The faint sound of metal stopped, and Benson heard the door start to open. The method of its opening answered his questions. Very slowly, an inch at a time, it was pushed in by some hand long practiced at illegal entry. A professional criminal was opening that door!
The Avenger bent down in his chair. He preserved the same body balance in spite of the move. A swivel chair is apt to squeak if it is tilted — so he didn’t tilt it.
His steel-strong hands went to the slim, concealed holster of Mike, the silenced little .22, and the slender sheath of Ike, the throwing-knife. He straightened with the knife in his left hand and the gun in his right. He could use both unique little weapons with either hand.
He heard a man’s breathing, now. It was very light. Then it deepened a little, grew curiously uneven.
Two men were there, Benson realized after a moment.
The slight rustling of fabric of their clothes as they moved, stopped. Benson heard only their breathing. Even that, somehow, sounded murderous, deadly. Then he heard a new kind of sound; an almost inaudible rasp as a finger felt along the wall.
They had come in, they had closed the door behind them, they had listened and heard nothing.
So now, as soon as that finger felt the light switch, they were calmly going to turn on the lights.
Benson sat in the chair with every steel-wire muscle ready for fast action. Those men would have drawn guns in their hands. They’d be ready for split-second shooting. The sight of a man at the desk, where they expected no one, would startle them for a second or two. That would be all the time Benson had for his own action.
There was a hesitation, then a little click. The lights flashed on.
Benson saw a heavy-set man in dark overcoat and cap, with his back to the closed door. And a smaller man with his left hand still next to the light switch set into the paneled wall. Both had automatics, and both were positively gaping at the sight of a person where none had been expected.
The two men saw an average-sized man sitting calmly at the big desk with a small knife in one hand and something that looked like a length of slim, blued pipe in the other. They also saw a shock of snow-white hair over a face as horrible to them as a nightmare. That was because the face, in spite of the circumstances, was as devoid of expression as a thing of wood. Only the man’s eyes had expression. Colorless, pale, they were flaming like ice under an arctic moon.
The Avenger’s left hand whipped forward before a full second had passed. The slim, unique knife left his fingers like a needle-shaped bullet. Almost with the same breath, the silenced little gun in his right hand whispered its deadly little spat.
The big man backed against the door tottered forward and fell on his face. The little man suddenly began yelling and wrenching to get away from the light switch.
He stopped after one agonizing move, however. The knife had pinned his hand squarely to the wood panel, and Ike’s edges were razor-sharp. Every move cut deeper.
The little man still had his automatic in his other hand. Realization of this cut through his pain and he began pumping shots at Benson as fast as he could.
The Avenger had faded down behind the desk before the first shot roared out. He slid forward on hands and knees beyond the right corner of the desk, low down, and snapped one more shot.
This time he didn’t shoot to crease. That shot, hitting the top of the skull just deep enough to knock a man out, but not deeply enough to kill, required a target a little more quiet than the jumping, yelling gunman. Benson shot for a larger spot, the man’s gun hand.
The automatic spanged out of the gunman’s fingers, and then there was silence.
Benson stepped over to him and drew the knife out with a hard, swift jerk that brought a scream from the man’s lips. Then the fellow stood shivering, with blood streaming from his left hand, and the fingers of his right wrenched at crazy angles where the gun had been torn from them.
“Who are you?” said Benson, voice as expressionless as that terrible, dead face of his.
The man, shivering, terrified, was yet stubbornly silent.
“You came here to kill Groman, of course. And it’s not the first attempt. Why?”
Still the man was silent, in agony, but retaining his stubbornness.
Benson’s hands dipped swiftly into the man’s pockets. But the gunman had prepared for trouble. There were no identifying papers of any kind on him.
But in his right-hand coat pocket was a package of razor blades.
Benson stared at the package with blazing eyes.
“So you came here to do more than kill Groman! You meant to torture him as well! Why?”
The man shrank back from the awful eyes.
“You fools,” said The Avenger, “don’t you know Groman couldn’t feel your cuts? He’s lying in there, paralyzed. You could light fires on his body and he wouldn’t know it.”
He wasn’t going to get anything out of the fellow. He knew that. The gunman was one of those tough cases in whom stubbornness combined with fear of talking. He could be cracked all night in a police back room and still not talk.
Benson stepped to the door and called. One of Groman’s husky guards came, stared bewilderedly at the two men who had somehow gotten in.
“How in—”
“Where are you stationed?” Benson snapped.
“Back entrance,” said the man.
“Where’s the man at the front door?”
“Say! Where is he! I don’t see—”
Benson went to the hall door next to the front vestibule. He threw it open.
One of Groman’s guards would never guard a door again. He lay on the floor of this room, dragged in there out of sight, with his throat cut from ear to ear.
But how had the two gunmen managed to get in the front entrance quietly enough to catch the guard unaware?
Benson went swiftly up the stairs to the second floor of the building. Here were many rooms and suites, where at one time important and wealthy men had visited the political boss. They were all empty now, save for a suite set aside for Terry Groman, and another for Ted.
At the head of the stairs the third guard came up to Benson.
“I thought I heard somethin’ downstairs,” he said. “I was at the back, up here, and wasn’t sure. Don’t like to leave this floor till I’m told to—”
“Something happened,” The Avenger said grimly. “But it’s under control now. Stay here at your post.”
One of the doors opened and Terry, lovely and sleepy-looking in a dark-blue negligee, stepped out, and came up to Benson with bare white feet twinkling.
“Did something happen downstairs—” she began.
She stopped, reading the death in Benson’s icily flaring, pale eyes.
“Another attempt on your father’s life, Miss Groman,” Benson said. “The riddle is how the killers managed to get into this place. You have your key, all safe?”
“Of course!”
“May I see it, please?”
“Surely you don’t doubt—”
“I only want to make sure you really have 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.