Nellie’s eyes turned to the terrible, pale orbs of Dick Benson. There was accusation in hers.
Benson nodded.
“I finally discovered that it was the roof that was to fall. I saw a man hiding on the top of that end statue with a bar in his hand, ready to jack the roof-beam out of place when Shaw — or Moen — raised his arms straight up as a signal. I knew what apparently Moen did not know: the floor, weakened by the fall of the few roof slabs intended for my head a while ago, was temporarily shored up by timbers bound to go in a roof collapse. So I played, I’ll admit, with loaded dice. I knew that if Moen raised his arms, he would die by his own hand.”
Not one sound came from under their feet. But Benson and his aides could see — all too much.
“Look!” said Mac. “There’s the secret of the skurlies’ disappearin’ act! Their robes are lined with black, so in the night when they reversed them they melted into darkness and vanished.”
Benson was leading the way toward the door, edging along the narrow strip saved by the foundation wall. Smitty said:
“How’d this Shaw guy, playing Taros, knock me out by just raising his arms, chief?”
“He released a gas,” said Benson quietly. “I think it is the same type of thing as the hypnotic drug. In small doses it hypnotizes. In large doses it causes that feeling of the body being on fire all over, and then unconsciousness.”
Nellie was staring fearfully down at the wreckage beneath.
“At least the mummy of Taros’ son was in its case this time,” she remarked. “Look — those dusty bones—”
“The mummy never left the cabinet,” said The Avenger. “It was always in there, even when it seemed not to be.”
“But—”
“The glass of the cabinet lid had been molecularly treated, as I treated the water glass in my experiment. The molecules were so arranged that they became subject to radio excitation, and made the lid a large sound diaphragm when words at a distance were spoken in a certain radio-wave length. It talked, just as my tumbler talked.”
“So the glass lid was really a large transmitter, amplifying words Moen spoke into that little set of his, at a distance,” said Smitty.
“That’s right. At the same time, along the edges of the lid were little pouches of fine black powder that could be released by radio when desired. This powder made the cabinet seem black and empty when you looked within and did not see the mummy or mummy case.”
They had all reached the door. But The Avenger did not pass through and into the sound part of the building. Not yet. He had herded the others to safety, but had one more thing to do himself.
He began climbing down into the gruesome wreckage in the basement.
“Chief!” Smitty at last exclaimed. “What—”
“The Taros relics,” said Benson. “I think I know where they are.”
He reached the bottom. No living hand was raised to stay his progress down there. Not one of the crushed shapes moved.
The Avenger went to where the cabinet of Taros’ son’s mummy was smashed and its occupant unceremoniously spilled out.
“There was dust behind the mummy’s head when I looked in the case,” said Benson. “As if that head had been touched by someone’s hand before my own.”
He picked up the head of the thing. The skull crumbled a bit in his hands, but stayed whole. He tilted it.
The Amulets of Taros slid out into his fingers. All the charms of Taros save the ring — which was on the hand of the dead Moen. The skull had been Moen’s cache.
The Avenger joined them in the next room.
The Taros relics had been recovered, and Caine and his son saved. Anna Lees, Shaw, Snead, Marlowe, Blessing — all would be all right with injections of a drug Benson had at Sixteenth Street, in the marvelous small case carrying his traveling laboratory. Shaw was technically a murderer, but actually he had been only an unwitting weapon in the hands of the real killer, Moen. So no one would ever know from The Avenger what Shaw had really done in his drugged trances.
Everything ended neatly. The shrewd killer behind the affair of the Taros relics dead, and his gangsters with him, by his own hand. It was a complete success.
But no triumph showed on The Avenger’s dead, emotionless face or in his icy, colorless eyes. It was only one more step on his pilgrimage of vengeance against the underworld. There would be no personal triumph for Benson — only the urge to annihilate another supercrook, and another, till at length he should find the one who was too clever even for him.