electricians.
There was sheer genius behind the pale, deadly eyes of The Avenger. He was less a man than a magnificent crime-fighting machine, dedicated to avenging a hideous wrong done him by the underworld years before.
But he was, after all, a human being. And human beings, no matter how efficient, make mistakes now and then.
Before he had started to hypnotize the second man, it was borne in on Benson that he had slipped up here.
The notification came in the form of a growing tumult from down below somewhere. The research room was near the concrete and steel stairway; and, in a moment, Stockbridge opened the door and said, “Something seems to have happened in the basement. It sounded to me as if someone yelled, ‘He’s dead.’ ”
There certainly was a commotion down there. The Avenger got down the three flights to the basement of the building in a blur of movement. He pushed his way through a crowd.
The man lay near the foot of the stairs. He was dead, all right. But there was more than that to it. A lot more.
The corpse was black.
Like something shriveled to a cinder, the body lay there, with white-faced men all around. A few girls from the upper floors, drawn by the shouts, were being kept from seeing the corpse, by the men.
It was the building engineer.
Beside him lay the thing that had come to be a dreaded symbol of this gruesome form of death—a black orchid!
So none of the four electricians was guilty of altering the light fixture. The building engineer himself had tampered with it and had hidden, in the three-foot air space, the television transmitter that had sent the actions within the room to the master set in the crypt.
Then the brain behind this Black Wings terror had discovered that The Avenger was at the Stockbridge plant questioning men concerning the light fixture. To be sure the engineer would not be questioned and talk, he had been sentenced to death.
But how?
How had the Voice—whoever it might be—learned of this so promptly and acted so swiftly, presumably from a distance?
Benson set about trying to find out.
There was a small cubicle walled off in a corner of the basement. It was the dead man’s office. There was a phone in there. The Avenger got the building switchboard.
The engineer’s name, a notebook told him, was Frank Stanton.
“Did Mr. Stanton just make a call from this phone?” he asked the switchboard operator.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said.
“Have you a record of the call?”
“No, sir. Mr. Stanton just asked for an outside wire. He didn’t have me get his number for him.”
“Give me the city operator.”
The Avenger got the answer he’d been afraid he would get. This was a vast company and many calls a minute cleared out of it. In the past ten minutes eight calls had gone out direct, without the Stockbridge operators getting the numbers.
The Avenger gave instructions for each building switchboard to check and see what employees had asked for a direct wire in that time. Then he turned back to the basement.
Stanton had the inevitable black orchid in his dead hand. But a man can’t simply wave his hand and produce a black orchid in a building basement. Either it has to be given to him, or he has to have it down there in the first place. Benson looked around to see if Stanton had carried it in with him that morning.
It seemed that he had.
In the trash box in a corner, Benson found a florist’s box, an outer and inner paper wrapping and the ribbon that had fastened the inner, green-tissue paper wrapping. He put these in another box, handling them carefully. With them, he put the black orchid.
Then he got his phone report.
Seven of the eight numbers without record by the Stockbridge switchboards had been traced to various employees. That left the eighth number as the one Stanton must have given.
“The number called was Murray Hill 7-9904,” said the operator. “I am locating that number.”
Grimly, The Avenger waited. It was pretty clear what
There was sheer genius behind the pale, deadly eyes of The Avenger. He was less a man than a magnificent crime-fighting machine, dedicated to avenging a hideous wrong done him by the underworld years before.
But he was, after all, a human being. And human beings, no matter how efficient, make mistakes now and then.
Before he had started to hypnotize the second man, it was borne in on Benson that he had slipped up here.
The notification came in the form of a growing tumult from down below somewhere. The research room was near the concrete and steel stairway; and, in a moment, Stockbridge opened the door and said, “Something seems to have happened in the basement. It sounded to me as if someone yelled, ‘He’s dead.’ ”
There certainly was a commotion down there. The Avenger got down the three flights to the basement of the building in a blur of movement. He pushed his way through a crowd.
The man lay near the foot of the stairs. He was dead, all right. But there was more than that to it. A lot more.
The corpse was black.
Like something shriveled to a cinder, the body lay there, with white-faced men all around. A few girls from the upper floors, drawn by the shouts, were being kept from seeing the corpse, by the men.
It was the building engineer.
Beside him lay the thing that had come to be a dreaded symbol of this gruesome form of death—a black orchid!
So none of the four electricians was guilty of altering the light fixture. The building engineer himself had tampered with it and had hidden, in the three-foot air space, the television transmitter that had sent the actions within the room to the master set in the crypt.
Then the brain behind this Black Wings terror had discovered that The Avenger was at the Stockbridge plant questioning men concerning the light fixture. To be sure the engineer would not be questioned and talk, he had been sentenced to death.
But how?
How had the Voice—whoever it might be—learned of this so promptly and acted so swiftly, presumably from a distance?
Benson set about trying to find out.
There was a small cubicle walled off in a corner of the basement. It was the dead man’s office. There was a phone in there. The Avenger got the building switchboard.
The engineer’s name, a notebook told him, was Frank Stanton.
“Did Mr. Stanton just make a call from this phone?” he asked the switchboard operator.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said.
“Have you a record of the call?”
“No, sir. Mr. Stanton just asked for an outside wire. He didn’t have me get his number for him.”
“Give me the city operator.”
The Avenger got the answer he’d been afraid he would get. This was a vast company and many calls a minute cleared out of it. In the past ten minutes eight calls had gone out direct, without the Stockbridge operators getting the numbers.
The Avenger gave instructions for each building switchboard to check and see what employees had asked for a direct wire in that time. Then he turned back to the basement.
Stanton had the inevitable black orchid in his dead hand. But a man can’t simply wave his hand and produce a black orchid in a building basement. Either it has to be given to him, or he has to have it down there in the first place. Benson looked around to see if Stanton had carried it in with him that morning.
It seemed that he had.
In the trash box in a corner, Benson found a florist’s box, an outer and inner paper wrapping and the ribbon that had fastened the inner, green-tissue paper wrapping. He put these in another box, handling them carefully. With them, he put the black orchid.
Then he got his phone report.
Seven of the eight numbers without record by the Stockbridge switchboards had been traced to various employees. That left the eighth number as the one Stanton must have given.
“The number called was Murray Hill 7-9904,” said the operator. “I am locating that number.”
Grimly, The Avenger waited. It was pretty clear what
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