The Avenger 15 - House of Death by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

of the names.
    It was Harlik Haygar.
    “The swine!” he snarled. “Taking the family name! He is no more a Haygar than I am a Mahatma. He steals my keepsake and also my last name!”
    The Avenger’s voice was as cold and even as an icy sea.
    “Why would he do that?”
    Shan shrugged. “I don’t know. Unless he thinks he can trade on the Haygar prestige by use of the name and the keepsake.”
    Dick’s steely forefinger was pressing the bell.
    “Are you just going up openly?” said Shan, looking surprised.
    “Yes. Why not?”
    “He will hardly turn over that medallion merely on demand!”
    “We can try open methods first,” said Benson.
    But it seemed they were not to be able to try them. For there was no answer to the bell’s ring.
    “Good! He’s out,” said Shan. “We can go over his rooms, if you can get in.”
    “I can get in,” said Benson.
    His aides would have looked surprised at all this. It was not like The Avenger to enter such enterprises without more investigation and study. It was not at all like him to be so pliant to the requests of a man who was hardly more than a stranger wandering in off the streets.
    The vestibule lock took about twenty seconds. Then they were in an automatic elevator, having seen no one in the small lobby.
    The door of Harlik Haygar’s apartment was opened in about a minute and a half.
    “So this is why the bell wasn’t answered,” said The Avenger, voice as glacial as his pale eyes.
    Did Dick Benson have a psychic sixth sense, whispering to him facts that other people must first see before they knew about them? Some people thought so; and in this case it almost looked to be true.
    For death was the reason why the bell had not been answered, and it seemed as if The Avenger must have sensed that in the vestibule and broken in to verify it.
    On the floor not far from the door lay a man such as Shan Haygar had described: elderly, thin, spidery-looking. He had been shot in the side of the head and lay with weak-looking blue eyes wide and blood dabbling his thin gray hair.
    Nothing in the place, from the orderly appearance of it, had been touched.
    Shan’s face had fallen.
    “We’re too late,” he mourned. “Someone has been here first. The medallion will be gone.”
    “We will search and make sure,” said Benson. It was eerie to observe the expressionlessness of that calm face in the presence of murder. In places where other men would register horror or fear or hysterical anger, Benson continued to hold perfect control over his emotions.
    The Avenger searched the three small rooms of the apartment.
    There is a science to searching a place, as any cop can tell you, particularly when the article searched for is as small as a quarter. It was an eye-opening thing to watch the swift efficiency with which Dick went over the place. In fifteen minutes it was possible to say absolutely surely that the gold disk Shan wanted was not there.
    “What do you think we should do now?” asked Benson, still with that curious pliancy to another man’s suggestion.
    Shan bit his lips and looked frightened and uncertain.
    “Er—nothing. This murder . . . Horrible! I’m going to drop the whole affair.”
    “The police should be notified,” said Benson. “This is murder.”
    Shan shook his head urgently.
    “As I’ve said, I don’t dare reveal my identity. I have powerful enemies. It would mean my death. Surely we can just drop this?”
    He laid his hand on Benson’s steel-cable arm.
    “I wanted my keepsake back. I came to you for help, and you kindly granted it. But now we find it is too late. Heaven knows who has the gold disk, now. It is gone beyond recall. Accept my thanks—and forget the rest.”
    “There is still a murdered man to report.”
    Shan sighed.
    “Very well, then . . .”
    The two of them left, Shan in the rear. At the curb, Shan opened the right door of the coupé and got in. His hand fumbled in the side pocket of the door.
    Benson went around to get in