The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring Read Online Free PDF

seeing strange things very far away.
    “An exact description of the old priest Taros, as given by Egyptian hieroglyphs,” he said.
    Smitty started to grin, and changed his mind.
    “It’s impossible of course,” the giant said. “But I will say this: if there really could be anything in this reincarnation business, if the ancient dead can come to life again—this guy was it. He didn’t just act like an old Egyptian priest. He was one! I can’t tell you why I felt that so strongly, but I did. And the girl was just as authentic.”
    “Yes, the girl,” Benson said. “That was more fantastic than the other. You say she bowed down to him?”
    “Yes! As if old Taros’ double had given her some kind of an order.”
    Smitty remembered the gauzy raiment worn and the shapeliness revealed underneath. Then he remembered something else.
    “Funny a ghost would wear a ring,” he said, more to himself than to Benson.
    “What?”
    Smitty found himself staring breathlessly into two colorless wells that suddenly had the flash of naked steel. Well as the giant knew the man with the paralyzed face, he was still unable to repress an icy feeling along the backbone when those terrible eyes turned on him like that.
    He moistened his lips.
    “I just said, it’s funny a ghost would wear a ring—”
    “Describe it!” the cold voice cracked out.
    “Well, I couldn’t see it very well in the darkness, and the guy wasn’t close till he raised his arms in that curse thing that knocked me out. But the ring seems to be pinkish, with a funny light to it—”
    The Avenger was halfway to the door. Smitty had to jump to keep up with him.
    “Where—” began Smitty.
    “Police headquarters,” said Benson. “That was the Ring of Power, Smitty. And it’s supposed to be in Caine’s strong-box—was supposed to be there at that moment. So we’ll see if thefts have been reported.”
    But that was where The Avenger’s description to the nation’s cops came in. For the first person they saw outside the Sixteenth Street mansion was a patrolman; and the patrolman had just received orders from the desk to try to find Benson and tell him Gunther Caine wanted him.
    The glittering big car started at seventy an hour through the deserted streets.
    Smitty spoke just once on the way.
    “Chief, I called the guy in the funny robe Taros’ double. Do you suppose—this reincarnation stuff—would it be possible that the boy with the bald dome and the eagle beak really is Taros, alive again after all these thousands of years?”
    The Avenger only said: “Faster, Smitty.”

    Gunther Caine, curator of the Braintree Museum, looked like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. His unpressed suit was more than ever like a suit of pajamas, after his night’s anxiety. His fuzzy brown eyes were dull with exhaustion and worry. He caught Benson’s arm, which was about like catching hold of a length of steel cable.
    “Mr. Benson, you must help me! We must get the relics back! My reputation, my whole life, hang on that!”
    He didn’t give the man with the white hair and linen-white face a chance to get in a word.
    “It’s my ruin,” he babbled on. “See my position. I personally was entrusted with the Taros amulets and the ring. I personally am responsible for the loss. Now, there are collectors, like the famous lawyer, Farnum Shaw, who would give up to half a million dollars for those things. I will be branded as a thief if we don’t get them back. People will say I sold out to someone like Shaw.”
    The Avenger was walking through the man’s library as Caine babbled, through it and to the small den where he had seen Caine place the box at a little before midnight.
    The box was there, empty, on the table where it had been when Benson’s pale eyes last rested on it. The Avenger strode to the table.
    “Where does that door go?” he said, pointing.
    “To the hall,” replied Caine, swallowing noisily.
    “And that one?”
    “To the drawing room