The door of Harlik Haygar’s apartment was opened in about a minute and a half.
“So this is why the bell wasn’t answered,” said The Avenger, voice as glacial as his pale eyes.
Did Dick Benson have a psychic sixth sense, whispering to him facts that other people must first see before they knew about them? Some people thought so; and in this case it almost looked to be true.
For death was the reason why the bell had not been answered, and it seemed as if The Avenger must have sensed that in the vestibule and broken in to verify it.
On the floor not far from the door lay a man such as Shan Haygar had described: elderly, thin, spidery-looking. He had been shot in the side of the head and lay with weak-looking blue eyes wide and blood dabbling his thin gray hair.
Nothing in the place, from the orderly appearance of it, had been touched.
Shan’s face had fallen.
“We’re too late,” he mourned. “Someone has been here first. The medallion will be gone.”
“We will search and make sure,” said Benson. It was eerie to observe the expressionlessness of that calm face in the presence of murder. In places where other men would register horror or fear or hysterical anger, Benson continued to hold perfect control over his emotions.
The Avenger searched the three small rooms of the apartment.
There is a science to searching a place, as any cop can tell you, particularly when the article searched for is as small as a quarter. It was an eye-opening thing to watch the swift efficiency with which Dick went over the place. In fifteen minutes it was possible to say absolutely surely that the gold disk Shan wanted was not there.
“What do you think we should do now?” asked Benson, still with that curious pliancy to another man’s suggestion.
Shan bit his lips and looked frightened and uncertain.
“Er — nothing. This murder… Horrible! I’m going to drop the whole affair.”
“The police should be notified,” said Benson. “This is murder.”
Shan shook his head urgently.
“As I’ve said, I don’t dare reveal my identity. I have powerful enemies. It would mean my death. Surely we can just drop this?”
He laid his hand on Benson’s steel-cable arm.
“I wanted my keepsake back. I came to you for help, and you kindly granted it. But now we find it is too late. Heaven knows who has the gold disk, now. It is gone beyond recall. Accept my thanks — and forget the rest.”
“There is still a murdered man to report.”
Shan sighed.
“Very well, then…”
The two of them left, Shan in the rear. At the curb, Shan opened the right door of the coupé and got in. His hand fumbled in the side pocket of the door.
Benson went around to get in behind the wheel. Shan jerked open the door, when the car was between the two, and leaped out. Like a streak of dark light he was gone up the street.
“Stop!” Benson cried. He took a few steps after the running man and then halted.
That would have puzzled his aides, too. The man who could beat The Avenger in a footrace probably didn’t live. And yet he didn’t pursue. He stood a moment on the sidewalk, then got into the coupé and drove off.
Shan, however, did not go far. He was back again before the car had gone four blocks. Back and entering that building again.
When his hand had fumbled in the car’s pocket, it had emerged with a glove. He examined it, now, and was glad to see that it was a unique glove indeed. It was made of some rough fabric, very strong, with what seemed to be fine wire woven through the stuff.
He did not know that it was asbestos and that with it The Avenger could plunge his hand into the heart of the hottest fire to retrieve objects there. All he knew was that there probably wasn’t another glove in the city like it. Which was even more than he had dared hope for.
Shan went back into the building and up to the dead man’s apartment.
He did this easily because of a simple precaution he had taken on the way down. He had put part of a match folder in the apartment door and again in the vestibule door, to keep the locks from clicking completely closed when the doors were shut.
They opened now for him at a touch.
Shan took the glove and placed it near the dead man’s body, so that the bloody coat half hid it. Then he left the building a second time, speedily, quietly. And this time he didn’t bother to keep the locks from closing.
Shan had had a coldly logical thought a few hours ago.
He wanted a gold medallion that was in the possession of another. The old boy who owned it was a tough customer. Therefore, he would get the aid of an even tougher one. It ought to be a cinch to go to The Avenger — known as a person who gave help to those in need — misrepresent a few facts, and have him be the cat’s-paw who got the gold coin.
The Avenger was unsurpassed when it came to handling tough guys and was without parallel in searching premises. The old fellow calling himself Harlik Haygar would come through with the medallion, all right.
Well, he’d enlisted Benson’s powerful aid with almost ridiculous ease and then gone with him to find the old guy dead. Which ended that.
So then Shan Haygar had had another coldly logical thought.
The Avenger’s abilities as an investigator, were of no further use to him in a search for the medal. But Benson might want to go on in the business of the gold disk and get to be a dangerous nuisance. Or he might insist that Shan give himself up to the police for long and exhaustive questioning. Either was not to Shan’s liking. So it had occurred to him to put the lid on The Avenger at once!
If Benson could be linked definitely to murder, even his reputation would not save him from detention, if not actually from a murder trial. He would be nicely out of the way for quite a while.
The linking, Shan thought, had now been done. At least, it would be as soon as he took the final, easy step.
He entered a phone booth and called police headquarters.
“A man named Harlik Haygar has just been murdered in Apartment 4b—” he gave the address, talking in a disguised tone. “I have reason to believe he was murdered by Richard Benson, known to many as The Avenger. I say this because I saw Mr. Benson drive up in his coupé, saw the light in Harlik Haygar’s apartment go off after something that sounded like a gunshot, and then went up to find the man dead. Benson drove rapidly away in spite of the fact that I called after him.”
“Wait a minute!” came the voice of the police sergeant at the other end of the line. “Who is this? Anybody accusing a man like Benson—”
Shan hung up, with a thin smile on his lips.
CHAPTER VII
Jailed for Murder
Benson had hardly gotten down the ramp at Bleek Street and into the basement garage when Smitty ran up to him.
“Chief! I’ve been waiting for you. We just got a call that you were to be held for murder. The tip came from Sergeant Marcy at headquarters.”
The Avenger’s pale eyes were as expressionless as glacial ice, and with much the same sheen.
“Mark Marcy down for compensation,” he said quietly. “A friend with such implicit faith as Marcy seems to have in me is worth rewarding.”
“But what’s this goofy murder charge about?” insisted Smitty.
“The man Shan Haygar and I went to call on is dead,” said Benson. “Shot through the head.”
“So you’re accused of it! But that’s ridiculous. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does,” said Benson, colorless eyes glinting. “Just a minute. I saw Shan fumbling at the pocket of the car—”
His hand, not large but powerful as steel, dipped into the pocket. It came out with a glove. One glove.
“I see,” said The Avenger.