The Avenger 22 - The Black Death (12 page)

This tower was in Wilmington, Delaware. The scraps of words indicated that the men were experimenting with a new plastic or fabric, and the home of these experiments was also in Wilmington.

At the gigantic home plant of the Stockbridge Chemical Corp., to be exact.

In the huge administration building of the Stockbridge Corporation, Benson asked for Stockbridge himself, president of the vast organization. The information girl’s eyebrows raised clear to her hairline at the promptness with which Richard Benson was ushered into the private office of the man who was in some ways harder to see than the President of the United States.

She would have been even more surprised at old Stockbridge’s greeting. He shook Benson’s hand almost effusively.

“Fine to see you, Mr. Benson. Fine! Fine! Haven’t seen you since the time when you straightened us out on that new smokeless-powder process. What can I do for you?”

“First, you can answer a question,” The Avenger said. “Have you recently discovered a new rayon-type thread that is cheaper and stronger than any present type?”

Stockbridge’s effusiveness vanished. But he didn’t look angry; he just looked dubious.

“I can’t answer a question like that, even to you,” he protested. “If any of the directors found out—”

“So you have,” Benson said. “I was sure of it. Now, I’d like to have a look at the laboratory in which work on this new fabric was completed.”

“I didn’t say—” Stockbridge said weakly. “Oh, well, the answer is ‘yes,’ all right. Come along. I’ll take you to the lab myself.”

It was on the top floor of the big building and was maintained only for experiments. There were many research rooms in this building, and this was in the rear. From the window, you could see that building tower that had showed in the televised scene, reflected in the glass tank.

With Stockbridge raining questions which Dick Benson didn’t bother to answer, The Avenger looked the room over. It was empty, now; no scientific young men were in, proving again that the experiment had been satisfactorily concluded and was now in the hands of the production wizards.

When his gaze got to the ceiling, the pale, icy eyes halted. The Avenger stared at the electric-light fixture.

“There is an air space between the ceiling and the roof?” he asked.

“I imagine so,” Stockbridge said. “The room would be pretty hot without one. Why?”

“I’d like the names of any electricians who have worked on repairs on this top floor recently,” Benson said.

“I remember, now,” Stockbridge sighed. “You never did answer questions till you were good and ready.”

He got the required information from the building engineer.

Four men had worked at various repair tasks on that top floor. In a short time, Benson faced these four.

“Which one of you,” he asked, “repaired the overhead light fixture in Research Room 34?”

There was no answer. Three of the men looked at each other; the fourth stared blankly at Benson. This man was a young fellow with a cud of tobacco in one cheek that seemed to have become a permanent fixture.

“Certainly one of you did,” The Avenger said, in that even tone which could frighten an evildoer more than any shouts or threats.

The young fellow with the distended cheek said, “Mebbe I did. Quite awhile ago. We work all over the joint all the time. I can’t remember.”

“What do you mean by a long time ago?”

“If I did work on that particular room, it would have been about six months ago.”

“None of you worked on it more recently that that?”

No answer.

Benson turned to Stockbridge. There was no emotion in his pale, awful eyes.

“I shall have to hypnotize these men,” he said. “I will answer for their safety. They won’t be hurt; but one of them will answer my question.”

As he spoke he watched the four men—not their faces, but their hands. The fingers of the young fellow quivered a bit, then clenched into fists.

“I will start with you,” Benson said evenly. “The rest will please wait outside. Perhaps you’d better call a few company police to make sure they wait,” he added to Stockbridge.

When he was alone in the research room with the man, The Avenger said, “Look at the ceiling fixture in here. As you can see, it has been tampered with. The reason for that was to allow the fixture to be silently drawn up by someone hiding in the air space, and a lens substituted. Thus, all done in this room could be witnessed through the lens.”

“I didn’t do it,” protested the man. “I swear I didn’t. I got a good record. You can look it up.”

“You can tell me instead of my looking it up,” said Benson.

His voice had taken on a queer monotone. His eyes were unblinking, and as bright and blank as chips of chromium in his masklike face. Any of his aides would have known that monotone and that blank, insistent stare. No man could hold out against it, even when calmly forewarned as this fellow had been that he was going to be hypnotized.

In about four minutes, the man was in a trance and was answering everything asked him.

And his answers were not those of guilt. The Avenger could swear positively—if not in a law court—that the man was innocent.

He called in another of the four electricians.

There was sheer genius behind the pale, deadly eyes of The Avenger. He was less a man than a magnificent crime-fighting machine, dedicated to avenging a hideous wrong done him by the underworld years before.

But he was, after all, a human being. And human beings, no matter how efficient, make mistakes now and then.

Before he had started to hypnotize the second man, it was borne in on Benson that he had slipped up here.

The notification came in the form of a growing tumult from down below somewhere. The research room was near the concrete and steel stairway; and, in a moment, Stockbridge opened the door and said, “Something seems to have happened in the basement. It sounded to me as if someone yelled, ‘He’s dead.’ ”

There certainly was a commotion down there. The Avenger got down the three flights to the basement of the building in a blur of movement. He pushed his way through a crowd.

The man lay near the foot of the stairs. He was dead, all right. But there was more than that to it. A lot more.

The corpse was black.

Like something shriveled to a cinder, the body lay there, with white-faced men all around. A few girls from the upper floors, drawn by the shouts, were being kept from seeing the corpse, by the men.

It was the building engineer.

Beside him lay the thing that had come to be a dreaded symbol of this gruesome form of death—a black orchid!

So none of the four electricians was guilty of altering the light fixture. The building engineer himself had tampered with it and had hidden, in the three-foot air space, the television transmitter that had sent the actions within the room to the master set in the crypt.

Then the brain behind this Black Wings terror had discovered that The Avenger was at the Stockbridge plant questioning men concerning the light fixture. To be sure the engineer would not be questioned and talk, he had been sentenced to death.

But how?

How had the Voice—whoever it might be—learned of this so promptly and acted so swiftly, presumably from a distance?

Benson set about trying to find out.

There was a small cubicle walled off in a corner of the basement. It was the dead man’s office. There was a phone in there. The Avenger got the building switchboard.

The engineer’s name, a notebook told him, was Frank Stanton.

“Did Mr. Stanton just make a call from this phone?” he asked the switchboard operator.

“Yes, sir,” the girl said.

“Have you a record of the call?”

“No, sir. Mr. Stanton just asked for an outside wire. He didn’t have me get his number for him.”

“Give me the city operator.”

The Avenger got the answer he’d been afraid he would get. This was a vast company and many calls a minute cleared out of it. In the past ten minutes eight calls had gone out direct, without the Stockbridge operators getting the numbers.

The Avenger gave instructions for each building switchboard to check and see what employees had asked for a direct wire in that time. Then he turned back to the basement.

Stanton had the inevitable black orchid in his dead hand. But a man can’t simply wave his hand and produce a black orchid in a building basement. Either it has to be given to him, or he has to have it down there in the first place. Benson looked around to see if Stanton had carried it in with him that morning.

It seemed that he had.

In the trash box in a corner, Benson found a florist’s box, an outer and inner paper wrapping and the ribbon that had fastened the inner, green-tissue paper wrapping. He put these in another box, handling them carefully. With them, he put the black orchid.

Then he got his phone report.

Seven of the eight numbers without record by the Stockbridge switchboards had been traced to various employees. That left the eighth number as the one Stanton must have given.

“The number called was Murray Hill 7-9904,” said the operator. “I am locating that number.”

Grimly, The Avenger waited. It was pretty clear what had happened.

Stanton, asked the names of the electricians who had recently worked on the top floor, knew that the light fixture trick had been discovered. Hurriedly, he had called the Voice for instructions. The Voice, fearing that Stanton would be found out and would talk, had moved to kill him.

The Voice had ordered Stanton to take his black orchid and give it to the investigator. The engineer had started to do so, not fearing for himself at all, thinking only that he would deal death to an enemy. But, in handling the flower,
he
had contracted the black death, as the Voice had cold-bloodedly planned, thus shutting his lips forever.

In what manner had death been dealt? The Avenger had a shrewd idea that he would presently test in his laboratory.

How had the man happened to have the black orchid with him? Benson could only guess at that, but he felt that his guess was accurate: For days past, Stanton must have been instructed to keep the symbol of the Black Wings’ doom constantly with him “in case we have to deal with an enemy.” For days past, the Voice must have kept prepared to have Stanton unwittingly kill himself if exposure threatened.

“I have traced Murray Hill 7-9904,” came the operator’s voice. “It is the number of a man named Austin Gailord. It is a rural number, clearing through the village of Pinetown, New Jersey.”

Austin Gailord’s number, phoned in hysterical fear by the man now dead and black! But Gailord was dead and black, too. Dick had seen his corpse.

The Avenger got into his bullet-like plane and headed north and a little east.

Alicia Hannon’s big car rolled down Route 1 for twenty miles after passing Newark Airport. Then it turned west, onto a much smaller road.

Behind it, Nellie Gray was chewing her pretty lips with nervousness. The taxicab she was in stuck out like a sore thumb here in the country roads. It would be a miracle, she decided, if the girl up ahead didn’t know by now that she was being trailed.

Now and then, behind her, Nellie caught a glimpse of headlights. Sometimes, these were bright and sometimes were dim, but Nellie had a nasty conviction that always they were the same headlights.

What she didn’t know was that persistent headlights were also behind those, and behind the second pair, too. In fact, down that dark country road, six cars were now traveling, five drivers aware of a follower, but not aware that the follower, in turn, was being followed.

There was Alicia Hannon, Nellie in the cab, Marcy after Nellie, Cole after Marcy, Miller following all, and Smitty bringing up the rear. Like a comedy of burlesque-spy stuff. Only this wasn’t at all funny. Not when you remembered corpses as black as burned cinders, Black Wings on a black background and this diabolical Voice addressing faithful followers ready to do murder on request.

“I wish,” Nellie groaned to herself, “I had some idea where our friend up there in the priestess’s robes was going. Then I could cut ahead and not be so conspicuous in this silly cab.”

It seemed that her driver was beginning to have some wonders, too. About where they were going, that is.

“Got any idea how much farther this’ll take us?” he asked, over his shoulder.

Nellie confessed that she didn’t. “Why?”

“Because I’m gonna run out of gas any minute, lady,” the man said. “And I ain’t seen no gas stations on this road.”

“How much more have you?”

“Enough to take me maybe twenty miles,” said the cabby gloomily.

Four of the twenty miles followed. Then the motor gave the distress signal familiar to every motorist of long standing. The motor coughed, died, caught, died again. This time for good.

“I think,” said Nellie through set teeth, “that you had better buy a new gas gauge!”

“Mebbe,” said the man. “Now what?”

“Coast into that lane. Maybe the farmer up there has gas he can siphon off. I’ll stay in the cab.”

Muttering about the difficulties of waking a farmer at this hour, the man stopped his cab out of sight of the road, and walked toward the house. Nellie got out her tiny radio.