Free The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death by Kenneth Robeson

caught a ghost of a sound in spite of the dark fellow’s clever camouflage of noise.
    But it wasn’t soon enough. Benson whirled like light, staggered as a gun barrel slapped down on his head, then fell as a second terrific blow descended!
    Mac whirled, too, ducking at the same time as a veteran rough-and-tumble fighter should. He got a glimpse of three men grinning at him without humor, then was slugged by the dark, sleek chap to whom he’d been forced to present his back.
    He went down, too.
    For once, The Avenger, being human after all and not quite a perfect machine, had overlooked something. That was the French windows in the penthouse which led to a terrace. A careful leader could send three men along a ledge to that terrace to enter at the rear, while he and four followers came openly in the front door. He could thus completely surprise even a smart enemy, perhaps to be encountered in the penthouse.
    The sleek dark man had been smart; and Justice, Inc., had been surprised.

    Mac’s first conscious sensation as he struggled back from oblivion was freezing cold from the knees down. And steadily and rather swiftly, the chill was creeping upward.
    He blinked and opened his eyes. It took a few seconds to focus them; but when he really did begin to see, he tried at once to yell and he tried to struggle.
    He couldn’t do either.
    He was gagged so that he could scarcely breathe, let alone yell. Also he was bound at ankles, waist and wrists. But his bonds seemed to give a little, queerly, when he tried to break free.
    The reason for that was soon apparent. Another figure was lashed to his the same way—arms, waist and ankles.
    “Muster Benson,” the Scot tried to say. The result, through the gag, was kind of a croak.
    The Avenger’s eyelids were opening.
    Benson was one of those men who woke from sleep instantly, clearly, in possession of all his powers. Unconsciousness is an artificial sleep. He snapped out of this in almost the same way, and his pale eyes took in the situation.
    It was some situation!
    The two men were bound rigidly together, wedged upright, in the glass-and-chromium shower cabinet in the master bathroom. They were standing in a rising flood. Over their heads, water poured. The shower had been turned on full force—the cold water, mercifully. If the hot had been used, they’d have died slowly and dreadfully.
    They could thank the dark chap for at least this favor, though it was certainly little of a favor because they were going to die slowly and dreadfully anyway.
    The water was up to their waists, now. Some trickled out around the tight-fitting door, but not enough to relieve the flood within the cabinet.
    Mac fought his bonds again, but stopped at a pressure from The Avenger. Benson’s eyes, showing no emotion even in this crisis, went to the spouting nozzle, overhead. The stream would easily fill the plate-glass cabinet from floor to the air vent at the top of the door, far above their heads, in four or five minutes.
    The water was up to their chests, now!
    Mac glared at the place where the handles should have been. The hot water knob was there all right. The cold water knob was gone, leaving only a little metal nub, so that the flood couldn’t have been turned off with anything less than a pipe wrench.
    Mac gave himself up for lost.
    “Downed in my bath,” he thought with grisly humor. “Weel, I’ve always said too many baths were weakenin’.”
    The water was up to his chin, which meant that The Avenger would be keeping his nostrils above it only by standing on tiptoe, for Mac was inches taller than Dick.
    Mac could feel Benson doing something or other with his feet.
    “Ye’ll make a soggy angel, Fergus MacMurdie,” he told himself. It was one of the dour Scot’s crazy traits that when things were at their worst a mad streak of optimism cropped up in his otherwise pessimistic philosophy. “That is—if ye’re slated for heaven. Because the chief’s wigglin’ his feet mighty