The Blood Ring

CHAPTER VII “Doctor, Lawyer—”

The loss of the Taros amulets was still a secret. The police, papers and public hadn’t the faintest idea the priceless relics were gone.

Caine didn’t want even the museum directors to know — in fact, above all, they must not know. So that when Benson went to see the three that night, he was put to it to ask any questions and still not give the loss away.

He did it by feigning anxiety that the relics might be stolen in the near future — instead of having already been taken.

“Mr. Caine has decided to keep the amulets and the ring in his home for a few days,” he said evenly to Evans, first of the three directors he called on. “It is understandable. Enthusiastic as he is about such things, he probably studies them by the hour — gets a positive intoxication from their temporary possession. Yet it may not be a very wise thing to do.”

Short, fat Evans shrugged his shoulders.

“Gunther’s a privileged person,” he said. “If he wants to do that, I guess it’s all right. Irregular, but O.K.”

“He’s entirely responsible?” said Benson.

Evans laughed.

“Gunther Caine has between two and three million dollars, all in government bonds. He’s curator of Braintree because he loves the work, not because he needs it. I’ll say he’s a responsible citizen!”

“His servants?”

“They’ll never get near the amulets. Gunther’s no fool.”

“His son,” observed Benson, “is not quite the sort of boy you’d expect from such a father.”

“Why, how do you mean?” said Evans.

“For one thing, his father’s work evidently leaves him cold. As I remember, he was so bored with the talk of the Taros relics that he left the library in the middle of the discussion last night.”

“He did go out, didn’t he?” murmured Evans, in discreet evasion.

Benson kept it up. The little fat man was not to be drawn out about Harold Caine.

Spencer, tall and chubby, wasn’t so evasive. His kewpie-doll face became as severe as it could when Benson mentioned Harold Caine.

“He’s a hairbrained kid,” he said primly. “Wild as they come. Always overdrawn on the generous allowance his father gives him. A great worry to Gunther. But he’s fundamentally all right, Mr. Benson,” he added quickly.

“You say you are worried about the safety of the relics. You can dismiss him from your mind as a possible source of trouble.”

Moen, heavy-set, muscular ex-football halfback, was not to be drawn out, either.

“Gunther Caine is more than the curator of Braintree Museum. He is the museum. We have about a million dollars a year to spend on expeditions and purchases. Gunther handles every cent of it, trusted blind. If he wants to keep the Taros relics a few days and gloat over them, it’s all right with us directors.”

But about the son he only said, indifferently.

“He’s a little spoiled, I guess. And Gunther has had to get him out of several jams. But he’s just a kid. He’ll be all right when he matures.”

To the husky Moen, The Avenger put another question.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

Moen frowned perplexedly.

“For example,” said Benson smoothly, eyes pale and brooding in his white, still face, “do you think old Taros could somehow get back to earth, perhaps in another’s body whose spirit he has temporarily dispossessed?”

“You’re joking,” said Moen.

“No, it’s a serious question.”

Moen paced up and down for a while.

“To anyone else,” he said at last, “I’d say the idea was insane. But to you— Well, I’m fairly well up on Egyptian history and religion, myself. And I know, as you do, that much is made of their beliefs that just such a thing can occur. Yet I’m hardly ready to say I believe in reincarnation.”

The Avenger started back to his temporary headquarters. His eyes, as always, were as unreadable as ice in his death-mask countenance. Whether he had learned a lot, or nothing, from talks about Harold Caine with the three Braintree directors could never be known from his expression.

In the Sixteenth Street home, Josh and Nellie Gray and Rosabel sat listening for the radio call from their tiny belt sets, so cunningly designed by the dull-looking giant, Smitty. The chief was out; and when Benson walked abroad, things were apt to happen.

The thing that happened next, however, came from Fergus MacMurdie instead of The Avenger.

Mac was out prowling the compact grounds of the place. He was hoping that perhaps one, or all three, of the bizarre priest-figures Benson had told about might come back here, and that he could get his hands on them.

Thousands of years dead, or modern and alive, past or present, the three that had attacked the chief that morning were killers. And the bitter-eyed Scot lived only for the grim pleasure of getting his hands on killers.

If only those three skurlies dressed as priests of thousands of years ago would show up again—

A figure suddenly came staggering from the south, along the sidewalk. Mac darted toward it.

However, the figure was not dressed in ancient garb, nor was it murderous. It was the figure of a man in ordinary business clothes, who seemed very ill. So Mac’s intended attack changed to a solicitous grip on the other’s shoulder.

“Whoosh,” said the Scot. “What’s wrong with ye, mon? Are ye drunk, or sick?”

There was no smell of alcohol, so that question answered itself.

“What’s wrong with ye?” Mac repeated, peering into the other’s face.

He was a man of forty-five or so, well-dressed, well-built. His face was blank, and his eyes glazed. Mac stared harder at the blank countenance.

It was a curious face when you studied it. The forehead and rather broad nose made a straight line from widow’s peak to nostrils. The cheekbones were a little higher than usual. It was a foreign-looking face. Mac got it after a minute. It looked Egyptian. Yet not like the faces of modern Egypt.

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,” mumbled the man.

“What?” said Mac.

“Doctor, lawyer— The Avenger.”

“Now wait a minute, mon,” rasped Mac. “The first is rigmarole. But the rest— You’re looking for The Avenger?”

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.”

Mac drew him toward the door.

“The Avenger… must find The Avenger.”

Mac led the man into the hall. He didn’t seem to have any idea where he was going; he followed the Scotchman blindly.

“What have we here?” asked Nellie, lovely eyes warm with sympathy. “Mac! What a queer face he has. Like — like—”

“Like the face ye might see carved on the frieze of an ancient Egyptian tomb,” nodded Mac. “I’ve noticed, Nellie.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” said Mac. “But he started out wantin’ to see Muster Benson. Must have lost his memory on the way here.”

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,” crooned the man with the blank, exotic countenance and the dulled eyes.

Then he fell. He had fainted.

Mac carried him to a divan in the drawing room. They found out a little about him from the things he had on him.

His name was George Snead. He was Washington manager for a big rug and carpet company, dealing largely in imports from the Orient. His home address was a club, which proved that he was a bachelor.

These things, Snead’s possessions told for him. The man, himself, told nothing. He continued to lie in a coma on the divan.

There was a new man taking Casey’s place at the museum that night.

He was younger than Casey, and had never been a cop. But he was a good man, nevertheless. He was burly, broad-shouldered, experienced as a night watchman and had plenty of courage. That went without saying. It took courage to take over the post of a man murdered on that post.

The man was unaware of Casey’s aversion to the Egyptian room. He knew nothing of the nature of the murder. Casey had been killed in the main museum rotunda, a long way from the Egyptian wing.

Therefore, when the new man came to the Egyptian room, and felt a chill go down his backbone, that could not be laid to imagination springing out of what had happened to Casey. It was something inherent in the place itself; in the very air.

The new watchman looked around, standing on the threshold of the great chamber. He looked at the cold, cruel faces of the great statues soaring up near the gloomy stone ceiling. As impersonal as the stars, staring straight ahead. He shivered a little.

He looked around at the tiers of mummy cases, each with its withered kernel that had been a man. He gazed at the great stone sarcophagi from which the cases had been taken.

And the new man suddenly didn’t like his job at all. But he had a wife and kids and needed the dough.

He went through the doorway, and became aware that there was a sort of second doorway.

More than statues had been brought here. Four huge pillars had also come from the Upper Nile. Temple pillars, from a massive entrance. Over the pillars, solid, immense slabs, also from the temple, were laid to form a lintel.

The watchman went under the stone slabs as fast as possible. Pillars and lintel had just been assembled like kids’ blocks, with finely cut stones piled on each other without cement. The surfaces were so close-fitting that cement wasn’t needed; nevertheless, the man got the panicky feeling that maybe those tons of rock would fall on him if he were not careful.

He literally jumped under the slabs, twenty-five feet above his head, and hurried to the time-box in this room, to punch his watchman’s clock.

Casey had always traced his steps to pass the mummy of Taros’ son last, because the thing gave him the creeps. The new man didn’t know anything about an old duck named Taros, or that he had had a son, at all. So he passed the mummy case first, on his way to the box under the elbow of one of the statues.

That is, he started to pass the case. But when he got abreast of it, he stopped, and gulped.

There wasn’t anything in that case.

The cabinet was empty of either mummy case or mummy! Through the glass lid you could see only empty blackness.

The watchman hadn’t the faintest idea who would want to steal a mess of ancient bones wrapped in moldering linen bands. But he did know that the mummy was probably of great value. It had been stolen his first night on the job.

He leaped for the phone, to get the police. Then he stopped. It would mean the loss of his job, if he reported such a theft. First, he’d see if by any wild chance the mummy was still around.

He tore from room to room of the vast hulk of the museum. No mummy! He went at last to the great main door, unlocked it, and went out to the grounds. A mummy is neither small nor easy to handle. He might surprise whoever was making away with their grisly burden.

Behind him, in the gloom, the faithful replica of an old Egyptan temple came alive!