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

here.”
    “It is,” nodded The Avenger. He put his lips close to the patrolman’s ear, so that the words wouldn’t be overheard by others and start a panic.
    “The frosted death!”
    The cop’s hands clenched convulsively. He knew more than most about the frosted death. He had been a close friend of the homicide detective who had been unfortunate enough to let the back of his hand brush against the body of John Braun.
    “There?” he whispered back. “That stuff?” He pointed to the beef, which was beginning to look as if invisible hands were slowly sifting powdered sugar on it.
    “That’s right. Listen, and follow instructions to the letter. Get more men and rope this area off. Then get kerosene—gallons of it—and pour it over that side of meat. Burn it where it is. Don’t try to take it to the city incinerator or anyplace else. Burn it on the spot!”
    The patrolman’s face was the color of putty.
    “Oh, no!” he said. “Not me! I wouldn’t go that close to it for—”
    “It’s all right as long as you don’t actually touch it,” said Benson. “We’ve found that out about it. When it has once settled on something, it fastens there. It doesn’t float off, even for another victim, by itself. Unless a bit of it is actually placed on your hand, you’ll be all right. Just keep from actually touching it.”
    “I’ll say I will,” exclaimed the cop, sweat glistening on his forehead.
    He blew his whistle for help in keeping the crowd back, and The Avenger and Smitty and Claudette Sangaman moved off. The girl was brave. She was pale, but composed.
    Benson saw a cab driver he knew he could trust. He waved him over and held the cab door open.
    “Go home,” he said to Claudette, “and pack a few things, then come back to my place at Bleek Street. I don’t want you to show your face outdoors for the next few days.”
    “You think there will be more attempts?” faltered the girl.
    “I know there will be.” The Avenger turned to the driver, a stalwart young fellow with a twisted nose who looked like a thug but with whom you could have left a thousand in cash, uncounted, and have known you’d get it all back again.
    “Mike, go into Miss Sangaman’s apartment with her while she packs. If anyone—servant or friend or anyone else—tries to get near her, knock him into the next room.”
    “Yes, Mr. Benson,” said the driver.
    The cab rolled off.
    Smitty and Benson soon found the window from which the glass capsule had been tossed. But it told them nothing. The window opened onto a long-vacant office in an old building next to an apartment house. Prints in the dust had been smudged. There were no fingerprints or clues of any kind.
    Benson called the Sangaman-Veshnir Corp., and got the personnel manager on the phone. He asked if any executive, or anyone connected with the laboratory, was absent at that moment.
    There was, it seemed. A chemist named Mickelson, now elevated to Targill’s place with the latter’s death and formerly Targill’s assistant, hadn’t come in that afternoon from his lunch period. All the rest were there.
    “Complications?” said Smitty, as The Avenger slowly hung up the receiver.
    “I don’t know,” said Benson, eyes icily thoughtful. “A new piece in the puzzle, at least. But we’ll make it fit, before we finish.”

CHAPTER X

Hope—And Defeat
    The curse of the frosted death was spreading, slowly but inexorably.
    It spread slowly because every health and law department in the city was concentrating on checking it and quarantining those even suspected of having been in contact with it.
    It spread inexorably because such a deadly thing couldn’t be quite corked up.
    Here a woman, servant to August Taylor who had touched her master when he called in the early morning for help, died with helpless doctors in attendance. There a man, boarding at the home of the detective who’d touched Braun, and who had been with his friend in death, saw hands and arms turn to snow