The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page B

seldom extends, was a specially designed .22 revolver. It was so streamlined that it looked like a length of blued pipe, with a slight bend for a butt. For compactness, the tiny cylinder held only four cartridges. There was a silencer on the small muzzle. This weapon Benson called, with grim affection, Mike.
    With the appearance of the three, Benson’s hands flashed for Mike and Ike. Not that he didn’t think he could handle three ancient knife-wielders with bare hands, but he wanted to be sure to capture one of them. And he could do that because of the uncanny accuracy with which he could handle Mike.
    The Avenger did not kill. He used Mike to “crease” attackers with. He shot so that the vicious small slugs hit the top of a skull and glanced, knocking the victim cold, without killing him.
    He wanted to perform this marvelous, eighth-of-an-inch shot now. But in stooping for Mike, for once in his life he made a mistake of timing.
    The three were rushing him just a little faster than he realized.
    He had his hand on the slight bend which was Mike’s grip, and was flashing the deadly, silenced pigmy from its holster, when the nearest of the three silent figures got to him.
    The knife in that one’s hand flashed down.
    Benson had to straighten and raise his arm in defense, to block the flashing death by letting the wrist behind the knife smack down on his upthrust fist. The maneuver was a success. But the knife glanced against the silenced little .22 with a clang, and Mike was torn from his fingers.
    The other two were on him, now! A knife thudded home against his left side. Another thumped against his back, directly over the heart.
    Benson sagged to his knees!

    The blades, gleaming a curious golden color in the early light, ripped into him in a score of places. But, oddly, they didn’t go in far, and when they were withdrawn there was no blood on their blades. That, although few but his aides knew it, was because Benson constantly wore a sort of vest of celluglass, a plastic of his own invention that was stronger than spun steel.
    The leader of the three—a tall, emaciated figure with an eagle beak of a nose, a hairless skull, and mad eyes under hairless brows—brought the handle of his heavy knife like a blackjack down on Benson’s head.
    Then the knives began reaching for his throat!
    The Avenger was half-stunned. But even in that condition he was faster than most men. He got a wrist in his left hand, and wrenched.
    When he wrenched, there was a soundless writhe of agony of the body under the priest’s robe. The knife was dropped. The straining wrist managed to jerk free at last, because Benson still was half-dazed. But the owner of the wrist made no effort to charge again; simply doubled over the strained limb and moaned.
    Benson got the second of the three with a blow to the heart that seemed literally to leave the robed figure hanging from his fist for a few seconds.
    The leader, gaunt and eagle-beaked and vulture-like, glared at Benson for an instant, then raced for the door. It was defeat. Benson’s strength was plainly returning from the blow on the head; and if he couldn’t be vanquished, now that he was weaker than normal, how could he be successfully attacked when he had regained his normal power?
    The other two staggered after him. And Benson leaped for the three of them. As far as he was concerned, the battle wasn’t over!
    The emaciated leader, who looked so fantastically like the long-dead Taros, tipped a great oak chair in front of Benson.
    The Avenger could have side-stepped that easily, had he been in full possession of his senses. As it was, he couldn’t quite miss it, and he went down.
    The three slipped out the door. Benson got to the curb—and saw nothing.
    Nothing at all was in evidence on the sidewalk of the broad avenue; nor was there any sign of the three when he went past the side of the mansion to the rear.
    The three in priests’ robes had stepped out the door—and