Read The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring for Free Online Page A

Caine’s son, and knocked. Again the door was opened.
    “I told you—” began the girl, obviously thinking it was Harold back again. Then she got a good look at the awesome, dead face and the chill, colorless eyes.
    She tried to shut the door. Benson held it open, and walked in, followed by the giant Smitty.
    The girl jumped to a table with its drawer partly open. She turned swiftly, with a little gun in her hand.
    “Get out of here, both of you!” she panted.
    Smitty tensed for a leap at her, to get the gun. An almost imperceptible movement of The Avenger stopped him.
    The pale eyes were boring into the girl’s frightened brown ones.
    “We don’t intend any harm,” he said, voice peculiarly monotonous and smooth. “We would merely like to talk to you for a few minutes.”
    “I don’t know you. I refuse to talk to you. Get out!”
    The girl gestured with the gun. Benson took a slow step back, eyes still intent on hers.
    Smitty nodded to himself. The tone of the chief’s voice had told him what was up.
    “If you are disturbed about the way you’re dressed,” Benson said, voice metronomic in its measured cadence, “we can step outside for a few minutes and return.”
    “That’s not it. I won’t talk to you at all. You—”
    The girl frowned a little, blinked.
    “Leave . . . at . . . once,” she said. But there wasn’t the sharpness in the tone that there had been. And it seemed to Smitty that the gun wavered. Though it would have been pretty suicidal to wager a jump on that hunch!
    “We only want to ask about Harold Caine, and the amulets and the ring and the high priest Taros,” said The Avenger, voice still as monotonous and level as a single sustained note on a harp string. “That is all. And you will answer to the best of your ability, won’t you?”
    “I—” faltered the girl. “I—”
    The gun was definitely sagging, now.
    Benson’s icy eyes seemed twice as large as usual in the white death mask of his face. Wide, and flaring—and hypnotic.
    “Give it to me,” he said softly.
    Slowly he stretched forth his steel-strong hand. And slowly, in a sort of unseeing blindness, the girl gave him the gun.
    Smitty sighed deeply. He had just seen a miracle. Rare eyes like The Avenger’s are strongly hypnotic. The time taken to hypnotize this girl wasn’t particularly short if applied to a willing subject. But to hypnotize a person that briefly, when the person was agitated and rebellious, was breathtaking!
    “Your name?” said Benson.
    The girls’ eyes were wide and staring, like a sleepwalker’s. And her gauzy night-attire carried out the effect. Like a sleepwalker, she would go where deftly led. And like one she would answer to the best of her knowledge any question put to her. There is no evasion possible in hypnosis.
    “My name is Anna Lees,” she said, voice empty and docile.
    “You have known Harold Caine long?”
    “Only for several weeks.”
    “He is infatuated with you.” It was a statement more than a question.
    “Yes,” said the girl simply.
    “You saw him last night?”
    “No!” Anna’s voice was positive. “I saw no one last night, after nine o’clock. I was in bed.”
    “You were seen near Gunther Caine’s home. How could you say you were in bed from nine on?”
    “I was in bed. I saw no one, and went nowhere. I went to bed early because I had a headache.”
    The Avenger’s eyes were like ice in a polar dawn.
    “A headache! Do you often have headaches?”
    “No,” said Anna. “Very rarely.”
    “What was this one like?”
    “It was odd. I felt as if my brain were on fire, and then I went into a deep sleep.”
    “You say you saw no one after nine o’clock. Did you see anyone just before that hour?”
    “Yes! I saw an old friend of the family. A lawyer by the name of Farnum Shaw.”
    The Avenger’s hands came together with a sharp clap. Anna Lees blinked, looked at him perplexedly, then fearfully. She saw her gun in his hand, and her fingers went up to