The Avenger 17 - Nevlo Read Online Free PDF Page B

band ran such terrible risks at all times that Dick was constantly fearing to pick up a phone and hear just this sort of thing: “So-and-so Hospital calling. There is a Mr. Smith here—” Or MacMurdie or Josh or Rosabel or Nellie—
    But this was not that dreaded occasion.
    “There is a girl here by the name of Janet Weems, as far as we can tell from an engraved pin, who wants to speak to Mr. Benson.”
    “Benson talking,” said The Avenger. “Put her on the wire.”
    “I’m afraid that is impossible, sir,” came the voice. “Miss Weems is very ill. I’m afraid you will have to come here.”
    “What does she want to see me about?”
    There was a hesitation. Then the voice said, “We really don’t know. Miss Weems is delirious. But over and over she calls your name. Dr. Daggit, of our staff, said to phone and ask if you would come; be believes Miss Weems might be helped by your visit.”
    “I’ll be over at once, of course,” said Benson quietly.
    He hung up, and turned to the big cabinet containing a twin to the marvelous television set in Mac’s drugstore.
    “Smitty! Benson calling. Smitty! Smitty—”
    In about six seconds the giant’s voice sounded over his belt radio. This was a two-way set so small that it could be worn unnoticed at the waist in a thin, form-fitting metal case no larger than a cigar case. Smitty was the designer of this, too, and all the little crew wore them.
    “Right, chief,” rumbled the giant.
    “Smitty, meet me at General Hospital, at once.”

    Smitty pulled up at the broad entrance of the hospital a minute after The Avenger got there. They went in and were shown to the office of Dr. Daggit.
    Daggit, a thin, serious-looking man with a surgeon’s hands and a brain doctor’s sardonic eye, shook his head when Miss Weems’s name was mentioned.
    “I hesitated whether to call you or not,” he admitted. “The girl is completely irrational. I doubt very much whether she will have anything coherent to tell you when you do see her. Yet, as you were told over the phone, she is so desperately anxious to talk to you that we thought a visit might help her.”
    “Is there any clue at all to what she wishes to see me about?” asked Benson.
    Daggit shrugged.
    “She keeps talking about an envelope. She never describes it; doesn’t say what’s in it. There is simply, it seems, an envelope.”
    “Was an envelope found in her personal possessions?”
    Daggit stared curiously, and with a little inward shiver, at the appalling, colorless eyes of this man whom he knew not alone as a crime fighter, but also as a brain specialist far superior to himself.
    “She had no personal possessions,” he said. “Not even a handbag. Certainly no envelope.”
    “Let’s have a talk with her,” said Dick.
    They went to a room, Smitty hulking gigantic in The Avenger’s wake, Daggit leading the way.
    “She’s pretty,” said Smitty, looking down at the girl who stared back, vacant-eyed, from the bed. “And she must have had an awful bad knock recently,” he added, looking, at her tapering fingers, which picked aimlessly at a covering sheet.
    “Miss Weems,” said The Avenger, voice compelling, vibrant.
    The vacant, deep-brown eyes turned toward him. His pale eyes stared down.
    “I am Richard Benson. You wanted to see me.”
    Almost, for an instant, there was a glint of reason in the blank, beautiful eyes. But then they wandered again, and the trembling fingers worried the sheet.
    “Needles,” she said.
    Daggit looked at Benson.
    “I don’t know what that means,” he whispered. “But she hasn’t mentioned needles before—”
    “Needles,” came her voice. “Needles with roots. In the envelope.”
    “What about the needles?” Dick said, his voice hypnotic. But there is no hypnosis of a person without a will of his own.
    “In the envelope. A diagram. Needles with roots. Have to get through to Benson. Must see Benson. What will I tell him, Bill?” She screamed. “It exploded! It