To choose one of the many tunnels to travel along seemed hopeless; but Benson didn’t hesitate more than a few seconds. He stared at the various holes only till he found one going definitely upward. Then he entered that one, with his small but powerful flash, and began a long, steady ascent.
Mt. Rainod was certainly a thing of surprise. No wonder it had a sinister reputation, extending back through the-ages! It was small, as mountains go; but with all these tunnels and age-old shafts piercing its vitals, all sorts of weird things could happen here.
Benson went up and up along the low tunnel. This was one of the artificial ones, painfully hollowed out of the glass mountain by countless savage hands centuries ago. It was quite regular and easy to travel. But even at that, it took him over an hour to get to the end of it.
When he got to the end of the tunnel, he got to the heart of at least one mystery.
The shaft ended in a larger one that was a natural rift in the basalt. And this, in turn, ended in something as unexpected, in this place of nature’s freaks and ancient man’s labor, as would be a night club on top of Mt. Everest.
It ended in an ordinary, modern gate-valve.
The thing was immense with at least a five-foot opening. It was set in tons of concrete, which blocked tightly the space between valve and walls of the rift.
Benson went back to the tunnel he had just left. Beside it, where it entered the bigger rift, was a block of basalt as accurately cut as if by jewelers’ tools. Cut to fit the tunnel mouth and block it from the rift.
The gate-valve was shut, with just a few drops of water oozing under apparently enormous pressure around the edges of the bronze gate. And lying next to it, as if his had been the hand to shut it, lay a man. But the man would not shut, or open, anything any more.
He was dead. And, also, he was familiar.
Benson went swiftly to the body, and knelt down with the flashlight on his face.
The dead man was Crast, from the Chicago office.
Benson was very still. The pale eyes behind the eye-shells glared like ice under a polar moon. Jim Crast, here in this place, though everyone had supposed him to be in Chicago!
Crast had been shot in the back of the head. The gun that had killed him lay beside him. Benson picked it up in hands stained and lined to resemble the hands of the ancient Indian. There were initials on the butt of the revolver.
The initials were T.R. The Avenger knew of only one man, remotely connected with this business, with those initials.
Thomas Ryan.
Benson started to go through Crast’s pockets for a key to his unexpected presence here at Mt. Rainod. Then his hands jerked back, and he got to his feet in one fast, flowing motion.
Steps were sounding down the rift from the big gate-valve. The steps of many men.
Benson stood straight and still beside the corpse, facing in the direction of the sounds. He made no move at all to get away. His flash was off and in his pocket.
Men came into sight down the tunnel. There were eight of them, dressed in working clothes. Benson recognized them. They were of the original crew. Evidently not all had gone to Boise on the work train after they’d quit.
The men stopped short as they saw the erect figure before them — ancient, seamed face, straight body in faded overalls.
“Well, well,” said the man in the lead, “it’s old funny face. How’d he get loose?”
“Maybe it’s—” began another.
“Naw! He’s back there. This is the other one, all right. Hey, Chief Yellow Dogs, time to go back to your basket.”
Benson drew himself straighter still, and folded his arms over his chest.
“Don’t he make a pretty picture?” sneered the man in the lead. “But he makes a prettier one tied up like a furled sail and stuck in the back of the Rain God’s house. Get him and take him back.”
The men’s words were telling Benson many things. So many that he made not one move when the men laid violent hands on him.
He stood perfectly still, as the dignified old savage he was pretending to be probably would have done. Since it was apparent that eight young men could overpower one old one, Chief Yellow Moccasins probably would not have lost his dignity by engaging in useless struggle.
The men tied him even more securely than he had tied the old Indian outside. And then there were more steps. And a figure came into the light that made the men swear and blink in awe.
The figure that wove into the light was apparently the same figure that stood tied by the gate-valve. There was the same seamed and ancient face, the same hawk nose and arrogant posture, the same faded overalls.
“Boy, you’re good,” said one of the men holding Benson, as he stared at the second figure.
The Avenger stared, too, eyes icy behind the disguising eye-shells.
Benson knew that the man he had bound and left outside was not this man. Even if he had not known it was impossible for him to be up and around so soon, he would have known because this man had no gash on the top of his skull where Mike’s small slug had bitten.
So there were, with Benson’s own pretense, three old Indians around the glass mountain where only one was supposed to be.
“I think we ought to knock the old duck off,” said one of the men, glaring at Benson. “This is the second time he has worked out of his ropes.”
“No, not yet,” said the other figure in the faded overalls. “Take him back to his cell again.”
“How about this thing?” said a man, nudging the body of the dead partner, Jim Crast, with a callous toe.
“Leave it here.”
“The gat? There’s initials on the butt.”
“Leave it, too. It will be sealed in here forever next time the valve is opened.”
The men followed the one figure in faded overalls back down the rift, half-shoving and half-herding the other, similar figure; that of Benson.
The Avenger said nothing and attempted nothing. He went where he was prodded, all the long way down a slope similar to the one he had climbed from outside the mountain. He got to the great cave Nellie Gray had seen, in which was the weird image of the Rain God.
There he was dragged to a place behind the statue. A rock slab was rolled back, and he was shoved in. The slab was replaced.
Benson had snapped out his flash when he heard sounds while standing at the gate-valve. The men hadn’t bothered to search him, so he still had the flash. He lit it after some time had elapsed, holding it in his bound hands.
He was in a cell about ten feet square. There were remains of food in here, and, on a sharp projection, a wisp of faded blue denim. The old Indian whom he had creased with Mike had obviously been held in here for some time before escaping — to fall into The Avenger’s impersonal way.
The third figure in faded denim? The twin to Chief Yellow Moccasins?
There was the heart of the riddle.
CHAPTER XVI
Two Nellie Grays
Mac and Josh and Smitty didn’t like men who looked like rats and the new crew hadn’t been around very long when the three got very wise to them.
“There has certainly been a colossal slip-up somewhere,” said Smitty. “These guys are all crooks and killers if ever I saw any.”
Mac nodded somberly.
“They’re certainly not the kind the chief would pick. Nor would any friend of the chief pick them.”
Josh spoke up with some of his dusky philosophy.
“When the lamb finds itself in the wolves’ lair, the lamb should move!”
The other two nodded. They weren’t exactly lambs, but they certainly found themselves in a wolves’ lair at the moment. They walked with death beside them. They sensed that; knew it. Todd had already died. It was quite logical that The Avenger’s aides would be tackled, too. And there were half a hundred of these killers that had come so surprisingly to Mt. Rainod as a workers’ crew.