Free The Avenger 11 - River of Ice by Kenneth Robeson

cracking ice. And when Benson finally pushed against it, a large section fell to the floor in bits, revealing the next room. They stepped into it, holding aside quarters of hung beef as they might have brushed aside jungle undergrowth to make a path. The door of this room had an inside handle, for the very precaution of keeping someone from being accidentally trapped. Smitty pushed up the lock-lever, and they jumped out into the narrow corridor.
    There were men out there, six of them. They were clustered around the next door, the one with no inner handle, the one that had been shut to trap Benson and Mac and Smitty. They were watching that door as terriers watch a rat hole, to be sure the three inside didn’t pull a fast one and escape.
    When the three intended victims suddenly came out of the next door, the six men gaped at them in a bewilderment that would have been funny if it hadn’t been instantly succeeded by such furious deadliness. The six leaped toward the three!
    These men were in the whites worn by the workers around here. But the whites were too clean. They weren’t spotted with the labor of handling sides of meat. And the faces of the six were not the faces of honest workers. Corny, mob leader, would have known those faces; the manager of the warehouse would not.
    “Come and get it!” rumbled Smitty. This was something the giant liked—a good, open fight. Much better than a furtive door-closing which was supposed to lock them in a death chamber of dry-ice fumes. Two of the men jumped at Smitty, one from each side. The giant struck twice! He got one of the charging men with a blow to the side of the head that must certainly have dislocated his neck. Perhaps it broke it: the man fell, singularly still.
    The second man was fortunate. He managed to duck a bit so that Smitty’s hamlike left hand only glanced from the top of his head. He received just a little blow. Only enough to whirl him around twice, slam him against the side of the narrow corridor and leave him shaking as he clawed at the smooth wall for support.
    Mac had a man who was becoming very sorry he had attacked. The Scot was working the fellow over with fists that were like bone mallets at the end of his stringy but amazingly strong arms. Mac was having fun where it showed the most—on the man’s face. MacMurdie had suffered from crime as much as Benson himself. So he was having a good time now—first smashing a nose flat, then splitting a mouth into a bloody ruin, then blackening an eye.
    Benson had already accounted for one man and was turning to another. The Avenger’s fist flicked out with the delicate skill of a surgeon’s scalpel and struck a jaw just hard enough to send the owner into sleep for a half-hour.
    The sixth man, discreetly hanging around just outside the range of ruinous fists, drew a revolver. “Gun ’em down!” he yelled. “The hell with the noise. They’re gettin’ away!”
    Benson was way ahead of the man. He had been expecting some such move, even sooner than this. His right hand drove into his coat pocket. Through the fabric of the pocket thrust a needle point. But this needle was hollow, like the needle of a hypodermic syringe. From it came a tiny stream of greenish liquid. The thin stream instantly expanded into a thick one, and kept on expanding into a black and nauseous cloud. Before the man could fire, or the others fumble for their guns, half the corridor was enveloped in a thick, dense pall. You couldn’t see your hand before your eyes.
    Mac and Smitty said nothing. There was no need to call orders. They went for the staircase, getting to it so close together that their bodies touched. Six steps down and they were out of the black pall vaporized from MacMurdie’s chemical discovery which had been shot out through the hypolike needle.
    Leisurely the three walked down the stairs and out of the building.

CHAPTER IX

Four Into Three
    Benson moved fast when he was out of the building. “Mac,” he snapped,