The Avenger 20 - The Green Killer (17 page)

The men edged toward the rock door. The natives made no effort to stop them; they stared at Nellie.

“This girl, you must not kill,” Nellie said, shoving Marge to the foreground. “Oh, dear, what’s the word for ‘niece’?” She went on again. “This girl is of the family of the white man you hold prisoner. Your leader went to a far country to bring her back alive. He will be very angry if you kill her now.”

It stopped the headman for a moment, and that at least was all to the good. It was another moment of life for the trapped four.

The old man took it up with the two squat ape forms nearest him. Finally, he motioned for Marge to step toward them, away from Smitty and Nellie and Mac.

Marge got it then, and hung back.

“Oh, no!” she said, frightened but game. “I won’t get out of here on your necks, I’ll take what you do.”

“Don’t be a dope,” said Nellie out of the side of her mouth. “It won’t do us any good to have you in the pool with us. Look! Heber’s gang’s getting away.”

The last of the men was just slipping unobtrusively through the rock doorway. Nellie snapped to the native headman:

“Those men are your enemies far more than we are. Do they get away free? Why don’t you send them with us on the long journey?”

“Nice,” murmured Smitty, sensing the drift of the words. “I wouldn’t mind the dive nearly as much if those rats went with us.”

But the oldster couldn’t seem to make up his mind on this point. It appeared that the delivery of these four for sacrifice by those other whites had convinced him that Heber’s crew were friends.

Anyhow, there was no pursuit of the gang. And now the scores of monkey men started their advance on their victims again.

“Can you think of any other stall for time?” said the giant.

Nellie shook her lovely blonde head.

“I’m sorry, Smitty. You know, before they reach us, I’d like to say something. I’ve kidded around a lot, but I really think you’re pretty swell.”

“That goes double,” said Smitty huskily.

“Save yer wind for fightin’,” Mac interrupted. “We’ll need it to get out of here.”

The monkey men were almost near enough to spring, in their steady advance.

“Get out of here?” repeated Nellie, amazed even at such a moment. “You think we can—”

“Sure, we can,” said Mac, cheerfully. The cockeyed optimism of the Scot at moments of the most impossible peril was asserting itself. “We’re all born to be hung. We’ll not feed the beastie in the pool.”

The monkey men launched themselves in silent ferocity for the three who were to go into the pool. Marge Stahl was ignored; Nellie had saved her, at any rate.

Mac and Smitty sprang forward to meet them—and there were sudden shots and yells from the direction of the rock door!

Back through the massive doorway poured Yellow Hair and his men. They ran as if devils were after them, and they looked the same way.

“Heber and his fine plans!” raved one of them. “We’re goners, that’s what we are!”

“Anyhow, we’re trapped here,” snarled another. “We should have fought our way down that tunnel.”

“Don’t be dumb!” Yellow Hair snarled back. “Those monkeys would have got us sure with their darts. And they’ve got their chief back to lead ’em. I
knew
I’d heard planes!”

Mack and Smitty got it, then. The little leader of this lost tribe had returned in repaired planes with the men he’d taken north. Or perhaps they had acquired more planes. They’d landed on the Negro River and just got here through the jungle.

And then he appeared.

The monkey man with the flaming intelligence in his fanatic eyes, who had almost stopped The Avenger’s band at Cayenne, came onto the terrace with his men. They were all still dressed in civilization’s clothing, and the garments looked even more bizarre on them here in their native haunt than they had up north.

The leader advanced on the cowering gang a little ahead of his men. He paid no attention to their guns, knowing that the quieter, cruder weapons of his men were more effective.

“So,” he said, his meticulous English sounding weird on his lips, “in my absence you thought to trick my people. It is well that I returned when I did. For now, you will all go to the god in the pool.”

“So we do have company,” breathed Smitty, almost contentedly.

“No company for me,” said Mac sturdily “I’m not goin’ in that pool, and that’s an end to it.”

“You’re crazy—” Smitty began. He didn’t finish, because the next act in the swiftly unfolding scene took place.

The little leader had underestimated the potentialities of desperate men, particularly men used to living criminally by their wits.

Quick as a snake, Yellow Hair darted forward! Before the little leader could leap back, he was caught.

Yellow Hair held him like a shield and, in spite of the native’s furious efforts, walked with him to the edge of the pool.

“There’s going to be a splash you hadn’t counted on,” Yellow Hair said to the others, “if you don’t let us go. All but the ones down there, that is.” He pointed to the Avenger’s aides.

The natives didn’t know the words; the leader was the only one who knew English. But they caught the meaning.

They drew back, chattering like the apes they resembled, and all undecided.

The leader screamed at them in their native tongue.

“He’s got crust,” said Nellie, listening hard. “He’s telling them to go ahead and kill the lot of us and pay no attention to him.”

“They’re not obeying,” said Smitty.

That was plain enough. No matter what the little man said, his people were not going to lose him. The monkey men stared at Yellow Hair, then moved away from him and his struggling captive—toward Nellie and Smitty and Mac.

They were going to take up the sacrifice ceremony where they had left off.

The little leader kept yelling orders till Yellow Hair clapped his hand over the writhing mouth.

And then lightning struck Yellow Hair! At least it must have seemed like that to all on the stone ledge—to all except The Avenger’s little band.

They knew the nature of that lightning.

A shallow gash suddenly appeared on the exact top of the man’s skull, mingling red with the blond hair. For an instant he stood there, holding the little leader, as if he had not been touched by anything.

But his eyes were already sightless, and next instant he folded like a wet sack and lay on the stone with one arm trailing almost into the pool.

For a second, all were stunned with the surprise of it. Then the others of the gang got back their wits. Three rushed for the little leader, to go on with Yellow Hair’s plan to hold him hostage against their release.

From the rock doorway hurtled a figure like something shot from a gun. He got to the leader first, and crouched between him and the men.

The Avenger was only of average size and weight, but he looked tremendous as he crouched there. The three stopped their rush and drew their guns again. The leader squalled an order.

Three slugs hit Benson’s body, jerked him with their impact, but didn’t pierce the bullet-proof celluglass. Then it was all over as the blacks obeyed that order of their leader.

Bamboo tubes whispered their death song. Three darts lightly pierced the three crazed gangsters. They screamed in their knowledge of inescapable death, and the rest stood in frantic immobility to keep from sharing their fate.

That held for a moment—the blacks’ masters of Heber’s cutthroat crew, The Avenger standing like the figure of Fate itself, Mac and Nellie and Smitty staring with dawning hope in their eyes, Marge off to one side, dazed by all that had happened.

Then the leader spoke to Benson. The fire had died from his glitteringly intelligent eyes, leaving them very thoughtful.

“You saved my life,” he said, looking down at the yellow-haired man. “After he had gotten to his plane at the river, if my people had allowed him to, he would have killed me.”

The Avenger said nothing. It was still a tense moment; they were all in extreme danger, hanging on the power of this incredibly educated little monkey man.

“You claimed at Cayenne that you were friend, not enemy. It is possible that your word can be believed.”

“It can,” said Benson, voice as calm as his glacial, pale eyes. “We want my old friend, whom you have held prisoner. That is all.”

“You are not after the treasure of my tribe?” said the little leader. “We have a great deal, you know. That is how we have the wealth for planes and anything else we need.”

“I know it is great,” said The Avenger. “And I know what the treasure is. Emeralds. But I already have more wealth than any ten men could spend. I don’t need yours.”

“There are many pounds of emeralds—big ones.” The little leader was craftily testing Benson. And it was a good, rough test. In spite of their deadly danger, the eyes of Heber’s men glittered like wet grapes with greed.

If there had been a single similar glitter in Dick Benson’s pale eyes, it would have meant his death. But there was, of course, no such glitter.

“I want only my friend,” Dick repeated quietly. “Then my friends and I will leave and never come back. Nor shall we ever tell others about your treasure.”

The little leader sighed. “I have sworn never to let a white man live to leave here, to come back with others,” he said. “But I think I believe in your word to me.”

The glare came back to his eyes.

“These men!” he spat at Heber’s cowering gang. “They must be punished. They shall go into the pool.”

The Avenger shook his head. “I have a better plan. They must all be criminals with police records.”

“Not a man among them hasn’t murdered,” the little chief said. “I have had them all investigated.”

“Good. Then they’ll bring their own punishment on their own heads. Free them. They will follow us in their transport plane to Rio. There, they will give themselves up to the police for whatever sentence may be meted out to them.”

“They will not live to fulfill their sentences, of course,” said the little leader judiciously. “They have the monkey disease. A glance tells that. They’ll die soon. But that is not enough for me! I want to see them die,
now.”

One of Heber’s men recovered from the shock of this enough to gasp, “Hey! What d’you mean, we got the monkey disease? This guy Benson invented an antitoxin for that, and we all got inoculated with it.”

“I invented an antitoxin,” Dick said icily. “But Heber never had it. Knowing he was faking the disease, I gave him a harmless glucose solution, and he jumped to the conclusion that it was the antitoxin. I let him think so. That is what you were inoculated with.”

It was an explosion of dynamite among them. They changed from cowering men into crazed animals, for this was a hideous thing they’d heard. One of them jerked suicidally toward the pool, to leap into it and end his troubles once and for all.

The Avenger sprang to him and dragged him back. He said to them all, “I have the real antitoxin. It will cure you. I will inject each of you with it—in the Rio jail.”

It took a minute for them to get it.

“No one will guard you on the air trip to Rio. You will follow us in your plane. But anyone who does not report to the police and give himself up for past crimes will not get an injection!”

They all got it then, and in the faces of all was abject surrender. A dignified reflection of the same emotion was in the little leader’s eyes.

He nodded to Benson.

“Very well. You may all go. These men can have their transport at the Negro River. You and your friends may have one of two amphibians beside it, in which we came home. I would rather have seen them die, but . . .” He shrugged.

Dick knew when to let well enough alone.

“Thank you,” was all he said.

Smitty and Nellie, Mac and Marge Stahl came unmolested through the ranks of the sullen monkey men. They went, with the cowed gangsters, toward the rock doorway, and Benson came last.

“Wait!”

They all turned, half crouching. Was the little chief already regretting his gratitude for the saving of his life?

He went toward Dick Benson, tugging at the shirt he wore. His hand was inside it. But the hand came out with a thing in it that made them all gasp.

The huge emerald that the little man wore had been mentioned by Stahl and Heber. This was it.

The flashing green thing was as big as a pullet egg, set in heavy, dull gold, beaten into a circlet by some native craftsman.

“This I would like you to have,” he said to The Avenger, with as much dignity as if he’d been King of England.

Benson nodded. He slid the ring onto the little finger of his left hand, raised that hand in salute, and then all filed through the rock doorway.

There was a tunnel to a half-ruined temple far in the jungle, but Smitty and the rest were scarcely conscious of their way of exit. They’d had too close a brush with death to think of anything else. They all kept seeing the “thing” in the pool.

Near the mouth of the tunnel, Stahl joined them. And Marge and he silently embraced. They looked with awe and thanks at The Avenger.

They collected Heber and Gleason at the village and set out on the tortuous path to the Negro River.

In the air, in one of the astounding little native’s excellent planes, Smitty looked at Nellie.

“What were you saying at the pool, when we thought we were going to be fish food?” he said solemnly.

“Me? At the pool?” said Nellie, looking very innocent.

“Yeah. Something about your thinking I was all right, maybe, after all.”

“I said that? I don’t remember.”

“Sure,” complained the giant. “When you think you’re going to get knocked off, you treat me human. Otherwise, you wouldn’t give me a kind word if I . . . if I . . .”

“But I’ve given you many a kind word,” said Nellie. “Ask Cole Wilson.”

“Cole Wilson!” howled Smitty. “That unnaturally handsome dumbbell. What’s he got that I—”

They quarreled comfortably. The plane roared steadily. Behind them, docilely, piloted by men whose only fear was that they’d lose their captors and not get an injection of that antitoxin, the transport with all Heber’s gang hung close, on their way to face the results of their criminal careers.