He managed to toss the clip so that it fell in front of her door. He saw her manacled hands reach out and pick it up. She’d be all right, with the clip over her nostrils. The spongelike mass was impregnated with a chemical which counteracted the gas.
Mac himself needed no clip. The lapel of his coat was impregnated with the same chemical.
Holding his head down so that he breathed through the lapel, Mac pressed close to the door. It’s an ill wind that blows no good. The rats had done one thing at least.
They had sent the deputy, in his blind gyrations, so close to the cells that, when he fell, he was within reach of Mac’s cell door.
Mac, by squeezing so hard against the bars that most of the hide was scraped from his shoulders and chin, could just get his fingertips under the man’s belt. Then it was short work to drag him closer, and almost as short to get the keys the sheriff had turned over to him. Keys to handcuffs as well as doors.
Mac had thought he heard something, while he was freeing Nellie and himself. The sound was a little like that of distant surf, a queer, growing roar.
The gas was out of the room, now, with windows thrown open. Mac could dispense with the coat lapel, and Nellie removed the nose clip.
“We’ve got to get a doctor for this poor fellow, right away,” said Nellie, looking at the deputy, still unconscious from the gas.
Mac nodded. Getting help gravely increased the risk of not completing their getaway. But it had to be done, of course.
“Voices!” exclaimed Nellie suddenly, listening hard.
So then Mac understood that curious, surflike roar. It was quite close, now.
Voices, of course! Many voices! Many people, roaring in dull fury and advancing on the jail.
“A mob!” said Mac. “What in the worrrld—”
He went to the window and looked out.
The road sign gave the population of Kinnisten as twenty-four hundred. It looked as if every one of the population was outside the jail. Then the Scot saw that the mob was mostly men, though a few women raved their inexplicable fury among them.
One thing all had in common. A fury, a very insanity of hatred seemed to possess them. More than one mouth had white flecks of foam on it as the mad crowd stormed toward the jail.
Now, individual shouts could be made out.
“Bring ’em out!”
“They killed Morel! We’ll kill them!”
“String ’em to the nearest tree!”
Nellie stared at Mac. “Mac — the rats, those people! They’ve been treated with some of the hate serum Morel invented!”
“Looks like it,” said Mac. “Maybe in the town water supply. Ye were right. This jail
“Mac, what are we going to
The Scot shook his head. “I ha’ no more gas pellets save a couple that produce death instead of unconsciousness. We can’t kill anyone in that crowd. They’re decent citizens, turned crazy by Morel’s drug. It’s not their fault.”
No, not their fault; but it would be Nellie and Mac’s death if the mob got their hands on the two!
There was a sudden battering at the door. The portal split clear down the center. They had a battering-ram or something outside.
“String ’em up, they murdered Morel! Sheriff said so.”
“Kill ’em!
Incarnate hatred held that mob. Murderous hatred!
“So?” said Nellie evenly.
“I guess the trap has worrrked,” burred Mac, eyes steady, though his freckled face was pale.
“Wouldn’t it,” said Cole Wilson, “have been better if we had come up
He and The Avenger were in the cabin of another of Benson’s planes, with Kinnisten, Maine, just over the skyline.
Dick shook his head, pale eyes fixed on the altimeter.
“You were out, and I couldn’t leave my laboratory for several more hours; so I sent Nellie alone. I wouldn’t have come up with you, now, but there have been no reports from them. I don’t care so much for that.”
“It was a dangerous thing to try — walking right into a trap,” sighed Cole.
Wilson was absolutely fearless, himself. Walking into a trap was precisely the sort of thing that appealed to his reckless nature. But, like so many fearless persons, he could always feel fear for others’ safety. The Avenger himself was like that.
“Some day,” said Dick evenly, pale eyes lambent and icy-clear, “all of us will have to die. Now or fifty years from now. Fifty years is a short span in the history of the human race.”
Cole nodded his comprehension. What the man with the colorless, deadly eyes meant was that no one could go on indefinitely cheating death as he and his helpers did in their crime battles. Some trap some day would close on one or all of them — and stay closed!
“I hope this isn’t the day for—” Cole began.
Then he stared ahead and downward.
“There are the lights of Kinnisten. And a red light, an uncertain light— One of the buildings is afire!”
Benson nosed the plane downward and, at the same time, shut off the twin motors. With only the shriek of the wind sounding, he planed toward the fire.
