The Avenger 33 - The Blood Countess (2 page)

“Well,
senhor,”
said the captain, “it seems very little of what you tell us is true. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I imagine some of your people have moved the body.”

The captain made a growling noise in his throat. “The police,
senhor,
I assure you have not—”

“But you’re not,” said the Avenger, “really policemen.”

“Cuidado,
take care what you say.” The captain took a step closer. “What do you mean by suggesting we are not truly policemen,
senhor?”

“Your uniforms are real, I give you that. It’s the little details you fouled up on. Those two-tone alligator shoes of yours, captain. They give you away.”

The man frowned down at his gaudy shoes.

In the same instant the Avenger acted. He clutched the coffee table with both hands and flung it at the imitation police captain.

The silver tray, with its bottle of mineral water and plate of biscuits, clanged against the captain’s head. The edge of the table hit him hard in the midsection. His gun went off, drilling a hole in the carpet.

Benson followed the table. He got hold of the man’s gun and wrenched it from his grasp. Shoving him aside, he spun to face the other fake policeman.

But that one was gone. He’d apparently climbed out of the window and up the dangling rope as soon as the struggle started.

The captain had pitched over onto the dead man.
“Madre-perola!”
he exclaimed when he noticed blood smeared all over his sleeve. He wanted to brush it off, but was reluctant to touch it.

Benson grabbed the big man effortlessly up and deposited him in a straightback chair against the wall. “You’ve given me quite a warm welcome to South America,” he said. “Now we’ll have a little talk.”

“I will say nothing,
senhor.”

“On the contrary,” said the Avenger.

The overhead fan spun slowly round, clicking once at the completion of each revolution. The dark-paneled office was shadowy, with the bright morning outside a huge yellow rectangle at the end of the room.

At the window the Avenger stood looking out at the tile roofs and church spires of the capital. The square below was paved with mosaic tiles which made sinuous blue and white patterns. Near a palm tree a fat boy in a straw hat and white duck trousers was selling tiny ice cream cones out of a spotless white cart.

“Your visitor was merely a gun for hire,” said the lean, tanned man at the office’s ornate carved-wood desk. He was Colonel Charles Heberden, supposedly attached to the U.S. embassy here in Panazuela, but actually a key man in a clandestine intelligence agency.

“I know that. I questioned him last night,” said Dick Benson. He had employed a certain gas, an invention of Fergus MacMurdie, in his interrogations. He knew he’d been told the truth by the imitation captain. “What about your man who was killed?”

“That was too bad.” The colonel picked up a sheet of blue paper. “Didn’t know him well; name was Dick Minnig. Wife and two kids back in the States.”

“Why was he sent to me?”

“We’d decided it might be safer to contact you a bit less openly,” said Heberden. “As things turned out, you had to look me up anyway. Minnig was to give you an initial briefing, then set up an out-of-the-way meeting between you and me.”

“No need of that, they obviously know I’m here.” He was still watching the square. A chunky man in a white suit had just bought his second ice cream cone. Turning toward Heberden, the Avenger asked, “How did they find out?”

“At this point, I have no idea. Though you can be damned sure it’s being looked into.”

“How many people knew I was coming to Panazuela?”

“Four on this end.”

“Yourself and Minnig. Who else?”

“Captain Castel-Branco of the capital secret police. A highly reliable man, and definitely pro-American,” answered Heberden. “And Leonard Rodney, who runs our consulate office in Mostarda. You’ll be seeing him when you get up there to talk to the girl.”

Benson came toward the desk. “Why am I important enough to kill?” he asked. “Does Elizabeth Bentin know something that important?”

The colonel flipped open a file and began pawing through it. “We believe so, yes,” he said. “As you know, she, and her nurse, have been involved in underground work in Europe. The Gestapo had actually captured the girl . . . tortured her. Then the underground managed to rescue her. They got the train that was moving her from one place to another.”

“What sort of information does she have?”

“That girl knows something important,” Colonel Heberden assured him. “The damn trouble is she won’t talk to anybody but you. Knew her in the States, did you?”

“A long time ago.” Though Benson was still a young man, not yet thirty, a good many things had happened to him. The loss of his wife and child at the hands of criminals; the subsequent forming of the crime fighting team known as Justice, Inc. These things had served to put a great distance between the Richard Henry Benson of today and the young man who’d dated Elizabeth Bentin in college. “We saw a good deal of each other in college, for a semester or two.”

“Well, she’s evidently kept up with your career, even though she’s been in Europe since before the war. Her family had factories over there, you know, and when they were lost the girl decided to stay over there and aid the underground.”

“You mentioned a nurse. How ill is Elizabeth?”

“It’s more a psychological thing, I think. Physically, though a bit pale and thin for my tastes, the girl seems fine.” The colonel folded his hands over his notes on Elizabeth Bentin. “There are times, though, when she apparently blacks out, has blank periods. The nurse, a very competent young woman named Erika Mowler, is confident the girl will eventually recover completely.”

“And you haven’t any notion as to what she has to tell?”

“You know, Benson, that Panazuela is neutral,” said Heberden. “Our German friends have quite a colony here. I’m certain Berlin is already making plans for getting their top boys out of Germany when Hitler goes under at last. One of the places they’ll come is this country.”

“They’ll need fake papers, other identities.”

“Yes, and from a few hints that Elizabeth Bentin dropped when she was in the capital last month, it may well be she has information on the whole sinking-ship operation.”

“This place she’s staying in—”

“A castle, they call it Pedra Negra,” said the colonel, “which means Black Rock. It’s in a primarily agricultural sector of Panazuela, about three hundred miles north of here. You have to go over a couple of nice stretches of hills, by train, to get there. As I understand it, the girl’s family has owned the place for quite some time. She didn’t feel up to trying the States yet, wanted a rest out there first.”

“By now, our friends on the other side probably know she’s there.”

“Possibly, but the girl is well looked after. No one can get at her.” He was toying with the edge of a sheet of paper which was beneath several other notes. Toying with it hesitantly, as though it were his hole card and he couldn’t remember whether it was an ace or a deuce.

“Something else you want to tell me?”

“Don’t know if it’s got anything to do with this business or not.” Heberden tugged the sheet of paper halfway out of the folder. “Well, I might as well mention it. Could be, now I think of it, right up your alley.” He got the sheet all the way out, studied it. “I’ve had Leonard Rodney quietly looking into this. So far, there . . . well, let me give you the bare facts. There have been three murders in the vicinity of Pedra Negra recently.”

“Since Elizabeth moved there, you mean?”

“Yes, the first death occurred two days after she arrived at the castle.” Colonel Heberden looked everywhere but at Dick Benson. “You find a good deal of superstition in rural areas. Same way in the States. I grew up in Iowa, where—”

“How were the victims killed?”

“The whole thing sounds rather . . . strange.” The paper fluttered in his hand. “According to my information, each of the victims was found dead with a good deal of the blood from his body drained away . . . and with puncture marks in the neck and throat area. Sounds farfetched, but those are the classic signs for someone who’s been killed by a—”

“Vampire,” said the Avenger.

For every person who has a premonition of his own death, there are millions who don’t. For them death comes as the ultimate surprise, completely unexpected.

Leonard Rodney was feeling fine, just fine. Since being transferred to the consulate here in Mostarda from Rio he’d taken to smoking cigars. The long dry black cigars made by the José Silveira Co. He lit one now and inhaled happily.

Twilight was gradually giving way to night. Rodney was a thickset man of thirty-seven who still had the build he’d had when he played football for U.C.L.A. Smoking his before-dinner cigar, he was strolling out beyond the grounds of his large tile and white stone house. By going out through the arched doorway in the garden wall you could walk through the forest that stretched from there up to the low hills a mile distant.

There were insects aplenty, but they never bothered him when he was smoking one of these José Silveira cigars.

“Maybe I ought to tell the Pentagon about these cigars,” he said to himself, chuckling. “Use ’em in jungle warfare, keep our boys free of bugs.”

Even the alimony he was paying to his ex-wife, who was out in Los Angeles, California, still trying to break into pictures, didn’t bother him much. The alimony was based, after all, on the salary he made as consul. She didn’t know about his other income; nobody did.

Nobody except those who were paying him, and they weren’t likely to talk about it.

Rodney really didn’t feel bad about what he was doing. There were a lot of nasty names for it, sure . . . espionage . . . treason. Those were flag-waver words.

Selling a little information now and then, there was nothing so terrible about that. Especially since that paid him nearly as much as old Uncle Sam did. The extra dough was what allowed him to live, unobtrusively of course, as comfortably as he did.

There was a slight breeze tonight, rustling the leaves of the trees.

He hadn’t heard from them since the snafu of the attempt to get rid of Benson.

“Wasn’t my fault they fouled that up,” Rodney told himself. “Didn’t I warn them he was a smart cookie? Justice, Inc., has a terrific reputation, and . . . he’s the top man in the organization. So what do they do? Send a few local goons to take care of him.”

He puffed at his cigar and blew smoke up at the darkening sky visible through the tree branches.

“He’ll be here in a couple days. They’ll have another chance.”

Rodney stopped walking. He looked back over his shoulder, listening.

Some kind of bird, settling in for the night. Nothing to worry about.

Even so, he’d gone far enough from his house. You couldn’t even see the lights from here.

He turned and started back through the forest. After a few paces he stopped again.

There was something . . . something off there . . . In among the trees, something was watching him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked himself. “There’s nothing dangerous in these parts. The locals told you that, and you’ve taken dozens of walks out here.”

Even so, he began walking fast, almost running.

It was there.

There in the darkness between the trees. Rodney couldn’t see it, but he felt it. Something in the dark. Something that wanted him.

He stopped once more, wishing he’d brought his pistol. “Listen,” he said aloud, “get away from me. Get away!”

He ran.

But not fast enough.

Something dropped down out of the trees and hit him full in the back. Fingers tightened around his throat.

Rodney gagged as he tried to throw off whoever it was. Circles of light seemed to be dancing in the dark night. Dizzy, he fell forward onto the forest path.

He was slipping across into unconsciousness. The last thing he ever felt in this life was an incredibly sharp pain in his throat.

The wind grew stronger as the night wore on.

The man whose job was to watch the back courtyard of the Pedra Negra castle turned up the collar of his suit coat before thrusting his hands into his pockets. He was a patient, unimaginative man, which helped him get through his ten-hour shift of watching.

Across the courtyard was a chapel. It had not been used for almost a century, and no repairs had been made in it for almost that long. One of the thick oaken doors hung half open. Time had made the stained glass windows look like incompleted jigsaw puzzles. Pigeons and doves roosted in the eaves.

There was a cloaked figure standing against the far wall of the chapel. The guard couldn’t see that wall from where he stood. He wouldn’t have seen the figure anyway, since the long black cloak blended perfectly with the night shadows.

The cloaked figure moved silently along the stone wall and eased through a side door.

Inside the chapel, the figure glided down the center aisle. Just behind the altar was an entrance that led into the castle. No one else knew this.