Benson’s “superior officer” wasn’t in circulation. But a lot of his men were going to be here in about two minutes.
He said swiftly, in guttural, accented English:
“There has been a plot. Some of our organization wanted to keep half the payment due you, for themselves, and pretended that our government was responsible. The rest of us feared our whole glorious military plan might suffer, and we refused to agree with them. There was a fight. They won. I, alone, got away, without hat or coat. Come with me. Hide before they catch us. There! You hear? They are nearing the field even now! Hurry!”
“I’ll cable your government,” raved Veshnir. “I’ll tell the whole thing. They’ll behead your fine friends who try to cheat an honest man out of his money.”
He was running as he spat this out, however. Running toward the coast, and then veering north and toward the tarpaper shack, in a wide circle around the men.
The submarine crew were split two ways. About a third of them were still ringing the great fir tree in which the sounds of Benson’s retreat had last been heard. It was a big tree and took a lot of searching if you wanted to be methodical about it. And it was a characteristic of these men’s training that they were extremely methodical.
All the others were investigating the unexpected arrival of the fast plane, fanning out around the field to try to locate whoever had come in it.
Around the little factory there was no one at all.
Benson urged Veshnir in. The first thing Veshnir saw was the sub captain, unconscious on the floor.
“He was one who fought against the plot?” he began. Then he stopped. A fit of coughing racked him.
Mac and Josh and Sangaman, bound, were glaring up at him — with Mac and Josh hardly conscious any more. And the marks of fire scarred the wall near the refrigerator, while the racked, completed capsules were all disarranged.
“What’s been going on here?” demanded Veshnir. “Why is Sangaman here? What—”
He stopped. A knifepoint like a needle had touched his throat. Then the edge of the blade, razor-sharp, settled with steady menace against his jugular.
“The antidote, please, Veshnir,” Benson said, abandoning Brocker’s guttural accent.
“Why— What in the world — I don’t know what you’re talking about. What antidote?”
Benson’s hands were going over Veshnir, however; and they paused at a lower vest pocket. The Avenger drew out a slim glass vial, tightly stoppered, filled with a bluish-green substance.
He stared at Mac. The Scotchman could hardly see, and he couldn’t talk at all; but he made out the color of the vial; and his lips moved.
“Yes,” was the word they formed.
There were tremendous stakes involved in this great game of the frosted death. But Benson’s first allegiance was to his aides. That was the way The Avenger always worked.
“Untie Sangaman,” he said to Veshnir.
Veshnir fumbled with the knots.
“Faster!”
Veshnir completed his task in a hurry. Meanwhile, Benson reached behind him and fastened the door. There was an inner, as well as an outer, bolt.
“Mac, does this antidote go through clothing the same as the mold it attacks?”
Again Mac managed to form the word: “Yes,” with his numbing lips.
“Sangaman, take this vial. Shake some of the stuff in it over these two men. Save some for yourself and put it on your arm. I don’t know whether it will act fast enough—”
But the profound relief in Mac’s dimming eyes answered Benson. The Scot knew that it would act fast enough to save them, and his eyes showed it. The tensity of The Avenger’s flaming, terrible orbs ceased somewhat.
Veshnir was coughing again. And Josh was staring at him with a very curious look in his eyes. A look that was calm, grim, knowing, inexorable — the way a judge might look at a prisoner being led to the gallows.
“Cut them loose, please, Sangaman,” Benson said.
Sangaman slashed Mac’s and Josh’s bonds. Benson nodded and then suddenly whirled.
The sub commander had regained consciousness, and cunningly concealed it till he had a little strength back. Then he had leaped from the floor, like a crouching cat, at The Avenger’s back. But The Avenger had heard the light rasp of his shoe just in time.
He braced to the charge of the man, and battered him down with one lightning blow to the throat. But the action took just long enough for Veshnir to escape.
Moving faster, under the stimulus of fear and greed, than anyone ever would have thought he could move, he got to the door, and tore the bolt back.
“Everybody! Here!” Benson heard him shouting, as he leaped outside.
The Avenger raced after him, but he was too late!
The sub’s crew had returned from the big fir tree where, to the last, they’d thought Benson was hiding; and from the landing field where Veshnir had just set his plane down.
They swarmed around Veshnir and Benson. The Avenger’s hand darted out to close the door again and bolt it from the inside, but a crashing boot was fast enough to prevent that.
The commander of the sub came unsteadily up behind Benson, shoved him savagely aside and strode out among his men.
“Well? Well?” he snapped. “Reports! What has happened?”
One of them spoke up. One who had just come from the landing field.
“We found two planes on the field. One has been here for some time. It is the plane that has been here before. At the controls is divisional commander Buehlow, unconscious. The motor is cool; so that plane has been here for some time. The other plane is empty. The hot motor shows that it has just landed a few—”
“I came in that,” said Veshnir. He was glaring at The Avenger in grim triumph. “I got here just in time, it seems.”
“How it is that you came at all?” the sub captain growled at him.
“There was a phone message to me in New York leading me to believe that your nation was thinking of trying to cut the final payment to me for the frosted death—”
“What?” howled the officer, glaring at Veshnir. “You dare to think my nation would do such a thing? It is an insult!”
His voice was all the louder for the very fact that he, personally, had had just those thoughts in mind when he gave orders to load on the sub whatever capsules were already completed.
Veshnir cringed.
“It was a plot, of course. I should have known.”
The captain was pacing back and forth in front of the tarpaper shack. The men ringed Benson and Veshnir stolidly but watchfully.
“So!” the captain said. “These men up here know of our plans! At least one man in New York — the one who alarmed you into coming here — knows of them. We must act fast.”
“I would suggest,” ventured Veshnir, “that you load the submarine—”
“We have no submarine,” cut in the captain, looking murderously at Benson. “But — there are two planes on the landing field. Buehlow’s is the largest?”
“Yes,” said Veshnir. “It’s a twelve-passenger job.” His body suddenly shook with coughs.
The captain looked a little puzzled by the violence of the attack. So did Veshnir — a little worried. However, the captain had plans more important than the fact that Veshnir seemed suddenly to be catching a hard cold.
“You!” he snapped to one of the men. “Go with ten of the men to the large plane. You are a good pilot. Refuel with whatever petrol there is in the smaller ship—”
“No, no!” bleated Veshnir. “That will leave me stranded here!”
“Not for long,” the captain reassured him. He turned back to the man. “Go to New York. Report at headquarters there. Get a big transport plane and return. The rest of us will leave here in that, taking the glass capsules with us. We can carry them to whatever ship of ours is closest on the Atlantic.”