The Blood Ring

CHAPTER XVI Vengeance of Taros

Josh and Mac and Smitty hadn’t time to get their guns out — and the others of course had no guns. Guns weren’t in existence by some thousands of years when Egypt was young.

The priestly horde had the weapons of their ancient priestcraft, but even these they did not draw, for some reason. Like a crew of crazed fanatics they rushed on the three temple intruders to tear them apart barehanded.

That suited Smitty right down to the ground. Where bare-handed tearing was concerned, he was well equipped to take part.

He didn’t wait for anybody to reach him. He stepped forward toward the rush, to be overwhelmed and knocked down as a bear is overwhelmed in the surf by a great wave.

But even as the bear presently emerges on the other side, swimming strongly, so Smitty soon emerged.

As he went down, he had found a throat with one hand and a thigh with the other. It had taken a little regretful effort to squeeze on the throat with a little less pressure than on the thigh. But he had managed it. If he hadn’t, the neck in his grasp would have snapped like a match stick.

As it was, the man grabbed by the neck went suddenly limp, while the man grabbed by the thigh suddenly screamed in pure frenzy as it seemed to him that all the muscle of his upper leg was squeezed quivering through the skin.

What Smitty took hold of usually disintegrated.

He released the two, and got two more men, by the shoulders this time. The heads of the two priests of old Egypt proved just as fragile — when knocked together — as the heads of anybody in 1940 A.D.

Meanwhile, Mac was swinging fists like bone mallets, and Josh was putting up his usual black-tiger fight.

Mac smashed a grinning face beyond all hope of comely repair, and then got in a heart blow on another man. The two retreated for a much-needed intermission.

Josh tripped a too-enthusiastic figure in flowing white and there was a scream as that figure fell on a copper dagger strapped at its waist. The Negro swung from his knees with his flashing right fist, and broke the jaw of the grim shape next to the first one.

And still none of the temple servers drew their daggers or other ancient weapons.

Smitty had worked up to his feet again, a perfect mound of struggling humanity as men clung to his legs and arms and broad back to tear him down. He mashed two against the wall by lunging backward, and shook off two more by swinging his arms together so that the man on the right knocked the breath from the body of the man on the left, and vice versa. He got to Mac and Josh.

The three men fought there, facing outward so that they formed a swaying, formidable triangle. But the end was foreordained, and it was hastened when at last the horde drew knives that gleamed dull gold in the dim light.

But still they did not use blades nor points.

The knives, large and heavy, with metal handles, were menacingly clubbed. A heavy handle caught Josh on the forehead and he groaned and staggered. Another hammered down on Mac’s shoulder when the Scot was agile enough to miss getting it on the top of the skull. Several glanced from Smitty’s lofty cranium.

Nellie, bound, fifty feet away, had been crying her encouragement. Now she stopped. The time for encouragement was past!

Mac and Smitty and Josh were down, each swarmed over by half a dozen ferocious priests. The writhing mounds moved a little more, and then were still. The horde drew back.

The trap had been perfectly competent to handle them. The odds were such that even three such as The Avenger’s aides had had no chance.

They began to bind the three slugged men. Then they dragged them — looking almost like mummies, themselves, so many coils of rope were around them — to where Nellie lay helpless.

The four were placed in the immediate vicinity of the fateful mummy that could talk and walk.

Then, almost before Nellie could get her wits back, there was a slight commotion at the door of the wing. It opened, and two of the priestly shapes came in dragging one more person. At sight of this one, Josh was to groan aloud when he came to.

It was Rosabel, the Negro’s pretty wife. They’d gotten her from the Sixteenth Street mansion where she was pretending to be an ordinary maid in the service of The Avenger, meanwhile keeping an eye on the other servants to be sure no treachery was buried there.

With Rosabel, the roundup was complete — save for The Avenger, himself. Every one of his aides here, tied and helpless at the foot of the cabinet containing the mummy of Taros’ son. But the man with the dead face and pale, deadly eyes was still not caught. And while he was free, somewhere outside this trap, there was hope.

Nellie heard a light tap from the cabinet enclosing the mummy. The tap came from right beside her, close enough for her to touch the spot with extended, bound arms. She shuddered as she had the thought that the mummy, stirring within, must have made it. Then she found the cause.

Her fingers, cautiously searching in such a way that her body would hide the activity from the priestly mob, touched a curious little throwing knife. It had a hollow tube for a handle, was sticking lightly in the wood.

It was Ike, The Avenger’s knife.

Nellie had a moment of wild hope. Benson was somewhere among that maniac crew. Or else was hidden somewhere behind statue or sarcophagus. The chief had thrown the knife, lightly, to her, from among their enemies.

The wild hope died in Nellie’s breast. An even greater despair settled there. With Benson here, the roundup was complete! And hopeless. What could even The Avenger do against this weird army of ancient priestcraft?

Nellie’s bound hands busied themselves almost of their own accord. Meanwhile, she looked around the great room.

A dozen or more of the mob had gone to their post beside the door again, ready to cut off retreat when the last expected member of the enemy entered — ready to capture the man with the white hair and the dead face when he did show up.

In the meantime, four of the robed shapes held themselves aloof, as leaders do. The four were Shaw, Snead, Marlowe and Blessing. Or, rather, Taros and three of his head priests.

Nellie’s eyes went to the left hands of these four. The Ring of Power! One of these four would be wearing it. Almost certainly Taros. And Nellie was as aware — as The Avenger had been — that the time of its renewal was almost up. Very nearly forty-eight hours had passed since the ring had been dipped in blood.

But no one of the four had the ring on his hand.

Nellie started looking at the hands of the others. They shifted around so, and there were so many of them, that it was a difficult job. But at last she spotted it.

One of the ordinary rabble of under-priests had on the fateful ring, which seemed odd. The legend had been that the leader, Taros, must himself always wear that charmed circlet with the cornelian seal in it.

The person wearing it was tall, rather heavily built, keeping very much in the background and in shadow.

Nellie bit half through her lip to repress a scream. The door was opening again. But it was not Benson’s familiar form that came in, as she had been fearing.

The man who entered was Gunther Caine!

The curator, whatever his reason for being here, provided the one sane note in an otherwise mad world.

Caine was dressed in an ordinary business suit, not in an outlandish costume used thousands of years ago. He had on an ordinary and reassuring felt hat. And in his hand was the most common article of all: a rather battered and bulging suitcase.

Caine walked up to the little group of four. The reincarnated beings with the faces of Blessing and Snead and Marlowe stepped back a pace. But Shaw — Taros — stepped forward, eagle beak arrogantly high and hairless skull dully shining in the poor light.

Caine was carefully looking away from the still bodies of The Avenger’s aides. He kept his eyes toward Taros. But a moment later his gaze went on past Taros’ gaunt shoulder and a choked cry came from his lips. At the same time, Nellie heard steps, measured and clear, from the blank end of the wing. She turned her head that way too — and a gasp came to her lips.

The mummy was coming toward them!

Swathed legs moving with the slow precision of clockwork, ancient linen bands cleared from the face enough to show shallow blue eyes and a vacuous, cruel countenance, it advanced on the group.

“Harold!” screamed Gunther Caine, staggering back a step. “Harold! My son!”

Taros spoke, then, voice sepulchral and slow.

“Not your son. My son. Dead these centuries, and coming back to life as I have come back to life. For what matter whose the body, when the soul and spirit are those of us?”

The museum curator looked about to fall in a faint. But he managed to keep upright, staring at the dreadful appearance of his son.

Taros’ long, gaunt arm came out.

“I’ll take the case,” he said.

Caine shoved the suitcase forward, dully, eyes ever on the mummy.

But another voice sounded.

“No. I’ll take the case.”

Nellie really did cry out that time. But her voice was lost in the uproar that followed.

That had been The Avenger speaking. The Avenger, somewhere in the center of all this. Nellie’s gray eyes went over face after face to try to find him.

It was one of the underling priests who yelled it out.

“It’s Snead! He’s our man.”

“That’s not Snead. Snead lies, out of his mind, at Benson’s place!”

There was a roar, and a rush. And the priest with the face of Snead leaped clear of the small group, and flung the suitcase to the far end of the wing with a flirt of his steely wrist.

The face might be Snead’s. But only The Avenger could display such effortless power, could move so fast.

Nellie’s clear voice rang out.

“We’re ready!”

She had used Ike, the throwing knife, well. Her own bonds were cut by the razorlike blade, and also those of the rest. And Mac and Smitty and Rosabel had regained consciousness, though continuing to lie with closed eyes. Josh had not recovered yet.

The Avenger stood near them, now, and near the cabinet housing Taros’ son. He took the disguising eyecups from his eyeballs. His colorless, infallible eyes glared at the oncoming mob. And in spite of themselves they slowed and halted.

But Taros, gaunt and vulture-skulled, came slowly on, hands outstretched.

“You shall die,” he said. “You and all your friends. It is the vengeance of Taros.”