Free The Avenger 22 - The Black Death by Kenneth Robeson

egg on his jaw where The Avenger’s fist had struck.
    “The only thing up the tree back there,” Benson said evenly, “is my coat, spread on a fork to look as if I were in it. I got to the next tree, then to one over the gate. As your car came out, I dropped and got on the rear bumper. Fortunately, it is a dark night.”
    “That f-flat—” faltered Nellie.
    “When I fell toward the front of the car I wedged a small capsule in the tread so that it would burst with the first revolution of the wheel. In the capsule was concentrated sulphuric acid.”
    The colorless, icy eyes went to Smitty.
    “Change the tire, Smitty, and drive to Bleek Street,” he said. “I’ll see the three of you there in a little while.”
    “If you’re going to stay around here, you’ll need help,” Cole protested. “Let me—”
    “I’ll see the three of you at Bleek Street soon,” said The Avenger calmly. They knew there was no changing that decision.

    Benson picked up the unconscious driver and faded into the underbrush beside the road. He went to the car in which he and Cole had come to Hannon’s place.
    The man muttered a little and moved. Dick’s fist struck with exactness of force and direction at his jaw again, and the man entered a second sleep. Then Benson took a small case, like an overnight bag, from the back of the car.
    He opened it to disclose what was probably the world’s most complete makeup kit.
    In the top tray were dozens of pairs of shell-thin little optical cups with different-colored pupils. Just under this were myriad little bottles of hair stain. Under that, in the bottom tray, were chemicals to draw and distort flesh, wax fillers, pads, all the aids of disguise. In the lid of the box was a mirror.
    The Avenger propped the chauffeur up in the seat and set the box so the mirror was beside the man’s face. Then he changed coloring, conformation and expression, till his features were unbelievably like those of the gunman. Finally, he selected contact lenses to match the man’s muddy-brown eyes, and slid them over his pale, glacial orbs.
    He got out a hypodermic needle and gave the unconscious man an injection that would keep him sleeping for four or five hours. Then he locked the car from the outside and walked slowly back toward Hannon’s estate.
    As usual, everything The Avenger had recently done had a sound reason behind it. From the pretended brain injury to the present disguise and return into the enemy’s stronghold—all was done according to a pattern.
    When Dick had come to in the tool house, he had regained consciousness completely and instantly, as he did when waking from a sound sleep. Like a jungle animal. And almost the first thing he’d seen, which none of the rest had, was a peephole in one wall. And in the peephole was an eye.
    So they were observed. That was why he had pretended the injury that would make him seem harmless, and hence would make their captors tend to pay little attention to him in future action. For that reason, he had adopted the vacant stare. This also permitted him to listen with all his power of concentration and still not seem to be listening.
    The Avenger’s hearing bordered on the miraculous. He could hear sounds so faint that none of his associates dreamed there were sounds at all.
    And it seemed to him, there in that solid little stone cubicle, that he heard something down below him. Down under the seemingly solid stone floor.
    He never had identified the sound or even been absolutely sure he’d heard it. Indeed, he might have been hearing only the pulse in his ears; after all, those two blows had been bad ones. But he thought he had heard something and wanted to investigate.
    Also, on coming out of the tool house, he had looked at the lightning rods on the Hannon house and observed that they seemed just a little taller than they need be.
    As if, just possibly, they were aerials, not just lightning rods.
    Finally, the men back there had shot at him and Cole in