The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers Read Online Free Page A

man’s eyes were any more intent than those of Xisco, once Veck’s laboratory helper and now eager to avenge the scientist’s death.
    “Has he said anything yet?” Benson asked the chief.
    “No. He hasn’t really regained consciousness. He is delirious and very weak. He has rambled a little—”
    “Water,” moaned the man in bed. “Water . . . that’s the stuff—”
    “Does he want a drink of water, or what?” whispered the chief. Evidently the death of his man was cutting him all up. There was the look of a father in his stern eyes.
    “But no . . . water could—” mumbled the dying man. “I don’t understand . . . nuts . . . if you can take time . . . this slug I picked up—”
    “I told you he went there with a bullet for a ballistics test,” whispered the chief to Benson. “But the other words—about water—they can’t have any meaning. Unless he means that he’s thirsty.”
    The man moistened his lips.
    “I . . . but, water . . . no . . . look out!”
    “Pass that pitcher,” said the chief, nodding to water on a night table. “If he’s thirsty he can have a drink. He won’t have many more.”
    The man happening to be nearest the water was Xisco. He passed the pitcher. The police chief poured a glass and held it toward the dying man’s lips—
    “No!”
    The voice of The Avenger positively crackled with the monosyllable. In his colorless eyes was a pale fire of comprehension. His hand went out. He slapped the glass from the man’s lips before a drop could get to them!
    The glass crashed against the wall near the lieutenant of detectives, who had been watching proceedings with a cigar clamped grimly between his lips.
    They never heard the crash of the glass. It was drowned in a roaring explosion that took out that wall, brought down most of the plaster on the ceiling and stunned the lot of them!
    The police chief’s hand was still shaped to the glass The Avenger had dashed from his fingers. His coat had been shredded, but he was all right.
    “What—” he began, dazed. Then he bellowed, “Grab that pitcher!”
    The man on the bed, far past realization of even such events as the explosion, suddenly writhed and was still. He was dead.
    “Somebody was going to make sure he wouldn’t talk by poisoning him right in front of our eyes!” the chief barked. “Hold the pitcher. And that man who passed it. He must have put something in it. Hold him, too.”
    The men stared at each other, bewildered. Then the chief grated,
    “The man who passed the pitcher. Where is he?”
    Xisco, the little man with the big ears, had vanished.
    “Search the building. Get him!”
    But Xisco was not to be found. He had sneaked out with marvelous rapidity during the after effects of the explosion.
    The chief turned grimly to The Avenger.
    “Sorry. You and your two friends will have to be held till we’ve analyzed the water in the pitcher. You and the others were the only men here not on the regular force.”
    Benson’s paralyzed, death mask of a face was as unmoved as the still white face of the moon. Swift death had struck here. And an explosion where it would seem impossible for an explosion to occur. But his countenance was as expressionless as carved chalk. The rest stared at him in awe.
    “Of course you must hold us,” Benson nodded, voice quiet but strangely vibrant with power. “I’d like to ask a favor, however. I am fairly familiar with routine laboratory tests myself.” Mac snorted. Benson was probably the world’s greatest chemist. “I would like to watch while the water is analyzed.”
    The police chief chewed his lip and finally nodded. The man with the colorless eyes could be watched so that he’d have no chance of tampering with the work.
    They went to the biggest industrial laboratory in the city, since the police lab was now in ruins. Every test known to science was given the water from the pitcher.
    And all came out negative!
    There was no trace of any kind of poison in the water.