The Avenger 5 - The Frosted Death Read Online Free PDF

stuff’s a kind of mold. It grows like lightning. The spores are dust-fine; they hang in the air for minutes before settling to the ground. They seem to be a kind of bridge between the animal and the mineral kingdoms.”
    “Artificially cultivated, Mac?”
    “Yes! I’m sure of it.”
    “Go on!”
    “It doesn’t act like other molds. It doesn’t fasten on jellies or decayed substances. It attacks only one thing. That is, meat. And only fresh meat, too. When disintegration has set in, it refuses to germinate on it. Oh, ’tis a very snooty kind of stuff, this mold.”
    “Any more?”
    “On meat, it reproduces fastest, like I said. It has hair-fine feelers. No—finer than any hair. Ye have to use the big microscope to see them. The feelers go down into any tiny irregularities—”
    “On a human body, then,” Benson cut in, “I suppose the pores and hair follicles would be attacked?”
    “That’s right, Muster Benson. If the stuff got on a person’s body, it would kill him in a hurry. It would clog all the pores, which is enough for death. But more, it would of course sift into the lungs and coat them, too. So ye’d have a phenomenon like pneumonia, only faster than any pneumonia could ever worrrk.”
    “One more thing, Mac. I have my own opinion on this point, but I want yours, too. Is the stuff deadly to the public at large, do you think?”
    “Muster Benson,” said Mac urgently, “it’s the deadliest thing I’ve ever had the bad fortune to look at! I’m sure it’s contagious. I’d say that any mon gettin’ some of it on him—even a bit as small as a pinhead, would die. He’d die fast or slow, dependin’ how little of it stuck. ’Twould take a longer time to cover him. But—die he would!”
    “Then?”
    Mac said the thing that had burned in his bitter blue eyes since first examining the snowlike substance:
    “If any of this mold gets out, Muster Benson, we may have an epidemic that would make the Black Plague, in the Middle Ages, look silly. Because, d’ye see, some people escaped from that. And from this—no escape. One touch is death!”
    Mac chewed his lip, then asked the question he scarcely dared put into words.
    “Has . . . has anybody been exposed to this?”
    “Yes, Mac, several have,” Benson said quietly. “And I’m afraid we’ll be hearing from them soon.”

    Into headquarters marched the doctor who had been called by John Braun just before he sank into the coma of death. The doctor’s face and lips were the color of ashes, but he was calm. It was, however, the calm of a brave man past all hope.
    He went to the commissioner’s office.
    The commissioner normally wouldn’t have been up for three hours yet, for it was half past four in the morning. But he had come down in a hurry at the report of the “snow man.” There are some things you can feel are terrible, even if they seem meaningless and fantastic at first. This was one of them. It called the commissioner to his duty.
    “You attended Braun?” he repeated, to the ashen-faced physician. “I see. I meant to get in touch with you first thing in the morning. You have something to say to us?”
    “I have,” said the doctor. His voice was like his face—perfectly composed, drained of all emotion. Even of terror. “Rather, I have something to show you.”
    He took overcoat and suitcoat off. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it hang from his belt. Under that was a white undershirt, of the athletic type. But the commissioner, half rising from his chair in horror, didn’t look at the athletic shirt. He stared at the doctor’s arm.
    The arm, from wrist to shoulder, seemed to have been turned to snow.
    “Good heavens!” whispered the commissioner. “You, too—”
    “I touched Braun, of course, in the pursuance of my examination,” the doctor said steadily. “I washed in the usual strong disinfectants. It seems they weren’t strong enough. I have what Braun died of.”
    “You’ve seen other doctors? There is