Free The Avenger 15 - House of Death by Kenneth Robeson

thing he had waited for.
    In that enclosed cabin with the man, he could use one of the glass capsules, if necessary, or capture him and hold him as hostage.
    Benson stopped abruptly just inside the threshold. His icy eyes widened a little at the sight presenting itself.
    Four men lay in there, bound and stacked like cord-wood. They glared at the man in front of Benson and strained wildly at their bonds.
    Heavy arms encircled The Avenger from the rear, and the leader whirled and got him from the front.
    For once, the man with the calm face and the thick shock of coal-black hair had been outmaneuvered. For a fraction of a second, all his attention had been riveted on the unexpected sight of the four bound men. And the leader of this crew of cutthroats had looked forward to that fraction of a second, counted on it, and stood ready to utilize it.
    Benson’s arms strained swiftly apart, flinging the two clinging men off him as if they had been children. But it was too late.
    A club in the hands of someone behind him caught him on top of the head, and another got him on the side.
    He was bound hand and foot when his eyes opened. He was next to the rail; and the leader of this band, who insisted he was the genuine Shan Haygar, sat on that rail and stared down at him.
    “Coming out of it, eh?” he said, in almost a conversational tone. “I didn’t think you would regain your senses quite so fast. You are going over the side with a hundred pounds of iron tied to your feet! Would you like to be hit on the head again? It might be easier for you.”
    The Avenger’s voice was as calm as though he were seated in his own headquarters with nothing on earth to fear. His face, dreadfully calm even at a time like this, made several of the cutthroat band back away a step, as if they feared the man even when he was securely bound.
    “I’ll face it conscious,” he said.
    The leader nodded. “But of course your courage is well known,” he shrugged. Then: “Oh, yes, I recognized you at once! I recognized you and realized that, while we were sure to overpower you in the end, a man like you might kill many of my men first. And I need them all. So I tried a little trickery.”
    A brawny fellow was lugging a section of iron rail toward them. Benson said evenly, “So the man you killed engaged this boat first. And you took charge, bound his crew, and laid in wait for him.”
    “That’s right,” nodded the leader, swinging his long legs a little as he sat on the rail. The boat was making her full fourteen knots, but the water was calm.
    “There seems to have been a great deal of murder over a few small gold coins,” observed Benson. The man was tying the iron rail to his bound ankles.
    “It would seem so,” nodded the leader. “But then, we Haygars attach a great deal of sentiment to our small possessions. We have so few left, you know.”
    “Does the gold medallion you took from the dead man have the letters S H, or H H, on it?” asked Benson.
    The man frowned a little and got off the rail.
    “You know too much, my friend. It is indeed well that you try a sea cure for knowledge. One that will last a long time—till that rope rots and lets your unidentifiable body float at last to the surface. Over with him!”
    Even bound, The Avenger made trouble for four of them. But finally his body was poised on the rail and pushed over.
    The splash was deadened by the throb of the propeller and the rush of water past the hull. He slid along like a surfboard with the momentum for a second, then sank like a stone.
    “The other, too, but don’t bother with iron,” said the new Shan Haygar.
    The dead man was given to the sea. The boat went on, with the first pink of the new day just dappling the water’s placidity.

CHAPTER IX

The House in the Sea
    The island was nearly six miles off the Maine coast. It was fairly large—about twenty-five acres in extent. It was wooded, with a large cleared space in the center which rose a few feet above