The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a stranger to you, you mean. Have you any idea who was behind his death?”
    One blink.
    “Was it Singell? Buddy Wilson? Sisco—”
    One blink.
    “You think it was a man of Sisco’s, then—”
    Benson recalled the strange letters traced in blood on the bare office floor.
    “Do you know what the words, ‘the devil’s horns,’ mean?”
    But his questioning was through. The eyelids closed—and stayed closed. Benson’s steely fingers sought Groman’s pulse. The pulse was thin and thready.
    He went to the bedroom door.
    “Doctor, you’d better attend Groman. I think he needs a heart stimulant.”
    The coroner went in. As he passed Benson, he shook his head.
    “He’s through,” he said in a low tone, nodding his head toward the bed. “He’s just a nerveless, dead hulk, now, waiting for true death. I don’t give him a month to live.”

    He went on to the bed, and Benson went back to the office. Captain Harrigo came toward him. Some of his bluster had gone, and he looked more dangerous without it.
    “You haven’t explained your presence here,” he said.
    “I’m a guest of Mr. Groman, staying with him in his apartment,” Benson said. “My name is Richard Henry Benson.”
    The name seemed to give the detective captain a shock, like the touch of a live wire. But with dawning recognition in his reddish eyes came dawning rage—and hate.
    “Got a gun, Mr. Richard Henry Benson?” he grated, looking at the bullet hole in the dead man’s chest.
    “Not of a caliber such as made that wound,” said Benson calmly.
    “We’ll see—”
    Harrigo’s big, muscular hand went out to search The Avenger.
    Many men had thought to handle Benson as his average size and weight would seem to warrant. One by one, they had learned a thing or two about the quality of muscle.
    They had learned the curious fact that now and then a man appears who seems to have a different kind of muscle than the average person. One who seems to have muscular fiber with a strange power—triple the power of a similar bulk of ordinary fiber.
    Harrigo learned this surprising fact about Benson now.
    The Avenger’s steely white hand, not big, not bulky, encircled the wrist behind the rough hand Harrigo thrust out. The white, long fingers tightened.
    Harrigo gasped with surprise. Then he moaned a little with sudden, amazing pain. Then he whipped his left hand toward his gun.
    The Avenger’s fingers twisted a little. Harrigo changed his mind about going for the gun. His wrist could have been broken in that calm grip.
    “You exceed your authority, I think,” said Benson. The tone was so quiet that it seemed almost a whisper. The face of The Avenger was as emotionless as a wax mask. The eyes were unmoved ice in the white mask.
    But Harrigo stood still, chewing his lips, when the terrible grip was relaxed.
    “I have told you,” said Benson, “that I was with the police commissioner when this man was murdered. There is no possibility of connecting me with it. I have an idea it would not be healthy to be put behind bars in your city on trumped-up charges. If you want to call me later as a witness before a grand jury, I’ll be here.”

    He left the man, glaring murder at him, and went out to the hall again. Terry Groman was still out there. Groman’s son, Ted, wasn’t around.
    “Who found the body and phoned the police?” Benson asked.
    Terry Groman shivered. “I did.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “I wanted to see Dad about—a certain matter,” said the girl. “I knocked on his door about a half hour ago. It was locked, as he has been in the habit of keeping it lately. There was no answer. There always had been before when I knocked, so I was afraid something was wrong. I got my key—”
    “You had a key to his suite?”
    “Yes! So has Ted. So had Mr. Hawley. I unlocked the door and went in. Mr. Hawley lay dead near the desk. Dad—was lying in the bedroom doorway. I thought he was dead too, till the doctor came and told me it was a