Cracks spread all through it, from foundation to turrets as they stared. And then the walls collapsed!
The walls came down very curiously indeed. So oddly that everyone of them noted it, at least subconsciously, even at such a moment.
The walls were of brick and should have broken into a million fragments, with stray bricks flying every which way. And they did not. Instead of breaking, the walls bent! They fell to the ground, not in a heap, but in cohesive sections each of which was many feet square.
But, regardless of manner, fall they did. The house of Haygar literally had disappeared, as figuratively the House of Haygar had. That was why the fat man had maneuvered to get back into the house alone. It was not to get at Carmella, but to set a time switch of some kind that would bring the house down on all of them at once. Smitty remembered the wire exposed in the cellar wall next to the dead man’s bones. All the foundations, tunneled every few feet in a search for treasure, must have been studded with explosives when the concrete was replaced, so that the fat man could destroy the building whenever he felt too hard pressed by enemies.
“Curious,” Dick Benson said calmly. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a person with treasure in mind has only one thought: to dig for it.”
Carmella stared wildly at him. She was almost over the edge of hysteria, but the calm tone was helpful. Nellie was nearly as shaken, but had a much better grip on her nerves. The leaping flames from the ruins threw red on their faces.
“The fake Goram Haygar dug for the treasure he knew was somewhere on the island,” The Avenger said. “It never occurred to him that it was, in a manner of speaking, right out in plain sight — in the exposed walls of the house itself.”
“The walls?” said Mac.
“Yes! You saw how they fell, with the bricks clinging together in large sections, and those sections bending rather than breaking. Come, I’ll show you the reason for that.”
The group went back to the ruins, as close as the flame would allow. A large section of the wall of the right-hand turret had been flung far in its fall. In looking at it, they saw what Benson had meant.
The wall was made of a double layer of brick, with a space between about four inches wide. And that entire inner space, the whole inner wall sandwiched in between brick layers, was of gold!
The Avenger knelt, apparently to look more closely. His right hand touched the calf of his right leg.
“As each branch of the international Haygar clan sent a great gold shipment to America ahead of the political storm foreseen in its own country,” he said, “old Wendell Haygar secretly melted the bullion and poured it between the outer and inner brick walls of a new wing added to this house. Then he had a medallion made showing that wing, the amount of gold represented, and the date received. To that branch of the family was sent the medal, as a sort of deed to that amount of gold and as an identification disk for the bearer. Many of the clan had never seen the others and didn’t know them by sight.
“It was a positive method of identifying gold hoards with medallions, since each metal would have precisely the same ring, and precisely the same analysis, as the bigger bulk from which it was taken. Thus, no forged disk could ever go undetected. But it was a very poor method of identifying the bearer of the coin. Because anyone getting hold of a medal could claim to be the member of the Haygar family whose initials were on it. Could and did! Four out of five medal-bearers who got through to the island were impostors, and no one will ever know how many other impostors were murdered by those four before the medals came into their hands.”
“Wait a minute!” gasped Nellie. “You say the amount of gold and the date received here were lettered on the disks. Carmella’s, for instance, has 19 and then 33 on it. The 33 would probably be the date. You mean the 19 has to do with the amount?”
“That’s right,” said Benson, pale eyes going to the Spanish girl’s face. “Nineteen tons of gold, received in 1933.”
“Tons?” said Nellie faintly.
“Tons,” said The Avenger. “The other disks call for quantities ranging from that up to thirty tons. Isn’t that right, Carmella?”
Carmella was still shivering, but was fairly calm, now. She nodded.
“Yes, that is right. You have guessed everything. There is no use trying to conceal things from you any more.”
“In addition,” said Benson, “there must be some of old Wendell’s wealth here. It could not have evaporated as completely as it seemed — to the point, indeed, of leaving him in absolute poverty in a decaying estate. Perhaps the side or rear walls are his. In any event, there must be close to a quarter of a billion dollars here — the entire wealth of a family almost the equal of the Rothschilds. And it is all yours, Carmella—”
Something like a human tank waddled around a blazing, head-high clump of debris to their left. A last flare of lightning whitened the red glare that illuminated the big bulk.
It was the phony Goram Haygar. In his hands was a submachine gun, and in his stone-dull eyes was coldly triumphant murder!
Smitty rumbled an exclamation of complete disgust. He had felt safe because of the clearing around the debris. He had thought it impossible for the gross fat man to get near them unseen. It hadn’t occurred to him, or apparently to any of the others, that the hulking killer had ducked to left or right on leaving the front door, instead of going straight ahead, and that as a result he had been nearer the ruins than they, when the explosion occurred.
But it seemed he had tricked them in this way, and had hidden to one side of a blazing barricade till they came within a few feet of his gun.
Mac and Smitty and The Avenger stayed stone still. Nellie was foolhardy enough to let her hand drop an inch toward her belt. The muzzle of the submachine gun swayed a very little. Her hand froze.
The Avenger was still on one knee, hands on the ground to support his weight. The fat man grinned coldly at his tense, strained position, which he was aware The Avenger knew without words he’d better keep if he didn’t want to be instantly annihilated.
“I heard your neat explanations,” the fat man said. “They sound pretty correct, in the main. The location of the gold is particularly interesting. I should have thought of the upper walls myself, but I was too intent on looking underground. If I’d known it was the walls, I would have blown up the place long ago.”
They all stared, rigid, breathless, at the death represented by the machine gun. Whether it would speak at once or would delay its deadly chatter a few more seconds, there was no telling.
It seemed there was to be a delay. Apparently, it gave the hulking murderer a fine sense of power to hold them moveless here, and he didn’t want to lose the pleasure too soon.
“You were wrong in only one particular,” the fat man went on to Benson. “That was in saying the gold belongs to Carmella. It doesn’t. It belongs to me — as soon as I rid myself of a few witnesses, as I have rid myself of intruders before now.”
Smitty and Mac glanced swiftly at Dick Benson.
There was only one thing to do. That was for all to rush at once. Certainly most of them would die before they could get to the gun. Probably all of them would. But such a course was better than simply staying still and taking it.
So they flicked a glance at the man who was chief, to get his imperceptible nod that should start them all jumping forward at the same instant.
And they saw that The Avenger was staring past the fat man instead of at him. Staring with agate eyes that seemed to have little lights smoldering behind them.
Behind the gross killer, another figure had appeared from around the blazing ruins and was creeping close. And at sight of this, Mac and Smitty breathed raggedly and felt their jaws go slack in astonishment.