The Avenger 18 - Death in Slow Motion Read Online Free PDF Page B

that, without letting Old Mitch know that he was being given the once-over.
    He wasn’t shivering any more. His color was not good, but at least it was no longer that bean-green shade. And he didn’t move any more slowly than any other man.
    “Lemme go, dang it!” Old Mitch snarled.
    So Smitty let him go. But he looked after the cheap new roadster with hard eyes.
    “I got the license number,” he said. “I’ll phone it in to the police and let them give him a going over. I’ll teach that guy to hit an old, defenseless man!”
    “No!” snapped Old Mitch instantly. “No! I . . . you can’t do that!”
    “Why not?” demanded Smitty curiously.
    “Because . . . you . . . I don’t want you to. I can take care of myself, I tell you. I’ll fight my own battles!”
    “Good for you,” approved Smitty. “But just the same, I’ll give that young fellow something to remember me by.”
    “I won’t let you look him up!” raved Old Mitch, seeming ready to literally froth at the mouth. “If you haul him in, I’ll swear he never touched me! See?”
    “That sounds,” said Smitty quietly, “as if you knew him.”
    “I do,” said Old Mitch.
    His shoulders drooped and showed the full weight, and more, of his years and feebleness.
    “He is my son!” he said, with a volume of unspoken grief in the tone of voice. “I . . . I don’t want to be a burden on him; so he goes his way and I go mine.”
    “Except for once in a while,” said Mac hotly, “when he drops around to get pennies or something from you—and knocks you down!”
    “He is my son,” said the old man wearily. “I would never permit charges to be lodged against him.”
    He turned and went laboriously down the alley, bundle of discarded wood scraps and other bits of junk tightly held under his ragged old arm.

CHAPTER V

Strike Three
    In Akron, Ohio, two rubber factories had been paralyzed by the mysterious business of their workers abruptly turning into slow-motion automatons.
    The factories stayed paralyzed. No workman would enter the crude-rubber department of Wardwear’s plant, or any part at all of the Quill factory. They were afraid they would get the same queer malady that had afflicted the other workmen.
    The fear was justified. That malady was deadly!
    Several dozen of the workmen had already died. Of the rest, a score or more were at death’s door. And the balance were very sick men and getting worse.
    Some kind of anaemia, the doctors said vaguely. And it was an anaemia that grew worse instead of better. It looked as if every man affected, and there had been hundreds, was going to die sooner or later.
    In the two plants, watchmen hired for their almost crazy courage were on guard to keep the vacant shops from being looted. Nothing happened to the watchmen, which would seem to argue that it was safe to go back, now.
    But just the same, no workman could be induced to enter the places and start the machines again. So two plants were out of the running.
    And a third blow, had anyone known it, was in the process of paralyzing another plant.
    This time it was in New York.
    Down near the Hudson River, a light closed truck left a clattering machine shop that specialized in machine tools and dies. The truck had a load of jigs and dies for the Manhattan Rubber Gasket Company.
    This company was small—its plants employed only a hundred and four men all told—but it was highly important. It made only one thing—various rubber gaskets. It was made immensely important by one type of gasket now being turned out in quantity lots.
    This gasket was made from a secret formula and by a secret process for the tubing of ships, notably warships and coast-guard cutters. Just one small part of the labyrinth of machinery in a ship. But it is impossible to overrate the importance of that one part.
    The little plant was working night and day to turn out an order of those gaskets for war use.
    The truck went east on Canal Street, north on one of the avenues,