She went out. And the Avenger’s icily flaring eyes followed her till the door was shut. Their almost colorless depths were strangely clouded for a moment. Something was trying to fight its way into his mind. Something that disturbed him very much.
It had to do with the meaning he had picked from the newspaper story of Sangaman’s guilt in the Taylor death. He knew that much. And something else. Something the girl had just said—
Benson could move almost faster than the eye could follow. Occasionally there are such men — with a co-ordination of mind and whipcord muscle that makes the motions of others seem slow. The Avenger was like that.
He got to the door almost before Nellie Gray was aware that he had left his chair.
“She mustn’t be allowed to go down this street alone!” he snapped, eyes like flashes of stainless steel. “Of course! I should have known it at once! She is in terrible danger.”
“You want me to—” Nellie began.
“Stay here!” he rapped out. “There may be phone calls—”
He was gone, racing down the stairs with more urgency than Nellie had ever seen him move.
He got to the street door, over which was the small Justice sign, just as Smitty was coming in. In fact they almost bumped.
“Smitty! With me!”
The giant turned and ran after Benson down the short block composing all there was to Bleek Street. He couldn’t quite keep up with the gray fox of a man with the dead face, but he did his best.
They got to the corner, where traffic was thick. Ahead, Benson saw the girl, walking toward a cab stand.
Probably there wasn’t another man in all the great city who could have seen the thing. But those colorless, keen eyes of The Avenger’s had telescopic power. He saw it, inconspicuous as it was.
Claudette was just raising her hand to call a cab from the line when it happened.
From some window near her, something flashed out and down. The Avenger couldn’t see what it was. It was too small. But he knew. The crystalline flash of it told him. He couldn’t see what window it came from, because he was looking down along the street at a thin angle. But he let that problem go till later.
The flashing downward arc of the little thing made Benson spurt forward with even greater speed. He was probably covering ground at a rate of nine seconds flat per hundred yards, when he got to the girl.
His steely arm swept around her before she knew he had approached. She cried out in surprise. As she did so, the little glass capsule whose flash Benson had seen, hit the sidewalk next to both of them.
There wasn’t anything dramatic about it. The thing hit with a soft, harmless-sounding littie plop and broke into a million pieces. That was all.
But that small plop was more terrible to discerning ears than any roar of a bomb explosion would have been.
Benson leaped away with the girl as if she had weighed only a few ounces. He didn’t stop till there was twenty yards between him and the bit of sidewalk where the capsule had broken.
“Why—” gasped Claudette. “What do—”
The Avenger didn’t pay any attention to her. He had a more urgent thing to do, now.
People were beginning to gather, as people always do when something a little out of the ordinary happens. And this had been out of the ordinary: a man with blazing, colorless eyes and snow-white hair, catching up a girl and running twenty yards with her as if he had suddenly gone crazy.
Some of the people were pressing ignorantly toward the spot where the capsule had hit. They didn’t see what Benson saw. And even Benson might not have seen it had he not had an inkling of what to look for.
From the spot on the sidewalk where glass lay in fragments, a kind of gray cloud was rising. It was like a genie rising from a bottle, to solidify later into hideous form. Only this wouldn’t solidify. This would stay that way, faintly shining, a whitish mist, looking innocent and harmless — till flesh and blood were near.
Then—
“Back everybody!” The Avenger’s voice was like the crack of a bullwhip. There was such command in it that everyone in earshot stopped in his tracks as if a hand had been laid on his shoulders.
Then they moved again. People are like that, too. You can’t make them obey a command for any length of time without telling them why. And Benson couldn’t take the precious seconds to try a real explanation.
“Poison gas — around that doorway!” he called in his whiplash voice.
That did it. The crowd shrank hastily back from the doorway near which the dreadful, white mist was hovering in air. A few with extra-good eyes saw the mist, and talked volubly about the spectacle to the rest.
“Smitty!” The Avenger rapped out.
The giant turned from the light gray cloud.
“Nearest butcher shop,” Benson snapped. “Get a side of beef — any big chunk of meat. Bring it here instantly!”
There was a butcher shop on the far corner. The giant raced for it, running as fleetly as a stripling, for all his great size.
“The… frosted death?” whispered Claudette, staring with fearful eyes at the faint, shimmering mist.
“Yes,” said Benson. “Aimed at you! Fortunately it is still, without wind, at this moment. So the stuff stays where it is. If a breeze were to spring up and scatter it before Smitty gets back—”
The giant was on his way back, already, with a quarter of beef, running as lightly with it as if it had been a pork chop. He reached the corner and looked at his chief. Few words were needed between The Avenger and his aides!
Benson nodded toward the gray cloud. Smitty tossed the beef so that it hit at the base of the patch of faintly shining mist.
The result was as weird as it was horrible.
The shining, translucent patch suspended in the still air began to funnel down on the meat like water streaming through a faucet. It was as if the microscopic particles composing the misty patch were little particles of steel, and the beef was a powerful magnet.
In less than half a minute there was no trace of the thin grayish cloud. It was all on the meat.
The crowd couldn’t understand that at all. Poison gas, this man with the emotionless, dead face and icily flaring eyes, had yelled. And some had seen the “gas” cloud. But gas settling like that on meat? It seemed worse than gas. Now that the danger was over, had they but known it, they all got back to an even safer distance than when it had hung by a thread over their unknowing heads.
Benson drew a deep breath, as the crisis passed.
A uniformed patrolman was hurrying toward the crowd. He started to pass Benson, saw the white, still face of The Avenger and his awesome, colorless eyes, and stopped.
“You, Mr. Benson!” he said respectfully. “What’s wrong, sir? It must be important if you’re here.”
“It is,” nodded The Avenger. He put his lips close to the patrolman’s ear, so that the words wouldn’t be overheard by others and start a panic.
“The frosted death!”
The cop’s hands clenched convulsively. He knew more than most about the frosted death. He had been a close friend of the homicide detective who had been unfortunate enough to let the back of his hand brush against the body of John Braun.
“There?” he whispered back. “That stuff?” He pointed to the beef, which was beginning to look as if invisible hands were slowly sifting powdered sugar on it.
“That’s right. Listen, and follow instructions to the letter. Get more men and rope this area off. Then get kerosene — gallons of it — and pour it over that side of meat. Burn it where it is. Don’t try to take it to the city incinerator or anyplace else. Burn it on the spot!”
The patrolman’s face was the color of putty.