It was the figure of the man in the coffin. It was the corpse of Wendell Haygar, who had chosen to be placed in a crypt in his own estate rather than be normally buried—
Either that or a ghost of mist and shadow.
But in the right hand of the creeping thing was held a most material object. A knife! And as the figure stole ever closer to the fat man’s back, the knife raised inch by inch for a downward stroke.
A croaking moan came from Carmella’s lips.
The ghost they’d seen in the hall had been explained away as the fat man himself, in disguise. But here were both the fat man and the ghost. No explaining away that ghastly white figure, now!
The fat man heard the moan and saw the appalled expression in the girl’s dark eyes.
The trick most to be expected in such a situation was that some of this group would try to make him turn around on the pretext that someone was behind him. So the man only grinned coldly, while his finger tightened on the trigger.
Not till the final leap of the figure behind him did he start to turn. And then it was too late!
Carmella screamed, and Nellie cried out. The men stared with dilated eyes.
And the knife went home!
A roar came from the fat man like the bellow of a mortally hurt beast of the jungle. But it seemed he had vitality like that of a jungle beast, too.
A running man has been known to go on for fifteen feet after a bullet has lodged in his heart. With cold steel in his, the fat man dragged the gun around. Red flame lanced from its muzzle at the white figure, then went on for a second in a rising arc before dead fingers fell from the gun.
And if a corpse or a ghost cannot feel bullets, then this sheeted form was neither ghost nor corpse. For it lay writhing on the ground with red coming from its middle.
The Avenger slid Mike back into its holster.
Before the fat man had rounded the corner, Benson’s miraculous hearing had picked up the sound of a step. Kneeling and ostensibly looking at the gold, he had drawn the little silenced revolver so stealthily that even his own followers hadn’t known. And over the fat man’s head had hung that whispering menace all the time he had the machine gun on them.
But The Avenger had delayed till the last because of his tremendous desire never to kill with his own hands.
From a kneeling position, and without aiming, even he could not have suddenly snapped a shot at the fat murderer with any assurance of the eighth-inch accuracy that creased instead of killing. He could have hit the head, yes. But he had been delaying such outright execution—
And then the figure had appeared and made unnecessary the gamble of such a shot.
The others were crowding around the figure now and staring at the chalk-white, ghastly face. Benson joined them.
It was a person every one of them had almost forgotten existed, in the crowded last minutes.
“Morgan, the servant!” said Smitty.
The man’s lips moved as if he were smiling. The Avenger said gently, “Not Morgan, the servant. But the real Goram Haygar, son of Wendell and owner of this island. His features prove it.”
The dying man nodded.
“That is right,” he whispered, with the subsiding wind and the crackle of flames making it almost impossible to hear. “Wendell’s son. I came home after… absence… to find my father dead and the servants missing. I managed… get employed by that man as servant. I meant to expose or trap him.”
He closed his eyes, seeming to try to gather strength out of darkness.
“I am a… coward. I was afraid of the man. I didn’t dare to tell authorities of men he killed who sneaked to island… fear he’d kill me. When you… caught in rat pit… I went down to release you. You were out… I played ghost and led to bones of victims.”
“Why didn’t you kill the guy when you found what he’d done?” said Smitty. “No one would have blamed you.”
“Too afraid—” whispered Wendell’s son. “So… played ghost… easy because I resemble father if expression right. Just now… all lost if couldn’t overcome cowardice. I got the knife and… and—”
He fought suddenly for air.
“Knife—”
He was dead!
“The one I could really call cousin,” said Carmella softly. “The only one. And he—”
Tears dropped from her dark eyes. Nellie put her arm around her. She blinked rapidly and looked at The Avenger.
“If it is true, the hugeness of the amount of gold here that you say, you shall have as many millions as you like for what you’ve done.”
The rest knew the answer to that, but Carmella didn’t. So The Avenger patiently replied.
“We need no money. We have all we can use. You are welcome to the help, because that is our job.”
The wind had almost gone down. The clouds were breaking in the far sky. The fire was dying. There would be a residue of gold from the flames as big as a mother lode.
“I’ll use it to help others like myself,” said Carmella, like a person taking a vow. “It will feed and clothe refugees of all nations.”
The Avenger nodded and went off a few paces to be alone. His own vow he did not speak of.
The vow to fight on and on against crime, wherever it reared its hideous head. The vow to go on, till death stopped him — The Avenger!