The Avenger 15 - House of Death (6 page)

“Help—”

Just the one cry ripped out. Then four guns spoke! And each was pressed tight against the victim’s body. Four reports, sickeningly muffled.

“There has been noise,” suggested Sharnoff, blowing lightly over the muzzle of the little derringer.

“Better to go,” said von Bolen in his guttural tone. “We know where next we shall see each other. It seems that this imposter who had everything but his identifying medallion”—he looked expressionlessly at the dead man—“got in touch also with Carmella Haygar. So, doubtless, she will join us at our final destination. Shall we leave—and separate for the moment?”

The four filed out, walking calmly out at different times and taking different directions.

Nellie Gray seldom made a mistake.

Smitty, always safely out of earshot while he did the praising, for he rarely gave the diminutive bombshell the pleasure of praising her to her face, insisted that she
never
made mistakes.

It was a question whether she had made one now. But she thought she had and was all broken up about it.

“Why I ever let her out of my sight, I don’t know,” she wailed.

She was referring to Carmella Haygar of Spain, who was not among those present at Bleek Street any more.

“You’d think,” Nellie went on, “that anybody coming here and begging to be allowed to stay for forty-eight hours so she could be ‘protected’ would stick around. So I didn’t guard her or anything like that. And now she’s gone.”

“Naturally you had no reason to suspect she was going to sneak out,” said The Avenger quietly. He looked again at the recorded phone conversation that had preceded the girl’s swift exit.

Every phone call in Bleek Street headquarters made an automatic record of itself and stamped the time on that record. This was stamped 4:10 p.m. It was certainly short.

“It has been decided to go to the island a bit sooner than previously planned. You may travel with us if you like.”

There was no identifying name in the words. Somebody had phoned for Carmella, told her that “they” were going to some island or other and she could come along. That was all.

“And right after that, I came up from my suite downstairs, and she was gone,” said Nellie. “I’m so terribly sorry! I—”

The tiny red light in the wall near the door glowed. It was a silent announcement that somebody downstairs in the vestibule wanted to come up.

Smitty went to the small television set that was constantly turned on. It gave a picture of whoever was in the vestibule.

“Sheiks of Araby and stuff,” he said.

The next instant, the person who had prompted the comment was among them.

He was taller than average, hard and fit-looking, with very dark skin and eyes that were squinting and keen. Those eyes instantly singled out The Avenger, as any eyes would in any gathering.

“You are Richard Benson?” he said in good English.

“Yes.”

“I have heard much of you,” said the man. “That is why I came here. Your name is known in the Orient.”

“I have had a little business there,” said Benson, pale eyes like diamond drills on the dark face.

“More than just a little,” said the man, showing white teeth in a smile. “My family has had dealings all over the Orient for years. They have reason to remember the man who, among other things, opened up the Mosul oilfields.”

“Your family?”

The man straightened up, much as Carmella had done.

“The family of Haygar. Turkish branch, in my case. In fact, I am the last of that branch.”

Smitty started a little, as that once-great name was sounded a second time in here.

“I am Shan Haygar,” said the man. “I have no wealth, now. I have no friends in New York that I can trust implicitly. And I need your help. So I came to you.”

“Justice, Inc., has helped a few persons, now and then,” said Benson.

“That,” whispered Nellie to Smitty, “is what you’d call a miracle of understatement.”

“The affair in which I need help does not sound important, but to me, it is—very,” said Shan. “As I said, I have no money. I escaped Turkey only with my life and a few keepsakes relative to the power my family once enjoyed. Principal among these was a small gold medallion that has been stolen from me in the last few hours. I want to beg your help in getting it back. It has no real value, but it has great sentimental attachments.”

“Where have I heard that before?” whispered Nellie.

The Avenger’s basilisk eyes were still on the visitor’s face.

“You have an idea who stole the coin?” came his calm, vibrant voice.

Shan nodded, face dark with anger.

“An old man whom I befriended. A spidery old fellow. I am sure he took the medallion. I know where he lives. But I have hesitated to call the police because I do not want it known that I am in this country. Where once we were able to go anywhere on the strength of our name, now we are fugitives who hesitate to reveal our identities.”

The Avenger’s head, with its thick, black hair, nodded.

“I will help you. You wish to go to this man’s place and see if he has the medallion?”

“Yes,” said Shan eagerly.

Nellie Gray seldom remonstrated with the chief, no matter how worried she might be over the insane chances he took. But this time her worry overcame her discretion. She drew him aside.

“Chief,” she whispered frantically, “you aren’t going with him, are you?”

“Of course,” said The Avenger.

“But the man’s story sounds phony from start to finish! It’s probably nothing but a trap of some kind!”

“He mentions a medallion,” said Benson calmly. “So did Carmella Haygar. Now Carmella has been foolish enough to go out. She may be in great danger. This may be a lead to her whereabouts.”

“Take Smitty or somebody with you—”

“Better to go alone with him,” said Benson, whose motto seemed to be: always walk into a trap, because within it you might learn something.

Shan Haygar’s dark face expressed thanks and anxiety as the coupé bore him and The Avenger toward the East Side address he mentioned. Benson’s pale, deadly eyes raked level along the street as he swerved the powerful car an inch here or there to weave through traffic.

“This medallion,” he said finally. “Will you describe it, please?”

Shan nodded, dark eyes furtively sliding to Dick’s impressively calm face and away again.

“It is a gold coin about the size of your twenty-five-cent piece. On it are the letters H H, the numbers 29 32, and a sort of coat of arms of the Haygar family.”

“I see. And the meaning of the numbers and letters?”

“I really don’t know,” said Shan apologetically. “I suppose there was a meaning at one time, but it has been lost to memory now.”

They got to the address he had given.

It was a moderately good building near Sixteenth Street with about a hundred apartments in it. Shan Haygar traced names at the bells with his forefinger. He swore fluently in Turkish, seeming utterly outraged, as he stopped at one of the names.

It was Harlik Haygar.

“The swine!” he snarled. “Taking the family name! He is no more a Haygar than I am a Mahatma. He steals my keepsake and also my last name!”

The Avenger’s voice was as cold and even as an icy sea.

“Why would he do that?”

Shan shrugged. “I don’t know. Unless he thinks he can trade on the Haygar prestige by use of the name and the keepsake.”

Dick’s steely forefinger was pressing the bell.

“Are you just going up openly?” said Shan, looking surprised.

“Yes. Why not?”

“He will hardly turn over that medallion merely on demand!”

“We can try open methods first,” said Benson.

But it seemed they were not to be able to try them. For there was no answer to the bell’s ring.

“Good! He’s out,” said Shan. “We can go over his rooms, if you can get in.”

“I can get in,” said Benson.

His aides would have looked surprised at all this. It was not like The Avenger to enter such enterprises without more investigation and study. It was not at all like him to be so pliant to the requests of a man who was hardly more than a stranger wandering in off the streets.

The vestibule lock took about twenty seconds. Then they were in an automatic elevator, having seen no one in the small lobby.

The door of Harlik Haygar’s apartment was opened in about a minute and a half.

“So this is why the bell wasn’t answered,” said The Avenger, voice as glacial as his pale eyes.

Did Dick Benson have a psychic sixth sense, whispering to him facts that other people must first see before they knew about them? Some people thought so; and in this case it almost looked to be true.

For death was the reason why the bell had not been answered, and it seemed as if The Avenger must have sensed that in the vestibule and broken in to verify it.

On the floor not far from the door lay a man such as Shan Haygar had described: elderly, thin, spidery-looking. He had been shot in the side of the head and lay with weak-looking blue eyes wide and blood dabbling his thin gray hair.

Nothing in the place, from the orderly appearance of it, had been touched.

Shan’s face had fallen.

“We’re too late,” he mourned. “Someone has been here first. The medallion will be gone.”

“We will search and make sure,” said Benson. It was eerie to observe the expressionlessness of that calm face in the presence of murder. In places where other men would register horror or fear or hysterical anger, Benson continued to hold perfect control over his emotions.

The Avenger searched the three small rooms of the apartment.

There is a science to searching a place, as any cop can tell you, particularly when the article searched for is as small as a quarter. It was an eye-opening thing to watch the swift efficiency with which Dick went over the place. In fifteen minutes it was possible to say absolutely surely that the gold disk Shan wanted was not there.

“What do you think we should do now?” asked Benson, still with that curious pliancy to another man’s suggestion.

Shan bit his lips and looked frightened and uncertain.

“Er—nothing. This murder . . . Horrible! I’m going to drop the whole affair.”

“The police should be notified,” said Benson. “This is murder.”

Shan shook his head urgently.

“As I’ve said, I don’t dare reveal my identity. I have powerful enemies. It would mean my death. Surely we can just drop this?”

He laid his hand on Benson’s steel-cable arm.

“I wanted my keepsake back. I came to you for help, and you kindly granted it. But now we find it is too late. Heaven knows who has the gold disk, now. It is gone beyond recall. Accept my thanks—and forget the rest.”

“There is still a murdered man to report.”

Shan sighed.

“Very well, then . . .”

The two of them left, Shan in the rear. At the curb, Shan opened the right door of the coupé and got in. His hand fumbled in the side pocket of the door.

Benson went around to get in behind the wheel. Shan jerked open the door, when the car was between the two, and leaped out. Like a streak of dark light he was gone up the street.

“Stop!” Benson cried. He took a few steps after the running man and then halted.

That would have puzzled his aides, too. The man who could beat The Avenger in a footrace probably didn’t live. And yet he didn’t pursue. He stood a moment on the sidewalk, then got into the coupé and drove off.

Shan, however, did not go far. He was back again before the car had gone four blocks. Back and entering that building again.

When his hand had fumbled in the car’s pocket, it had emerged with a glove. He examined it, now, and was glad to see that it was a unique glove indeed. It was made of some rough fabric, very strong, with what seemed to be fine wire woven through the stuff.

He did not know that it was asbestos and that with it The Avenger could plunge his hand into the heart of the hottest fire to retrieve objects there. All he knew was that there probably wasn’t another glove in the city like it. Which was even more than he had dared hope for.

Shan went back into the building and up to the dead man’s apartment.