The Avenger 34 - The Glass Man (9 page)

Josh took a look around before getting in beside the giant. “Is Nellie’s hotel going to be our first stop?”

Benson started the car and headed it for the highway. “Yes. I want to talk to her before we do any investigating.”

“I still bet you Cole is off with that magazine babe somewheres,” said Smitty. “Because it has been my experience that whenever there’s a good-looking skirt around—”

“What about the missing Dr. Dean?” reminded Josh. “Think he went along with them as a chaperone?”

“Naw, he probably just went cuckoo. Scientists are always going nuts; you see it in the movies all the time.”

“You’re something of a scientist,” said the Negro. “When do you figure to go cuckoo?”

“I ain’t the big brain trust kind of scientist. Small fries like me keep their sanity. Although I got to admit that my Uncle Algernon don’t always act—”

“Trouble up ahead,” said the Avenger.

“Huh?”

Two long sawhorses blocked the roadway. A sign announced that the road was closed.

Near the side of the road rose a rocky mesa. As Benson brought the automobile to a stop a fat man appeared from among the rocks.

“It ain’t road trouble,” said Smitty.

Behind the fat Hugo came Fritzi. Each carried a submachine gun.

Very casually Benson leaned across the front seat. “What seems to be wrong?” he called out the open window to the approaching men.

“Everybody out,” ordered Hugo.

The Avenger’s hand made an almost imperceptible flick. A small glass pellet went spinning through the air.

It smashed in the gunmen’s path, nearly beneath their feet.

In a matter of seconds Hugo and Fritzi were engulfed in a thick, billowing cloud of black. The pellet contained a special gas which spread an impenetrable pall of blackness when it came into contact with oxygen in the air.

A burst of machine-gun slugs came sputtering out of the engulfing cloud.

The Avenger had anticipated that. With lightning swiftness he’d left the car.

When the slugs ripped across the front windshield he was far from the auto, racing a zigzag course for the black cloud which swirled at the side of the road.

Smitty and Josh also had vacated the vehicle, and were approaching the blacked-out gunmen from two other angles.

Benson dived into the blackness first.

His unfailing instincts took him directly to the back of the fat Hugo. Swiftly he applied pressure to the big man’s neck.

Hugo gave one surprised gasp before he and his machine gun dropped to the ground.

“What’s—” Fritzi began to ask.

Then giant hands ripped his weapon from his grasp and yanked him out into the daylight.

“Aw, I only caught a little one,” complained Smitty. “Maybe I ought to toss him back.”

Cole Wilson made a final tug and brought his hands around in front of him. “Told you I was an escape artist,” he said. On hands and knees he made his way across the bouncing panel truck to where Jenny Keaton was tied.

“I’ll do a glowing article on you,” said the redhead, “if we ever get completely free of these Nazis.”

“Have no fear.” He went to work on the ropes which held her wrists behind her back. “I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that the good folks always win out in the end.”

“Let’s hope Konrad and his chinless buddy also subscribe to that.”

“They’re not very good at knots, whatever their philosophy may be.” He removed her bonds. “Now let us see what we can gather together in the way of weapons.”

There were several cartons stacked in the rear of the panel truck, most containing canned and packaged foods.

“Lima beans,” Jenny Keaton read off the side of a box, “creamed corn . . . Don’t spot anything that says hand guns or pole axes.”

Prying up the lid of a cardboard carton of canned beans, Cole peered in. “Really is tinned goods.”

“At least we won’t starve.”

“Loan me one of your stockings, Jen.”

“Planning to compete with Konrad?”

“Give me the sock and then stand by for a demonstration of man’s inventive mind at work.”

“I’d love to do my bit, but I haven’t had a pair of nylons—or even rayons—since fall of 1942. These stockings are the painted-on kind.”

“Forgive me for not noticing.” Cole hopped, took off his right shoe. He removed one of his argyle socks. “This plaid, by the way, is the official tartan of the Clan MacMurdie.” After returning his shoe to his bare foot Cole selected a can of beans and stuffed it into his sock. He jiggled the sock until the can was bulging at the toe end. “And thus, using only a few everyday items found around the average household, boys and girls, we’ve made a perfectly useful blackjack. Don’t miss the next issue when Edison Bell will tell you how to use one of your mother’s old—”

“Will that thing work?”

Cole swung the improvised blackjack and made a substantial dent in the side of one of the cartons. “Should work nearly as well on Herr Konrad’s noggin.”

“The only problem now is to get close enough to use it.”

“Wait until . . . Hello! We seem to be turning off the road.”

“Think we’ve arrived?”

“Yes, I’d guess that we’re fast approaching our destination,” said Cole. “Excuse the lack of a more imaginative stratagem, but let’s use the old sick-prisoner dodge.” He hurried over to the place where he’d originally been dumped and lay down on his back with his hands behind him. The homemade blackjack was underneath him, along with the ropes he’d gotten out of. “When they come to fetch us, explain that I had a fit. Might go so far as to suggest I foamed a bit before I fell into my present stupor. That should bring at least one of them within sapping range.”

The truck was bouncing and bumping considerably now. A few more dips and it came to a stop.

“Hands behind you. Look captive. And feign concern for me.”

“I am concerned for you, you idiot. I’d hate to have them—”

The lock on the outside of the compartment doors rattled. In another moment the doors were pulled open. “Okay, you two,” said Waxman, sticking his head into the truck. “Get to your feet and come out of there.”

“Ohhh,” groaned Cole.

“He . . . he’s had some kind of seizure,” said Jenny Keaton. “It’s all your fault, treating him so roughly and tying those smelly ropes so tightly. I’m afraid he—”

“What are you trying to pull?”

“Ohhh,” moaned Cole, rolling weakly from side to side, froth on his lips.

“Can’t you do something?” cried the girl. “He’ll die, he’ll choke or something.”

Waxman rubbed at what little chin he had, thinking. “Okay, I’ll take a look,” he said, pointing his .45 automatic at her. “If it’s a game, I’ll fill you both full of lead.”

“Stop talking and help him!”

Awkwardly Waxman climbed up into the truck. There was no sign of Konrad, no indication of where he was.

“Ohhh,” murmured Cole in a choked voice.

“What kind of spells does he have?” asked Waxman, approaching Cole. His revolver hand hung down at his side.

“What kind?” said Jenny Keaton. “Well, mostly it’s—”

“Laughing spells,” said Cole, swinging his bean-bag blackjack.

The heavy tin can thwacked against the man’s temple. His eyes snapped shut and his legs went out from under him.

Cole, jumping up, used the sap once more.

Waxman dropped over on his face.

Grabbing away his automatic, Cole said, “Now let’s fix our matinée idol.”

“Waxman,” called Konrad’s voice from some distance. “What’s delaying you? Bring them into the house.”

“He’s about a hundred yards away, on the porch of an adobe ranch house.” Jenny was cautiously looking out through the crack in the open door. “There’s a big garage right behind us, about fifty feet off.”

“Konrad got a gun?”

“Tommy gun, no less.”

Cole, after frisking the unconscious Waxman, joined the girl. “I’ve got our chinless chum’s keys. But I don’t know if we can get around outside and into the cab of this truck without Herr Konrad mowing us down.”

“He’s started this way.”

“Then let’s seek shelter in that garage,” said Cole. “Now!”

Hand in hand they jumped out into the bright morning and ran for the open slant-roof garage.

They were nearly to the doorway before Konrad noticed them and started shooting.

The fat man stared straight ahead. But his small, puffy eyes saw nothing. “Yes, I will answer all your questions,” he said in a dull, level voice.

The Avenger had broken a capsule of truth gas beneath the captured Hugo’s nose. The fat man could do nothing now but tell all.

They were sitting on the dry desert ground behind the mesa from which the unsuccessful ambush had been launched. Smitty and Josh, the petulant Fritzi held between them, stood nearby.

“Who are you working for?” Benson asked Hugo.

“The glorious homeland.”

“Are you in charge of this particular operation?”

“They don’t think I’m good enough for that, although I actually am,” droned Hugo. “I must take orders from Werner Konrad.”

“Hey,” said Josh, “there used to be a German actor named Werner Konrad.”

“Is Konrad the actor?” the Avenger asked.

“Oh, yes. He fancies he’s as good as Veidt or Jannings,” answered Hugo. “He’s been a Nazi agent since 1936, and in this country, secretly, since 1939.”

“What is your mission?”

“To kill the Avenger.”

“I mean your over-all mission.”

“Our major concern at the moment is to obtain the invisibility formula.”

“How did you learn of it?”

“We have a contact at the project base.”

“Who is he?”

“Not he, she. Dr. Pearl Coopersmith. She was planted in this country many years ago.”

“Where is Dr. Dean?”

“I do not know.”

“Did you kidnap him?”

“No, we did not.”

“Then who did?”

Hugo said, “That we do not know, nor does Dr. Coopersmith. It is a mystery.”

“What about Cole Wilson and Jenny Keaton?”

“They were showing too much interest in the art gallery.”

“Art gallery?”

“That is Konrad’s cover. He runs the Rosay Gallery,” said the drugged Hugo. “He dresses in female attire and poses as Madame Rosay.”

“They used to say Konrad could play anything,” put in Josh.

“Do you have Wilson and the Keaton girl?”

“Yes, they are our prisoners.”

“Where?”

“Konrad and a young lout named Waxman have taken them to the desert house.”

“Tell me where that is.”

Hugo gave Benson detailed directions for reaching the place.

“How many men do you have there?”

“Konrad and Waxman, that is all. We do not need large numbers to get results.”

“Not for the kind of results you guys got today,” remarked Smitty.

The Avenger asked, “What is to be done with Cole Wilson and Jenny Keaton?”

“They will be thoroughly questioned,” replied the fat man, “Then they will be executed.”

“I think not,” said the Avenger.

It was risky, terribly risky.

But he had to take the chance.

There was absolutely no chance of getting back to the pueblos ever again. The only other supply of formula fluid was that hidden in his cottage at the project facility. He could make a new supply, but that would take time.

The important thing was to stay invisible. The last shot would wear off in a few more hours.

Lamont increased the pressure on the gas pedal. The stolen car roared ahead on the desert back road.

“How did that Gray girl know it was me?” he asked himself as he drove toward the Perseus Project.

He hadn’t made any mistakes, not a one.

Well, not anticipating that damn dog of Montez’s—that wasn’t very bright. But that had nothing to do with the little blonde knowing him.

He’d never believed that the Justice, Inc., gang was as smart as the papers and magazines made out. And yet . . .

It was going to be tough getting back to his place. If Pike or the Gray girl phoned a warning to the facility, the cottage might be surrounded before he got there.

“Can’t be helped. I’ve absolutely got to get that stuff.”

He wasn’t planning very far ahead. One thing he was certain of: he was going to go ahead with his plan.

The rest of them would die.

Every single one of them who’d been in on the murder of his brother.

“Rusty was the smart one,” Lamont said to himself while the car raced through the bright day. “If only he’d lived . . . he could have done much more than I’ve been able to do. If only he’d lived.”

So they had to die.

The sheriff blinked when he saw the car go barreling by the bare intersection up ahead.

It wasn’t just the speed of the vehicle. There didn’t seem to be anybody at the wheel. The car looked empty.

He’d had a report that a car similar to the one stolen near Montez’s place had been seen out this way.

“Seems like that report was right,” he said as he tromped on the gas.

He didn’t use his siren much, which probably accounted for the rusty wail it emitted when he turned it on now.