Benson had reached slowly up and caught the flanges of the anchor at the bow, after the crew had raised it when the small boat was swung up. He had hung there while the cruiser made for the open sea, taking a good long time, so that his clothes would dry a bit and not betray him by dripping too much when finally he did come aboard.
Then the fight had broken out, and the sounds indicated a disturbance in which he should be able to get aboard without being observed.
Over the low rail his face could be seen, calm, crowded by the thick, black hair. His eyes were like narrowed chips of stainless steel. Then he was lying on the forward deck with the low front of the cabin hiding his lithe body.
On the afterdeck, the fight was, of course, once more going against Shan. He wanted to fight the leader alone, but naturally the gang wasn’t permitting that. And no man can face, bare-handed, odds of eleven to one.
Shan was bare-handed, now. A man with a broken nose and only half an ear had kicked the blade from Shan’s fingers when he overreached the leader and stabbed only empty air beyond the other’s shoulder.
The knife lay along the rail near the stern, glittering neglectedly as the men circled to get Shan without accidentally getting their chief first.
It was at this moment that the light rayed on.
The thing could not have been timed worse for The Avenger. He was crouched on the top of the cabin, making his way toward a boat swung between its davits. The boat had been covered with taut canvas, and he intended to get in it and lie hidden till the cruise, whatever its destination, was over.
But now this searchlight glared out, and squarely in its blazing white circle was Dick Benson.
He crouched there, frozen into immobility. And two of the men on the rear deck yelled. At the same time, still another dark-skinned, grinning murderer came from the cabin itself.
There had been a man at the wheel during all this. He had seen the figure rise over the bow, had watched through a darkened pane while Dick climbed to the cabin’s top, and then had switched on the searchlight. With the wheel hooked to keep the boat on its course, he joined the others.
Half the gang turned toward Benson. But then Benson wasn’t there any more.
One swift leap had taken him back where he came from, on the foredeck, where just his pale, deadly eyes showed over the cabin’s top. He took out Mike, the little silenced .22. And into his left hand slid Ike, the tiny gun’s companion in war.
Ike had been holstered below The Avenger’s left knee. It was a small throwing knife, blade-heavy, with a hollow tube for a handle. The point could have compared with the point of any needle, and you could shave with either razor edge. With it Benson could pin a fly to a wall twenty feet away.
The Avenger leveled Mike for a shot. And the leader’s voice cracked out.
“Wait! Let the man alone. It is only this one we fight.” The words ended in a yell, in some choice Arabic profanity, and then came the order: “Get this dog. But quietly.”
Blood streamed from a gash on the right side of the leader’s throat. In the distraction of Benson’s appearance, Shan had managed to get his knife from its resting place near the rail. He had made one last attempt on the leader’s life. The knife barely missed the big vein in the man’s throat when he frantically jerked aside from Shan’s rush.
It was literally a last attempt.
The men had fought to overpower Shan before. They waded in with knives and clubs. Shan kicked one in the jaw in a manner suggesting a broken neck, but then it was over. He fell with half a dozen blades in his body, and with his head clubbed almost out of human semblance!
The leader pressed a handkerchief to his bleeding neck and stepped over the dead man toward the cabin.
“Come aft,” he called in English to The Avenger. “You may keep your weapons. We have no quarrel with you — unless you were working for our enemy, here.”
Benson, not unnaturally, stayed where he was, cold eyes expressionless, features emotionless in the face of danger.
“You might as well come aft,” said the man, without apparent anger. “If you jump overboard, we can run you down or shoot you. If you put up a fight, eventually we can overpower you.”
The Avenger made no move to holster Mike and Ike, although the logic of what the man said was apparent. Benson had another weapon with him: small glass capsules of a powerful anesthetizing gas of MacMurdie’s devising. But the gas would be futile, used on the open deck of a boat at sea. The fumes would be blown away before the men were even made groggy by it.
“You may not have a quarrel with me,” came Dick’s voice, calm, even, icy. “But you would have an excellent reason for not wanting me to live. I have just seen your crew stab and club a man to death.”
“You have,” said the leader. “But you did not see a murder, as you are probably thinking you did.” He dabbed at his neck. “My men killed him before he could kill me. And they killed no honest man, but a criminal and an imposter.”
“Imposter?” repeated The Avenger, tonelessly.
“Yes. That man claimed to be Shan Haygar, of the Turkish Haygars. He was not. I am Shan Haygar!”
The other men were listening, some intently, showing that they understood English, some indifferently, indicating that it was an unknown tongue to them.
The Avenger holstered Mike and Ike.
If it occurred to him that these Haygars were about the hardest people to put a finger on that the world had ever seen, his eyes gave no sign of it. Haygar, Haygar, who’s a Haygar? It seemed as if dozens of people were running around calling themselves by that name, and then getting bumped off by other dozens insisting that they were genuine and the first ones frauds.
Benson went forward over the cabin’s top. It was quite true that, with a dozen men against him and no chance to use any of the weird devices he carried with him to fight crime, he was trapped. And even if he could have fought free, his main purpose of being aboard — to see where the boat was bound for — would be hopelessly frustrated.
While The Avenger was approaching, the leader was bent over the dead man with his hands flying over his stark form. He straightened up, and there was a glint as light touched a gold medallion in his dark hand.
He smiled at Benson.
“It looks pretty grisly, doesn’t it?” he said. “But believe me, justice has been done. And to show you how firmly I am convinced of that, I am now going to radio the harbor police.”
He stood aside, wordlessly taking it for granted that Dick would jump down beside him.
“Will you come into the cabin with me?”
Without waiting for an answer, he ducked and strode into the cabin. And Benson, not seeming to move swiftly, and yet covering space like flowing light, leaped featherlike to the deck and strode into the cabin.
It was the sort of thing he had waited for.
In that enclosed cabin with the man, he could use one of the glass capsules, if necessary, or capture him and hold him as hostage.
Benson stopped abruptly just inside the threshold. His icy eyes widened a little at the sight presenting itself.
Four men lay in there, bound and stacked like cord-wood. They glared at the man in front of Benson and strained wildly at their bonds.
Heavy arms encircled The Avenger from the rear, and the leader whirled and got him from the front.
For once, the man with the calm face and the thick shock of coal-black hair had been outmaneuvered. For a fraction of a second, all his attention had been riveted on the unexpected sight of the four bound men. And the leader of this crew of cutthroats had looked forward to that fraction of a second, counted on it, and stood ready to utilize it.