The Avenger 19 - Pictures of Death by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online

gone over the composition of the painting. Could the grouping of subjects, or the arrangement of lines, have presented a message? Or a map or something?
    But this wasn’t probable, either. Gauguin had painted a picture just to be painting a picture. It would be impossible to distort a copy into spelling out some message without so altering the lines that a glance would tell that it wasn’t an original.
    Nellie was at the news ticker, watching the unreeling tape.
    “We’re sure on a hot trail, chief,” said the little blonde. “About seeing if other collectors have had some kind of troubles. Listen to this:
    “ ‘Durban Vaughan, well-known artists’ agent and owner of the Manhattan Art Gallery, has just been reported murdered. His body was found in his office at 2 P.M. by an employee returning from a late lunch. Police are now investigating.’ ”
    “We’ll join them in the investigation,” Dick said. “Mac!”
    The two went out—the tall Scot with the dour blue eyes and the lithe, chilled-steel bar of a man called The Avenger.
    “Leaving me to rot here doing nothing,” Nellie said resentfully to Smitty.
    “Leaving both of us,” mourned the giant. “I can’t understand it in my case. In yours, I can. The chief is on important business. It wouldn’t help any to have you go and get in a jam so that a couple of us had to drop the main job and go to your rescue—”
    He ducked just in time to keep an angrily flung book from bouncing off his head.
    It didn’t look as if they were going to miss any excitement, however. Benson and Mac were simply on a routine murder investigation.
    At least that was what it started out to be.

    The Manhattan Gallery is on upper Fifth Avenue. Crowds stream past all day, and there are usually several people in the gallery. It is about the last place anyone would choose for a daylight murder; but murder had been done, nevertheless. And just a glance at the locale told how it could have been committed with no one the wiser.
    Durban Vaughan’s private office was a full room away from the front, display part. Dick and Mac passed through a storeroom where scores of canvases were stacked and opened a door to the office.
    The first thing The Avenger saw was that the door was half a foot thick, like the door of an ice box. That gave him the idea, which only a glance at the walls was needed to confirm, that the office was elaborately soundproof.
    This is excellent for comfortable and silent working. But it can—and in this case it had—become a decided disadvantage. No sounds can get in from outside to disturb concentration. But no sounds can get outside, either, even the sound of yells, to attract attention.
    And in the death of Durban Vaughan, there must have been yells!
    The man, middle-aged, partly bald, a little too heavy, lay in front of the door of his office vault. His shoes and socks were off, and there were burns on his feet.
    A lieutenant of detectives named Parsons was in charge of the case. Parsons had met The Avenger several times.
    “Hello, Mr. Benson,” he said. “I’m glad you’re interesting yourself in this case. It looks like a tough one. No one saw anybody come in here; no one knows what they were after. It’s a blind alley.”
    “You have found nothing important?” said Benson, pale eyes ranging the big private office.
    “Nothing,” said Parsons.
    “You have no idea what the killers were torturing this man to get?”
    “No, sir.” Parsons was over fifty. The Avenger was in his twenties. But that “sir” just naturally slipped out.
    “Anything missing?”
    “Not as far as we can tell. Or as the clerk who found Mr. Vaughan can tell.”
    Benson’s gaze went to the vault and stayed there.
    “It is probably,” he said, “that the murderers were torturing Vaughan to make him open that vault. There seems to be nothing else around that they couldn’t have searched without his help. I see the vault is now closed. Was it closed when you got