The Avenger 11 - River of Ice by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

“several should go. It’s possible the men who tried to kidnap me might have learned the address from something in my other hotel suite. If so, there would be trouble.”
    “ ’Tis just a messenger boy’s job,” persisted the Scot. “Smitty and me will go, Muster Benson—”
    He stopped. The Avenger’s pale eyes were looking at, and seemingly through him, lost in thought. Mac repressed a shiver. Well as he knew Benson, those colorless, dreadful eyes could still make his heart skip a beat when they were turned on him. “The three of us will go,” said Benson quietly. “You and Smitty and I.”
    Nellie looked hard at Benson’s white, dead face. She knew him perhaps a little better than the others. Intuition told her that Benson had sensed something very peculiar and that he was working on it with all the power of his amazing genius, but as yet he had come to no conclusion. That he expected danger was proved by the fact that he also meant to go on what seemed an easy errand. Benson allowed his helpers to take no risks that he himself would not share; and, of course, The Avenger frequently entered danger zones more sinister than he would let his followers face.
    Benson turned to Lini Waller. “Make yourself at home here. Nellie, show her a room. We should be back soon with the suitcase, Miss Waller.”
    “Thank you very much,” said Lini, in her slightly wooden, expressionless tone.

    In the basement of the triple building was Benson’s garage. There were over a dozen cars down here of all kinds and sizes. Among them was a car with truck tires half again as big as ordinary tires. That was because the car, a sedan, was made of something like armor plate and weighed nearly five tons. Benson got into this car. “Lookin’ for trouble?” said Mac. “Perhaps,” said The Avenger. Smitty got in the back with Mac and a door rolled soundlessly up while Benson drove up a ramp and out over the sidewalk onto Bleek Street.
    The address given by Lini Waller was a little north of Bleek Street. The heavy sedan nosed around the corner to the left, went up to Twelfth Street, and turned right. Down the second block loomed something that was a common sight in European cities. The wrecked shell of a building, standing stark and ragged in the night. It looked as if a bomb had gone right down through the center of it and exploded in the cellar. But New York was not being bombed, as yet. It was the work of ordinary wreckers, tearing down an old building to make way for a new one.
    “Ye know,” said Mac pessimistically, “some day this city’ll be done. Then they won’t be forever tearin’ at your eardrums with rivetin’ machines, and shakin’ the gizzard out of you with subway blasts. But we’ll never live to see the day. Yon building, for example. It was good enough as it stood. But no! They have to yank it down and put up a marble and stainless steel prison that misguided apartment dwellers pay too much rent for.”
    “You Scotch raven,” said Smitty, “stop croaking, will you? The new buildings are swell.”
    Benson said nothing. But at the wheel, his pale, infallible eyes seemed to be looking at everything at once. Though still a young man, The Avenger had made a fortune in strange, dangerous places. He had made millions in minerals from Peru, more from engineering feats in Siam and Arabia and Africa. He had lived in antarctic wastes and tropical jungles. He had seen death in more guises than any dozen average adventurers. He could literally smell danger. And he smelled it now!
    “I suppose,” said Smitty to Mac, “you’d rather have the old buildings stand till they tumble down around your ears. I suppose you’re against all progress. The horse and buggy is good enough for you, huh? If everyone figured the same way—”
    “Look out!” yelled MacMurdie. But the car had already swerved to the right under Benson’s deft hand till both Smitty and Mac were almost thrown to the floor. Smitty could see why Mac had