The Avenger 17 - Nevlo (14 page)

Smitty was blessed if he knew.

The first power shut-off, lasting only a few seconds, had not been much commented on. The second one, lasting for minutes, had been commented on widely. And the comments were growing. In fact, they were mounting into a sort of continental hysteria that embraced Canada as well as the United States.

All power blanked out for over a quarter of an hour!
All
power—airplane and automobile and motorboat systems as well as great power generators! It was as horrible in its implications as it was incredible.

There were several wild theories to account for the thing. The most commonly held was that a hostile foreign power had done it as an experiment, perhaps to prove to its military staff that it could be done, perhaps as a terrifying groundwork for some piratical military demand to be made in the near future.

A war measure! The United States and Canada perhaps to be drawn at last, directly, into war on their own soil!

Several scores of war-weary refugees, who had fled to America in a last, desperate effort to escape wars’ madness, became hysterical and committed suicide, utterly unable to face once more the inhumanities of modern warfare.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled to the open country and became burdens there on the local country people. The stock and bond markets dropped so fast that the exchanges had to be closed.

The whole natural life of the continent was in danger of being dislocated; so the government, naturally, stepped in, and stepped in hard.

Half the entire staff of Federal officers was turned over to the task of solving the mystery of the power failure. And leading this half, personally, was Paul Edward Arnold.

Arnold turned his full attention on the power failure, and in a short time he began getting little loose ends to tie together.

It started with an anonymous tip.

His phone rang and a man’s voice, obviously disguised, said:

“In the last power failure a man named Richard Benson was present at the Portland, Maine, radio tower. Also, at about the same time, Richard Benson phoned a Los Angeles radio station, probably to give orders.”

“What?” snapped Arnold, having instantly set in motion the dictaphone that recorded all telephone conversations. “What was that about Benson? And who are you?”

The man at the other end seemed to know exactly why Arnold asked for a repetition. Arnold was stalling till an officer could locate that telephone and race to it. So he didn’t bite.

“Also,” the disguised voice went on, “Richard Benson has been active around Marville, Ohio, where a power plant has been mysteriously unable to generate power since its completion.”

There was a click. The phone had been hung up. And long before anyone could get to it, the speaker would be gone.

Arnold hated anonymous tips. All law officers do. But all officers work on them, just the same. They can’t afford to ignore what may be a wide-open lead given by a disgruntled crook or by some private citizen afraid to let his name become known because of possible criminal revenge.

So Arnold got his little loose ends.

A radio tower in Portland and another in Los Angeles that had all power tubes blown during the blackout and also had showed signs of fusing, intense heat. A power plant that wouldn’t run, in Ohio, which had been made useless a few weeks before the midnight failure.

And Richard Benson
had
been present in all of this.

Arnold went through a process of reasoning as brilliant as it was erroneous.

The man known as The Avenger was the world’s best electrical engineer, he had heard. If anyone could perform the miracle of stopping power plants, it would be Benson.

The Avenger had helped the government in several important cases; he was known to every high official. Yet, in the last analysis no one knew anything
about
him. He was essentially a man of mystery.

And he had been mixed up in this even before the government asked him to work on it. Arnold checked and found that out.

However, though circumstantial evidence pointed strongly at Benson, Arnold didn’t make up his mind. He knew The Avenger had trusted him. Arnold was a fair man, and circumstantial evidence was not enough.

It remained for the sworn statement of a man whose name was known from coast to coast to burst like a bombshell in Arnold’s office and damn Benson irrevocably.

The man was Pierpont Ryan, who had taken a plane to Washington from Cleveland.

He told of the secret meeting at Blake’s home and of a madman’s demand for five million dollars on threat of permanently shutting off America’s power.

“Said his name was Nevlo,” barked Ryan. Arnold nodded. His investigations had already brought Nevlo into the picture so that he knew the discharged engineer’s background. “But then a second Nevlo came in just in time to spoil the game of the first.”

He told all about that, too, and Arnold’s face went more white and grim with each word.

“That first man,” concluded Ryan, jaw set like rock, “was a fellow named Benson. I could see that, later. I know Benson well; I was licked by him in a couple of South American power deals years ago. As he ran down the hall I saw him reach to his eyes to take off little lenses that had made them black. Benson’s eyes are almost white, you know. Only one man has those colorless, flaring eyes—Richard Benson. Yes, no doubt of it, it was Benson.”

“And he demanded five million?” said Arnold, lips thin.

“Yes. The second man—Nevlo, or whoever he was—evidently knew a little of Benson’s plan and tried to horn in. But—the man who made the
real
extortion demand was Benson!”

No disputing the word of a magnate like Ryan. He was a well-known character, and one against whom no shadow had ever fallen. This was the bombshell. Richard Benson, the only man in America logically capable of the power shut-off, had actually been the one who did it. For five million dollars—

“But he’s rich,” mused Arnold aloud. “Tremendously rich—”

“Few men are rich enough not to want five million dollars cash in a lump,” snapped Ryan.

Arnold nodded. That was unfortunately true. After Ryan left, he called his best ten men into his office.

“We’re going after Benson,” he said, after telling what had gone before.

Of the ten crack Federal officers, seven had seen The Avenger personally and the other three had heard volumes about him. The oldest man among them licked lips that had suddenly gone dry.

“After
Benson?”

“Yes!”

“I’d rather go after the United States army.”

Arnold’s face grew grimmer yet.

“I know as well as you do what kind of a man he is. If he’s innocent, he ought to come with any of you for questioning readily enough. But if he shows the slightest sign of resistance—well, we’ll have to have him, dead or alive. This thing is too huge, too terrible, to take any chances with.”

Next day, after this secret talk in Arnold’s world-famous office, the man talked about landed in Cleveland. With Dick Benson was Janet Weems.

Janet’s condition had been described by Benson—a great psychiatrist himself—as almost certainly temporary, induced by great nervous strain. It had proved to be a true diagnosis. Shortly after being rescued from the house on Vermont Avenue in Portland, she had snapped out of it.

She had told Benson what had thrown her into the state of delirium. She had then drawn for him the diagram Bill Burton had wanted her to give him with the needles.

At sight of the diagram, showing what seemed a large needle with a root going under a wavy line and with shorter lines coming from its tip but not quite meeting it, The Avenger’s eyes had glittered.

The glitter in his awesome eyes told that he already knew about all there was to be known about this affair, but was not yet ready for final action.

There would have to be a little more investigation first. So he was in Cleveland on the matter, now, with Janet.

“Must you go to the spot where Bill Burton’s car—exploded?” said Janet with a shudder.

“I’m afraid we must,” The Avenger said in his quiet but vibrant voice.

“But that was days ago,” pointed out Janet. “Nothing could be learned there, now.”

“No trail is so cold,” said Dick, “but what some fact may be turned up if it is followed. I know it’s painful to you, but we must investigate.”

So they went to the spot around the corner from the obscure hotel where Janet had hidden. And Janet reconstructed the scene for Benson.

Car there. Parked cars down farther. Janet here. Tremendous blast, rolling clouds of smoke—

The Avenger stepped into the store nearest the spot where Burton’s car had been demolished. The storekeeper said that he had been there when the blast took place. He had looked out of his show window a moment later. What had happened to the man in the car, he did not know. Apparently he had been blown to bits. The store-owner did not remember reading in the papers anything about a body.

Benson’s pale, deadly eyes were quite as infallible as they looked. They were like twin diamond drills that could pierce through and through any pretense. Those colorless eyes saw evasion and fright behind the storekeeper’s smooth statements.

“From all accounts,” said Benson, “there was a lot of heavy black smoke around the car, hiding it, just after the explosion.”

The Avenger’s voice had changed. The change was subtle, but distinct enough for Janet Weems to catch it. She stared quickly at his calm face.

The store-owner said, “Yes, there was a lot of smoke.”

“Enough, perhaps,” Benson went on in that level, monotonous, hypnotic tone, “to hide movements of anyone near the car?”

The storekeeper seemed to be going through a curious, dazed struggle as he stared into the pale, awesome eyes. He obviously tried to look away from them—and obviously could not do so. Janet Weems stared breathlessly as she realized what was happening. This man beside her, in a matter of seconds and with no instruments but his quiet, compelling voice and brilliant, colorless eyes, was hypnotizing the man.

“I suppose such movements could have been hidden by the smoke,” said the storekeeper in a curious, smothered tone.

“Then if someone had reached in and taken the body from the wreckage of the car, the people nearby might not have seen it? But you could have seen it, close as this window is to the spot.”

“Yes, I could have seen it,” said the storekeeper, tone becoming mechanical.

“Now,” commanded The Avenger, “you will tell me just what you
did
see?”

“The man in the car was not killed,” said the store-owner. “I saw him reel from the car. Most of his clothes had been torn or burned off. He was out on his feet and hadn’t the least idea what he was doing. But he was alive.”

“Oh, thank Heaven!” cried Janet.

She stopped immediately, aware that a sharp exclamation might undo what The Avenger had accomplished. The man stirred a little, but couldn’t escape the pale eyes.

“So by some freak of explosion, the man did not get killed when his car was blown up,” nodded Benson. “All right, what happened then?”

“The nearest of the cars parked down the street had two men in it,” said the storekeeper. “I think they, and I, were the only ones who saw the man get out of the car. They came running into the smoke. They looked as if not believing what their eyes told them. It seemed so impossible that any living thing could be spared by the blast.”

“Then?”

“They got the man from the car down to their own machine and drove away.”

“You seem to have observed everything minutely.”

“I did.”

“Then perhaps you can tell us something identifying about their car. Appearance, license number, something of that nature.”

“I can. There was a banner tied on their rear bumper. They could not have noticed that, of course, or it would have been ripped off long ago. The banner read: ‘Marville Natural Caves.’ As the two men went back to the car with the dazed man, one saw the banner and jerked it off and put it in his pocket. But I had seen it by then.”

Benson turned deliberately from the man, releasing him from the intangible chains forged by his brilliant, pale eyes.