The Avenger 12 - The Flame Breathers by Kenneth Robeson

Through the knot of his tie, where something like a tiny jewel could be seen, came a thread-like squirt of liquid.
    It didn’t stay thread-like. It became a stream of almost solid looking black as big as the jet of a fire hose. Then it became a dense small cloud which spread from wall to wall of the garage almost before the eye could follow its expansion.
    The black ball probably saved Smitty’s reckless life, for no man can rush a machine gun and not get riddled.
    Smitty couldn’t find the man any more. But that was not necessary. He was at the front of the coupé, with the gunner lurking between the back of the car and the wall. So Smitty put his vast hands on the front of the radiator and pushed!
    There was a shriek from behind the car as a man was pinched like a bug between rear bumper and plank wall. The shooting stopped abruptly, and so did the shrieking. Then Smitty fumbled to the place in the back where The Avenger had burned a hole.
    The other two were there. They identified each other in the blackness by an arm pressure they had worked out for such cases, and they slid through to the outside air.
    “We’ll come back . . .” Smitty began ominously.
    But the words had hardly left his lips when there was a soft roar from behind them and a sheet of pale, intense flame enveloped the place.
    The garage had been set afire!
    They heard the girl scream; heard the shouts of the men, fading toward the front of the building. Then all they heard was the crackle of flames.
    It was incredible, the heat of that fire. It made a furnace of the garage building in three minutes. By the time the wail of approaching fire engines sounded, it was obvious that the buildings on each side of the plank structure were going to go up in smoke, too.
    No one would ever investigate that garage or anything in it.
    The Avenger and his two aides slipped off into the night, with Smitty rubbing an egg on his head and still muttering because he hadn’t gotten his hands on the man who slugged him.

CHAPTER VII

The Fourth Pole
    The curious headquarters of The Avenger, on Bleek Street, did not often see the white-faced man and all his aides there, together. Usually one or more was out; there was a lot of work to be done by a little band like this who devoted their lives to crime fighting.
    They were all there now the day after the burning of the garage.
    Nellie Gray sat on a leather divan near the rear corner window, with sun highlighting her gold hair through slats over the casement that looked like the slats of a Venetian blind. They were not what they seemed, however. The slats were special alloy steel, set into the masonry at a 45° angle so that light could come through but bullets could not.
    Nellie, barely five feet tall, with soft blue eyes, was the most diminutive, feminine looking young woman you’d ever want to see.
    But large men had been known to fall on their surprised faces when they tried to lay hands on her, for Nellie Gray could surpass the skill of most men, with her hands as well as with a gun.
    Near Nellie sat Rosabel, the pretty Negress who was Josh Newton’s wife. She stared at her sleepy-looking husband with fond eyes.
    Josh, Mac and Smitty stared at their chief, and wondered what lay behind the pale, death mask of a face in which were eyes as expressionless and glittering as chips of stainless steel.
    The Avenger was waiting for a report. The report, if it came, was to be about a fourth gentleman from Poland.
    Wencilau, tragically dead in Paris; Shewski in Berlin; Veck in Montreal. And in each case were similarities that simply could not be coincidence.
    Investigating authorities had found each time that the dead man had lived in fear of immediate death. They had found that each man was a scientist of some sort. They had discovered, of course, that each was Polish.
    Three men, of the same profession and nationality, hiding in far places! The first thing The Avenger had done, of course, was to try to link the three