The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers by Kenneth Robeson Page B

when he stepped inside. He could fairly smell danger around. He felt as if eyes were on him as he followed the gray steel figure of The Avenger up the dim stairs to a room on the top floor in the rear. However, stare around as he would, he could see no door open nor any person on stairs or in halls.
    He wondered how Benson was going to get in to see Sodolow. A man hiding in horror is not apt to open up. Not even when the magic name of Benson was given. There were too many chances that the name could be used by someone else.
    The giant got the answer in the next moment.
    Benson took from his pocket a thing like a crochet needle save that its slim length was split into two slivers. Then he knocked on the door.
    “Who is it?” came a voice inside.
    “A friend,” Benson called through the panels. “We must see you on a very important matter.”
    There was a silence. Then the voice said bitterly,
    “I have no friends. Whoever you are—go away.”
    “Won’t you at least look at us and judge for yourself if you’ll receive us?” said Benson.
    The Avenger had noted in advance that there was no peephole arrangement in the door. It was that which had guided his plan.
    There was the sound of the lock being reluctantly opened. Then the door went back about an inch.
    In the crack, Smitty saw a face. But the face was merely a reflection in a hand mirror. Sodolow was taking no chances. He wasn’t showing himself at that door. He stared at the two in the hall with the aid of the mirror, meanwhile, keeping safe himself. And Smitty saw, near the reflected face, the tip of a gun muzzle the Pole held for further protection.
    “I don’t know you, sir,” Solodow snapped. And he shut the door.
    Benson had the slim, slit length of steel in the lock. The Pole turned the key, and there was a clicking sound. But the bolt did not slide into place. It was caught by the steel. The click was caused by the sliding of one half of the slim steel against the other. It perfectly imitated the sound of a thrown bolt and would have fooled anybody.
    Benson opened the supposedly locked door and stepped into a shabby room.
    The man inside screamed and whirled. The Avenger’s hand flashed out and wrested the gun from Sodolow before the frightened man could pull the trigger.
    Sodolow glared at the white, dead face and the pale, deathly eyes.
    “All right,” he said. “You’ve got me helpless. Go ahead and kill me.”
    Benson snapped the cartridges out of the revolver and handed it back.
    “I’ve told you we were friends,” he said quietly.
    Sodolow sneered. He was a chubby man with a face ordinarily cast in cheerful lines. But it was bitter, frightened, cynical now.
    “Fine friends, who force their way into a man’s room!”
    “Only because there was no other way to see you,” Benson said. And such was his tone, and the look in the colorless, glacial eyes, that Sodolow relaxed a little.
    “What do you want with me?” said Sodolow resignedly.
    “We want some information, if you will give it. And we want to help guard against a certain danger that hangs over you. A most peculiar danger.”
    The effect on Sodolow was remarkable. His face paled, then purpled. He raised quivering hands.
    “You know . . . the nature of . . . that danger?” he panted.
    “Poison—that later shows no trace of itself in laboratory tests,” said Benson evenly. “Or—the white flame, coming from a man’s lips and nostrils. Of course I know the nature of the threat.”
    Sodolow drew a deep breath.
    “Who are you, anyway?”
    “The name is Benson. Richard Henry Benson.”
    Into the Polish scientist’s eyes came profound respect.
    “The inventor of the alpha lamp, which produces light without heat!” he breathed. “I am honored, Mr. Benson. I have studied many of your formulas.”
    Sodolow reached for a small tin on a nearby table. There was a well-known brand of headache tablets in the tin. He took one up, started to put in his mouth . . .
    Benson’s hand