The Yellow Hoard

CHAPTER VII Hollow Hieroglyphs

Dr. Mortimer Barker had cut and run.

Bower was so frightened for his personal safety after the murder of Professor Gray that he had fainted when Dick Benson dwelt on the subject. Doolen was frightened, but composed. Barker, it appeared, was frightened and discreet.

He had gone to Europe for a month, his assistant said, when Benson called to talk to the man.

Two phone calls — one to the American consulate in New York and one to the steamship company — verified the statement that Barker was on a ship and fleeing from danger at the moment. So Benson discarded the worthy physician as a possible source of information and went to see Olin Chandler.

Chandler was in an office listed: “Chandler & Co., Zoning and City Planning Engineers.” There was an outer office with half a dozen clerks at work, an anteroom where a smart-looking girl answered phone calls and talked to visitors, and then the inner office of Chandler himself.

Benson was directed in. He saw a big desk in the five-o’clock sun, with a smallish, middle-aged man seated at it. The man had intelligent brown eyes and an alert manner. He looked hard at Benson as the pale-gray man walked with his tiger tread from door to visitor’s chair beside the desk.

Then Chandler withdrew his hand from the partly open desk drawer. In that drawer was a flat automatic.

“So you want to know about the Mexican expedition, too,” he said, folding well-kept hands across his flat and well-kept middle and leaning back in his chair.

“Too?” repeated Benson. His pale eyes were rapidly evaluating Chandler. A man as composed as Doolen, and perhaps even more resolute. A younger man than Doolen, perhaps more of a fighter.

“You’re the third to approach me with questions,” said Chandler. “The police were one. In connection with poor Gray’s death. The second was a man who skulked into my apartment when I was out, waited till I’d got home, and then talked to me from behind where I sat. He said he had a gun and would shoot if I tried to turn and see who he was. I took his word for it and didn’t turn. I didn’t tell him anything either. Rather, I told him a lot of stuff that I made up as I went along. But I’ll talk to you, Mr. Richard Henry Benson.”

“Why?” said Benson.”

“You evidently have a great many friends, some of them in out-of-the-way places. One of them is a Harry Rhodes, who is an importer in Guatemala. Right?”

“Correct,” said Benson quietly.

“Well, it happens I know Rhodes, and he has spoken of you. That’s good enough for me.”

“You’ve been in Guatemala much?” came Benson’s silken voice.

“I was there for two years,” nodded Chandler. “Most of the time between Professor Gray’s next-to-the-last expedition — on which I went along, also — and this final one.”

“You were there in your capacity of zoning engineer?”

“Yes,” said Chandler. “The title indicates my work, of course. I advise governments in laying out new towns, or remodeling old ones. Where to lay the streets, how to group the various business, manufacturing, and residence districts, that sort of thing. I was at work on the town of Chiquimula when the boys told me to pack up and leave because they weren’t going to have the money to spend that they’d thought they would have.”

“Guatemala — munitions,” said Benson.

“That’s right.” Chandler nodded ruefully. “The silly little country is so busy buying a silly little army and navy that they’re broke. They haven’t the money for such comparatively civilized jobs as city planning. So I came on home.”

“There are whispers,” said Benson, “of more munitions being rushed down there than the country itself could ever handle.”

“Right,” said Chandler, eyes narrowing. “There are also whispers that this big store of munitions has something to do with a move against Mexico, with perhaps a foreign power aiding under the surface. But has this anything to do with what you came to see me about?”

“I suppose not,” Benson said. “What I came to see you about was — Mexican bricks.”

The pale and deadly eyes probed Chandler’s brown ones in the pause that followed. And Chandler stared squarely, thoughtfully back. Then he nodded.

“You’ve hit on it,” he said. “The thing of great importance that Professor Gray found in Mexico. The thing he was murdered for, though the police simply can’t quite believe it. Five rough, ancient bricks of ordinary dried clay.”

“There were five, then? I wasn’t sure of the number.”

“There were five. And Gray thought them so important that he split them up when we came up across the border into Texas, past the customs men. He took two himself — the ones that were stolen when he was murdered. He gave one to Dr. Barker to handle for him, another to a young fellow named Knight, and the third — to me.”

“Now,” said Benson, “we’re getting somewhere. As a great favor — if you’re sure enough of me to trust me that far — I’d like you to let me see that brick.”

Chandler got up. He began to pace slowly back and forth across his office. Finally he stopped in front of Benson with a troubled look on his face.

“I’m sure enough of you, after all the things Rhodes has told me about you. But — I haven’t got the brick.”

“You haven’t got it? You gave it back to Gray?”

“No. Gray hadn’t asked me for it before he died. I was still keeping it, waiting to hear from him. I told you a man was waiting in my apartment for me last night, and questioned me? Well, that man got the brick. As soon as he had gone out a rear window behind me, I ran to the place where I’d hidden the brick. It wasn’t there.”

Benson drew a deep breath.

“I understand there was Aztec picture writing on the bricks. If I could have just a glimpse of one of them—”

“There,” said Chandler unexpectedly, “I can help you out.”

On his desk, acting as a paper weight, was a perfect little cannon. A miniature of a field piece as complete in all its parts as the clever model boats that many men build as a hobby. Chandler lifted the little toy and took the top envelope from a pile of several envelopes held down by it.

Benson saw the name Krupp on the little cannon.

The envelope had a transparent window on it, as do envelopes that contain bills. The printing on it showed that it was a firm manufacturing mechanical-drawing instruments.

But the way Chandler handled it indicated that there was something in the envelope far more important than a bill for mechanical-drawing tools. That was just a blind.

“I’m trusting you right down to the ground in showing you this,” Chandler said. “But I think I can.”

“You can,” said Benson quietly.

Chandler took out a sheet of paper. It was covered by lines of little ideographs, the picture writing of the Aztecs.

“This,” said Chandler, “is an exact copy of the hieroglyphs on that brick Gray had me keep for him. I copied them off just in case something should happen to the brick.”

“Can you read this?” said Benson, pale flames of eyes traveling over the cryptic lines.

“Hardly!” said Chandler, smiling a little. “I’m interested in the Aztecs — went on two expeditions to their ruins — because they were such marvelous old city planners. I got ideas for my own modern work. I’m not nearly advanced enough to know their writing! Not many men are.”

“May I copy this?” said Benson.

Chandler thought for a moment. Then he said slowly: “I think I’ll do better than that. I think I’ll let you take the list itself. Since the brick itself, with that writing on it, has fallen into the wrong hands, there is no longer such an urgent reason for keeping the whole thing secret. Although I didn’t show even the police that sheet of paper you hold in your hand.”

“It’s much appreciated,” said Benson.

He got up, only of average size but impressive, with his silver-white hair and white, dead face, as few men are impressive.

“I’ll return this shortly,” he said. “Meanwhile, take plenty of precautions about your safety. There seems to be a menace over all who went on that last expedition. As an intimate of Professor Gray, perhaps you are in danger even more than the others.”

Chandler’s smile went crooked and humorless.

“Good advice — but I don’t need it. My hide is very precious to me. I’ll guard it, all right!”

Benson went to the address of Alec Knight, the one young student taken with Professor Gray on that final archaeological expedition — and the third of the dead man’s intimates on the trip.

Knight was obviously in meager circumstances. The building he lived in was hardly more than a tenement on the East Side. But there were tiny apartments in the tenement, not just single rooms. He was getting along well enough to have more than a single chamber to live in.

Benson pressed the bell under his name, got no answer, and jabbed the button again.

Benson went to the top floor of the four-story walk-up building, and found Knight’s door. He knocked. When there was still no answer, he took out a small pocket knife and opened a blade that looked a bit like an old-fashioned buttonhook, except that it was smaller.

It was not a buttonhook. He inserted the thin, flexible end in the lock, turned experimentally twice, and the door opened. He stepped in — and then shut the door quickly and softly behind him. Shut it on death.

His call on Alec Knight, brilliant student putting himself through Columbia, was too late.

Knight, a sturdy, tanned youngster of twenty-one or so, lay next to the shabby day bed, which was the largest piece of furniture in the room. The top of his head was mashed in, as the top of Gray’s head had been. And the room had been searched by someone so thoroughly that it looked as if a tornado had come to call.

Benson stepped with his tiger tread to the door on the side wall. Opening it, he saw another room, with the big folding doors of a pullman kitchenette at its end. This had been designed as a dining room, perhaps. Now it held a work table cluttered with Indian relics of the more common variety and textbooks.

Here the room was not so disarranged, and the gray steel man nodded, his face, as ever, expressionless. The fact that blood was still trickling from Knight’s head showed that he had been very recently killed. And the fact that this second room was only a little disarranged hinted that the killer hadn’t had time for a complete search before he’d been frightened off. Probably by Benson’s ring at the bell downstairs.

With pale eyes full of sympathy at the youth of the dead man, but with a white, still face as dead as the man himself, Benson finished the searching of the second room. No need to go over the part that had already been rifled; anything of importance there would already have been taken.

Benson found many things relative to Aztec Indians — but no clay brick. Only one thing came to light — in a battered leather portfolio — that caught the notice of the pale, infallible eyes.

That was a sealed envelope addressed to Professor Archer Gray. It was unstamped.

Benson opened it. The piece of paper within had just three marks on it — three of the ancient Indian ideographs. That was all.

Benson put it in his pocket and went back to examine the murdered man. His pockets had been turned out, his shirt had been half removed to make sure he had no secret hiding place next to his skin for anything, like a money belt.

The position of the body indicated that the youth had been slugged while he lay resting on the day bed. Asleep, probably. The poor devil hadn’t had a chance, had never known what hit him.

With a reflection of the terrible, cold fury in his pale eyes that had leaped there at the callous act of the man in the brown cap, Benson left the pitiful place of death.

He went to the Metropolitan Museum.

As Chandler had noted, Dick Benson knew countless people in many unusual positions. One of his host of friends was old Dr. Brunniger, on the staff of the Metropolitan. Brunniger was an outstanding authority on ancient Mexico.

“Dick,” said the old man, as Benson found him munching a cold dinner and studying the latest shipment of primitives, “it’s a treat to see you again.”

Brunniger’s eyes went to Benson’s still, white face and his snow-white hair.

“You’re… different than when I saw you last, Richard. I heard about your loss. I’m… sorrier than I can say.”

A terrible light flared in the deadly, pale eyes. That light came when anything reminded The Avenger of the reason for his present mode of life. But he moved his hand as if brushing the thought aside.

“I came for a little information on your specialty, doctor,” he said. He opened the paper Chandler had given him.

“Can you read this?”

Brunniger smiled. “Indian ideographs! Why do you come to me? You, with your surprising knowledge of all things under the sun, can read hieroglyphs yourself.”

“My knowledge,” said Benson, “isn’t as deep as yours. At any rate, this seems to be beyond me.”

Brunniger studied the paper.

“Mayan, I think — no, Aztec. They borrowed from the Mayans, who preceded them, as you know—”

The old expert blinked, shook his head a little, then studied the paper again. He stared up at Benson with a humorous quirk to his lips.

“Why, it doesn’t mean anything! I thought so at first, but couldn’t be sure. Is this some brilliant joker’s idea of humor?”

“I don’t think,” said Benson, “that’s a joke. But it seemed to me, too, to have no significance. That’s why I brought it to you. To make sure. You’ll swear to that — that the ideographs have no meaning?”

“Of course. It’s as though a child with a knowledge of hieroglyphs had scrawled several lines of characters having no relation to each other — and no meaning whatever.”

Benson stared at the paper with icily flaming eyes. The copy of the hieroglyphs on Chandler’s brick. Murder had been done for bricks similar to that. Seemingly, the bricks themselves had no real value. So it had been probable that the murder had been done to get and read whatever message had been on the bricks.

And now it was proved that the message on Chandler’s brick, at least, had no meaning at all.

Benson took out the paper with the three ideographs on it that Alec Knight had addressed to Professor Gray.

“What do these tell you, doctor?”

The old man studied the three symbols, and nodded after a moment.

“The first of these,” he said, “is the symbol for death. The last has to do with building construction. Stones — or bricks.”

“I read those two,” said Benson. “But the center one I couldn’t be sure of.”

“That’s natural,” said Brunniger. “It’s a very rare symbol. It means artificial rain, irrigation. The Aztecs raised crops by irrigation, you know.”

“Thanks,” said Benson.

Brunniger’s whimsical smile appeared.

“Thanks for what, Richard? Is it possible that those three symbols spell a message to you? Death — irrigation — bricks! Can you read a meaning there?”

“I think I can,” said Benson.

And the gray steel figure with the dead, paralyzed face and the snow-white hair turned and went out.

Back to Alec Knight’s dingy little apartment.

Benson found it under the tub. Under the linoleum, and then under a loose board in the floor of the bathroom.

That was the way he’d figured Knight’s cryptic message to Professor Gray. Symbol for death, symbol for running water, symbol for brick. “In the event of death, you will find the brick under the bathtub.”

Or it could have been kitchen sink, bathroom wash-stand — anything symbolized by running water. It had been under the tub, however, the first place Benson looked.

He stared at the old clay brick Gray had entrusted to Knight. There was writing on it, too. Hieroglyphs that Benson could make out. It was the same as the picture writing on Chandler’s brick; it spelled no message.

It had no meaning whatever — was just a brainless conglomerate of symbols such as might occur in our own language if a child shook a hatful of words together at random and then copied several lines of them as they fell.