The Avenger 15 - House of Death (16 page)

The two girls had been far from sleeping when Smitty knocked. They were even farther from it afterward.

Carmella was scared to death but kept it under fair control, helped by an aristocratic ancestry and a goodly amount of personal fortitude.

Nellie was consumed by curiosity and a baffled anger that this confounded brunette who had caused them so much trouble didn’t seem disposed to spread knowledge.

After Smitty left, she tried to get information from Carmella by apparently thinking aloud to herself, meanwhile looking sideways at her roommate once in a while to see if any of her shrewd guesses hit home.

“Let’s see,” she said, “five members of your family came to this country, one after another, after being dispossessed in their own, from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Turkey, and Russia. Each had a gold medallion, proving that he really represented the Haygar family.

“There was some murdering done over Harlik Haygar’s gold disk, and it finally wound up in von Bolen’s pocket—after Mr. Benson had had a murder charge thrown at him by Shan Haygar. Incidentally, you have sweet cousins, Carmella.”

The dark girl stirred as if in protest, but said no word.

“You were kidnapped as you phoned us for help. Mr. Benson rescued you and recovered your medallion from a thug who had swallowed it for safekeeping. The gold medal, you say, is only a keepsake, with only a sentimental value.”

Carmella’s lips were tight and her face as expressionless as she could make it.

“All of you Haygars met here at the island of still another cousin, the last member of the American branch of the family,” Nellie went on. “The island has trenches all over it as if Goram means to fight a war.”

There was a noticeable glint in Carmella’s dark eyes at mention of the trenches, but her mouth remained stubbornly closed.

“It seems as if Sharnoff came ahead of time with his gang, and hid them,” mused Nellie, eyes sharp. “Shan followed, and he had a gang, too. There really was a war, though the trenches didn’t play a part because the war was at the dock. Then a dynamite trap was sprung—set by Goram to protect himself against just such invasion—and the two gangs were wiped out. But Sharnoff and Shan got clear.

“And this Shan, now—he was interesting. He was not the original Shan. That one, the first one, was captured and killed by our present Shan, who claimed he was an impostor. And yet the first one had the medal. How would you know, if a person had a medal, whether he was an impostor or not?”

There was still no answer. Nellie went doggedly on.

“Our little crew reached here and was almost wiped out, too. But now, all is sweetness and light as far as Goram is concerned. He put everybody up for the night, and is the perfect host. However, three more died in this little island paradise: von Bolen, Shan, and Sharnoff.”

Carmella was looking at her blood-red nails in the dim light of the room. Nellie could have choked her.

“A young army of men, dead—fighting, murdering, lying, framing people into prison! All, apparently, for the golden disks! Yet everybody insists that they have no value other than a sentimental one!”

“You can see how true that must be,” murmured Carmella. “If one of the medallions were melted down, there wouldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-five of your dollars’ worth of gold in it,”

“But they could mean something,” said Nellie, exasperated.

Carmella shrugged. “It is hard to see what. In each country, our family has lost all estates and possessions. That is a matter of record.”

“Could I see your medallion?” asked Nellie, biting back a few choice, impulsive remarks.

Carmella hesitated, then got her golden disk from its hiding place next to her skin. It was warm from her body as Nellie took it.

Nellie examined it.

Same on both sides. Part of a wall, that now could be identified as the wall of this very house. The letters F H. And the figures 19 33.

“The letters, of course,” said Nellie, still in that musing tone and still watching Carmella out of the corners of her eyes, “must be the initials of your father, Francisco Haygar. But what do the figures mean?”

“They could be a date,” murmured Carmella.

“Sure, they could be. They could be just what they seem, and indicate the year 1933. But if that is so, why is there a gap between them—19, space, then 33?”

Whether or not Carmella might have answered the direct question will never be known. Because it was at that moment that the tap sounded at the door.

It was a very light tap, hardly to be heard. Indeed, it was more of a scratching noise than a tap, as if perhaps a dog were sniffing around the door out in the hall.

Nellie went to the door, gun in hand. And she saw the dim light under the door suddenly vanish. The light in the hall had been turned out.

“Don’t open it!” whispered Carmella frantically, hand on Nellie’s arm.

Nellie considered. She had given her promise.

“Who’s there?” she asked in a low tone.

In an even lower tone came a muffled answer. In fact, it was so muffled that you couldn’t understand it at all. At least, Nellie was sure she hadn’t understood it. For the sound she had thought to hear was, of course, fantastic.

She thought she had heard the name, Wendell Haygar!

She smiled at that one. How silly! Wendell Haygar was a corpse, four years dead, lying in a coffin under their feet, according to what Smitty had told her.

Wendell Haygar, indeed!

“Who did you say you were?” she asked.

There was no answer at all this time.

“Don’t open it!” pleaded Carmella.

But Nellie, gun alert in her hand, snapped back the lock and opened the door a few inches. No one could shoot her or otherwise try to murder her without rousing the giant next door and getting nailed for it.

She looked into darkness that was only intermittently broken by lightning, playing in the window at the end of the hall. An empty darkness. There was not a soul out there.

Then another of the lightning flashes occurred, and she changed her mind. And behind her, peering fearfully over her shoulder, Carmella moaned in superstitious horror.

There was a vague white figure in the darkness. It looked almost like mist. It was about the size and shape of a small human being. A man.

“It’s a ghost!” moaned Carmella. “Back! Lock the door—quick!”

“If it’s a ghost,” said Nellie reasonably, “it could come through a closed door.” And she stood her ground, even when the wavering white shape came closer.

The white mist had a voice, it seemed. Low words came, muffled, that could barely be heard.

“Follow me. I will show you that which you seek.”

Nellie heard Carmella say, quaveringly, “If it’s me you are talking to—I know what I seek.”

Nellie reached back and grabbed Carmella’s wrist till the tall brunette gasped.

“I don’t know what you seek,” she said, lips to Carmella’s ear. “And, anyhow, I want to nose into this a little. Shut up!”

The figure was slowly fading down the hall. Nellie took a step after it.

“You are going to follow?” panted Carmella.

“Bet your life!” said Nellie. “I might find out something important.”

“You told your big friend you wouldn’t leave the room.”

“I said I wouldn’t for anything human,” Nellie pointed out. “This is a ghost. It practically says so, itself. So I can follow it and still keep my promise. It may be twisting a promise a little, but you couldn’t sue me for it.”

“How can you be so frivolous at such a time?”

“I’m doing it to keep my knees from knocking together,” Nellie said, starting on tiptoe down the hall after the ghostly shape. “You stay in the room.”

“Alone?” whispered Carmella. “Oh, no!”

She came with Nellie down the hall, staring with wide, terrified eyes at the weird white shape, ever-receding before them.

Down the hall to the stairs. Up these to a third-floor corridor that was dusty and never used. Toward the front of the house, to the left—

“He’s taking us to the turret on the opposite wing of the house from the one you were held in,” Nellie whispered to Carmella.

The Spanish girl only trembled and hung on to Nellie’s left arm; the blonde still had her gun in her right hand.

There was one more short staircase, ending in the door to the little room in the left-hand turret, four stories up from the ground.

It was too bad Smitty had been so brief in mentioning the “accidents” occurring to Shan and Sharnoff. He had done so only to spare Nellie’s feelings. But he had unwittingly failed to give information that might have helped her now.

Had Nellie known that the accident that took Shan’s life was a fall from the other turret and that he had died mumbling of something leading him to that which he desired, she might have been more cautious now.

But she did not know, so she followed the white wraith up the stairs.

During the whole follow-the-leader game, the wraith had periodically disappeared. Then it would appear again, as if it had trouble in keeping materialized, only to fade back into the land of the spirits now and then.

At the door of the turret room, it disappeared once more.

But this time it stayed that way.

The two girls went on up the last few steps in total darkness, with Nellie cursing the fact that she had no flashlight. They halted in front of the door, which was closed.

Nellie was waiting for the wraith to appear once more. Carmella, meanwhile, was tugging at her to get her back down the stairs.

The wraith refused to lead any more, and Nellie refused to heed Carmella.

“Whatever this is all about,” she said to Carmella in a low tone, “the answer must be behind that door.”

“You’re not going in?” gasped Carmella.

In answer, Nellie tried the doorknob, found that it was open, and swung the door back.

Lightning flashed and revealed the small room. It was about ten feet square, and it seemed to be absolutely bare. No furnishings in it, no people, nothing. The floor was not dusty, however, as the stairs and third-floor corridor had been.

“You see?” chattered Carmella. “There is nothing in there, no reason for going into the room.”

Nellie gripped her gun tight and went through the doorway; Carmella, fearing nothing so much as being left alone in that storm-tensed, frightening darkness, crowded close on her heels.

It was Carmella who screamed!

Her cry ripped through the night, echoing through the big house over a sudden, grinding crash.

There wasn’t any floor where a floor had just been!

It had collapsed under their feet and taken the floor beneath in its fall and the one beneath that. In a thundering pile of wreckage, all plunged into the basement fifty feet below, with Carmella’s screams sounding over all!

Carmella’s screams kept sounding because she and Nellie had not plunged down with the rest of the stuff. And that was due to Nellie’s almost superhuman agility.

As had been demonstrated when she outwitted the mastiff, she was trained in traveling high among branches of trees. The cardinal principle of such training is this: if a branch cracks or sags beneath you, get to another one fast.

That training had developed into an automatic instinct with the high-powered little blonde.

With the first quiver of the collapsing floor, she had leaped for the window, straight across the room. No time to turn and try for the door again, but there was a good chance of reaching the window.

She did, just as the bottom seemed to drop out of everything. She caught the sill in straining fingers, her feet found an inch of protruding beam with a broken end, and she hung there.

And an instant later, Carmella’s wildly clawing fingers caught her!

The Spanish girl’s hands fastened around Nellie’s slim ankles like leg irons; her hundred and ten pounds became an appalling death weight.

Nellie knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep this up very long. But she didn’t scream. She decided to save her breath, because Carmella was doing enough screaming for both of them.

“Somebody better come in answer to those screams pretty fast,” she thought, as her fingers slipped a hundredth of an inch on the sill.

Somebody did!

There was a kind of bellowing like that of a mother elephant suddenly aware that its offspring had fallen into danger. There was a trembling of stairs, and a flash shot its beam over the two girls.

“Nellie!” yelled Smitty in anguish.

Nellie didn’t say anything. It was not a question of saving any breath any more; it was a question of not having any breath to save. Her whole body was trembling with the frightful strain of supporting Carmella. Her fingers were slipping with slow but relentless steadiness over the sill.

Carmella kept on screaming and Nellie kept on fighting to hold on just a little longer, and Smitty turned and went down the turret stairs in two jumps.

Nellie wondered dreamily what he thought he was going to do now, but couldn’t guess, and relapsed into a kind of pink fog where time stood still.

Fifty feet beneath was a jagged pile of beams and debris. Well, that was too bad. No matter how far the drop or onto what, she couldn’t hang on any longer.

With a tired sigh, she relaxed her grip! And through the window, a vast hand lunged and grabbed her by the right wrist as she was falling. Smitty, unable to get to her from the door, had raced outside and climbed the wall to the window.

“You big dope!” whispered Nellie. “You do have your uses.”

That was all she knew till she got to the drawing room on the first floor. She regained consciousness as Smitty carried her in. Carmella, on the giant’s other arm, was still out.

“You little feather-brain!” Smitty was raging in a trembling voice. “You haven’t any more sense than a telephone slug. You said you wouldn’t leave your room.”

“I said I wouldn’t for a human,” defended Nellie, feeling pretty much a fool. “And I didn’t. I followed a ghost.”

“Ghost?” snapped Smitty, putting her into a chair. “Ghost? What the devil—”

Into the room barged their grossly fat host, waddling like a human tank, eyes heavy-lidded and stone-dull.