small, lithe, fragile looking blonde. It was to be suspected that the big fellow had a large spot in her heart too; but you could never do more than suspect: Nellie would have died rather than show it.

“Smitty! Lini Waller is downstairs! I think the chief would want to know that and be with her, as soon as possible. He’s out at the office of either Wittwar or Mallory or Werner. Get him, fast! Tell Lini to come up as you go through the vestibule. I’ll stall her here till he comes.”

Smitty went out in a hurry. In a moment Lini Waller came in the door of the great top-floor room. “Hello,” said Nellie, making the greetings sound as careless as she could. “Come in. We’ve missed you.”

Lini stood there. “I can’t come in,” she said. “I haven’t time. I must see Mr. Benson right away. I have important news for him.”

Nellie stared at her with carefully veiled curiosity, and sympathy. If Benson had deduced correctly, a dreadful thing had been done to this girl! At this moment she was walking around with a length of steel in her brain. But it seemed impossible to believe so fantastic a thing. Lini’s face showed little expression, to be sure. Her tone lacked a certain animation. But it was hardly enough to confirm that hideous statement of the chief’s.

“I’ve got to see Mr. Benson right away,” repeated Lini.

“He isn’t in,” said Nellie. “But he will be any minute. Come in and sit down.”

“I can’t. I must go at once, before they guess that I am here and come and take me.”

“No one can take you from this place,” said Nellie soothingly.

“Yes. They can. They can do anything. They are terrible! I must see Mr. Benson and tell him where they are.”

Whew! Hold everything! was Nellie’s thought. And with the thought went all ideas of just stalling the girl till the chief returned. “You mean, you know where the men who are after your secret are hiding?” she demanded.

Lini’s head nodded, slowly. “I think I do. I am sure I do! Within a block or so. Mr. Benson can find the exact place when I take him to the block in which they are.”

Yes, thought Nellie, the chief could do that easily. But she had another thought: So could I.

“You lead me to that block,” she said, reaching for a perky hat as she spoke. “Come on, let’s go!”

Lini hung back. “It was Mr. Benson I wanted.”

“When it comes to a thing like this,” said Nellie, “you can’t distinguish between Mr. Benson and anyone of us who work for him. Lead on!” Her blue eyes were wide and pleased as she followed Lini Waller down the stairs. This was going to be dandy.

The chief was expected back any minute with Smitty. When he returned, he would hear Nellie’s voice on the radio. By then she should have marked the precise building in which their enemies were located, after Lini had led her to the block. Then The Avenger could come directly to that address instead of having to waste time finding it himself. Meanwhile, she could lurk around the place and be sure that none of the men went out.

Lini a pitiful automation? Well, maybe she was. But it didn’t matter. One way or another, she was going to reveal an important thing: the location of the enemies’ headquarters. And Nellie wasn’t going to allow such an intention to cool! Anyhow, she had been pining so hard for something precisely like this that she jumped at the chance.

“It’s on or near Park Avenue,” said Lini, when the two girls were in the coupé Nellie usually used.

Nellie nodded. She was no dope. The chances that this was a trap were large. She had known that when she started, but she had not cared. Even if it was a trap, she could still lead The Avenger to a place where the enemy, lying in wait for her, could be located, couldn’t she?

Had Lini mentioned some dark or disreputable district, the trap possibility would have been confirmed. As it was, Park Avenue is not a typical place for gangsters to try to burn people down. Though it was still possible, of course.

“I think,” said Lini, when the coupé had raced to Park Avenue and the Forties, not far from the lordly Waldorf Astoria, itself, “that it is in this block, between Park and Lexington.”

The traffic light went red. Nellie dutifully stopped. From the opposite curb came a bellow: “Hey, you! In the coupé! Why don’t you stop when the fight goes red?”

Indignantly, Nellie looked toward the source of the noise, a burly traffic officer in blue. The man walked over to her coupé, shoulders swinging.

“You’re a foot and a half over the white line,” he said truculently, leaning close. Nellie was rolling down her window to protest. “How do you expect pedestrians to cross with the lights when you’re clear out in the next street like that.”

And this was all Nellie heard. From the dark, blue-clad bulk so close to the rolled-down window, a large hand jabbed forth. The hand caught her by the throat. Nellie could handle any two men, so expert was she at jujitsu. But she hadn’t a chance, sitting down, with the steering wheel cramping her and her assailant’s bulk outside the car and inaccessible. She tried to yell, and couldn’t. She tried to squirm free, and couldn’t.

“I think you’ll just take a little ride to the station house,” said the man loudly, for the benefit of a car waiting just behind Nellie’s. “Move over! I’ll drive.”

This fell on ears that couldn’t hear at all. Nellie was completely out. Her inert body was shoved over against the impassive form of Lini, and the man in cop’s clothing slid behind the wheel. The coupé sped smoothly from the desirable neighborhood of Park Avenue to another neighborhood almost as discreet and respectable. Lower Fifth Avenue.

But Nellie knew nothing of destinations. Once, when she stirred a little, the big hand jammed down on an already bruised throat, and she didn’t stir any more. She came to, finally, feeling nauseated with the pain of her aching throat. She stared around, thinking she was still out and wandering in some kind of nightmare.

From a little above her, and to her left, stared the glassy eyes of a lion. Or, rather, of a lion’s head, just the head. Above, was a queer, rough ceiling with exposed beams, as if she were in some very crude place. She could see the ceiling plainly because she lay on her back on something firm, yet yielding.

She moved to get off the thing and found that her arms and legs were tightly bound. Furthermore, she couldn’t even roll her head. She tried, and there was a firm pressure on her forehead that prevented it. After a moment she realized that adhesive tape passed over her forehead, binding it down to whatever she lay on. She could only move her eyes. Then she tried to scream!