The Avenger 8 - The Glass Mountain Read Free

mountain that was practically made up of one solid piece of black glass.
    It wasn’t so much for his engineering ability, however, that the three faced the door with pleased smiles. Benson had many other abilities.
    Incalculably wealthy, he had devoted his life to investigating the bizarre and deadly, and to fighting crime. There didn’t seem to be anything criminal here, but there was certainly something very bizarre—and very deadly. It would be advantageous to talk it over with him.
    “When did you get in touch with Benson?” asked Ryan.
    “Late last night,” said Crast. “He’s an old friend of mine. When I phoned him in New York and told him of the strange deaths in Idaho and begged him to advise us, he promised to take a plane at once. So here he is.”
    “We’ll retain him no matter what fee he asks,” said Fyler.
    Crast smiled.
    “Any fee we could afford to pay him would be funny. Benson could buy us and throw us away and not know he had spent any money. He doesn’t work for cash—”
    The door of the conference room opened and the man they had been talking about stepped in.
    Richard Henry Benson was a young man; but his hair was snow-white. Also, his face was dead. Literally dead. The facial muscles were so completely paralyzed that never again would any emotion be expressed on it.
    From the awesome, white, dead face peered eyes that were so pale they were almost totally without color. They looked like stainless-steel chips in his unchanging countenance.
    Looking at Benson, you could understand why the underworld whispered fearfully about him and called him—The Avenger.
    Benson shook hands with Crast and was introduced to Fyler and Ryan, to whom he was only a name.
    After the greeting and some explanations, Crast said:
    “So there you have it. Three men have been electrocuted near the construction camp at about the proposed site of the new Mt. Rainod tunnel.”
    The Avenger’s pale deadly eyes studied Crast’s face.
    “Electrocuted?”
    “Yes, literally. The report we got was that the three were struck by lightning. Yet the same report said that there was no storm at the time, not even any clouds in the sky.”
    The Avenger’s eyes remained fixed like pale diamond drills.
    “It puts us in a jam,” admitted Crast. “We have staked everything on the Mt. Rainod tunnel. It’s a big job. But we won’t even get started if this kind of thing happens again. There’s a silly sort of legend out there—”
    “I know,” nodded Benson, face as still and white as ice. “The legend of the Pawnee Rain God.”
    Later the three partners would learn that, apparently, The Avenger knew everything about everything; but just now they looked surprised.
    “I know you’re busy,” said Crast, clearing his throat. “Yet I ventured to call on you for help—”
    “I’m glad you did,” said Benson. “In the first place, I’m not forgetting the time you saved my life in Australia. In the second, this sounds like precisely the sort of thing that should be investigated at once. So I’ll proceed to investigate it. I have already sent some of my aides out to Idaho to begin looking around.”
    “I certainly hope they find something,” said Ryan fervently. “The morale out there, I understand, is pretty lousy.”

    Lousy was a mild word for the spirit reigning in the construction camp at the glass mountain. In fact, there wasn’t any morale at all, lousy or otherwise.
    The men had set up camp at the flank of Mt. Rainod, and that was all they had done. The gasoline-power generators were ready. The drills were assembled. All was set to start on the tunnel.
    But the men were not starting on anything—unless it was a trip home. It had been all Harry Todd, engineer in charge, could do to keep them from leaving the place.
    Three dead! Struck by lightning out of a clear sky! And nobody could guess how many more might be treated the same way if that mountain continued to be disturbed!
    The old Indian didn’t help