Free The Avenger 23 - The Wilder Curse by Kenneth Robeson Page B

he mentioned that he knew who had made the phone call to Foley that drew him here to the office. The last call he made before he was murdered. Maybe the call that brought him to his death.”
    “Phone call to Foley?” said Moran. “I can tell you who phoned him that night. Not that the call meant anything, I’m sure, considering who made it.”
    Benson’s agate-pale eyes swung to him. Mac’s bleak blue ones did, too.
    “Mr. Sillers phoned him,” said Moran. “From the office here. I happened to be working late that night and overheard him.” He looked at Benson. “Myra mentioned to you why I have been working late, recently.”
    “Ye heard this mon, Sillers, tell Foley to come to the office the night he was murdered here?” snapped Mac, in a good deal of excitement.
    Moran shook his head.
    “I didn’t hear any of Mr. Sillers’s conversation with Mr. Foley. I don’t know if he asked him to come to the office. All I heard was his greeting. I was out in the big office and saw Mr. Sillers working the switchboard himself to get a line. I heard him say, ‘Carl?’ Then I came in here, into my own office.”
    Mac saw Dick Benson’s head tilt a fraction to one side, as if those keen ears of his heard someone do something outside in the big office where men and girls were working. Mac himself heard nothing but the cheerful, routine hum of a big establishment.
    The Avenger said to Moran, “Does Mr. Sillers own a garage, outside of those connected with Thornton Heights?”
    Moran nodded. “He has a small garage quite a way north of here. I’ve done bookkeeping on it for him. I think it just about breaks even. He doesn’t pay much attention to it—”
    There was a scream in the general office! It was a blood-curdling one! And, as if in answer, many other shrieks and yells sounded.
    In a single bound, it seemed, The Avenger was at the door. Mac padded at his heels. After them, came Moran, face pale and questioning.
    Benson threw the door open.
    They all saw the thing that had caused the commotion, as soon as they came into the big office. It was a man at the outer door.
    The man was swaying as if he must crash to the floor at any moment. His clothes, blue working garments, were slashed and bloody. Blood came from his lips and nostrils, and his head was gashed.
    He glared unseeingly at those in the office, took a step forward, swayed more wildly.
    “Basement!” he croaked. “Thing down there—”
    The three men sped toward the man. He fell before they reached him.
    “I heard the outer door open,” said Benson, “and thought perhaps it was Sillers coming. But this is not Sillers.”
    “No,” said Moran, bending over the man. “This is our head engineer, Carter.”
    He jumped for a phone to get a doctor. Everyone else in the place seemed too paralyzed at sight of the bloody figure to do it. But Mac, a fine physician as well as pharmacist, knew a doctor could do no good.
    The glassy eyes took on a more terrible glaze even as he stared. And Benson shook his head.
    Carter, head engineer, was dead! Dying, he had gotten to the office. The last of his strength had gone in the effort.
    “He was hurt some little time ago,” said The Avenger.
    Mac saw what the pale, infallible eyes had instantly noted. There was a lot of coagulated blood around the hideous wounds on the man’s body. He had lain for some time with the wounds bleeding, then had had a last flare of consciousness and had summoned the will power to drag himself up from the basement.
    Since there was nothing to be done for Carter, the two raced for the place where he had apparently been hurt. They got to the iron stairs leading down and sped to the basement.
    Everything seemed all right in here.
    The vast space, as clean and spare as the engine room of a battleship, was empty of life. The banks of furnaces, supplying thousands of people with hot water and occasional heat to take the edge off the night chill, roared softly like sleeping lions.
    Benson