By giving up just a few minutes of his time to hammer home the murder frame started by the glove, he had put The Avenger on ice for an indefinite number of days. Certainly for a time amply long enough for him to do what he pleased in the affair of the golden disks.
He would be untroubled now by any apprehensions of interference by Benson. The police? He scarcely thought twice about them.
He walked in a leisurely fashion toward a cheap rented car, parked half a block away.
The photographer who had been fooling with his camera, head down, as he made his exit, threw flashlight kit and camera into a trash box and followed.
Camera and kit were dummies, stage props.
The eyes of this man, as his head went up a little, were seen to be pale, deadly. His hair was thick and black.
The Avenger had thousands of friends in all walks of life. Among them were many actor friends.
Now, one of those friends, with thin colorless eye-cups over his own blue eyes, and with a heavy black wig pulled over his own brown hair, and with a face made up with putty and grease paint, was in a jail cell being addressed as Richard Benson.
In the meantime Benson, himself, trailed Shan Haygar, having by this somewhat elaborate process thrown the man completely off his guard.
CHAPTER VIII
Double Kidnap
Shan didn’t seem to be in any hurry. In fact, he gave the impression of a man killing time. He drove slowly south and east till he came to a hotel that was little more than a flophouse. He went in, and Benson waited in the cab he had picked up a little way from police headquarters.
There wasn’t any rear entrance to the hotel; so The Avenger passed several hours quite calmly, sure of his man. And eventually, with dawn not far away, Shan came out again.
He had a suitcase with him, now; he was evidently leaving the city. He got into the car again and resumed his progress south and east. The river eventually stopped him.
There, Shan went gingerly out almost to the end of a dock. Two hundred yards out in the river a boat swung with riding lights all too dim in the darkness. From their position, the boat was a fairly large one, probably of the cruiser type.
Leaning over the side of the dock, Shan called a name softly. In a moment a head showed over the massive wooden stringers.
Shan talked for a moment, then handed down the suitcase and bent to climb down after it. There was a ladder there, it seemed.
Meanwhile, at right and left, more heads showed. There were two at the right and three at the left. These were furtive, and their owners crawled over the stringers like snakes. They leaped toward Shan!
The fight that followed was as fierce as it was short and relatively silent.
Shan had been crouching down when they jumped him. But far from allowing that to be a handicap, he made it a help. He shot upward with all the power of his bent thighs, and his head came up under a man’s jaw.
The man staggered back six steps and sat down. Then he went farther and lay down. And stayed there. He was knocked so cold it would be some time before he came to.
One of the others struck at Shan with a thing so short and unobtrusive that it couldn’t be seen in his fist. A sap. Another of the remaining four got his hands around Shan’s throat in a good, homey grip.
Shan ducked the blackjack and brought his knee into the strangler’s stomach.
The man’s breath whooshed out, and he doubled up and hugged himself with agonized arms while he fought for breath. Shan polished him off with a blow to the jaw.
Three against one now. And Shan was fighting like a wildcat — fighting the way a man fights when he sees death as the price of defeat.
One of the three got Shan down by lunging low against his legs. Shan brought his hand down on the back of the man’s neck in a rabbit punch, dazing him for a moment. The boot of another of the three cracked against Shan’s ear.
Shan was nearly stopped by that one, but he had sense enough left to grab the ankle over the heavy shoe and pull. There was a splash. The kicker was now kicking in the water.
Two to one. Admire Shan or not, you had to admit that he was putting up a vicious fight. But it was just about over.
The man to whom he had handed the suitcase came back up over the edge of the dock. It was complete treachery, for Shan had obviously trusted the fellow.
He came back over the stringer while Shan was looking the other way. There was a club in his hand. He walked up to Shan and socked him in the back of the head.
Then he lowered him into the boat.
It was almost as big as a lifeboat, instead of being a standard small dinghy. Besides Shan, the other five men, one still as unconscious as if dead, were crowded in. Then the boat pulled for the cruiser swinging idly out in the river.
The cruiser weighed anchor and split the pre-dawn darkness on its way to the open sea.
It was a boat built more for solidity than swank. It made about fourteen knots, was broad of beam, and was about sixty feet over all. There was a big cabin, a small deck forward, and a larger deck aft. Four men joined the occupants of the small boat on this afterdeck.
All ten of the men could, now, in the dimness of the running lights, be seen to be Oriental in type. There were several Arabs, several with Mongol cheekbones and eye-pits, and the rest with a Eurasian blend of many races.
But there was one thing all had in common. They looked as though they’d murder a blind cripple for a ten-cent piece.
From the cabin came still another man. This one was a cut above the crew. He was tall, fairly well-dressed, with an air of authority. He went to where Shan lay, beside the fellow whose jaw he had butted with his head.
He stood looking down for several moments, then looked at the nearest crew member.
“Bind him,” he said in Arabic. “Make sure the dog can not slip free.”
The man nodded. The tall leader turned.
And Shan leaped.
The man who had lied The Avenger into a murderer’s cell may have still been unconscious when he was carried aboard. He had been faking unconsciousness for some time while he lay there. He lit into the leader of this band with almost the ferocity and freshness he had displayed on the dock.
He seemed to know this man and to hate him as one man seldom hates another.
There was an insanity of rage in his dark eyes as he brought down a knife that the crew had carelessly neglected to take from his limp body. His mouth writhed like a thin red serpent in his distorted face.
The other man seemed almost as hate-filled. He ducked forward; the blade whistled down over his shoulder, and he caught Shan’s right arm. He brought the arm down hard over his upflung knee, as a person attempts to break a tough stick of wood.
Shan’s arm would have been broken like a stick, if he had not managed to jerk it half loose from the other’s grip before the vicious move could be completed.
Meanwhile, with the eyes of all busy with the fiercely fighting two, a hand came slowly up over the rail at the bow. It was not a large hand, but it gave an impression of being made of pale steel. Just the hand would have identified the owner to a great many people who had been unfortunate enough to feel its strength.
The Avenger had slid into the water and started swimming silently out to the cruiser the moment Shan handed his suitcase down, back at the dock.
The riding lights of the boat were the only ones around.
The cruiser was bound to be Shan’s destination; so Benson had decided to share with him his ride out to sea.
From the water he had stared back, with the pale eyes that could see so much better in darkness than those of most men, and he had caught glimpses of the fight. That was all right, too. There were few things that left The Avenger more indifferent than the murderous fighting of crooks among themselves. The more they killed each other off, the better he liked it. And regardless of the outcome, the survivors would almost certainly wind up in the cruiser.