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

castle was a steaming, smoking heap of rubble and debris.
    Singer was thrown flat on the ground. A gardener, working near him, was similarly knocked flat by the concussion. He was up first, and he helped his employer to his feet.
    Singer’s first words indicated the caliber of the man. They weren’t about his house or his loss.
    “The servants,” he faltered, face as white as death.
    But the people working in Singer’s home were beyond all hope or care.
    The fire department, screaming up from half a dozen local stations, and the score of policemen, arriving almost simultaneously in squad cars, found that out.
    There had been eighteen servants in the house, from Jasper, the sixty-four-year-old dignified butler, down to Agnes, the newest maid. The only thing they would need, from now on, would be eighteen coffins.
    Police there. Fire department there. And within forty minutes—The Avenger.
    Just a hint of the curious nature of the catastrophe had come out in the first hurried news dispatches on his private teletype. But even the hint was enough to send the man with the dead face and pale, icy eyes to the scene.
    So the explosion had seemed to come from all parts of the house at once! It indicated a multiplicity of bombs—or else something much more odd.
    Benson found that it was the latter.
    He looked for something, anything, whose nature might indicate that it had packed explosives. Finally he found something. But it was not a bomb casing.
    It was a length of copper water pipe. Quite a long length.
    He kept on looking, and he found some more pipes with the same appearance; they were blasted and burst and twisted like flattened ribbon. He also found bits of standard water faucets blown to pieces.
    It was as if someone had filled the entire water system of the mansion with TNT, and then set it off. But you can’t fill the water pipes of a big house with nitro. Or can you?
    The idea that the police are dumb is held by many people. They are wrong. There are sharp brains in the police forces of America. The sharpest, in this case, belonged to a young patrolman scarcely out of the rookie class.
    The young cop knew all about the almost mythical character known as The Avenger, though this was the first time his awed eyes had rested on that paralyzed, deadly face and the pale, infallible gaze. So it was to Benson that he went with his deductions.
    “The explosive,” he said, “was in the water pipes. I’m sure of it, Mr. Benson.”
    Benson looked at the young patrolman, with his earnest, intelligent face, at the length of copper pipe at his feet which he had just been inspecting, at the prowling cops and detectives all around them.
    “How can you be so sure?” Benson asked expressionlessly.
    “The look of the pipes for one thing. But for another—something even more important. Look here, sir.”
    Benson followed him half a dozen steps to where the young cop had heaved aside some beams. There were more of the burst pipes and an electric cable, shredded of insulation but otherwise intact.
    The end of the cable was scraped bare. Marks of the scraping knife were there, bright and recent.
    No bared cable like this had any business in a house.
    “That cable,” said the cop, “must have been wired to the plumbing. Then, at a given time, a spark was switched into the water system, and the thing blew up.”
    Benson had been so sure there was some such arrangement in the wreckage that he hadn’t even taken the time to look for it. But he didn’t tell the rookie that. The youngster had done a good job, even if the genius of The Avenger had beaten him to it by a considerable margin.
    “It looks as if you might be right,” said Benson, pale eyes like ice chips on the cop’s face. “What is your name?”
    “O’Shawn, sir,” said the cop, repressed excitement in his tone. He was going to have something to tell about in the locker room for a long time: a face to face talk with The Avenger himself!
    “Thank you,