The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring (13 page)

There was one person to call when Nellie was in danger. One person who became a raging, one-man landslide in her defense.

The giant, Smitty.

Josh whispered into the set. “Smitty. This is Josh. Emergency. Smitty!”

There was no answer. Josh had lain unconscious too long. Too late now for even the giant to help. But Josh tried again.

“Smitty! Help—Braintree Museum—Nellie—”

The high priest had heard, over the yards between where Josh lay and the doorway. He turned, then whirled more hastily toward the girl and raised the knife again.

The keen copper blade flashed toward Nellie’s white, taut throat!

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.

All reports on Snead, Shaw, Blessing and Marlowe had given them shining reputations. Only Shaw had a questionable spot. He was a little ruthless in his acquisition of Egyptiana. Most collectors tie a can to ordinary ethics and emotions when they go after coveted objects. But Shaw was apparently more keen and ruthless than most.

However, that trait alone was not too serious in the general picture. Like the others, it could be said about him that he was indubitably a good example of decent citizen getting along in a reasonably honest business with as little hurt as possible to others.

Benson’s glacial, deadly eyes were brooding as he went to the directors of Braintree in quest of more information. Ever more information.

Of the three, Evans and Spencer and Moen, only Moen, it seemed, was sharp enough to be experiencing a beginning feel of uneasiness about the Taros amulets.

“How is it,” said the husky ex-football player, “that you are still in Washington, Mr. Benson? And still asking questions now and then that bear on the Taros relics? It is well known that you are a busy man. How is it that you are staying so long on this mere invitation to come down and give us your opinion on the authenticity of the amulets and the Ring of Power?”

The Avenger’s icy eyes remained as cold and emotionless as his paralyzed, death-mask face.

“I am fairly well versed in crime procedures,” he said quietly. “The time to fight crime is before it has been committed. The Taros relics are a tempting morsel to a certain kind of criminal. I am trying to plug possible loopholes before they are opened up.”

Moen stared, then shrugged.

“Loopholes? Such as what?”

“One is represented by such collectors as Farnum Shaw.”

Moen looked less impatient at that.

“Yes, Shaw would do things for rare Egyptian items that he wouldn’t dream of doing in ordinary business. But I guess he hasn’t a chance here. The relics
are
perfectly all right, aren’t they?”

Benson still felt obligated to keep the loss of the priceless amulets secret, for Gunther Caine’s sake.

“They are being duly cherished,” he said smoothly. “Have you seen Shaw recently?”

“You can forget about Shaw,” said Moen brusquely. “After all, it’s fantastic that the man, a distinguished lawyer, would stoop to anything really criminal to get the Taros charms.”

That was all Benson could draw from the man.

Spencer, tall and fat, with his kewpie-doll face more severe than usual, whitewashed Shaw, too. And he showed no suspicion that anything might already have happened to the relics. But he presented another angle that made time pressing.

“Gunther had better turn those things over to the board, really,” he said peevishly. “I told you a while ago that he was so trusted by us that he could keep the things around to gloat over. But I meant any amount of time within reason. And this is beginning to be unreasonable. After all, the Taros charms were acquired for exhibition to the public, not just for Gunther’s private pleasure.”

“I’ll tell him what you said,” Benson assured the director evenly.

Spencer backed down a bit, chewing his upper lip in indecision.

“No—” he said slowly. “No, you needn’t do that. Gunther is a wealthy man. And a powerful man, I wouldn’t care to annoy him. And after all, I suppose it
is
all right—”

Evans, short and chubby, rubbed his hand over the fringe of hair around his monkish bald spot. He seemed completely neutral, about everything. Shaw was a good fellow and wouldn’t harm a fly, even for rare Egyptian objects. Gunther Caine was a prince and a saint, and could keep the relics as long as he chose, as far as Evans was concerned.

The Avenger stepped from Evans’ house, seeming to have drawn a blank all around—and the slight buzz of his belt radio made itself apparent. It was picked up by vibration, by the steely muscles of his abdomen, more than as actual sound.

Benson put tiny ear phones to his keen ears.

“Mac talkin’, Muster Benson. I’m at Senator Blessing’s house, as you orrrdered. I’ve been watchin’ the place closely, but I’ve a bad feelin’ that he has given me the slip.”

“What makes you think that?” said Benson, icy eyes narrowed to pale slits in his dead face.

“I’ve seen him at this and that window, from eight in the evening till about an hour ago. An’ after that—nothin’ at all. But the thing is, the last time I saw him was at a downstairs window with a dark shade drawn so I got only a silhouette. Either the senator was wearin’ a funny kind of dressin’ gown—or somethin’ like a priest’s robe.”

The Avenger reflected a moment.

“Stay there, Mac. If he is gone, we have no idea where, so there’s no way for you to follow him. If he isn’t, well, I still want him watched.”

“If he went out in the skurlie’s costume, there may be bad trouble brewin’,” argued Mac.

“True! But stay there.”

The Avenger’s face was as dead as ever, but his eyes expressed concern. His aides commanded everything he had in the way of loyalty.

He dialed Nellie and Josh, and got no answer. The giant Smitty was at the wheel of the car near him, so he was all right.

Benson went back to his temporary headquarters. He told Smitty to go to Blessings’ home and help Mac watch. Then the man with the death-mask face and the eyes like ice under a polar dawn, rigged up his tiny laboratory for an intricate experiment.

Because the experiment might have ruined the delicate instrument of Smitty’s invention if it were too close, he did something seldom done by any of the dauntless little band.

He took off his belt radio.

Thus The Avenger, bending pale-eyed over work that could scarcely have been duplicated in any of the great commercial laboratories, did not hear that single, despairing call from Josh.

It was one of those rare occasions where every radio seemed dead—save the one over which Josh had sent his anguished plea.

As long as Josh lived, the sacrifice scene in the reproduced Egyptian temple would live in his mind. And all he could do at the moment was watch in frozen horror. He was too far away to reach the victim in time to save her; and, anyhow, the odds against him were too great.

Three shapes, not men but
things,
and a fourth that was swatched in cerements of an ancient grave! What could one normal human do against such a force?

He could only watch, in a trance, while the high priest with the bald skull and the vulture beak brought his copper dagger down at the throat of Nellie Gray. That dagger which glittered with a dark gold gleam but which had been tempered to hold an edge as keen as any steel.

The knife plunged down—and there was a clang as it hit stone instead of soft white flesh.

Josh cried aloud with the swiftness of it. At one moment Nellie had been a limp bundle, helpless at the high priest’s feet. At the next, she was a writhing, lithe form a yard away and still rolling. She hadn’t been unconscious. Through the fringe of lowered lashes, she had watched the priest move, and gauged her movement at the last possible instant.

So the knife had swished four inches past her throat as she jerked her body away. And the priest had been off balance with the vicious blow so that he didn’t get to her till she had gotten to her feet.

Josh yelled. It was a battle call. His trance of sheer horror was broken. There was a chance to help her now, time to reach her side. He bounded over the stone floor.

One of the most ghastly things about these dread shapes of ancient death was their silence. The funereal chant was the only sound Josh had heard from them. They continued to be silent, wordless, now.

In savage soundlessness, they leaped.

The shapes might represent deathless, malevolent souls, but the bodies housing the souls were indubitably of flesh and could be touched. So Nellie touched them plenty!

Though scarcely five feet tall, and weighing little more than a hundred pounds, Nellie Gray could turn a man’s own strength against him so deftly, by jujitsu, that he never knew what happened.

The gaunt high priest stretched infuriated arms for her. Next moment the emaciated figure was staggering beyond the girl, brought up against a stone sarcophagus with an audible smack.

The other two priests—with the faces of Senator Blessing and Dr. Marlowe—got to her.

The first fell heavily as Nellie caught the priestly robe, deftly pulled, and guided his rush so that he tripped over her shapely right leg. But, after all, she was only one person. She couldn’t handle three.

The man with Marlowe’s face got her by the arms.

And then Josh arrived from the distance.

The Negro could fight like a black tiger when he had to. They might nickname him Sleepy, but there was nothing a slumbrous about him in a rough and tumble.

He slammed his fist home against the chest under a flying robe, felt the shape give ground. He heard a shrill sound, like a whistle, from the gaunt shape near the sarcophagus, and paid no attention. He started for that shape.

“Josh!”

It was Nellie’s agitated call. She had chanced to look at the doorway.

Josh turned, diverted from the high priest by the tone of her summons. He saw what had made her cry out.

The shrill wail of the high priest, like a lost soul calling to other lost souls, had been a signal, all right. In answer to it, a horde of white-clad figures were pouring into the Egyptian wing—from where, Josh could not guess.

These wore robes not quite as ornate as the three in the wing. Underlings in priestcraft, evidently. Neophytes. But there were at least a score of them, and they were more to be feared than the dread three because their bodies were those of younger men.

As silently as their superiors, they moved. They converged on Josh and Nellie.

Josh’s long arms were smashing out. His fists were like black hammers as he slowly retreated before a group of the silent attackers.

Nellie had thrown two of them, and was fighting in the grip of three more. It was curtains, and they both knew it.

From just outside the wing came a sudden, scarcely human bellow. The sound filled the great barracks of the museum as if a bull had broken loose in there. It swelled as the maker of it rushed closer.

“Smitty!” shouted Josh, with a relief singing in his heart that went beyond words to describe. True, he didn’t know what even the giant could do against such a horde. But just the presence of Smitty, where he hadn’t been even hoped for, was like a draft of cold water down a parched throat.

The bellowing resounded in the doorway. Then the hulking figure of Algernon Heathcote Smith could be seen there.

The entire silent crew had turned, still holding Nellie and Josh, but no longer trying to hurt them. Two dozen to one—but that one looked as invincible as a battleship as he paused in the doorway.

Smitty began walking toward the horde. He got to the second doorway, made of the four great pillars and the massive lintel brought stone by stone from Egypt.

Josh and Nellie, almost at the same instant, brought into play all their trained litheness and strength, and with a sudden explosion of effort ripped free from their captors.

They streaked to the threshold where Smitty hulked. After them, murderously aroused now, raced the whole fiendish crew of temple dwellers.

Smitty’s great, arms shot out. His vast hands smacked solidly against two of the four pillars. His shoulders compressed, then began slowly to swell to their full, enormous width—forcing his rigid arms out as they did so.