The Avenger 34 - The Glass Man (11 page)

“Oh, no need for that,” said Lamont, “You’re right, Pearl, you’ve got me. The game is up, isn’t it? I might as well quit.” He pointed at the bed. “I’ve got most of what you want hidden under there. If you’ll move aside and let me get at it . . .”

Dr. Coopersmith said, “Very well. Make every move slowly.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Lamont assured her. “I’m going to cooperate.” He went to the bed and shoved it aside. “That was pretty smart, the flour over the door. Like a fraternity prank.”

The doctor said nothing.

Lamont dropped to his knees. He pried up the plank, reached in, and took out the metal box. He carefully opened it and looked inside. “Hey, that’s funny.”

Dr. Coopersmith came closer. “What do you mean?”

“This!” He threw the box into her face, dodged to one side, then grabbed her gun hand. He bent it back and forced her to drop the Luger before she could squeeze the trigger.

“Alan, you’d—”

He got hold of her throat, his dusty white hands tightening. “You’re not going to do anything to stop me,” he said. “I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it. You . . . you’re simply going to die.”

Dr. Coopersmith gasped and sank to the floor.

Lamont kept his hands on her throat, choking.

A key scraped in the lock of the front door.

He let her fall to the floor.

“I’m not ready to be caught just yet.”

He bent, picked up the hypodermic and the bottles of fluid. Nothing had broken.

He ran into the bathroom, caught a towel off the rack, and swiftly rubbed the flour off himself. In a moment he was nearly invisible again.

He jumped over the body of Dr. Coopersmith and ran to the rear of the cottage.

The front door swung open as he climbed unseen out an open kitchen window.

Nellie went into the cottage first.

Pike followed close behind, gun in hand. “Go easy,” he advised.

“Don’t worry.” By now the government agent had had ample proof that Nellie could take care of herself, but some men are hard to convince.

From the back of the cottage came a low moan.

The little blonde made for the sound.

She halted at the door of the bedroom for an instant, calling over her shoulder, “In here, Pike. It’s Dr. Coopersmith.”

“Huh?”

Nellie knelt beside the woman. “Somebody tried to choke her, but didn’t quite succeed.”

Pike ran to the phone beside the bed. “Get me the hospital,” he said. “Hello . . . I want an ambulance and crew at Alan Lamont’s cottage, double quick!” He slammed down the receiver. “Looks like Lamont’s flown the coop.”

Nellie was giving most of her attention to Dr. Coopersmith. “I think she’s going to be all right. We must have scared him off.”

Snapping his fingers, Pike snatched up the phone again. “Give me security . . . this is Pike. Shut down all the gates. Nobody is to go in or out until I give the word. Huh? Just now? Well, send a car after it and search it. Search it good, because you’re looking for an invisible man. Yeah, that’s what I said.” He hung up, muttering. “Truck just went through the gates. Don’t know if Lamont could have jumped on it or not.”

The wail of a siren grew louder and louder, then stopped outside. In a moment two orderlies in white hurried in with a stretcher.

Nellie stood back while they lifted Dr. Coopersmith into it and then carried her out to the ambulance.

“Wonder about the flour on the floor,” mused Nellie.

“Knocked it down in the struggle probably.”

“Granted, men aren’t as organized domestically as women,” said the little blonde. “But I don’t think anybody’d keep a canister of flour in his bedroom.” She walked around the bed. “Looks like the stuff dropped down from up over the door.”

“Doc Coopersmith don’t seem like the type for practical jokes.”

“It’s a good way to make an invisible man visible in a hurry,” suggested Nellie. “Just coat him with flour and you can see him for a while.”

“Yeah, but how’d she know Lamont was the invisible man?”

“That’s one of the things you’ll have to ask her.”

“If the doc suspected Lamont, she’d have come to me with it.”

Nellie pointed a foot at the fallen Luger. “Why do you think Lamont needed a gun to strangle the woman?”

The agent frowned. “You think the gun’s hers?”

“Makes more sense. Booby trap so she could see him, then hold the gun on him.”

“So why?”

“Maybe to find out what he knew,” said the blonde. “It’s obvious—isn’t it?—that Lamont had something hidden here in that hollow space in the floor. That tin box must have held the secrets he’d taken from Dr. Dean, and probably his supply of whatever it is that turns him invisible.”

Pike shook his head. “What are you getting at? Just because she maybe had a German pistol doesn’t mean . . . What are you doing?”

Nellie was bent low, studying the floor. “He stepped through the flour on his way out of here . . . left a faint trail.” She crossed the threshold into the hall. “Yep, he ran out this way and down this hallway.”

Pike followed her as she followed the faint white footprints.

The trail led to the kitchen and the open window. “That’s where Lamont went,” said Nellie, pointing with her thumb.

“This is the first time I’ve ever followed footprints made out of pastry flour,” said Pike as he went out the back door.

But the trail ended a few yards from the window. Neither of them could pick it up beyond there.

Inside the cottage the phone rang.

“Where’s Cole?” asked Nellie as she came into the Avenger’s hotel room.

“Where else? He’s looking after that Keaton frill,” said Smitty. “How are you?”

“Swell, Smitty,” said Nellie.

The Avenger had tracked her down and called her at the Perseus Project facility. Now she and Benson, along with Smitty and Josh, were holding a meeting in the Avenger’s hotel suite in Nolansville.

“Cole is none the worse for having been held prisoner by the resident Nazi agents,” Benson assured her.

Nellie took a chair. “I sort of wanted to rescue him myself,” she said. “Figured if I cracked the invisible-man business I’d find him.”

“Apparently we’ve got two different forces at work here,” the Avenger said. “The Nazi group and the invisible man himself.”

“You found Dr. Dean, huh, Nellie?” said Smitty, his admiration for the little blonde showing across his broad face.

“As I told Dick, the doctor is safely back at the project. They’ve put him into the hospital for a couple days of rest and observation,” she replied. “He didn’t have any idea who’d grabbed him, but it was definitely our invisible man. I figure Alan Lamont got the doctor off the facility by making him invisible, too.”

“You said Pike and his security people were trying to stop Lamont from getting off the grounds,” said Benson. “They’ve had no luck in catching him?”

“Oh, they gave that up. It seems fairly certain he got out in a delivery truck, then jumped off it before the security people halted it. They wouldn’t have let me out if they hadn’t been pretty sure Lamont was already long gone.”

“Where you think he’s heading?” asked Josh. “Out of the country or what?”

Nellie shook her head. “Nope. I’d be willing to bet he’s right here in Nolansville.”

“Nellie’s spotted the pattern to the murders,” said the Avenger. “Suppose you go over that again.”

“Lamont’s older brother died some fifteen years ago,” the girl began. “It was an accident really, but a half dozen of his college friends were responsible. They left him out in the desert, tied up, as a sort of prank. Before they went back to rescue him he was bitten by a poisonous snake.”

“Brr,” said the giant. “That’s a rough way to go.”

“Alan Lamont was very fond of his brother,” Nellie went on. “It looks like the idea of revenge has pretty much taken over his thoughts. The first two men who were strangled were among the six who’d been in on the prank that killed Rusty Lamont.”

Josh said, “What about all those stunts before he killed anybody, the invisible-man tricks?”

“That was, no doubt,” said the Avenger, “to establish the idea that there was something very unusual going on, to plant the idea of an invisible man in the minds of the public and the law officers.”

“That’d just point to him,” said Smitty.

“Nope,” Nellie said, “it would point to Dr. Dean. He was supposed to be the only one who knew the secret. See, Lamont is really a very bright guy and he, either by swiping some of Dean’s notes or by independent research, had already found the secret. I’d guess that he planned to kill all six of the men he believes killed his brother. Then he’d release Dr. Dean.”

“And Dr. Dean would get blamed,” said Josh.

“Most, likely,” said the girl. “Plus which, he knew that the government security people would work like anything to keep this whole business quiet. Even if they didn’t think Dr. Dean had killed anybody, they weren’t likely to want a wide-open investigation of the murders.”

“A gamble on his part,” observed Josh. “He still might have gotten caught, which in fact he has. Or at least we’re on to him.”

Nellie spread her hands wide. “Well, obviously Alan Lamont is crazy,” she said. “I’m not saying that his plan ever would have succeeded, even if we hadn’t walked in on it. I’m only telling you what I think he must have figured.”

“Like I been saying,” put in the giant, “these big science guys all go goofy sooner or later.”

“Let’s assume,” said the Avenger, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, “that Lamont will indeed try to continue his revenge. That means he’ll make an attempt on the life of one of the remaining four.”

“More likely three,” said Nellie. “One of them is living back in the East someplace.”

Smitty watched the window. “Getting on toward sundown,” he said. “He might try something tonight.”

“We’ll split up,” said Benson, “each take one of the prospective victims.”

“Going to be hard to see this Lamont bozo if he’s still running around being invisible.”

“Flour works for bringing him into view,” said Nellie.

“There are several precautions we can take,” said the Avenger, “in advance. I have a hunch one of us will see the invisible man tonight.”

The fat nurse wore crepe-soled shoes. They made an odd squeaking sound as she crossed to Dr. Coopersmith’s bed. “And how are we feeling?”

“As well as can be expected,” replied the doctor in a dry, hoarse voice.

Glancing back toward the closed door, the fat nurse said, in a lowered voice, “Hugo and Fritzi have been captured. But Konrad is still free. He is at location three.”

“Can you get a message to him?”

“Oh, yes, in the usual way.”

“Tell him Lamont got away with the formula and the fluid,” said the older woman in her raspy voice. “He must intercept him if he wants to get that.”

“Where might Lamont be?”

“I think I know.” Dr. Coopersmith told the nurse what she’d guessed about Lamont’s upcoming activities.

Nodding, the fat woman asked, “Did you know that Dr. Dean has been found?”

“Yes, one of the doctors informed me, on the theory that the news would cheer me up.”

“Perhaps it will still be possible to obtain the—”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Dr. Coopersmith. “Apparently no one yet suspects me of being what I am, but very soon they may. That will end my usefulness. I think the best thing to do is make certain that Dr. Gardner Dean does not live to go on working on his formula. Then, even if we don’t get the secret from Lamont, neither will the Americans get it.”

“You wish me to . . . ?”

“No, bring me a hypodermic,” instructed Dr. Coopersmith. “A little air in his veins should take care of Dr. Dean. I’ll handle him as soon as there’s a clear chance.”

“Are you sufficiently recovered to—”

“Don’t worry about me, just do what I say.”

“Still, you might be seen when—”

“No one will think anything of one injured researcher paying a sentimental visit to another. Now hurry, get me that needle and then send the message to Konrad.”

The weary-looking old man slumped on the doorstep of the roadside souvenir shop, gazing blankly at the rows of supposedly Indian-made pottery. He was whistling tunelessly, now and then sipping at a bottle of ginger ale.

Few cars stopped at his whitewashed adobe shop.

As dusk began to spread through the desert there was a flutter of wings overhead.

“Ah,” said Werner Konrad. The look of weariness left him when he stood up.

Behind the shop was a row of pigeon coops. A white homing pigeon had just landed in the coop on the far right.

“Come, my pet, let’s see what news you bring me.” He gently reached in to unfasten the tiny message capsule from the bird’s leg. After stroking the bird Konrad went into the back room of the souvenir shop.

He clicked on a lamp which sat on a table amid a herd of red plaster bulls. Unfolding the code message, he read it over twice.

Crumpling it, he smiled to himself. “A most interesting challenge this will be.”

From a closet he selected a makeup kit and one of several small suitcases.