The Avenger 34 - The Glass Man (13 page)

Nellie asked, “What about Dr. Coopersmith?”

“She remains silent,” answered Benson. “From what Pike has been able to dig up, she really is Dr. Pearl Coopersmith. She was very carefully checked, of course, before she ever came to work on the Perseus Project.”

“Another one of them German agents planted here years back, huh?” said Smitty. “Like that guy we run into up in Connecticut last year and—”

A knock on the door.

Josh ambled over to answer it. “Ah, yes,” he said. “It’s Mr. Pike. Come in.”

“Only popped in for a minute or two,” said the rumpled government man. “Wanted to wish you all bon voyage.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Nellie.

“Yeah,” said Pike. “I didn’t mention this when we were working together, Miss Gray, but I been thinking I ought to have. So I wanted to tell you . . . you’re okay.”

“Thank you, I’m . . . well, I’m very pleased to hear that.”

Pike shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, if you’re ever out this way again,” he said, “look me up. Thanks, to all of you.” He shuffled, cleared his throat, and left the room.

“Boy,” said Smitty, “somebody’s always falling for you, Nellie.”

“More imitation maple syrup?” offered Cole, grinning across the white-clothed table.

“Since I finished the last of my hotcakes over an hour ago,” replied Jenny Keaton, “I think I’ll pass.”

“Alas, I seem to be hearing time’s swift chariot circling the block,” he said. “Our farewell breakfast must soon draw to a close. I must return to the steel and concrete canyons of Gotham while you . . . what did you say you’d be doing?”

“Don’t know for sure, Cole. There’s a possibility of a job doing a story in Europe,” said the red-haired reporter. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Too bad you didn’t get anything out of this jaunt, anything you can write up, I mean.”

Jenny Keaton sighed and smiled. “Well, this war isn’t going to last forever. Some fine day I’ll be able to use all the stuff that’s classified and top secret and Jenny-do-us-a-favor-and-don’t-write-this-yet. And when that day comes am I going to write one hell of an autobiography.”

“I hope I have a treasured place among its pages.”

“Sure, you’ll get a few paragraphs, or at least a nice fat footnote.”

“Never been a character in anyone’s book before. I look forward to that.”

Jenny Keaton checked her wristwatch. “Think I’d better get back to my hotel and call my boss in New York. Maybe now he can tell me where I go from here.”

Picking up the check, Cole stood and came around the table to pull back the girl’s chair. “We Wilsons are great believers in fate, or what is sometimes known as kismet,” he said. “I feel it was indeed kismet which brought us together. That being so, it should do it again from time to time.”

“In case kismet lets you down,” the redhead told him, “you can always get in touch with me through my boss in New York.”

The giant moved along the snowy Manhattan street with the little black box held against his ear. He looked something like an iceberg drifting through chill waters. “Geez,” he said aloud, “that’s terrible.”

“. . . hardly suspecting that the handsome gardens at the palatial country estate of suave industrialist J.P. Frenkel contained a vast quicksand pit,” the tiny radio was saying in Smitty’s ear. “What then must have been the shock experienced by Mary Joyce, lovely young surgeon, when she learned that little Jerry, who had been bravely taking a stroll in those very gardens despite his missing toe, had seemingly sunk into the treacherous mire? And as we join Mary and crusty old Dr. Winship, the elder statesman of the medical world says . . .”

“Hey, mug, you’re blocking the way!”

“Huh?” Smitty had halted on the sidewalk, the better to savor his favorite soap opera.

The five-foot-tall newspaper vendor in the corner kiosk was scowling up at him. “None of my customers can’t get at no papers with you standing there, palooka.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. I was all wrapped up in this Mary Joyce episode and I—”

“Did they find the kid yet?” asked the vendor.

“You mean little Jerry? Naw, it sure looks like he sank in the quicksand.”

“Naw, he didn’t sink. Because—you remember?—Nurse Reisberson found one of his shoes way over in the tulip beds.”

“No kidding? I must have missed that part while I was out in New Mexico.”

“What I think is . . . there’s something mysterious going on at that rich guy’s place. Now you better scram so my clientele can get at me.”

“Sure.” Smitty obliged, started walking toward Bleek Street again.

“. . . certain he’ll turn up, Mary, my dear,” old Dr. Winship was saying inside the tiny radio.

The giant listened to the broadcast until he was inside the Bleek Street headquarters of Justice, Inc. Then, with some reluctance, he clicked off the radio and dropped it into his pocket.

“No use getting razzed again.”

There was no accounting for taste. No one else around here was very fond of Mary Joyce, MD.

Cole was already in the big office, sitting sideways in a sofa chair and reading a copy of
News
magazine. “Did little Jerry find his lost toe?” he asked the giant, looking up from the magazine’s slick pages.

“He fell in some quicksand,” said Smitty. “Although that little bozo who peddles papers around the corner says maybe he—”

Josh had entered the room, looking concerned about something. “Morning,” he said.

“That is surely a proverbial hangdog look you’re featuring this morning,” observed Cole. “What’s wrong?”

“Maybe I better let Dick tell you.”

Smitty dropped into a chair, causing it to creak some. “We got a new job to work on?”

The black man nodded. “Maybe two of ’em.”

Before Smitty could say anything more the Avenger came in and took his place behind his desk.

“Why the pall of gloom?” asked Cole, glancing from Josh to Richard Henry Benson.

“Not gloom, Cole, only concern,” said Benson. “One. of the things we’ve been asked to look into involves the disappearance in the last week of three prominent government officials.”

“Geez, somebody’s always disappearing.”

Folding his hands on the desktop, the Avenger said, “I don’t yet know if our more personal problem has anything to do with that business or not. But we’ve had absolutely no word from MacMurdie since we returned from the Southwest.”

Fergus MacMurdie had stayed East during the invisible-man case, working on something else. He was, in point of service, the oldest member of Justice, Inc.

“Mac?” said the giant Smitty. “Where the heck is he?”

“We’ll have to find out,” said the Avenger.