Read Online The Avenger 15 - House of Death by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online

he went farther and lay down. And stayed there. He was knocked so cold it would be some time before he came to.
    One of the others struck at Shan with a thing so short and unobtrusive that it couldn’t be seen in his fist. A sap. Another of the remaining four got his hands around Shan’s throat in a good, homey grip.
    Shan ducked the blackjack and brought his knee into the strangler’s stomach.
    The man’s breath whooshed out, and he doubled up and hugged himself with agonized arms while he fought for breath. Shan polished him off with a blow to the jaw.
    Three against one now. And Shan was fighting like a wildcat—fighting the way a man fights when he sees death as the price of defeat.
    One of the three got Shan down by lunging low against his legs. Shan brought his hand down on the back of the man’s neck in a rabbit punch, dazing him for a moment. The boot of another of the three cracked against Shan’s ear.
    Shan was nearly stopped by that one, but he had sense enough left to grab the ankle over the heavy shoe and pull. There was a splash. The kicker was now kicking in the water.
    Two to one. Admire Shan or not, you had to admit that he was putting up a vicious fight. But it was just about over.
    The man to whom he had handed the suitcase came back up over the edge of the dock. It was complete treachery, for Shan had obviously trusted the fellow.
    He came back over the stringer while Shan was looking the other way. There was a club in his hand. He walked up to Shan and socked him in the back of the head.
    Then he lowered him into the boat.
    It was almost as big as a lifeboat, instead of being a standard small dinghy. Besides Shan, the other five men, one still as unconscious as if dead, were crowded in. Then the boat pulled for the cruiser swinging idly out in the river.
    The cruiser weighed anchor and split the pre-dawn darkness on its way to the open sea.
    It was a boat built more for solidity than swank. It made about fourteen knots, was broad of beam, and was about sixty feet over all. There was a big cabin, a small deck forward, and a larger deck aft. Four men joined the occupants of the small boat on this afterdeck.
    All ten of the men could, now, in the dimness of the running lights, be seen to be Oriental in type. There were several Arabs, several with Mongol cheekbones and eye-pits, and the rest with a Eurasian blend of many races.
    But there was one thing all had in common. They looked as though they’d murder a blind cripple for a ten-cent piece.
    From the cabin came still another man. This one was a cut above the crew. He was tall, fairly well-dressed, with an air of authority. He went to where Shan lay, beside the fellow whose jaw he had butted with his head.
    He stood looking down for several moments, then looked at the nearest crew member.
    “Bind him,” he said in Arabic. “Make sure the dog can not slip free.”
    The man nodded. The tall leader turned.
    And Shan leaped.
    The man who had lied The Avenger into a murderer’s cell may have still been unconscious when he was carried aboard. He had been faking unconsciousness for some time while he lay there. He lit into the leader of this band with almost the ferocity and freshness he had displayed on the dock.
    He seemed to know this man and to hate him as one man seldom hates another.
    There was an insanity of rage in his dark eyes as he brought down a knife that the crew had carelessly neglected to take from his limp body. His mouth writhed like a thin red serpent in his distorted face.
    The other man seemed almost as hate-filled. He ducked forward; the blade whistled down over his shoulder, and he caught Shan’s right arm. He brought the arm down hard over his upflung knee, as a person attempts to break a tough stick of wood.
    Shan’s arm would have been broken like a stick, if he had not managed to jerk it half loose from the other’s grip before the vicious move could be completed.
    Meanwhile, with the eyes of all busy with the fiercely