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

have been.
    Benson leaped away with the girl as if she had weighed only a few ounces. He didn’t stop till there was twenty yards between him and the bit of sidewalk where the capsule had broken.
    “Why—” gasped Claudette. “What do—”
    The Avenger didn’t pay any attention to her. He had a more urgent thing to do, now.

    People were beginning to gather, as people always do when something a little out of the ordinary happens. And this had been out of the ordinary: a man with blazing, colorless eyes and snow-white hair, catching up a girl and running twenty yards with her as if he had suddenly gone crazy.
    Some of the people were pressing ignorantly toward the spot where the capsule had hit. They didn’t see what Benson saw. And even Benson might not have seen it had he not had an inkling of what to look for.
    From the spot on the sidewalk where glass lay in fragments, a kind of gray cloud was rising. It was like a genie rising from a bottle, to solidify later into hideous form. Only this wouldn’t solidify. This would stay that way, faintly shining, a whitish mist, looking innocent and harmless—till flesh and blood were near.
    Then—
    “Back everybody!” The Avenger’s voice was like the crack of a bullwhip. There was such command in it that everyone in earshot stopped in his tracks as if a hand had been laid on his shoulders.
    Then they moved again. People are like that, too. You can’t make them obey a command for any length of time without telling them why. And Benson couldn’t take the precious seconds to try a real explanation.
    “Poison gas—around that doorway!” he called in his whiplash voice.
    That did it. The crowd shrank hastily back from the doorway near which the dreadful, white mist was hovering in air. A few with extra-good eyes saw the mist, and talked volubly about the spectacle to the rest.
    “Smitty!” The Avenger rapped out.
    The giant turned from the light gray cloud.
    “Nearest butcher shop,” Benson snapped. “Get a side of beef—any big chunk of meat. Bring it here instantly!”
    There was a butcher shop on the far corner. The giant raced for it, running as fleetly as a stripling, for all his great size.
    “The . . . frosted death?” whispered Claudette, staring with fearful eyes at the faint, shimmering mist.
    “Yes,” said Benson. “Aimed at you! Fortunately it is still, without wind, at this moment. So the stuff stays where it is. If a breeze were to spring up and scatter it before Smitty gets back—”
    The giant was on his way back, already, with a quarter of beef, running as lightly with it as if it had been a pork chop. He reached the corner and looked at his chief. Few words were needed between The Avenger and his aides!
    Benson nodded toward the gray cloud. Smitty tossed the beef so that it hit at the base of the patch of faintly shining mist.
    The result was as weird as it was horrible.
    The shining, translucent patch suspended in the still air began to funnel down on the meat like water streaming through a faucet. It was as if the microscopic particles composing the misty patch were little particles of steel, and the beef was a powerful magnet.
    In less than half a minute there was no trace of the thin grayish cloud. It was all on the meat.
    The crowd couldn’t understand that at all. Poison gas, this man with the emotionless, dead face and icily flaring eyes, had yelled. And some had seen the “gas” cloud. But gas settling like that on meat? It seemed worse than gas. Now that the danger was over, had they but known it, they all got back to an even safer distance than when it had hung by a thread over their unknowing heads.
    Benson drew a deep breath, as the crisis passed.

    A uniformed patrolman was hurrying toward the crowd. He started to pass Benson, saw the white, still face of The Avenger and his awesome, colorless eyes, and stopped.
    “You, Mr. Benson!” he said respectfully. “What’s wrong, sir? It must be important if you’re