“We have heard you did,” said Benson.
Shaw smiled calmly.
“I have nothing as fine as the Taros relics, of course, Mr. Benson. But I’d like to have that kind of thing. There isn’t much I wouldn’t give for them.”
Shaw’s candor took Smitty’s breath. But The Avenger was as icy calm as his eyes.
“Not many people know much about the Taros amulets,” he observed. “You seem to know all about them.”
Shaw shrugged.
“Spencer, of Braintree Museum, is a close friend of mine. I’m also slightly acquainted with Moen and Evans and Gunther Caine. I heard some time ago of the discovery of the tomb of Taros’ son, and that the amulets and ring would be on their way here as soon as Cairo allowed shipment.”
Suddenly Shaw’s eyes narrowed. His face changed like a flash.
“Something has happened to the relics,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re asking— The amulets have been stolen!”
Benson nodded, pale eyes probing the lashless eyes of this modern, legal expert who chanced to look so remarkably like a high priest, dead these thousands of years.
“They have been stolen,” said Benson. “But no one knows it yet, save Gunther Caine and his son — and the thief. It must not be told to anyone else.”
“I understand,” said Shaw gravely. “Caine’s position — horrible! By the way, am I under suspicion?”
Benson said nothing. His eyes, like pale agate, were glittering and unreadable in his white, waxen face.
“Of course I’m under suspicion,” said Shaw crisply and without seeming anger. “I collect rare Egyptian items. I am wealthy. Most collectors would buy things like the Taros relics from anybody offering them, and no questions asked. I can only assure you—”
“Would you mind telling me what you and Anna Lees talked about shortly before nine o’clock last night?” The Avenger cut in smoothly.
“Anna Lees! How did you know I knew her? But I don’t know her well. Her father was a law partner, and I’ve looked in on the girl now and then to be sure she’s been all right since coming to Washington. As for last night — I didn’t see her.”
“She says you did.”
Shaw’s high-bridged nose flared at the nostrils with anger.
“Then she’s lying. I didn’t see her — haven’t seen her for weeks.”
“And you know nothing of the present whereabouts of the Taros relics?”
“Good heavens — of course not!”
Benson’s pale, infallible eyes flicked to the second finger of Shaw’s bony left hand. There was no ring on that hand, nor on the right one either. Shaw, it seemed, was a man who didn’t care for jewelry.
But on that second finger was a slightly discolored band of flesh — where it seemed a ring had recently been worn!
Only The Avenger’s microscopic sight could have discerned it. But Benson did see it, and plainly.
He and Smitty left shortly afterward. They had found out little, in words; but, it would appear, a great deal in physical facts. That bony skull and high nose and lank face.
“Chief,” said Smitty soberly, “ghosts are walking. The dead are coming back to life. And before this is over, some of the living are going to join the dead!”
CHAPTER VI
The Copper Dagger
In lower New York City there is a short block called Bleek Street. Dick Benson owns or leases all the buildings on the street, so that in effect, he owns the block.
Three narrow brick buildings are thrown into one, though that fact doesn’t show from the outside. Over the central entrance — the other two had been blocked off — is a small sign:
JUSTICE.
Behind the sign is the headquarters of The Avenger.
Under that sign have gone many people desperate for aid. They have been people confronted by criminals too smooth and powerful for the police to handle, or possessing some reason why they didn’t dare ask the police for help.
Shortly after the hour when Benson saw Shaw down in Washington, three of his aides were in the great top-floor room of the headquarters in Bleek Street.
The three were a white girl, a Negro man and his wife — Nellie Gray, and Josh and Rosabel Newton.
Josh was sitting in a big chair, looking over the news reports constantly streaming in over Benson’s private teletype.
He got up suddenly.
“Radio,” he said, as Rosabel and Nellie looked at him.
Form-fitting, under Josh’s belt, was a thin, metal case. In that was probably the world’s smallest and cleverest radio set, capable of both receiving and transmitting messages. Josh had gotten the faint signal from the belt set. Only The Avenger and his aides knew or used those signals.
The Negro could have plugged in tiny earphones, hardly larger than a lady’s wrist watch and carried in a vest pocket. But it was easier to go to the big set. He did so.
A quiet but vibrant and compelling voice sounded in the room.
“Benson talking. Come to Washington, all of you. Come at once, by plane. Nellie, please bring the small case and the condensed laboratory set. Josh, bring your black suit, Rosabel, the maid’s outfit. That’s all.”
The three looked at each other.
‘‘The chief went on a peaceful errand for a change,” murmured Nellie Gray. “But it looks as if something has changed his plans.”
She called a drugstore on Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue.
In that store was another aide of The Avenger. The proprietor of the store — bought for him by Benson — was a Scotchman by the name of Fergus MacMurdie. He lived for battles against crime, and his bleak blue eyes brightened at the call from Nellie.
“Whoosh,” he muttered. “More skurlies murderin’ and thievin’ and needin’ their dirrrty ears pinned back. ’Tis good.”
He swiftly collected a few accessories from the rear of his store, and went to join the others at Benson’s private hangar at the airport.
The accessories he gathered were odd indeed. Mac was one of the world’s best chemists, and he had invented some very queer drugs. He had great faith in them.
He might not have had so much faith had he known they were to be stacked up against beings that had apparently stepped straight into 1940 from the year 4000-and-odd, B.C.
As the plane was leaving New York’s sharp skyline, The Avenger stepped into the Braintree Museum. An anthropologist on the staff had just discovered the dead body of Bill Casey and phoned the police, who hastily got in touch with the man with the flaming eyes in the death-mask face.
Benson bent over the corpse.
There were two wounds on the body, and these two, either one of them instantly fatal, told him all he wanted to know about the murder.
One was a small slit in the back where a knife had gone straight to the ex-cop’s heart. There was practically no blood at all around this. The slim gash had closed when the knife was withdrawn, and the bleeding had been nearly all internal.
The other was as bloody as a slaughterhouse. That was the straight slash across the throat that had half-decapitated the corpse. A clotting lake of crimson was on the floor from this.
A police captain worried over the two deadly wounds.
“What’s the meaning of ’em?” he fretted. “The stab in the heart killed him deader’n a salt mackerel. And that, I think, came first. Why did the killer slash his throat, too? And why kill Casey anyhow? There’s nothing gone from the museum, as far as a fast check shows. It’s goofy.”
Smitty’s eyes sought the colorless, flaring orbs of his chief. And Benson nodded.