The Avenger 20 - The Green Killer by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

word they used. It’s well to know ahead of time that you have such enemies. For another thing, they’re going to try to get Heber again. One of them said so. They seem to be dead set on killing Heber.”
    “Why do they want to eliminate us?” asked Nellie petulantly. “What have we done to them?”
    “I don’t think they want us to go to South America,” said Smitty. “They’ve probably guessed that’s what Heber came to ask us to do—go back with him. And the idea doesn’t seem to appeal to them.”
    “It doesn’t seem to appeal to me much, either,” confessed Nellie. “What with poisoned arrows, gangs—white and Indian—thirsting for our blood, and a crazy kind of disease at the end of the journey that makes monkeys out of humans before finally killing them. I think I’ll learn to knit.”
    “I can see you sitting domestically beside a lamp and tatting a sock, or whatever it is they do to socks,” jeered Smitty. “But I guess the chief will be only too glad to have you stay home out of trouble. That way he won’t have to detail two or three of us to keep you from getting into a jam—”
    “Is that so!” flamed Nellie. “Who rescued whom from what, a few minutes ago on that boat?”
    It was pretty hard to find an answer for that. Smitty was still trying, unsuccessfully, when they got to Bleek Street.

CHAPTER VI

The Antitoxin
    All of Justice, Inc., knew of The Avenger’s anxiety to get to Brazil, to the aid of Stahl, in a hurry. Dick had said quietly that Stahl was an old friend. That was enough.
    They all knew that the man with the thick black cap of hair and the pale, infallible eyes would stop at nothing to help a friend.
    But all realized, of course, that it was senseless to start the trip before something had been done about that dread disease, the green killer, that lurked at their destination. Otherwise, they’d just go there and get it themselves, and that would be that. No help to anybody.
    They confidently expected The Avenger to conquer the disease. But they couldn’t even guess at the probable time element. Maybe weeks. Maybe, with luck, only a matter of days.
    Which proved that even Justice, Inc., was unable, sometimes, to comprehend fully the real genius of its leader.
    Because the solution proved only a matter of hours.
    Dick came out of the laboratory shortly after Smitty and Nellie returned to headquarters with their sullen, silent little captive. The Avenger carried with him a small vial which he handled very carefully. In the vial was a pinkish mixture.
    “Ye surely haven’t found the answer so fast?” gasped Mac.
    Benson nodded, face calm. “I found it. That’s a very odd disease, Mac.”
    He stared with glacial, expressionless eyes at Heber, who looked back at him, and at the pinkish vial, with dawning hope in his eyes.
    “It’s a filterable virus,” said Benson. “I had to use almost the full power of the electron microscope to see it. When I did see it, I saw something that I believe no modern eyes have seen before.”
    He stared absently at the little vial.
    “The germ causing this disease is so near the line of nonliving, inanimate matter, so crude and low a form of life, that I believe it to be prehistoric.”
    “Gosh!” said Smitty. “You mean—a prehistoric disease?”
    “Why not?” The Avenger was talking more to himself than to them. He was off in a realm of pure science where few could follow him, with the mundane affairs of an everyday world—even the predicament of his friend Stahl—for the moment disregarded.
    “There have been animals, millions of years ago, such as no man living has ever seen. Plants, too. Prehistoric, we call them. If plants and animals—why not germs, bacteria?”
    “Gosh!” breathed Smitty again. Then he tried to follow a little way into the tremendous vista this opened up. “A prehistoric disease that makes humans into monkeys. At least in body, if not in mind. Why, say—that opens up the whole question of