Benson went back down to the second floor and out onto the roof. The other man was still lying there, deeply unconscious. It was possible that he had a mild concussion from the bullet’s crease; but his life was in no danger.
Benson went to the edge of the roof. There was a heavy rainpipe there; and it was up this that the two men had climbed in the first place. The Avenger went down the pipe and along the areaway to the street on which the garage fronted.
Two men promptly wheeled toward him from across the street, unconsciously marching in exact unison. Two more came toward him from down beyond the garage. It was so precisely and mechanically done that it was like the changing of the guard.
Benson was so good at judging men that he was almost psychic about it. At a glance he picked the one of the four with the most authority in the set of his jaw. This one he approached at once.
“Brocker!” the man said. “Why do you leave your post? Do you not know—”
The Avenger knew a dozen languages, and knew them so well that he had no accent in any. The knowledge was advantageous, now; the man spoke in the tongue of north Europe.
“There has been trouble,” Benson replied in the same language. He had had no chance to hear the real Brocker speak; so he could only guess at the proper, guttural intonation. “The man with the white hair — I believe he has gotten away.”
“Impossible!” snapped the authoritative-looking man. “All have been in place in front. And if you and Vogg have been properly on duty in the rear—”
Benson had only been waiting to learn the name of the other man.
“Vogg has been hurt.”
“Hurt! There was a fight?”
“No! I don’t know what happened. I turned, to see that Vogg was down. I ran to the areaway and looked down. There was a sound that I could hardly hear. I leaped back from the edge with these holes in my hat.” He pointed at the bullet holes. “Some one had shot me.”
“You saw no one?”
“I was not sure. I leaped back with my own gun out. I thought I saw a man running this way. A man, it seemed, with white hair showing under the rim of his hat.”
“No one, of any color hair, has come into this street. I am positive. But this is serious!”
“What shall I do now? Return to my post?”
“Of what use?” said the man bitterly. “If you and Vogg were attacked, it must have been that during the distraction our enemy did, indeed, manage to slip away. Is Vogg badly hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then leave him to look after himself. You — report to our superiors immediately. I shall get the rest, and we will comb the neighborhood before we accept, as fact, the white-haired man’s escape.”
He turned away, and Benson, walking with a stiff and military gait on his high-lift shoes, went down the street.
Report to our superiors!
He had intended only to get away from his headquarters. But with a glance at the men on this street, he had had a swift change of plan. It had seemed like an excellent time to find out a bit about this foreign, efficient corps on United States soil.
Klammer Importing Co., Fifth Avenue.
That might or might not be the headquarters for this ruthless crew. He could only chance it.
The Klammer office building was old, part apartments and part offices. The Klammer Co. was on the fourth floor, walk-up. Benson opened the door there.
He could not make his face express agitation — or anything else. So he did it by the swift pace of his entrance and his hurried tone to the young lady at a desk near the door.
“I must report at once! Important!”
“To whom?” asked the girl, in the same European tongue.
“To whom do you suppose, stupid?” Benson snapped. “Be quick—”
An inner door opened. A man with a paunch and a square-looking head stepped out.
“Very well, Brocker. Make your report.”
“The man with the white hair,” The Avenger said, making his voice urgent and wishing he could do the same with his moveless face, floridly made up in another man’s image. “He has gotten away from us.”
“Fool!” rasped the paunchy man. “Do you know how serious that is?” He stepped forward. “Where did he go? Did you follow? Have you any idea?”
“We didn’t have the chance to follow. He was too swift.”
The paunchy man paced up and down, hands twisting behind his back.
“Who can say where he has gone, now! Who can tell what harm he can work! We have just gotten the last of our reports on the meddler, Benson. They are most disquieting. You pack of fools!”
“We admit it, sir,” said Benson meekly, timidly. “And now — your orders?”
“Be at ease. Go where you like, you—” he searched for expletives and couldn’t seem to find any strong enough. “You and the others shall pay for this when we get back to the homeland. You know how you will pay.”
Brocker gave the salute of the land whose language he was talking and started for the door. He didn’t appear to do so, but he moved a little more slowly than he might have. Before he had gotten the door open, the paunchy man whirled to the girl.
“The telephone!” he rapped out. “They must be warned up on the coast—”
Benson went out.
“They must be warned up on the coast.” It told him a lot.
The ultimate use for the frosted death had become increasingly obvious, in the last twenty-four hours. It was to be a ghastly war weapon, to be shipped abroad. To the country from which had come these heavy-shouldered, phlegmatic-looking men who worked like a military machine rather than a gang.
Very well, but to be used by that country, it would have to be shipped there first. That meant two things.
The terrible white stuff was being cultivated somewhere in large quantities, and packaged somehow for handling.
It could not be shipped openly. Nor would anyone even try to smuggle it, on a large scale, on regular ships. Too much chance of its being discovered.
What craft could bear it most secretly? An undersea boat. Where would it head in to an obscure port?
“Up the coast,” the paunchy man had said.
Somewhere north of New York a submarine would be stealing in — if it had not anchored already. Almost certainly near there, some kind of hidden plant would be located, turning out the shipment for the sub.
But Benson shelved this valuable thought for the moment. At the time, that day, that Claudette Sangaman had almost been killed, a chemist at the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp. named Mickelson had been absent. He might have been the one to toss the glass capsule at her — though this would have upset considerably, the theories Benson had formulated. Or his absence might be a coincidence meaning nothing — or a lot.
Benson set out to discover what it did mean.
CHAPTER XIV
Death Sentence!
Andrew Mickelson, of the Sangaman-Veshnir laboratory, had had nothing to do with the glass capsule tossed at the feet of Claudette Sangaman. He hadn’t even been in New York at that moment. From an early lunch hour on, Mickelson had traveled, all afternoon and evening, on train, bus, hired car and finally afoot, to get where he was, now.
That place was the forest hide-out of Thomas Sangaman. And Mickelson grinned insolently, menacingly, as he sat on the rustic divan in the pine-wailed living room.
Sangaman hadn’t met Mickelson with a gun. Veshnir, as far as Sangaman knew, was still around. He had only gone out of here a half hour before. He had thought it was Veshnir coming back, when Mickelson knocked.
However, Sangaman didn’t think of it, now, as Mickelson’s tap at the door that he had heard. It was the knock of doom itself. That much had come out in a short time.