Kenneth Robeson
The Frosted Death
CHAPTER I
The Glass Capsule
The man was a perfect example of the way in which fate sometimes selects obscure persons for great historic roles.
He was certainly obscure enough. His name was John Braun, pronounced Brown. He was average in height, average in weight, average in brain power, and average in earning capacity. Mr. John Q. Public, himself. Yet fate chose him as the first one.
Braun worked on the night shift at the Laddex Rubber Co. on lower Eighth Avenue, New York City. He earned twenty-four dollars and eighty cents a week, on which he supported a wife and sister. The wife and sister were away at the time — which was very lucky, indeed, for the wife and sister.
Because the great role fate had selected for John Braun was that of victim; and if the two women had been at home with him they would have been victims, too.
The night was fairly warm. Braun was walking the mile to his apartment, instead of taking the subway. He walked with carefree stride, swinging his black tin lunchbox.
Now and then he looked dreamily at the sky. It was clear, and the night was filled with stars. It reminded Braun of the farm from which he had come, eighteen years before, to take a city job.
He was looking up, in the shadow of a building taller than the rest around here, when it happened. But he didn’t see it fall.
The first thing of which he was aware, was a swift little swish as something fell past his ear. Then there was a shrill small sound, as something smashed to a million fragments at his feet. After that — nothing.
Thus, simply, did fate usher Braun into posterity.
Braun looked up again. The building from which this thing apparently had fallen was nineteen stories high. It was all dark, save for the top floor. Presumably the thing had fallen from there.
But what was it that had fallen?
Braun stopped. Covering the sidewalk for ten feet around were bits of glass so small that they looked pulverized. The thing that had fallen had been a glass bottle, or vial, or capsule.
He looked around to see what had been in the capsule, to see if it had smashed, too. But there seemed to have been nothing at all in it. There weren’t even traces of moisture on the sidewalk to indicate a liquid of some sort.
Braun decided the little glass container had been empty. In which case its fall meant nothing. There was nothing to return to the lighted top-floor space from which it had toppled; nothing to be done but go on home and be thankful that the little glass thing hadn’t hit him on the head. From that height, even a small object, dropped squarely on you, would give you something more than a headache!
He walked on toward his dingy apartment, swinging his black lunchbox.
In the lighted top floor of the nineteen-story building, there was plenty of activity after the fall of the glass capsule.
The building was the Sangaman-Veshnir Building, which housed the main offices of the gigantic Sangaman-Veshnir Drug Corp. On the seventeenth and eighteenth floors were row after row of general offices. On the nineteenth floor was the experimental laboratory and the big offices belonging to the partners, Sangaman and Veshnir.
It was from the laboratory that the glass capsule had dropped. There was a window open next to a workbench and the bench was a little higher than the sill. An object rolling off the bench would be quite apt to roll onto the sill and bounce on out into thin air — which was what the capsule had done.
In the laboratory were two men. One was a fellow named Targill, brilliant graduate of a well-known school of scientific research. The other was Carl Veshnir. The faces of both were distorted with frenzied emotion. But the expressions were different.
Veshnir’s emotion was an almost insane anger and nothing else. Targill’s was a blend of contrition, fear, and sheer horror.
“If this entire building had fallen, crushing every soul in its path,” Targill gasped, “it would have been less terrible than for the capsule to fall from that window! We must repair the damage at once.”
Veshnir faced him, snarling. Veshnir was fifty-four, stout, florid-faced, and normally a very benevolent-looking person. He looked, indeed, like a deacon in a church.
But not now!
“What do you mean — repair the damage?”
Targill, tall and stooped and scholarly appearing, said stubbornly:
“We must act before that horror spreads in the city. Get it under control. We must call the police and have them rush a squad car. Quarantine anyone who may have happened to be passing nearby when the thing fell. Rope off the area under the window.”
“Are you insane?” snarled Veshnir. “You know what it would mean if the nature of this experiment, and our connection with it, became known. And it certainly would become known if we communicated with the police!”
“Everything’s off now,” Targill said desperately. “Nothing matters now. Only the thing that dropped. Phone the police.”
“No!”
“You realize what might happen to New York if you don’t—”
“I won’t phone the police!”
“Then I will!”
“No!”
Veshnir got between the laboratory telephone and the frantic head-chemist for Sangaman-Veshnir Drug Corp.
“Man! Every second counts!”
Veshnir stood where he was. Targill took several steps toward him, then stopped. Veshnir was a bigger man than he. The chemist began pacing frantically up and down the lab, beating the back of his fist against his forehead.
The laboratory was a curious room. All the apparatus in it, normally in use for a dozen experiments, had been shoved aside out of the way of a great table and several benches on which only one experiment was taking the limelight.
On the table and workbenches were many flat, shallow pans, with glass lids carefully fitted over them. In the pans were snow.
At least it looked like snow — fine, white snow.
On the big table, among the pans, lay a small, dead piglet. The little porker had been shaved, as if in preparation for a barbecue. Every part of its hide had been shaved clean. And it wore pants. A small pair of trousers, made from a thick towel, swathed porcine waist and hams.
Targill stared at the pig in pants with eyes literally glazed with terror, as if the dead piglet were some frightful monster about to spring at him.
“I tell you, we’ve got to phone headquarters about what happened!” he croaked. “Are you a human being, that you can ignore a thing like that? There are seven and a half million helpless souls in this vicinity—”
“I’m human enough,” snapped Veshnir. “Human enough to want my share of the biggest thing that’s ever happened under this roof. You’ll get a huge share, too.”
“I don’t want a share at such a price. I’ve done a lot of things that weren’t quite straight. I’d do them again. I’m no saint. But this — oh, no!”
Targill started toward the phone with his fists clenched. Veshnir grabbed up a small lead case in which was a radium needle.
“Stand aside, Veshnir!”
Veshnir stood where he was, teeth showing between parted lips.
“My friend,” he said softly, “it is better to be a live — and rich — man of discretion, than a dead hero.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” whispered Targill.
Veshnir continued to smile, teeth naked and ugly, like the fangs of an animal.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Targill repeated.
And he leaped for the older man.
On the table, the dead pig in its grotesque pants, seemed to stare as if with grim approval.
CHAPTER II
Page The Avenger