The Avenger 35 - The Iron Skull (4 page)

Out of the darkness, silently, rolled a wheelchair. The man in the chair was large, broad-shouldered. His arms rested on the arms of the chair, and over his head he wore a black silk hood. His suit was black and of a military cut, like a uniform with all the insignia stripped from it. The wheelchair stopped in the exact center of the rug.

The hooded man sat, saying nothing, watching the three men.

The one in the center, a frail man of nearly sixty, finally broke the ominous silence. “We didn’t anticipate—”

“Shut up, you doddering senile swine!” roared the hooded man. He pointed at the man on the left. “And what about you, Nevins? Did you not anticipate, either?”

Plump Nevins licked his lips. “There’s bound to be a malfunction in the field from time to time, sir.”

“A malfunction. Is that what you call the complete failure of two of our mechanisms? A malfunction?”

The third man spoke. “Now look here . . . we followed your instructions in every way. The designs and plans are yours, after all, and not—”

“The designs are perfect, Hubin! The plans I entrusted to you cretins were perfect! It is you, you three blubbering imbeciles, who are imperfect!” He had been pointing at them with his left hand. Now he reached across himself and lifted up his right hand with his left. The arm swung up stiffly and stayed suspended where he let go of it. He peeled off the black leather glove which covered the hand.

Hubin took a step back. “Perhaps you’re right, sir,” he said, quickly. “Yes, I’m sure you are. We must have made an error.”

The right hand was made of highly polished metal. “You will make no further errors,” said the hooded man.

From the tip of his forefinger a thin beam of light came sizzling. It hit Hubin in the chest and burned a hole clean through him. He fell back out of the light and into the blackness.

“My God!” said Nevins. “He was only—”

The hooded man swung his right arm toward the plump man. “Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“Unlike humans, weak things of flesh and blood,” said the hooded man, “my mechanical men are capable of perfection. Had the MacMurdie mechanism been as perfect as it should have been, the Avenger and most of his toadies would be dead by now. Dead, ripped to pieces!”

“It’s possible,” ventured Nevins, “that the mechanism itself is all right. I have a hunch the weather may have—”

“A perfect mechanism is not affected by weather,” shouted the hooded man, “nor by anything else! We may not get another chance at Richard Henry Benson. I blame you for that.” With his left hand he pushed his right arm down to the chair arm. “As for the Edward Kessell mechanism . . . the incident is very unfortunate.”

“Perhaps,” said the frail older man, “we ought to postpone the rest of our—”

“No!” He slipped the glove back over his metal fingers. “The risks have increased, that is all.”

“But they must realize at least part of the situation now,” said Nevins. “It puts us under a severe handicap, to my way of—”

“Handicap?” The hooded man rocked in his chair, laughing. “What do you know about handicaps, Nevins? Did you ever wake up and find you no longer had a right arm? Did you ever wake up and see your left leg lying halfway across your laboratory? No, I fancy not! I have overcome a good many handicaps. And what did I learn from my tragedy, you ask? I learned that one can overcome any handicap. That a man can be nearer to perfection after an accident that many considered crippling. You do not know what handicaps are.”

“We will proceed on the regular schedule, then?” asked the frail man.

“Yes, we will,” said the hooded man. “Will the George Nichols mechanism be ready for tomorrow?”

“There are a few more adjustments and tests to be made,” said Nevins, glancing off into the darkness. “Now that we won’t have Hubin to—”

“You will have to work harder, then, will you not? All night, if necessary. This one must be perfect. Do you understand? Perfect!”

“Perfect,” said Nevins.

The hooded man wheeled himself away into the darkness.

After a moment the older man said, “Poor Hubin. It was awful.”

“Just be thankful,” said Nevins, “he didn’t take off the hood.”

Cole sat up. He was surrounded by complete and utter darkness. The floor beneath him was cold stone. “Let me guess now,” he mused aloud. “Could this be the Black Hole of Calcutta? No, not crowded enough for that. Or if might be that hideaway where they stuck the Count of Monte Cristo, or—”

“Whoosh!” exclaimed a voice in the darkness. “I’d ken that voice anywhere. ’Tis Cole Wilson!”

“MacMurdie! Are we sharing this dungeon together?”

“Not quite, mon,” replied the Scot. “ ’Tis a string of cells doon here. A wall of iron bars separates you and me.”

Cole began to move, on hands and knees, across the floor. “You sound all right, Mac. Are you okay?”

“Physically I’m nae too bad,” said MacMurdie. “But spiritually I’m doon in the dumps. Allowing them two skurlies to get the drop on me and haul me here in their truck . . .”

“We just had a similar encounter.” Cole felt the bars now, chill and close together. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Nae, lad. Mot be Connecticut still, but since I’ve nae notion how long I was out cold, I dinna know how far they hauled me. We could be in Alaska fer all I ken.”

“Who runs this lockup?”

“I canna tell ye that, either,” said Mac. “They bring me food twice a day and change my portable privy. But I dinna see them. The first time somebody came into m’ cell, I jumped him. All I got for that was stunned agin.”

“Hey! Is that you, Mac? And Cole?” It was Josh Newton, off to the left somewhere.

“You overslept, Joshua,” called Cole. “I’ve been up for minutes. You missed marching around the breakfast table with Don McNeill and—”

“Mac, are you alive?”

“To the best of m’ knowledge, Josh.”

“Crawl around a little,” suggested Cole. “You’ll no doubt come to some bars, Joshua. I’d guess you’re in the cell next to me. Mac’s on the other side.”

“Oh, yeah. I found the bars,” said Josh in the blackness. “What’s the scoop? Where are we, and so on?”

“It distresses me to inform you that we seem to have no idea,” said Cole. “If you’ll frisk yourself, you’ll find they’ve taken everything that might be of help . . . except . . .”

“What?”

“I was remarking that we’ve been plucked quite thoroughly of our weapons and sundries. Meaning we’ve nothing to fight our way out with and nothing to communicate with the outside world.” Each of them had had a miniature two-way radio in his belt. The belts were gone.

“Say, Mac,” said Josh, “I think we got grabbed by the same cats who got you. Uh . . . notice anything odd about ’em?”

“Aye, they’re nae human,” replied the Scot. “They must be some highly sophisticated kind of robots.”

“No kidding? I thought you only encountered robots in
Wonderman
comic books and B-movies.”

Cole put in, “Any idea what any of this is all about, Fergus?”

“Got a few inklings, though I dinna see where we fit in,” said Mac. “There’s two other fellows doon here with us. Ahoy there, Mr. Kessell. Be ye awake?”

“Yes, MacMurdie, I’m awake.” He was in the cell on the other side of Mac. “Let me introduce myself; I’m Edward Kessell. Sorry we can’t shake hands. Next to me is Kirby Macauley. Anything to say, Macauley?”

“Why don’t you all pipe down?” said a nasal voice. “All this joking and chatting isn’t doing any good.”

“Sure it is,” said Kessell. “Helps keep up the morale.”

“Wait a minute,” said Josh. “Edward Kessell, Kirby Macauley . . . they’re both working on the anti-rocket project.”

“How’d you know that?” said Macauley.

“Mon, he’s an associate o’ mine,” said MacMurdie. “Since I know who ye are, it follows he does.”

“Too many people know about our work, if you ask me. That’s why we’re here . . . too much loose talk.”

“I say there, Mr. Kessell,” said Cole. “Have these chaps who’ve got us, whoever they may be . . . have they been questioning you?”

“No,” replied Kessell in the dark. “Which makes me wonder what exactly they’re up to.”

“We were unconscious for hours,” Macauley reminded him. “You’ve no way of knowing what they found out then . . . using truth serum or hypnotism or Lord knows what.”

“Sure, that’s possible,” said Kessell. “All I’m saying is they didn’t ask me anything since I’ve been living in this hole in the ground.”

“I fancy,” said Cole, “you’ve all discussed how you were caught . . . and that no useful information resulted.”

“Aye,” said Mac. “We were each grabbed in a similar way. We’ve gone over each incident and come up with nothing.”

“Gone over everything more than enough times,” complained Macauley, “I’m sick of hearing about it.”

“Ah, where’s your spirit of patient research, old man?” said Cole.

“Why don’t you all just shut up?”

“Huh,” said Josh. “Just thought of something.”

“What, lad?”

“Been thinking ’bout them robots we saw,” said Josh. “They’re pretty darn convincing, ain’t they?”

“Looked like real lads to me, until they started a-playing their tricks.”

“Suppose there were more of them,” Josh went on. “I mean, suppose somebody made one that looked like, say, Mr. Kessell.”

“Eh?” said Kessell. “What do you mean?”

“Wondering if they could make a robot that looked enough like you to fool people,” said Josh. “They could send it into some of the top secret meetings you’re supposed to go to. Be a nice way to learn all about our anti-rocket defense system.”

“Well,” said Kessell, “it sounds a little farfetched to me.”

“Farfetched?” said Macauley. “It’s preposterous.”

Professor George Nichols cut himself a second time with his safety razor. “Damn,” he said. “I think I’m going to grow a beard again.”

His blond wife was in the adjoining bedroom making the bed. “They won’t let you, will they?” she said. “It’ll make you look too radical.”

“Sinister,” said Nichols. “That’s what I look like when I have a beard. My students used to tell me that.”

“The co-eds, mostly.”

“True,” admitted the professor as he rinsed off his face. “Since I signed on . . . since I was persuaded to sign on with this anti-rocket thing, I—”

“You’re not supposed to talk to me about it, remember? Security.”

“All this schoolboy mumbo-jumbo,” said Nichols. “It’s a wonder we don’t have a secret handshake and a project song.”

“Maybe you do and they don’t trust you enough to tell you.”

“Could be. Old ‘Security Risk’ Nichols.” He came into the bedroom. From the balcony window you could see the Long Island Sound. The water was a slaty gray this morning, and choppy. “Fellow down on the beach looking up at us.”

“Must be part of the new security measures.”

Nichols put on a fresh white shirt, then selected a necktie. “Everyone is so cagey, I still don’t know what happened to Ed Kessell.”

“Is it something that can happen to you, too?”

“Don’t know,” the professor answered. “All I know is they called late last night to tell me extra security measures would be in effect from now on.”

“Well, what you’re doing is pretty important.” She walked to the door.

“I know, I know, but—”

“Big black car out in the drive,” said his wife from the hall.

“More security stuff. They said I’d have an escort this morning.”

“Wonder if their windshield’s bulletproof.”

“Probably is.” Nichols got a jacket out of his wardrobe closet. His favorite pipe was in the pocket. Putting on the tweed coat, he went out into the hall.

His wife was standing with her fingertips on the sill, looking down through the frosted window pane.

Nichols put an arm around her and looked out. “Yep,” he said, “that has to be a car full of government agents.” He kissed her cheek, went downstairs and toward the front door. From the hall closet he grabbed his overcoat and hat.

He went out the front door and walked along the freshly snowplowed drive toward his detached garage.

He went in the side door, as was his habit each morning. As he bent to catch the handle of the big garage door he chanced to glance at his coupé.

“What the hell?”

He was already sitting in his car.

That is, a man who looked exactly like him was behind the wheel, dressed in an overcoat and hat identical to his.

“Don’t open the door just yet, Professor Nichols,” said a voice from a dark corner of the garage.

“What?”

Another voice, much closer, said, “We’ll kill you if we have to.” This was Nevins, holding a .45 automatic trained on Nichols.

“Now, wait a minute,” said the professor. “There’s a carload of government men parked not a hundred yards from here. You don’t seriously think you can—”

“Of course we can,” Nevins assured him.

“And how did you get in here without their spotting you?”

“We’ve been awaiting you since before dawn,” said the frail old man, stepping out of the shadows. “It’s much easier to skulk about in the dark.”

“But they’ve got guards posted.”

“The one we encountered passed out for a few minutes,” explained Nevins. “Something he has absolutely no recollection about.” He took a small vial from an inside pocket of his coat. “But the G-men are going to wonder why you aren’t opening the garage. So we’ll save any further talk for later.”

Nevins pushed the vial toward the professor’s face.

Bang!

The vial splintered in his hand. Crying out in pain, the plump Nevins went stumbling back away from the bluish gas released from the vial.

“Now drop the automatic,” ordered a calm voice from above them.

Nevins blinked, raising his eyes. “I—”

“Drop it, or I’ll shoot it out of your hand.”

The Avenger was up there in the rafters. In his hand was the unique blue-steel tube which was actually a .22 pistol. “I mean you, too,” he said, nodding at the older man.

In that instant Nevins acted. He lunged and grabbed the stunned professor. He clutched him in front of himself as a shield. “We’re taking off,” he shouted at the Avenger overhead.