The Avenger only said: “Faster, Smitty.”
Gunther Caine, curator of the Braintree Museum, looked like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. His unpressed suit was more than ever like a suit of pajamas, after his night’s anxiety. His fuzzy brown eyes were dull with exhaustion and worry. He caught Benson’s arm, which was about like catching hold of a length of steel cable.
“Mr. Benson, you must help me! We must get the relics back! My reputation, my whole life, hang on that!”
He didn’t give the man with the white hair and linen-white face a chance to get in a word.
“It’s my ruin,” he babbled on. “See my position. I personally was entrusted with the Taros amulets and the ring. I personally am responsible for the loss. Now, there are collectors, like the famous lawyer, Farnum Shaw, who would give up to half a million dollars for those things. I will be branded as a thief if we don’t get them back. People will say I sold out to someone like Shaw.”
The Avenger was walking through the man’s library as Caine babbled, through it and to the small den where he had seen Caine place the box at a little before midnight.
The box was there, empty, on the table where it had been when Benson’s pale eyes last rested on it. The Avenger strode to the table.
“Where does that door go?” he said, pointing.
“To the hall,” replied Caine, swallowing noisily.
“And that one?”
“To the drawing room beyond. But that door is always shut. It has a bolt on it that is rusted to the catch. It hasn’t been used in years.”
“And that door I just came through leads to the library,” nodded The Avenger. “So a person could leave the library, step into the hall, walk to the hall door of this room—”
Caine eyed him intently, hopefully. But Benson did not go on. He was looking at the table. Then he bent down and looked at the floor around the table.
There was a deep-piled green rug on the floor. The Avenger’s steely fingers went down, picked up something from the thick nap.
It was a tiny, flattened flake of wax.
“No one left the library while we were talking over the relics,” Caine said, mopping his pale forehead. “So your idea of someone’s leaving, and slipping down to the hall door of the den has no foundation.”
“Yes,” said Benson, “someone did leave.”
“But I remember distinctly. Moen and Evans and Spencer—”
“Your son left the room,” said Benson quietly. “I’d like to talk to him, please.”
CHAPTER V
Strange Headache
The Avenger was one of the finest judges of men who ever lived. He looked at Harold Caine, son of Gunther Caine, and had a complete character portrait in about three seconds.
Here was a young fellow who had never grown up. He was about fourteen instead of being his actual age. But there were good potentialities in the shallow blue eyes and the vacuous face. Some day he might turn out all right.
Meanwhile, the lad was capable of any foolishness.
“You dance a good deal, don’t you?” said Benson.
His voice was even and quiet. But there was a quality in it that would have made any of The Avenger’s aides know that something important was behind that question.
“Yes,” said Harold Caine. He was defiant in look and tone. “Why not?”
“No reason why not,” said Benson. “I merely asked. You danced either yesterday afternoon or during the dinner hour. Probably the latter.”
Harold Caine hesitated. His shallow blue eyes tried to avoid the terrible, colorless ones, and couldn’t.
“Yesterday evening,” he mumbled acknowledgment.
“The floor was freshly waxed,” said Benson.
Caine nodded.
“Yeah! Terrible job. There were little lumps of wax all over the floor. How can a guy swing his stuff on a floor like that? But how did you know?” he ended swiftly.
“I found a flake of the wax,” said Benson.
Harold Caine was suddenly breathless. He stared like a person hypnotized at the awesome, white face from which peered the pale, infallible eyes.
“I found the little flake,” said Benson, “in the carpet next to the table in the small den. The table from which the Taros relics disappeared.”
They were in the library — Gunther Caine, his son, The Avenger. Gunther Caine suddenly spoke up.
“See here, Mr. Benson, you can’t make insinuations like that! My own son — this is ridiculous! I asked you to help me, but if you persist in such a line—”
His voice died. No man could speak that blusteringly before the paralyzed, grim countenance of The Avenger.
Benson didn’t even raise his voice as he said:
“I have made no insinuations. The facts make those. Harold Caine was near the table on which were the relics. And Harold Caine left this library — alone among all of us — a short time before you discovered the loss of the amulets and ring.”
“I didn’t go into the den,” said Harold.
“Where did you go?” Benson’s pale eyes held their diamond drill look.
“I went upstairs for a minute. I went to Dad’s room to get some aspirin from the medicine chest. I don’t keep any aspirin in my bathroom. I never had a headache before.”
“You had a headache last night?”
“Yes!” Caines’ eyes took on their-queer, glazed look for an instant. “It was a pip. Almost as bad as a hangover headache.”
“What would give you a headache, do you suppose?” said The Avenger, voice vibrant with some inner stirring that was beyond Gunther Caine and his son.
“I don’t know. It was a funny kind of a headache.”
“What was queer about it?” Benson shot out.
“Why, it felt like my brain was on fire inside my head,” said Harold unsteadily. “My scalp prickled all over. Things went kind of fuzzy in front of my eyes.”
“You went up, took aspirin, and came back down? That is all?”
“That’s all,” insisted Harold.
“But at least a quarter of an hour passed between the time you left the room and the time we left the house.”
“Look here—” Gunther Caine shouted, ranging himself alongside his son.
Again he stopped blustering at the glance of the pale and deadly eyes. But he appeared badly shaken, as if sorry he had asked this man with the virile white hair and the death mask of a face for help.
Benson asked a question of the father instead of the son.
“You have reported the loss of the Taros relics to the police?”
“No,” said Caine. “I haven’t. All I told headquarters was that I must get in touch with you on an important matter. I can’t tell the police. It would become public at once, that the relics have been stolen or lost — and that would finish me.”
Benson turned toward the door.
“If any bit of news comes up, get in touch with me,” he said.
“You are going now?”
Both father and son looked relieved that the questions, backed by the authority of the awesome, colorless eyes, were to be stopped. Yet they looked worried, too.
“Yes, I’m going,” said Benson. “I have learned all I can here, I think.”
He went out, and Smitty looked questioningly at him.
“Nothing — at the moment,” said Benson quietly. “But there may be something very shortly. Drive around the next corner and park.”
The big closed car stopped at the designated place. Benson watched the corner.
He hadn’t misjudged Harold Caine’s agitation in the least. Within ten minutes a roadster swept by, with young Caine behind the wheel.