The Blood Ring

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.

Smitty, without a word, followed. It was still not quite six o’clock in the morning. Strange hour for a young fellow to be making a hurry call.

Harold didn’t go far. There was a big new apartment building, of the type put up by the score for modestly paid government employees, about eight blocks away. Harold jammed on the roadster’s brakes in front of this, and hurried in.

Smitty and Benson followed.

Harold went to the floor below the top floor and rang a bell there. From the stairwell, Benson and Smitty watched. There was a long pause; then a girl opened the door a foot.

And Smitty clenched his hands hard.

The girl was tall and slender but well-rounded. She had dark-brown hair. Her face was of an exotic type: from the widow’s peak at the forehead down in an absolutely straight line went the slope of forehead and nose. It gave her the look of having stepped off an Egyptian frieze.

The ordinary, flimsy nightgown she wore had much the transparent effect of the high-priestess’ robe, and this clinched the memory for Smitty.

“Chief!” he gasped. “That’s the girl I saw with old Taros last night! The priestess. And Gunther Caine’s son is calling on her!”

Benson didn’t say anything in reply. He watched Harold talk to her, saw her frown first in a bewildered, then in an angered fashion. He could see Harold’s face for just a glimpse, long enough to read his lips as he said: “last night.” Then Harold had his back turned again and he saw no more.

But he could see the girl’s face, and he saw that she was giving Harold scant satisfaction in whatever matter had brought him here at such an hour.

She didn’t look like an Egyptian priestess now. She looked like just a normal girl, with a slightly exotic cast of countenance, who was resentful at being awakened by an acquaintance at six o’clock in the morning.

Harold left, finally, shaking his head and looking as if he’d like to wring his hands, too.

Benson went to the door the instant the elevator had shut on Caine’s son, and knocked. Again the door was opened.

“I told you—” began the girl, obviously thinking it was Harold back again. Then she got a good look at the awesome, dead face and the chill, colorless eyes.

She tried to shut the door. Benson held it open, and walked in, followed by the giant Smitty.

The girl jumped to a table with its drawer partly open. She turned swiftly, with a little gun in her hand.

“Get out of here, both of you!” she panted.

Smitty tensed for a leap at her, to get the gun. An almost imperceptible movement of The Avenger stopped him.

The pale eyes were boring into the girl’s frightened brown ones.

“We don’t intend any harm,” he said, voice peculiarly monotonous and smooth. “We would merely like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“I don’t know you. I refuse to talk to you. Get out!”

The girl gestured with the gun. Benson took a slow step back, eyes still intent on hers.

Smitty nodded to himself. The tone of the chief’s voice had told him what was up.

“If you are disturbed about the way you’re dressed,” Benson said, voice metronomic in its measured cadence, “we can step outside for a few minutes and return.”

“That’s not it. I won’t talk to you at all. You—”

The girl frowned a little, blinked.

“Leave… at… once,” she said. But there wasn’t the sharpness in the tone that there had been. And it seemed to Smitty that the gun wavered. Though it would have been pretty suicidal to wager a jump on that hunch!

“We only want to ask about Harold Caine, and the amulets and the ring and the high priest Taros,” said The Avenger, voice still as monotonous and level as a single sustained note on a harp string. “That is all. And you will answer to the best of your ability, won’t you?”

“I—” faltered the girl. “I—”

The gun was definitely sagging, now.

Benson’s icy eyes seemed twice as large as usual in the white death mask of his face. Wide, and flaring — and hypnotic.

“Give it to me,” he said softly.

Slowly he stretched forth his steel-strong hand. And slowly, in a sort of unseeing blindness, the girl gave him the gun.

Smitty sighed deeply. He had just seen a miracle. Rare eyes like The Avenger’s are strongly hypnotic. The time taken to hypnotize this girl wasn’t particularly short if applied to a willing subject. But to hypnotize a person that briefly, when the person was agitated and rebellious, was breathtaking!

“Your name?” said Benson.

The girls’ eyes were wide and staring, like a sleepwalker’s. And her gauzy night-attire carried out the effect. Like a sleepwalker, she would go where deftly led. And like one she would answer to the best of her knowledge any question put to her. There is no evasion possible in hypnosis.

“My name is Anna Lees,” she said, voice empty and docile.

“You have known Harold Caine long?”

“Only for several weeks.”

“He is infatuated with you.” It was a statement more than a question.

“Yes,” said the girl simply.

“You saw him last night?”

“No!” Anna’s voice was positive. “I saw no one last night, after nine o’clock. I was in bed.”

“You were seen near Gunther Caine’s home. How could you say you were in bed from nine on?”

“I was in bed. I saw no one, and went nowhere. I went to bed early because I had a headache.”

The Avenger’s eyes were like ice in a polar dawn.

“A headache! Do you often have headaches?”

“No,” said Anna. “Very rarely.”

“What was this one like?”

“It was odd. I felt as if my brain were on fire, and then I went into a deep sleep.”

“You say you saw no one after nine o’clock. Did you see anyone just before that hour?”

“Yes! I saw an old friend of the family. A lawyer by the name of Farnum Shaw.”

The Avenger’s hands came together with a sharp clap. Anna Lees blinked, looked at him perplexedly, then fearfully. She saw her gun in his hand, and her fingers went up to her lips to hold back a scream as she got an inkling of what had happened.

“You get out of her!” she said hoarsely. “What have you done to me? What did I say? Leave here or I’ll call the police!”

Threatening to call the police against Benson was funny. But Benson only nodded, handed the gun back to her, and left.

“Lawyer Farnum Shaw,” he mused. “Mentioned also by Caine, as an example of a collector who would give any amount for the Taros relics. I think we’ll have a talk with Shaw.”

Smitty had gasped when he saw the tall, exotic girl, Anna Lees, in the filmy nightgown so like the priestess’ robe she had worn the night before. He was stunned beyond gasping when he saw the lawyer, Farnum Shaw.

Shaw, corporation lawyer, lobbyist, stock dabbler, was over six feet tall and as thin as a skeleton. He had practically no eyebrows or eyelashes. He was lantern-jawed and lank of countenance. There wasn’t a hair on his high-domed skull, from nape of the neck to forehead. His head looked like a billiard ball, with an eagle beak of a nose sticking out on the face side.

The corporation lawyer was dressed in riding breeches and checked coat for an early-morning horseback ride in Rock Creek Park when Benson and Smitty reached his home. He talked as dully as he acted. If this was the individual who had been doing an appearing and disappearing act last night, his manner concealed it well.

“I have heard of you,” he nodded pleasantly at the self-introduction of the man with the icy-slits of eyes and the white, still face. “What can I do for you?”

“I came to see you about the Taros relics,” said The Avenger, eyes as expressionless as his paralyzed face.

Shaw jerked his bald, vulture head.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Benson. Wonderful pieces, those! The amulets are the finest of their kind in existence, I believe. And the Ring of Power, with its incredible past and its niche in history—” He sighed. “I collect Egyptiana myself, as it happens, in a modest way.”

“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!”