The Avenger 17 - Nevlo Read Online Free PDF Page A

get there, what do I say?”
    Burton hesitated a long time. What he had in mind was too appalling to tell even Janet. He shrank from doing so. He had an unreasonable feeling that just the knowledge, in her brain, would be dangerous to her.
    Finally he reached into his pocket and drew out a small envelope. From the envelope he took two slim lengths of steel, pointed at the ends like needles. At the blunt end of each needle he had taped a very fine strand of copper wire.
    They looked like needles with roots on them.
    From another pocket he took a diagram. The diagram was simple. It represented one of the needles—whether big or little could not be told since there was nothing else in the drawing for comparison of size—standing upright on a wavy line. The needle’s “root” went down under this wavy line, and from the needle’s tip went up a flock of other lines, straight lines, none of which quite touched the point.
    He folded the diagram so that it would be encompassed in the envelope and slid the needles back in also.
    “Give him this,” he said, sealing the envelope.
    “Bill—what do they mean?”
    Burton said nothing.
    “Darling, what did you find out at the plant? It must have been just in the last day or two. Before that time you were worried, but that was all. Since then you have been more than worried. You have been afraid—terribly afraid!”
    Burton only shook his head. He had a firm chin, anyhow. It was stubborn as granite now. And his lips were a thin straight line in his face.
    “You won’t tell me?”
    “No, honey, I won’t,” he said. “Time for us to get going. I’ll go out first. You follow in a few minutes. One of us must get through to Benson. You understand? One of us must get through!”
    “Oh, Bill!”
    Janet’s arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him. Then he went out, shoulders back, like a soldier going over the top to a war adventure from which he knew he would never return.
    Janet had taken a room in a small, side-street hotel, where Bill had met her. He went out the door with his head down and hurried up the block and around the corner. His car was parked there.
    For a full minute he stood in a doorway near the corner and looked around. He was trying to see if anyone was lurking near his machine. He had to wait till several people on the walk went on their way, to be sure they were the innocent pedestrians they seemed to be.
    Because of the delay, Janet saw the thing that ensued just a little later.

    She gave Burton four minutes, then left the room herself.
    In her effort to keep her movements secret, she did not formally check out of the hotel. She left money to cover her bill on the dresser, with a note. In the small lobby, she walked past the desk with only a nod to the clerk, as if she were merely going out for dinner somewhere.
    She, too, went out of the entrance as unobtrusively as possible, and her way lay up the block, in the wake of Burton’s steps, toward a taxi stand in the next square.
    She reached the corner, glanced down, and saw Burton’s car. She could see the back of his head, through the rear window of the coupé, as he settled behind the wheel.
    Her heart was in that look. Dear Bill, so afraid of something. And it was so unlike him to be afraid of anything—
    She heard a scream rip out in the rumble of traffic sounds, then another, and another. But after the first high, awful cry, the screams sounded only in her own ears. And they sounded so because they were her own.
    No one else heard them because a roar of noise drowned every other sound on the street.
    She had seen Bill’s body move a little, as if he had put his foot on the starter. Then there had been blue flame a full story high, blossoming from the car! And, after that, no more car.
    Where the car had been, was a solid, mushrooming pall of black smoke!
    The roar of the explosion boomed down the canyon of the street. There was a clang as the hood of the car fell half a block away.
    Then