That seemed very tender-hearted for a member of the gang that had stolen the mystery car, murdering freely to get and keep it.
“I’ll go with you to the gate,” said the man. “It’s a quarter after five. I’ll be punchin’ outta here, anyhow, in a little while.”
Benson only nodded, saving his strength for the long walk. He made it, on sheer will power, leaning heavily on the man’s arm.
“You gotta car?”
Again Benson nodded. He had come in the stock-room man’s car. It was down the line in the vast parking lot that was provided for employees. The owner must be pretty nervous by now — also Smitty and Mac and Nellie and Josh — at not having heard from their chief.
They were, all right!
Up in the hotel suite, they all surrounded him and stared literally with their mouths open. Exclamations of surprise burst from them. Nellie particularly was petrified with wide-eyed astonishment.
“Chief! Your face!” she whispered.
Benson rubbed his hands over his cheeks. There was still some the fiery feeling in his face, dying very slowly after that terrific ray bombardment.
“And ye’r head, mon!” gasped Mac.
So Benson went to a mirror and saw for the first time, himself, what had happened.
It was an unbelievable thing.
His face had expression!
Once Benson had had a normal countenance. A nervous shock, that would have killed many men, had completely paralyzed and deadened the facial muscles, and at the same time it had turned his hair snow-white.
He had been a long time in seeing that dead, white face as his own and not that of some stranger stuck on his shoulders. Then he had become used to it.
Now, after a second horrible shock to the nervous system, his face was as it had been nearly two years ago.
And, again, it looked like the face of somebody else put on his shoulders. A living instead of a dead face.[1]
He stared at the countenance that had been his once before. And stared at his head, where the snow-white hair had been, so incongruous on a man so young—
Where it had been.
It wasn’t there, now! There was no hair at all, any more.
In the invisible cyclonic bombardment of that big box, something had happened to the hair roots, so that all his hair had fallen out. That was why his head had felt cold, back at the plant. That was why the watchman had stared so hard, for it is unusual to see a man with no trace of hair at all on his head.
Experimentally, Benson smiled. And Nellie gasped aloud. Never once had she seen a movement of that dead, but now, somehow, revitalized face. And now it was smiling!
The rest were in Nellie’s state of mind. Of them all, only Mac had seen The Avenger in the beginning, with a normal man’s face and a normal man’s look in his eyes. And Mac had gotten just a glimpse of him.
That was at an airfield.
Mac called it to mind. The man with jet-black hair and flaming, colorless eyes in a lean, square face, striding along with a lithe swing of his body, talking warmly and contentedly to companions. No more like The Avenger, that cold machine for fighting crime, than if he had been an entirely different person.
Then that man had, in a sense, died, when his face had died, after the appalling injury a crime ring had done him because he happened to get in their way.
Here was a man with a vital, tense, live face again! Save for the fact that there was no hair — and that other man had had jet-black hair — this person was like that other—
No, not quite. For this man, while once more resembling that other in looks, still had the cold hatred in his pale eyes for anything criminal or murderous. So he was a kind of blend of the two—
All of which Mac could express in only one word — or Scottish gasp, if you like.
“Whoosh!”
“What on earth happened to you, chief?”
That was Smitty, who had never known Benson save as the man with the dead face, whose flesh could be prodded into any likeness and would stay that way like putty. As it had last night, when Dick Benson had adopted the likeness of the stockroom employee. But his features then had been artificial — independent of his facial muscles. So that, upon the revitalization of those muscles, that guise gave way to his natural, normal countenance.
“It seems I got tempered, like any bar of old iron, at the Marr plant,” said Benson with grim humor. “It also seems that I’ll have to wear one of the wigs from my make-up kit permanently.”
Nellie’s eyes reflected the thought that would have come to any woman, as they went over the altered appearance of The Avenger.
He was certainly good-looking. That was her opinion. In spite of the handicap of no hair, he was about the handsomest man she had ever seen.
She had always suspected that he must once have been a very handsome man, till the dead facial muscles took on that masklike appearance. Now the dead mask was gone, and with it had gone, apparently, about twenty years.
Dick Benson looked so young! Good heavens, Nellie thought, he is very young!
And then The Avenger proved that changes like this are only skin-deep. White haired and with a face like a death mask, or young and classically featured — he was still The Avenger. He was still the man of cold genius who was concentrated on just one thing:
The destruction of crime and of the men who made their livings from crime.
“Mac,” he said, and his voice was as cold and even as ice water. “A workman who stayed in the Marr plant all night is the one responsible for this — and was almost responsible for my death. I want you to check on every man who was in the plant yesterday; trace their movements after working hours till you find which did not come home. If you do locate him, be careful. He is unusually clever and incredibly strong. In fact, the most dangerous person I have ever encountered.”
All of them drew deep breaths. The face had altered, but this was still their chief — indomitable, centered on just one thing, brilliant, glacially cold.
“Josh, I want you to check on the man, Cole Wilson, who gave his address as the Shelton Arms, on Jefferson Avenue. Smitty—”
It was then that the phone rang.
CHAPTER XIV
The Warning Voice
Every eye turned to that phone. They all felt that it was important. The Avenger picked up the instrument.
“Hello, Mr. Benson?”
The voice was high-pitched, yet almost a whisper, as if the speaker were afraid of being overheard by someone.
Also, the voice was faintly familiar.
“This is Benson.”
If you closed your eyes, you could see the white, dead face by which The Avenger was known, because the voice was the same. Then you looked at the taut, alert new face and got kind of a shock.
“This is Will Willis talking,” came the faint voice.
And now it was seen that while the face of The Avenger was once more capable of expression, it wasn’t going to be wasteful with it. The others looked surprised. Will Willis! But not a muscle of Benson’s face moved. An iron self-control was taking the place of the former paralysis to keep his countenance from revealing his feelings.
“Yes, Willis?”
Benson looked at Nellie, and his right hand made a fast, significant motion. Thumb and second finger joined tips, and forefinger stood out straight. It meant:
Trace this call, and trace it fast.
Nellie slipped out of the room, and the far voice went on.
1
(Medical science has recently reported success in the treatment of diffuse scleroderma, an uncommon though tragic condition characterized by the hardening and an expressionless rigidity of the skin. Results have been achieved by operation on the somewhat mysterious parathyroid gland, though such treatment is not inerrant. However, marked progress has been discovered in the practice of chemotherapy — the use of medicines of chemical compounds — and the prescription of scientific diet, and promising claims have been advanced in their meritable effect on this condition. It is also possible that an electrical shock to the nerves controlling the facile muscles would have a similar effect.)