House of Death

CHAPTER XI Wholesale Disaster

The next night, after the moonlit one in which a pack of dogs had reduced a man to a quivering mass of meat, was cloudy and dark. There was wind, and the sea was choppy.

Nevertheless, ten miles south of Haygar’s island, at about ten o’clock at night, a plane began gliding down with the clear intention of landing on the treacherous cross waves.

The plane was very high. Its pilot cut the motor and began using it like an overgrown glider, settling on as long a slant as possible, soaring up now and then as an air current could be taken advantage of.

The pilot was The Avenger. In the cabin with him were Smitty, MacMurdie, and Josh.

The Avenger had been zooming around in the plane half the day, about fifty miles to the south where they would be over the horizon from the island.

They had been waiting for that boat from which Benson had been callously tossed with a hundred pounds of iron as an anchor.

The boat had finally showed, and the plane had gone out to sea till darkness came. Then The Avenger had calculated its speed, waited till it was about due to dock, and turned back.

Now, he was gliding silently down, without lights, from a great distance, to land near the island at about the same time.

“I wonder if the other Haygars are already here,” said Smitty, peering down and ahead through night glasses to get a glimpse of the boat’s running lights.

“Probably they are,” came the calm voice of the man with the flaring, colorless eyes. “They came by plane, as far as we know.”

“And Carmella Haygar?”

The Avenger shrugged a little.

“There is no telling whether she is here, too. She dropped completely out of sight after leaving Bleek Street.”

MacMurdie was frowning and peering out into the darkness with bleak blue eyes.

“What d’ye suppose is behind this gold-medallion stuff?” he ventured.

“Remembering the former greatness of the Haygar family,” said Benson, “it is pretty easy to guess the nature of the thing behind the golden disks.”

Mac subsided into puzzled silence. It might be easy for Benson to guess; it certainly wasn’t easy for Mac!

The Avenger’s infallible pale eyes kept the lights of the boat far on his left. He saw that the plane was going to land before the boat quite reached the island. But that was all right.

He coasted, with a soft air song over the wings, to a point beyond the island, whereas the boat was heading toward the center of it, the dock being there on the sea side.

The plane ripped softly over the tips of the waves, then settled. The shore of the island was quite close. The wind was steady from the southwest — a factor The Avenger had counted on.

“Stay with the plane, Josh,” Benson said. “Let it drift north and to sea until the island is at least five miles away. Then take off and stay around the mainland, nearby, till you get a radio message from us.”

Josh Newton’s dark face registered disappointment at leaving the place where a great deal of excitement was probably going to occur. But The Avenger’s orders were obeyed to the letter by his indomitable little band.

Smitty and Benson and Mac stepped on a wing, put most of their clothes in waterproof bags, and slid into the water. They started swimming toward the dark shore while the plane, already only an indistinguishable dark patch in the night, began drifting slowly north and east till it should get out of earshot.

The three waded silently ashore and put on their clothes. Dick began walking down toward the dock. Smitty’s vast hand suddenly clutched his arm.

There had been a faint sound behind them.

They turned, and the sound continued and became louder. It was a scratching noise, and then it was followed by a snarling to make a man’s hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“Dogs,” whispered Mac.

The owners of the snarls came into view.

“Not dogs,” Mac corrected himself in a low tone as he got a good look at the two mastiffs racing over a clear bit of beach at them. “Mon, they’re prehistorrric monsters!”

The Avenger whipped Mike out of the slim leg holster. But he didn’t think he’d have to use the little special gun, for Mac’s bony right hand was fishing in a large coat pocket.

The two dogs were near enough to leap. Mac made two quick, deft casts. With each flick of his hand something small and shining shot out, to burst on the ground just ahead of the two dogs.

The things were lead-foil capsules containing the deadliest gas Mac had ever contrived. Considering he had invented over fifty quick-dispersing gases of varying deadliness, this was saying a great deal.

One of the dogs stopped as suddenly as if he had run into a stone wall. His barrel-like head went up, neck straining back in silent agony as his wet muzzle picked up the gas and death filtered swiftly into the brain. Then the dog dropped.

The other came on. The gas capsule hadn’t burst in quite the right spot to get it.

Smitty came a step ahead of the other two. He waited, great arms spread, and the dog leaped.

Hands like steam dredges closed on the dog’s throat. Arms like walking beams held the writhing canine body out straight.

The mastiff’s clawing paws ripped up and down in an effort to disembowel this grim enemy, but they couldn’t quite reach. The muzzle quivered and strained, but no sound came out.

Smitty held the violent hundred-and-forty-pound bundle of four-legged death at arm’s length for over a minute, long past the point where the struggling had ceased. Then he dropped it.

“Poor devils,” said Mac, gazing at the two dogs.

But it had had to be done.

The four went on down the shoreline toward the dock.

The dock jutted from the shore at a point where there was only a five-yard strip between the water, at high tide, and a cliff that went up fifty feet or more like the side of a house. There was no chance to get near the dock without being seen, so The Avenger began climbing the cliff two hundred yards above the dock.

The boat was just drifting in when they reached the top, next to a zigzag flight of steps leading from the water to the top of the cliff. They could barely hear the boat bump and see men leap out and secure her.

The things that happened in the next few minutes had the unexpected and dreadful qualities of a nightmare.

The men got off the boat peacefully enough, about a dozen of them, all moving as silently as possible. They started along the short dock toward land. And then, abruptly, they found themselves confronted by an even larger band.

No place to hide in the open little flat strip between dock and cliff? Well, that was true enough. And yet there had been a place to conceal men. Quite a few men. That was, under the dock itself.

Before the men could get on land from the dock, another body of men emerged dripping from under the thing. They charged forward in silent savagery. The men from the boat, unable to get back and able to get to land only by overcoming these others, rushed forward to meet them.

They began to fight like two packs of wild animals, save that animals would have made more noise. These whirling figures were as silent as was possible. There were no gunshots, no yells, just the sound of bone or club on flesh and the gasps of men using all the strength they had.

Two burst from the group and raced to the stairs. Three others detached themselves and ran after them. The five, pursued and pursuers, began coming up.

“Back down, the way we came,” said Benson in a low, calm tone.

They went back to the spot, two hundred yards north, where they had climbed the cliff. They descended again.

“We’ll go closer, keeping out of sight by staying flat against the foot of the cliff.”

“You figuring on interfering?” whispered Smitty, quite willing to do so.

“No,” said The Avenger. “Let them fight. The more killers turn their attention inward and murder each other, the better for society as a whole. But I want to keep an eye on the one who claimed he was Shan. If he is downed, we’ll try to take him out of that mess. He has at least one of the gold disks—”

Benson’s calm voice stopped. His hand, sliding along the flat rock of the cliff, had touched a curious thing. A small, round hole in the stone. He bent to look closer in the darkness. Then, with his coat around the spot so that the light could be seen by no one but himself, he snapped on his small but powerful flash.

The tiny beam showed a hole about an inch and a half in diameter that was too regular to be natural. It had been drilled there.

The Avenger snapped off the flash and felt along the cliff. There were three more holes in the direction of the dock. Presumably they went on and on, a hole about every two yards.

He back-tracked, with Smitty and Mac watching him in the dimness and wondering what on earth had attracted his attention. They couldn’t see the holes.

The regular line of holes stopped with the fourth one toward the north.

“Come on,” said The Avenger. “Back!”

He led the way thirty yards past the last hole, and they crouched there.

“What—” began Mac uncertainly.

“Blasting holes in the cliff face,” said Benson. “They seem to run from that jutting boulder down there, clear south past the dock. No telling how far.”

“Blasting holes?” repeated Smitty, mystified.

“Yes. Someone has undermined the whole face of the cliff behind that dock. And recently — those holes look quite fresh. I don’t like the appearance of the thing, so we’ll stay behind the line of blasting holes for a little while.”

Mac nodded. “You think it might be some kind of trap.”

“Yes,” said The Avenger, pale eyes lambent in the darkness. “We know the owner of this island doesn’t encourage visitors. The dogs prove that.”

Mac and Smitty, through the darkness, could barely see the struggling knot of men about halfway up the stairway. But Benson’s hawk eyes could make out more detail.

The three pursuers had caught the first two, and there was a life-and-death struggle going on. The two Orientals from the boat were putting up a good show against the three.

While Benson peered, he saw one of the three arch backward suddenly, under a treacherous kick. The man grabbed for the rail and missed. His body went head over heels through thin air for thirty feet and slammed on the rock next to the water.

Then it was two and two, and the fight became even fiercer! But for a moment The Avenger’s pale gaze was drawn down to the dock again. Drawn by the entrance of a new element into the battle.

That was dogs!

Seven or eight of the same type of huge brute as the two they had been regretfully forced to dispose of suddenly came lunging along the water from the south. With slavering jaws, they flung themselves against the men, indiscriminately, leaping for the throats of attackers and attacked alike.

But this didn’t last long, either. For it was at about this time that the full nightmare quality of the fracas came clear.

Benson’s gaze had been jerked to the stairs again by a low but agonized cry. He just caught sight of another man flying over the stair rail to fall toward the water’s edge.

But this one hit something on the way down — hit it and broke it.

The Avenger thought he saw something like a thick black fishline break as the man’s body scraped along the cliff wall. He thought so, but even with his marvelous eyesight he could not be sure.

The next moment he knew what it was.

There was a low, but tremendous roar. Then the entire face of the cliff at that point seemed to surge sullenly up a foot, to subside again with another roar that was more long-drawn-out.

That black length had been a wire, broken by the man’s falling body.

The men at the foot of the cliff were no longer trying to keep silent. They were all yelling, with their screams almost lost in the racket of falling rock and earth and trees. And then the mass, thousands of tons, hit them!

Men, dogs, dock, and boat disappeared.

It was as if a blanket had been thrown over a heap of puppets on a miniature stage set, covering them carelessly for the ensuing night. Only these puppets were men, and the night would be the long one of death!

The sullen rumble of the last falling rocks died away. The quiet that followed seemed even more breathlessly still than before.

“Whew!” breathed Smitty, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.

Mac said nothing. He stared in awe at The Avenger. Once again this man had saved their lives by his marvelous powers of observation. Who but Benson would have seen those little holes, read their meaning, and acted with such methodical precaution? Those blasting holes might be freshly drilled and loaded. They might be part of a trap that might be sprung while the three were in a bad place for it. So The Avenger had led them back from the line of holes. And they were living, now, instead of sharing the fate of the others under the grinding mass of rock, trees, and earth.

“Hold on,” Mac whispered. “One of the skurlies got clear, after all. See? He must have been beyond the blasting line in the other direction from us.”

The Avenger’s colorless, telescopic eyes finally made out the figure even at that distance.

“Shan!” he said in a low tone. “He let his men fight for him while he kept safely out of range.”

“Say — two got away,” said Smitty, pointing.

The man he pointed to was not far ahead, at the edge of the rock slide. They went to him.

They found that two had not gotten away. On the body of this man was a rock weighing several hundred pounds. What it had done to that body in its fall was something Mac and the giant found their eyes shuddering away from. But there was still a spark of life in the fellow.

“Russian,” said The Avenger, bending over the suffering face.

“Yes,” the man whispered raggedly. “White… Russian… Sharnoff! Shar—”

That was all. He was dead.

“So Sharnoff Haygar came with his gang,” said The Avenger. “He, or his men, lay in wait for Shan. Sharnoff’s gang jumped Shan’s — and both perished. As so often happens in the chess game of life, the board is swept clear of pawns, but the leaders remain.”

“All but Harlik Haygar,” said Mac, reminding Benson of the murder charge over his head.

“All but Harlik,” nodded The Avenger. “Some one of the others murdered him. Some one of them almost certainly has Harlik’s gold medallion, as well as his own.”

Benson stared toward the spot where Shan had last been seen. The tall, dark leader of the Oriental cutthroats was no longer there. He had gone up the cliff, low down there, and was in the shadows of the woods.

“Now?” whispered Smitty of Benson.

“To the house we saw from the plane, in the center of the island,” said The Avenger. “And — I think — to the secret of the golden disks.”