There was something terrible about the expression-lessness. It wasn’t normal. It was that of something dead, not that of something living and merely in repose. It frightened you, that completely moveless face.
Benson, with a suffocating feeling rising within him, tried to smile. He couldn’t.
Lips, eyebrows all the flesh of his face remained entirely still.
He tried to frown, to grimace — and couldn’t.
“The facial muscles are… paralyzed,” the nurse said gently. “Oh, it’s not permanent, probably.” Her tone showed that she was lying, to help him. “Probably it will go away. But for now, it’s paralyzed. We don’t know whether it was the blow on the head you got in the plane when the copilot had to down you, or the nerve shock of your — delusion.”
Benson could only stare at the immobile face, that was white as linen, with the pale-gray eyes flaming through. The nurse went back to the window, which she had been closing when he first called her. Benson pressed at his face. He could barely feel the press of his fingers. The nurse turned.
She screamed, then stifled it with her hand.
Benson looked at her, then into the mirror again. And he saw why she had screamed.
He had pressed at his face with his fingers. Where he had pressed, the flesh was ridged up over one cheekbone. It gave him a demoniac look that was indescribable, when added to the linen-pallor of his skin.
He pressed the flesh down again. Then worked both cheeks.
He could move his facial flesh only with his fingers. And wherever he moved it — it stayed!
“I… I’m sorry I cried out,” faltered the nurse. “But you looked so… so awful—”
A staff doctor came in.
“Ah! Conscious, eh? And how do we feel?”
Benson’s mind was as fast as his body. He’d been conscious only for a few minutes, and after a brain bout that had nearly cost his life. But in that short time he had realized two things.
He must gain strength as rapidly as possible and get out of here.
To get out, he must conceal his colossal agony at the fate of Alicia and little Alice, and indeed pretend as if they had never existed at all.
“I feel much better,” he said.
“Fine,” said the doctor. “Now as to the matter you were speaking of when we brought you—”
“That is all past,” said Benson firmly. He felt a knife turn in his heart — felt as if he were betraying the two who meant all of life to him. But it had to be done.
The doctor’s face cleared. “Good man!” he said in a different tone. “I knew you’d get over your delusion. We can have you out of here shortly, I think.”
In the doctor’s face, Benson saw what he had narrowly missed — detention in the violent ward, maniacs screaming all around him, a padded cell, perhaps. But he had missed it.
In the days that followed, he flexed his muscles and breathed deeply and ate all the rich broths and food they brought. He was storing up strength. And he thought, during the slow hours, tried vainly to figure it out.
What in Heaven’s name had happened to Alicia and little Alice? There had been no way for them to get out of that plane. Yet — they’d disappeared from it.
And why?
During the days when he built strength back and fought to keep from really going insane with anguish, he asked that question a lot.
Why?
In what horrible criminal plot had he unwittingly thrust his family and himself when he shoved his way aboard that plane? He could not guess. But he knew it must be something gigantic; knew it must be something fiendish. And if he had suffered such an awful loss, there must be others threatened with the same. How many? There was no guessing.
He was discharged from the sanitarium. He had gone into the place a man. He came out a machine; a machine of ice and slow fire; a powerful engine geared to only two things — recovery of wife and child and destruction of the force that had acted so fantastically against them.
Benson even looked more like a thing of steel than a man.
Snow-white, his hair was, like chromium. His face, terrible in its utter lack of expression, was steely-white. His eyes, so colorless in his colorless face that you seemed to be looking far, far through them at a chill world of fog and ice, were like pale steel. Even the suit he’d worn in there carried the impression out. It was steely-gray.
At the Montreal airport, he staggered and almost collapsed as he saw a big plane with props idling on the runway. His eyes were dreadful in his white, still face. He knew he could never again look at a plane without feeling that terrific shock. But he also knew that he was going to have to use them — for fast moves of vengeance in the program to which he was dedicating himself.
The agent shrank back a little from the steely-gray figure, moistened his lips at the chill glare of the pale-gray eyes.
“Y-yes, sir,” he stammered. “There’s a seat in the Buffalo plane.”
“Thank you,” said Benson. His lips barely moved with the words. They seemed to come, of their own volition, from great, white, still spaces back of those pale and flaming eyes.
He went to the plane. Attendants made way for him and stared after him. But he paid no attention. Alone in the glacial, terrible world of his grief, he boarded the plane and roared back along the track of tragedy.
CHAPTER III
The First Clue
Never had a man chanced to be in less of a position to prove that he’d ever had a wife and daughter than Dick Benson.
For two years, since he had acquired his last half million in an Australian amethyst venture, he and his young wife and little Alice had played over a large part of the globe. Bermuda, Hawaii, California, Florida, Alaska — all had seen them. In Buffalo they’d stayed at a hotel for a few days. They had no locality, no neighbors — they’d been rich vagabonds.
But Benson had to get some place or person to prove his story so he could get the aid of the police.
He went to the hotel. The assistant manager said of course he’d met Mrs. Benson and the daughter. That was before they’d gone to Louisiana.
“What are you talking about?” snapped Benson.
The man flinched at the glare in the pale eyes.
“The clerk said that’s where they went.”
Benson went to the clerk who’d been on duty when they checked out.
Yes, he’d seen Mr. Benson go out with Mrs. Benson and the child. Then he’d gotten the forwarding letter.
“What letter?” said Benson, lips barely moving in his dead, white face.
“The letter Mrs. Benson wrote saying she was going to New Orleans and to forward mail to the Picayune Hotel there.”
“She went with me to Montreal.”
“Of course, sir, if you say so,” the clerk muttered.
Benson got hold of the cab driver who had taken them to the field.
“Yes, sir, you got in at the hotel with a lady and a little girl. I drove you to the airline ticket office downtown. You all got out there. The lady and the little girl didn’t get back into the cab with you. They stayed downtown.”
Benson’s hand, went out like a darting snake. He got the driver by the collar and those steely-slim fingers of his showed what just a little pressure would do.
“Please! You’re choking—” The driver stared into the appalling gray eyes with his own like those of a frightened rabbit. “I swear you went to the airport alone! I’d… I’d swear it in court!”
Benson marked him down for the future, and went to the Buffalo airport. Behind came a dark green sedan with three men in it, but he didn’t see that. He stared straight ahead, a gray steel bar of a man with pale and awful eyes staring into a future that held but one hope-finding again all that made life worth living for him.