The Avenger 5 - The Frosted Death (3 page)

“It’s a kind of growth!” the doctor said, shocked. “A sort of fungus, I’d say, almost microscopically fine. Though it looks almost like an inert mineral substance.”

“You mean the guy is moldy?” asked the detective, with no intention whatever of being funny.

“Yes. In a way, the stuff is like mold. Only I have never seen anything spread so fast. It reproduces itself, literally, while you watch it.”

The detective shivered, and drew a sheet over the dead face. The eyes were open, and the powdered-sugar substance had reached them by now. The eyeballs looked like snow-covered ice.

“Is it some new kind of disease, or what?” asked the detective.

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied. “I suppose that’s as close as we can name it, right now.”

“Then it isn’t a case for the homicide squad,” the detective said, relieved.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” The doctor absently scratched at his hand. “This may have been caused, not by nature, but some human brain, somehow. I wonder where the fungi originated, and how?”

In the place where the powdery, glittering stuff had originated, the Sangaman-Veshnir laboratory, Veshnir stood near the lab door with his head bent in a strained, listening attitude. He was listening for sounds in the adjoining chamber—Sangaman’s office.

At Veshnir’s feet was a figure already beginning to stiffen a little. It was Targill’s body! The whole top of the chief chemist’s head was knocked in. The weapon that had done it lay next to the corpse. It was the oblong lead case in which was the radium needle.

While Veshnir listened in the direction of Sangaman’s office, he stared at the corpse near his feet. And in his eyes was a horrible fear.

“I had to do it!” he muttered, staring at the body. “The fool would have told the police all about it. It was his fault, not mine. I had to do it!”

But having to commit a murder, and getting away with it, are two different things.

There were on the top floor of the building, and had been ever since ten o’clock that night, only three people. Those three, only souls in the place save for the building watchman and the assistant engineer in the basement, were on record as being present. When you went into the building after hours, no matter who you were, you were required to sign a register in the lobby. Then the watchman ran you up to whatever floor you called.

So it was a matter of inescapable record that only Targill, Veshnir and Sangaman were up there. No one else had come in.

Now Targill was dead! And automatically it became iron-clad fact that only one of the remaining two could be the murderer.

Either Veshnir or Sangaman was going to face the chair.

“But I had to do it,” Veshnir whispered again. “There are millions, scores of millions, in it if it can be kept secret. But there isn’t a cent in it if it gets publicity—as it would have if Targill phoned the cops.”

So Targill had had to die. But now—

There was a sound from Sangaman’s office. A curiously unsteady step, then a thump, and after that the solid thud of a body as Sangaman fell near the door in his curious dizzy spell.

Veshnir drew a great sigh of pure relief.

“It’s all right, now,” he said aloud. “Everything’s all right now.”

Sangaman slowly swam back to consciousness. His senses cleared so that he began to be aware of things around him. But one of the first things of which he was aware was a queer feeling—more of a hunch than anything else—that he had been
half
conscious for quite a few minutes. He had faint recollections of moving around, of having something in his hand. Some metal. It was as if his conscious brain had been cut off, but his body seemed to have been able to roam around and do—Heaven knew what.

He looked around. He was in the laboratory. He remembered he had started to come out here when the odd seizure downed him. He had intended to confront Veshnir—

Veshnir was here, standing right in front of him—and looking down at him with an accusing expression that was most perplexing.

“Why,” asked Veshnir, voice incredulous, “did you do it?”

“Do what?” said Sangaman. It seemed to him that his voice came from a distance.

“Kill him?”

“Kill
who?”
said Sangaman, blinking.

He tried to get to his knees, but he couldn’t make it, yet. He sat there, body swaying. He must have been working too hard over those books.

“You know who! I got to the hall door just in time to see you strike him down.”

Sangaman discovered that one reason why he wasn’t able to get up was that there was something in his right hand that slid along the floor when he tried to brace himself. He looked down stupidly at it. It was the lead case containing the radium needle. There was blood on the sharp corner of the heavy little casket.

Then Sangaman looked farther—and gasped. There was a hand and arm trailing along the floor like dead seaweed. The arm was in a white laboratory coat sleeve. He looked on past the shoulder.

“Targill!”

“Yes. Dead!” said Veshnir. “You mean, to say you didn’t remember? A thing like
that?”

Veshnir repeated his story.

“I was at the laboratory washroom, just off the hall. I came back, opened the door and saw you facing Targill. You had your right hand raised. The lead case was in it. I opened the door just as you brought it down on his head. Then you seemed to faint or something.”

“I killed Targill? You’re mad!”

“You must remember some of it,” Veshnir said.

Sangaman’s face screwed up in the most intensive thinking of his life. The devil of it was that he
did
remember a little. A very little. Enough to be sure that he had moved around some during his lapse of memory and voluntary action—though he couldn’t recall what he had done.

Sweat began to break out on his forehead. Gone forever was the thought of finances and books that had brought him in here. There was only room for the one terrible thing.

“I didn’t hit him, Veshnir!” he pleaded. “I swear it! I’d know if I—”

“Of course that would be your story,” nodded Veshnir. “And I’ll stand by you through thick and thin. I’ll swear, too, that you were nowhere near the laboratory when Targill died. However—”

Sangaman hung on his words, his look.

“Well? Well?” he croaked.

“There isn’t, really, much chance to lie out of it. There are only the two of us here—with a dead man. And your prints are on that lead case, along with his blood.”

“Veshnir, on the memory of your mother, as you hope for deliverance when you die—did I do what you said you saw me do?”

“I’m sorry,” said Veshnir, with infinite pity on his benevolent countenance, “you did. I think I begin to see why. You’d worked too hard over those books. You got up and came into the laboratory to see me. You saw Targill instead. You have always hated him—said he was ruthless and shifty. Now, you were in a sort of coma. You felt the lead case under your hand, and not knowing in the least what you were doing, you killed him with it. Then you fainted, coming to about five minutes later.”

Sangaman shuddered. If only one small thing hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t believe this impossible thing for a second. But the one thing shook him. That was the fact that he had come to with the definite impression on his mind that he had been moving around, subconsciously, a short time
before
that.

“I don’t care! I won’t believe it!”

“I’m afraid the police will believe it,” Veshnir said. “See the facts. Only the three of us are here. One of us must have murdered Targill. But it is well known that he and I worked together, were on fine terms, and that his death brings to a premature close an important piece of laboratory work. It is equally well known, on the other hand, that you disliked him very much and would have fired him if I hadn’t intervened.”

Sangaman moaned and rubbed his splitting head.

“I still won’t believe I really did such a thing, conscious or unconscious! But—what shall I do?”

Veshnir shook his head.

“I don’t know. I will support any statement you choose to make, as I said. But I’m afraid—no statement will do any good.”

“Veshnir—
you
were in here alone with Targill.”

“Naturally,” Veshnir said quietly, “you would think of that. Everyone will. But not for long. As I pointed out, I was working with him on a very important experiment. There might have been millions in it. His death is a great loss to me—but not to you.”

Sangaman was on his feet, now, swaying. He felt the lead case in his hand and dropped it as if it had burned his fingers.

“What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”

Veshnir was looking very thoughtful.

“I’m afraid you haven’t a chance if you get picked up, now. But later, after we’ve gotten together the best battery of legal talent procurable, you may. Or perhaps we can get together some prominent psychiatrists who could prove you did it in a temporary fit of insanity.”

“So?” said Sangaman pleadingly. He was stunned, dazed, unable to think.

“If you’re caught now, everything is lost. If we have time, there may be hope. It’s everything to gain and nothing to lose. I’d advise you to hide somewhere for a while.”

“Where in the world could I hide? The call will be out for me the minute this is found out. I couldn’t go home—or anywhere else.”

“I don’t know where—” Veshnir began. Then he stopped abruptly. “But, yes! I do know. Last fall I picked up a new summer place in Maine. North of Bangor. It’s a rough place—for shooting and camping. There’s a log cabin, nearly a thousand acres of woods, not a soul on it. It isn’t even known that it’s in my name. I bought it secretly. You can go there.”

Sangaman was in a fog. It was impossible that he had done murder, even in a moment of mental disorder. But—there the body was! And the whole police force would be sure he was the killer, and would pin it on him in an hour’s investigation.

Brokenly he accepted Veshnir’s proposition.

“Wipe my prints off that case,” he said, at the door.

“Of course!” Veshnir said.

But as the door closed, he did not wipe the case. He placed it a little closer to the dead chemist’s head, handling it with a handkerchief around his fingers to keep his own prints off.