The Avenger 11 - River of Ice (4 page)

“Yes,” said the girl, beginning to frown a little. She didn’t know what business this was of the young man with the white hair and dead, white face.

“Of course,” nodded Benson. “And the gold alone would be a tempting prize to a criminal. Whom have you talked to concerning the seven caves?”

“Only those four men in there,” said Lini, pointing to the closed door of the conference room where the directors still sat. “But really, I—”

“You have told no one else where the caves are?” asked Benson.

“I haven’t even told them,” Lini said. “I am to lead them, or any men they desire, to the caves personally.”

Benson nodded. “That’s good. A wise precaution. But just the same, you are in danger.”

“Why on earth would I be in danger?” demanded Lini, frown deepening.

“Because you have a priceless secret. It is my business to know when danger may be expected. And you—”

“Just what is your business—all of it?” asked the girl frostily. “Why do you horn in on this?”

Benson hesitated. If there was anything he hated, it was autobiographies. Particularly in his own case. Because the reasons for being what he was sounded so confoundedly noble. To say that he was a man who fought crime simply because he had suffered from it personally in the past and wanted to save other people similar suffering, sounded silly, to one who knew nothing about him. But there were times when he had to talk of himself and his work, and this seemed one of them. “Sometime ago,” he said, eyes like pale ice in his paralyzed face, “my life was irreparably damaged in a crime plot. Since then, I have devoted most of my time to fighting criminals as a sort of revenge on the underworld. I need no fees for it. I am quite well established financially. That is, as you put it, my business.”

“There’s no crime in any of this matter,” said Lini, face unfriendly.

“There could easily be,” said Benson. “So I would like to offer my help.”

Lini started toward the outer door again. “I’m sure you are all you claim,” she said, with cool politeness. “But I don’t know you, or anything about you. As you say, I have a priceless secret. Its very value makes it impossible for me to put blind trust in strangers.”

Benson’s steely hand touched her arm, and she stopped. “Stay at my headquarters,” he urged. “A girl who helps me in my work can look after you there. The police, or anyone else in New York in a position of authority, can assure you about me if you’ll take the trouble to phone. You will be safe—”

The conference door opened. Wittwar looked out. “Mr. Benson, could you come here for a moment?” he asked.

“Stay here, please,” said Benson to Lini.

He went into the conference room again. Wittwar said, hopefully, “Since you hadn’t gone yet we wanted to call you in and ask you something. That is, would you take an expedition back to the caves that girl described, and to which she has promised to lead us?”

Conroy nodded eagerly. “There’s no man on earth we’d trust more, Mr. Benson,” he said. “And we’ll pay you anything in reason—or out of reason!”

Benson shook his head. “Sorry, gentlemen. I have other things to do. Any good man can perform this task for you.” He went back into the other room, leaving disappointment on four faces.

Lini Waller was not there. In Benson’s short absence, she had gone. In her taxicab, leaving the Kembridge Building, Lini continued to frown. But this time at herself. Perhaps she had made a mistake in not finding out a little more about this Mr. Benson. Perhaps she had been too swift and suspicious in turning down his offer to guard her. After all, the Wittwar Foundation directors, all important men, had treated the young man with the white hair and the pale eyes very respectfully. She shrugged and put it out of her mind. After all, since no one knew of her reason for being here—save the four in the Kembridge Building—what possible danger could she be in?

Lini had taken a small suite at an obscure but excellent hotel. Her brother, Brent, had made an adequate salary since leaving college; so the two of them could afford good things. Like the radio receiving-transmitting set which Lini had set up in the corner of the living room. The set, operating on batteries or plug-in, was a twin to one which Brent had in his far-away cave under the river of ice. On it, she had talked to him nightly, save for a few days when the static was so bad that even a superfine commercial set couldn’t bridge the distance intelligibly. She switched on the set now to tell him that they had won, and were millionaires.

Brent Waller had reached the stage where he was beginning to talk to himself. As day followed day, he grew more and more lonely, down in his hole that had originated with an ancient and forgotten race, thousands of years ago. And there was plenty to give him the jitters. “I’ll swear those damn sentries move every now and then,” he said aloud.

He had a small fire going in the large cave, off which the seven other caverns were situated. He had the seven doors carefully closed; the slight heat of his fire might injure hides and flesh, hitherto preserved only by glacial cold. He coughed. It was pretty smoky in the cave. There was no opening in the top for the smoke to get out. Remembering an old trick, he had built his fire against the rear wall. The smoke hugged the wall as it rose, flowed sluggishly along under the roof, and eventually found its way out the opening under the glacier’s foot. A nice trick; only it didn’t work very well. There was enough smoke hazing the lower air to make him feel like a herring.

But you can’t eat meat and fish raw. He had to have a few embers to cook on. “I’ll only have a few more days of this,” Brent promised himself. His spoken words echoed eerily in the cavern. “Last night Lini said she was sure our proposition would be accepted today. When she comes back with him, it will certainly be by airplane. A boat can get here later to take this stuff away. Only a few more days.” Then Brent said some words that would have led anyone overhearing him to be sure he had gone insane in the solitude. “I’ll be all right—if the mastodon doesn’t get me!”

Brent’s meal was done. He took up the frying pan and went to the first door on the right. He entered the cave behind this door to eat his meal in more comfort, away from the smoke in the outer cave. The first door on the right was the seventh door. And in the cave behind that—the seventh cave, as Lini and Brent had counted it from the first—was the gigantic ancestor of the modern elephant.

Brent ate his solitary meal with his eyes on the tremendous animal that towered in perfect preservation to the rock roof. Perfect preservation? Well, not quite. Now, with a bit of the glacier’s cold dispersed, the big thing was beginning to show its age. “It smells,” Brent said aloud. “So does the guard,” he added morosely, looking at the long-dead mummified sentry who sat almost under the mastodon’s trunk, grasping his polished spear.

Brent finished his dinner. He didn’t know why he should choose this cave, out of all seven . . . But he did know. There was no use kidding himself. He kept having the sneaking suspicion that the seven dead sentries moved a little once in a while. With the mastodon—it was more than a suspicion. It was an absolute conviction!

He could swear he had seen the mastodon move on at least three occasions. Once, its great trunk had swayed a little. Once, an ear had distinctly flopped. Once, the left foreleg had twitched, sending a shiver through the whole mighty bulk. Yet he knew that wasn’t possible. The thing was so dead that it smelled. It
couldn’t
move! He was going insane in here. To preserve his own sanity, he forced himself to stay in the cave of the mastodon more than in any other, as a matter of strict self-discipline.

The mastodon didn’t move—while he finished his dinner at any rate. Brent took his frying pan out to the outer cave again, and cleaned it in glacial water. He debated going outdoors and decided against it. It wasn’t dark yet. There was always the chance that some hunter or trapper might see him and investigate his presence in the wilderness. It was bad enough to have to have smoke coming out the foot of the cliff.

He went into the cave containing costumes of the vanished race. Furs—nice thick ones. He selected a cape to throw over the fur suit he had already filched from the cave. It was as cold as the devil under the glacier. “Hey!” he screamed suddenly, jumping a yard. Then he swore at himself. He thought he had seen the guard in this room move its spear. “I
am
jittery,” he snapped, aloud. “That’s what comes of studying the stuff in the caves too much.”

To while away the time, as much as to learn, Brent had gone over some of the records in the library cave and had studied more minutely the pictures painted in the mastodon cavern. He had learned more about the master of mastodons. The master was headman of the tribe, all right. More, he was supposed to have everlasting life and to be able to guard the race always. His spirit was thought to have gone from body to body of a succession of reigning masters, and to be imperishable. Brent was reminded of the fear of the three Chinooks who had deserted him and Lini. “Old spirits.”

“I’ll get a Hollywood orchestra on the radio,” Brent shivered. “I need something to cheer me up. Boy, I’m earning any dough we might get out of these caves!” He went back to the seventh cave where his fine radio was set up. He pressed at the right-and-left spots on the door to swing it open—and whirled with a gasp! He thought he had heard the sound of a step. It had seemed to come from the cave of the costumes which he had just left. There were no further sounds, but so strong had been his sense of hearing a step that he went back to that cave door and opened it. There was nothing moving within, of course. How could anything move in a place where death had reigned for thousands of years?

Brent returned to the mastodon’s cave and went in. The radio was against the side wall. He walked to it, passing the dead sentry within a yard, walking almost close enough to the mastodon to brush its trunk. He’d show the damned dead thing if he was afraid of it! He snapped on his radio which was set at the wave length he and Lini used. He’d leave it on that for a little while, before getting some dance music to make the hours endurable in this awful place. It wasn’t the hour when Lini usually communicated with him, but she might try a little earlier tonight.

In the civilized sophistication of her hotel suite, thousands of miles from the glacier caverns and thousands of years from it in human advancement, Lini kept calling into the radio. There was panic in her heart. Every time Brent didn’t answer her call at once, she started thinking of all the things that might have happened. Particularly the possible collapse of ice over the cave mouth that could entomb him forever. Then she heared his voice and gasped in relief. It was tiny, thin, intermingled with static; but she could get it all right. “Brent! How are you?”

“All right, Lini. Didn’t expect to hear from you for a couple of hours.”

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. But hurry things up, will you? I’ll admit I’m beginning to get awful nervous in here. Hearing things after me and all that sort of thing. And the mastodon moves.”

“Brent!” exclaimed Lini, with an awful fear clutching her.

“I’m just kidding,” Brent’s tiny voice came back, in a different tone. A better tone. “Just kidding, Lini.”

“Well, hang on,” said his sister. “The deal’s gone through, Brent. We’re millionaires. I’ll be starting back any time, leading men to take over the caves.”

“Great!” came Brent’s far voice. “I—” There was silence.

Lini called frantically. “Brent!
Brent!”

Then she heard his scream. Like the far wail of a seagull in a night of storm, it sounded over the crackling in the radio. His scream, and the words,
“Help! The mast—”
That was all! Lini leaped up from in front of the radio with horror filling her heart. Something dreadful had happened to Brent! To have heard him cry for help—and to realize that he was as far from her as if he were on another planet! “I’ve got to do something!” she whimpered. “I’ve got to—”

The lights in the room went out! She screamed and ran toward the door. Something caught her by the arms. She fell into a blackness more absolute than that of any darkened room!