The Avenger 2 - The Yellow Hoard (23 page)

“Yes. That was an attempt at double cross for which Borg would have paid later. Borg was going to keep all the gold himself.”

“He couldn’t have found it, with only four plates.”

“He counted on getting the fifth plate from one of our bodies when we’d been in our tomb long enough to die,” Benson pointed out. “Chandler, of course, didn’t even need to wait that long. He had seen the fifth plate, Alec Knight’s plate, and knew the whole message. He could have gone right to the treasure as soon as he’d killed everybody in his way with the rock slide.”

“You let him set off that explosion,” said Nellie, staring hard at the white, still face.

“Yes, I let him,” said Benson.

“And you knew which way the slide would go. Because you kept me from going to the side I thought was safe.”

“I knew,” Benson nodded quietly. “I scarcely even needed a look at the fissure to know that. Because that small crack was the only visible evidence of the last and greatest Aztec death trap of them all—designed as a last resort to protect their treasure from raiders. And since the hoard was buried on Borg’s side of the ridge, naturally any trap protecting it would be bound to send death on that side, no matter which way it seemed the avalanche would slide from an examination of the top of the ridge.”

The baleful colorless eyes stared at the tumbled tons of rock.

“So I let Chandler destroy himself and his men as the ancient Aztecs would have destroyed them had they been here today to guard their treasure. If he was ruthless enough to scheme our deaths by the twitch of his trigger finger, let him bring on himself the fiendish fate he had hatched.”

The giant Smitty sighed. “Justice & Co.,” he murmured. But Mac had something else in mind.

“Whoosh! How d’ye know the treasure was on that side? Ye hunted on our side this mornin’.”

“I found it,” said Benson, voice as cold and emotionless as his dead face.

“Ye did? Then it’s under all that rock and no man will ever see it—”

“It is—under the third biggest boulder in the middle of the slide,” said Benson. “We can find it quite easily, whenever Nellie Gray wants it. It’s hers.”

Nellie shook her sleek blond head vigorously.

“It’s
ours.
We share alike. But I’ve a suggestion to make.” She stared very seriously at Benson. “I’d suggest that we leave it where it is as a sort of permanent and tremendous bank deposit, to be drawn on in a perpetual fight against crime. And I’d like to join in that fight. I want to work with you. I could do many valuable things that no man could do. And I . . . my father—”

She stopped for a moment and composed herself.

“Crime killed my father. I want to wipe that out by working against crime. With you.”

There was a pause. The pale, inexorable eyes searched her to the soul. Then Benson’s hand went out, and the steely fingers gave her hand a man’s grasp.

MacMurdie was his dour self again.

“Ye’re plannin’ great and noble things, my girl,” he glowered sarcastically. “But how’ll we get out to do ’em? We’re stuck here in the jungle. Our plane was blown up. The gang’s plane is under half of Mexico—”

“You pessimistic Scot!” said Smitty. “Haven’t you got feet? We’re hardly a hundred miles from the coast. There’ll be a coast town where we can get a tramp ship to an airport. All we’ll lose is a few days’ time.”

Wrangling amiably, they went to the edge of the cliff and started descending to make camp for the night. Nellie paused a moment beside the man who was now her chief.

He was staring with pale, basilisk eyes over the jumbled thousands of tons of rock. Thinking of the human rats lying beneath, sent to death by their own leader? No. Thinking of the vast wealth lying there to be tapped by themselves alone whenever they should need any of it? No.

Nellie didn’t think either of these things was behind the colorless eyes that flared like ice in a glacial dawn. She thought she knew what he was thinking.

Of a woman for whose sweetness he had lived; of a child for whose promise he had worked. Wife and small daughter, snatched from him by crime.

He was thinking of them—and dedicating his remaining bleak existence anew to the fighting of crime.

Nellie turned and went softly away, leaving him to the chill and dangerous immensity of his thoughts.

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