The Avenger 17 - Nevlo by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

know.”
    “Is the name Janet Weems familiar to you, Mr. Blake?”
    Blake jumped a little. “Why, yes. She is Burton’s secretary. That is, part of the time she helps him. make out his reports, and the rest of the time she is in the Marville office. She . . . hasn’t been around lately, either.”
    “Nor your former engineer, Nevlo?”
    “Nor Nevlo,” said Blake. And then he began to swear, though he didn’t look like a man who was often profane. “Nevlo, damn him! He’s responsible for the failure of Plant 4. For a long time I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that a man could stop a power plant. But I believe it now. I’m beginning to be convinced that no power on earth can get Plant 4 running again if Nevlo doesn’t want it to.”
    “How could he keep it from working?”
    “I don’t know,” said the unhappy Blake. He spread his hands. “I’m in a bad spot, Mr. Benson. I don’t mind admitting it. I’m president of this corporation, but I’m answerable to the stockholders. And they’re beginning to ride the daylights out of me because Plant 4 doesn’t begin operations. And the directors—” He shrugged helplessly.
    “I can understand how it might take some explaining,” said Benson quietly. “And you have no idea where Burton or Miss Weems can be reached?”
    Blake said nothing. He was staring over the Avenger’s shoulder at something.
    Blake’s desk was placed so that, if he looked a little to the left, he saw a corner window. He was looking there now, rigid, eyes unblinking.
    “You don’t know where Burton and the girl are?” The Avenger repeated.
    Still Blake said nothing. And now his eyes began to take on a glazed look from sheer horror. A sort of croak came from his distorted lips, and he tried to point.
    Mac and Smitty and Benson whirled toward the window.
    “Whoosh! ” exclaimed Mac in a suffocated tone.
    “For—” gasped Smitty.
    Benson said nothing. He jumped for the window.
    Out there, hanging onto no visible support at all, as far as could be seen, was a sort of mad gorilla form. A man, yet with the face of an insane beast, dressed in clothes that were burned and torn till they were little more than rags.
    “Nevlo!” panted Blake.
    The hideous face disappeared. Benson got the window up and looked down.
    Blake’s office was on the second floor. Down below, a crooked, distorted gorilla form was just dropping from the serrated bricks of the wall onto the sidewalk.
    They saw him knock aside several screaming pedestrians and then disappear around the corner of the building. Smitty and Mac raced for the stairs, but they knew they’d not reach the street in time to see the apelike figure.
    “Nevlo—mad!” whispered Blake.
    Benson said nothing. It was not necessary to add words.
    A man discharged, formerly just vindictive. Now a lunatic from a misdirected experiment. A madman loose with a tremendous destructive secret in his crazed brain.
    A madman with power to shake the world!

CHAPTER VII

The Dead Line
    Practically on the threshold of The Avenger’s odd Bleek Street headquarters, a man had died. He had died mumbling about the date April 27th, which had been only a few days away at that time.
    The man had come from Marville, where a power plant had failed, and he was an electrician. It was obvious that he was connected with that plant. Furthermore, it was a probability that he had discovered something about the nature of that failure and had come running to tell Dick Benson about it. Death had stopped him!
    But he had managed to gasp the one statement: “Midnight, April 27th—”
    What would happen then? Almost certainly a thing that had occurred before.
    Another general power failure, perhaps brief, perhaps permanent.
    Of course, all this was deduction, not provable; and the date might have to do with something else. But it was the most reasonable assumption to be made; so The Avenger was acting on it.
    Acting on it in the air.
    Patient checking of the power