The Devil’s Horns

CHAPTER VII Unwelcome Visitors!

Benson sat in Groman’s chair at Groman’s teak desk. In the next room lay the helpless hulk that had once been the ruler, behind the scenes, of all Ashton City.

Both rooms were in total darkness. The Avenger was thinking, with the marvelous machine that was his brain clicking smoothly and swiftly along over the straight rails of genius. He thought best in darkness, so he sat in darkness now. It was about one o’clock in the morning, and things were very quiet.

He was sorting over the last secret radio reports sent him, and tabulating them, coldly and impersonally as fate.

Smitty had been taken on as night driver by the White Transportation Corporation. They’d been glad to get a man of his size and strength because they expected trouble.

Nellie had reported that the presence of murdered Judge Martineau in the gambling club called Friday the Thirteenth had been due to a frame-up, not because the judge was used to frequenting such places. Also, just a few minutes ago, Nellie had reported seeing Terry Groman, old Oliver Groman’s daughter, in Sisco’s nightclub office. It was odd that she’d have contacts with her father’s enemies.

Josh had reported that Judge Broadbough was alarmed by something — probably the first gang reports of the presence of Richard Henry Benson in Ashton City.

By his visit to Broadbough’s home disguised as Vautry, The Avenger had proved conclusively that Norman Vautry and Judge Broadbough were in this up to their necks. Also, Broadbough — had valuable documents somewhere around the place.

The wording of Nellie’s report concerning the talk between Buddy Wilson and the fat man corroborated Benson’s guess that in the murder of Martineau lay a weapon against the whole vicious political-criminal ring. “I helped rig it up. We all did—”

Exactly when Benson first heard the noise, he couldn’t have said, himself. At one moment he was sitting utterly motionless in the dark office, thinking. At the next, he was sitting equally motionless, but listening with all his powers of concentration.

The Avenger’s hearing was as far beyond normal as the rest of his powers. In steaming jungles and Antarctic cold, in city and wilderness, he had wagered his life on his miraculous hearing — and won.

The first thing he heard, after the few vague sounds out in the hall that had first caught his attention, was the slight scrape of metal against metal. Someone was turning the doorknob. Then there was a slight period of soundlessness. The knob-turner had discovered that the door was locked. After that, there was another tiny, metallic sound as a key was thrust into the lock.

Benson stared grimly through the darkness. Three keys there were supposed to be to that door. Just three. One was owned by Groman’s son, Ted. Another by Terry, his daughter. A third by Groman himself.

Benson had Groman’s key in his pocket now; he had taken it following the old lion’s helplessness.

Who, then was furtively unlocking that door? Ted or Terry? It seemed unlikely that either of them would act that way. They had a right here. Groman’s night nurse had taken advantage of Benson’s presence to go to the kitchen and make herself coffee and a sandwich. Would she have borrowed one of the keys and be entering like this? That was even more unlikely.

The faint sound of metal stopped, and Benson heard the door start to open. The method of its opening answered his questions. Very slowly, an inch at a time, it was pushed in by some hand long practiced at illegal entry. A professional criminal was opening that door!

The Avenger bent down in his chair. He preserved the same body balance in spite of the move. A swivel chair is apt to squeak if it is tilted — so he didn’t tilt it.

His steel-strong hands went to the slim, concealed holster of Mike, the silenced little .22, and the slender sheath of Ike, the throwing-knife. He straightened with the knife in his left hand and the gun in his right. He could use both unique little weapons with either hand.

He heard a man’s breathing, now. It was very light. Then it deepened a little, grew curiously uneven.

Two men were there, Benson realized after a moment.

The slight rustling of fabric of their clothes as they moved, stopped. Benson heard only their breathing. Even that, somehow, sounded murderous, deadly. Then he heard a new kind of sound; an almost inaudible rasp as a finger felt along the wall.

They had come in, they had closed the door behind them, they had listened and heard nothing.

So now, as soon as that finger felt the light switch, they were calmly going to turn on the lights.

Benson sat in the chair with every steel-wire muscle ready for fast action. Those men would have drawn guns in their hands. They’d be ready for split-second shooting. The sight of a man at the desk, where they expected no one, would startle them for a second or two. That would be all the time Benson had for his own action.

There was a hesitation, then a little click. The lights flashed on.

Benson saw a heavy-set man in dark overcoat and cap, with his back to the closed door. And a smaller man with his left hand still next to the light switch set into the paneled wall. Both had automatics, and both were positively gaping at the sight of a person where none had been expected.

The two men saw an average-sized man sitting calmly at the big desk with a small knife in one hand and something that looked like a length of slim, blued pipe in the other. They also saw a shock of snow-white hair over a face as horrible to them as a nightmare. That was because the face, in spite of the circumstances, was as devoid of expression as a thing of wood. Only the man’s eyes had expression. Colorless, pale, they were flaming like ice under an arctic moon.

The Avenger’s left hand whipped forward before a full second had passed. The slim, unique knife left his fingers like a needle-shaped bullet. Almost with the same breath, the silenced little gun in his right hand whispered its deadly little spat.

The big man backed against the door tottered forward and fell on his face. The little man suddenly began yelling and wrenching to get away from the light switch.

He stopped after one agonizing move, however. The knife had pinned his hand squarely to the wood panel, and Ike’s edges were razor-sharp. Every move cut deeper.

The little man still had his automatic in his other hand. Realization of this cut through his pain and he began pumping shots at Benson as fast as he could.

The Avenger had faded down behind the desk before the first shot roared out. He slid forward on hands and knees beyond the right corner of the desk, low down, and snapped one more shot.

This time he didn’t shoot to crease. That shot, hitting the top of the skull just deep enough to knock a man out, but not deeply enough to kill, required a target a little more quiet than the jumping, yelling gunman. Benson shot for a larger spot, the man’s gun hand.

The automatic spanged out of the gunman’s fingers, and then there was silence.

Benson stepped over to him and drew the knife out with a hard, swift jerk that brought a scream from the man’s lips. Then the fellow stood shivering, with blood streaming from his left hand, and the fingers of his right wrenched at crazy angles where the gun had been torn from them.

“Who are you?” said Benson, voice as expressionless as that terrible, dead face of his.

The man, shivering, terrified, was yet stubbornly silent.

“You came here to kill Groman, of course. And it’s not the first attempt. Why?”

Still the man was silent, in agony, but retaining his stubbornness.

Benson’s hands dipped swiftly into the man’s pockets. But the gunman had prepared for trouble. There were no identifying papers of any kind on him.

But in his right-hand coat pocket was a package of razor blades.

Benson stared at the package with blazing eyes.

“So you came here to do more than kill Groman! You meant to torture him as well! Why?”

The man shrank back from the awful eyes.

“You fools,” said The Avenger, “don’t you know Groman couldn’t feel your cuts? He’s lying in there, paralyzed. You could light fires on his body and he wouldn’t know it.”

He wasn’t going to get anything out of the fellow. He knew that. The gunman was one of those tough cases in whom stubbornness combined with fear of talking. He could be cracked all night in a police back room and still not talk.

Benson stepped to the door and called. One of Groman’s husky guards came, stared bewilderedly at the two men who had somehow gotten in.

“How in—”

“Where are you stationed?” Benson snapped.

“Back entrance,” said the man.

“Where’s the man at the front door?”

“Say! Where is he! I don’t see—”

Benson went to the hall door next to the front vestibule. He threw it open.

One of Groman’s guards would never guard a door again. He lay on the floor of this room, dragged in there out of sight, with his throat cut from ear to ear.

But how had the two gunmen managed to get in the front entrance quietly enough to catch the guard unaware?

Benson went swiftly up the stairs to the second floor of the building. Here were many rooms and suites, where at one time important and wealthy men had visited the political boss. They were all empty now, save for a suite set aside for Terry Groman, and another for Ted.

At the head of the stairs the third guard came up to Benson.

“I thought I heard somethin’ downstairs,” he said. “I was at the back, up here, and wasn’t sure. Don’t like to leave this floor till I’m told to—”

“Something happened,” The Avenger said grimly. “But it’s under control now. Stay here at your post.”

One of the doors opened and Terry, lovely and sleepy-looking in a dark-blue negligee, stepped out, and came up to Benson with bare white feet twinkling.

“Did something happen downstairs—” she began.

She stopped, reading the death in Benson’s icily flaring, pale eyes.

“Another attempt on your father’s life, Miss Groman,” Benson said. “The riddle is how the killers managed to get into this place. You have your key, all safe?”

“Of course!”

“May I see it, please?”

“Surely you don’t doubt—”

“I only want to make sure you really have it — that you didn’t lose it recently and still not know it.”

The girl went back into her room and returned with a small, beaded purse. She rummaged in it, and came out with a flat brass key. Benson took it.

He looked at it for a long time, then handed it back.

“Thank you. Which is Ted Groman’s door?”

Terry went with him to it. Benson knocked. Ted’s narrow-shaped face appeared at the door after a moment. Groman’s daughter had been awakened by the faintly heard sound of the disturbance downstairs. But Groman’s son had apparently slept right through it.

“What’s up?” he said, sleep fleeing from his eyes at sight of his sister and the man with the white face and snow-white hair.

Benson told him in a few words what had happened.

“You have your key all safe and sound?” he concluded.

Ted nodded. He went to his clothes, hanging over a chair back, felt in his trousers pocket, and came back with his key to his father’s two rooms.

The Avenger stared at that for a full minute, too, before handing it back.

“All right. There will be police around, but I don’t think you two need be disturbed. There is a dead guard, there are two wounded gunmen. We can book the gunmen for murder, and that’s that.”

But it was not so simple.

Harrigo was the man who came in answer to a phone call to headquarters. Harrigo was plainly looking for something on which to haul Benson off to jail. If he could just get The Avenger behind bars, with a mayor in the crooks’ power, and judges in their employ, it would be dandy.

In a dozen ways, the captain of detectives showed that he was one of the doubtful ones in high places mentioned by Groman and later by Commissioner Cattridge.

But, with Benson’s influence, there just wasn’t enough to jail him on!

“I was in this office,” Benson repeated quietly. “I was sitting in the dark—”

“Why?” barked Harrigo.

“Because I like to sit in the dark. As I sat there I heard the door open. The lights went on, and these two gunmen appeared. I overpowered them, and later we found the guard they had killed. That’s all.”

“No, it’s not all! You knifed the smaller one in the hand, and shot his gun away from him—”

“I have permits to carry both gun and knife,” said Benson, pale eyes taking on their basilisk stare.

Harrigo stared at the bigger man, still unconscious; stared at the gash on the top of his skull where Mike’s marvelously aimed bullet had creased him.

“How’d you do that?” demanded Harrigo. “Sock him with a piece of pipe or something?”

Benson didn’t even answer. He left Harrigo fuming, and went out of the office.

The Avenger was still grimly searching the answer to the entry of those two men. When he had looked at the keys of Terry and Ted, he had found a part of one. Ted’s key to Groman’s first-floor suite was all right.

Terry’s key showed just a trace of file marks, raw and new in the brass, on the serrated edge.

Somebody had filed out a duplicate key, using Terry’s as a master, a very short time ago. It was with that duplicate key that the two men had entered the office.

But how about the building itself?

Benson began making the rounds of the place to see if there were any trick entrances and exits. But there were none.

On the second floor a person might get in through a window — if he could climb sheer wall. But once in, he could only get to the stairs leading down by one staircase. And in the hall leading to that, a guard was stationed all the time.

The first-floor windows were barred. There was a guard at front and back entrances. The Avenger even went to the basement, and looked around, with microscopic eyes.

All was okay down there, too. There were no windows at all. No outer doors. The basement walls were solid cement, tapping revealed.

Benson went back to the office. His search had taken up a long time. Harrigo, blustering and baffled, had cleaned the mess in there and gone out. The Avenger began looking around.

Book-lined walls can sometimes conceal many unusual things. While he was searching around, Benson decided he’d better go over that, too.

He took out every fifth book, on every shelf in the room. There was, behind them, nothing but solid wall. No safe, no concealed exit, nothing. But he did find one peculiar thing about the books themselves.

In a lower shelf, under the barred and opaque street window, there were four books, new, on the same subject.

That subject was paralysis.

One title was: “Failure of the Motor Nerves, Cause and Effect.” Another: “Kephart’s Analysis of Thromboid Paralysis.” The other two were similar.

Benson stared from the four books to the door of the old lion, Groman, a hulk waiting for death. He’d had warning of a probable stroke, it seemed, and had bought books on the subject to see what was in store for him.

Well, he knew now, precisely, what paralysis meant!