This is a world of greed. No one does anything unless he’s going to get something out of it. Therefore, Benson must be mixing in because he expects a reward. His claim that he is only doing it to help the cause of justice is, by all logic, silly.
And yet — she was beginning to think, foolish as it sounded, that he was really on the level.
“The list is complete,” she said, in a low, troubled tone.
Benson nodded.
“Three of these,” he said, “have little check marks after them, meaning that on the expedition they were the particular intimates of Professor Gray. The three are Dr. Barker, Olin Chandler, and Alec Knight. Right, Miss Gray?”
The girl nodded, uncertain, still not knowing how much trust to place here.
“Dr. Barker has been our personal physician for years. Olin Chandler has worked with Columbia, and with dad, on Aztec stuff, and was on an expedition with dad two years before, in Yucatan. Al Knight is a brilliant student working his way through Columbia now. They were the three father knew best. Two were with him when he discovered—”
She stopped abruptly.
“When he discovered what?” said Benson. “The bricks?”
She would not answer. She had gone as far as she dared go, at the moment.
What was her secret, that it was so gigantic she dared not, even yet, lift a corner of the veil of mystery for Benson to gaze at?
The pale-gray flames of eyes turned from her face to the faces of MacMurdie and Smitty.
“Mac, call on Rex Orto and Harry Armitage. Smitty, visit John Sanderson and Cole Tega. Learn from them what you can. I’ll take Professor Gray’s three intimates — Olin Chandler, Dr. Barker, and Alec Knight. Then we’ll all get together and see what we’ve turned up.”
A sound, methodical plan. But even the plans of Dick Benson, The Avenger, could fail if the proper factors — beyond any human influence — appeared.
One such factor being death—
CHAPTER VII
Hollow Hieroglyphs
Dr. Mortimer Barker had cut and run.
Bower was so frightened for his personal safety after the murder of Professor Gray that he had fainted when Dick Benson dwelt on the subject. Doolen was frightened, but composed. Barker, it appeared, was frightened and discreet.
He had gone to Europe for a month, his assistant said, when Benson called to talk to the man.
Two phone calls — one to the American consulate in New York and one to the steamship company — verified the statement that Barker was on a ship and fleeing from danger at the moment. So Benson discarded the worthy physician as a possible source of information and went to see Olin Chandler.
Chandler was in an office listed: “Chandler & Co., Zoning and City Planning Engineers.” There was an outer office with half a dozen clerks at work, an anteroom where a smart-looking girl answered phone calls and talked to visitors, and then the inner office of Chandler himself.
Benson was directed in. He saw a big desk in the five-o’clock sun, with a smallish, middle-aged man seated at it. The man had intelligent brown eyes and an alert manner. He looked hard at Benson as the pale-gray man walked with his tiger tread from door to visitor’s chair beside the desk.
Then Chandler withdrew his hand from the partly open desk drawer. In that drawer was a flat automatic.
“So you want to know about the Mexican expedition, too,” he said, folding well-kept hands across his flat and well-kept middle and leaning back in his chair.
“Too?” repeated Benson. His pale eyes were rapidly evaluating Chandler. A man as composed as Doolen, and perhaps even more resolute. A younger man than Doolen, perhaps more of a fighter.
“You’re the third to approach me with questions,” said Chandler. “The police were one. In connection with poor Gray’s death. The second was a man who skulked into my apartment when I was out, waited till I’d got home, and then talked to me from behind where I sat. He said he had a gun and would shoot if I tried to turn and see who he was. I took his word for it and didn’t turn. I didn’t tell him anything either. Rather, I told him a lot of stuff that I made up as I went along. But I’ll talk to you, Mr. Richard Henry Benson.”
“Why?” said Benson.”
“You evidently have a great many friends, some of them in out-of-the-way places. One of them is a Harry Rhodes, who is an importer in Guatemala. Right?”
“Correct,” said Benson quietly.
“Well, it happens I know Rhodes, and he has spoken of you. That’s good enough for me.”
“You’ve been in Guatemala much?” came Benson’s silken voice.
“I was there for two years,” nodded Chandler. “Most of the time between Professor Gray’s next-to-the-last expedition — on which I went along, also — and this final one.”
“You were there in your capacity of zoning engineer?”
“Yes,” said Chandler. “The title indicates my work, of course. I advise governments in laying out new towns, or remodeling old ones. Where to lay the streets, how to group the various business, manufacturing, and residence districts, that sort of thing. I was at work on the town of Chiquimula when the boys told me to pack up and leave because they weren’t going to have the money to spend that they’d thought they would have.”
“Guatemala — munitions,” said Benson.
“That’s right.” Chandler nodded ruefully. “The silly little country is so busy buying a silly little army and navy that they’re broke. They haven’t the money for such comparatively civilized jobs as city planning. So I came on home.”
“There are whispers,” said Benson, “of more munitions being rushed down there than the country itself could ever handle.”
“Right,” said Chandler, eyes narrowing. “There are also whispers that this big store of munitions has something to do with a move against Mexico, with perhaps a foreign power aiding under the surface. But has this anything to do with what you came to see me about?”
“I suppose not,” Benson said. “What I came to see you about was — Mexican bricks.”
The pale and deadly eyes probed Chandler’s brown ones in the pause that followed. And Chandler stared squarely, thoughtfully back. Then he nodded.
“You’ve hit on it,” he said. “The thing of great importance that Professor Gray found in Mexico. The thing he was murdered for, though the police simply can’t quite believe it. Five rough, ancient bricks of ordinary dried clay.”
“There were five, then? I wasn’t sure of the number.”
“There were five. And Gray thought them so important that he split them up when we came up across the border into Texas, past the customs men. He took two himself — the ones that were stolen when he was murdered. He gave one to Dr. Barker to handle for him, another to a young fellow named Knight, and the third — to me.”
“Now,” said Benson, “we’re getting somewhere. As a great favor — if you’re sure enough of me to trust me that far — I’d like you to let me see that brick.”
Chandler got up. He began to pace slowly back and forth across his office. Finally he stopped in front of Benson with a troubled look on his face.
“I’m sure enough of you, after all the things Rhodes has told me about you. But — I haven’t got the brick.”
“You haven’t got it? You gave it back to Gray?”
“No. Gray hadn’t asked me for it before he died. I was still keeping it, waiting to hear from him. I told you a man was waiting in my apartment for me last night, and questioned me? Well, that man got the brick. As soon as he had gone out a rear window behind me, I ran to the place where I’d hidden the brick. It wasn’t there.”
Benson drew a deep breath.