Free The Avenger 15 - House of Death by Kenneth Robeson Page A

the rest of the terrain.
    In the cleared space was a big house. And from a little distance, the house seemed to be rising from the sea itself, instead of having its foundations on dry land.
    The place looked a little like an old-world castle.
    It was of dark-red brick. There was a central turret, and then a slightly smaller turret at each end. They were flat-topped and looked like crenellated watch towers. There were few windows, and these were small and had heavy bars over them. Under the central turret was a big, blank door of ponderous oak.
    The house must have been elaborately kept up at one time; the layout of the grounds suggested great wealth.
    But now the grounds were overgrown with weeds and young brush, and the building itself was in bad repair.
    It was late night, but the moon was bright and bathed clearly the stained, badly kept old building. Stretches of unhealthy ivy made splotches on the walls.
    Into the moonlight, at intervals, from the wooded sections around the once-lovely formal gardens came animals that at first appeared to be calves or ponies—they seemed far too big to be dogs. However, that was what they were: the most ferocious mastiffs, trained in killing, that the present owner of the island could lay hands on.
    These four-legged, fanged pets of the devil aided the six miles of open sea in keeping intruders off the place.
    Perhaps the man steadily forging through the water in a slow, tireless crawl stroke from the mainland did not know of the existence of the dogs. At any rate, he kept coming on, with singularly little in the way of equipment to protect him from a dozen of the brutes if they ever winded him.
    At the moment, whether or not he knew of the dogs, they did not know of him. Nor did the two men in the grim, eerie-looking house.
    These two men were in the unkempt vastness of what had been a drawing room. They were the master of the island and his one servant.
    The master was a huge man, over six feet and weighing well over three hundred pounds. He had small, rhinoceros eyes, a hide that looked as if borrowed from the same animal, and a small head half buried in his ponderous neck.
    The servant was a wisp of a man, harassed-looking, meek, the type of human rabbit who would jump if a small boy looked angrily at him.
    “Our visitors will be coming along sometime in the next twenty-four hours,” growled the master.
    “Yes, Master Goram,” said the wisp of a servant. He had a high-arched nose, a long, narrow jaw speaking of feebleness of will, and a skin that was too white and too thin. He looked like a cartoon of an aristocrat gone to seed.
    “Fix some of the bedrooms so they can at least be camped in,” grumbled the huge man. “Damn it! This house will fall down around our ears soon, if it keeps on going to pieces. But then, it’s only sharing the fate of all the other possessions of the Haygars.”
    He picked up a cracking leather case with the initials G H on it and stared at it moodily. The G H stood for Goram Haygar, only living member of the American clan of Haygar.
    Goram Haygar was the son of Wendell Haygar. Wendell, of the American branch, had, at one time perhaps, been the strongest and wealthiest of all the strong and wealthy clan. But that was long before this house had been built.
    The house had been erected on the island when the family fortunes had almost sunk out of sight. Old Wendell must have designed it as a retreat in which to end his days in comfort, if not in luxury. But even the comfort had disappeared before his death, a few years ago.
    In country after country, the Haygars had gotten into desperate circumstances because of things beyond their control. War and revolution had taken their estates.
    To one after another old Wendell had poured out financial help, draining his own resources, vast as they were. Lower and lower had sunk his own reserve.
    Then he had bought this island and built this home, a sort of castle to guard his old age. But hardly had it been