The Avenger 9 - Tuned for Murder (19 page)

Ruin, if another three seconds passed, and left him at the mercy of this man with the white-steel eyes! Ruin, if he could not shoot him down and get to the disk!

Grace squeezed the trigger as the last light of volition blanked from his horrified eyes. He pulled the trigger—and fell at the feet of the man in the doorway.

Not an expression appeared—could not appear—on the white death-mask of a face. Then Benson took the formula from a bloody pocket and dashed both the disk he’d held in his left hand, and the disk beside Cranlowe, against the wall.

The inventor, when he began to think for himself again, found himself free. And found the man with the prematurely white hair silently, extending a bloody paper to him

“Did I . . . write that?” he gasped. “And Grace . . . was going away with it?”

Benson nodded. Cranlowe put his face in his hands and groaned.

“There is no safety anywhere,” he whispered.

He had not taken the blood-spattered formula.

“This is your property,” the Avenger said. “You may take it if you want it, and do with it as you please. But don’t you think it would be safest in the secret vaults of the United States government?”

For a long time Cranlowe stared into the icy eyes, so inexorable and yet so direct and honest.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes! Now—I do. Take it to Washington for me, Mr. Benson.”

The Avenger went toward the basement.

In his pocket was a priceless weapon for his country. In the library, dead by his own hand, was a supercrook who had almost stolen it for the world’s detriment. Downstairs was a mob that would go to jail for kidnaping. His job was done.

Victory had again come to The Avenger and his aides. But in Benson’s pale and deadly eyes, there was no triumph. After the tragedy of his loss, which had set him against all crime everywhere, there could never be in his heart any emotion as human as triumph.

There was only the grim anticipation of the next great task, wherein he could cause the annihilation of criminals ordinarily beyond the law.

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