The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers (5 page)

“That’s enough,” he said.

At the words, a man near him, sitting at a small table on which was what appeared to be a telegraph key, pressed that key. It was a radio-control button.

And eleven miles off, the incredible plane suddenly was no more!

A blinding flash of light appeared where the plane had been. Seconds later the sound of an explosion was heard in the dirigible.

And that was all!

The police weren’t looking for Xisco. The Avenger was. And he found news of him at a private airport.

The little man with the big ears had taken off in a private plane for the Newark airport and New York City. But before that he had scanned all weather reports and copied one down. The traces of his words were on the sheet of paper under the top of the telegraph-blank pad he had used. Graphite dust brought out the words.

And the report could be of only one district: Salt Lake City.
Not
Newark.

In the middle of the night The Avenger had taken off in his fast plane with Mac and Smitty and headed south and west. But there was destined to be a delay before Salt Lake City was reached.

During the morning, when they were within a hundred miles of the spot mentioned, they received the news flashes on Benson’s radio.

A plane, ownership and identity of pilot unknown, had apparently burst into bits yesterday afternoon over Utah. At least, it was thought to have been a plane, though such was the force of the explosion that it might have been a small meteor exploding on contact with the earth’s heavy atmosphere.

A rancher, however, had testified that he had seen a plane near the place of the explosion just previously. He said the plane had been going faster than he had ever seen one travel before.

Benson headed for the spot mentioned in the report and started cruising in wide circles.

“What are ye lookin’ for, Muster Benson?” asked Mac.

“Evidence of the plane wreck,” said The Avenger.

“The news flash said no one had been able to locate a wrecked plane—”

“Perhaps,” said Benson quietly, “the searchers were looking for pieces larger than there are to find.”

The barren land turned a thousand shades as the sun climbed. The flats were like giant saucers set in the earth. Far off, to the west, the rim of the largest flat of all could barely be seen.

“There’s a funny looking spot,” said Smitty suddenly, china-blue eyes widening as he stared down.

There was a section almost half a mile in extent that, at first, looked like the rest of the earth beneath. Then, as you stared harder, you saw that it had the curious aspect of having been recently seeded.

There were scattered black specks all over the circle, as if a great hand had scattered them thinly.

The Avenger’s plane shot down, lit like a feather in the midst of the black specks.

Except that down here the specks weren’t specks any more. They were fragments of a plane!

The fragments were such as to send a chill to your spine. No one of them was larger than a man’s two fists. Most were smaller. And all were fused and torn and ripped in an incredible way.

“Whoosh!”
said Mac somberly. “Explosion, was it? I’ve never seen anything that could explode a plane like
this.”

Benson didn’t seem to hear him. When he spoke, it was as though to himself.

“In all directions again,” he said softly. “The explosive acted in all directions, like the one at the Montreal police laboratory. Not just in the line of greatest resistance.”

Smitty was ranging swiftly around, staring at the twisted fragments. To an ordinary man, those pieces would mean nothing at all. But to Smitty they spelled a message that was increasingly curious as it became clearer.

“Funny,” he said. “I don’t see pieces of anything that looks like a gas tank.”

Benson nodded, colorless eyes taking on their icy sheen. He had noticed that from the start.

“Should we gather up a few of these?” said Mac distastefully, staring at the fragments.

The Avenger shook his head. He walked toward the plane. The three got in. But they didn’t go far.

Benson had barely lifted her from the level expanse and hurtled a dozen miles toward Salt Lake City when his marvelous eyes caught sight of something else. And again the plane whistled downward. Down to the middle of the biggest flat in sight.

There, conspicious in the paleness of the flat, was a large blackened area.

The three poked around that too.

“Somethin’ burned or exploded here,” said Mac.

Smitty nodded. The Avenger stooped and picked up something.

It was a little nubbin of a thing that had once been a hub cap; but it was so run together now, melted in some terrific heat, you couldn’t have told what it was save for a bit of the center medallion that retained traces of two letters.

“A car!” exclaimed Smitty. “A car burned here! But there was nothing said of any car in the dispatches.”

Benson stared from black spot to salt flat.

“It’s pretty plain,” he said quietly. “Automobiles only come to these places for speed runs. Therefore, there was a test car out here in the near past. It made its run, and then was consumed by fire.”

“Caught while she was speeding along,” said Mac sagely. “Too much strain on a hot motor.”

“In that case,” said Smitty, “there would be a long black trail of fire. Instead of this one spot. No, the car caught while it was standing still. Then, later, somebody was interested enough to haul it away. It couldn’t have been for salvage. A fire like that wouldn’t even leave salable junk.”

“A plane destroyed and a car burned up, within twenty miles of each other,” mused The Avenger, pale eyes flaring. Then he added, in the same expressionless tone, “Apparently, others are interested in this as well as ourselves.”

A speck had appeared on the horizon. It came across country, growing rapidly. As it raced nearer, the speck could be seen to be a closed truck. There was one man in the cab.

The van came to a stop between Benson, Mac and Smitty and their plane. It looked old, but had moved with a swift silence indicating that it was of an expensive make.

The driver was a broad-shouldered, stubby man in dungarees. He had a grin on his face and looked friendly. But he also looked puzzled.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you the guys who phoned us to come out here and pick up a wrecked car? And, if so, where’s the car?”

Mac and Smitty went up to the man, who descended from the cab of the van. Benson stayed a little behind, hands in his pockets.

“We didn’t phone anybody,” said Smitty, looking dull-witted and slow. “When was it you got the call, and what was said about a wrecked car.”

He stopped then. And the van driver laughed a little. He was still looking amiable. But behind him, fanning out from the body of the van in which they had ridden here concealed, were eight men!

It had been cleverly done. They’d popped out like jacks-in-boxes. They’d spread so that no three men, even supermen, could attack them effectively before death came.

And that death was scheduled to come for The Avenger and his aides was quite evident!

The men, about as ill-assorted a mob of thugs as Mac and Smitty had ever seen, held guns with the loose efficiency of experts. And every gun trained at the three!

Mac growled deep in his throat. Smitty showed his teeth in a wolfish snarl. They didn’t like men who looked like rats, as these men decidedly looked.

But it didn’t seem as if they were going to be able to do anything about it here. Eight guns were leveled and, at any moment, they were going to belch lead. There was going to be no more parleying. Just execution!

The men, however, had reckoned without the man with the white, dead face and the icy, pale eyes.

Benson had his hands in his pockets, which was one of the reasons for the haste in which the gunmen obviously meant to act. But their haste didn’t match his.

The Avenger’s hands tilted forward a little, and tiny glints appeared through the fabric of his gray coat.

The glints were the points of little tubes hardly larger than hypodermic needles. But at the other ends of the tubes were syringes, and in these was a liquid of Mac’s contriving.

The Avenger pressed the syringes.

It had all been done much more swiftly than words would indicate: the appearance of the men, their plain intention to shoot, the press of the syringes.

Into the air spread a colorless gas. The liquid from the needles was so volatile that it spread like wildfire, and so powerful that at contact with human nostrils it numbed the brain.

Nine men felt their hands and bodies go numb before they could press triggers. Nine men sagged like cut grain. One managed to shoot, but his gun was hanging almost straight down and the bullet chewed harmlessly into the earth.

Mac and Smitty had whipped handkerchiefs out and pressed them over their faces. The cloths were satuated with a chemical that safeguarded them from the knockout gas; all their handkerchiefs were so treated.

The Avenger had his own handkerchief in service as a mask. He nodded toward the van and then toward the plane. The command was plain to his aides: search the van, then take off in the plane.

They leaped into the van. They had to work fast; the gas, a variation of twilight sleep worked out by Mac in his chemical laboratory, lasted only a few minutes. The very volatility, which made it act so fast, also caused it to dissipate harmlessly in a very short time.

Immediately, Benson saw something that interested him very much, indeed. Two dark spots on the floor of the van. Something had stained the wood there and had been painstakingly scrubbed away. But all the scrubbing had not quite cleaned the patches.

He took scrapings from each patch and put them in envelopes. Into a third envelope went a fused bit of metal. Then he was out and had the van’s hood up.

He took the distributor cap and raced for the plane, with Smitty and Mac close behind. The eight gunmen and the truck driver were already twitching a little with returning consciousness. Benson reached to open the cabin door.

And a voice said,

“No you don’t! Stay right where you are!”

The three whirled. The voice had been a girl’s. The owner was drawing nearer to them now, around the plane’s cabin. The gun in her hand looked like a cannon; it was a .45 automatic, and she was a small girl.

Beyond a wingtip, Smitty now saw part of a car. It was a roadster, cheap and old. In it, the girl had softly coasted to a stop behind the plane while they were in the body of the van.

“You took something from the truck’s motor,” said the girl. “I want it!”

She had large, snapping black eyes that might normally look beautiful; but now they were as cold as jet. She had ink-black, silky hair and was dressed in a rust-colored outfit. Altogether, she rather looked like a fashion model—somehow wandering loose on the salt flat with a cannon in her small hands.

“Give!” she said, extending her left hand.

Benson took an innocent step toward her, drawing the truck’s distributor cap from his pocket.

The girl stepped warily back, too.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Don’t try to get within jumping distance. Just toss it to me.”

The Avenger stared at her with his paralyzed face as emotionless as a metal mask. But his eyes showed that he was considering the situation.

The girl could get at least two of them if they tried to charge her. And the look in her black eyes said that she would get them, too! Behind her, the men from the van were already feebly trying to get to their feet and were groping for the guns they’d dropped. In another half-minute they’d be in the picture again.

The appearance of this black-eyed, black-haired girl was as disconcerting as it was sudden. But, having appeared, it looked as if she would be top dog in the situation.

Benson tossed her the cap. There was nothing else to do. The syringes in his pockets were emptied of the knockout gas.

The girl began backing away, with the cap in her left hand. She turned a little to call over her shoulder to the men by the van,

“Come and get ’em!”

The thugs were willing. They swung unsteadily toward the plane. But with the girl’s gaze off him for a moment, Benson had acted.

His steely hand streaked down and scooped up saline sand from the flat. With the same continuing motion, the stinging stuff flew in a little shower toward the girl’s face. She gasped and choked, and wiped at blinded eyes.

“Into the plane,” snapped Benson.

They hadn’t time to get to the girl. Already, the men behind her were shooting dizzily. They had time only to get into the bulletproofed cabin of the plane.

Slugs spanged off it as Benson started the motor. They starred the heavy glass windows as the plane took its run. Then they were up, and the men were a milling little bunch of ants on the flat, far below.

“I wonder,” said Mac, “where they came from?”

The Avenger nodded downward.

The main highway to Salt Lake City spread like a ribbon below them now. Leading into it, from open earth, were several faint car tracks, made by the van.

The tracks curved onto the highway in the direction of the Pacific. There was only one place to go to, on that line. That was the city.

“The girl,” said Smitty suddenly, “was kind of pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Whoosh!” said Mac. “Nellie Gray should hear that.”

Nellie, diminutive blond bombshell now in New York holding down the Bleek Street headquarters, was another aide of the man with the white, dead face. It was suspected that she regarded the giant, Smitty, as strictly her property.

“I just said the girl was kind of pretty,” Smitty said, at the reference to Nellie Gray.

“So’s a diamond-backed rattler, if you like that kind of good looks,” said the Scot. “Me—I’d prefer the rattler.”

The Avenger said nothing. On and on, he sent the plane. And there was a glitter in his eyes, like ice under a polar dawn, hinting that he already knew many things from the scattered happenings of the past few hours.