The Avenger 33 - The Blood Countess (11 page)

“You won’t kill me!” Elizabeth suddenly lifted the chair and threw it with all her strength at the approaching housekeeper.

The leg of the chair clipped the side of the old woman’s head. She went staggering back, cursing.

The girl ran. If she could get outside—

But Mrs. Andrade was between her and the door that led to the hallway. The old woman’s lips were drawn back from her uneven front teeth. “You’re dead, my dear, dead as a graveyard corpse. Don’t fight me.”

Elizabeth changed her course and made it to the rear door of the library.

“Yes, that’s the way,” crowed Mrs. Andrade. “Run that way, child. Then I can corner you.”

Ignoring her, Elizabeth rushed through the door. It was true. This hall led only to the stairs, which went up to the bedrooms. No matter, she ran.

Stopping on the landing beside a leaded window, she caught her breath. There was a metal-based lamp on a small table beneath the window. Elizabeth snatched it up, jerking the cord from the wall. She threw it at the window.

Glass smashed. Wind rushed in, spilling rain.

She cupped her hands and called out into the wet blackness, “Help me! Help! Can’t you hear me?”

The lower steps creaked. “Why prolong this, my dear?” called Mrs. Andrade as she climbed heavily up after the girl. “Not that I don’t enjoy the chase, but a frail girl like yourself—”

Elizabeth sent the table down the stairs at the fat woman.

It knocked her down.

Elizabeth raced up the rest of the turning staircase and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it.

She went to her dressing table and yanked out a drawer. Yes, here was a pair of scissors. If the old woman got in, she wouldn’t have an easy time.

A key rasped in the lock. “You forget,” said Mrs. Andrade through the door, “that the housekeeper has keys to everything.”

Cole bounded up the stone steps. Reaching the door, he raised his small flashlight to locate the button that would open it.

The small beam of the light began to dim and grow brownish. The light faded out entirely.

“What a time for one’s batteries to fail!”

He slapped at the flashlight and got one brief spurt of light, and then darkness surrounded him again.

Dropping the flash back into his pocket, he began feeling at the door.

When he’d gone through after Erika, he hadn’t taken the time to locate the button on this side of the secret door. So he wasn’t sure exactly where it was.

“Let’s try the same spot as out there.” He pressed several places that might coincide with the button location on the other side of the door.

Nothing resulted.

“Like many things, this tunnel is easier to get into than out of. Let’s try a bit lower.”

No button.

“Let’s explore the possibility that it’s not on the door at all.”

It wasn’t. He located it to the right of the door, at shoulder level. A whirring commenced, and the door pivoted open.

Cole charged into the hall. There was no one in view. “Elizabeth!” he shouted. “Elizabeth, where are you?”

At first he heard only the sound of the rain pounding at the windows.

He then heard, from up above, the sounds of a scuffle.

Glancing around, he spotted a staircase that should lead up there. He ran up it.

“Elizabeth, it’s Cole Wilson. Where are you?”

There was a half-open door at the upper corridor’s end. He made for it.

They were in there. Elizabeth was bent back across the bed, Mrs. Andrade hunched over her. The old woman’s strong hands were at the girl’s throat. Elizabeth was trying to slash at her with a pair of scissors.

“Enough!” said Cole, sprinting across the room and jabbing the barrel of his pistol into Mrs. Andrade’s back.

She paid him no heed.

Cole grabbed her wide shoulder and tore her away from the girl.

The old woman’s eyes were wide, staring. She didn’t seem to be able to take him in at first.

“Move aside now,” Cole ordered.

Gradually she focused on him. “Fool, you think you can stop me?” She made a lunge at him.

Cole backed off, dodging her. He gestured with the gun. “I’ll use this!”

“Both of you,” muttered the old woman, “both of you will die. And I’ll drink your blood!” She kept coming at him.

Cole squeezed the trigger.

The slug grazed her upper arm. Blood welled out through the burned-away cloth. Still she didn’t stop.

Cole took another few steps back. “Mrs. Andrade, I suggest you stop right where you are.”

Teeth bared, she threw herself at him. “You will die first.”

But Cole wasn’t where he had been.

The fat woman thudded on by, couldn’t stop in in time, and hit the high bedroom window. It smashed before her weight, and shards of glass exploded into the room and out into the black night.

She cried out not at all as she plummeted down to the rain-washed stones of the courtyard.

Cole went over to the bed. The girl was sitting up, touching at the bruised spots on her throat. “She almost did it,” she said in a dry hoarse voice.

“I’m glad it’s no worse than almost.”

Elizabeth reached out to take his hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I never had any idea that she . . . well, maybe it’s all over now. Maybe things will get better.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption.”

A tremendous pounding came up from below.

“What’s that?” said the girl.

“Should be one of your guards with a few questions as to what’s been going on up here.”

She sighed softly. “I’d better go down and let him in.”

“Stay put,” advised Cole. “He’ll find his way up here soon enough.”

Smitty made a final knot in the necktie around Bulcão’s wrists. “All tied up like a Christmas present,” he announced as he lifted the compact man and sat him on the other chair in the underground meeting room.

MacMurdie had already performed the same service for Ensolardo.

They’d located this hidden headquarters room and brought the two Nazi agents here for questioning.

“You won’t get anything out of us, you know,” said Ensolardo. “Unlike American agents, we are well-trained never to betray our country.”

“Skip the propaganda, buddy,” Smitty told him. “You’ll talk. You ain’t going to have no choice.”

“I assure you, no torture in the world will make us speak.”

Dick Benson had been searching the stone room. He crossed over to the seated Ensolardo now. Without a word, he held a capsule beneath the man’s nose and broke it between his fingertips.

“What do you . . .” The agent’s words died away.

“You’ll answer all questions,” the Avenger told him.

“Yes, I’ll answer all your questions.”

“What are you doing, you idiot?” said Bulcão. “You can’t—”

“Hush up,” Smitty advised.

“Who are you working for?”

Ensolardo, now that the truth gas controlled him, said, “For the homeland, for our cause.”

“Here in Panazuela,” said Benson, “who is your boss?”

“The woman.”

“What woman?”

“The old woman. Mrs. Andrade, she’s the chief of our operation. The nurse is only a lieutenant.”

The Avenger, eyes blazing, leaned close to him. “You mean Elizabeth Bentin’s housekeeper and nurse are both Nazi agents?”

“Yes, they are both Nazi agents.”

Benson gestured toward Mac. “I’ll want you to take over the questioning in a minute,” he said. To the drugged Ensolardo he said, “Is there a quick way to get from this temple to the castle?”

“Yes, by way of the tunnel.”

“Details,” requested the Avenger.

Ensolardo explained how to reach Pedra Negra by way of the underground passages.

“Okay, Mac,” said Benson. “I want to get to Elizabeth right now. By the way, what time is it?”

“Shade after midnight,” answered Smitty after a quick check of his watch.

“Maybe she’s safe for the night, but I have to check.” He ran for the metal ladder outside. His searching of this room had unearthed his pistol and knife.

She stopped running to listen.

No sound of anyone following her. Erika smiled. Apparently the dashing Mr. Wilson had been unable to figure his way through the wall.

She pulled down the lever in the wall before her.

“With any luck, that old crone will kill them both tonight,” said Erika. “I’ll finish off the Avenger. Yes, it will be a—”

The stone wall had swung open. The first thing her flashlight showed her was the Avenger.

He had been on the other side of the wall, about to open it from that side. “Good evening, Miss Mowler,” he said.

“Mr. Benson, what are you doing here?” the blond girl asked. “I must admit I don’t understand exactly what’s going on. I noticed Elizabeth using this apparently secret passage earlier this evening, and as soon as I safely could, I decided—”

“Won’t work,” he said quietly. “Your associates have talked. Now if you’ll—”

She threw her flash out into the temple corridor, grabbed at the door lever, and got it closed again. She began running back down the tunnel. She couldn’t be caught. She
must
escape.

A moment later, the wall grated open behind her.

“Stop, Miss Mowler!” called the Avenger.

No, there could be no stopping. There was still a chance to escape if she could just manage to elude him until she got back to the castle.

But he was narrowing the distance between them. She could hear his running footsteps gaining, see the splash of his light beam as it came nearer and nearer.

She gave one final furious sprint, got a few feet farther ahead, and stopped. Reaching into her inside coat pocket, she faced him. There was still one escape no one could stop. From the pocket she took a pill and swallowed it. “Good-bye, Avenger,” she said, smiling mockingly.

She fell dead before he reached her.

The courtyard of the castle was bright with midmorning sunlight. Elizabeth, in a flowered dress, was smiling. “Yes, I feel a great deal better, Dick.”

They were walking slowly toward a walled garden at the side of the castle. “A good many of your troubles were due to the various drugs Erika was using on you. According to MacMurdie's analysis, one of the drugs is what was affecting your memory. It’s something relatively new.”

Shaking her head, the dark-haired girl said, “All of her kindnesses, all her attentions . . . it was all to cover the fact that Erika was keeping me doped.”

“Colonel Heberden is trying to trace back,” he said, “to find out if anybody else among the people you worked with over there was a double agent.”

“I still don’t see why she didn’t just kill me in Europe.” Taking his hand, she led him into the garden.

“She probably didn’t get a chance—you were pretty well watched out for over there,” the Avenger said. “When she realized she couldn’t kill you, she came up with the drug idea. Or more likely it was suggested by one of her superiors.”

Elizabeth seated herself on a stone bench facing a stand of rosebushes. “I guess the real blackouts I’d been having inspired the whole plan.”

He sat beside her. “By cutting you off from your memory, they were safe for a while.”

“But Erika had had all sorts of opportunities to kill me since we’ve been here. Why didn’t she?”

“That’s where I come in.”

“You, Dick?”

“As soon as they found out you’d only talk to me, they decided to wait until I showed up,” he explained. “I learned that from the two agents we questioned the other night.”

“I was the cheese in the trap.”

“One way of putting it,” he said. “They felt that here was a golden opportunity to keep you quiet and at the same time kill me. As you probably know, I’m not very popular in Berlin.”

“But they didn’t kill you when they got you.”

“More cheese. Erika suspected I’d be watching the castle that night. It was she I saw in the cloak. I hate to admit I walked right into the trap,” he said. “Once I was in, I was the lure to bring in other members of the Justice, Inc., crew.”

“Which is exactly what happened.”

The Avenger said, “I was kept alive, and unconscious, so they could kill me
after
the others arrived. My death was going to look like another vampire murder.”