The Avenger, never cooler than when danger was at its height, had Brocker’s coat off. Just as the first of the men rounded the building, Benson tossed the coat.
It lit ahead, in another tree. That tree was hollow. He could see the hollow from where he was; but from the ground it did not show.
The coat struck the hollow accurately and fell into it. But the running man at the corner of the shack couldn’t see that. He saw a hurtling form in the air, got a glimpse of it landing in a great tree fork, then saw it no more. And, of course, he assumed it had swung on farther into the woods.
“This way!” he yelled. “He is going this way!”
He ran forward with the rest streaming after him. All had guns in their hands now. They fired at random into the branches as they went, methodically sweeping the leafy ambush up there with searching lead fingers.
The Avenger waited till the last had gone into the woods, then calmly turned back. He lit softly on the roof of the building, walked warily so that he would not rustle the drying leaves of the branches piled there to camouflage the place from the air.
A guttural sentence indicated that not all of the men were scattered on the false scent. At least two had been left behind.
Benson felt along the tarpaper of the roof, till he found a soft spot. Here there was a knothole in the planks under the paper. He punched through it and looked down.
For an instant he was as motionless as a block of ice. His eyes, colorless, glaring, were as terrible as drawn knives. He was looking straight down at Josh and Mac.
They were sprawled on the floor, deeply unconscious. But it was not their unconsciousness that brought that look into Benson’s eyes.
Over the features of the two men was forming a whitish fine film, as if snow were sifting gently down on them as they lay.
The frosted death. It had them!
Benson faced toward the coast, leaped once more from the roof, soundlessly caught a branch, and began swinging like a gorilla toward the sea.
CHAPTER XVIII
Race Against Time
The Avenger went a quarter of a mile through the trees. It was miraculously done. No trained trapeze expert could have kept up with him. At the end of each swing, he seemed instantly to spot just the right branch, at the maximum distance ahead, and leap for it. So that his progress seemed one continuous flow of motion.
He could go faster on the ground, however; so he dropped the instant it seemed safe, and began running. He flitted through the woods like a gray streak, hurdling tree-trunks and underbrush, toward the coast.
Benson had to get to a short-wave radio transmitter. Fast! And the only one he could conceive of near here, was on the submarine.
The Avenger was acting on a theory that to him was just about accomplished fact. He knew men. In particular, he knew Mac and the rest of his aides. He was sure the dour Scot wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t left his drugstore. He was equally sure Mac would not have left his store if he hadn’t found the antidote for the frosted death. The Scotchman would have kept on at his laboratory bench till he dropped from fatigue.
So there was an antidote. And Mac and Josh had been taken with it. An antidote would be a priceless thing. So it was unlikely that it had been destroyed.
The sea was in sight, shimmering in the sun. Benson slowed his pace, stopped behind a big stump. He wasn’t even breathing fast from his prodigious effort. His body, it seemed, was made of metal instead of flesh and blood.
The point at which he had emerged was at the edge of one of Maine’s rock cliffs, about thirty feet above the water level. Beneath, the water pounded against the rock, quite deep clear up to the foot of the cliff. Its color told that.
Out a little way was the whalelike form of the submarine, under water to the conning tower. Over the edge of the tower hatchway, showed the head and shoulders of one of the sub’s crew. Left on guard. With how many others? The Avenger could not guess.
Benson’s hand went down to his leg, came up with the slim, blued butt of Mike, the .22, in it.
It was a long shot. Over a hundred yards, and down. It isn’t easy to shoot from an elevation. But Benson probably had no peer in marksmanship. The colorless, glacial eyes lined the sights up for about four seconds, and then he squeezed the trigger.
The man in the conning tower suddenly disappeared. There was no sound, no move. He simply slid down out of sight.
It seemed there was another man just below him. This one appeared like a jack-in-the-box, with a submachine gun poking inquisitively around over the hatch rim.
The fall of the first man must have seemed like a ghastly miracle to this man. No sound. No one near, as far as could be seen. Yet the first man had slumped down the iron rungs of the tower ladder, apparently clubbed on the top of his head!
Mike spat another leaden pea. The second man threw up his hands and fell back within. The gun he had held splashed into the water and sank.
Benson let a minute pass. No third head showed. He holstered Mike, fastened a waterproof hood over the holster. Then he straightened on the cliff edge.
Below, the surface next to the cliff was strewn with great rocks, over which water combed white. He dived, like an arrow, down the thirty feet, gliding into the water almost without a splash, with rocks to right and left so close that they almost grazed him as he passed.
He swam to the sub, lowered himself down the conning tower, and stepped over the two unconscious guards.
His steely white fingers flew at the task of altering the sub’s short-wave apparatus so that it could send to the special instrument in the Bleek Street headquarters.
“Smitty? This is Benson talking. Orders. Rush!
“Telephone Veshnir. Talk in the guttural tone and with the accent we’re familiar with. Tell him that it has been decided to cut the price to be paid him in half. When he protests, tell him he will take that or nothing at all, and that he is lucky to be getting that much. Then hang up. Repeat to me.”
Benson turned from the receiver, satisfied, as Smitty repeated the message.
He was betting that Veshnir had some of the antidote at all times. The man dealt with the frosted death. What more natural than that he should carry some with him, in case he was unexpectedly attacked by the mold?
Everything was being wagered on this, with the lives of Josh and Mac as the stake. Wagered on this — and on the time element.
The Avenger’s pale eyes probed around. From a locker he got a collapsible rubber raft. He took it above, inflated it, and tossed it into the water. Then he dragged the two men up, laid them on it, and floated them toward shore. He went down the iron ladder one more time.
Benson opened the submersion tanks of the underseas craft, and darted back up the conning tower. Water was just beginning to slide over the rim as he got out. The submarine lurched downward, settled at a crazy angle, and sank in forty-five feet of water.
At the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp., Veshnir tilted back in his swivel chair in a pleasant mood. He had never looked more kindly, more benevolent. He coughed. He’d caught cold or something, and it was bothering his throat. But aside from this minor detail the world was perfect.
Things could not have gone better. Mickelson, by incredible luck had gone mad when he discovered what had happened to him; so that even if he wished to tell what little he knew, before death took him, now he would be unable to do so. Soon Sangaman would be out of it, a victim of his own plotting, as far as the world knew.
He had a million. Vast additional sums were to come for the frosted death and later, for the antidote. There were Taylor’s millions to be paid into the coffers of the company when it was found that the insurance people would never be able to prove their claim against Sangaman. The company would be all his when he tended to Claudette Sangaman.