The Avenger 17 - Nevlo (2 page)

His Honor, Mayor Bristow, cleared his throat pompously and loudly. It had the effect of a banging gavel in the hands of an assembly leader about to open a session, or of a warning bell as a school class is about to begin.

Everyone turned toward Bristow.

“Gentlemen,” boomed the professionally oratorical voice, “we are gathered here at this most auspicious occasion—”

The booming voice, saying nothing in particular but saying it in ringing, earnest tones, filled the big room like the humming of a bluebottle fly. Smooth, even, soothing. The men present kept from yawning and politely applauded now and then. The mayor’s hand caressed the master switch, which it would throw in a few minutes.

And over near the window, a bitter-looking, black-haired man, who habitually held his head slanted to the left, gazed with sardonic amusement. Nevlo, the man whose brain had spawned this place, but whose ungovernable temper and erratic lack of a sense of responsibility had gotten him discharged.

In spite of the mayor’s windy nothings, the air of the place began to grow more tense as he neared the peak of his speech—and the moment when he would throw that switch.

There began to be quite a little suspense in the wait for the movement of the switch. Then, light would gleam, and current would flood cables and take over the work of the obsolete plants dotted from twenty to sixty miles away from Plant 4.

A big occasion, a smooth and sleek occasion . . .

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” whispered the editor suddenly, “if the damn thing didn’t work, after all.”

The store-owner stared at him, almost shocked. Then he grinned a little.

“Don’t be silly. The turbines, generators—everything here has been checked a dozen times. There isn’t a chance of its not working.”

“I know,” said the editor. “There isn’t, really.”

“And so, fellow citizens,” the mayor boomed along, “in dedicating this edifice to the use of mankind, we are sanctioning the functioning of a true work of creation. When this switch is pressed, light shall leap into being throughout this great room—and in thousands of homes through our glorious state. When these great wheels begin to turn, the wheels of countless factories will turn with them. And all resulting from the movement of one man’s hand. My hand, gentlemen. I am highly honored to be the man who moves this switch!”

There was a breathless five seconds. Every eye was on the switch and on the rows of light bulbs set nearby. Every ear was on the alert to catch the slowly gathering humming of the great generators. There was silence in the place so complete that the slamming of the master switch sounded like a pistol shot.

And then there was a silence even more complete.

The generators started their humming, all right. The hum changed to a shrill whine of great speed.

But nothing else happened. The lights didn’t glow at all. They stayed cold and dead, though presumably current was shooting through them with the switch contact.

River rushing, turbines whirling, generators whining—and nothing was coming of it.

Over near the tall window sounded a bitter sardonic laugh. And that cracked the silence.

“Hey,” said the mayor, staring at the lights that didn’t light, “did I do something wrong?”

Young Burton, staring pop-eyed at the switchboard, went white and leaped for Bristow’s side. After him, only a little less hurriedly, came President Blake.

Burton batted the mayor’s fumbling hand away from the switch and took over himself. He pulled it down and snapped it back several times.

And nothing happened!

It was something more than disconcerting. It was like proudly breaking the bottle of champagne over the nose of a ship and then having the ship stay on the ways and refuse to slide down to the sea.

A fine new plant, this Plant 4—only it didn’t work.

Blake was observed to say something out of the corner of his mouth to Burton, and the engineer grew even whiter. Then Blake, sleek, efficient, smiling, faced the rest.

“It seems a slight mechanical defect has ruined our dedication,” he announced, with just the right amount of rueful humor. “We’ll have to accept the dedication and start the wheels turning in a few hours, when adjustments have been made. For, of course, in a few hours—”

“This plant will never generate any power!”

The mayor’s voice had sounded loud when he orated. Blake’s had sounded assured when he spoke of minor adjustments.

This voice seemed to fill the place like an explosion, and it was more assured than Blake’s had ever been.

It came from Nevlo, the big, blazing-eyed man near the window. Nevlo, who had designed the plant and had been fired a month before its opening.

“What did you say, Nevlo?” snapped Blake, face first red and then chalky with fury.

“I said Plant 4 will never generate power. Not till I am in charge again.”

Blake nodded to a couple of huskies in dungarees.

“Throw him out if he doesn’t get out by himself.”

“Oh, I’ll get out!” said Nevlo. “And you’ll want me to come back, and you’ll beg me to come back, many times before I do. For I tell you this plant will never function till I allow it to.”

Head to one side, lips stony in their bitterness, Nevlo left the plant. Blake faced the rest, managing an artificial smile.

“You can disregard the vindictive mutterings of a man discharged for incompetence,” he said. “And you may also disregard his vague threats about Plant 4. I’m not much of an engineer, but I know that no power on earth can keep these generators from doing their job as long as the river turbines turn them.”

Which was true enough, it seemed. Burton, himself, reassured Blake, when the rest had gone and the two were left alone beside the great generators that were whirling so industriously—and were producing nothing.

“Sure,” he said, biting his lips, “that’s right, Mr. Blake. As long as these generators are turning, power is sent over the cables.”

“They’re turning, and there is no power,” Blake snapped.

“There must be something physically wrong with the set-up,” worried Burton. “Some little thing, though I can’t imagine what. I checked everything dozens of times.”

“Can there be anything to what Nevlo said? Is it possible that he could get revenge by sabotaging the plant?”

“No man could keep a whirling generator from building up power,” swore Burton.

“Well, these are whirling,” said Blake again. “And it doesn’t mean anything. You’d better find out what’s wrong, my young friend, or I’ll fire you faster than I fired Nevlo, and I’ll see that you don’t get a job with another utility company in the continent!”

So Burton, thick brown hair more rumpled than ever, checked Plant 4 again. And again he found that everything was exactly as it should be. Wiring okay, turbines okay, generators okay. And from this shining, whirling, perfect generating unit, not one bit of juice emerged.

Nevlo’s bitter, assured laugh rang in his ears again and again, though he
knew
no man could revoke the fundamental laws of electricity as they seemed to have been revoked here. So he checked and searched and grew haggard and found only perfection. And Nevlo’s black eyes haunted him.

That was in March, five weeks before the series of events that shook the world.

The drugstore on Sixth Avenue looked like any other drugstore on Sixth Avenue. Or any other avenue. That is, it looked that way from the front.

There were counters behind which were all the thousand and one items carried by modern drugstores. There was a prescription counter along one side. A gleaming soda fountain ranged along the other side.

At the soda fountain sat a customer, a Negro, gangling, lean, looking sleepy and stupid.

But this was Josh Newton, graduate with high honors from Tuskegee and an aide of Richard Henry Benson, known to the underworld as The Avenger.

And the store, with its normal, ordinary look, was just as deceptive as Josh Newton. For it wasn’t ordinary at all. You could have found that out by going into the rear room.

The rear room was twice as big as the front. And it had no store supplies. It was a dual laboratory, with chemical apparatus on one side and electrical on the other.

The chemical side was the property of Fergus MacMurdie. The electrical apparatus was presided over by Algernon Heathcote Smith. These were two more of The Avenger’s aides. They were both engaged in experiments at the moment.

Smitty worked with his back turned to MacMurdie. And a tremendous back it was. Smitty was a six-foot-nine, near-three-hundred-pound giant, with all of it muscle and bone. No one would have divined from his moonface—more amiable than intelligent—that he was one of the world’s outstanding electrical engineers.

“Whoosh!
’Tis the devil has got ye!” Mac suddenly howled, throwing a beaker half full of pinkish stuff to the floor.

“You sandy-thatched Scotch ram,” Smitty snapped. “Why’re you throwing junk all around the place?”

“It’s not junk. It’s my new local anesthetic. A drop of it blocks all sensation for an hour and a half. Put it on a finger and ye could cut the finger off without pain. Apply it to the gum around a sore tooth, and ye could yank the tooth without feelin’ it. ’Tis an invaluable thing.”

“So you go throwing it around the shop,” said the giant. “I can see how invaluable it is.”

The Scot chewed his lips, his bleak blue eyes glaring.

“Ye overgrown papoose. It
is
invaluable!”

“But?”

“Well,” admitted Mac, “ ’tis a wee bit strrrong, right now. It seems to kill flesh a little bit, as well as pain. I’ve got to take the bite out of it. I thought I had, and it seemed I hadn’t; so I got a trifle impatient.”

“Nice stuff,” approved Smitty. “You put it on a finger to kill pain, and it kills the finger.”

“Whoosh!”
grated Mac. “And what’re ye workin’ on? A set of buildin’ blocks?”

It was the giant’s turn to be stung.

“I’m working on something
really
important, if you want to know,” he rapped out. “A new heating element that will take a five-hundred-percent overload without burning out, will be indestructible, and can be cheaply made. It will be—”

“Children’s play,” scoffed Mac. “Ye don’t lose yer temper because ye never have sufficient cause, what with your little experiments. I’m going to buy ye an electric train for next Christmas. Ye’ll love it, Algernon.”

“Why, you—” began Smitty, outraged.

Mac got out of there. He was one of the few mortals on earth who could call Smitty by his given name and not be torn to bits. But there was no use pushing his luck too far.

He went gloomily into the front part of the drugstore and replaced his bright-eyed assistant behind the soda fountain. There, he watched sourly while Josh Newton finished his fifth maple-nut sundae.

“If ye were a payin’ customer,” he remarked bitterly, “I could retire with a fortune in a year. But we both work for Muster Benson, and so ye come in here and lap up them sundaes on the house.”

Josh grinned. Mac didn’t have to watch the pennies, but it was deeply ingrained in his Scottish nature to do so.

A youngster came in and ordered a chocolate malted milk. Mac mixed it and set the chromium beaker on the little stand for the electric mixer to take over. The busy whir of the mixer rose.

“I will have,” began Josh, “another maple-nut sundae with lots of nuts—”

He stopped. The mixer had stopped, and the lights in the store had gone out.

There was a howl from the rear, indicating that whatever Smitty was working on had been forced to a halt because of failure of electric current.

“Must have blown the main fuse down in the basement,” said Mac. “I’ll go—”

The lights went on again, and the mixer started its whirring. About twenty seconds had passed.

“Hm-m-m! Powerhouse failure,” said Mac, not very disturbed. No presentiment of the extent of the thing that had just happened occurred to him. Not just then.

Smitty came barging out, looking like a bull on a rampage.

“What did you do,” he raged, “pull the switch in the basement? I ought to take some of your own half-baked local anesthetic and pour it over your head—”