The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns (5 page)

He walked away from the door. And in the doorway, Singell’s gunman guard stared after the straight, powerful back of the gray steel man with fear in his eyes.

A fear always thrust into the minds of criminals by the sight of this quiet, rather small man with the snow-white hair and the cold, colorless eyes.

Benson got back to Groman’s apartment building at a little after eleven—and ran into full-fledged hell.

There was a squad car in front of the door. There were reporters and patrolmen running around. The reason came out as soon as Benson got inside.

Terry Groman, the old politician’s violet-eyed daughter, came up to Benson with fright and shock in her pretty face.

“Mr. Hawley—Dad’s secretary—” she gasped. “They got him! He’s dead—”

Benson pushed on past her and into Groman’s office.

The room the old lion had made into an office was on the first floor at the side of the building. It was spacious, book-lined, rather bare. The main pieces of furniture were the huge teak desk and swivel chair at the side wall of the room.

Off this office was a big bedroom and bath. Here the old man stayed most of the time. It was his personal suite. There two rooms were sometimes locked for a day at a time, with Groman lurking behind the locked portal like an old bear in a private den.

Beside the big desk lay the man Benson had met as Groman’s secretary. The man with the sleek brown hair, and mild brown eyes and patient, submissive face.

Hawley had been shot just above the heart. The wound had not been instantly fatal. That could be told because Hawley had had time before he died to leave a message.

It was a message traced in his own blood, by his dying finger, on the floor next to the rug on which his body sprawled.

The blood-red letters said: “The devil’s horns—”

The coroner was in the office, and a big, blustering man who came truculently up to Benson and stared down at him with red, choleric eyes.

“Who are you, Whitey?” he said.

The Avenger stared at the man. Smaller, lighter in weight, there was yet something in The Avenger’s still, white face and his icily flaming eyes that put the iron of fear in the bigger man’s soul.

“Who are
you?”
Benson countered quietly.

“I’m Captain of Detectives Harrigo,” said the big man with the red face. Then, realizing that he had been forced by the white-faced man’s will into the position of answering first, he blustered: “You’ll find out who I am! In headquarters!”

“I’m not going to headquarters,” said Benson.

“That’s what you—”

“When was this man killed?”

“About forty-five minutes ago,” the coroner said, standing near Hawley’s body.

“Forty-five minutes ago,” Benson said, “I was with Police Commissioner Cattridge. So I won’t be going to headquarters, Captain Harrigo. Where is Groman?”

Again, while the captain of detectives blustered incoherently, the coroner took it on himself to answer.

“He’s in the next room. In a pretty bad way, I’m afraid.”

Benson went into Groman’s bedroom, and shut the door on the two of them.

The doctor’s words were amply justified.

Groman lay in his bed with his face drawn in a queer, wooden look. His eyes were dull and seemed almost sightless. The coverlet rose and fell a little with his breathing, but that was the only movement in all his body.

Benson stepped to the bed, staring hard. He was an accomplished physician himself; indeed, he was author of several textbooks on obscure tropical diseases.

The Avenger lifted Groman’s right hand and let it fall. It fell like a thing of wood to the coverlet. And the old man stared up at him out of a wooden face, eyes dull and scarcely seeming to see him.

He had had a second stroke. And this time it had really done for him. He was completely paralyzed.

Benson’s pale eyes, like ice under a polar sun, flamed in his white, dead face. A wandering clot of blood could cause a stroke.

So could a sudden, intense nervous shock.

“Mr. Groman,” he said, “if you can hear me, blink once.”

His voice, not pitched high, took on a vibrant, piercing quality to stir sluggish eardrums.

Groman blinked once, with his right lid closing just a little ahead of the left, as though he could no longer synchronize them.

“So you can hear, at least. Have you had some shock in the last few hours?”

The eyelids blinked once, laboriously.

“Was it connected with your secretary’s death?”

The eyelids blinked once, for yes.

“Did you happen to be near here when he died?”

One blink.

“In this room?”

One blink.

The Avenger’s flaming eyes, like colorless jewels, were steady on the drawn, motionless face.

“Did you see him die? Is that the shock that laid you low?”

As if the tired eyelids weren’t capable of movement, there was no response for a moment.

Then—the single blink.

“You saw him killed, then. Do you know who did it?”

Two blinks for no.

“His murderer was a stranger to you, you mean. Have you any idea who was behind his death?”

One blink.

“Was it Singell? Buddy Wilson? Sisco—”

One blink.

“You think it was a man of Sisco’s, then—”

Benson recalled the strange letters traced in blood on the bare office floor.

“Do you know what the words, ‘the devil’s horns,’ mean?”

But his questioning was through. The eyelids closed—and stayed closed. Benson’s steely fingers sought Groman’s pulse. The pulse was thin and thready.

He went to the bedroom door.

“Doctor, you’d better attend Groman. I think he needs a heart stimulant.”

The coroner went in. As he passed Benson, he shook his head.

“He’s through,” he said in a low tone, nodding his head toward the bed. “He’s just a nerveless, dead hulk, now, waiting for true death. I don’t give him a month to live.”

He went on to the bed, and Benson went back to the office. Captain Harrigo came toward him. Some of his bluster had gone, and he looked more dangerous without it.

“You haven’t explained your presence here,” he said.

“I’m a guest of Mr. Groman, staying with him in his apartment,” Benson said. “My name is Richard Henry Benson.”

The name seemed to give the detective captain a shock, like the touch of a live wire. But with dawning recognition in his reddish eyes came dawning rage—and hate.

“Got a gun, Mr. Richard Henry Benson?” he grated, looking at the bullet hole in the dead man’s chest.

“Not of a caliber such as made that wound,” said Benson calmly.

“We’ll see—”

Harrigo’s big, muscular hand went out to search The Avenger.

Many men had thought to handle Benson as his average size and weight would seem to warrant. One by one, they had learned a thing or two about the quality of muscle.

They had learned the curious fact that now and then a man appears who seems to have a different kind of muscle than the average person. One who seems to have muscular fiber with a strange power—triple the power of a similar bulk of ordinary fiber.

Harrigo learned this surprising fact about Benson now.

The Avenger’s steely white hand, not big, not bulky, encircled the wrist behind the rough hand Harrigo thrust out. The white, long fingers tightened.

Harrigo gasped with surprise. Then he moaned a little with sudden, amazing pain. Then he whipped his left hand toward his gun.

The Avenger’s fingers twisted a little. Harrigo changed his mind about going for the gun. His wrist could have been broken in that calm grip.

“You exceed your authority, I think,” said Benson. The tone was so quiet that it seemed almost a whisper. The face of The Avenger was as emotionless as a wax mask. The eyes were unmoved ice in the white mask.

But Harrigo stood still, chewing his lips, when the terrible grip was relaxed.

“I have told you,” said Benson, “that I was with the police commissioner when this man was murdered. There is no possibility of connecting me with it. I have an idea it would not be healthy to be put behind bars in your city on trumped-up charges. If you want to call me later as a witness before a grand jury, I’ll be here.”

He left the man, glaring murder at him, and went out to the hall again. Terry Groman was still out there. Groman’s son, Ted, wasn’t around.

“Who found the body and phoned the police?” Benson asked.

Terry Groman shivered. “I did.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I wanted to see Dad about—a certain matter,” said the girl. “I knocked on his door about a half hour ago. It was locked, as he has been in the habit of keeping it lately. There was no answer. There always had been before when I knocked, so I was afraid something was wrong. I got my key—”

“You had a key to his suite?”

“Yes! So has Ted. So had Mr. Hawley. I unlocked the door and went in. Mr. Hawley lay dead near the desk. Dad—was lying in the bedroom doorway. I thought he was dead too, till the doctor came and told me it was a second stroke, from shock.”

“The door was locked on the two,” Benson mused. “How could that be? Hawley, dying, couldn’t get up and lock the door after he’d entered. Your father was unconscious, paralyzed.”

“I think the murderer must have a key that none of us knew existed. I think he sneaked into the building, unlocked the door, meaning to kill Dad, and found the secretary with him. He shot Mr. Hawley, became frightened by the sound and left, locking the door after him.”

“But how could a stranger get into this building, guarded as it is, in the middle of the morning?”

“I don’t know,” said Terry, dully.

“Are the guards here all right?”

“Dad thinks so, or he wouldn’t have them around. Anyway, none of them has a key.”

“So you think one of Sisco’s men stole in here to kill your father, got Hawley instead, and then faded before the sound of the shot would bring the guards.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Terry, shrinking away. “Not that. I don’t think Mr. Sisco is involved in this at all!”

People didn’t lie well to The Avenger. The icy, pale eyes were too hard to fool. The girl missed them with her own eyes now.

“Why,” said Benson, “are you so sure Sisco isn’t involved?”

“He . . . he used to work with Dad.”

“Mr. Groman made the statement that the men he used to work for are trying to kill him, now, because they’ve got wind of his decision to have the city cleaned up.”

“I’m sure Mr. Sisco doesn’t want Dad killed. And it isn’t because Dad wants the city cleaned up that—”

She stopped suddenly. Benson’s eyes seemed to go right through her head.

“If your father’s death isn’t desired because of his reform ideas—why
is
it desired?” he said, softly.

“I don’t know,” faltered Terry.

“What did you start to say a minute ago?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all.”

She knew something. The Avenger sensed that infallibly. But he sensed also that nothing would make her tell. He changed his line.

“Did you see those words Hawley traced in blood?”

“Yes!” she said.

“The devil’s horns,” Benson repeated slowly. “Have you any idea what they mean?”