Kenneth Robeson - The Avenger 12 by The Flame Breathers

Author:The Flame Breathers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-20T15:13:07+00:00

Chapter X

Bath of Fire

It began to look, with the second violent attack on a man of great wealth, as if some force had arisen in New York that was determined to wipe out the city’s magnates.

First Lorens Singer, then Pratt Henderlin.

Pratt Henderlin was a heavy-set man with grizzled eyebrows like little cupolas, an oversized jaw and a mole on the left side of his fleshy nose. The domineering, fighting face had often been pictured in the newspapers.

He was almost as wealthy as Singer, being head of the Henderlin Holding Corp. that owned about a third of the nation’s oil fields and the pick of the coal mines.

Henderlin was not in a garden, at a distance, when catastrophe hit his place!

The coal and oil baron lived in a large apartment building that was one of his many real estate holdings, and atop which was his penthouse. That is, he lived there till the evening of the day Singer’s home went up in smoke. At that time, early, because he was tired from an extra-heavy day at the office, the rich man unfortunately decided to take a relaxing bath before going to bed at half-past nine.

That was his last known act. The next thing to occur was a soft but frightening roar, a sheet of white flame! Half the penthouse was blown off the roof and most of the floor beneath destroyed.

Roar and flame came from the bathroom into which Henderlin had gone to relax.

They extinguished the fire pretty fast, but that didn’t enable them to collect any of Henderlin. There just was no trace of the magnate at all among the heaps of debris, in which it seemed all the cops in the word scurried around.

All the cops in the world. And The Avenger.

Many people could be found who would swear that the man with the pale, deadly eyes and the white, still face was the more to be feared!

The whole rooftop was a mess, of course. But the thing most terrifically battered and burst was Henderlin’s bathtub. It was as if that had been the focal point of the whole thing.

If the tub had been filled with high-test gasoline, for instance, the result would have been much the same.

Benson went up to Henderlin’s valet. In this case, the results of the Singer affair had been reversed. There, the master had lived, and the servants died. Here, Henderlin’s quarters had demolished, including the room in which his wife had been sitting, while the servants’ part of the penthouse remained intact.

Henderlin’s man was shivering as if with a chill, and was being kept from collapsing by a hypodermic shot given now and then by the medical examiner. But he managed to talk fairly coherently with Benson.

“You say Henderlin came home exhausted from the office and decided to retire early?” Benson asked, voice quiet but vibrant with power and authority.

“Yes, s-sir,” chattered the valet.

“And he thought a warm bath would help him to get to sleep more quickly?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was this a usual procedure of his?”

“N-no, sir.

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