Read Online The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns by Kenneth Robeson - Free Book Online Page A

it—that you didn’t lose it recently and still not know it.”
    The girl went back into her room and returned with a small, beaded purse. She rummaged in it, and came out with a flat brass key. Benson took it.
    He looked at it for a long time, then handed it back.
    “Thank you. Which is Ted Groman’s door?”
    Terry went with him to it. Benson knocked. Ted’s narrow-shaped face appeared at the door after a moment. Groman’s daughter had been awakened by the faintly heard sound of the disturbance downstairs. But Groman’s son had apparently slept right through it.
    “What’s up?” he said, sleep fleeing from his eyes at sight of his sister and the man with the white face and snow-white hair.
    Benson told him in a few words what had happened.
    “You have your key all safe and sound?” he concluded.
    Ted nodded. He went to his clothes, hanging over a chair back, felt in his trousers pocket, and came back with his key to his father’s two rooms.
    The Avenger stared at that for a full minute, too, before handing it back.
    “All right. There will be police around, but I don’t think you two need be disturbed. There is a dead guard, there are two wounded gunmen. We can book the gunmen for murder, and that’s that.”

    But it was not so simple.
    Harrigo was the man who came in answer to a phone call to headquarters. Harrigo was plainly looking for something on which to haul Benson off to jail. If he could just get The Avenger behind bars, with a mayor in the crooks’ power, and judges in their employ, it would be dandy.
    In a dozen ways, the captain of detectives showed that he was one of the doubtful ones in high places mentioned by Groman and later by Commissioner Cattridge.
    But, with Benson’s influence, there just wasn’t enough to jail him on!
    “I was in this office,” Benson repeated quietly. “I was sitting in the dark—”
    “Why?” barked Harrigo.
    “Because I like to sit in the dark. As I sat there I heard the door open. The lights went on, and these two gunmen appeared. I overpowered them, and later we found the guard they had killed. That’s all.”
    “No, it’s not all! You knifed the smaller one in the hand, and shot his gun away from him—”
    “I have permits to carry both gun and knife,” said Benson, pale eyes taking on their basilisk stare.
    Harrigo stared at the bigger man, still unconscious; stared at the gash on the top of his skull where Mike’s marvelously aimed bullet had creased him.
    “How’d you do that?” demanded Harrigo. “Sock him with a piece of pipe or something?”
    Benson didn’t even answer. He left Harrigo fuming, and went out of the office.

    The Avenger was still grimly searching the answer to the entry of those two men. When he had looked at the keys of Terry and Ted, he had found a part of one. Ted’s key to Groman’s first-floor suite was all right.
    Terry’s key showed just a trace of file marks, raw and new in the brass, on the serrated edge.
    Somebody had filed out a duplicate key, using Terry’s as a master, a very short time ago. It was with that duplicate key that the two men had entered the office.
    But how about the building itself?
    Benson began making the rounds of the place to see if there were any trick entrances and exits. But there were none.
    On the second floor a person might get in through a window—if he could climb sheer wall. But once in, he could only get to the stairs leading down by one staircase. And in the hall leading to that, a guard was stationed all the time.
    The first-floor windows were barred. There was a guard at front and back entrances. The Avenger even went to the basement, and looked around, with microscopic eyes.
    All was okay down there, too. There were no windows at all. No outer doors. The basement walls were solid cement, tapping revealed.
    Benson went back to the office. His search had taken up a long time. Harrigo, blustering and baffled, had cleaned the mess in there and gone out. The Avenger began