“Didn’t jump!” gasped the man. “Ghost led me to turret. Said… ‘Lead me to that… which I desire—’ ”
The lips stopped while tortured breath panted out. Then:
“ ‘That which I desire’… led me to death… instead—”
That was all. The eyes closed and the words stopped.
“He’s done for,” said Mac to Smitty. “He might live for hours like this, but we could never move him. The least jar to that broken spine might be fatal—”
The end came even as he spoke.
Evidently a paroxysm of unendurable pain swooped on Shan Haygar, for he twisted convulsively on the ground. The convulsive move stopped; then he screamed and died.
He had killed himself with that uncontrollable spasm.
The big front door opened as Mac and Smitty and Benson reached it. Light streamed out, silhouetting the huge figure of their host.
The fat man stood blinking and looking sleepy as they entered the hallway.
“What’s all the commotion?” he asked. “There have been yells outside and the sound of this door banging. And, just now, there was another scream. What—”
“Two of your cousins are dead!” said Dick.
“What?” exclaimed the fat man.
“Somebody shot Sharnoff with an arrow,” blurted the giant Smitty. “And either a little before or a little after that, somebody led Shan Haygar to the top of one of the turrets by a ruse and shoved him over. He broke his back when he landed.”
The gross owner of the island didn’t blink. He just stood there, staring with heavy-lidded eyes at the three who had come in out of the night.
“I will go with my servant and bring the two in,” he said at last. And that was all. He faced the stairs.
“Morgan!” It was unnecessary to call twice.
The servant had evidently been on his way down. He appeared at the upper landing, looking hastily dressed, and came on down as fast as uncertain legs would carry him.
He stared fearfully at The Avenger, then turned quickly away again. He went out the front door with his hulking, phlegmatic master.
“Shan dead,” said Smitty somberly. “Sharnoff dead. That leaves only Carmella and Goram of the once-great and once-numerous Haygar family.”
“My bet is that Goram killed those two,” ventured Mac, looking sideways at The Avenger as he spoke.
“Well, they certainly didn’t kill each other,” was Smitty’s retort. He stared at Dick, too.
But Dick Benson did not have much to say at the moment, it seemed. He only said, “Back upstairs. Smitty, your room is next to the girls’ room. Keep a sharp watch. As you have said, of all the owners of the gold medallions only Carmella and our host are left alive. I would not like to be Carmella at this moment.”
Smitty went upstairs in a hurry, not so much because of danger to Carmella — though of course that entered his thoughts, too — but because of accompanying danger to Nellie.
Where the five-foot-nothing blonde was concerned, Smitty was a three-hundred-pound mother elephant.
He tapped on the girls’ door before opening his own. It was Nellie who poked her pretty golden head out.
“Smitty! I was waiting for some news. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Carmella, I’d have gone out and dug up my own news! What happened? We heard screams.”
“Sharnoff and Shan,” said the giant somberly, “have met with — accidents.”
In the room behind Nellie, he heard Carmella gasp.
“Don’t go out of here for any reason whatever,” Smitty said. “And don’t open the door to any one but one of us. Promise?”
“I won’t open the door for any human being but you,” promised Nellie.
She didn’t know how that promise was going to fail to bind her, a little later.
“Good night, then. Try to get some sleep.”
Smitty went next door to his own room, with some of his fears laid at rest. At a single word from Nellie, he could be there. He could hear a call easily through the wall.
Even knowing Nellie as well as he did, it did not occur to him that there might not be a call to hear!
CHAPTER XVI
From the Tomb!
The two girls had been far from sleeping when Smitty knocked. They were even farther from it afterward.
Carmella was scared to death but kept it under fair control, helped by an aristocratic ancestry and a goodly amount of personal fortitude.
Nellie was consumed by curiosity and a baffled anger that this confounded brunette who had caused them so much trouble didn’t seem disposed to spread knowledge.
After Smitty left, she tried to get information from Carmella by apparently thinking aloud to herself, meanwhile looking sideways at her roommate once in a while to see if any of her shrewd guesses hit home.
“Let’s see,” she said, “five members of your family came to this country, one after another, after being dispossessed in their own, from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Turkey, and Russia. Each had a gold medallion, proving that he really represented the Haygar family.
“There was some murdering done over Harlik Haygar’s gold disk, and it finally wound up in von Bolen’s pocket — after Mr. Benson had had a murder charge thrown at him by Shan Haygar. Incidentally, you have sweet cousins, Carmella.”
The dark girl stirred as if in protest, but said no word.
“You were kidnapped as you phoned us for help. Mr. Benson rescued you and recovered your medallion from a thug who had swallowed it for safekeeping. The gold medal, you say, is only a keepsake, with only a sentimental value.”
Carmella’s lips were tight and her face as expressionless as she could make it.
“All of you Haygars met here at the island of still another cousin, the last member of the American branch of the family,” Nellie went on. “The island has trenches all over it as if Goram means to fight a war.”
There was a noticeable glint in Carmella’s dark eyes at mention of the trenches, but her mouth remained stubbornly closed.
“It seems as if Sharnoff came ahead of time with his gang, and hid them,” mused Nellie, eyes sharp. “Shan followed, and he had a gang, too. There really was a war, though the trenches didn’t play a part because the war was at the dock. Then a dynamite trap was sprung — set by Goram to protect himself against just such invasion — and the two gangs were wiped out. But Sharnoff and Shan got clear.
“And this Shan, now — he was interesting. He was not the original Shan. That one, the first one, was captured and killed by our present Shan, who claimed he was an impostor. And yet the first one had the medal. How would you know, if a person had a medal, whether he was an impostor or not?”
There was still no answer. Nellie went doggedly on.
“Our little crew reached here and was almost wiped out, too. But now, all is sweetness and light as far as Goram is concerned. He put everybody up for the night, and is the perfect host. However, three more died in this little island paradise: von Bolen, Shan, and Sharnoff.”
Carmella was looking at her blood-red nails in the dim light of the room. Nellie could have choked her.
“A young army of men, dead — fighting, murdering, lying, framing people into prison! All, apparently, for the golden disks! Yet everybody insists that they have no value other than a sentimental one!”
“You can see how true that must be,” murmured Carmella. “If one of the medallions were melted down, there wouldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-five of your dollars’ worth of gold in it,”
“But they could mean something,” said Nellie, exasperated.
Carmella shrugged. “It is hard to see what. In each country, our family has lost all estates and possessions. That is a matter of record.”
“Could I see your medallion?” asked Nellie, biting back a few choice, impulsive remarks.