A man who would see thousands of his countrymen die helplessly, for money, could not be trusted. Veshnir might receive the balance of the huge payment for his white death, and then try to refuse delivery till still more money was paid. After receiving money, he might try to stall till he could contact other European powers and sell them the white death, which would checkmate the glorious plans of the nation to which the sub captain owed allegiance.
There were many slips possible between now and the time when the completed store of glass capsules was ready to be packed on the sub.
And there was one very simple way to take insurance against some of them.
Why wait till the manufacture was completed? There were almost enough glass capsules in that little shack, now, to accomplish their plans. Why not take aboard what had been made, to date, and then just keep loading as the capsules were sealed and racked?
Then, if anything came up, the sub could dive and head for home with whatever they had on board, and all would be well. Matter of fact, it was entirely possible that he might get enough for their needs before Veshnir returned and found out what was happening. Then they could waive that final, huge payment to him, altogether.
The commander sent eight men to the tarpaper shed to bring back all the capsules ready for packing.
The eight got to the shack just as smoke began to seep from the rough cracks between planks, and spiral up in the clear morning air.
With a wild curse in his foreign, guttural tongue, the leader of the eight charged to the door, unbolted it, and rushed into the building.
If the crackle of flames hadn’t been so loud, Mac and Josh might have heard the approach and continued to act like the robots they pretended to be. But they hadn’t heard, were not warned, and hence were caught off base.
The leader of the squad rushed into a room in which ten men acted like dead things, with entire lack of sense in their dull eyes; and two acted like normal humans. The two were in a corner, watching the flaming wall. As clearly as if the fact had been shouted, the squad leader knew that these two were responsible for the trouble. He jumped toward them.
“Josh!” yelled Mac, knowing it was all up, “hold ’em. If we can keep ’em from getting after the fire for just a little longer—”
But that couldn’t be done, either. There were too many. Eight to two!
Mac’s fists, like mallets of bone, swung with a desperation that made him insensible to pain. Josh fought like a black cat. But with a machine-like precision that almost reminded them of the automatons still huddling stupidly by the worktables, the eight surrounded them and methodically cut them down.
The men from the sub stamped the fire out. Then one, with a harsh oath, drew out his service automatic and aimed it at Mac’s unconscious head.
“No!”
The squad leader had a spark of imagination. Also he had a mighty fury that these two had almost wrecked the plans of his country. They deserved something worse than quick death for that.
He took one of the thousands of glass capsules in the storage tacks, unhurt by the flames on the other side of the room. He came back to where the Scot and the Negro lay. The other men were grinning now.
The man dashed the glass capsule between Mac and Josh on the floor.
From it, like a genie from a magic bottle, came the almost invisible, grayish cloud of death spores. They did not hover long.
The eight men from the sub had backed as far from the capsules as they could. But they needn’t have worried. The frosted death settled on the nearest victims always, and from then on could be dislodged only by contact.
The entire contents of the capsule sifted down over Josh and Mac.
“Now,” said the man from the sub, “they will have a few hours to think over what they tried to do, and regret it.”
On the submarine, the captain saw the spiral of smoke rising from the plant. He whirled to the speaking tube.
“All hands! To the building in the woods!”
Two men were left aboard as guards, but the rest, nineteen including the commanding officer, went hastily ashore.
The smoke wasn’t spiraling upward any more. It seemed that the trouble at the death shop had been overcome. But it only confirmed the captain’s thought: get aboard what capsules already were prepared, at once.
In the building, the eight were already turning to the storage racks, to lift trays of capsules. And on the floor nearby, Josh stirred a little in his unconsciousness, and moaned. But for a little while longer his senses were in an oblivion that was merciful.
Not for a little while more would they realize that in a few hours they would be like the other victims of the frosted death; that over them was forming the fine white stuff, like powdered sugar, that would turn them to snow men.
There had been no chance for quick wits, and medicated felt pads, to save them this time!
CHAPTER XVII
Two To Die
Some hours before, Mickelson had sat on one end of that rustic divan with Sangaman on the other. Now, The Avenger’s gray-steel body reposed where Mickelson had been.
Before, Sangaman had sat with his head in his hands, a beaten man. Now he sat erect, chin up. And this in spite of a thing of pure horror that he had discovered a little while ago, just before this man with the awe-inspiring, colorless eyes had arrived.
That thing concerned his right hand — which he kept in his coat pocket, deep down so that even the wrist should not show.
Benson had come first to the one building he had seen from the plane: the log cabin. And there he had found this elderly man for whom all the police of all the nation were searching.
“All right,” the tired fugitive had said. “You’ve got me. I surrender. Take me where you wish. It won’t last long, for me, anyway.”
“I’m not here to arrest you,” said Benson. “I’m after the guilty man.”
Benson had listened to Sangaman’s account of all that happened to him, with his mind clicking into place the few details he hadn’t as yet known.
“Veshnir, of course,” Benson snapped. “I have known it since the day before yesterday, with the murder of August Taylor.”
“Veshnir, of course,” Benson snapped. “I have known I was sure it was he, at first. Then I didn’t know. Recently I have been more and more sure it wasn’t. But always I was too confused to think. Why do you say the murder of August Taylor convinced you of his guilt?”
“Taylor’s death releases millions in business insurance to prop up the sagging finances of the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp.”
“But,” said Sangaman, “since they think I did it, there will be no payment made. Insurance companies do not pay to murderers.”
“Exactly,” said The Avenger. “But at present they only think you did it. Unless they prove in court that you are the murderer, the payment must be made to the firm. And if you disappear forever, which was undoubtedly Veshnir’s plan, there could never be such proof. Therefore the payment would some day be made — and greatly enrich Veshnir’s company.”
Sangaman shook his head.
“It would not all be his. Even with me dead, my daughter, Claudette, would get my share; so he would still own less than half. He would have to kill her, too, before it would all revert to him—”
The old man stopped, with his hands beginning to tremble. He was still keeping the right one in his pocket.
“Precisely,” nodded Benson. “And the attempt to kill your daughter was made, which again nailed it all to Veshnir; only he could have profited.”
“An attempt?” babbled Sangaman. “A murder attempt on my… on Claudette?”