In the civilized sophistication of her hotel suite, thousands of miles from the glacier caverns and thousands of years from it in human advancement, Lini kept calling into the radio. There was panic in her heart. Every time Brent didn’t answer her call at once, she started thinking of all the things that might have happened. Particularly the possible collapse of ice over the cave mouth that could entomb him forever. Then she heared his voice and gasped in relief. It was tiny, thin, intermingled with static; but she could get it all right. “Brent! How are you?”
“All right, Lini. Didn’t expect to hear from you for a couple of hours.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. But hurry things up, will you? I’ll admit I’m beginning to get awful nervous in here. Hearing things after me and all that sort of thing. And the mastodon moves.”
“Brent!” exclaimed Lini, with an awful fear clutching her.
“I’m just kidding,” Brent’s tiny voice came back, in a different tone. A better tone. “Just kidding, Lini.”
“Well, hang on,” said his sister. “The deal’s gone through, Brent. We’re millionaires. I’ll be starting back any time, leading men to take over the caves.”
“Great!” came Brent’s far voice. “I—” There was silence.
Lini called frantically. “Brent! Brent!”
Then she heard his scream. Like the far wail of a seagull in a night of storm, it sounded over the crackling in the radio. His scream, and the words, “Help! The mast—” That was all! Lini leaped up from in front of the radio with horror filling her heart. Something dreadful had happened to Brent! To have heard him cry for help — and to realize that he was as far from her as if he were on another planet! “I’ve got to do something!” she whimpered. “I’ve got to—”
The lights in the room went out! She screamed and ran toward the door. Something caught her by the arms. She fell into a blackness more absolute than that of any darkened room!
CHAPTER V
Sign of the Skull
Lini Waller had been suspicious of everyone. Even of Wittwar and his fellow directors of the Foundation. She hadn’t told even them where she was staying in New York. Her address wasn’t on record anywhere at all. Therefore, it took The Avenger over an hour to locate her hotel, and another twenty minutes to get to it. And by then he was too late. Lini was gone.
Benson looked around the hotel suite. There was little luggage. The most conspicuous thing in it was a small but excellent radio. The radio was on, indicating that the girl had been kidnaped while she was listening to it. That she had been kidnaped Benson was sure. Something had happened to her even sooner than he had feared. And there was not one clue from which The Avenger could discover where she had been taken. He carefully noted the wave length to which the radio transmitter was set and switched the instrument off.
To make sure the girl’s absence wasn’t legitimate, if hasty, he phoned each of the Wittwar Foundation directors. Not one of them had heard from Lini since she had left the Kembridge Building an hour and a half ago. Downstairs, he had his worst suspicions confirmed. “Nope,” said the doorman when Benson described Lini, “nobody like that’s come out in the last two hours. Far as that goes, I know the lady by sight. Make it my business to know the hotel guests after they’ve been here a coupla days. She didn’t come out.”
“Have workmen carried any heavy bundles out of the building?” asked Benson. “Any crates, big boxes or anything like that?”
“Nope. Wait a minute. Yeah, a coupla guys carried out a roll of carpet. A big roll. That was about three quarters of an hour ago.”
Benson didn’t have to go to the management to know that there had been no authorization for the removal of a roll of carpet recently. In that bulky roll, Lini Waller had been carried unseen out of the building. Where she was now it would take a wizard to figure out. And The Avenger was not quite that, though enemies as well as friends sometimes thought he was.
At that moment Lini Waller was several miles away and across the Hudson River. She had arrived there in brisk time after leaving the hotel in a roll of carpet. She wasn’t aware of the manner of her exit, however. She wasn’t aware of anything till she regained consciousness, quite a while after being pricked with a hypodermic needle after the lights had been turned out in her room. It took Lini some time to snap completely out of the fog that seemed to envelop her. Whatever drug had been used to knock her out had lasting effects. First, she was aware of a vague sense of horror that she could not quite place. It didn’t concern her so much as someone else. Who? Then it began to seep back.
Brent! He was in some sort of danger. He had been talking about — of all things — the mastodon moving. Then he had yelled, “The mast—” and everything had gone dead.
“Brent.” she moaned, opening her eyes. She felt strange, as if she was back under the glacier. It was cold and the walls seemed to be icy. In fact, they looked like solid ice sheets. But she couldn’t be in the caves with Brent. The caves were thousands of miles away.
“She’s snapping out of it,” she heard someone say. She tried to move and couldn’t. Something bit into her ankles and wrists. She was bound. But she felt as if she were made of ice. There was one thing; she could move her head a little. She lifted it and gazed around dazedly. She was in what seemed to be a solid ice chamber with a big door also made of ice. There was one thing in the room — a wide bench, or low table, near the center. White light streamed down over the bench and over the room’s nakedness.
Near the ponderous door were five men. They were rats if Lini had ever seen rats; and she had seen many, in the course of traveling around with her active brother. Narrowed, heavy-lidded eyes, poorly-shaped heads, indifferently cruel features, flashy but cheap clothes, twisted mouth—ugh! It gave her the shivers to look at them. Here were five thugs who would stop at nothing.
“Yeah, she’s with us again,” drawled one of the five. He had practically no mouth, his lips were so thin. In his dark eyes were a mixture of sadism and lust as he stared at the bound girl. Lini writhed, trying to get her dress down farther over her bound legs.
“Do we pop her off?” said one of them lazily.
“Not if you know what’s good for you,” was the retort. “She’s supposed to stay alive. The boss needs her alive to go through with the sale and get the dough for that Indian stuff — or whatever she came to New York to sell. No girl; no pay. And he wants the pay.”
“Who is the boss?” said the man with the thin-lipped gash for a mouth.
The other speaker shrugged. “Far as I know, it’s Corny.”
“Yeah. Corny’s the guy that the smoothies, who don’t dirty their hands with hot work, get in contact with when they want something done. But Corny ain’t the real boss, and you know it.”
“All right,” shrugged the other. “So Corny ain’t the real boss. So what? I don’t care who is as long as we get ours. And we’ve got two thousand dollars apiece already with a lot more to come.”
Lini closed her eyes again. Her mind raced for a way out of this — and could not find one. She could think of but one thing to try. “You,” she said. “You men. Let me go, and I’ll give you more money than you could possibly get from whoever is paying to hold me here.”