The Avenger 22 - The Black Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

lithe, broad-shouldered visitor didn’t look like one who was subject to fits. He looked very healthy indeed.

CHAPTER IV

Not So Crazy
    The young man sat in a deep leather easy-chair. He lounged there in an indolent way, looking languid and harmless and self-possessed. The Avenger’s diamond stare had never left his face.
    “You say you are subject to fits,” Benson repeated. “Just what is the nature of these fits?”
    “You saw one of them,” the young man shrugged. “I’m all right. Then— zing! All of a sudden, I’m not all right. I go off the handle. I light into the nearest person.”
    “How long have you suffered from them?”
    “Oh, for years,” murmured the young man politely. He was unusually polite, streamlined.
    The Avenger seemed to dismiss the subject of fits. He said: “You came here to see us, I believe. What did you want to see us about?”
    “About Austin Gailord,” said the man.
    Josh and Rosabel, Cole Wilson and Nellie tensed at that. But Benson didn’t change expression. He never did.
    “You knew Gailord?”
    “Very well,” the young man nodded.
    “You know what has happened to him?”
    The young fellow looked less streamlined for a moment. In fact, he looked rather sick. “Yes, I know.”
    “Who are you, anyhow?” Cole Wilson burst out. Cole was the impulsive member of Justice, Inc. Sometimes, he got into trouble from his impulsiveness. The rest scowled at him for interrupting the chief’s questioning, but Benson himself paid no attention.
    “My name is Schuyler Marcy,” said their visitor to Cole. Then he turned his light-brown, pleasant eyes back to The Avenger.
    “There is an old Philadelphia family by the name of Marcy, I believe,” said Benson. “Wealthy at one time. Not so wealthy since the depression.”
    “Flat broke, to put it bluntly,” said Schuyler Marcy cheerfully. “Which brings me to Austin Gailord. I was trying to get a job with him. I need a job quite badly. I knew him pretty well. I was to meet him here in New York, but when I did meet him, uptown, he suddenly seemed to go crazy and ran away from me. I followed in a cab. He came to within a block of this little street and paid off his cab. I didn’t get to him before he’d walked beyond the entrance of Bleek Street. Then he broke loose and ran to this building. Here, he got into that car and drove off.”
    “You say he broke loose,” said Benson. “Why were you holding him? Did you want to keep him from coming here?”
    “No,” Schuyler Marcy said, looking very honest about it all. “I simply wanted to take him to a doctor. He was acting so strangely, and he . . . didn’t look well. I thought he’d better see a physician at once.”
    “Didn’t look well? You mean he was already turning—black?”
    “Yes,” said Marcy, looking ill again. “Black, sort of.”
    “This is all you can tell us?”
    “I’m afraid so,” said Marcy.
    “What do you intend to do, now?”
    Marcy hesitated an instant. Then he countered with a question of his own.
    “Are you going to investigate the cause of Gailord’s death?”
    “After the havoc caused by my special car,” said The Avenger, “I could hardly do otherwise. Though the circumstances of his death are so queer that I would do it anyhow.”
    “Then I’d like to stick around and help with the investigation,” said Marcy. “Gailord was my friend. I’d like to help nail whoever was responsible for his dying.”
    “You think it was murder, then,” Benson said evenly.
    Marcy shrugged. “Dead men don’t turn black naturally. Unless,” he added, “this is a sample of some strange, though natural, disease like the old black plague of Europe. But I suppose you wouldn’t know that.”
    Marcy didn’t know, of course, that The Avenger was an outstanding medical authority; that he had written treatises on bubonic and other plagues that were used in most post-graduate courses.
    “It is not the Black Death of Europe,” said Benson. “If you want