Read Online The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online

flashed out and knocked the tablet from his fingers.
    Sodolow exclaimed at the suddenness of it, then shrugged and smiled bitterly.
    “Of course. It may be the death of me, Mr. Benson. But I have taken three of those tablets already today, with no ill effects. And, after all, a man must swallow food and wine or water. That is my vulnerability to the fiends—”
    He stopped. Benson said,
    “It is a very great thing you have discovered, isn’t it?”
    “So great,” said Sodolow, in a hushed tone, “that I dare not tell even you. Though it sounds as if you have guessed a little—”
    “You brought it to this country some time ago?” said Benson. “And then you left the country hurriedly?”
    “That’s right. Veck and Shewski and Wencilau and I. A tremendous discovery. We brought it to America for financial backing. Poland is poor and the United States has great wealth. But we intended to use our brain child to benefit mankind. And, instead, we found that mankind was to be exploited. Shewski and Veck and Wencilau have died, though they hid at the ends of the earth. So I came back to see the cold-blooded fiend who ordained their deaths and plead with him—”
    Sodolow stopped. His mouth suddenly twisted with pain.
    “To plead with him—” he repeated, almost stupidly, as if not knowing that he was speaking aloud.
    He screamed.
    Smitty felt like putting his hands over his ears to shut out the sound. It was the shriek of a man who suddenly discovers that, beyond all hope, he is doomed! It was the cry of a man already dead, and terribly aware of it.
    “Smitty! The pump!” Benson snapped.
    Sodolow had taken nothing into his mouth since the two had been there. Hence, unless the poison had been swallowed previously and was just beginning to work, he could not have been poisoned.
    Yet he was acting like a man who had been.
    He doubled in the middle, and fell to the floor where he writhed in agony! Foam flecked his lips. His teeth were so ground together that even The Avenger’s iron fingers were put to task to get them apart so the pump could be used.
    Benson drained the stomach contents and put them into one of two vials he took from his pocket. The vial was tightly stoppered, was absolutely airtight.
    Not half a minute had elasped between the time when Sodolow fell to the floor and the time when his stomach was emptied. But even The Avenger’s foresight and swiftness had not been enough in this case.
    Sodolow was dead, struck down as if by lightning!
    “Good heavens,” breathed Smitty.
    Benson looked down at the dead man, the fourth to go in so short a time. His paralyzed, emotionless face was like a mask. His eyes were like polar ice. Yet Smitty knew there was plenty of emotion under the surface.
    The death of this man, whom Benson had come to try to save, was a major defeat. It was all the more of a defeat since Benson had had no time to get real information from him. But the white, still face, of course, showed none of that.
    Benson put the bottle with the stomach contents in his pocket. The other, identical vial, he filled with wine from a bottle on the table. He put this into his pocket, too, and beside it the little tin box of headache tablets. There were two left in the tin.
    “Police?” said Smitty, glancing from the dead man to his chief.
    “We can notify them later,” said Benson. “We had better get away from here as soon as we can—”
    The door smashed open!
    “You had that idea a little late, buddy,” grated a man at the door.
    His scarred, crafty face snarled at them over the sights of a .44. He shot twice at Benson and twice at the giant Smitty.
    Both fell without sound!
    The man took the aspirin tin and the vial from Benson’s pocket, and left.
    Smitty was the first to get up. He rubbed his vast chest. Over his torso, and Benson’s, was a special type of bulletproof vest, recently perfected by The Avenger. Made of interwoven strands of a marvelous substance which Benson called