“Doesn’t it seem strange,” said Benson, pale eyes like diamond drills, “that the sheriff should have packed in a great hurry, dropped everything and traveled to Washington just to talk about planting a certain bare area with trees?”
Cutten’s eyes continued pleasant — and expressionless. “Aldershot is an enthusiast about the West. He has approached me before, and Burnside, too, about projects designed to beautify our section.”
The Avenger’s colorless eyes were like stainless steel chips in his dead face. “Did the sheriff, by any chance, mention a crytogram to you?”
On Cutten’s face was a fleeting expression of utter perplexity. “Cryptogram? No! He said nothing about cryptograms.”
“He neither showed you one — nor got one from you?”
Cutten frowned a little. “I have said there was no talk of such things. As for getting one from me, there are implications in that question that I don’t quite like. I know you by reputation, Mr. Benson, and know that your integrity is not to be questioned. But I don’t think that gives you the right to doubt my assertions.”
The Avenger stared for a long time into the blue eyes of Cutten. Benson saw an iron will there, a determination not to be lightly shaken. But he also thought he saw fear. No, something deeper than fear — horror! As if the man stared through his questioner and saw ghosts.
“Thank you, Senator Cutten,” Benson said smoothly. “Good night.”
He went out, and the blue eyes followed his straight steely back with the fear growing in their haggard depths.
Benson went back to the hotel suite he had engaged on coming to Washington a few hours before. His assistants were there, waiting for him.
The Avenger’s aides were almost as remarkable, and as capable, as The Avenger himself. Four of them were with him on this trip.
There was the huge giant, Smitty; the dour Scotchman, Fergus MacMurdie; the sleepy-looking but extremely intelligent Negro, Josh Newton; and Josh’s pretty wife, Rosabel.
MacMurdie started fuming when Benson came in. “Whoosh, Muster Benson,” he greeted The Avenger gloomily. “I’m thinkin’ by now ye’ve probably found we’ve had a trip for nothin’. A couple of murders. ’Tis bad, of course, and I’m sorry for the lads that got killed. But ’tis not as important as the crrrooks we usually go after.”
“You Scotch raven,” snapped the giant, Smitty, “is it up to us to judge whether or not a case is important enough to work on?”
“Ye couldn’t judge, anyway, Algernon,” retorted Mac. “Yer head’s a long way up from the ground, but there’s nothin’ in it to make judgments possible.”
The Scot was one of a few rare souls who could call the giant by his true name, Algernon, and not be instantly annihilated. But even from Mac, Smitty didn’t like it.
“I’ll show you—” he growled, starting toward Mac.
The Avenger paid no attention. His two men were always bickering back and forth, but Benson knew that such bickering stopped in a hurry and changed into efficient cooperation when there was work to be done.
Something in his colorless eyes and the set of his gray steel bar of a body stopped the two. They watched him while he went to a case like a small wardrobe trunk and opened it.
The big case was the most complete traveling laboratory imaginable. And Benson was probably the world’s finest chemist. Put the two together and you got results that any of the big commercial laboratories might have envied.
Benson analyzed the scrapings from the left shoe of dead Sheriff Aldershot. In silence, the four watched him while his deft hands performed their miracles with microscope, acids, and retorts. At last, The Avenger straightened up from his meticulous task.
“Sulphur and salt,” he said.
“Eh?” gaped Mac. “What about sulphur and—”
“From the welt of Aldershot’s shoe. What do you know about Bison National Park, Mac?”
The Scot wrinkled his reddish, coarse-skinned forehead and his bleak blue eyes narrowed in thought. “ ’Tis a rather small one, as national parks go, and doesn’t get the tourists that the big ones do. It’s in Montana, near the city of Bison. There are the usual freak stone formations, several miniature grand canyons, a couple of geysers, mineral springs—”
“And from mineral springs,” nodded Benson, “some such mixture of salt and sulphur deposit might be lying around. Go out to Bison and find it, Mac. Go with him, Smitty. Take the plane. I want to know just where Aldershot was in Bison Park, before he came in such a hurry to Washington.”
CHAPTER IV
Senatorial Interest
The eminent psychiatrist Dr. Fram had his office on the first floor of the home he had rented while in Washington. The office took up most of the first floor. There was a large anteroom, which was normally the living room of the place. A heavy double door led to Fram’s private office, formerly a paneled dining room.
In the big anteroom was Fram’s secretary and assistant. And a glance at her suggested that Fram had excellent taste in secretaries.
She was rather small, with a figure that could have gone into any floor show, and with dark eyes and soft brown hair, and lips to make a man go around talking to himself. Her name was Nan Stanton, and she had been working for Fram for about a year.
Because she had worked for him that long, she was frowning perplexedly over a bill that had just come in the doctor’s regular mail. The bill was from a veterinarian’s office. It was for ten dollars but didn’t specify what the ten dollars was to pay for. It was just a bill for ten dollars from a veterinarian.
That was why Nan Stanton’s soft brown eyes expressed such perplexity. She had worked for Fram for a full year; and to the best of her knowledge, he had no pets of any kind. Certainly he had brought none to Washington with him from his regular New York office. Why, then, a bill for ten dollars from a vet?
She laid it aside, to ask Fram about it later, as a man came out of her boss’ private office. She smiled at the man as he nodded a farewell to her, and he smiled back.
The man was Senator Cutten.
Nan began slitting open other envelopes, and sorting their contents for Dr. Fram. She didn’t know quite how long she was engaged at this routine task, when suddenly she was aware of someone else in the anteroom.
She looked up — and gasped.
She was staring into eyes that had so little color as to seem to be pale crystal. And they were as hard as any crystal, too. The eyes were set in a white, dead face that gave you the shivers.
For an instant, the pale eyes were not meeting hers. Then they flickered up to her face from the thing they had rested on before.
That thing was the bill from the veterinarian.
“Good morning,” said the owner of the colorless, deadly eyes and the mask of a face. “My name is Richard Benson. I would like to see Dr. Fram.”
“I’ll take your name in,” said Nan, staring more curiously than ever. This man was one of the most memorable she had ever seen. But in his remarkable appearance, at least one thing was missing that usually appeared in the eyes of visitors here.
That was — fear. The people who came here were usually driven by fear! Of a nervous breakdown. Of their mental balance. Of the brain troubles of near and dear ones. That was what good psychiatrists were for — to be visited by people in such trouble.
But there was no fear in those pale eyes. No fear of anything on this green earth. And if ever she had seen an icy, unconquerable clarity of logic and sanity, she saw it in those eyes.