The Avenger 5 - The Frosted Death by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

door.
    Some one stealing secretly in here to get something. If that person could be caught—
    Instead of heading for the window and the slim cable still trailing up to the grappling hook on the cornice, he headed for the door. There the two took up their stand, with the giant on one side and The Avenger on the other. Whoever came in here was going to have a surprise.
    It developed, however, that the surprise was, for once, going to be the other way around!
    The door finally opened, a hand slid along the wall past Smitty’s shoulder till it found a switch, and light flared in the laboratory.
    Smitty grabbed the hand, and then yelled: “Watch out, chief!”
    The most capable of men are sometimes caught off-base by an unpredictable event. It was so in this case. Benson had prepared to capture the one or two or three men who were sneaking into the laboratory for some furtive reason. What neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen was that, not just a couple of men, but a young army of them, was coming into the room!
    Smitty held in his vise-like grip the one who had turned on the lights. Benson held another man as helpless as a child. But more came on!
    Men boiled in through the doorway till the lab seemed to be half full of them. At least twenty. And all converged on Smitty and The Avenger.
    They were all about the same type—stocky, heavy-shouldered fellows with fleshy, foreign-looking faces and close-cropped hair.
    The Avenger threw the man he held at the approaching squad and stooped in a lightning-swift movement. His hands jerked from holsters at the calves of his legs two of the world’s most curious weapons.
    One, from the right leg below the knee, was a little .22 revolver that looked like a slim length of pipe with a small bend for the butt. It had a silencer on it. Benson, with bleak fondness, called the deadly little gun Mike.
    The other, from a sheath strapped to his left calf, was a specially designed throwing-knife with a needle point and a razor edge. The handle was a hollow tube, which gave it an arrow flight when it left The Avenger’s grim hand. And this weapon, he called Ike.
    One of the foreign-looking men had an automatic out. Ike flashed forward like a silver bullet from The Avenger’s left hand. The blade deftly sliced the man’s knuckles so that he dropped the gun with a yell.
    Mike, the special little .22, spat out a small slug. The shot could hardly be heard, but the man next to the one who was nursing a dripping hand went down as if he had been slugged. Which, in effect, he had been. The .22 bullet with marvelous accuracy, “creased” him—hit the exact top of his skull so that he was knocked out instead of killed. The Avenger, even in moments of stress, followed his iron-clad resolution not to take life himself.
    But the two out of the running were only two drops in a very large and active bucket. There were nearly a score left. And they were on the two before Mike could do more than spit out one more leaden pea and send a third man to the sidelines.
    There was no more appearance of guns. Evidently the one Benson had silenced had been a hotheaded error. These fellows didn’t want any sound of gunshots to bring people around. Silently but furiously they swarmed at Smitty and The Avenger.
    The giant knocked down two, with two blows that came so fast they seemed like one motion. He got a third by the neck, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him at a fourth. The Avenger, meanwhile was clubbing with Mike.
    The little gun, even as a club, was deadlier than you’d imagine. It was a slim steel length, with silencer and all, of about ten inches. In swift, scientific taps, it cracked down; and with every venomous, deft crack, a man sagged to the floor.
    But two men, even such as these, couldn’t overcome twenty. A concerted rush by the attackers, who were skilled fighters themselves, took the giant off his feet. And Benson swayed and went to his knees, too. A blackjack glanced off Smitty’s