The Avenger 11 - River of Ice Read Online Free PDF Page B

in human advancement, Lini kept calling into the radio. There was panic in her heart. Every time Brent didn’t answer her call at once, she started thinking of all the things that might have happened. Particularly the possible collapse of ice over the cave mouth that could entomb him forever. Then she heared his voice and gasped in relief. It was tiny, thin, intermingled with static; but she could get it all right. “Brent! How are you?”
    “All right, Lini. Didn’t expect to hear from you for a couple of hours.”
    “You’re sure you’re all right?”
    “Yes. But hurry things up, will you? I’ll admit I’m beginning to get awful nervous in here. Hearing things after me and all that sort of thing. And the mastodon moves.”
    “Brent!” exclaimed Lini, with an awful fear clutching her.
    “I’m just kidding,” Brent’s tiny voice came back, in a different tone. A better tone. “Just kidding, Lini.”
    “Well, hang on,” said his sister. “The deal’s gone through, Brent. We’re millionaires. I’ll be starting back any time, leading men to take over the caves.”
    “Great!” came Brent’s far voice. “I—” There was silence.
    Lini called frantically. “Brent! Brent!”
    Then she heard his scream. Like the far wail of a seagull in a night of storm, it sounded over the crackling in the radio. His scream, and the words, “Help! The mast—” That was all! Lini leaped up from in front of the radio with horror filling her heart. Something dreadful had happened to Brent! To have heard him cry for help—and to realize that he was as far from her as if he were on another planet! “I’ve got to do something!” she whimpered. “I’ve got to—”
    The lights in the room went out! She screamed and ran toward the door. Something caught her by the arms. She fell into a blackness more absolute than that of any darkened room!

CHAPTER V

Sign of the Skull
    Lini Waller had been suspicious of everyone. Even of Wittwar and his fellow directors of the Foundation. She hadn’t told even them where she was staying in New York. Her address wasn’t on record anywhere at all. Therefore, it took The Avenger over an hour to locate her hotel, and another twenty minutes to get to it. And by then he was too late. Lini was gone.
    Benson looked around the hotel suite. There was little luggage. The most conspicuous thing in it was a small but excellent radio. The radio was on, indicating that the girl had been kidnaped while she was listening to it. That she had been kidnaped Benson was sure. Something had happened to her even sooner than he had feared. And there was not one clue from which The Avenger could discover where she had been taken. He carefully noted the wave length to which the radio transmitter was set and switched the instrument off.
    To make sure the girl’s absence wasn’t legitimate, if hasty, he phoned each of the Wittwar Foundation directors. Not one of them had heard from Lini since she had left the Kembridge Building an hour and a half ago. Downstairs, he had his worst suspicions confirmed. “Nope,” said the doorman when Benson described Lini, “nobody like that’s come out in the last two hours. Far as that goes, I know the lady by sight. Make it my business to know the hotel guests after they’ve been here a coupla days. She didn’t come out.”
    “Have workmen carried any heavy bundles out of the building?” asked Benson. “Any crates, big boxes or anything like that?”
    “Nope. Wait a minute. Yeah, a coupla guys carried out a roll of carpet. A big roll. That was about three quarters of an hour ago.”
    Benson didn’t have to go to the management to know that there had been no authorization for the removal of a roll of carpet recently. In that bulky roll, Lini Waller had been carried unseen out of the building. Where she was now it would take a wizard to figure out. And The Avenger was not quite that, though enemies as well as friends sometimes thought he was.

    At that moment Lini