Free The Avenger 2 - The Yellow Hoard by Kenneth Robeson Page A

ideographs. But this was not like the paper Benson had had. This had the ideographs in reverse. They had been formed by inking the surface on which the hieroglyphs had originally been carved, and then pressing the paper to that surface. So the picture symbols were white on a dark background.
    The old man put on glasses and took the paper to the nearest light. He peered at it, back to the man in black.
    “Curious,” he said, after studying it for a time. “It seems to have some sort of topographical description in it. There is something about a great rock image on a hill or cliff. I think the rock image is a freak of nature, like a natural bridge, not carved by human hands. But I can’t be sure. These hieroglyphs have so many meanings that they can’t be accurately read except in totality of subject. And this message is incomplete.”
    “Incomplete?” said the man in black.
    “Oh, yes. There is obviously much more of it. This is just a fragment of a much longer message.”
    The man’s smile grew more ingratiating.
    “It’s swell of you to help me out,” he said. “Is there any more besides a cliff and a rock statue?”
    “There’s a symbol here that has two meanings, again depending on the context of the rest of the message. One meaning is the setting sun. The other is gold.”
    “It’s either a symbol for the setting sun—or gold?” said the man pleasantly.
    “Yes. There’s no way to tell wh—”
    The word was terminated before its conclusion. So was the kindly old man’s life.
    The man in black stared, still smiling, at the body of the old expert, lying on the stone floor with red dabbling his gray hair. He wiped the barrel of his gun, which had clubbed Brunniger down, on the frock coat the old man wore, and then put the gun in its shoulder holster.
    He went out, past the body of the watchman at the big front door, and strolled away from the huge building.
    The watchman lay there, breathing harshly and unevenly as a man does from concussion of the brain.

    Next morning, in a hospital bed, the watchman’s breathing was better. He was conscious now. He stared up into pale eyes like colorless fire, set in a dead, immobile face that itself had no color whatever.
    “Can you remember at all what the man looked like?” Benson asked urgently. Over his shoulder, Lieutenant of Detectives Hogarth peered anxiously.
    The watchman was too weak to talk normally. He whispered:
    “He had black eyes, and his skin was very dark. That’s all I could see. He had his left hand over his face like a mask.”
    “How did you come to open the door for him that late at night?”
    “I heard a tapping at the door. I called out, and got an answer that it was Van Zyder, who is a director in the museum. I thought he had something important to tell Dr. Brunniger, who was still there. I opened the small door in the big metal one. This man shoved a gun in my stomach. He made me turn around after the door was closed behind us, and slugged me.”
    “And all you saw was that he wore dark clothes and had black eyes and a dark skin?”
    The wounded watchman thought a minute.
    “Just one thing more,” he whispered. “The man had his hat back just a little from his forehead. Enough for me to see that his hair was black too, and grew down on his forehead in a little peak. Widow’s peak, they call it.”
    Benson’s pale eyes burned on Hogarth’s face.
    “Not enough,” Hogarth growled. “I don’t think we can place the guy with such a meager description. But we’ll try, of course.”

CHAPTER IX

The Snatch
    Nellie Gray was as fragile-looking as a porcelain doll. Dainty and small, slim and pink and white, she looked as though life owed her a satin pillow on which to sit and dream in sheltered seclusion. No one could look at her and guess the amazing deftness and strength there was in her slimly rounded body.
    And no one at this moment could have guessed the desperate thing she was turning over in her quick brain.
    She sat on one