The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring (20 page)

“So the glass lid was really a large transmitter, amplifying words Moen spoke into that little set of his, at a distance,” said Smitty.

“That’s right. At the same time, along the edges of the lid were little pouches of fine black powder that could be released by radio when desired. This powder made the cabinet seem black and empty when you looked within and did not see the mummy or mummy case.”

They had all reached the door. But The Avenger did not pass through and into the sound part of the building. Not yet. He had herded the others to safety, but had one more thing to do himself.

He began climbing down into the gruesome wreckage in the basement.

“Chief!” Smitty at last exclaimed. “What—”

“The Taros relics,” said Benson. “I think I know where they are.”

He reached the bottom. No living hand was raised to stay his progress down there. Not one of the crushed shapes moved.

The Avenger went to where the cabinet of Taros’ son’s mummy was smashed and its occupant unceremoniously spilled out.

“There was dust behind the mummy’s head when I looked in the case,” said Benson. “As if that head had been touched by someone’s hand before my own.”

He picked up the head of the thing. The skull crumbled a bit in his hands, but stayed whole. He tilted it.

The Amulets of Taros slid out into his fingers. All the charms of Taros save the ring—which was on the hand of the dead Moen. The skull had been Moen’s cache.

The Avenger joined them in the next room.

The Taros relics had been recovered, and Caine and his son saved. Anna Lees, Shaw, Snead, Marlowe, Blessing—all would be all right with injections of a drug Benson had at Sixteenth Street, in the marvelous small case carrying his traveling laboratory. Shaw was technically a murderer, but actually he had been only an unwitting weapon in the hands of the real killer, Moen. So no one would ever know from The Avenger what Shaw had really done in his drugged trances.

Everything ended neatly. The shrewd killer behind the affair of the Taros relics dead, and his gangsters with him, by his own hand. It was a complete success.

But no triumph showed on The Avenger’s dead, emotionless face or in his icy, colorless eyes. It was only one more step on his pilgrimage of vengeance against the underworld. There would be no personal triumph for Benson—only the urge to annihilate another supercrook, and another, till at length he should find the one who was too clever even for him.

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