The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns (8 page)

Josh had been in Broadbough’s house—frowningly and reluctantly taken on after the judge read the note—for less than five hours, when he had things to report to Benson.

For one thing, the judge was scared of something and couldn’t quite conceal it.

Broadbough was a venerable-looking man of sixty, with a paunch and a monkish bald spot on the top of his head. He made it a business to look venerable—the kind of man nice old ladies would ask to help them across streets.

But his eyes squinted too much and were set too close together.

In those eyes was an abiding fear, though it didn’t show in any of the man’s assured actions. Josh got a chance to listen to snatches of several phone calls, through the judge’s closed library door, and gathered that men no judge should know were telephoning bad news. Once he heard Broadbough say:

“The devil’s horns? What could
that
mean? And why was it so important that he traced it out while he was dying?”

Then, in a moment: “But who killed him? Haven’t you had any lead at all, Harrigo?”

Judge Broadbough’s colored maid had come down the hall, then, so Josh had to get away from the door. The maid, who looked at Josh in a way that would have made Josh’s wife, Rosabel, claw her eyes out if she could have seen, went toward the kitchen. And Josh had to go with her, laughing and talking, to avoid all look of suspicion.

It was at a little after nine that evening that the bell rang, and Josh opened the door to a man of fifty or so who looked younger and had a neat Vandyke and glittering spectacles.

“Is Judge Broadbough in?” the man asked.

“Yas, suh,” said Josh, showing the ivory of his teeth.

“Will you tell him that Norman Vautry is calling?”

Josh took up his station outside the library door. He could hear quite well.

“Norman!” said the judge, with an inquiring inflection in his voice. “Glad to see you any time, but what’s the visit for tonight?”

There was flat silence for a moment. Then Vautry’s voice:

“You asked me to come, didn’t you? Well, here I am.”

“Look here!” The judge’s tone was shaky. “I didn’t send for you.”

“My secretary said you’d phoned and left word for me to come tonight.”

“Something is wrong!” bleated the judge. You could fairly see the perspiration coming out on his forehead. “Believe me, Norman, I haven’t been in touch with your office for days! Oh, something is very wrong!”

“It begins to look like it,” said Vautry, grim-voiced.

“Groman?” said Broadbough. “Could—”

“Hadn’t you heard? Groman’s out of it—paralyzed. Had a second stroke when Hawley was killed. No, it couldn’t be Groman. But I’ve heard a whisper of somebody new in town. Somebody brought in by the old swindler. I’d better get out of here right now—and we’d both better not talk too much!”

“Yes, yes,” panted Broadbough.

“Meanwhile, if you have anything you don’t want to destroy but still are afraid to keep around the house, you might give it to me and I’ll keep it in my big safe.”

There was a pause, then the judge said:

“I have some documents, of course. You can’t deal with . . . er . . . friends like ours without precautionary measures. So I keep a few facts in case I’m found dead like Martineau. But I’ll continue to keep them, myself, Norman.”

“Of course, if you like. Meanwhile, say nothing to anyone.”

“You don’t have to tell me that!”

Steps warned Josh to get away from the door. He went to the end of the hall. The library door opened. Vautry came out hurriedly, and left the house.

He got into a cab at the curb. In the cab there was a small suitcase. A bag with a gray slipcover that had foreign labels on it. As the cab drove off, with the driver unaware of what was going on in the seat behind him, that bag, and steely-white, deft fingers, did curious things to the face with the neat Vandyke and glittering spectacles.

Norman Vautry became Richard Henry Benson.

The steely white fingers shut the bag with a brittle snap. The flaming pale eyes stared balefully from the wax-white, dead face.

The Avenger had hoped, as a short-cut, to scale valuable criminal documents from Judge Broadbough. He had failed. But minor failures do not mean general failure. The crooks and killers that ruled a city could not be reassured by this small lack of success, even had they known about it.

Benson sat in Groman’s chair at Groman’s teak desk. In the next room lay the helpless hulk that had once been the ruler, behind the scenes, of all Ashton City.

Both rooms were in total darkness. The Avenger was thinking, with the marvelous machine that was his brain clicking smoothly and swiftly along over the straight rails of genius. He thought best in darkness, so he sat in darkness now. It was about one o’clock in the morning, and things were very quiet.

He was sorting over the last secret radio reports sent him, and tabulating them, coldly and impersonally as fate.

Smitty had been taken on as night driver by the White Transportation Corporation. They’d been glad to get a man of his size and strength because they expected trouble.

Nellie had reported that the presence of murdered Judge Martineau in the gambling club called Friday the Thirteenth had been due to a frame-up, not because the judge was used to frequenting such places. Also, just a few minutes ago, Nellie had reported seeing Terry Groman, old Oliver Groman’s daughter, in Sisco’s nightclub office. It was odd that she’d have contacts with her father’s enemies.

Josh had reported that Judge Broadbough was alarmed by something—probably the first gang reports of the presence of Richard Henry Benson in Ashton City.

By his visit to Broadbough’s home disguised as Vautry, The Avenger had proved conclusively that Norman Vautry and Judge Broadbough were in this up to their necks. Also, Broadbough—had valuable documents somewhere around the place.

The wording of Nellie’s report concerning the talk between Buddy Wilson and the fat man corroborated Benson’s guess that in the murder of Martineau lay a weapon against the whole vicious political-criminal ring. “I helped rig it up. We all did—”

Exactly when Benson first heard the noise, he couldn’t have said, himself. At one moment he was sitting utterly motionless in the dark office, thinking. At the next, he was sitting equally motionless, but listening with all his powers of concentration.

The Avenger’s hearing was as far beyond normal as the rest of his powers. In steaming jungles and Antarctic cold, in city and wilderness, he had wagered his life on his miraculous hearing—and won.

The first thing he heard, after the few vague sounds out in the hall that had first caught his attention, was the slight scrape of metal against metal. Someone was turning the doorknob. Then there was a slight period of soundlessness. The knob-turner had discovered that the door was locked. After that, there was another tiny, metallic sound as a key was thrust into the lock.

Benson stared grimly through the darkness. Three keys there were supposed to be to that door. Just three. One was owned by Groman’s son, Ted. Another by Terry, his daughter. A third by Groman himself.

Benson had Groman’s key in his pocket now; he had taken it following the old lion’s helplessness.

Who, then was furtively unlocking that door? Ted or Terry? It seemed unlikely that either of them would act that way. They had a right here. Groman’s night nurse had taken advantage of Benson’s presence to go to the kitchen and make herself coffee and a sandwich. Would she have borrowed one of the keys and be entering like this? That was even more unlikely.

The faint sound of metal stopped, and Benson heard the door start to open. The method of its opening answered his questions. Very slowly, an inch at a time, it was pushed in by some hand long practiced at illegal entry. A professional criminal was opening that door!

The Avenger bent down in his chair. He preserved the same body balance in spite of the move. A swivel chair is apt to squeak if it is tilted—so he didn’t tilt it.

His steel-strong hands went to the slim, concealed holster of Mike, the silenced little .22, and the slender sheath of Ike, the throwing-knife. He straightened with the knife in his left hand and the gun in his right. He could use both unique little weapons with either hand.

He heard a man’s breathing, now. It was very light. Then it deepened a little, grew curiously uneven.

Two men were there, Benson realized after a moment.

The slight rustling of fabric of their clothes as they moved, stopped. Benson heard only their breathing. Even that, somehow, sounded murderous, deadly. Then he heard a new kind of sound; an almost inaudible rasp as a finger felt along the wall.

They had come in, they had closed the door behind them, they had listened and heard nothing.

So now, as soon as that finger felt the light switch, they were calmly going to turn on the lights.

Benson sat in the chair with every steel-wire muscle ready for fast action. Those men would have drawn guns in their hands. They’d be ready for split-second shooting. The sight of a man at the desk, where they expected no one, would startle them for a second or two. That would be all the time Benson had for his own action.

There was a hesitation, then a little click. The lights flashed on.

Benson saw a heavy-set man in dark overcoat and cap, with his back to the closed door. And a smaller man with his left hand still next to the light switch set into the paneled wall. Both had automatics, and both were positively gaping at the sight of a person where none had been expected.

The two men saw an average-sized man sitting calmly at the big desk with a small knife in one hand and something that looked like a length of slim, blued pipe in the other. They also saw a shock of snow-white hair over a face as horrible to them as a nightmare. That was because the face, in spite of the circumstances, was as devoid of expression as a thing of wood. Only the man’s eyes had expression. Colorless, pale, they were flaming like ice under an arctic moon.

The Avenger’s left hand whipped forward before a full second had passed. The slim, unique knife left his fingers like a needle-shaped bullet. Almost with the same breath, the silenced little gun in his right hand whispered its deadly little spat.

The big man backed against the door tottered forward and fell on his face. The little man suddenly began yelling and wrenching to get away from the light switch.

He stopped after one agonizing move, however. The knife had pinned his hand squarely to the wood panel, and Ike’s edges were razor-sharp. Every move cut deeper.

The little man still had his automatic in his other hand. Realization of this cut through his pain and he began pumping shots at Benson as fast as he could.

The Avenger had faded down behind the desk before the first shot roared out. He slid forward on hands and knees beyond the right corner of the desk, low down, and snapped one more shot.

This time he didn’t shoot to crease. That shot, hitting the top of the skull just deep enough to knock a man out, but not deeply enough to kill, required a target a little more quiet than the jumping, yelling gunman. Benson shot for a larger spot, the man’s gun hand.

The automatic spanged out of the gunman’s fingers, and then there was silence.

Benson stepped over to him and drew the knife out with a hard, swift jerk that brought a scream from the man’s lips. Then the fellow stood shivering, with blood streaming from his left hand, and the fingers of his right wrenched at crazy angles where the gun had been torn from them.

“Who are you?” said Benson, voice as expressionless as that terrible, dead face of his.

The man, shivering, terrified, was yet stubbornly silent.

“You came here to kill Groman, of course. And it’s not the first attempt. Why?”

Still the man was silent, in agony, but retaining his stubbornness.

Benson’s hands dipped swiftly into the man’s pockets. But the gunman had prepared for trouble. There were no identifying papers of any kind on him.

But in his right-hand coat pocket was a package of razor blades.

Benson stared at the package with blazing eyes.