The Avenger 22 - The Black Death (3 page)

Nellie shivered. “That can’t be the drugstore, Smitty. Mac couldn’t change it like that, no matter how much of a practical joke he tried to play. You’ve picked up somebody else.”

“Impossible,” said the giant. “It’s a million to one that no other set as complete as this is in existence. If there were, it’d be another million to one against our happening to hit on the precise unscrambling adjustment to catch a straight image. So you see, it’s—er—impossible,” he finished lamely.

“Sure,” said Cole Wilson sardonically. “So it’s impossible. So what are we looking at on the screen?”

They looked some more.

A grim, subterranean chamber carved of solid rock and lighted by something like concealed torches or candles. The illumination was yellowish and uncertain. Seepage like wet blood glistened blackly on the walls. It whispered of evil, of a horror somehow beyond horror.

“Where in the world,” breathed Smitty, “do you suppose that chamber of horrors is?”

And with the question he admitted that through some incredible accident his device
had
picked up a strange image. Huge as the odds against such a thing were, there was another set as complete as his in existence; and his unscrambler
was,
by chance, tuned to it.

So out of the blue was coming an alien picture.

“Look,” said Josh suddenly. “Is that an altar?”

Details were becoming clearer, both as the set warmed and as their eyes got more used to the dimness of the picture. The thing Josh had pointed out was a low, oblong block of stone in the center of the background.

“An altar,” said Cole in a low tone. “Or—a tomb.”

Now a shadow was growing over the screen. At first all they could see was that the image was darkening. Then the darkness lightened around the edges. It lightened in such a way as to make a definite pattern.

“Wings,” said Smitty suddenly. “The shadow of wings.”

It was. The shadow was focusing into a smaller compass and was darkening at the same time. Now it covered the center of the screen, leaving the edges in complete blackness. The effect was like that in an animated cartoon when a bird or bat flies straight at the camera lens and seems to swallow up the whole. Only this was not funny. There was an air of indescribable evil about it.

The inky-black shadow of the vast, unseen wings suddenly vanished. And Smitty gasped, and Nellie’s small hand convulsively closed on his arm.

Where nothing had been before, a figure now stood, introduced during the miniature blackout. The figure was tall, lithe and terrible in close-fitting black. The head was just a black blob, since a sable hood hid it completely. Over the broad chest, the outline of spread wings showed in a thin white line—a black emblem on a field of black.

“Better get the chief,” said Nellie. “I think we have blundered into something pretty important here. And pretty bad!”

Smitty nodded and stepped to a big fiat-topped desk. It was The Avenger’s desk. On it were buttons that connected with red signal lights all through the building—in the laboratory, rest suites, basement garage, everywhere.

The giant pushed the button activating the signal light in the laboratory. Benson was in there. The Avenger, who was one of the greatest scientists of all time, was usually in his laboratory when not engaged in making criminals sorry they’d ever been born.

Smitty gave the urgent signal, two shorts and a long. And it seemed as if The Avenger was in the doorway almost before Smitty’s big fingers left the button.

At first when you looked at The Avenger you found it impossible to fit the man to his gigantic reputation.

Richard Henry Benson was about five feet eight and weighed no more than a hundred and sixty-five pounds. If you’d been told that even the giant Smitty could not cope with this strange man in a physical encounter you would have found it hard to believe that, too.

Then, on looking at his face, you could have had a small idea of how the reputation was possible.

His features were classic in their regularity, the eyes were as brilliant as gems and almost totally devoid of color. His hair, cut close, was black as soot and grew in a virile cap.

Seeing The Avenger move, you’d have begun to believe the stories about him.

Now and then a man is born who seems to have an unearthly quality of muscle that makes up in power for any amount of quantity. Benson was such a man. In his hands, rather small, long-fingered, well kept, was the strength of steel; and in his rather slight body was a power almost beyond calculation. Furthermore, he moved with such effortless rapidity that it baffled the eye. At one moment he was in the doorway. At the next he was beside the desk—and none in the room had really seen the detail of his steps. It was as if he had leaped the distance, though he actually hadn’t, of course.

“Yes?” he said to Smitty.

“By some freak we’ve picked up a strange image on the test of the new unscrambler,” the giant explained. “It’s something pretty queer. We thought you’d like to look at it.”

They went to the big television cabinet.

“The guy in black turned toward the altar and bowed three times, his back to us,” Cole said. “Now he has turned again, as you can see, and is facing us.”

The Avenger watched with the rest. The atmosphere of unexplainable evil had deepened, if possible, on the screen, since the giant had momentarily left it. But Benson’s face showed no emotion. It never did show emotion; it was always as expressionless, as calm, as a thing in wax. Only his pale, deadly eyes lived and glowed in the midst of that impassiveness.

Words came suddenly from the hooded figure in black. Rather, the words came from the screen and you thought they were from the figure. Actually, they might have issued from all parts of the sinister rock chamber in a deep, hollow voice that had nothing human in it.

“All of us who live under the shadow of the black wings,” said the inhuman, sepulchral voice, “have great power given us by that shadow. The shadow of the wings is our demoniac mother and father and supporter. While we obey the Voice of the wings we are in safety, no matter what we choose to do. We have superhuman power. We can do anything. But when one steps out of that shadow, when one disobeys the Voice, the safety departs and the black wings take vengeance.

“One has but recently been mad enough to defy the Voice and depart from the black shadow of safety. To all those listening and looking now will come news of this fool’s end. His doom shall now be lowered upon him.”

While the slow words had gone on, that black, wing-like shadow had slowly blotted out the black figure again. It grew smaller, focused even more impenetrably over the hooded figure in the center, then lifted as before.

Now two figures were there.

The second was that of a middle-aged man, rather small and timid-looking, who seemed to stand in a trance. He was as still as a statue and might actually have been a wax thing; you couldn’t tell.

The hooded figure picked something from the oblong stone block that couldn’t be seen before. It looked like a crumpled handful of tissue paper rather messily doused in black ink so that lighter streaks were left. The tall figure put this into the limp fingers of the little middle-aged man.

The receiver still stood without movement, as if he didn’t know he’d been handed anything. He stood that way for many seconds.

Nellie screamed softly.

The man was swaying. And he was getting darker. Suddenly he collapsed like a pierced inner tube and lay on the rock floor. In his hand was still the thing that looked like a crumpled handful of tissue paper dipped in ink. The hand that held the black thing was also black.

The shadow of returning wings was deepening.

“That is all,” said the deep voice. “The fool who rebelled, Austin Gailord, is now dead. Take warning. Faithful to the Voice, under the safe black shadow, you have all power and all privilege. Disobey the Voice and this fate is yours.”

The sound stopped. The image blurred and disappeared.

The television screen was blank again.

“Whew!” exclaimed Cole Wilson, dabbing at his forehead.

“What in the w-world did we t-tune in on?” stammered Smitty.

Nellie was more composed. But she also had less color than usual in her cheeks.

“That looked like a death sentence to me.”

All eyes went to the moveless face of The Avenger.

Benson’s colorless, icy eyes were inscrutable, but their diamond brilliance indicated deep thought. It was clear that he was not regarding this spectacle as at all funny. But that was all that was clear.

The rest were sorting things out a bit now.

“There’s a secret cult somewhere around here that we’ve never heard of,” mused Josh. “It’s a form of devil worship, and its emblem is a pair of spread black wings. That’s plain enough.”

Nellie’s dainty blonde head nodded. “More is plain, too. There are places—how many, and where, there’s no way of guessing—where people can go and catch the ritual of this worship of evil on other television screens. These images are scrambled so that no one else can oversee, except by the kind of accident that let us in on it. A one-in-a-million chance, Smitty calls it.”

Rosabel, Josh’s pretty wife, contributed her bit.

“It looks as though the head man, of the Voice, tells different members of the cult what to do. If they don’t obey, they die. Wonder what that black thing like tissue paper was, and what it meant when the little middle-aged man turned black.”

Again all eyes went to The Avenger’s brooding face. But all Dick Benson said was, “There’s the buzzer. See who’s at the door, Smitty.”

A minor product of the giant’s abilities was a little black box on the big desk that was a miniature television set. Tuned constantly to a receiver downstairs, it showed whoever entered the building vestibule and rang their bell. Smitty looked into the box now.

“Why, it’s Caghill, the cop over on Seventh Avenue. Why are we visited by the law? Somebody here been breaking the speed limit?”

This was usually worth a grin; members of Justice, Inc., were exempt from such things as speed laws because of the nature and value of their work for society. But if any grins were brought forth, they were wiped out again fast when Caghill’s looming, uniformed body filled the doorway.

“Mr. Benson,” the cop said respectfully, “somebody just stole your car.”

The patrolman said it in an incredulous tone, as if he still couldn’t believe it; as if someone had stolen the mayor’s pants or the commissioner’s gold shield. Such things simply weren’t done.

Smitty muffled an exclamation. They stared at him.

“The sedan!” he said, looking sheepish. “I . . . I left the keys in it when I came upstairs. I only meant to be here a minute.”

“Why, you fathead!” said Nellie. “You get out of a car and leave the keys in like any cluck of a half-brained kid!”

The Avenger’s diamond stare stopped her. And it suddenly reminded them of the possibilities of this thing.

“Good heavens!” said Rosabel. “That sedan is armored so it could plow through things like a tank! And the way it’s equipped. If anybody started fooling with the dash controls—”

“The thief
did
start fooling with them,” said Caghill grimly. “You’d better come and look. It’s pretty bad.”

Benson went with Caghill. Smitty, looking stricken at his carelessness, followed on their heels.

The giant went white as Seventh Avenue was reached.

The ruin left in the wake of the big sedan was being cleaned up rapidly and efficiently; but it was still pretty bad, as Caghill had said.

Cars were being driven away, mainly under their own power; the collisions when the gas put drivers to sleep had not been made at very high speed. But a few were fit for the tow car.

People were stirring and waking up under the ministrations of plainclothesmen and interns; waking up unhurt, since the gas only induced unconsciousness, with no bad after effects.

But there were broken limbs, and a few cases for the emergency wards, caused by cars that had gone wild. Far up, the crowd was thicker. Caghill and The Avenger and Smitty went up there.

The sedan was still half in and half out of the dress shop. Benson’s pale, awful eyes flicked on it, then went to Caghill. “The driver?”

“Dead,” said the cop. “And in a very funny way. Mr. Benson, this—all this damage—you can’t be held responsible for the actions of a crazy thief. But—”

“List damage and injury to everyone concerned,” said The Avenger. “I’ll take care of it.”

He went to the front of the car, then inside the shop. Police and mob instinctively gave way to admit the passage of the young man with the masklike face and the colorless, icy eyes. Those eyes took in the corpse of the thief and the ghastly peculiarity of its color.

Smitty said in a shaken tone, “What would turn a dead man black?”

The Avenger didn’t answer. He was closely scrutinizing the man’s flesh. In the minds of both—certainly in Smitty’s mind—was the spectacle just caught out of the blue, which they had witnessed on the television screen.

A small middle-aged man—as this man was small and middle-aged. Doomed to death by the hooded figure with the booming voice. Dropping in seeming death—
and turning black in death.