“Who is he?”
“Dick Benson,” said Crast.
“Benson?” said Ryan.
“Benson!” exclaimed Fyler.
They looked as if they had had a shot of something soothing and reassuring, too.
There were several reasons for that.
Richard Henry Benson was not primarily an engineer; but as a youth he had done several jobs for the French Railway in North Africa that were more complicated than any jobs the Central Construction Co. would ever do. So he might give highly valuable advice on how to tunnel through a mountain that was practically made up of one solid piece of black glass.
It wasn’t so much for his engineering ability, however, that the three faced the door with pleased smiles. Benson had many other abilities.
Incalculably wealthy, he had devoted his life to investigating the bizarre and deadly, and to fighting crime. There didn’t seem to be anything criminal here, but there was certainly something very bizarre — and very deadly. It would be advantageous to talk it over with him.
“When did you get in touch with Benson?” asked Ryan.
“Late last night,” said Crast. “He’s an old friend of mine. When I phoned him in New York and told him of the strange deaths in Idaho and begged him to advise us, he promised to take a plane at once. So here he is.”
“We’ll retain him no matter what fee he asks,” said Fyler.
Crast smiled.
“Any fee we could afford to pay him would be funny. Benson could buy us and throw us away and not know he had spent any money. He doesn’t work for cash—”
The door of the conference room opened and the man they had been talking about stepped in.
Richard Henry Benson was a young man; but his hair was snow-white. Also, his face was dead. Literally dead. The facial muscles were so completely paralyzed that never again would any emotion be expressed on it.
From the awesome, white, dead face peered eyes that were so pale they were almost totally without color. They looked like stainless-steel chips in his unchanging countenance.
Looking at Benson, you could understand why the underworld whispered fearfully about him and called him — The Avenger.
Benson shook hands with Crast and was introduced to Fyler and Ryan, to whom he was only a name.
After the greeting and some explanations, Crast said:
“So there you have it. Three men have been electrocuted near the construction camp at about the proposed site of the new Mt. Rainod tunnel.”
The Avenger’s pale deadly eyes studied Crast’s face.
“Electrocuted?”
“Yes, literally. The report we got was that the three were struck by lightning. Yet the same report said that there was no storm at the time, not even any clouds in the sky.”
The Avenger’s eyes remained fixed like pale diamond drills.
“It puts us in a jam,” admitted Crast. “We have staked everything on the Mt. Rainod tunnel. It’s a big job. But we won’t even get started if this kind of thing happens again. There’s a silly sort of legend out there—”
“I know,” nodded Benson, face as still and white as ice. “The legend of the Pawnee Rain God.”
Later the three partners would learn that, apparently, The Avenger knew everything about everything; but just now they looked surprised.
“I know you’re busy,” said Crast, clearing his throat. “Yet I ventured to call on you for help—”
“I’m glad you did,” said Benson. “In the first place, I’m not forgetting the time you saved my life in Australia. In the second, this sounds like precisely the sort of thing that should be investigated at once. So I’ll proceed to investigate it. I have already sent some of my aides out to Idaho to begin looking around.”
“I certainly hope they find something,” said Ryan fervently. “The morale out there, I understand, is pretty lousy.”
Lousy was a mild word for the spirit reigning in the construction camp at the glass mountain. In fact, there wasn’t any morale at all, lousy or otherwise.
The men had set up camp at the flank of Mt. Rainod, and that was all they had done. The gasoline-power generators were ready. The drills were assembled. All was set to start on the tunnel.
But the men were not starting on anything — unless it was a trip home. It had been all Harry Todd, engineer in charge, could do to keep them from leaving the place.
Three dead! Struck by lightning out of a clear sky! And nobody could guess how many more might be treated the same way if that mountain continued to be disturbed!
The old Indian didn’t help matters.
He looked to be a hundred years old. And a cowhand from thirty miles south had drifted past and insisted that he was Chief Yellow Moccasins, and in reality two hundred years old. He had a face so wrinkled that it looked like soil erosion. However, he stood and walked as erect as an arrow, and he talked all too glibly.
He was on a small flat rock now, exhorting a group of the loafing workmen.
“Oh, friends,” the old Indian was saying, “heed the warning of the Pawnee Rain God. Thrice has he struck. There will be many, many more if you keep displeasing him.”
One of the men who was not quite so cowed as the rest spoke up.
“What’s displeasing your danged Rain God, anyhow? What have we ever done to him?”
“He is angry because the mountain, which is his soul and home, is to be pierced by your tunnel. It is as if you had driven a shaft to his very heart. He will not allow it. As long as you persist in drilling here, you will be stricken with his lightning bolts.”
“How’s he do it, anyway?” said another man, half skeptical and half fearful.
“The Rain God cloaks himself in mist,” said the old Indian. “Walking thus, invisible to the eyes of men, he strikes with a lightning bolt carried like a spear inside the mist. And, indeed, you all saw the marks of the lightning on the dead men’s bodies and on the soles of their feet.”
The men muttered uneasily. They had seen — all of them.
“The new railroad must go around the glass mountain. Modern civilization has struck against the ancient force of the Rain God. And modern civilization will be powerless. You must leave the mountain alone and go around it.”
The drill foreman, who had been valiantly trying to make the men go to work, shouted:
“We can’t go around. All you men know that. There’d be so many tunnels and trestles that the whole railroad would have to be given up. We have to go through Mt. Rainod. It’s the shortest point. Don’t listen to this old windbag.”
The ancient Indian drew himself up to full height. He was in ordinary overalls and checked shirt; but he looked for a moment like an old chief in full war regalia.
“Chief Yellow Moccasins will not forget that insult. Chief Yellow Moccasins wants only to warn you. For that aid he does not expect blows.”
“Fine lot of help you are!” howled the enraged foreman. “Look, you guys, you’ve got to get on the job!”
The men paid no attention to him. One stared at the old Indian fearfully.
“Say, I heard you were the Rain God himself. I heard he takes on a man’s look when he wants to be with humans — and that you’re him.”
The Indian stared at the man for a long time before replying. He only said, however:
“I am a mere mortal, though very old. The Rain God is a god.”
“The Rain God won’t do half as much to you bums as Crast and Fyler and Ryan will,” bellowed the foreman. “I’m tellin’ you, you better get on the job unless you all want to be fired right away.”
The moment he had said that he realized he had made a mistake. There was probably nothing more the men wanted right now than that very thing — to be fired. They wanted to get away from this region where men were found struck dead by lightning bolts, though no cloud had been in the sky at the time of their deaths.