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Roy Glashan's Library
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The Phantom Detective, September 1941, with "Death Over Puget Sound"
A timber trail of doom follows in the wake of the grim "Echo Voice" murders. The world's greatest sleuth writes "Finis" to a tragedy played on nature's stage!
CYRUS STARKE, the banker, missed seeing death waiting for him.
He was too vital, too concerned with the everyday business of living to be a victim of premonition. Yet death lurked just around the corner for Cyrus Starke.
He was the last one on the rope that linked four persons together on Green Glacier. Under the late strike of the westerning sun upon the Olympic Mountains, the smooth ice ahead had the glittering brilliance of polished jade.
Lela Starke, the banker's young daughter, lissome in her climbing togs, was also linked to the safety rope. She was the second in line. A burst of gay song told of her bright spirit. Her face was like a white, lovely snow flower, framed by her red parka hood.
A brief smile lightened the serious lines that were the only marks of age upon the banker's features. The touch of frosty gray at the temples seemed out of place with the quick, alert movement of Cyrus Starke's lean, well-kept figure.
"Judge we'll make it across before dark, Trulow!" called out Starke. "You say that there are new crevasses at the upper side of the glacier?"
"One tricky break close to the Honeycomb Caves," replied the erect leader of the four climbers. "It's a shifting crack, but safe enough, with light, to see the ledge we'll cross a little above it. Barring a sudden fog, we'll make the log camp by sundown."
"Hope so!" said Cyrus Starke, his voice raised to cover the eighty feet of space between himself and the leader. "And I'm hoping that Tom Randall's suspicion about the recent accidents in the camp are unjustified. Even if three men have been killed in odd ways, sometimes accidents go by threes."
Thurman Trulow, the leader, turned his bared blond head. His light blue eyes searched the face of Lela Starke, some twenty feet behind him on the rope. The girl was still singing softly.
"That's right, Starke!" Trulow called back. "Accidents do go by threes sometimes, but they don't leave twisted necks, and marks that might have been made by either a beast or a man!"
Lela Starke quit singing. Next to her on the rope, between her and her father, a chunky young man uttered low words that carried an oath. His dark eyes moved from side to side, furtively, as if he were afraid, but desired to keep his inner fear from his three companions.
THIS third figure on the safety rope was Ralph Larch, the head cashier in Cyrus Starke's bank, and Starke's personal secretary. If he had not been the fiancé of Lela Starke and if she had not jibed him about his timidity, he would not have been here upon the treacherous jade green ice of the glacier.
Ralph Larch shivered at Trulow's sinister suggestion concerning the accidental deaths in the log camp, which Cyrus Starke had insisted upon investigating personally. Larch turned his head to look back down a steep, stiff mile of the polished glacier.
Figures like little dolls showed down there among the log cabins of the big tourist camp. Larch had the feeling that the transient residents of the camp were watching the four on the rope with that morbid wish of some humans for a thrill, for something to happen to the glacier climbers.
MEN had died before on Green Glacier. Once there had been two women. Yes, was Larch's shuddering thought, down there are men, and women, too, who would be thrilled by a tragedy.
Lela Starke's white face turned toward Ralph Larch briefly. She had a little smile. But at twenty feet, with the blinding ice blink, it looked forced.
"Coming along all right, darling?" she said cheerfully.
"Okay," grunted Larch. "But I wish we hadn't started so late. They say fog comes fast on the afternoon chill."
The girl laughed gaily.
"Always the great optimist, darling," she jested.
But even as she spoke, the words died on her lips. Ralph Larch saw her face disappear. It was as quick as that. A gray shroud, chilling and blanking out the sun, came as suddenly as a gray blanket might have been flung by invisible hands over the climbing four.
Thurman Trulow, the leader ground out an oath.
"Well," he said grimly, "we've walked into it! But the ledge around the Honeycomb Caves is just ahead, and once beyond that we're on easy ice! Move slowly! Miss Starke, you keep the rope tight between us! And Larch, you and Starke keep your ropes tight!"
"Right!" sung out Cyrus Starke, with that ring in his voice that told he was more than a banker. He was an adventurer at heart. "Ralph, don't get the jitters!"
The reply of Ralph Larch, between Starke and the girl, was an unintelligible mutter. He already had the jitters. That fog seemed to go all through him. Through his mind ran the thought:
"The watchers down below are getting their thrill. They can't see us now, but they are picturing us falling—falling into some bottomless abyss. If only I had made some excuse and stayed in the camp! Or better, if I had never left Seattle."
Larch's heart-tightening thought was broken by the sharp voice of Thurman Trulow up ahead.
"I'm on the Honeycomb ledge! Follow slowly! Each one of you, keep touching the rock at your right hand. We'll pass that new crevasse without seeing it. The ledge trail is plenty wide, and then we'll be on unbroken ice for the last mile!"
"The last mile!"
Larch cracked his teeth together. He had only whispered. But his whisper seemed to be as loud as a shout in the ice-blink fog. He could see no more than four or five feet of the rope.
"I'm on the rock ledge, darling!" Lela Starke called. "You all right?"
"Sure—sure!" Larch tried to make the words casual, but they sounded like a hoarse croak.
THEN Larch felt hard rock, a sure footing under his boot caulks. His hands touched a reassuring wall. The hand slipped into nothing for a space. He held his breath until his hand touched rock again.
He knew the empty space was the mouth of one of the many small caves that gave the Honeycomb its name. Back of him, Cyrus Starke called out:
"Wish we had this solid footing all the way, Trulow!"
Their words and voices gave evidence of the spirit of each of the four on the rope.
Thurman Trulow, owner of the Roaring River tourist camp at the foot of the glacier, and other Olympic Highway camps. A steady-nerved man to whom Green Glacier was more of a paying tourist attraction than it was a menace to human life.
Lela Starke, luxuriously living in her home and social circle, but brave and carefree, loving the spice of danger.
Ralph Larch, soft-bodied and soft-souled, with furtive fear riding his spirit in any unusual situation, at any suggestion of circumstance that might mean bodily harm.
Cyrus Starke, exhilarated by every uncertainty, stimulated by the hint of dangerous adventure in the fog, although the Honeycomb Caves ledge trail was safe enough. Head of the Peninsula State Bank at Seattle. A banker who often took longer chances that he should in the game of finance.
Four different humans, different spirits, linked together by eighty feet of safety rope. Each dependent upon the others if there should be a slip on a treacherous spot.
Larch's hand groped along the reassuring wall. It thrust into another empty space of a small cave. His skin crawled.
"All clear!" Trulow's voice rang out up ahead. "Take it easy! I'm on good ice, off the ledge!"
Larch's heart seemed to expand with sudden lightness. He was glad they had missed seeing the new crevasse, if it was there below the ledge. He didn't want to look down into any bottomless green depths, and—
A choked groan tightened his heart to nothing. It came from Cyrus Starke, twenty feet behind him. The rope had been taut against the ring in Larch's safety harness. It went slack without the slightest preliminary jerk or pull.
Then there was a frightening scream, a long drawn-out cry. The kind of indescribable terror that rips from a human throat when a body is falling. That died out.
Larch heard Thurman Trulow curse sharply. He heard Lela Starke exclaim:
"Oh, what happened? What is it?" Then a cry wrung from her soul: "Father! It's Father!"
Larch swayed. His knees buckled. He went down on the ledge. His hands clawed at the wall of rock until his fingernails tore off. Then he was almost unconsciously pulling in the length of rope that had been connected to Cyrus Starke.
He pulled it more quickly as he heard Thurman Trulow passing Lela Starke, coming back to him. There had been no pull on the rope, no evidence of Cyrus Starke having been in trouble.
Had the rope come off Starke's safety harness ring?
Larch was sickeningly aware it could not have been sawed off on a rock or ice, for there would have been strain. With the sweat of sick fear running into his eyes, Larch had the loose end of the rope between his fingers.
HE could hear Trulow coming, slowly, talking to Lela Starke, trying to comfort her, to give her hope.
Trulow was feeling his way, the cautious movement of a skilled climber.
Suddenly Larch lay flat. His bleeding fingers started to tear at the loose rope end. For it had come to him with the devastating impact of a bullet in the brain—that rope had been cleanly cut!
Only a knife or some other sharp instrument could have done that. Larch clawed at the smooth, cut end, fraying the strands. His brain was in a turmoil, and this made whispers in his throat.
"It's murder! The rope was cut! I was next to him! They mustn't know! They won't find the body down there! But when they find out—they'll say I did it! Say I had a knife and threw it away! They'll—"
Thurman Trulow was over him like a sinister shadow. He was within the few feet where he could see. Larch quit tearing at the rope end, dropping it. But he was not quick enough.
Trulow bent, gripped his collar, lifted him. Trulow spoke into his ear so that the girl could not hear.
"You blasted fool! What're you doing? Fraying the rope, huh? It's been cut!"
Trulow had the damning rope in his hands, fingers rubbing the end. There was at least twelve feet of it that had been behind Ralph Larch. Larch's tongue swelled in his dry mouth and he could not reply.
"So Starke was close to you, or you pulled in some of his rope, huh?" Trulow's low voice gritted.
"No! No! No!" The desperate words seemed to Larch to ring through the fog, but his denial was only a vague sound.
"The knife you cut it with?" demanded Trulow, as Lela Starke cried out in a sobbing voice:
"Please, Ralph! Mr. Trulow! Tell me what it is. Tell me it isn't true!"
Larch saw Trulow's long fingers swiftly tear back the strands at the end of the rope. He was completing the destruction of possible murder evidence.
"Wait, Lela—Miss Starke!" commanded Trulow. "We are coming to you. Don't move!" His whisper rasped into Larch's ear: "We'll keep the truth for now, to save her, you fool! Give me the knife. But I'm not protecting you once we're off the glacier. When they find the body, I'll have to tell what you were doing. The knife—"
"There is no knife—I had no knife—"
Larch's words were choked gasps. Trulow turned him toward the girl on the ledge.
"You'd be smart enough to ditch it," said Trulow. "But it will be found, too. Now go on, ahead of me. We must cross the rest of the glacier before night."
RALPH LARCH shuffled along the ledge like a dead man walking. It was Trulow who put strong, comforting arms around Lela Starke's quivering shoulders.
"We can only go on," he said kindly. "There is nothing we can do now in the fog, or before night. We will start a searching party from the camp, and another from the cabins as soon as we reach a phone. Many men have fallen, and have been found alive."
"My father is dead," the girl said huskily, but with conviction. "I know that. Yes, we must go on. I will come back with the searchers."
They reached the slanting, smooth ice, three of them on the rope now. And out there the sharp edge of the ice-blink fog parted and the sun was shining again.
The glacier was jade green and looked as cold as death...
Bright sunlight of the late afternoon flooded Green Glacier. It drenched both sides of the ice-blink area of fog that poured from one of the great, solid river's deep crevasses. The ice river flowed but an inch or so a day.
The black rocks of the Honeycomb Caves jutted upward to divide two slanting fields of the glacier. On the one side toiled the three figures that were Thurman Trulow, Lela Starke and Ralph Larch.
The three were making their slow way upward toward a high green wall that was composed of age-old fir and spruce trees. This had been their destination when they had been four.
On the other side of the Honeycomb Caves, hidden from the eyes of the three, an incredibly huge figure was crossing the ice alone. He walked, boot caulks biting into the ice, like some shambling gorilla.
One hamlike hand, swinging at knee level, gripped the haft of a shining two-bitted axe. Deep little eyes in shaggy brows as thick as black fur darted this way and that. A huge head, on which the black hair was like the fur of the eyebrows, turned as the man looked back at the Honeycomb Cave rocks.
"It was too quick, like that," he spat out. "They will not find the mark of the Black Wolf, if they find anything! It is better so, if the mark would be left."
The giant figure's free hand lifted. Unbelievably big fingers made a twisting motion, as if they might be holding a man's neck. The little eyes glittered. There was a rumbling, frightening snarl like that of a beast in the man's throat.
He lifted the two-bitted axe. He rubbed a finger along the edge of one of the double blades. He moved the blade over the back of his hand. The thickly furred hair was shaved off as if with a razor.
"They will never guess that one," the man chuckled. "The next time there will be the mark of the Black Wolf."
There was a quick, rasping sound in the air. It jerked the eyes of the beastlike man to the high line of evergreen fir and spruce above the glacier field.
The rasping sound ceased. So distant, he seemed no larger than a monkey, a man clung in the topmost tip of a centuries-old fir tree. A bright saw gleamed in the western sunlight.
But the man had quit sawing.
"He has eyes of an eagle, that fool, Slim Layton!" growled the beastlike man on the glacier. "I see him, so he sees me! He will remember it when he hears of Cyrus Starke! It is not good!"
THE huge man, out of all proportions to the average human, reached the edge of the glacial field. Once more the bright saw was rasping in the distant top of the two-hundred-foot fir tree.
The figure that had been monkeylike, at a distance, was a lithe young man when seen close up. He was fastened by climbing straps to the bending fir top, and was accompanying the clean rasping of his saw with a low whistle.
"Slim" Layton was a tree topper, one of those who moved ahead of the regular choppers of a logging crew. He climbed dizzy heights with axe and saw, to cut out tops of selected trees. These tops might have split the trees as they were felled by the ground crew.
Slim Layton had seen the four climbing figures roped together on the glacier. They had gone into a fog. The black rocks had prevented him seeing that only three came out on the rope.
He saw the shambling, giant figure with the two-bitted axe. The incredible size could be marked even at a distance. For a moment Slim Layton ceased his whistling, watching.
There was a speculative look on his lean, strong face.
"Now that fellow looks big enough from here, against that ice, to be the Black Wolf, the one they're saying back in camp must be Paul Bunyan himself come back to life," Slim told himself softly. "It's queer, for he's totin' an axe. There ain't any lumberjack his size around our camp. Or maybe the sun on the ice magnifies him."
Slim Layton shrugged his hard shoulders and went back to his sawing. There had been fatal accidents in the woods of the Roaring River camp. There had been marks on twisted necks, as if a giant's fingers had broken men's necks. But the dead men had been trapped by falling trees, or had fallen from a height.
Slim Layton was not superstitious. But older loggers in the camp had whispered. They had spoken of "Paul Bunyan," the legendary figure of Americas first logging era.
A great giant of his day, his story had been told in uncounted camps. Paul Bunyan had been accredited with pulling up trees by their roots, carrying oxen under his arms, damming rivers with his hands.
Slim Layton was of a younger generation of loggers. He did not believe in legends, or in Paul Bunyan. But there had been marks on dead men's twisted necks, and there had been a sinister fear running through the Roaring River camp, because of a killer who had become known as the "Black Wolf."
Although Slim Layton was miles from camp, and the nearest humans had been on the glacier, he decided, "The devil with thinking too much," and went on with his sawing. The huge man with the axe had disappeared from the glacier and gone into the woods.
Slim Layton's saw bit through the fine, dry grain of the fir. Slim dropped down in his straps, ducking as the top went whipping over, cracking loose.
He clung tightly as the fir was freed and snapped his body back.
Tree toppers had been killed by back-firing tops. But Slim Layton was grinning, thoroughly enjoying the momentary peril. The cut fir became still. But only for an instant of time.
SOMETHING like a bumblebee buzzed viciously between Slim's face and the tree. Slim's hands dropped and his saw slithered through space, a hundred and eighty feet to the ground. His head was bent on his limp neck. His body hung inertly in his climbing straps. All life appeared to have been drained out of him.
The darkness came slowly, settling with a ghostly pall over the giant firs and spruces, and the misty surface of the vast Green Glacier.
There was quick, furtive movement in the woods below Slim Layton, but he did not know about that. He never would.
Many hours, a few days, might elapse before the body would be found. The big trees were thick here. Searchers must first come upon the sawed-off fallen fir top. Then they would discover Slim Layton hanging in his straps, high up.
ONE of America's last cable cars clanged and clanked its way down the steep pitch of a Seattle hill. Only one other such cable car line still survives in the United States. The other system is in San Francisco where some hills are also too abrupt for electric lines.
Frank Havens, publisher of the New York Clarion and other nationwide newspapers, sat near the cable car grip-man. Havens was a rugged, middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. He owned the Northwest Clarion out here, and he was a marked figure of distinction wherever he went.
The mild-appearing man in the gray business suit who sat with Havens did not appear important. He had a round face, and his hair appeared to be also slightly gray. He would have passed for Mr. Average American in any crowd.
That was because he wanted it that way. For the face he wore now was only one of a thousand faces he might have presented to the world. The greatest wizard of make-up of all time, he could alter his face, character and voice to fit any situation. Within a few minutes he could become a replica of any man he had seen, and heard speaking.
For he was the world-renowned Phantom Detective. In many world cities he was known and feared by the cleverest criminals. He was likewise respected and admired by the brainiest police operatives in the unnumbered places where he had solved baffling mysteries.
For years he had been seeing to it that the oppressed received justice, and that the oppressors paid in full. He was the Nemesis of the underworld on several continents.
For he was the Phantom Detective.
Had he been without disguise, the Phantom would have appeared as a dark-haired, brown-eyed young man with clean-cut features and a sardonic smile. His wide shoulders would have been fitted into the latest in expensive tailored suits.
And he would have appeared to be as bored with life as any other playboy whose father had left him too great a fortune for him to spend.
In his rightful identity, the Phantom was Richard Curtis Van Loan, of Park Avenue and Broadway, of Palm Beach and the Riviera, at least when there had been a Riviera. But the only man in the world who knew this was Frank Havens. And because of Havens the Phantom was here now after a record-smashing flight in his own private plane from New York City.
THE publisher had called him in New York at noon. It was now close to midnight. It was less than an hour now since he had landed in Seattle, and the Phantom was on his way with Havens to keep an unusual appointment.
The appointment dealt with the reported death of Cyrus Starke, bank president of Seattle, on a glacier some thirty-two hours before this moment. With that, and the business of too many "accidental" deaths in the big woods, which Starke was said to have intended investigating.
The spreading lights of Puget Sound, America's greatest harbor, twinkled below the cable car hill. More distant points glimmered far across miles of water.
"IT'S remarkable, Frank," said the Phantom, "how few persons in the East know of the Olympic Mountains, and the thousands of square miles of wilderness lying between Seattle and the Pacific Ocean."
"Yes, Dick," agreed the publisher. "Seattle is an ocean port, but the sun sets over the mountains to the west. It is more than a hundred miles by land from Seattle to the ocean."
"And I have learned that in the Olympics are billions of feet of fir, spruce and larch in an area of more than three million acres," said Van. "Four big companies have been logging for years and have only touched the edges of the wilderness. That last great stand of timber is now needed for national defense work. Something like a million acres of national parks have scarcely been explored.
"Now you say the missing Cyrus Starke had interests there, and that Anton Cushman, officer of the same bank, believes the Starke mystery may be connected with his activities, and that the same may be the case with others who have died?"
"Yes," said Havens. "Perhaps Starke's bank has timber investments. Cushman did not make it clear when he called me. There is also the tremendous electric power in the snow-fed rivers of the mountains to be considered, and if anyone should have designs on either... But Cushman said he would give you the details when we meet him with Tom Randall, a forest ranger, on the Skidroad."
"I have understood the Skidroad is called a 'hell roaring' waterfront street, Frank. It's a strange place to meet a banker."
"Cushman explained that some old lumberjacks would be with Tom Randall, and they have their own ideas about talking," stated Havens. "It seems to have been Tom Randall who suggested that the Phantom be called into their trouble. The only place the loggers would consent to talk is in this saloon called the Bright Spot."
"So we are to meet a banker, a forest ranger and some lumberjacks," said the Phantom musingly. "An odd combination. Every case has its peculiar angles, Frank."
Havens nodded, thinking of many curious mysteries during several years past that had come to the Phantom for solution. Havens smiled as he recalled how he had first brought Richard Curtis Van Loan, the gay spender and despair of society matrons with unmarried daughters, into a murder case. It had been more or less of an experiment, in the hope that the young son of his oldest friend, now dead, would find relief from his boredom. But young Van Loan solved that first murder mystery so successfully, that he had gone on. Frank Havens had given Dick Van Loan an interest in life.
Today the once bored playboy ranked highest in his chosen profession. He had thrown himself into his life's work with enthusiasm and dauntless courage. He had acquired physical and mental ability beyond that of all other hunters of criminals.
IN physical encounter he ranked high, in all the means of combat from ju jutsu to straight bare-knuckled slugging. He had learned ventriloquism, much of hypnotism. His knowledge of scientific deduction had been gleaned from his own carefully selected library and fully equipped laboratory, and from his own amazing experiences. He was now as ready to attack this matter on the far West Coast as he had ever been wherever and whenever called upon.
As Van Loan and Frank Havens descended from the cable car, switch engines rumbled along the Puget Sound waterfront.
"You learned of this trouble in the Olympics before you were called by Anton Cushman, Frank?" asked the Phantom.
"Yes," replied Havens. "One of our biggest advertisers, Thurman Trulow, has been deeply concerned about some mysterious deaths, and a report of a strange band of outlaws operating close to a number of big tourist camps he owns on the Olympic Highway. He was with Cyrus Starke yesterday when Starke was lost in the glacier ice. All our reports, however, indicate that Cyrus Starke's death—if he is dead—was an accident."
The Phantom nodded. He was thinking how many phases of defense work had been affected by criminal saboteurs since the beginning of all-out aid to Great Britain.
As he had been told, he discovered that the famous Seattle street known as The Skidroad was "hell roaring." Scores of saloons and dance halls were resounding at this midnight hour.
The Bright Spot Saloon was perhaps the "hell roaringest" of all.
Inside a long room, with a bar, bearded lumberjacks punched more holes in the plank floor with the steel caulks of their boots. The floor was already pockmarked by thousands of such punches.
As the Phantom and Frank Havens entered, the publisher sent a searching glance all around. He did not see Anton Cushman, the banker.
"Perhaps we're early," he remarked. "He said to find a table and wait if he happened to be delayed."
The Phantom's keen eyes also took in the room. But he saw more than Frank Havens had seen. His trained senses told him that even among these loggers Havens had been recognized. It was more than that, however, which caused him to grow tense as they reached an empty table.
Anton Cushman might not yet have appeared, but it was clear to Van that he and Havens must have been expected. For he had not failed to note the furtive movement among the scores of carousing lumberjacks as soon as they had appeared.
Van touched Havens' arm as he saw perhaps a dozen tough, bearded men who seemed to be pushing among the tables, converging upon them.
"Keep an eye open, Frank," warned Van. "Perhaps others beside Tom Randall expected this Anton Cushman to meet you here. We seem to be known, and we are about to have visitors."
He was watching the movements of some of the tough men in front of him. Then there was a roaring oath behind him. Before Van could turn, a fist apparently was swung and the full weight of a two-hundred-pound logger drove down upon Van's shoulders.
At the same instant, the others Van had been watching swirled in toward the table. Caught by surprise, Van was jammed forward, his face striking the table.
But he shot one powerful hand up and back. His fingers gripped thick hair.
His steel-strong wrist twisted, and his broad shoulders heaved. The man who had landed on his back somersaulted over the table.
THE Phantom saw red for a second then. A logger's fist caught Frank Havens under one ear and sent him out of his chair. Other fists hammered at Van's head as he got to his feet, but that did not prevent him from reaching the tough who had hit Havens.
Van's short punch was terrific. The man went down.
There was no doubt in Van's swift-clicking mind but that all of this quick brawl had been prearranged. But he had no time for theorizing on the reason for it.
Tables crashed and chairs were being swung. Van stood with his feet spread over Frank Havens. Fists smashed at him from both sides. He grew dizzy, but his arms worked like well-oiled pistons. Men were piled on the floor around him.
All of the interior of the Bright Spot was now a roaring bedlam. Bottles splintered on the bar. A chair smashed into the big mirror back of it.
Van realized the uproar must quickly bring the police down upon the Bright Spot, and he wondered about Anton Cushman, the banker. Why had he not appeared? How had it happened that an organized brawl had been arranged as a reception to Frank Havens and himself?
A big logger lunged at Van from in front. At the same time a chair crashed down on Van's skull from behind. Van went to his knees, but stayed conscious.
The lights of the Bright Spot went out at the same instant. And from outside in the street a police siren wailed.
A STRANGE, echoing voice sounded from somewhere. It seemed to be coming from a great distance. Van instantly decided the speaker might be an experienced ventriloquist.
"Get out quickly! It's all over! The power of the Echo Voice has struck!" Boots pounded as police with drawn clubs showed up in the wide, front entrance. Patrons of the Bright Spot were fading out through side and rear doors. Van was unable to fix definitely the direction from which the weird Echo Voice had come. Besides, he had a good idea that the leader of the brawlers was disguising his real tone to prevent recognition now or later. He heard cars going out of an alley as he helped Havens to his feet.
Policemen had cornered a group of lumberjacks when the lights flashed on. Over by the glass-strewn bar, a policeman waved his club and shouted, as he stood over some man prone on the floor:
"Get back! Hey! Who did this? Who was with this man? Get back, I said! This man's deader'n a mackerel!"
It was more than a hunch that sent the Phantom pushing through to the bar with Havens. The man on the floor was dead. His face was bruised and cut. But it was the horrible, twisted position of his head that left no doubt about death.
"Anton Cushman!" Frank Havens exclaimed to Van. "Good glory! Do you suppose—is it possible that all of that fight was staged to get him?"
"Just that," Van said crisply. "And he wasn't in this room when the fight started. So he was brought in when the lights went out. He must have been killed outside."
Anton Cushman, the banker, had died of a broken neck. Van knelt beside the body. The policeman pushed him with his club.
"Hey—get away from that body!" he commanded.
VAN'S right hand palmed a glittering badge in the shape of a domino mask. It was set with tiny diamonds—the badge of the Phantom, known to nearly every living police officer.
"The Phantom!" the policeman said in a low tone. "Hey! The rest o' you stay back!"
Van made a swift, close examination of the dead man's throat. He employed a powerful microscope enclosed in a tube. As he came erect, he said to the policeman:
"When you get the killer, you will have perhaps the biggest man you have ever seen. The fingerprints are of an enormous hand."
"You know this dead man, Phantom?" the policeman asked.
"He is Anton Cushman, of the Peninsula State Bank," said Van. "He was to meet a forest ranger here tonight, a Tom Randall. There was a framed brawl. All of the men who were in it, posing as lumberjacks, have disappeared."
A hard young voice spoke behind the Phantom.
"That's correct, Phantom—if you are the Phantom Detective. I was to meet Mr. Cushman here, with some old loggers. The loggers apparently were frightened away and did not appear. So the word of our meeting here with Mr. Cushman and you, Phantom, must have been passed along to what they call the Black Wolf timber mob. I'm Tom Randall."
TOM RANDALL, forest ranger, was a whip of a man. He was slender and tall, with quick movements which suggested that his muscles were strung like fine wire.
He surveyed the Phantom and Frank Havens with cool gray eyes.
But his mouth was tight and he rumpled a hand through a mop of black hair.
"I suspect that my suggestion for you to be called, Phantom, is the reason for Anton Cushman's murder," he said. "Perhaps he was slated to die, anyway, if it turns out that Cyrus Starke also was murdered. You heard that queer voice in the darkness. My men have heard it in the hills when there was death. They call it the Echo Voice, and they fear it greatly."
"What's all this?" the policeman said. "All of you may be witnesses. So stick around."
A precinct inspector pushed into the circle. Two minutes later the inspector said:
"It's okay, Phantom. It isn't regular, but your reputation is such that we'll leave it to you. I ask only that Tom Randall be available for the inquest."
Having cleared that up, the Phantom said:
"There's nothing more we can do here. Probably your version of all this, Randall, will give us a motive for Anton Cushman's being killed." Tom Randall's brows contracted over his gray eyes.
"I'm not prepared now to give you much information, Phantom," he said slowly. "There are two others involved. They are partners of mine, outside of the forestry service. So I'll have to ask that you go with me to Roaring River before I can talk freely."
Few living men could read character as quickly or correctly as the Phantom. Randall's eyes satisfied him.
"I'll go with you to Roaring River," he said. "But others must have known you were coming here to meet Anton Cushman and Mr. Havens, if not myself?"
"I'm afraid that's it, Phantom," Randall said instantly. "And it puzzles me. Several persons knew of it, for I guess I talked too much yesterday when the news of Cyrus Starke being lost came into Roaring River camp. I don't want to suspect the wrong person. When Lela Starke, the daughter, and others came off Green Glacier yesterday, I did say that I suspected murder, and that our troubles had become more than ever a case for you."
"Perhaps it's just as well it happened this way," Van said, "except that it cost Anton Cushman his life. Do you happen to know any man with enormous hands, Randall?"
"There were similar marks on some of the loggers who seemed to have died by accident, at times when the Echo Voice was heard," said Randall. "We can go into that later, Phantom. I'll be ready to drive to Roaring River as soon as I have collected a suitcase from my hotel."
"I would prefer that we make a night jump there in my plane, Randall," said Van. "It's quicker, and there's nothing more convenient than being able to get an air view of woods and a glacier country."
Van might have mentioned that his private plane was virtually a flying laboratory. Its equipment would be important in the situation already suggested.
AS they were leaving the Bright Spot, he was trying to fathom Randall's possible reason for withholding more information. A queer, cracked voice rang out from the street doorway.
It penetrated the saloon and hushed most other voices.
"Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is raging!"
The Biblical quotation seemed oddly out of place, and still exactly fitting the place and the moment.
"Old Proverb!" exclaimed Tom Randall. "He bobs up in the most unexpected spots."
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard!"
The words came through an aperture between long, yellow teeth, which seemed to be the only pair left in the mouth of the old fellow whom Tom Randall had just called "Old Proverb." Van got a better view of the man then—a figure that could only be that of some mentally warped fanatic.
Old Proverb was tall and gaunt. His only attire was a combination garment of cougar skins that swung over one shoulder and extended to his knees. Long gray hair strung down onto his neck and mingled with a gray beard that grew low on his breast.
He might have been a pirate materialized out of a Robert Louis Stevenson book. For Old Proverb wore a black patch over one eye. His good eye gleamed like black, polished agate. Gnarled hands clutched a pointed staff.
"He was in our camp yesterday," said Tom Randall. "Must have made a quick trip to get here. Everybody knows Old Proverb. He scrapes up a good living around the Roaring River tourist camp below Green Glacier. But I don't believe he ever spends any of his money, for he lives somewhere in the Honeycomb Caves, and it's said he eats only wild meat."
Old Proverb moved aside as the Phantom and the others passed out. Van did not miss a scrutinizing glance of the hard, black eye. He had the quick sense of judging that Old Proverb was not as fanatical as he seemed.
"A fool and his money is soon parted!"
Old Proverb half turned, flinging the words after them as they reached the street.
"We'll take a taxi," Van said, "and suppose you meet me at the airport north of town in half an hour, Randall?"
"Right," said Tom Randall. "I'm grabbing the cable car up the hill. My hotel is only three blocks up, and I'll come out to the airport in my own car. I've a logger with me who'll drive it back to Roaring River."
As Van and Frank Havens turned to a taxi near the corner, Van saw Tom Randall swing aboard a cable car that had just stopped at the foot of the hill. He saw something else.
Three men slouched out from the sidewalk and also got on the cable car. Besides Randall, these were the only passengers. Van noticed that Randall was seated on one side of the grip-man, and that the other three men were on the other side.
The cable car grip-man stood in the center of the front, open section. Here he manipulated the big levers that set the car in motion, by gripping onto the endless wire cable running under a slot in the center of the track. The car's brakes were sliding shoes that camped down upon the rails rather than the wheels, when the car was to be stopped.
"I don't like the looks of those three fellows who got on with Randall," said Van. "They seemed to have been waiting there at the corner. Look, Frank, there's Old Proverb across the street."
APPARENTLY the fanatical hermit of the Olympics was merely shuffling away without noticing them. He reached an alleyway and scuttled into it with the movement of a frightened animal. But he had distracted Van's attention.
The cable car gripped the fast-moving cable and started up the steep hill. The hill climbed for three long blocks, and the car line crossed three other streets that were graded level along the bench of the bluff.
The car was halfway up the hill when Van saw a commotion. The view of what seemed to be suddenly struggling figures was almost cut off by the body of the car, but a uniformed man came rolling out into the street. He struck hard, apparently upon his head. For he rolled over as his body crumpled, and lay quiet on the steep grade.
At that moment the cable car shot across the level side street into the second block above.
"Wait here, Frank!" rapped the Phantom, leaping toward the nearby taxicab.
The taxi driver's seat was empty. Van saw that the key was in the ignition lock, and saw the driver at a lunch counter a few doors away. But he had no time to wait.
Van roared the taxi motor into life, as he saw the cable car nearly two blocks away. The body of the grip-man, or perhaps the car conductor, still lay in the street. At Van's distance it was impossible for him to see what had happened on the car.
The taxi took the steep grade in a fast second speed. Van realized why that hill required a cable car, for he had to jam the shift into low speed halfway up the first block. The motor roared and ground in protest.
A cursing taxi driver ran out into the street near Frank Havens. Havens soothed him with a bill from his fold.
Van chanced a red light on the first level street. He seemed to almost lift the taxi between a truck on one side and a sedan on the other, bringing about a screaming of brakes.
The cable car had jumped into the third block. Van was in the block below it, having passed the unconscious man in the street. Then he saw three men leap from the cable car, dart to the sidewalk, and disappear between two buildings.
For a long five seconds, the cable car was stopped. Then it was moving, starting down the hill. It was on the wrong track. Van knew that the three mysterious men must have freed the grip on the cable.
Blue fire shot out from under the cable car. It jumped to terrific speed, apparently little held by the sparking brakes on the rails. With the grip-man gone, Van realized that Tom Randall must have been knocked out, along with the car's conductor.
It being after midnight, there were but few cars on the cross street, and luckily none on the steep hill, which had the 45-degree angle of a roller coaster drop. But Van knew, with a sudden sense of being helpless, that the flying cable car would meet and pass his taxicab in the middle of the second block. He had the taxi stepped up to all it would give in low gear.
MUCH of the Phantom's remarkable success was due to his amazing memory and attention to detail. Even as he saw a woman run screaming into the street, and saw an automobile coming out of a driveway into the path of the runaway juggernaut, Van was visualizing all that might happen.
"The car will be doing seventy or better at the bottom of the hill, if it misses all cross traffic on that next street," he gritted. "There's a line of boxcars directly across the last street at the finish. Tom Randall will die there, if he isn't already dead."
The cable car caught a fender of the auto Van had seen coming from a private drive. The light coupé spun, then turned over and over down the frightening grade.
Van's swift thoughts were compressed into three seconds of time. Only the setting of the rail sled brakes on the cable car could check its rush to destruction. And he could never overtake the car if it passed him.
His mind worked with lightning speed as he threw the wheel of the taxicab into an abrupt left turn. He was headed in a curving arc directly across the track of the thundering, rocking runaway. The taxi rubber screamed and the cab went up on two wheels with the shortness of Van's turn.
The woman in the street threw up her hands and pitched to the pavement in a dead faint. Undoubtedly she imagined a maniac was at the wheel of the taxi and that he was bent upon committing suicide in a weirdly awful fashion.
None but a man as iron-nerved and coolly calculating as the Phantom could have brought the taxi around, seemingly with the sheer strength of his hands upon the steering wheel. Then the taxi was slanting back down the hill, crossing the track, with the cable car looming over it like some monstrous doom.
Steel wheels and rubber squealed and screamed. One split second it appeared to Van that the taxicab could not clear the onrushing tons of weight. Then he was clear, all but a rear fender which caught and slewed the cab around.
Instead of checking the skid, Van spun the cab all the way around on its sliding wheels. He had one bit of luck there, for the Seattle hill was paved with cobblestone and brick, and the night dew of the region was heavy, greasing the street.
Van's hands were clammy on the steering wheel, though, when he was alongside the cable car, jerking the cab into high gear and stepping on the accelerator. Cable car and taxi shot down the hill together then at blinding speed. Van could see Tom Randall. The young forest ranger was lying on the floor of the cable car. He was stretched out on his face. Another huddled figure was inside the car—the conductor, in uniform.
The cross street seemed to leap at Van. There was a red light, but it had no meaning. The Phantom could only pray silently that no car would come into the street on cross traffic.
NEVER before in the Phantom's amazing career had such an apparently hopeless situation been presented. He had been in uncounted tight spots where his own and other lives had been at stake, and had survived. But never had one called for such daring coolness of nerve and judgment as did this.
Only the setting of the rail sled brakes could check that cable car. Tom Randall lay in a position where even a minor crash would surely hurl him headfirst into the outside platform wall. Nothing could prevent his neck being broken and his life snuffed out, if he was still alive.
The Phantom felt rather than saw his taxicab hit the level of the cross street with bounding impact. Then taxi and cable car were racing madly down the last long block of the deadly grade.
It was then that Van acted. He pulled the flying taxi to the cable car, until fenders and running board were touching. His foot was all the way down on the gas, and he had to be prepared to jump the instant he released it, slowing the cab.
He jammed the driver's door open, holding it. The cab swung dizzily. Van dived outward, employing all the strength of his sinewy legs.
For what seemed long seconds he was in mid-air. The taxi slowed, was caught by the cable car's running-board. It went over, crashing down the hill in complete wreckage.
Van clawed at the floor of the cable car, digging his fingers into the floor where there was no hold. He slipped all the way down on the running board before one hand caught a protruding iron. He drew himself inward, realizing that the cable car must have less than thirty seconds before it reached the end of the line, and started the final dash across the waterfront streets into the railroad yards.
Disaster, certain death for Tom Randall, and serious injury or death for the Phantom himself waited ahead.
Van swung to the grip-man's levers sticking up in the middle of the cable car. There was the central lever that connected the gripper with the running cable below. Use of that would only jerk out the cable, or rip out all of the mechanism with which the car was attached to the tracks.
There were two other brake levers, but no time to choose which to use. Van swung his weight and strength upon both levers. It seemed as if a thousand demons screamed under the car.
Steel sleds rammed down upon the steel rails. Fire ran up from the sides of the car. Van could not turn to see how much distance remained. All he could do was exert all of his power to hold the brake levers.
For the moment he lost all sense of speed. He could only vaguely determine when the cable car jumped loose from its rails, its wheels grinding into the pavement of that last street at the bottom of the hill.
Then the cable car was stopped. There was a hard bump, and that was all. Sweat dripped from Van's grim face as he let go his hold on the brake levers and looked up to see the other end of the cable car lightly blocked by a boxcar on the railroad track.
Crowds from all directions were shouting and running. Van had one glimpse of the cable car conductor, and saw that he was past all help. His skull had been crushed in.
TOM RANDALL was breathing. Blood had soaked his rumpled black hair from a deep cut over one ear. Van's sensitive fingers had just determined there was no surface skull fracture when Frank Havens appeared, with a cursing taxi driver, followed by two policemen. Havens' voice was shaky when he spoke.
"It was close, so terribly close, Phantom!" gulped Frank Havens. "I couldn't breathe when you hit that last block."
"It was close," admitted Van laconically. "An ambulance comes first. Randall's a hospital case."
The policemen were staring. Then one started forward. The Phantom's badge stopped his rapid-fire anger, then Van told him of the three men responsible for the accident, men who were likely in the clear.
Two minutes later the taxicab driver whose car was a complete wreck on the hill was looking at a check written by Frank Havens.
"Mr. Havens, of the Clarion!" ejaculated the taxi-man. "And the Phantom Detective? Holy Cats! Say, Mr. Havens, that cab wasn't worth half that price when it was brand new!"
"It's well worth it, son," said Havens.
The policemen told the Phantom they never had seen the three men he described briefly.
"It must have been a part of that mob that busted up the Bright Spot and murdered Banker Cushman," said one officer. "And they was dressed up as lumberjacks. The alarm's out for them, but there's been no pickup yet. They made a clean getaway."
Van nodded. He left the police then, to join Frank Havens in the ambulance with Tom Randall. The police surgeon with the ambulance said Randall had a bad concussion and a possible fracture.
"His pulse is good," he said, "but he may be unconscious for some time. That blow he got likely was meant to kill him, so he's lucky to be alive."
The Phantom had an idea that he, too, was lucky to be alive, as he reviewed his mad ride in the taxicab and on the cable car. He knew his life had been marked off by split seconds.
At the hospital they received assurance that Tom Randall would live. Van and Havens were descending the inside stairs to leave when three people came into the lower corridor. One was a girl.
Neither had realized how long a time had passed while they had waited for Tom Randall to have a thorough examination. They knew now how long it had been, for one of the three new arrivals held an extra edition of the Northwest Clarion.
Headlines blazed the news of the Anton Cushman murder and of the cable car crash. One story told of the amazing feat of the Phantom in saving Tom Randall from the runaway cable car. Van disliked the publicity, but it could not be avoided. He heard Frank Havens suddenly exclaim:
"Thurman Trulow!"
A tall, blond man, one of the three the Phantom had noticed, bowed and spoke.
"Mr. Havens! This is a terrible tragedy. Following the accident to Mr. Starke, the death of Anton Cushman is almost a calamity. And Tom Randall?"
The blond man's blue eyes glanced inquiringly at the Phantom.
"Randall will live, but he is unconscious," said Havens. "This is the Phantom Detective, Trulow."
AS Trulow extended his hand, a word of admiration on his lips, the flowerlike face of the girl who was with him seemed to become whiter. Her violet eyes filled with tears and her breath came with a sob.
"And this is Miss Lela Starke," said Trulow. "And her fiancé, Ralph Larch, whom you have probably met, Mr. Havens."
Van's quick eyes took in the stocky young man, Ralph Larch. He noted a nervous twitching of his face muscles, and the roving, almost furtive dark eyes. Larch nodded and muttered something, his gaze finally fixing upon the Phantom.
"We are all good friends of Tom Randall's," explained Trulow. "We had—" Trulow hesitated, then said, "Larch, if you and Miss Starke will wait in the reception room?" There was warm sympathy in Trulow's voice.
"Never mind me, Mr. Trulow," the girl broke in, her tone steady, but tense. "You wish to speak of Father. He is dead, Mr. Havens. All hope was given up today."
"Yes," said Trulow. "It was discovered the crevasse where Mr. Starke fell had closed. We three were the only persons with him when it happened. We were caught in a fog when Mr. Starke's rope broke. We drove to Seattle early this evening. Tonight, when I heard the news about Mr. Cushman and Tom Randall, I called Miss Starke and Larch, and we came right out here."
"Mr. Randall has been a good friend of my Father for a long time," said Lela. "I would have come anyway, if Mr. Trulow had not called. My Father was helping Mr. Randall, and I know he would want me to do all that I can."
Van noticed Ralph Larch give Lela Starke a quick glance, a glance that gave the Phantom the instant impression that Larch did not care for Lela Starke's friendship for Randall. Or it might be something else?
"Perhaps you would know something of Randall's reason for coming here to meet Mr. Cushman and myself?" Van said, the question meant for any one of the three.
He shot the question quickly. Ralph Larch's dark eyes went to him, but dropped when he saw Van studying him. It seemed to Van that Larch had flinched, as if he had been struck.
Trulow, the tourist camp owner, shook his head.
"I'm afraid only Tom Randall knew what he desired to tell," he said. "He, or perhaps Bill Summers and John Hart, his logging partners. Randall told us he had called you, Phantom, because of too many fatal accidents. I have hoped for an investigation, as the trouble has hit the tourist camp business. The Olympic Highway is not strongly policed, and there have been some road holdups. That, of course, I had not believed to be in the province of the Phantom, but so many killings—"
Van continued his quiet study of Ralph Larch. The young man had been mentioned by Frank Havens as the cashier of the Peninsula State Bank.
Now Van was certain that Ralph Larch was afraid. Of something. Fear was in his roving black eyes. His hands were never quiet. He had the air of a man who seems fearful that too much may be said, or that something was being held back.
Lela Starke appeared to wish forgetfulness for her own grief in another interest.
"My father was deeply interested in Mr. Randall's trouble at Roaring River," she said, "so I want to do all I can to help Tom Randall."
"Yes," said Trulow. "Randall is a great fellow. Is it possible to see him? I tried to find him on the Skidroad when we arrived, and then I saw the newspaper story about the car."
"I'm afraid not now," said Frank Havens. "He may not be conscious for some time."
"We'll keep in touch with him," said Trulow. "You are going to Roaring River, Phantom?"
"Yes. I want to meet Mr. Randall's partners..."
WHEN the group of three left the hospital, the Phantom was fully aware that Ralph Larch, the bank cashier, took a step toward him just before they started away. It was in Larch's eyes then that he wanted to speak, but abruptly he changed his mind.
Van thought there might be something about the Cyrus Starke tragedy that Ralph Larch desired to tell, but was restrained by the presence of Lela Starke, his fiancé. For the moment, Van said nothing of this to Frank Havens as they, too, went out to their taxi.
"Has Ralph Larch been long with the bank, as cashier?" Van asked.
"As long as I have had a newspaper here," said Havens. "He was in Cyrus Starke's confidence, I believe. At least he acted as secretary to Starke, as well as bank cashier. Why, Dick?"
"Just a thought," said Van. "So Tom Randall is a partner with a Bill Summers and a John Hart, in the logging business. They were the two he wished to consult before giving me more information concerning the trouble with a timber mob, I suppose. It's possible that there are killer forces at work for a big stake. Otherwise such long chances would not have been taken to prevent Anton Cushman and Tom Randall from talking."
Havens nodded. He was sure the Phantom had something more in mind in connection with Ralph Larch, but it was Van's habit to keep silent until he had more than mere suspicion.
"We're at the same dead end where we started," said Havens. "There doesn't seem the faintest lead to the purpose of all the ruthless killing. Both Anton Cushman and Randall were afraid of something, but of what we know no more now than we did before."
Van smiled a little. "I may have a fairly definite lead to the killers," he said, "or it may turn out to be but a minor coincidence. Finding the murderer with the giant hands should not be difficult. But he is not so important. Another character has come in who, I believe, will be more worth investigating."
"At the hospital, Dick?"
"No," said Van. "Before that." He was silent a moment before he said: "I am routing out Chip Dorlan at daylight to fly to Roaring River. You have brought Steve Huston out here with you, Frank, I understand. How about putting him to work at once, checking up on Ralph Larch, just to see if he goes about his regular work at the bank in the morning, and what he does outside of his routine job?"
"Steve will jump at the chance," Havens promised.
Steve Huston, a rusty-headed reporter of the New York Clarion had often cooperated with the Phantom. He could be depended upon to find out all there was to know about any man's business.
Chip Dorlan was the Phantom's protege and aide. Van had once saved Chip's innocent brother from the gallows and had earned Chip's undying devotion. Chip had proved a loyal and nervy youth. Vacationing from a military school now, he had made the trip West with the Phantom.
A FAST, low-winged monoplane came out of the sun, rising over the Sierras in the morning. The ship was flying low, circling above a vast expanse of green and white that marked the great forests, the snow-clad ranges and the shining glaciers of the Olympic Mountains.
The Phantom, at the controls, was in the guise of the humble business man which he had assumed the night before. Chip Dorlan, thin-faced, alert, had his sharp blue eyes fixed upon the wilderness below.
"Gee, Phantom!" he exclaimed. "Who'd think there was a place like that left in America? I'd like to build me a cabin down there somewhere, and start out like the old pioneers. Just hunting and fishing, and not worrying about anything."
"You have an idea there, Chip." Van smiled. "It would be the salvation of a great many boys of your age. But just now it happens that somewhere down there, where it looks so peaceful and inviting, some of the cruelest killers we have ever known are probably lurking. Motors and planes are great stuff, Chip, but they have spoiled some of the nicest places left in the world."
The Phantom's musing thoughts took up the tragic prelude to this flight to Roaring River. Seldom had he been so close to learning something into which he might sink his teeth, and then been robbed of vital information.
He reviewed the situation as he knew it so far.
Tom Randall, forest ranger, was a partner with two other men in a logging operation on Roaring River. The men were Bill Summers and John Hart, whom he had not yet met.
Tom Randall had communicated with Frank Havens through Anton Cushman, director of the Peninsula State Bank, asking for the services of the Phantom. This had been because of suspicious deaths in the Summers-Hart-Randall logging camp.
Cyrus Starke, president of the Seattle bank, had been interested in the logging camp and its troubles. So had Anton Cushman, the bank director. Starke had disappeared on Green Glacier while on his way to investigate the logging deaths. Anton Cushman had been brutally murdered just before he was to meet the Phantom, with Tom Randall. Then the same killers had undoubtedly attempted to remove Tom Randall before he could tell too much. Furthermore Randall had admitted there was something to tell, but he preferred not to speak until he had consulted his partners.
Van's mind dwelt briefly upon one odd character that had obtruded upon the scene. A mountain hermit, or fanatic, called Old Proverb, had appeared strangely on the Skidroad just before the attempt upon Tom Randall's life. Had that been coincidence?
There were many more things to mull over, also. Cyrus Starke had been given up as lost. Lela Starke held such friendship for Tom Randall that she had come immediately to the hospital to see him.
Thurman Trulow, owner of tourist camps, was concerned over the tragedies affecting his business. He had known of Randall summoning the Phantom, but not of what Randall had to tell.
Then there was Ralph Larch, bank cashier and secretary to the missing Cyrus Starke. Van was sure that Larch would just as soon not have been at the hospital.
If Larch had been alone, Van believed there was something he might have divulged. Larch had plainly enough been in the grip of some deep and abiding fear. Also it had been plain that he disapproved of Lela Starke's friendship for Tom Randall.
STILL, with all those disconnected bits of information, the whole thing was at a dead end, as Frank Havens had said, so far as direct leads were concerned.
Van was studying the forest only a few hundred feet below. Suddenly he pushed the ship's nose downward.
"Take your controls, Chip," he directed. "Drop to about two hundred, and bank around that spot that looks like a huge emerald shining down there. It's Green Glacier. I want to get the topography in mind. It may be valuable before long."
"Gee!" exclaimed Chip. "And to think a man was lost in that glacier only day before yesterday, Phantom. It doesn't seem possible."
"Yes, Cyrus Starke died down there," Van said, using a pair of powerful field-glasses through the window set into the plane's floor at his feet. "I can see at least two parties that must still be searching for Starke."
Chip was proud of his expert handling of the plane, as taught him by the Phantom. He dropped to about two hundred feet and leveled off. His circling bank carried the ship out over the edge of the massed trees.
Van's hand touched Chip's arm. Van was concentrating on something he had caught in the glasses that brought the tops of the trees close up to the plane.
"Change your course, Chip," he directed crisply. "Go into a spiral and climb, with this spot as the center. And hold it at a thousand."
Van's keen eyes were studying the object he had seen. He snapped a glance at the instruments, judging the direction and drift of the wind. And he was slipping his emergency parachute from under his control seat.
"What is it, Phantom?" Chip asked breathlessly. "You mean you're going to bale out?"
Van nodded, slipping his arms through the 'chute harness.
"I'm baling out at a thousand. Chip. Crescent Lake landing field is only a few miles due west. You can find it. Land the plane there and stay with it until you hear from me. Be sure and don't let anyone near the plane."
"But what is it, Phantom?" repeated Chip.
"A dead man trapped in the top of a tree," said Van. "The way he is held, it could only be murder."
Van pulled a heavy leather belt and a length of strong rope from under the control seat. He fashioned the rope into a double loop, wrapping it around his body over the belt.
Chip's active eyes asked a question. "It'll be handy to be able to reach the ground after landing in the trees two hundred feet up," Van said, grinning. "The fir and spruce are so thick that there isn't a chance to fall through them. And then, there is another big tree to climb."
The Phantom's quick-thinking caution had carried him over many rough places. His mind now was upon the weird, chilling view he had been given in his powerful glasses.
The split top of a tree had been drawn close. Wedged into that split, as though by some giant hand, was the body of a man. By any theory of accident, it was impossible that the victim could have been trapped in the split of the tree.
At a thousand feet, Van repeated: "Stick to the plane when you reach Crescent Lake, Chip. Don't admit any stranger under any circumstances."
VAN went out of the monoplane door as smoothly as if taking a header from a diving board. He had gauged the wind and distance, and he held his powerful field-glasses ready.
He took a breathless plunge of a clean five hundred feet before he opened the pilot 'chute. The bigger silk ripped open three seconds later. Van swung easily in his own specially contrived harness, ready to employ cords of his own devising to guide his descent. The glasses brought the trees up closer. Van could see out across the emerald glitter of Green Glacier.
He had just located the murder tree when a moving spot took his eyes back to the glacier surface. Not far from the edge of the forest a figure moved. Under the glasses it assumed detailed and formidable size. It was as if Van were looking at a huge, furry-haired gorilla at a lens close-up of about fifty feet.
The figure was shuffling swiftly in toward the trees. The hairy face was turned upward and the man was undoubtedly watching the 'chute's descent. The Phantom saw that the man carried an axe in one hand, swinging it as though it were a weapon instead of a tool.
"So there'll be a reception committee waiting," muttered Van. "And from his size, he could be the killer of the Skidroad. Among the trees it'll be an even chance."
Even chance or not. Van made sure of his heavy automatic under his arm, and of a smaller, quicker gun that could be snapped from his left sleeve. His fingers touched the body-fitting make-up case he always carried. He was ready.
His hands grasped the 'chute cords. The green sea of tree-tops flashed up to meet him. His descent into the slender limbs of a spruce tree was easy enough but, as he had foreseen, his 'chute was trapped when the ground was more than a hundred feet below.
Freeing himself, Van followed the branches to the trunk of the tree. He went down until a clear seventy-five feet of space remained without branches.
Looping the rope attached to his belt around the thick tree bole, Van eased himself down with infinite caution. It was like being in some vast outdoor cathedral. Everywhere was green silence.
The great firs and spruce were so thick that Van could see but a few yards in any direction. He was halfway to the ground when a rustling movement off to one side halted him. He paused, moving slowly around the tree.
In a round, open space stood the oddest creature he had ever seen. It was a man, with a yellow face turned upward. His body was nearly as broad as it was long. He seemed to have no legs, they were so short.
The man wore a cougar-skin cap. His coat or jacket was of tanned deer hide.
Besides being yellow, the face appeared at that distance to be so flat it could have no nose. Van decided the man must be a Siwash Indian, of the squat and greasy coastal tribe.
Van, however, was chiefly interested in the polelike spear the Siwash held poised. He was turned toward the tree down which Van had come, but appeared uncertain as to where Van had disappeared to when the descending man moved behind the trunk.
AS Van watched, the Siwash put fingers to his lips and emitted a shrill whistle. There was rushing movement in the underbrush not far away. Half a dozen lean dogs, of the frightening size and ferocity of Alaskan huskies burst into view.
Although they were all springing forward at the call of the whistle, not a dog gave voice. They moved with silent speed, crouching beside the Siwash.
Then the Phantom could see them clearly, and a shiver of horror went along his spine.
The great dogs lay panting with their red mouths open. And not one of them was lolling its tongue, as all dogs should. The answer to that was the frightful realization that the dogs had no tongues.
It was easy to surmise that they were a pack of killers, and that their silence was a part of their value to their Siwash master. Dogs and master, they had their eyes fixed upon the big tree down which Van had been sliding his looped rope.
For a long half minute Van did not move. He debated what would be his wisest action. He had no evidence, other than instinct, that the Siwash and his tongueless dogs were enemies, or meant to do him harm.
Van wondered what had become of the huge man with the axe he had seen come among the trees? That man must have watched the parachute falling and he had been making toward it.
Never in all his experience had the Phantom witnessed such a grim tableau.
The Siwash stood like a statue, his spear poised for a throw, his flat face turned toward Van's tree.
Neither master nor dogs moved as the seconds ticked past. Van speculated upon the wisdom of using his heavy gun as a warning. Perhaps some lead dropped close might convince the Siwash that his crude spear and his mute dogs would be no match for an automatic. Yet Van wished to avoid an encounter with anyone without first being sure of its necessity.
Suddenly he was spared the need to act. Somewhere in the trees a rifle cracked spitefully. One of the big dogs jumped straight into the air. The animal was hit, and he was tearing at his flank with his teeth. It was blood-chilling to see the beast cringing in pain without so much as a yelp or whine.
The Siwash turned quickly. The rifle cracked again. The spear in his hand jolted and he dropped it. Then he seemed to scoop up his weapon without bending. He made a sharp clucking sound.
It was like watching frightened deer vanish into the brush. The Siwash and his dogs seemed to melt away among the trees. Van waited, motionless.
He expected the rifleman to appear, but no person showed and there was no sound of movement.
The Phantom slid slowly to the ground. He was set for any manner of strange attack. It might come from a rifleman, an axeman, or a Siwash with dogs that had no tongues.
CLOSE to the big spruce the Phantom did not move for three or four long minutes. It was a windless morning. Except for the cheery chirping of a small bird, there was no sound.
Van could see the tall tree for which he had been headed. He recognized it by a fallen top near its base. That top had been newly sawed off. The tree was near enough to have made a dash for it, but with an expert marksman undoubtedly watching him, Van waited.
An attempt to climb a tree to reach a murdered man was unquestionably dangerous if the rifleman happened to be one of the Roaring River mob of killers. His frightening away the Siwash with his silent dogs told Van nothing.
The Siwash might be a hunter, a queer, primitive native of these woods and a wilderness little known in America outside of this single state. If so, that might mean the rifleman was one of the mob, and would only be waiting for a clean shot at Van.
The Phantom never was given to waiting when the cards were all stacked against him. He made a swift decision and called out clearly: "Whoever you are, with the rifle, I am a flier! I dropped down to investigate a body in a tree-top!"
There was no reply, no movement. Van was facing the direction from which the two bullets had been fired at the Siwash. He now stepped into plain view.
The rifle cracked again instantly. The bullet struck a rock at the foot of the big tree and whirred away viciously. Then a deep bass voice boomed out, although its heavy tone was more that of a woman than a man. For all of its depths, it rang musically in the quiet woods.
"You're the Phantom Detective, an' you've got more nerve than sense comin' out of the sky alone like that! But I was for Tom Randall bringin' you in, and I'll be standin' guard if you think you can shinny it up that fir tree where I seen Slim Layton hangin' just before you dropped down!"
The Phantom never had been handed a greater surprise.
"Who are you?" he called out. "Yes, I'm the Phantom!"
"I'm Mantha Strong, but it ain't any difference about me! I'm stickin' right here until you've seen with your own eyes what's happenin' to peaceable folks in these woods, an' heard the Echo Voice with your own ears! If you hear it, take care! There is always death when the Echo Voice speaks!"
So, thought Van, the fear of the strange Echo Voice mentioned by Tom Randall, and that the Phantom himself had heard on the Skidroad in Seattle was strong.
He was quick to decide that this fear had been created by someone completely familiar with superstitions of the loggers.
The unseen woman's knowledge of the Phantom and Tom Randall, and her ability to place a bullet where she wanted it added one more to the queer angles Van had encountered.
The list of strange characters he had already run across was surprising and growing all the time.
First, a huge human beast, supposedly known as the Black Wolf, who had left enormous fingerprints on Anton Cushman's neck.
Next, Old Proverb, the one-eyed fanatical hermit who had appeared by such coincidence, if it were coincidence, on the Seattle Skidroad.
Then the Siwash, with his tongueless husky dogs, and his primitive spear, and the giant figure with the axe that the Phantom had seen crossing the glacier as he had parachuted to earth.
And now a woman with a bass voice, a woman who appeared to know all about him and Tom Randall, and who could shoot.
THE Phantom decided to accept Mantha Strong's word. If she was other than she said, any other course undoubtedly would make him a target for her unerring rifle.
He uttered a quick word of warning.
"There was a big man, all black hair, and carrying an axe, who crossed the glacier into the woods!" he cautioned. "He may be close to us now! Look out for him! Or is he one of your friends?"
"He ain't a friend, Phantom, no more than is that good-for-nothin' Siwash and his spook dogs!" came Mantha Strong's sharp reply. "He's the Black Wolf himself! But he'll stay out of lead slingin' distance! He knows my shooting!"
"Stand guard then, Mantha Strong," said Van.
He peered closely in the direction of her voice. But all he could see was the blank wall of green brush among the big trunks of the trees.
He moved swiftly toward the spruce of the fallen top. As he looped his doubled rope around the great tree, hitching it upward, and swinging by his belt, with his toes digging into the bark of the tree, Mantha Strong spoke again.
"You'll do, Phantom," she called, "but I'd never have believed it! Nobody but a tree topper would know how to make that hitch! I guess Tom Randall knew his onions when he called for you!"
Van wasted no more breath. The ascent of a hundred and eighty feet of tree with his improvised climbing rope was no slight task. Few men, other than trained tree toppers, would ever have attempted it. Not one logger in a hundred could ever become a climber fit to be a highly paid topper.
The Phantom seldom was affected by evidence of death by violence. But the dead face of the tree topper, whom he had just heard Mantha Strong call Slim Layton, brought a silent oath.
The topper's body was still in the climbing rig. The face was empurpled by a frightful pressure upon the body. For the tree had been sawed off at the top, but the trunk had been split apart like the prongs of a stick. This split extended down for several feet, and it might have been made as the sawed top had fallen.
The split tree had been pried apart, as if by some giant hand. The body had been placed in the cleft. The tree was back together, and only saw and axe would release it from its position.
But it had not been this that had caused death. The tree topper's neck had been broken, twisted, like that of Anton Cushman. Seconds later, under the glass, Van saw the prints of the same huge fingers that had killed Cushman on the Skidroad. And from the swollen condition of the throat, it seemed certain that Slim Layton must have been alive when the killer hand had broken his neck.
Then Van saw something else. There was a deep bruise on the dead man's forehead. Bits of tree bark had been driven deep into the flesh. Van's eyes went to the tree, to the spot about where the topper must have been supported by his straps when he had died.
There was a cleanly scored furrow across the tree. Van scarcely needed the microscope he used to discover that the mark on the tree had been made by a bullet, and that it had been of soft lead.
INSTANTLY it flashed into his mind that he had noticed casually that another bullet of soft lead had been fired only moments before. And not many modern rifles used other than steel-jacketed projectiles. The bullet of which he was thinking had come from Mantha Strong's rifle, and had whirred from a rock near him only a few minutes before. The slug had spattered and left its gray impression.
"It might be coincidence, and probably is," reflected Van. "There could be another old-fashioned rifle in the hands of this so-called Black Wolf's killers. But what was the reason for shooting this topper, other than the possible terrorizing of the Roaring River loggers?"
It was the manner of the shooting, its expertness, that struck Van. The sureness of the eye that had placed that bullet so it would strike the tree close to the topper's face and stun him with the impact of flying bark.
He recalled how squirrels were often shot that same way. Smart hunters of squirrels used rifles to "bark" the little animals, so that the bullets would not tear them to pieces. A slug that hit a tree close to a squirrel would stun it and knock it to the ground.
Van turned a little, looking out across the tree-tops near him. He drew in his breath sharply. He was looking down across the wide expanse of Green Glacier.
He could see a high ridge of black rocks.
Just beyond the rocks were several moving figures. He put his glasses upon them, and saw that they were both women and men who seemed to be viewing this place on the glacier near the rocks with unusual interest.
His powerful glasses brought a woman fairly close. She was taking a picture with a camera, which she appeared to be pointing only at the glacier, and not at any other person.
"That's it!" exclaimed Van in a tense voice. "They are sightseers, tourists, out there! Filled with morbid curiosity. That must be the spot where Cyrus Starke disappeared. If so, the tree topper could see from up here, and he has been dead at least two days."
Van started back down the tree. He was sure that the topper he had been told was Slim Layton had died because he had seen too much. But what might that have been?
Even as he was hitching himself swiftly down the spruce, the Phantom was piecing together the information he had.
Cyrus Starke had fallen while he was with only three persons. They were Thurman Trulow, Lela Starke and Ralph Larch, the bank cashier. It was Larch's nervousness and apparent fear that had caused Van to have Steve Huston shadow him.
"And it was reported as an accident," Van muttered softly, as he neared the ground. "And how could it have been otherwise, with Lela Starke and the others there?"
Then a single sentence flashed into Van's mind. It had been uttered by Thurman Trulow, the tourist camp owner, back at the hospital in Seattle.
"We were in a fog when Mr. Starke's rope broke."
THE Phantom was self-critical at this moment. Because of the presence of the attractive Lela Starke, and being aware of her sincerity, and the general report of the accidental death of Cyrus Starke the Phantom had not asked for further details of that tragedy than had been volunteered.
But up there, queerly dead in the top of a spruce, was a tree topper who had been in position to see across Green Glacier. The topper had been stunned with a rifle bullet, and he must have died at about the time of the Starke accident.
The Phantom thought of the strange Mantha Strong who had been watching while he had investigated Slim Layton's death. He would see her now. There was a possibility she might know more of the details of the Starke tragedy on the glacier.
Van freed his improvised climbing rope. He stepped around the wide trunk of the tree.
A huge figure, with matted black hair, and little eyes glittering under black, furry brows, rushed upon him. A two-bitted axe was raised high in an enormous hand.
The Phantom was face to face with Black Wolf!
STEVE HUSTON was a newshound. The red-headed newspaperman was the ace crime reporter of the New York Clarion. When Frank Havens gave him the Phantom's assignment to trail Ralph Larch, bank cashier, it was like giving the scent to a bloodhound.
Steve Huston was handed all of the details, so far as the Phantom and Frank Havens had learned them. Tom Randall, forest ranger, was in the hospital presumably because he had intended to impart information to the Phantom that someone wished not known.
Lela Starke, daughter of Cyrus Starke who had disappeared in a glacier crevasse, had indicated that she intended continuing her father's friendly interest in Tom Randall.
Thurman Trulow, owner of tourist camps, was concerned with murder and terrorism on Roaring River, chiefly because of its damage to Olympic Highway tourist business.
Ralph Larch apparently was opposed to Lela Starke's friendship for Randall. And Larch had evinced nervousness and possible fear, because of something he apparently was concealing. This might have had to do with the accident to Cyrus Starke. Lela Starke, Trulow, and Larch had been with Starke when he had met with his tragic accident.
So Steve Huston took up the checking upon Ralph Larch with bulldog determination. He picked up Larch's trail within an hour after the Phantom had requested that the reporter be put on the job.
Steve was in the shrubbery close to the front porch of the Cyrus Starke residence at two o'clock in the morning. The banker's home faced the highway on the shore of Lake Washington.
Steve had seen Ralph Larch talking with Lela Starke in the living room. A partly opened screen window permitted their voices to reach him.
He heard Larch arguing, protesting.
"Tom Randall isn't anything to you, and you can't throw away half your personal fortune on a gamble," protested Larch. "If your father could know of it, he wouldn't want you to do it."
"My father never quit a friend, and it's my duty to do as he would have done," said Lela, her lovely face glowing.
"But we are to be married, and if it were found out that you were spending your money on a forest ranger, it wouldn't look right!" Larch raised his voice vehemently.
"I'll be the judge of that," Lela said proudly. "It's my money. If I wish to risk it, and if Tom Randall loses it, it will be lost honestly, anyway."
"Randall may be honest, but his partners, Bill Summers and John Hart have put over shady deals in timber!" cried Larch. "Besides, you haven't your money yet!"
"I think you had better go now!" flamed the girl. "Don't forget, I have my own money from my mother!"
"You're in love with Tom Randall!" Larch angrily accused.
Steve Huston had not the slightest idea what kind of a deal was being discussed. But he was warmly and thoroughly for the girl. He liked her voice. He liked her loyalty to a friend of her father. He liked her spirit.
Then Lela Starke swiftly drew off a gleaming ring.
"You are right!" she cried. "Perhaps I hadn't realized it until you put it in words! I am in love with Tom Randall! It was my father's hope that I would marry you but now I know I never loved you. My father is dead, so he will not know. But if he were alive, I believe he would want me to marry only where there is love."
WITHOUT another word of argument, Ralph Larch hurried out to a taxicab that was waiting in the driveway. He had arrived with Lela and Thurman Trulow, in Trulow's car.
Steve cut silently through the shrubbery to his hired coupé, and was right behind Larch when the cashier was driven away.
Larch had not driven far when his taxicab stopped at a suburban, all-night drug store. Steve Huston was close enough behind to see Ralph Larch enter one of three phone booths. Huston's trained newshound instinct told him that Larch's urgent reason for making a call after two o'clock in the morning could only be related to his failure to prevent Lela Starke from carrying out some purpose inspired by loyalty to her father.
Larch was still dialing his number when Steve slipped into an adjoining booth. Steve noisily inserted a nickel and started dialing. He quit to listen.
Larch kept his voice low, but it carried distinctly through the thin wall. "The Echo Voice?"
Steve thought the queer name might be some sort of a code. But Larch used no obscure words after that first greeting.
"I can't change Lela Starke's mind about carrying out her father's help for Randall," said Larch. "That means I'll be found out. What will I do?"
Steve swore under his breath because he could not hear the reply. But his blood tingled at Larch's exclamation then.
"If a bank examiner takes over, I can't get into Starke's personal files," said Larch. "And I'll be caught with the other notes. I'm getting out from under."
Steve read fear, a terror as deep as death in Larch's tone. The strange Echo Voice, whoever he was, must have been definite about what he said.
"But I can't!" cried Larch. "No! You couldn't do that! I didn't cut the rope! I didn't! You know that! You—"
Steve heard the click that meant Larch's connection was cut off. Ten seconds later, Larch left the telephone booth, almost staggering. Steve Huston had a glimpse of his face. It was the color of green chalk.
So Larch had denied that he had cut a rope. That could refer only to the tragedy of Cyrus Starke. And Huston knew that Larch had spoken the truth, and that the mysterious Echo Voice knew that.
But Larch was afraid. Deathly afraid. He crossed the sidewalk to his waiting taxicab as if he had suddenly become a tottering old man.
Steve Huston trailed Larch directly to a downtown apartment house. The lobby directory showed that Ralph Larch lived there. Steve took up his vigil across the street. He kept it up throughout the night. He was still there when Larch came out in the morning. The reporter followed the cashier to the bank.
It was but eight o'clock in the morning. Steve Huston yawned wearily as he watched Ralph Larch go to the side door of the Peninsula State Bank. Someone inside, apparently the watchman, was opening the door for Larch when a bright red roadster whirled into the street with squealing rubber.
Huston grew tense, slipping from his coupé. He had been too close to too many mob rub-outs not to be on his guard. Larch was a marked man. He undoubtedly had been threatened.
Then Steve Huston relaxed. He saw the white, flowerlike face of Lela Starke through the windshield of the red car.
She pulled up quickly in front of the bank.
"Ralph!" she called. "I hoped you would be here! I called your rooms and you were gone! Ralph, Tom Randall has recovered consciousness!"
Huston lounged into the nearby bus stop and lighted a cigarette. He was close to Lela Starke's car as Larch reached it.
"What's that, Lela?" exclaimed Larch. "What if Randall is conscious?"
"He had me called from the hospital, Ralph!" said Lela. "The doctor says he will be all right, but he can't drive. I've called Mr. Trulow. Tom—er—Mr. Randall wants to get back to Roaring River right away. The doctor says he is able to go, but someone must go with him."
"What has that got to do with me?" demanded Larch. "You say you are in love with Tom Randall. I have my work to do. The directors will be meeting. The bank examiner will be here."
"I know that, but Father's business was also Tom Randall's, and it's the bank's business. I'm having Thurman Trulow drive his car. I think you should know what is happening at Roaring River, too. I must go there. I still can't quite believe my Father is dead. And I must know positively."
A closed car came speeding into the street. Steve Huston identified the bare-headed, blond Thurman Trulow at the wheel.
Ralph Larch looked at the bank, and back to Lela Starke. Huston could see that Larch was torn between two courses of action. The cashier apparently had a strong reason for wanting to be the first man in the bank.
But this business of Tom Randall apparently was almost as important. Larch apparently made up his mind with reluctance, but finally entered Trulow's sedan with Lela. Steve heard Larch speak as he followed her into the car.
"Tom Randall must be stopped from leaving the hospital in his condition. It's dangerous."
Steve was not sure whether Larch meant it would be dangerous for Tom Randall or for others—perhaps himself. That haunting fear for himself was again in Larch's voice. Steve wondered how this might effect an order that must have been given Larch by the Echo Voice he had called on the phone last night.
But at that moment Steve saw Thurman Trulow staring at him, so when a bus came along he hailed and boarded it. That looked like the smart thing to do.
He left the bus at the next stop and went quickly back to his coupé. There was time enough to reach the hospital before Tom Randall could be discharged and taken into Trulow's car for the trip to Roaring River.
When Steve arrived at the hospital, Trulow's car was waiting outside the entrance. The reporter went into a cigar store across the street. In five minutes he had Frank Havens on the wire, quickly relating all that had happened.
"The Phantom will contact me soon," said Havens. "Stay on the trail of that Trulow car and Tom Randall, Steve. Randall probably will be all right, but the Phantom will want to know he is coming to Roaring River. That conversation of Larch's with Lela Starke and his phone call will be interesting."
"I'll keep on the Trulow car," said Huston. "Tell the Phantom to be on the watch for me."
AS he left the cigar store, he saw Tom Randall coming down the hospital steps, supported by Trulow. Lela Starke and Larch were arguing, but Larch got into the car with the others.
It was evident that Ralph Larch was somehow caught between two forces. There was something Larch wanted to do at his bank, before it opened for the day. But staying with Tom Randall and his rebellious ex-fiancé must be more important to him.
Steve Huston was almost as skilled as the Phantom at keeping his car on the trail of another. The Trulow car, carrying Tom Randall, whirled through Seattle and down a steep hill to a ferry dock.
Huston waited and drove onto the ferryboat just before the gates were closed. He remained seated in his hired coupé. The ferry was the one crossing from Seattle to Bremerton, the Navy Yard city across Puget Sound.
When the ferry reached Bremerton, and the cars left the boat, Steve saw Trulow's car turn out a street with a sign that read:
TO THE OLYMPIC HIGHWAY AND PORT ANGELES
Trulow was driving fast, but Steve Huston was sure they would recall having seen his coupé on the ferryboat from Seattle, so decided on another course than following in that car. It would pay to waste a few minutes of time.
Steve's emergency wallet turned the trick for him at a used car lot. Within five minutes he had left his coupé, and driven out in a closed car of another color.
He shot the car along at high speed, but did not pick up the Trulow car until he reached the Olympic Highway at Uniontown, where the single road turned westward along the peninsula in the direction of Roaring River nearly a hundred miles away.
From there, Huston loafed along, just keeping Trulow's speeding car in sight. Some thirty miles out the highway, with the blue water of Hood Canal far below on one side, and the towering wall of the Olympics on the other, the highway turned back into the sharp hills.
A sign said this was the Roosevelt National Forest, with Quilcene at the other end of a canyon road. The tumbling white water of the Quilcene River roared below the road, with a high, sharp cliff on the other side.
On this road, at a sharp turn onto a bridge, Huston became sure he was suspected of following the other car. He saw Trulow lean out and look back, to get more of a view than his windshield mirror gave him.
Huston chuckled. He was sure Trulow had the jitters. That was to be expected with the murders of the Black Wolf fresh in his mind. Then Trulow slowed his car, evidently waiting for Steve Huston to pass him on the quiet highway, empty at that hour of the morning, except for their two cars.
MERELY a few rutty dirt roads branched off from the main Olympic Highway into the mountains. Steve Huston was aware that only trails went far into the hills, and that pack animals had to be employed by those who wished to penetrate the inner wilderness.
As Thurman Trulow slowed his car for Steve to pass, the red-headed reporter grinned and cut down his own speed.
If he stops and wants to investigate, I may learn something, he thought.
He was correct in one surmise. Trulow's car topped a curving hill just ahead. The car was stopped abruptly.
But it did not appear to be because of suspicion that Steve Huston was following. For a stringing line of horses came suddenly from a rough trail among the trees onto the surfaced highway.
Steve Huston jammed on his own brakes. His hand dipped under his arm, gripping his police automatic. For the dozen or more riders from the trail swung abruptly across the highway in front of Trulow's car.
Guns seemed to jump into the hands of the riders who were all bearded. One of the guns cracked. The Trulow car was started quickly, as if Trulow had decided to send it smashing through the horses across the road.
The next gunfire was a staccato ripple that echoed from the walled highway.
"A chopper out here!" grated Steve. "A mob on horseback! It doesn't make sense!"
The riveting sound of the machine-gun kept up. The intention of whoever was behind it seemed to be to annihilate the four persons in Trulow's car. His sedan had jumped ahead in second speed. It swerved now, as if under the impact of the streaming lead.
The chopper quit talking. Steve Huston chilled all over as he heard Lela Starke scream shrilly. The Trulow car dipped into a shallow ditch between the highway and a shale wall. Its rear end went upward and the car turned over.
Huston saw the tall figure of Thurman Trulow burst from the driver's door. When he landed on his feet, he had an automatic in his hand. He lifted it, shooting, and one of the horses reared and squealed with pain.
"Blast 'im!" shouted a hard voice. "Rub him out!"
TWO riders spurred their horses directly toward Trulow. Lela Starke screamed again. Huston did not see Trulow hit, but he did see him fall heavily as if one of the riders had struck him down. Trulow lay on the concrete without moving.
Steve Huston hit in the highway, forgetting all about his own safety and the heavy odds of the armed riders against him, plus a machine-gun opposed to his police gun. He ran forward, shooting, just as the two charging horsemen seemed to trap Thurman Trulow between them.
As Huston's gun jolted, one of the riders threw up his hands and pitched from the saddle. The way he hit on his head, and then rolled over, Steve knew the rider was dead.
He saw Ralph Larch's stocky figure lying in the ditch beside the upset car. He saw Lela Starke's white face appear at the door from which Trulow had jumped. She was apparently trying to get the injured Tom Randall from the car.
Huston bit off a short oath, for more of the riders were rushing down the highway upon him. The machine-gun racketed again, and Huston saw it thrust over the ears of a galloping horse. Lead struck the concrete. The line arose with a vicious buzzing. Huston dived off the highway, striking in the shallow ditch.
A ricocheting slug felt as if it had lifted off the top of his skull, but he remained conscious, and he could still see through a red haze. He tried to shoot again, but all of the strength was gone from his arm and his gun dropped to the ground.
Two bulky, bearded men rolled from their horses. As they reached Huston, seizing him and pulling him back into the road, Huston saw Thurman Trulow stretched out in the highway.
Trulow lay as if he were dead.
Ralph Larch had not moved from his huddled position in the ditch. Undoubtedly he had been knocked senseless when the car had gone over.
As powerful hands gripped him, fingers finding his throat, Steve Huston heard another car coming up the hill.
Thereafter, the figures about Huston blurred. For the driver of the oncoming car, with two men in the front seat, was speeding, and he evidently made an attempt to brake down the car.
The mounted machine-gunner went into action. And through that blur, as the windshield of the oncoming car shattered, Steve Huston saw the two men in the car's front seat slump out of sight, just as the car leaped the opposite shoulder of the highway.
There was a grinding crash, then a series of lesser crashes, which finally ended in the white water of the river nearly five hundred feet below. A hard voice yelled a command.
"Bring that nutty redhead, an' them others! Put the girl an' Randall on the spare horses! We've got to lam outta here! That shootin' will wake 'em up down in Quilcene!"
Huston was pretty sick. But not from the slug furrow along his head. He saw two men ruthlessly putting Lela Starke across the saddle of a horse. It was apparent that she had either fainted or had been knocked out.
"You don't have to do that to her," Steve grated to the two men pushing him along the road.
Lela Starke's wrists and ankles were bound with a rope. She was lying across the saddle, and the rope was being drawn under the horse's belly and tied tightly.
"Shut up, Redhead!" snapped one of the men with Steve, hitting him across the mouth. "You'll find out what it means to be spying on the Black Wolf for the Phantom!"
The words were a shock to Steve. How could any of these riding mobsters, working like Western outlaws, know he was helping the Phantom? He had made no contacts whatever, and he could think of nothing that might have betrayed him.
He clamped his teeth together and was silent.
Tom Randall, with a bandage around his head, was in the saddle of one of the horses. A rope secured Randall's feet under the horse.
STEVE HUSTON was lifted and thrown into another saddle, and a rider swung up behind him.
"You just sit tight, smart guy!" growled the rider. "We'd leave you with them other two on the road, but maybe you'll be able to give the Black Wolf an idea that will help him! He's got the Phantom where he wants him, only he might want to know something about what you've been digging up!"
The whole thing was uncanny to Huston at this moment. He could think of but one possible thing that might have betrayed him. It might have been that someone with this mounted mob had been trailing Ralph Larch earlier, and had spotted him shadowing the bank cashier.
Huston had a sudden idea. The mounted men were moving.
He could still see Thurman Trulow lying in the road, and Larch down in the ditch.
"Perhaps the Black Wolf would like to know what I've found out about the Echo Voice?" Huston said.
"What's that?" snarled the man behind him. "What do you know about the Echo Voice? Speak up! Burler! Come back here!"
A scowling, heavy-lipped man dropped his horse back.
"This redhead has heard the Echo Voice, Burler," said the man behind Steve.
"Yes? He has? Say, maybe it ain't the Phantom who run into Black Wolf! Maybe this is the Phantom! They say he's likely to be any mug you happen to meet!"
"Thanks," said Steve Huston slowly. "That's a big compliment. So Black Wolf has caught the Phantom, huh?"
THE man called Burler slapped his hand across Huston's mouth and rattled his teeth.
"You'll do the talkin', Redhead, when we get into the Roaring River canyon!" he growled. "Yup! You'll talk plenty, when you see that blasted girl turning into a human icicle! There are things Black Wolf wants to know about the Phantom, and his setup, if you ain't him!"
The mounted mobsters were following a narrow trail that went into the deep woods. Steve Huston could understand the hopeless chance of the killers being followed, as they twisted from this trail and rode through a woods of the biggest trees he had ever seen...
As Huston was started upon his enforced ride with Lela Starke and Tom Randall, as prisoners through the bewildering maze of the Olympic forest, there was slow movement near the wrecked Trulow car on the highway.
The stocky figure of Ralph Larch stirred. The bank cashier got slowly to his knees. His dark eyes widened with fear as he looked at the still body of Thurman Trulow in the center of the highway.
The body of a bearded man, the rider shot by Steve Huston, lay nearby. Blood stained the concrete near Trulow's head. Larch's broad face worked, as if in pain. He stumbled to his feet, whimpering like some scared animal.
He glanced fearfully up and down the highway. Hearing the hum of an approaching car, Larch scuttled into bushes beyond the ditch. He was crawling along the hill when the car stopped in the road.
LARCH paused and watched. He saw Thurman Trulow lifted and put in the car by two men. The men looked at the body of the bearded man, then got into the car and started away. The car went on, toward Quilcene, in the direction of Roaring River.
It was then that Larch staggered back to the highway. He walked fast for a short distance, then broke into a shambling run, glancing over his shoulder as if pursued by all the imps of the devil.
When he heard cars approaching, he hid beside the road.
"The Echo Voice!" he muttered hoarsely at times. "I've got to destroy everything now! I must reach the bank in Seattle before I'm discovered! They'll never believe now I didn't murder Cyrus Starke! I must find the Echo Voice!"
BLACK WOLF'S snarl was like that of the wild beast for which he was named. His double-bitted axe whirled over his head with the blinding gleam of its twin razor-edged blades.
The drive of that axe threatened to split the Phantom's skull all the way to his shoulders. As Black Wolf sprang upon the Phantom, his immense size would have terrified any man.
He neared seven feet in height. His shoulders and girth seemed to dwarf the lighter figure of the Phantom who was himself a broad-shouldered hundred and seventy pounds of hard muscles.
Taken by surprise as he rounded the big spruce tree, the Phantom had no time to set himself. The deadly axe was whistling in a circle above him as he crouched, and in the furry black face of Black Wolf was demoniacal rage.
Any man, it seemed, would have tried to spring aside or to have attempted to flee, and Black Wolf evidently expected that move on the Phantom's part. For as the axe swung up and then down, Black Wolf sprang forward, estimating the death blow to catch the Phantom as he fell back.
Van lacked the split second of time needed even to snap a shot from the automatic carried handily in his sleeve. His movement had to be instinctive and lightning fast.
And that movement must have amazed the Black Wolf. For Van dived straight toward him, directly under the falling axe. Then he seemed to twist in mid-air, with the writhing movement of a snake. The axe whistled down and past his head, so close that a blade nipped a bit of skin and flesh from his ear.
Van's hard head drove into the stomach of Black Wolf. And it was almost as if he had hit the tautly stretched skin of a bass drum, so compact were Black Wolf's muscles.
Black Wolf roared out a mighty laugh, as if some child had slapped him with a tiny hand. He let go of the quivering axe handle, as one of the blades was buried inches deep in the butt of the spruce tree.
"So ho! The Phantom he is want to fight man to man!"
The mocking words rumbled from the black, hairy chest that was so much like the furred barrel of a mighty gorilla. Black Wolf's long, tremendous arms flailed downward, his two fists held together.
The power of the blow which caught Van's spine between his shoulders seemed to numb him all the way to the heels. He dropped to the ground, alighting on his hands and knees.
But in the moment of striking Black Wolf's stomach with his head, as the doubled fists slammed the breath from his lungs, Van had seen something that gave him his cue for the fight-to-the-finish battle he knew was at hand. One instant of keen recognition of his opponent's vulnerable point, had shown Van instantaneously what he must do to finish the battle.
Black Wolf's manner of striking, and his crouching movement now, with his big hands open and fingers extended, told Van that Black Wolf had been a professional wrestler. Clawed, misshapen ears, buried in the furry black hair were further evidence of the human brute's mat experience.
Van guided his next move accordingly. For he was aware that if Black Wolf secured the right hold, he might twist any lighter opponent into helpless surrender.
It looked as if that hold was coming now. Black Wolf shot one arm down to encircle Van's neck, while his other hand darted to grip Van's foot.
The clamping of the half Nelson on the neck, accompanied by the deadly toe hold, would have whipped Van into a spine-bending knot that could have broken both his neck and his leg all with one movement of the giant Black Wolf's powerful arms.
Breathless as he was, Van waited until Black Wolf's hand hit his foot, and the arm was going around his neck before he acted. Black Wolf was bent over him.
Van's foot jerked away from the reaching hand. It came up with the speed of a snake striking as his elastic muscles doubled his leg, then released it like a coiled spring. His heel drove squarely into Black Wolf's face, flattening the broad nose.
Black Wolf bellowed an oath of pain as his head jerked backward. The arm looping Van's neck for a half Nelson went inert for half a second. And in that split second, Van appeared to employ only his thumb and forefinger upon Black Wolf's wrist.
The giant killer may have been a professional grunter and groaner of the ring before he had embarked upon his career of murder, but it was evident he never before had encountered that terrible Oriental nerve hold. The great, hairy body jerked. Black Wolf's own massive legs propelled him upward. Half of the nerves and muscles of his body had been fired by the agonizing impulse of that bit of applied ju jutsu.
It seemed as if Black Wolf himself was trying to commit suicide. With all of his three hundred pounds of weight—or more—he drove into the spruce tree above his axe, his hard head taking the impact.
The Phantom could have lost nothing then by being more ruthless. If he had exacted merited justice by finishing off Black Wolf, who rolled, senseless, at his feet, he might have averted further trouble and rid the world of a killer who rated only death.
But the Phantom could never work further violence upon a man he had rendered unconscious. And as he got weakly to his feet, still numbed by the blow that had almost cracked his spine, he was forced to back into the tree and snatch a flying body from the air to save his throat from being slashed.
Four silent, bare-fanged dogs were leaping upon him. The one that had jumped for his throat immediately tore at his arm, its pointed fangs slashing through his sleeve. Van did the only thing that he could, although he seldom had killed a dumb beast. He snapped the dog from him, breaking the animal's neck, and ending its life instantly and painlessly.
Then he was centered before the fangs of the other three tongueless animals that belonged to the Siwash he had previously seen.
He doubled one back with a kick that sent it sprawling twenty feet away. At the same instant he let his sleeve gun slide into his hand. The automatic barked and a merciful bullet killed a second dog. Fangs ripped one leg of his trousers above the top of his shoe, the teeth of one dog slicing into his flesh.
AT that instant, a shrill whistle sounded. As if both the surviving dogs had been hit by a whip, they whirled and made off between the trees.
Van knew that the squat, flat-faced Siwash was the man who had whistled. His breath recovered, he would have plunged after the master of the tongueless dogs. But the voice of the woman who had called herself Mantha Strong sounded over among the trees in another direction.
"Phantom! Phantom! This way, quick! Others are coming! They have heard the shootin'! Hurry!"
Where had this Mantha Strong been while Black Wolf had been slipping up to ambush the Phantom with his axe as the man from the plane had come down the spruce tree? Could the woman, so far unseen, have been in league with Black Wolf? Had she tricked him into climbing the spruce to give Black Wolf a chance with his deadly axe?
"I know what you're thinkin', Phantom," boomed the heavy voice. "An' I ain't blamin' you none. But by gracious, it ain't so! One of them Siwash devils knocked me down, an' I couldn't shoot before it was too late!"
There followed a bit of lumberjack swearing that would have done credit to the toughest logger. Coming from a woman, even if she had a bass voice and could shoot a rifle with amazing accuracy, it sounded strange.
Van was forced to smile a little at the vehemence of Mantha Strong's anger. He glanced at the still figure of Black Wolf and judged the man would stay quiet for several minutes.
When he pushed through the trees, Van was prepared to see a mannish appearing woman. But Mantha Strong was considerable more than just mannish. Seeing her for the first time Van thought of Man Mountain Dean, the giant wrestler. That was how the mountainous Amazon who confronted him impressed him.
She wore the rough clothes of a woodsman, the shirt and trousers tucked into her boots only making her look greater in size. She had a face that was so broad and fat that it seemed to lie in many rolls under snapping little eyes that gleaned at Van. A woodsman's cap was pulled over Mantha's broad forehead.
One of the big husky dogs lay dead on the ground. Van was convinced that the woman had killed the dog with her bare hands, for her rifle lay on the ground at her feet, and she was swearing steadily as she pulled together one sleeve of her shirt over a wound in her right shoulder where the flesh had been torn.
"The killin' beast got me from behind!" thundered Mantha's deep voice. "An' if I ever lay hands on that yellow, flat-faced, sneakin', no-good, lizard-eatin' Siwash, I'll pin his dirty ears to the back of his neck with his own spear! I nigh let you get yourself killed, Phantom, but I was so all-whanged busy with that killin' dog that I clean forgot you for a minute or two!"
She had said that others were coming. Van listened, but even his highly trained ears heard nothing. He spoke to her about that.
"They're comin' a-hootin' all the same, Phantom!" declared Mantha Strong. "I got 'em on the wind! An' maybe you won't want to be wastin' your time with explainin' what you found up that spruce! They're loggers, and they'll be holdin' you up when I allow you've found out things that'll maybe make you want to be some other place!"
VAN glanced back to where Black Wolf had fallen at the foot of the big spruce. The big man who should have been unconscious there was gone!
"Black Wolf's gone!" he exclaimed. "I should have tied him up while he was out!"
"I seen him getting away," said the amazing Mantha. "But I figured it best, an' maybe you'd want it that way. If I want to run down a litter of wolf pups, I always leave the old he-wolf free to lead me to 'em. An' I've heard enough of you to know that what you found out up in the spruce would make you want to have a look—see around before you get all tangled up with a bunch of nitwits and crooks askin' questions."
Van took another long look at the fat rolls of Mantha Strong's broad face, at her square jaw, and her glinting jade eyes. Her big body shook with silent laughter.
"Wonderin' how I figured out so much, huh, Phantom?" she asked. "Well, I've heard you're right smart of a tracker among them wolves they have in the big cities. An' I've been fightin' the kind of wolves we have in the woods a long time. It ain't much different, Phantom—the wood wolves, and the city wolves. Now just how did you figure Slim Layton, that topper, come to get himself killed?"
Van heard movement in the woods then. Many men were coming. He glanced at Mantha Strong's old Winchester rifle. He knew that earlier type. It shot soft-nosed bullets. And he remembered what had occurred to him before—that the topper had been stunned by a soft-nosed bullet.
But he decided to go along with Mantha Strong for the moment. If she was playing a deep game of her own, he should be able to find that out all the more speedily by being agreeable now.
"Slim Layton, that was the name of the murdered man," he said slowly. "Well, I would say Slim Layton saw too much on the glacier about the time that Cyrus Starke disappeared."
Mantha's great head nodded approvingly.
"You're all wool and a yard wide, Phantom," she said. "So what do you figure on doin' next?"
"That must wait for the finding of Cyrus Starke's body and the end of the rope fastened to him," said Van. "But they say the crevasse in which he fell has closed."
"The crevasse has closed, Phantom." Mantha nodded. "But Cyrus Starke's body isn't in the ice. And before that crook Harry Lant, and them other two crooks, Bill Summers and John Hart come along, maybe we'd best be going."
Van studied the strange big woman a few seconds. The fat rolls of her face seemed to become one vast, beaming smile.
He wanted further information on what she had just said. About a Harry Lant, for instance of whom he had not heard before—whose name had not even been brought into this snarled mess before now and of Bill Summers and John Hart. Mantha referred to them with feeling, and she had called them crooks.
He recalled the last two names—partners of the forest ranger, Tom Randall.
But these men could wait. He asked the other question that was suddenly pounding through his brain.
"How do you know that Cyrus Starke's body isn't in that crevasse, Mantha Strong?"
"Because Cyrus Starke's body is in my own cabin, Phantom," said the amazing woman. "I took him away before the ice come together."
INCREDIBLE Mantha Strong, who might have made a fortune with her great, powerful body in some circus sideshow, put her fingers suddenly upon her thick lips. Her bass voice sank to a husky whisper.
"They heard the shootin', and here they come, Phantom," she said. "Loggers from Tom Randall's camp. The good Lord help that boy. An' there's Bill Summers and John Hart. I had been hopin' they'd turn out honest, but they talked Tom Randall into lettin' Harry Lant build that home-destroyin' power dam, an' so they're as crooked as Harry Lant himself."
She motioned for the Phantom to stay hidden and watch. She pointed out two light-haired, lanky men whose bony faces were oddly alike.
"Summers an' Hart," she said. "An' that sawed-off foreigner that's maybe one of them Fifth Columnists, is Harry Lant himself. An' if he ain't caught up with by the proper law before he ruins me an' all the other settlers that's been slavin' our bodies to the bone to make this country, by finishin' that useless power dam of theirs, I'm goin' to send a bullet right through his gullet myself."
Van saw a short, swarthy man with an oily face, walking with the two men that Mantha Strong indicated to be Bill Summers and John Hart. The swarthy man was gesturing with his hands as he talked, in a manner to mark him as of European extraction.
Van wanted to quiz Mantha Strong more about the dam of which she had so bitterly spoken, but other things were more vital at the moment. The amazing woman had coolly stated she would shoot this Harry Lant, whoever he might be. And her tone was indication enough that she would do it, too.
He thought again about the tree topper having been killed by a soft-nosed bullet, and of the amazing Mantha's calm admission of the incredible stealing of Cyrus Starke's body for her own purposes—whatever they might be.
It was most important now that the Phantom see Cyrus Starke's body, and the rope by which Starke had been linked to the others in his party before he fell. And, so thinking, his mind harked back to the mystery of Ralph Larch, back in the city. And an almost fantastic idea came to the Phantom.
Yes, Van decided, to remain here would mix him up with the cursing loggers, one of whom already was ascending the spruce tree to reach the body of the topper. To linger here would delay him for he would have to explain his presence and make known his identity to Bill Summers and John Hart, the partners of Tom Randall, and to this Harry Lant who was so thoroughly disliked by Mantha Strong.
The logger up the spruce shouted down.
"The Black Wolf again! Slim Layton has been choked to death, an' his neck broke! We've got to saw him out of the top! By holy! The Black Wolf's a real, hell-whoopin' Paul Bunyan! He had to pull this tree apart with his bare hands to put Slim Layton in the split!"
Van heard the mutter of fear that ran around the circle of choppers and swampers and hook tenders, the loggers at the foot of the spruce.
He could have told them that he had seen the marks of small steel cables at the top of the tree, and that many men probably pulled that top apart. But he remained silent, staying beside Mantha Strong. Because of that mutter of fear that he heard run among the loggers, it was certain that some of them would quit the Roaring River camp as the result of this new murder they had discovered.
HE was watching Bill Summers who had stepped to one side with the swarthy and mysterious Harry Lant. Their voices were low, but the Phantom could read the words on their lips as clearly as if they had shouted.
"This may clean out the camp, and with Starke and Cushman out of the way, clear things up to begin finishing the dam without waiting," lanky Bill Summers was saying.
"It will be worth your while if it does the trick," said Harry Lant. "The Black Wolf has timed everything to the minute. And if it hadn't been for the Phantom last night, according to the radio, Randall wouldn't even be alive to carry on the fight." The body of Slim Layton was being lowered to the ground. Bill Summers and Harry Lant moved toward it. Loggers were exclaiming over the marks of the huge fingers on the dead man's neck.
Van was thinking of the same huge fingers that had almost sent an axe hurtling through his own skull.
It was time to be about what must be his next move. He must see the body of Cyrus Starke that Mantha Strong said was in her cabin. Also, he would be keeping a wary eye on the woman. If she reacted the wrong way to what he was about to do, it might be necessary to see that she was temporarily restrained from interfering...
It seemed impossible that Mantha Strong could move so vast a body as hers so quietly and quickly through the tangled woods. The Phantom kept up with her easily, but most men would have been winded and left behind in the fast two miles she traveled through the trees around the edge of Green Glacier.
"Here she be!" announced Mantha Strong, as they came suddenly upon a low, rambling log cabin. "Built every stick of it myself. There ain't anybody meddlin' about my place. So I fetched Cyrus Starke's corpse here from the glacier."
Van could well believe that Mantha Strong had built all of the cabin. He imagined the Amazon must have picked up the logs and lifted them into place.
The body of Cyrus Starke, he saw, when he entered the cabin, was just as it was, apparently when he had fallen into the glacier crevasse. Starke weighed at least a hundred and eighty pounds, and the incredible Mantha said she had put him over her shoulder and carried him here.
Mantha Strong had her own ideas of being a mortician. She had laid out Cyrus Starke so that the body would be preserved indefinitely, or at least until she had accomplished her avowed purpose of working out her own kind of justice.
Cyrus Starke's body was laid out upon big blocks of ice in a cold room of the strangest cabin Van had ever seen that belonged to a woman. The main room was filled with the skins of bear and cougar and deer. They were on the floor. They covered the walls.
"Yep, Phantom, I killed them all for their meat," said Mantha. "It was tough scratchin' to make a livin' when my man passed on, but I managed. I've got me a bit of a garden cleared out, an' I've kept up my taxes on a thousand acres of the best timber, which is more'n most of the settlers have done for themselves."
That chance remark started the Phantom thinking fast.
"There are lots of trees inside the mountains," he said. "Worth a great deal of money. You say, Mantha Strong, that most of the settlers haven't kept up their taxes?"
"They sure ain't," she said. "An' so there are a lot of new faces in the woods nowadays. Millions in timber have been bought up by a worthless lot of city hunters an' fishermen that ain't any idea of doing anything with the trees. Ain't even kept up the cabins an' clearings that were here."
MANTHA'S words started the Phantom's mind working fast. But he gave her no idea of the startling thought that had come to him.
As they stood together beside the body of Cyrus Starke, Van saw that about eight feet of rope was attached to the belt of the dead man. "The end was cleanly cut with a knife," he said. "But about twenty feet was between Starke and the next man, so he must have been following too close when it happened or the man in front of him would have felt the strain on the rope."
"I was down at the tourist camp," Mantha Strong said, "when the other end of the rope was brought in by Thurman Trulow and Ralph Larch. That other end was all frayed out, as if it had been rubbed off on sharp ice or rocks."
Van had his own thoughts. They jumped to Ralph Larch's fear when he had seen the cashier at the hospital. He wished at this moment he had a telephone to reach Seattle, for he was wondering what Steve Huston might possibly have discovered by trailing Larch?
Now, he thought, why did not Thurman Trulow speak?
Mantha Strong answered that question unexpectedly.
"The way I figure it," she said, "Trulow and Larch knew that rope was cut, but they wanted to keep Lela Starke from being too bad upset, so they frayed their end that she could see. Maybe they figured on giving the police the truth later. Trulow's always been a square shooter up here. But I don't know much about that Larch."
Van nodded absently. "Would you leave me alone with the body about ten minutes, Mantha?" he said.
"Sure, Phantom," she boomed out. "I'll drum you up a snack to eat while you're thinkin'."
When she was out of the cold room, Van worked fast. From under his clothes he brought out a body-fitting make-up case. He studied the strong, firm features of Cyrus Starke a long minute.
With the lighted mirror of his make-up case to aid him he inserted wax moulages in his nostrils, under his cheeks and his lips.
It was like some sculptor swiftly making a new face, with deft fingers molding clay.
Starke's eyes had been dark blue, but the Phantom fixed that when he fitted eye-shells over his own brown eyes. His hair was changed quickly by a dusting powder that was both water-proof and sweat-proof. Van did not overlook the hands, for he quickly noticed that Starke's hands were blue-veined.
When he had finished with making his change, he made sure Mantha Strong was busy outside. And only three minutes later he was dressed in Cyrus Starke's clothes, and the body was wearing the suit in which he had arrived. Van fastened the safety belt around himself, with the cut rope attached, and walked to the door.
"I warn you, Mantha Strong," he called, "not to be frightened. I am about to ask you to take Cyrus Starke across the glacier to the tourist camp. He has a serious cold from being exposed on the glacier, and when he arrives at the camp, he won't be able to speak above a whisper."
"What on earth are you talkin' about, Phantom?"
"Be prepared," said Van. "I am Cyrus Starke."
Mantha Strong was an iron-nerved woman, and as cool as they came. Nevertheless, she sat down abruptly in a creaking rocker and closed her eyes the moment the Phantom appeared before her.
When she opened her eyes again, the Phantom was still there. But in spite of his warning it was as if she was looking at Cyrus Starke as he had last looked when alive.
"If I didn't see it, I wouldn't believe it," said Mantha, her small green eyes glinting. "Now I know why you have to have a cold, and can't talk above a whisper."
"Yes," said Van. "But I have my own way of getting Starke's voice which I want to use later. But I have to go to Seattle to find that."
GREEN GLACIER reflected a brilliant emerald hue under the sun of high noon. The Phantom and Mantha Strong went through the big trees that bordered the upper side of the slow-moving river of ice.
The Phantom had consumed a meal of juicy deer steak and flapjacks thrown together by Mantha Strong. Although he was a member of society's most exclusive set in his true identity of Richard Curtis Van Loan, the Phantom was broadly human. He liked Mantha Strong's kind of people. The sort who took misfortune by the horns and smashed it by hard work and persistence. And he had reached the conclusion that there must be others of her kind settled in the big woods, pioneers who deserved the right break.
The Phantom had his own reason now for believing that the fortunes of these settlers, of Mantha Strong and her kind were involved in the campaign of murder and terrorism being waged by Black Wolf's timber mob and some mysterious master backing it. He believed that their well being depended on his working out this crime puzzle successfully.
Van was now in the role of the dead Cyrus Starke. Mantha Strong glanced at him from time to time, a bit fearfully. She had not yet accustomed herself to the image of a corpse she knew to be in her cabin now walking beside her.
When they were about to emerge upon the smooth Green Glacier, Van could see the dark cluster of tourist camp cabins about two miles below them. He lifted glasses to his eyes.
"Something unusual has happened down there, Mantha," he said. "Men and women at the camp are excited. They are collected in little groups. There are two highway police cars there."
"There never seems to be a dull moment any more," said Mantha dryly. "Maybe they've just heard of Slim Layton's murder being discovered."
Van believed it was something else that was causing the excitement he noted, but he let it pass.
"I feel like I'm Frank Buck," said Mantha suddenly. "I mean, bringing Cyrus Starke back alive."
Van swung the glasses over to the black rocks that marked what Mantha had told him was a series of caves in the middle of the glacier openings, called Honeycomb Caves. A number of climbing tourists were still about this spot where Cyrus Starke had plunged to his death in the crevasse.
Van tried to visualize what might have happened at the time of Starke's accident. There had been a thick fog, a local mist which had obscured that spot and probably had left the remainder of the glacier clear, at the time Starke had fallen.
"Someone might have been hidden in those rocks, cut Starke's safety rope, and then escaped across the glacier on this side," Van said to Mantha Strong. "In that way the killer would have come into the range of vision of Slim Layton at the top of the spruce tree."
"That's the way I've figured it, Phantom," agreed Mantha.
Her huge head turned quickly. The fat rolls of her face became grim, and her little eyes looked as hard as the jade which they resembled. The Phantom knew the reason for that at once.
"I know we're being trailed," he said. "I've known it for some time. But we'll be in the open on the glacier in another couple of minutes. Perhaps it's that Siwash with his silent dogs."
"You're as good in the woods as me, an' I've had to read signs for years to stay alive," said Mantha admiringly.
VAN had freed his heavy automatic. He noted that Mantha swung her old rifle into the crook of her left arm. They were set for trouble. But they were not expecting it with the abruptness with which it came. For it came with startling suddenness, when the glacier was but a few yards away.
Van's quick eyes caught the whistling flight of a thrown spear. It was like a flashing shadow. Only highly trained instinct whipped up one hand with incredible speed. His bunched knuckles were bruised as he struck at the flying weapon.
That instant coordination of brain, senses, and muscle saved Mantha Strong's life. The hurtling spear was deflected just enough to send it past the big woman's ear. It had been aimed at her back.
Van pivoted. Four tawny forms came leaping soundlessly toward them. Van's automatic cracked twice. They were but two of the silent dogs still coming on.
Van's lips puckered. At some distance to one side a shrill, commanding whistle sounded. It was a perfect imitation of the whistle the Phantom had heard the Siwash use before to call off his tongueless, tortured beasts. But the Siwash had not given that whistle. Van had himself.
He had employed ventriloquism with incredible precision. The attacking dogs stopped abruptly. They turned. The whistle came again.
The dogs dashed away toward the sound.
"Well, I'll be—" Mantha stared at the Phantom.
She had no time to elaborate upon her oath of surprise. For the big trees appeared to spawn bearded mobsters with drawn guns. Van saw the huge, furry-haired figure of Black Wolf himself at one side.
The giant leader he had bested in an open fight had his deadly axe again. And as Van saw the glittering blade whirl over Black Wolf's head, it came to him what might have happened to Cyrus Starke. Van was sure Black Wolf could hurl that axe with deadly accuracy.
The axe could have cut the rope that was now bound around Van's waist on Cyrus Starke's safety belt. As he turned, Van saw Black Wolf stare at him in amazement. The mob giant looked as if he had seen a ghost, and it brought indecision.
Then Black Wolf roared out a command.
"Grab that fool woman! Keep them two off the glacier, but don't shoot! The police will be up here if you do."
Van's eyes picked out at least a dozen mobsters with guns ready for action. His thought was for Mantha Strong. He judged the distance to the open ice, and saw that he and Mantha could not make it without a fight.
He imagined his own shooting at the two dogs might have been heard by the police down in the camp. But he could see no one coming up across the two miles of glacier.
Van swung upon Black Wolf, but kept his automatic down. He emitted a hoarse, muffled shout.
"Call them off, Black Wolf, or I'll get you first!"
But the mobsters were circling, cutting them off from the glacier. A roaring laugh came from Black Wolf's mighty chest.
"Ho! Ho! A ghost can't talk! So you're Starke! Take them, boys! Don't let them escape!"
Mantha Strong was swearing.
"They're too many and too scattered!" Van said to her. "Don't resist for the moment!"
BUT Mantha had her rifle lifted. She was swinging it upon Black Wolf.
Then it was that a weird voice that seemed to come from nowhere ran like a repeated echo across the glacier and into the woods.
"Not now, Black Wolf—not now!" The "not now" appeared to be caught by many echoing points and flung back. The voice again made its eerie sound.
"Let them go—Black Wolf—Black Wolf—Black Wolf! Go to icicle cliff at once—at once—at once!"
"The Echo Voice!" Van heard one of the bearded men exclaim. "It's an order!"
Black Wolf waved his axe.
"Your time will come soon, Mantha Strong!" he growled. "After we find the Phantom! You've hid him somewhere!"
His order rang out.
"The icicle cliff! You heard the Echo Voice!"
The armed men were fading among the trees. Black Wolf, too, was going away, his giant body crashing through the brush.
Van studied their surroundings. That Echo Voice had come in the same hollow tone that he had heard in the Skidroad Bright Spot when Anton Cushman had been murdered. The weird sound had the same tone as an echo sent back by mountain walls.
It was uncanny, but the Phantom knew that could be only a simulation of echoed words.
"That's it, the Echo Voice!" exclaimed Mantha. "It comes only when death is at hand. It sounds like an echo. Old Proverb always leads tourists to a place in the caves where they pay to hear funny echoes. But I don't think they could be connected with this echo voice."
"It sounds more to me like some microphonic projection of sound made to resemble an echo than a real one," observed Van.
"Glory to wildcats, Phantom!" exclaimed Mantha. "You've hit it! Like one of them loudspeakers I've heard at the movie in Port Angeles!"
They were about to move out onto the ice. Van had decided that pursuit of Black Wolf's mob now, and finding the mysterious icicle cliff that had been mentioned, was less important than the effect to be gained by his sudden resurrection of Cyrus Starke.
A shadowy figure emerged into view, going from the trees onto the ice, only a short distance away. Van saw that it was the figure of swarthy Harry Lant, power dam builder, suspected by Mantha Strong of having other interests than logging here—or perhaps because of them.
"Why, the lowdown polecat!" grated Mantha, lifting her rifle. "I've been sure of it all the time! It's him, Harry Lant! I'll put a quietus on that Echo Voice for keeps now!"
The woman's temper flared until her vast body shook with fury. Van sprang forward just in time to knock her rifle to one side. The gun exploded and the soft-nose bullet mushed on the ice only a few feet to one side of Harry Lant.
Lant whirled, jumped away. Then he saw Van and the woman. He halted, sliding. Then he walked toward them, on his face a queer mixture of alarm and rage.
"Great cats!" he exclaimed. "Starke? I'm seeing things! What is this?... And say! Was that shooting meant for me!"
Before Mantha could let loose her anger, Van spoke hoarsely, whispering.
"Don't be a fool, Mantha Strong. Tell him it was an accident. Be quick. Explain how you found me—"
THE coolness of Mantha Strong was never better demonstrated than then.
"We had trouble with the Siwash's dogs," she said. "I shot two of 'em. I didn't see you, Lant. Maybe if I had, I'd have shot straight. Yup, Lant! I found Mr. Starke wandering around, an' I had a fine time bringing him to his senses. He's nigh to pneumony, an' he's got to get to a doctor."
Harry Lant extended a sympathetic hand. Starke himself, if he had been there and ill, could not have put on a better show than the Phantom. He continued to speak haltingly in the whispering voice, on which he had decided, since he had never heard Cyrus Starke's own voice. He staggered a little and almost fell, until Lant's arm went out and supported him.
"Had a bad time of it Lant, a bad time," he said huskily. "I'm still shaky an' dizzy. Have to have a doctor. Mantha Strong saved my life."
"Well, no one could be more pleased than I am, Cy," said Lant. "Besides being glad to know you're alive, I'm thinking of how this will change a lot of things, as you know."
Van nodded, wondering to what the dark-faced Lant referred. Then he received a slight shock.
"With you and Cushman gone, I was stopping work on the dam," said Lant. "The Randall loggers have kept going, but Summers and Hart were calling them off today. Now we can go ahead."
Van recalled that, as Starke, he might not be supposed to know of the murder of Anton Cushman, there being no radio at the Mantha Strong cabin.
"Cushman?" he whispered. "What do you mean?"
Lant shook his head, then broke the news. Van seemed to be badly broken up by the shock. He was thinking, though, of what Lant had said, and of his sudden appearance here, just after that eerie echoing voice had sounded.
Then another figure came shambling out of the woods that gave the Phantom pause in his thoughts. The gaunt hermit, Old Proverb, shuffled toward them over the ice. He came close, his one good eye glittering as he looked at them, the patch on the other eye reminiscent of a pirate.
"The way of the transgressor is hard," he chanted in a monotonous tone. "The dead will live again, and speak."
Old Proverb scratched at his skin-clad body with bony fingers. The two yellow fangs that showed in his cavernous mouth made him look like some beast rather than a man.
"Go on, Proverb!" snapped Mantha Strong. "Pull the wool over the eyes of the city tourists! You don't fool me none!"
Old Proverb was staring at Van with his one glittering eye. He turned without another word and shuffled away down over the glacier.
"He's a queer old coot," said Harry Lant. "Crazy as they make 'em."
"Crazy like a fox!" growled Mantha's deep-set bass. "He ain't so cracked, to be puttin' all of the money he collects into timber tax liens like he is. He's owning most as much of the trees back here as all the other tax land grabbers put together."
THE Phantom could not exclaim now, or question Mantha further on that odd and startling bit of information. For it struck him that Cyrus Starke, whom he now professed to be, as a banker with interests up here must know considerable about all of the timber and the land bought up for back taxes. Perhaps Starke and Cushman had some kind of a deal with Harry Lant that involved the timber and the power dam.
But now, although he had seen Old Proverb but once before, down on the Seattle Skidroad, Van was trying to bring to mind some other figure that had resembled him in size and body structure. For the Phantom was an expert on the French Surete method of bone and body measurement, sometimes more effective in identifying criminals than fingerprints could be. And he was certain that in some measure he should be able to tie up Old Proverb with someone else whom he had run across.
As they came close to the tourist camp cabins owned by Thurman Trulow, Van was digesting the revelations that had been made to him during the past few minutes. Especially he meant to find out in just what vital way Cyrus Starke had been interested in Harry Lant's power dam, and just what were the logging interests in which Tom Randall and his questionable partners were tied up.
He was remembering that conversation he had overheard between Bill Summers and Harry Lant when they had believed themselves unobserved. And that conversation had indicated that Harry Lant intended to rush ahead with his power dam, the dam that Mantha Strong so violently condemned.
Van recalled that Bill Summers had said to Lant that with Starke and Cushman out of the way the power dam could be finished without waiting. That did not coincide with Lant's words now, the words he had uttered, believing himself to be talking with Cyrus Starke.
There seemed some ground for Mantha Strong's suspicion of Harry Lant.
EFFECTIVELY, the Phantom's hoarse, whispering voice and his apparent illness covered the reappearance of Cyrus Starke, believed to have been found in glacier ice. Mantha Strong's commanding figure and voice swept back the morbidly curious tourists when they reached the camp.
"Let him alone!" she commanded. "If you're wantin' that kind of fun for your money, go back home and have a look into your city morgues! Stay back, before I swat some of you!"
Lant stayed close beside Van, holding his arm. A red-faced, staring highway police captain pushed forward.
"Well, this is something, Mr. Starke!" he exclaimed. "I'm Captain Harvey! You're one worry off my mind, and I've enough others! Come on, Mr. Starke! We'll get inside, and I'll have a doctor for you in a jiffy!" Van saw that this Captain Harvey was attempting to keep back something that must be known to the circle of excited tourists, men and women. Then a feather-brained woman had to talk too loudly.
"So that's Cyrus Starke?" she exclaimed to others. "And I'll bet he doesn't know his daughter's been kidnapped right off the Olympic Highway!"
Van pulled the proper hesitation, staring bleakly at Captain Harvey.
"My daughter?" he whispered weakly. "What did that woman mean, Captain Harvey?"
"The blamed fool!" Captain Harvey muttered. Then he had Van's arm. "Come on inside, Mr. Starke, into Mr. Trulow's private office, and we'll talk," he said. "Take it easy now. There's nothing to worry about. I'll tell you all about it."
The camp manager opened a locked door to Thurman Trulow's private office under protest.
"I don't know about it," this manager said. "Mr. Trulow is touchy about anyone going into his office."
"Open that door, fella, or I'll take your keys!" snapped Captain Harvey. "I'm running this show now! Trulow will be back in a few minutes, anyway! So don't worry!"
As the door was opened, Van whispered to Harry Lant:
"I'd like to talk to Captain Harvey alone, and I'll see you again."
"Sure, Cy," Lant said. "I understand how you must feel. But keep your nerve. I didn't know about this myself."
Van glanced outside as he went into the office with Captain Harvey. Through an open window, he saw the queer hermit, Old Proverb, collecting tourists around him.
Old Proverb was reciting homely quotations.
"And those who would listen to the talking echoes can come with me to the caves," Van heard old Proverb say. "The voice speaks alone at times."
The gaunt, skin-clad figure shuffled away. A dozen or more gullible tourists followed him up toward Green Glacier.
Van would have liked to join that sight-seeing crowd, to hear Old Proverb's echo in the caves. He imagined this might be closely associated with the weird Echo Voice that had commanded Black Wolf and his mob.
But his identity of Cyrus Starke must be followed through now. For Van was convinced the real answer to all of the wide-spread tragedies of the mountains could only be found back in Seattle. The return of Cyrus Starke to his bank in the city might have startling results.
And the Phantom had yet to hear the news that Captain Harvey was prepared to tell him.
CAPTAIN HARVEY was a kindly, if bluff man. He was a good policeman. Also, he was at his wits' end in the maze of tragic events now spreading across the Olympic Peninsula.
He was assisting Van with gentle hands. Plainly the captain was at a loss how to break bad news to Cyrus Starke. He delayed, fussing about with a stiff drink and attention to the apparently sick man.
Van then had his reason for bringing Captain Harvey more quickly to the point, without the reserve he would have had with the real Cyrus Starke. So Van acted.
"See this, Captain Harvey?" he said, in a calm, low voice that would not carry outside the locked office door. "Now let's have your news. All of it."
Captain Harvey's eyes widened and he swallowed hard. A relieved oath came from his lips. He was looking at a diamond-studded domino badge of bright platinum.
"The Phantom!" he exclaimed. "Great snakes, man! And I've been waiting to ask you about that rope around you! It's been cut! I never suspected—"
"Yes, I'm the Phantom," cut in Van. "Pass all that. Cyrus Starke is dead. His body is in Mantha Strong's cabin. Only Mantha and you know the truth. I'm telling you, because within five minutes you're driving away in a hurry with me. You're taking me to Crescent Lake to my own plane. I'm going to Seattle faster than a car can take me."
Captain Harvey nodded, rubbing sweat from his forehead.
"Well, that's okay," he said. "But about Lela Starke. She has been abducted, along with Tom Randall, and another young fellow, a red-headed guy that was following a car in which Mr. Trulow was bringing Tom Randall and Lela Starke to Roaring River. Mr. Trulow got here a little while ago. He was bruised up by a mob on horses. Ralph Larch, of the Starke bank, was with them, and he also disappeared, but Mr. Trulow said he saw Larch getting away after their car was wrecked and the others were taken into the hills as prisoners."
"Steve Huston was the red-headed fellow," said Van. "He's a reporter who was helping me. What has been done about the kidnapping?"
Captain Harvey scratched his head. He scowled heavily.
"It would require a regiment of woodsmen to get back into those mountains and find anyone," he said. "We have only a few policemen who know the woods. I've phoned the sheriff at Port Angeles, and sent word to the governor at Olympia. But it will be some time before an organized hunt can get going. The draft has taken the state militia away, and we'll have to depend upon citizens' passes. Only woodsmen will be of any service."
Van asked a sudden question. "Where is the place known as the icicle cliff? I believe Black Wolf and part of his mob are headed there."
Captain Harvey shook his head. "Never heard of it," he said dubiously. "And I've been around here a long time. Icicle cliff? Huh, Phantom! Back of the glaciers are scores of places that might be called that. There are many cliffs where snow melts under the sun, and freezes into icicles on the rock walls when night comes, even in the summer."
VAN saw instantly how little the name "icicle cliff" could mean. "And Trulow?" he asked. "Where is he now?"
"He arrived about an hour ago," said Captain Harvey. "He phoned back to Seattle and talked to the governor at Olympia. Then he said he would be gone awhile, trying to stir up some of the old-timers. He asked Seattle police to look out for Ralph Larch, if he got back to the city. He said Larch ran away as if he was afraid to stay around the car wreck. Can't blame him, I guess."
"Put in a call to Seattle," Van said quickly. "See if you can call off the police there, on my word. Tell them Cyrus Starke is alive, and coming home. I don't want Larch interfered with just now."
While Captain Harvey was phoning Seattle, Van was thinking of pretty Lela Starke, and her loyalty to her father. Of Tom Randall, trying to get back to his logging camp. And of Steve Huston, trapped with them on the highway.
"If Steve is all right, he'll be hard for the kidnappers to handle," he said softly. "And somehow I have an idea that the quickest way to discover the whereabouts of Lela Starke and the others may be through Ralph Larch." He had Captain Harvey put in a call to Frank Havens.
Talking quickly with Havens, the Phantom learned that Steve Huston had followed Larch after hearing him make contact with someone known only as the Echo Voice. Havens could tell him no more than that, but after a few minutes wait, Havens called back.
"I have checked, Phantom," he said. "Ralph Larch is back at the state bank. A furore has been created here. Word has come of the finding of Cyrus Starke alive. Do you know of that? And Steve said something about Larch wanting to destroy some notes in Starke's private files."
Captain Harvey heard the Phantom employ a jumbled code of speech. When Van turned from the phone, he said:
"Frank Havens now knows the truth. Are we ready to go?"
As he spoke he was glancing into the bathroom off Thurman Trulow's private office. He walked into the small bathroom and looked at several small articles on a medicine cabinet shelf, then at a soiled towel on a rack.
"That's where Mr. Trulow washed a cut on his head when he came in," informed Captain Harvey. "He got quite a lick, that knocked him out. He said that the red-headed fellow—Steve Huston you said he was—shot and killed one of the horseback kidnappers."
"Steve would," commented Van dryly. "All right, Captain. You are taking Cyrus Starke down the highway now."
What he had filed away in his memory concerning Thurman Trulow's bathroom had little to do with the soiled towel, but the policeman who was with him could have no idea of that.
Captain Harvey kept the crowd back. Van caught Mantha Strong's bright little eyes. The fat rolls of her face crinkled a little. She deliberately winked.
The Phantom decided that Mantha was having the time of her back-woods life, knowing him to be the Phantom, when others were sure he was the dead Cyrus Starke...
Short of half an hour, the Phantom climbed from Captain Harvey's car and walked over to his low-winged monoplane where Chip Dorlan stared at him belligerently, but he grinned broadly when Van made himself known.
Two minutes later his motor roared to life.
The state bank in Seattle would close at three o'clock. It was now nearly one o'clock, and the Phantom intended that Cyrus Starke should make his appearance well before closing time.
The monoplane winged up over the mountains and crossed Green Glacier high up.
POLICE guards had been placed about the Peninsula State Bank. It was within a few minutes of three o'clock. Only a limited business was being conducted, due to the tragedies among the officials. Two friendly policemen escorted the Phantom from a taxicab into the bank lobby and into the private office. He was the weak and whispering Cyrus Starke now. The policemen helped to fend off a rush of congratulations for which Van was more grateful than they imagined.
Several men and a pretty stenographer were in Starke's private office. One man introduced himself quickly as a special bank examiner.
"Seeing you have had the remarkable luck to come back to life, Mr. Starke, I'll defer my investigation," said this man who had called himself Rucker.
The Phantom sank limply into a big chair at the desk. He waved one hand, scarcely looking up.
"I don't want to talk to any of you boys now," he whispered, realizing these were Starke's directors." Tomorrow perhaps, but I want to be alone for awhile."
Their voices were hushed as they went out. They imagined Cyrus Starke wanted to be alone with his grief over his missing daughter. The stenographer was alert, but there were tears in her eyes.
"Is there anything I can do, Mr. Starke?" she asked.
Van glanced at the dictaphone machine and shook his head.
"Not today," he said. "You may go home now. I have some matters to take up by telephone."
Alone in the office, he could see the cashier's window when the door opened. He saw the broad face of Ralph Larch. It was as white as death, except for a bruised line along the forehead below a taped bandage. He saw that Larch's dark eyes never left the door of Starke's office as long as it stayed open.
As soon as the stenographer had gone, Larch came in from a side door. The man was swallowing repeatedly, and apparently trying to find suitable words for something he wished to say. The Phantom had an idea it might concern the cut rope that had caused Cyrus Starke's death. For his own reasons, Van did not want to go into that now.
"Later, Ralph," he whispered. "What's the latest about Lela? And what do you remember of the kidnapping?"
"I saw some men on horses on the highway, and then the car went off the road," said Larch in a husky tone. "I was knocked out. When I recovered, I must have walked a long way before I became fully conscious. Then a car picked me up, and I came straight here... I want to get away soon, sir, to join those hunting for Lela."
"No," whispered Van. "You can do nothing now. Stay on the job here. The police are doing all they can. If there is a ransom demand, I may want you to deliver the money."
A policeman stuck his head in the office door. Van was certain that Ralph Larch shivered and actually flinched as the policeman spoke.
"Would you want to talk with anyone, Mr. Starke?" said the policeman.
"No one," whispered Van. "Please permit no one to come in."
"I'll put away the cash and lock up for the day, sir," said Larch.
VAN merely nodded. He could almost see the fear sweating from Larch's wide, oily face. He had never seen more abject terror in any man. The Phantom glanced about. He had seen that another room adjoining the office contained a couch. Also, he had seen some boxes of dictaphone records piled back there.
"I'm lying down for half an hour, Ralph," he said. "I need a short sleep. I don't want to be disturbed."
He went into the back room and closed the door only part way. He lay down on the couch and apparently closed his eyes. Larch hesitated a moment in the outer office, then he went out as if there was something he had intended to do but had lost his nerve to try.
Two minutes later Van had an old dictaphone record that carried Starke's voice. He went in, put it on the machine and listened to it for only a few seconds.
When he was back on the couch, the Phantom felt better. He could recover from his whispering cold at any time now and talk for Cyrus Starke. Few character imitators had ever acquired his expert mimicry of voices.
Van lay still, breathing regularly, apparently asleep. He heard customers leaving the bank and the outer doors being closed. Bank employees were busy inside their cages and the outer office.
Suddenly Van was tense. Ralph Larch opened his office door quietly and peered in. Larch straightened and came in quickly when he saw that Van was still on the couch.
The cashier came to the inside door and touched it as though to bring it shut. The Phantom remained motionless. Larch turned away, leaving the door as it was. He seemed now to be in great haste.
Van saw Larch take a paper from under his coat. The cashier opened the top drawer of a file, inserted the paper, and closed it. Then he tiptoed softly from the office.
Van snapped to his feet. A moment later he had the paper Larch had placed in the file. He examined it quickly and returned it to place. But as he did, a great light had come to the Phantom. Still it by no means solved the problem of the many murders.
The paper Larch had replaced in the file was a joint note in favor of Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman, personally, whereby Tom Randall, Bill Summers and John Hart agreed to pay Starke and Cushman the sum of $300,000, with interest, at the end of six months.
A preliminary clause in the note was interesting. It read:
The party of the first part (Starke and Cushman) agree to pay a loan of $300,000 to the party of the second part (Randall, Summers and Hart) in monthly installments of $50,000 each, to meet payroll and other expenses in the Randall-Summers-Hart logging camp at Roaring River. It is understood that payment of this note shall be from the first returns on the logging off of the timber area known as the Belt Line Timber, after taxes and other operating expenses are deducted.
"After taxes are deducted?" mused Van. "That's it. Tom Randall and his partners own that land. They have owed heavy taxes perhaps. The new defense demands have suddenly increased the value of their timber. So they had to have cash help to get out their logs and make good the taxes, expenses and profit, if any. And all of the terrorism up there has been intended to stop the work."
GOING through the file, the Phantom came upon a contract. The name of Harry Lant hit him first. This paper he thrust into his pocket.
"Mantha Strong may be right or she may be mistaken," he muttered. "Anyway, it would appear that Harry Lant would benefit most if the logging operation is brought to an end. Also Starke and Cushman are not too honest in this deal."
At that moment there was somewhat of a commotion in the front office of the bank. Van stepped from his office. He saw Thurman Trulow coming into the bank through a side door. Several men whom Van had an idea must be friends of Starke were with Trulow.
Trulow's head was bandaged. Van fell back upon his weak whispering voice to avoid conversation and to escape having to try to identify Starke's friends.
"I'm sorry I missed you, Starke," exclaimed Trulow. "I have done everything I could about Lela. I have a dozen posses in the woods searching for her. When I heard the great news about you, I grabbed a plane at Port Angeles and flew right down."
Van nodded and whispered his thanks.
"I am going home in a short time," he said. "I have some things to clean up here."
"Call me at home for the next hour, Starke, if you want me," Trulow said. "Then I'm going back to Roaring River camp. All this has disrupted my business. But if Lela is found okay, nothing else matters."
Van nodded and Trulow left. The other men clustered in a group, talking, and Van only nodded, holding his throat. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ralph Larch go into his private office.
The bank switchboard was back in a corner outside. Van noticed the girl making a quick connection on the board. He excused himself from the other men and went back to the board.
Van was taking a long chance now. He had decided that Larch was in a tight spot, that he had to make a call to the outside, and that he feared to leave the bank and attract attention to himself. Therefore Larch was seizing an opportunity to make an outside call from Starke's office.
"Cut me in on my office line quietly," Van whispered to the girl. "Give me your head set."
The girl's eyes widened as she saw the man she believed to be the bank's president listening in on the call from his own office. Van caught the middle of a sentence in a strange voice.
"—and Larch, drive the car to the open beach near Alki Point. Be sure you have Starke with you. Tell him his daughter's abductors wish to make contact to fix a ransom. Be sure he falls for that. Understand?"
"Yes—yes—" Larch's voice was weak, hurried. He went on: "I had to call fast, and he may come back any minute. An hour after dark, then. I'm sure he'll come with me. The other is fixed okay for the time. That's all."
Van was away from the switchboard, examining some papers in a basket when Larch came from his office. He did not appear to notice the cashier, but Larch came directly to him.
LARCH held a little paper slip. He handed it to Van. It contained a telephone number and read:
Call at once if you want to know about Lela Starke.
The number and words had been typed.
"Someone slipped this into my window, then disappeared before I could see him," Larch informed. "I've just made the call, sir. It's about ransom for Lela."
Van thought this was the first clever thing he had seen Larch do. He did not believe Larch had been handed that number and the message. He was convinced Larch had called a number where he could talk with the man known so far only as the Echo Voice.
"We'll have the girl find the number," Van said.
"Yes, sir," agreed Larch. "That might help."
His willingness was unexpected. But shortly Van realized why Larch had no objections to the check. The number was that of a public phone in a drug store less than a block from the bank.
Larch's story about the slip of paper might have been true, but Larch's conversation over the phone contradicted that. For the cashier had mentioned "fixing something okay." Van was sure that Larch had typed the message himself.
However, Van pretended to swallow the whole story.
"I'll be ready in a short time," he told Larch.
If Ralph Larch had suspected how ready "Mr. Starke" would be, he probably would have altered his plan.
Van put in a call for Frank Havens. Chip Dorlan had joined Havens at the office of the Northwest Clarion. Van's conversation was in a mixed code.
Specifically, he gave instructions for Chip Dorlan. These related to an order to take the Phantom's plane back to Crescent Lake. Then Chip was to go to Green Glacier.
"Tell Chip to make contact with the hermit, Old Proverb, and stick by him," Van told Frank Havens. "He is to find out all there is to know about Old Proverb's echoes in the caves where he takes the tourists. Tell Chip to be careful, very careful of the yellow fang teeth of Old Proverb."
Van smiled to himself. He hoped Chip would understand that he was to observe the hermit's teeth closely. It was one of the oddest orders Chip had ever been given. Van had good reason for this, one that he hoped might bring astonishing results.
FROM Cyrus Starke's papers, the Phantom learned the banker had been a member of the Puget Sound Club. With that information he came from the bank a few minutes after talking with Ralph Larch.
"I'm going over to the Puget Sound Club for a bath," he told the cashier. "Pick me up there when you are ready to keep that appointment."
Leaving the bank, he again made quick contact with Frank Havens. Nothing new had developed however. Searchers had come upon no trace of Lela Starke and the other abducted prisoners.
"Thurman Trulow was in to see me," said Havens. "He has arranged for a dozen planes to start a search over the Olympic Mountains tomorrow morning, offering to pay for it himself, if necessary."
"I have an idea, Frank, that tomorrow morning will be too late," the Phantom said grimly. "I fear that Lela Starke, Tom Randall and Steve are in the gravest danger. I may reach them tonight, but I must play this hand alone. In the meantime, have Chip Dorlan follow my instruction on his return to Roaring River tourist camp. Tell him to get in touch with Mantha Strong, and have her help him make the investigation of Old Proverb, the hermit, and his caves on the Green Glacier. She knows her way around."
The Phantom did freshen up and have dinner at the Puget Sound Club. His voice, as Cyrus Starke, was partly recovered, but he excused himself from conversation with anyone who would know too much about Starke.
It was growing dark when Ralph Larch appeared in a small coupé. As the Phantom joined him, Larch's white hands were nervous on the steering wheel. His fingers clenched and unclenched as he drove.
Van was trying to give Larch the benefit of every doubt. He had it in mind that the young man might be acting under a compulsion from which he would like to escape. Well, he would give him every chance.
"Is there something you're holding back, Ralph?" he asked, as Lela's father might have phrased it. "Is it about Lela? Something you know and don't want to tell me?"
"No, sir," said Larch. "No, nothing. I wish I knew more. I'm scared. Have you brought money with you? I mean much money? These kidnappers might knock us in the head, and Lela would not be freed, you know."
"I thought of that, Ralph," said Van. "I haven't brought money. They must make some arrangement and have proof they are representing the fiends who took Lela away."
"Oh, they do—"
Larch checked himself. He was too late. The car was moving along a deserted road leading down to Alki Beach on the channel between Seattle and Tacoma. Lights here were infrequent.
Disgust filled the Phantom. Scared, or acting as a tool for someone against his will, Larch was thinking more of himself than he was of Lela Starke, who had been his fiancé.
"That will be all, Larch!" snapped the Phantom.
He was no longer whispering, no longer imitating the voice of Cyrus Starke. He was himself, the Phantom, and there was cold anger in his tone.
"What—what?" gasped Larch, his white face turning toward the Phantom.
"Pull over under those trees, away off the road, and park!"
LARCH seemed about to collapse. Van's hard fingers gripped his shoulder.
The Phantom disliked Larch's type of cowardice intensely. He was broad enough to respect any man who might be only physically or nervously afraid. He had known many brave men who had been forced to conquer such fear. Van also respected a cautious man. But he had only contempt for a crook, a betrayer of his friends who was a coward at heart. A man who thought first of his own physical safety.
It put an extra snap into the short punch that traveled to Larch's jaw. The cashier's head sagged. He went to sleep without a sound. Van pressed a nerve center at the base of Larch's jaw, and the slumber was made good for many minutes.
Van's make-up case came from under his clothes. Thereafter, for considerable time, he was performing one of the most remarkable transformations of his notable career.
Truly the man of a thousand faces, the Phantom never had undertaken a more delicate or exacting task. For he was changing identities with Ralph Larch.
Rather, he was making Ralph Larch over to resemble the dead Cyrus Starke, and he himself was taking Larch's identity. It required the highest essence of skill for Van to convert Larch's broad face into a good semblance of Cyrus Starke's leaner features.
"It is well I have the darkness to cover the imperfections of his body size," murmured the Phantom, slipping gray eye-shells over Larch's dark orbs, then adding the right touch of gray to Larch's hair.
Van worked with only his make-up mirror, and Larch's face as a model. His own face was quickly broadened. He needed no eye-shells for his own dark brown eyes.
When he had finished, he looked at Larch, surveyed himself in the mirror, then slapped Larch's cheek sharply.
As Larch was slowly recovering, awakening, Van looked to his weapons. He made sure the small automatic was so concealed in his left sleeve as to miss detection. His heavier gun was slipped conveniently under his waistband. He had two smoke gas bombs concealed in his clothes.
They might be useful.
For the Phantom knew he was taking a straight gamble with death. He had no apprehension concerning Larch. Any man could control the yellow-spined cashier, the traitor to his friends and the girl he had planned to marry, perhaps for her fortune.
But should there be a slip, such as the discovery at Roaring River that Cyrus Starke really was dead, Van knew his own life would be worth much less than a thin dime.
Ralph Larch awakened. The little light of Van's make-up case played into the cashier's eyes. Larch was seeing himself in the small mirror. Or rather he was seeing the face of Cyrus Starke, the man whom Larch was planning to throw to the mobsters of Black Wolf's pack at the order of the mysterious Echo Voice.
Larch made a choking sound in his throat. Then his tongue seemed to stop altogether. The light swung to Van's face. And Ralph Larch was looking at a perfect image of himself.
VAN thought the cowardly Larch would pass out again from sheer fright. He slapped the cashier's cheek roughly again. And he permitted his small automatic to slip into his hand, pressing it into Larch's throat.
"You are now Cyrus Starke," he stated. "I am Ralph Larch. You will keep it that way when we meet the minions of the Echo Voice. You will act and speak as Cyrus Starke might speak. You will refuse any and all demands that may be made, and request that you be taken to Lela Starke, or I'll do it for you."
Larch's made-up skin was drained of blood. He made an effort to speak, but it was only a hoarse croak.
"Who—are—you?"
"The Phantom," said Van quietly. "And I know pretty much all you've been trying to do. Enough that I won't hesitate a second to shoot you down if you make a mistake or try to tip off the wolves you've been playing with."
"I haven't—I don't know them—I know only—only—"
"The Echo Voice!" snapped Van. "Who is he?"
"I don't know! I don't! I have only been in contact with him by phone, and he always leaves the number where I call, and he has a new number the next time."
From the way Larch blurted out the information, Van decided it must be true.
"But you have been working with him," Van said grimly. "Why?"
"He found out that I was in trouble, and—"
"That you were playing a crooked game at the bank," supplied Van. "All right, I believe you. Now I'll take the wheel. I am bringing you as Cyrus Starke, to keep that appointment with the wolves on Alki Beach. I will do all the talking, both as Ralph Larch and Cyrus Starke. When I speak as Starke, you move your lips and pretend to be speaking. If there is any slip at any time, you will not live to see the outcome."
Larch was a quivering mass of jellied body and spirit.
"I'll do anything you say, Phantom," he quavered. "I'll act like Cyrus Starke, and I'll even try to talk like him."
"I'll do all the talking," declared Van. "All you do is take the cues, and the words will seem to come from your lips, as Cyrus Starke speaking."
Larch's fear again sickened Van, but it would make possible an amazing deception.
He stopped the car long enough to whip Larch's arms behind him and secure them firmly with tape.
"Now they will see that I had to bring Cyrus Starke to them by force," he said. "That will also prevent any possible use of your hands to prove you're not Cyrus Starke. Also it probably will leave me free to act at any time, although I am sure that you are despised by the wolves you have been helping, and I would rather play almost any other role than imitating your kind of a rat."
Alki Beach was a long strip of sand bordering Puget Sound. It lay along the channel that connected Tacoma and Seattle, thirty miles apart.
When Van saw two other closed cars parked in the darkness without lights, he pulled up behind them. Then it seemed that the shadows sprouted bearded men. Flashlights played into the car.
Van evinced no surprise at seeing the furry-haired face and the glittering eyes of Black Wolf himself. Black Wolf shot a light into Larch's face, and grunted with satisfaction as he saw the man he believed to be Cyrus Starke.
THE light made a circle around Van's face. There was contempt in Black Wolf's growling voice as he spoke, and Van knew that was for the Ralph Larch he believed Van to be.
"Well, you brought him, I see," said Black Wolf. "You said he would come willingly. What happened?"
Van prodded Larch. Larch's lips moved soundlessly. The voice of the dead Cyrus Starke seemed to issue from Larch's mouth. The Phantom was doing the talking, and Larch was no more than a dummy for his words.
"Yes, I'll kill Larch for this!" was what the Phantom was saying, ventriloquially. "I haven't been fooled much! And I'm not paying out ransom money for my daughter, not until I am sure she is all right and will be returned that way!"
The way the real Larch's mouth was working, he might have been uttering the words.
"Ho!" said Black Wolf. "You'll see your fine daughter, Starke! We ain't caring anything about ransom money! You'll do other things, though, that the Echo Voice happens to want! You let this Larch beat you, so you ain't got much nerve! When the Echo Voice speaks, you will obey!"
"But my daughter? Where is she? Take me to her! Larch isn't man enough to have brought me here, if I hadn't decided to give up when he attacked me! I want to see my daughter!"
All the time, Van's arm was pressed into the real Larch's side. There was the hard shape of the weapon concealed there. He could feel the shivering of Larch's body.
"Okay, Starke! The order was to take you to your daughter and the Echo Voice! You got sense, anyway, so we'll start! I'm riding with you, and if there is a wrong move, Larch, I have always wanted to hear your neck crack!"
One closed car moved ahead of Van's car, and one behind it. He could hear the rasping of Larch's throat as Black Wolf's foul breath blew upon his neck. Van was getting the break he had expected and wanted, from the moment he had heard Larch's phoned conversation with the Echo Voice. He wondered if Black Wolf himself knew the real identity of that voice, from which he and his mobsters took their orders?
The three cars slid away into the night. Because Larch was bound, as the captive Cyrus Starke, Black Wolf avoided the Bremerton ferry and another boat at Alki Point that would have crossed to Olympic Peninsula. The cars went around the shore, through Tacoma, took the road to Olympia, and then reached the peninsula through the lumber town of Shelton. The other cars hit high speed and Van drove with them.
Then, two hours later, above the town of Quilcene, a dozen horses were waiting. Still acting as Larch, Van stayed beside the real Larch as Black Wolf had the bound Larch mounted.
DIM light from a scabrous moon filtered down among the trees. The white water of Roaring River tumbled and thundered some two hundred feet below a wide bench of the mountain.
It was after midnight now. In spite of the contempt Black Wolf and his bearded timber mobsters had for Ralph Larch the Phantom was permitted his freedom as he played the role of the cashier he himself detested.
Larch, as Cyrus Starke, was seated beside a blazing wood fire. Van stayed close to him, apparently determined to see that "Cyrus Starke" acceded to the demands of Black Wolf, or of the Echo Voice.
Now Van knew what had been meant by an "icicle cliff." Above the bench on which the mobsters had built their fire, a sloping rocky wall arose. Water came down this wall in thin sheets, and the night chill was freezing the water as it fell.
The firelight revealed a beautiful white formation that looked like graceful figures of carved artistry. The chill, frosty wind of night formed great icicles that hung in heavy clusters.
Van saw the tightly bound figures of Tom Randall and of Steve Huston. They lay on the ground at a little distance from the fire. When they had been brought there, Lela Starke had not been seen.
Black Wolf gave the Phantom a break. He came over and grunted a threatening order.
"Larch, you stick right close to Starke! Maybe you've got some nerve, or you wouldn't have tied him up! The Echo Voice may ease up on you because you've obeyed his orders! But don't let your own feelings for that Starke girl cause you to make any mistakes!"
Close to "Starke" was where Van wished to remain for the moment, where he could see that Ralph Larch did not make a mistake, especially the mistake of trying to inform Black Wolf and his men of the weird role the Phantom was compelling him to play.
Over at the side, Tom Randall's angry voice rang out.
"You devil, Larch! If I ever get out of here, I'll kill you, if it's the last thing I do! Starke, don't do anything you're ordered to do! I'm glad to see you alive! Everyone believed you were gone for good!"
Van again made the voice of Starke come from the bound Larch's mouth.
"Randall, is Lela all right? I'll do anything to have her safe!"
"She's all right! But don't—" Black Wolf walked over and ended Randall's speech with a driving kick in the ribs. Van restrained an impulse to shoot Black Wolf down, principally because he had to know more about the anonymous Echo Voice before he acted.
The Phantom realized that he was pitted against a mob of ruthless killers of whose numbers he was unaware. Randall and Steve Huston were helpless. For the moment, he had no means of informing Huston of his own identity, and knew that he was compelled to count upon his own weapons and his wit to meet whatever was to come. Because he was believed to be Ralph Larch, he had escaped being searched, and was not impeded in any way.
HE studied the bench on which they had arrived. He saw that there was an icy slope of perhaps two hundred feet that ended in the river below. Plainly it was used as a Skidroad to send huge logs into the river.
Van noted a number of cut logs ready to be skidded to the boiling white water. He also took in a small sled like platform of planks attached to a cable and a drum with an open steel hook. The platform sled of course, would be put to use sliding logs down to the river, or to break a jam.
Again the Phantom's eyes went to the sheets of water freezing upon the wall. What was it that had been said about Lela Starke becoming a "human icicle?"
Looking at the clustering ice points now being frozen, the Phantom felt his own blood chill. He knew now what a "human icicle" might be, and how the mysterious Echo Voice might expect to bend the resurrected Cyrus Starke to his will.
Van kept an eye cornered upon Ralph Larch. He was gratified to see that Larch's own personal cowardice fitted in well with what might have been the concern of the dead Cyrus Starke for his daughter's safety. When he had sized up the whole situation, an accurate plan had been evolved in Van's amazing brain, a daring gamble against death. He realized he stood but one chance in ten to win, but he knew, too, that these ruthless mobsters probably had not the slightest intention of permitting any of their prisoners to leave this place alive.
It was an eerie setting for death, as the pale, scabrous moon added its faint light to the flickering blood-red of the blazing fire.
Into this scene the Echo Voice came, rising above the thunder of the river below. It had the same haunting tone which Van had heard on Green Glacier earlier in the day.
"Black Wolf bring the girl—the girl—girl!"
The final words seemed to be caught up and tossed about the great trunks of the trees.
It was impossible to detect the spot from which the Echo Voice came. It seemed to be everywhere. Van saw Ralph Larch flinch at the weird sound. The Echo Voice spoke again.
"We waste no time—no time! Cyrus Starke, you will agree to my demands—demands! You will withdraw all support from Tom Randall and his partners—partners! You will cease your association with Harry Lant in the dam—the dam! Will you do that, Cyrus Starke—rus Starke?"
Black Wolf and the mobsters were standing, their attention fixed upon the trees. They did not themselves seem to know from where the Echo Voice was coming.
Van saw Black Wolf turn toward the bound Ralph Larch. It was well that the firelight made shadows that played over Larch's face, for he might or might not have been moving his lips. In truth, Van could see Larch's lips writhing with the soul-destroying fear that was undoubtedly riding him. And apparently from Larch's lips came the defiant reply to the Echo Voice.
"I'll never yield to any demands made this way! I know you'll kill us, anyway! You wouldn't dare permit us to go free now! No! If I could live, I would keep my agreements!"
THERE was movement, another quick order from the Echo Voice. Ralph Larch really attempted to come to his feet then, and Van played his role to the letter. He thrust Larch back to the ground roughly.
It was the queerest game the Phantom ever had played. He was enacting a role that he hated, that of the despised Larch. And Larch, against his will, was appearing and speaking for the dead Cyrus Starke. Only the trained powers and the cleverness of the Phantom could have produced such a fantastic situation.
Now the Echo Voice rang out in mocking laughter. It was a spine-chilling note of venomous, blood-curdling implication. It came when the lovely, white-faced Lela Starke was brought from the darkness.
To the Phantom there was more than just a general idea of intended torture to gain a material purpose. Then and there Van was convinced that the originator of the Echo Voice had a deeper, a more sinister personal reason for this treatment of Lela Starke and her father.
It came to Van that whoever was behind the Echo Voice now was performing an act of vengeance. In human relations, it could mean but one thing—that the ruthless master of murder who spoke in that echoed voice had been, or still was in love with Lela Starke. Perhaps he had been rejected by the girl in favor of Ralph Larch, the cashier.
"He would have to be a pretty low worm," Van told himself, "if he could not compete with a man like Larch. But no man could ever understand a woman's ideas."
Lela Starke's arms were bound, but her feet were free. Black Wolf himself walked her to the sloping wall of the forming icicles, until the spray from the thin sheets of water blew over her.
Lela's dress had been torn, and her slim young form stood out against the carved, white ice of the sloping wall. Van saw her shrink as the water struck her.
"Father!" Lela cried. "You're alive! I didn't believe it when I heard your name! Father! Whatever they do to me, don't yield to them! They mean for all of us to die! I heard—"
Black Wolf's brutal hand slapped across the girl's red lips, crushing them. Van half started to his feet, but sank back as the Echo Voice rang out derisively.
"When your daughter is slowly becoming an icicle, Cyrus Starke, you will think better of your refusal. Will you give up your help for Tom Randall, and the power dam plan—"
The words trailed off, but the Phantom noted that the echo effect had lessened. Evidently the master of murder was hurrying now.
Van wanted greatly to stop the torture of Lela Starke, but for the moment he had to gain time. So again he made it seem that Ralph Larch cried out in Starke's voice.
"No! You can't do that! I couldn't end the contracts if I wanted to!"
Van was moving now, as the real Ralph Larch might have done. Eyes fixed upon Lela, hearing the Echo Voice give a final command, none of the mobsters appeared to notice Van crossing around the fire to where Steve Huston lay bound.
AND, even as Lela Starke was thrust back into the thin sheets of flowing water, and her clothing and body began to frost over, Van had bent beside Steve. His hand moved with incredible speed, unnoticed, except perhaps by the staring Ralph Larch.
All the time, Van's gaze was fixed upon Larch. His watchfulness was significant.
The cringing Larch doubtless believed he would die if he attempted to make an outcry.
So it was that, as Lela Starke moaned, and the mobsters became silent, Van had left Steve Huston. Steve was free. A whisper had told the amazed Huston that the Phantom had cut him loose, but not to move yet.
However he had left a little knife in Huston's hand, and Huston was close to Tom Randall. Then Van was moving calmly toward Black Wolf and the freezing girl.
"What is it, Larch?" demanded Black Wolf menacingly. "Go back! Stay out of this!"
"If I talk to her, she will make her father change his mind," Van said, still advancing. "I don't want to see her die. We were to be married."
"A lot you cared about that!" roared Black Wolf. "Now get back!"
"Go back, Ralph—go back!"
Lela Starke uttered a pleading, choking cry. Thin ice was forming all over her body. Her voice was thinned with suffering. But even then, in spite of all her disagreement with Larch, and her breaking of her engagement, she was trying to save him. Van had seldom encountered a girl whose loyalty and devotion to others was greater than her own fear, her own desire to live. Yes, greater than her suffering now, as she was being slowly turned into a beautiful, frozen statue.
Nor had Van ever before been up against greater odds. His plan was mapped out, but there was one drawback that might prove to be fatal.
The Echo Voice was invisible. And the Phantom knew that somewhere in the darkness of the trees was the most ruthless killer of all—the man whose voice echoed over cliffs and waterfalls.
But Black Wolf was at hand, and through him only was there a slim chance of rescuing the girl from a slow, horrible death. In his role of Ralph Larch, the Phantom had to cope with Black Wolf, and had to act now, to strike, or he never would have another chance.
He sprang forward, his heavy automatic whipping into his hand. At the hoarse cry of the amazed mobsters, he jammed the gun hard into the body of the surprised Black Wolf.
"Ralph!" Lela Starke screamed. "You'll be killed!"
WEIRDLY, eerily, the Echo Voice rang out. But it had lost most of its haunting sound. There was now but human anger, hatred in its tone.
"Larch, you fool! What do you mean! I don't want you killed, but you will be!"
Van disregarded it. His words grated upon Black Wolf's ears.
"You'll die with a split spine, Black Wolf, if you make one bad move! I am the Phantom! Order your killers back, or I'll let you have it and take my chances!"
As in all killers, there was the fear of death in the huge body of Black Wolf. His voice roared out.
"Wait! Echo Voice! He is—"
Van stopped that with a slap of his gun across Black Wolf's ear, staggering him.
"Order your men back, Black Wolf, I said!"
Black Wolf's face turned toward the trees, as if he expected the Echo Voice to intervene, and yet feared it. His order came out then.
But the Echo Voice countered the command.
"Seize them! Look out! The others!"
Some mobster had been too intent upon Van and Black Wolf, and the freezing girl to be watching Steve Huston. That nervy, red-headed reporter had sprung into action.
A mobster went down under the impact of Huston's hard fist. Huston jumped and rolled with the man, jerking a gun free. He came to his feet, shooting, running toward the Phantom and Black Wolf.
There was a dizzy ten seconds of bedlam, in which the slow-thinking mobsters seemed unable to select their targets. And it was then that Van's gun cracked hard upon the back of Black Wolf's skull.
As Black Wolf fell, a small, round object from Van's pocket flipped across the open space, striking in the midst of the wood fire. There was an instant mushy, smoky explosion.
"Stop them, you fools! Stop them!"
The Echo Voice had forgotten all about echoing now. It was plainly just the voice of a surprised man, trying to keep his real identity under cover, a man who apparently had no means himself of getting into the sudden battle.
As the fire exploded, thick smoke belched out, spreading across the bench. Van's voice rang out.
"Steve! Tom Randall! The River!"
Guns were exploding now on all sides. Mobsters were running, fighting a smoky gas from their eyes and shooting aimlessly. Black Wolf lay inert at Van's feet.
Van swung around, catching Lela Starke up from the ground where she had fallen. The girl was limp, helpless, with the thin ice formed over her clothes and her face.
Van had no time to attempt to restore her. She was a light weight for him as he went directly into the thick smoke. His eyes were closed then, and he was employing that amazing sense of direction that fixed every detail of the mountain bench in his mind.
"Phantom!" Steve Huston called out. "We're over by the skidroad! Tom Randall's here!"
"Wait!" Van's command was succinct.
GUNS roared again. The mobsters were shooting at the sound of Huston's voice. Then, as Van glided past the smoking fire, he heard one agonized death scream.
That cry had animal terror in it. Yet Van knew it to be the voice of Ralph Larch, unquestionably the cowardly cashier, betrayer of his closest friends, of his sweetheart and her father, had stopped one of the wildly aimed mobster bullets.
Van's teeth clicked together grimly. He could find no sympathy in his heart for Ralph Larch. He did not know all, as yet, of what had inspired the fear that had brought the cashier into the clutches of the mysterious Echo Voice, but he could make a close guess at it.
He was sure that Ralph Larch had been playing a game inside his own bank for his personal profit. And that opportunity had been created by Larch through the dealings of Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman with Tom Randall and others...
Black Wolf's skull was hard. Van had knocked him out, but the huge killer's voice rang out now, filled with rage and hate.
"The skidroad! Stop them! The Phantom! He has the girl!" Gas-blinded mobsters howled and their guns started shooting more furiously. Lela Starke cried out in pain in Van's arms. Van knew, bitterly, that she had been hit, but he had to go on now. He had reached the spot he had fixed in mind when a figure collided with him, and he blocked a fist with his shoulder.
"Steve! It's the Phantom!"
Huston was gasping, panting, with the smoke in his throat.
"Phantom! What can we do? Randall's here! They'll rush us off the bench!"
Slugs from a dozen guns whined off the hard ground and the rocks near them. Once again Van applied his greatest asset for this moment, his ventriloquial power.
It was the eerie, high-pitched Echo Voice that seemed to issue a command.
"Up this way! They're fleeing into the trees! Head them off! Black Wolf! Over here, out of the smoke!"
The guns turned. The confused, blinded mobsters changed their direction. The real Echo Voice was quick, but it only confused them.
"Fools!" came the real Echo Voice. "It's a trick! The river! They're trying the skidroad!"
Hearing orders and countermanded orders in that same weird tone, the mobsters milled, bumping into each other. For seconds their guns were silenced. Black Wolf was uttering raging oaths.
Van himself could see no more than could the others. But he knew he was beside the platform sled, with its cable drum.
"Onto the platform, Steve!" he commanded tensely. "You all right, Tom Randall?"
"Okay, Phantom," came Randall's reply. "I know what you mean. I can free the drum. It'll be a tough ride, but it's our only chance."
The Phantom was crouched, one hand gripping the planks, and Lela Starke held with his other arm as the platform sled shot over the edge of the icy skidroad. There was a sickening rush of speed.
THE slender steel cable, with its hook checking the platform sled, was running off its drum with screaming speed. No toboggan ever traveled faster down any hill, for the icy skidroad was meant only for the chuting of great logs in to the river.
The sled itself screeched as it fell, rather than glided down toward the white water of Roaring River.
As the sled platform dropped with the speed of a falling elevator, the Phantom found a peg driven into the planks for a hand-hold. He felt warm blood upon Lela Starke's arm where he held her closely to him. Steve and Randall must have found similar hand-holds, for they were flattened on the platform.
It was amazing how the Phantom's mind worked during the four or five seconds of that mad dive down the icy slope. His first swift thought was that there must be depths to the river here to receive the big logs chuted into it.
Then there would be rapids filled with dangerous black rocks. Perhaps their platform would be wrecked upon them, even if it could be freed from the cable hook in time to prevent them all from being dumped into the boiling current.
Thinking of the cable hook that would snap the platform when it hit the water, Van performed what would have been a miracle of strength and timing in any other man. He released one hand-holding peg and caught at another.
It was just as the platform struck the water that he freed his hand again. He gripped the steel hook that was loose in a platform ring. Then came that split second when the abrupt stopping of the raft slackened the cable. Van exerted all of his strength. The cable hook came out of the ring.
The platform surged into the swirling river and Van felt the water close over his head and body.
As the platform came up, Van was swimming alongside, but he was holding Lela Starke's drenched form on the planks.
Up at the top of the skidroad that had brought them so close to death, red slashes cut the night.
Bullets thudded into the platform planks. Then the platform heaved upward and was borne along at almost express speed. Jutting black rocks whirled past. The platform stayed in the current, swinging around the rocks, clipping some with jolts that strained Van's holding arm.
He could barely see Steve Huston and Tom Randall on the other side of the raft, for the pale moon gave little light, and the spray of the thundering river was in Van's eyes. He could only guess where the platform might eventually land.
Now the high walls of the river showed notches. Van raised himself, trying to see ahead over the foaming crests of rock-tossed waves. If only he could pull the platform into a comparatively quiet eddy, there would be some chance of getting Lela Starke ashore.
Huston shouted, waving. That pulled Van's eyes to him. Van was just in time to see Tom Randall lose his hold on the raft.
The forester, undoubtedly weakened by his head injury of the previous night, had been rolled into the remorseless stream.
RED-HEADED Steve Huston tossed up one hand. It was a signal. Huston was of the bulldog breed of reporter. He never let go of a story as long as he had his breath, or of anything else. Now he threw himself away from the hurtling platform. Van uttered a fervent prayer that Huston would have luck. For the dauntless redhead had gone after Tom Randall.
Van could not leave Lela Starke. He had just time to discover that the wound she had received was only a nicked shoulder, but it had bled profusely.
She was still unconscious, but Van believed that was from shock.
Then, a spread of jagged rocks caught the raft squarely. The platform went under deep. Van fought for a foothold, with the girl's helpless weight pulling him under the surface.
YOUNG Chip Dorlan had arrived at the Roaring River tourist camp just before the dinner hour. He had caught a ride by auto over from Crescent Lake where he had landed the Phantom's plane on the hop from Seattle. Chip came into the group of tourist cabins as might any other hitch hiker. He saw a tall man with "MANAGER" on his coat sleeve, and inquired the distance to Port Angeles. The manager gave him a suspicious eye, but up here on the off trail of the Olympic Highway, even a casual hitch hiker had to be fed.
"Go into the main cabin and have your dinner, son," said the manager. "There'll be someone driving down to Port Angeles after that."
When Chip had fortified his stomach, he came out among half a hundred motor tourists. The first thing he heard was a cracked, queer voice that seemed to be reciting.
"Verily, the sword will be beaten into plowshares!"
Chip's blue eyes snapped with interest. This must be Old Proverb, the hermit, whom the Phantom had directed him to watch. He was in luck. He pushed in among men and women gathered about the gaunt, skin-clad figure.
"Now what did the Phantom mean by watching out for the hermit's yellow fang teeth?" Chip thought. "Yes, I see now."
"The pen is mightier than the sword!"
The words of the proverb came from between yellow teeth that looked like a wild boar's tusks, only perhaps not so long. The hermit's mouth was thin-lipped, and the cheeks were sunken above a scanty black beard. Long hair came over the ears, and one black eye gleamed on the small crowd. A black patch was over the other eye.
Chip observed that Old Proverb appeared too skinny and weak to support himself on his thin shanks. He was leaning upon a thick staff, which had a steel point, evidently for helping him across the slippery glacier ice.
Old Proverb went on with his monotonous and meaningless recital. It suddenly seemed to Chip that the hermit's single eye was fixed upon him like the evil orb of some witch. He thought he must only have imagined that, though, for the hermit could not possibly know he was the great Phantom's aide.
Then Chip saw and heard a massive woman. She was the biggest woman Chip had ever seen, and she had the biggest voice. She carried an old-fashioned rifle in the crook of her arm, and her little eyes were so green and hard that Chip was sure she would use the rifle on any pretext.
Chip liked her instantly, and he did not know why. She drowned out the hermit's singsong voice.
"And then, for four bits, the scalawag will be showing where he keeps his private echo," boomed the big woman.
Chip knew murder when it was in someone's eyes, and it was there then in Old Proverb's single orb.
"I will take the ladies and gentlemen here to the cave of the echoes in the Honeycomb Rocks, and it will cost nothing," the hermit said. "Beware of those who would lead you astray."
"Some of these days you'd better do a good job of bewarin', Proverb, or I'll pull out them hog teeth of yours!" snapped the big woman.
CHIP moved over beside her. He spoke in a low tone.
"I'm Chip Dorlan, and I guess you're Mantha Strong," he told her. "The Phantom said to find you, and you would help me reach the hermit's echo in the caves."
The little jade eyes suddenly lost their hardness as Mantha Strong looked at Chip.
"The Phantom?" she said in a deep whisper. "Now there's a man for you. An' he's wantin' me to steer you through on the glacier, son? A'right, Chip, you just call me Mantha. Time was I had a younker your size who called me Ma."
A few women and men were moving to accompany Old Proverb on a sunset trip to his Honeycomb Caves, to hear the echoes. Mantha Strong suddenly spoke up.
"Seein' it ain't costin' nothing. I'll just trail along to see that Old Proverb don't turn into a cannibal," she said cheerfully, and earned a lightning glance of hate from the hermit's single eye. "Come on, son, let's go up and hear the little birdies in the caves."
Chip Dorlan was sure that Old Proverb would have enjoyed using his heavy staff upon Mantha Strong. Perhaps the easy and careless way she carried her old rifle subdued his anger.
There were a dozen of the tourists, roped together by fours, as they started the dangerous climb up Green Glacier toward the black Honeycomb Caves, a mile above the camp.
The ice was rough and broken in spots, and crevasses opened and seemed to move with yawning mouths. Chip had never before seen so much ice in one place.
The party wound along narrow, slippery ledges that were like carved jade.
They followed the route upon which Cyrus Starke had gone to his death. About two hours of daylight remained as the breathless tourists reached the first of the Honeycomb Cave pockets.
Chip kept close to Mantha Strong's side. The caves widened as they passed through half a dozen underground entrances. Evidently the hermit had his own lighting system of smoky torches, which were stuck into the walls.
"The old reprobate ain't alone in here, Chip," Mantha Strong whispered to Chip. "Notice them torches have been there only a few minutes, and he's been down at the camp for more than an hour."
Chip nodded. He had noticed. Because the Phantom had seemed to have some suspicion of the hermit, Chip was on his guard.
Old Proverb halted in the middle of a cave that was larger than any of the others. Chip could see but two sides, the other sides being lost in the shadows.
Stepping dramatically to the middle of the cave, Old Proverb leaned upon his staff. He said, "Now someone, anyone call out."
A woman spoke her own name loudly. Three or four seconds elapsed. Then the tourists were startled by the name being repeated in a hollow voice from far back in the cave.
Chip called out, "San Francisco!" When the name came back after a lapse of seconds Chip knew it was too long for a real echo.
The hermit moved to another spot. The tourists were whispering among themselves in awe. The weird echo was repeated half a dozen times. Chip estimated the time of return was uneven.
Suddenly Chip whispered to Mantha Strong.
"I've got the answer, and it's not an echo," he said.
HE stepped closer to the hermit. Another tourist was calling out. Before the name could come back, Chip seemed to catch his toe. He stumbled, his shoulder hitting the hermit's staff and knocking it to one side.
The name that had been called out did not come back. But Old Proverb appeared to be overcome by furious rage. He turned upon Chip, raising the staff as if to strike him.
"Don't do it, mister!" Chip said. "I wouldn't like it, and you might break the microphone in it!"
Chip bent suddenly to where the steel point of the staff had rested between two rocks. He came up with a socket in which the steel staff had been thrust. This was attached to a pair of wires.
"Your echo's a phony, mister," he said. "Here's where it was connected. Every time you put that staff down, a microphone in it sends the voices back to someone in the cave. That someone created the supposed echo and sent it back over another microphone and a loudspeaker somewhere here in this cave."
Old Proverb hissed with rage now. The staff whirled down upon Chip, who sidestepped with lightning speed. As he ducked the swishing blow, he saw shadows materializing into solid figures at the back of the cave.
One of the women screamed. The tourists started to move. Mantha Strong's rifle whipped up in her hands.
"Get out! Get out—all of you!" Old Proverb was screaming.
His hollow staff broke on the rocky floor. He screamed again, diving at Chip with clawed hands, his yellow fangs bared.
He had all the appearance of a wild beast.
Chip could only defend himself the best he could. His hard fist snapped up, aimed straight at the hermit's mouth. It was a paralyzing short punch that traveled only a few inches. The hermit's lips were split and bleeding.
"Look out, Chip!" Mantha Strong cried.
A thrown axe whizzed past Chip's head and clattered on the rocks. Old Proverb was flat on his back. He was cursing in a wild voice that hissed and lisped.
At that, Mantha Strong's rifle cracked. The man who had thrown the axe screamed and went down cold. The tourists were fleeing pellmell back through the caves.
Even as he heard many feet rushing toward him, Chip scooped up a small object from the floor of the cave. He thrust it inside his shirt where it would not be easily found.
Mantha Strong's rifle was aimed again. Its flame shot out over Chip's back, and another body thudded to the floor of the cave. But a whizzing axe caught Mantha this time. Its keen blade missed her head by half an inch, but its hickory haft cracked down upon the side of her thick neck.
Chip tried to reach her as she staggered and fell. Her little jade eyes were closed, as Chip turned. The air suddenly seemed filled with flying fists.
For his size, Chip put up a rattling good fight. But he was outnumbered half a dozen to one. He could hear the hissing voice of Old Proverb, the hermit.
Then Chip was down, seeing through a red haze. Ropes were whipped around him. Old Proverb's hairy face, with one glittering eye seemed to Chip to be some kind of modern Cyclops, the one-eyed giant he had once read about.
THE hermit wasn't reciting proverbs now. His voice was funny, but it was as deadly as the hissing of a cobra.
"Take them down through to the river!" he ordered. "The damn' fool old woman has meddled for the last time! She'll start on her last ride! Get up there and set off that stuff! By the time the tourists sound an alarm, there won't be any entrance left to the Honeycomb Caves!"
Chip closed his eyes. He knew why Old Proverb's voice was lisping. The fanged yellow teeth were no longer in his mouth. It was only an ugly, toothless opening in his black beard.
"When you are down and outnumbered, if you are still conscious, sometimes it is best to play dead until you get your bearings," had been a bit of advice the Phantom often had given Chip.
Chip feigned unconsciousness now, as he felt himself being lifted by rough hands. He heard a few men cursing. His slitted eyes revealed four of them, having their hands more than full as they carried the mighty figure of Mantha Strong.
Chip realized that they were being carried farther into the caves. A cold draught of air blew through the rocks. It had the feel and smell of water. Chip had a notion that he and Mantha Strong were being taken to some other outlet to the caves.
Then behind them came a dull, rumbling roar.
"That ends that," came Old Proverb's lisping voice. "Get Mantha Strong and this other meddlesome mug down to the raft. I think I know who he is now. He is Chip Dorlan, the Phantom's aide, and he was sent in here for a purpose. This means we have to end everything tonight."
A few minutes later, Chip was lying beside Mantha Strong on rough logs that were lashed together. The big woman turned her head. Old Proverb had disappeared, but his men were tinkering with the raft upon which the prisoners had been placed.
Chip heard one man say, above the roar and gurgle of water underneath the logs:
"When this hits the dam, that will be the end of that. Has the boss sent word to Bill Summers that we are ready, and to have his men in the clear?"
"Sure," said another man. "Summers has been waiting for it. Better give them fuses half an hour. By that time, the raft will be trapped by the log boom Summers has placed across the dam. Harry Lant won't know it's happening until the works has gone up."
"And them two with it," commented the one who had first spoken. "The boss has sure been worried because the Phantom came up here and disappeared."
Mantha Strong was conscious. She was whispering, close to Chip.
"Keep your chin up, son. They ain't never downed Mantha yet. Maybe they won't this time. I thought Harry Lant was the chief killer, but I guess it's Bill Summers. I always thought he was a polecat."
Chip was having a chill in spite of himself.
"You think they mean we're to be blown up with the dam?" he whispered. "Gee, Mantha! If I only knew some way to reach the Phantom! But I haven't any way of knowing where he is."
"Listen, son," said Mantha. "I never met the Phantom but once, but if there's any earthly way for him to be around, he'll find that way. I've been froze up in winter, an' burned out by forest fires, but I'm still kickin'. An' I'm bettin' it'll take more than dynamite to get Mantha Strong out of their hair. Wait and see."
There was not the slightest hint of fear in Mantha's voice. It was well for Chip that he couldn't see her little eyes go shut, and her lips move as if she were saying a prayer.
Not for herself perhaps, but for Chip Dorlan, who was like a younker she once had.
HOWEVER extraordinary the Phantom's skill as a swimmer, it was of but little service against Roaring River. The white water was like some implacable monster. Its waves smashed down upon the Phantom, driving his body into the rocks.
Van's breath was pounded from his lungs because he kept himself as a bulwark between the weight of water and slim, delicate Lela Starke. His feet found but little hold upon mossy stones.
The rifting clouds passed off of the full moon. The light gave Van some advantage when the river did not beat into his face. The plank platform had been whirled away.
Van fought his way, inch by inch, to smooth rocks above the river surface.
He could have clung there for some time, but Lela Starke seemed to be no longer breathing. Her pulse was too faint to be detected.
"If Tom Randall has been knocked out, Steve will never get him out," gritted Van, scanning the tumbling white water. "And if Steve finds him, he'll hang on until he goes under with him."
There was no sign of either Randall or Steve.
Van could have saved himself with ease. He had but to dive through a narrow channel of rushing water between him and the slope of shore above a black eddy. But there was the thread of hope that life still sparked in the girl's chilled body.
Drawing a full breath, bringing up that vast reserve of strength that often had been his margin of safety when death menaced him, Van put one arm about the girl's limp form. He slid off the rocks.
Never had he faced a more grueling battle. The river rolled him over and under. He emerged, driving his free hand and his feet with lashing power. There was some compensation in the swiftness of Roaring River.
The Echo Voice and Black Wolf with his murdering mobsters had been distanced. Perhaps they were convinced that their escaping prisoners were lost.
When Van's lungs were being stabbed with the pain that warns of final exhaustion, he was in the smoother, quiet eddy. He was so numbed by the river's beating that he scarcely noticed the difference until his feet touched solid bottom.
Under a shelf of rocks, Van would have dropped and paused to recover himself had he been alone. But he went to work without resting.
It seemed hopeless at first. Lela Starke's arms were like rags when he began moving them. Her face had the white stillness of death. Van knew that his battle was useless if the girl had taken water into her lungs. But it had been an advantage that she was unconscious and had not struggled. It seemed a long hour to Van that he applied first aid without result. It was only a few minutes.
Then there was a long, sighing moan. The girl's lips trembled. Her chest expanded with an indrawn breath. Van knew he had won, but many more minutes were required for Lela's full recovery.
When Lela Starke's eyes opened, the moonlight was upon Van's face. The girl shrank from him. She was staring, and Van realized that not even the river had changed his role of Ralph Larch.
"You?" The single word held breathless contempt. "I wish I had died! My father—"
FULLER consciousness restored her memory as Van spoke to her softly. A terrible sob shook her slender shoulders.
"You are the Phantom!" she cried. "Then my father was not there!"
"No," said Van gently. "He was not there, Miss Starke. It seems cruel now, but it was necessary to save your life, and Tom Randall's. Ralph Larch was made to look like your father. It didn't work out so well."
"Tom Randall?" the girl repeated numbly. "Where is he?"
There was a note in her voice Van had not heard before. A tense expectancy. Keen intuition told Van that Lela Starke had never been in love with Ralph Larch, but that she had a deep affection for Tom Randall.
Van again searched the river's surface before speaking. He did not have to break the news he was afraid he must.
"Phantom! Phantom!"
The voice of Steve Huston was calling from the rocks above them. Van replied and Huston came sliding down to the shelf on the shore.
"I had about given you up, Phantom!" exclaimed Huston. His red hair stuck out all ways in the moonlight.
"Randall?" said Van.
"He's sitting up, and he'll be all right," said Huston, as calmly as if he had not just saved the forester's life. "He had a close squeak of it. We thought you two were gone, and I guess Randall—" Steve Huston glanced shrewdly at the girl. "I guess Randall wasn't giving a hoot for his own life if that had happened."
There was a comfortable bench above the rocks. Coats were wrapped around Lela Starke. Van and Steve appeared not to notice that Tom Randall had taken Lela in his arms and kissed her. Though Van did not need that final proof to know that his guess about the girl and Randall had been correct.
"Stay here, and be quiet," Van directed them. "I'll scout along the shore and see if there is a safe trail out of here. We are across the river from Black Wolf's men. They'll have some time getting over, and I imagine they think we could not escape."
Steve Huston offered to accompany Van, but his request was refused.
"Stick here and watch, Steve," said Van. "One man has a better chance of being unobserved if there should be prowlers of the wrong kind."
Van did not expect to meet anyone. But he had decided they were above the Roaring River log camp and the Harry Lant power dam, which was still unfinished. He had no means of telling if they were near or far from the camp.
A narrow trail ran along the top of the bluff among the big trees. The moonlight was patchy here. Van could hear the roaring of the river in the canyon below him.
He had gone perhaps half a mile when he saw twinkling lights on the other side of the river. They were some distance away. He thought this must be Tom Randall's logging camp.
"There will be a crossing over the river there," he mused. "Black Wolf's mob must have given up the hunt by this time."
HE halted quickly then, merged his figure with the shadow of a big tree. For another shadow had moved between trees ahead of him. As Van remained quiet, the shadow shifted to another concealing tree.
The skulking man was close enough for Van to see the shape of a rifle he carried. Van waited, setting himself. The skulker was only a dozen yards away when Van acted.
Van's lips did not move. But there was a sudden, savage growling beyond the rifleman, as if some wild beast was stalking him. The skulker pivoted, startled, jerking up his gun.
The full weight of Van landed upon the man's shoulders. The skulker cried out as he was driven to his knees. Van's hard fingers twisted the rifle from his hand.
Then Van's brought the skulker up facing him, with an irresistible hand locked in his coat collar. The moonlight showed the swarthy features of Harry Lant, power dam builder.
Van held him back so that his own face was revealed.
"Larch?" gulped Harry Lant. "You? Why, how did you get here? Let me go! Have you lost your mind? And what was the shooting all about?"
The Phantom had to think fast. There was in Lant's tone an undercurrent of understanding, as if for some reason Ralph Larch would not be expected to be other than a friend.
Van released Lant, using Larch's voice as he spoke, and imitating the dead cashier's manner.
"I didn't know it was you, Lant," he muttered. "I just saw you had a gun, and I was scared. I jumped you before I knew what I was doing."
"You would be scared," said Lant mockingly. "All right, what are you doing here? Wait a minute."
Lant had recalled the queer growl of an animal on the other side of him. He slapped at the bushes with his rifle. There was no response.
"That's funny, Larch," he said. "Did you hear a bear back there?"
"I heard something and I guess that's what made me jump you," said Van. "I've been in here hunting for Lela Starke."
"You? You've been hunting Lela Starke alone? Don't make me laugh. You wouldn't go ten feet alone in these woods at night unless you were forced to do it. You've been in the river. Come clean! Tell the truth before I shake your teeth loose. What have you been framing now, seeing that Cyrus Starke is alive? And say! How much have you found out? You've been playing along with Bill Summers, shifting papers at the bank, and now you're up to something else. My men had warning to stay off the dam tonight."
The Phantom could not determine exactly what Harry Lant was driving at. At least, it seemed that Lant had cleared himself of any suspicion that he might be the Echo Voice. For if he had been he would have known that this Ralph Larch was the Phantom who had knocked out Black Wolf.
Then Van saw Lant's dark eyes turning furtively, looking past him and to both sides, as if he expected others to be nearby.
WHAT if Harry Lant had known? He would be playing exactly this kind of a game, was Van's swift conclusion. He would want the Phantom to believe he knew nothing of what had happened a short time before when the prisoners had escaped.
And Lant's words had deliberately been framed to throw suspicion upon Bill Summers, one of Tom Randall's partners. Still, Lant might be on the level. Van decided to play the role of Ralph Larch a little farther.
He had the knowledge to make it stick, too.
"I don't know anything threatening the dam," he almost whined. "I know you and Starke wouldn't want anything to happen before everything is cleaned up. Perhaps Bill Summers is working with the Echo Voice, or he is in with the Black Wolf crowd."
"You fool, Bill Summers is the Echo Voice!"
"No!" cried Van. "He wouldn't double-cross his partners!"
"He's like you, Larch!" snapped Lant contemptuously. "We would double-cross anyone for a few bucks! Now talk fast! I'm not foolin'! Just why are you here?"
If Harry Lant was feigning, and if he knew the real truth, Van had to admit he was putting on a good act. Then Van had sudden reason to believe Lant might be shooting straight.
"Answer me, you two-timing chiseler!" rapped out Lant.
The back of his hand slapped abruptly across Van's mouth. Only Van's quickness prevented the blow from crushing his lips. He decided there was no more to be gained by sticking to the role of Ralph Larch.
Lant had revealed that he knew of Larch's crooked dealings at the Seattle bank. He might as well know the truth, that Larch was dead, and that Cyrus Starke had not come back to life.
Before he could speak, however, there was a sharp cry from up the river bluff. Then Steve Huston burst into view.
"Phantom!" he called out. "Look! In the river! There's a log raft! There's two people on it! It looks like there are powder fuses burning! See!"
Van swerved toward the edge of the bluff. Fully revealed in the moonlight, a small raft shot into view. It held up a few seconds in an eddy.
There was no mistaking the sputtering sparks of fuses among the logs, nor that two figures were bound to the raft. Their white faces were turned upward as the raft went out of the eddy and into faster water.
Van was over the bluff, dropping yards at a time. He heard Harry Lant let out a sharp oath.
"So that's why Bill Summers wanted that chain boom across the open outlet of the dam!" raged Lant.
QUICKLY the Phantom hit the river, in a long dive that carried him all the way out over the smooth eddy. He came up in fast white water that whirled him downstream like a bobbing cork.
That was what he wanted, what he had to have if he was to overtake the log raft, now at least a hundred yards away. Heedless of protruding rocks, Van drove himself forward on the crests of the rough water in a powerful crawl stroke.
He added all of his strength to the speed the river was giving him, well aware that if he struck some partly submerged rock he probably would be crushed.
As he lifted, driving ahead, the fuse sparks became twin sizzling lights of doom.
He had no means of knowing the owners of the white faces he had seen dimly in the moonlight, but he could guess they must be friends of his own, and enemies of Black Wolf. The swift process of elimination brought him to an answer that made him feel empty and sick. For he could think of only Chip Dorlan, except for the regular police who might have crossed up with the Black Wolf mob and the mysterious Echo Voice.
"And I sent Chip directly upon the trail of the Echo Voice himself," muttered Van. "So, if it's Chip, that must be Mantha Strong. That woman would stick with a friend until Hades froze over."
Ahead of him, the log raft again swung into an eddy. As the raft moved in a slow circle, a ray of hope came to Van. Harry Lant had evidently feared some threat to his power dam.
That meant the burning fuses would probably be cut long. Those sending the raft down the river would be wasting their effort if the dynamite should let go before the raft reached the dam.
What Harry Lant had shouted as he had dived down the bluff flashed into Van's mind.
"That's why Bill Summers wanted that chain boom across the outlet of the dam!"
It looked black for Bill Summers.
"And the Echo Voice and Black Wolf could have sent the powder raft down the river after we escaped from the mob," Van thought. "But the raft must have been ready to go, or there wouldn't have been time to set it up."
Van reached the edge of the eddy where the log raft had moved in a slow circle. The raft went out of the other side of the slow pool, again racing over white water.
But Van was only a few yards behind it now. And he saw a big round face turned toward him as both he and the raft were lifted on waves close together.
"Mantha Strong! So the other one is Chip!"
As the words slid from his stiff lips, the Phantom drove ahead with all of his reserve force. Perhaps no other voice in all the Olympic Peninsula could have made itself heard above the thunder of Roaring River.
"Phantom! Go back! It's too late! Pick up Chip Dorlan! I can get him off!"
It was the mighty bass of Mantha Strong. A wave lifted, and Van could see Mantha turning, working with her teeth at the bindings of a smaller figure beside her. Her own legs seemed to be fastened securely to the logs.
The Phantom heard a fainter voice, but he could not make out Chip's words. He was within touching distance of the log raft now.
If he could but reach the fuses, break them out!
Suddenly one of the sparks winked and went out of sight, down between the logs. Its disappearance suggested that this was close to the end, that the dynamite might let go at any second. Mantha Strong cried out again.
"PICK him up, Phantom! Get away! Don't mind me!"
Van's fingers gripped the edge of the raft. The towering shadow of a wall whipped his eyes upward.
There was Harry Lant's power dam. The log raft had reached its destination. If those fuses had been accurately timed, all of the furies would break loose at any instant.
As Van heaved himself onto the raft, it floated in slow water. Here the river widened out to four times its normal channel. Van felt the logs bump and heard the rasping of a chain.
The raft undoubtedly was hanging up on Bill Summers' log boom. One fuse still sparked, but the fire of the other was already underneath the logs. It might be in the water, but a fuse burns as well and as fast under water as out of it.
Van hurled himself toward the visible spark. As he did, Mantha Strong was trying desperately to roll the light Chip Dorlan to the edge of the raft with her huge head.
"Get off, Phantom! Pick him up! I don't matter! I'm an old woman!"
Chip shouted, "Phantom! No! Don't let her! Get her loose! I'll make it!"
There was no reaching the second fuse without diving, and it was no time to dive. A knife whipped into Van's hand. He ripped Chip's bindings, though not knowing if it could be in time.
Chip rolled from the raft. Van saw that his arm and legs were stiff and that he went under. Somewhere on the shore men's voices shouted. There were gun flashes.
As Van sliced the ropes holding Mantha Strong, slugs chewed into the raft. Splinters stung Van's face.
"Phantom, you fool! Save that boy! Get him! I can swim!"
Mantha's deep voice was a veritable roar of rage and despair. Her huge arms raised as if she would push the Phantom off the raft. They dropped helplessly.
THE big woman swore bitterly, wildly. Her body jerked as lead struck her. At least half a dozen guns were being fired from the bluff at one end of the dam.
"In you go, Mantha!" exploded the Phantom. "Here's luck! Hit for the other side, if you can, away from the guns!"
If a hippo had splashed into the smooth water above the log boom and the dam, it could not have made greater commotion than Mantha's solid weight.
Chip was still on the surface when Van reached him. The river sucked toward the outlet where the dam had not been completed. Van fought this pull, driving toward the shore across from the gunmen.
He was sure they must be some of Black Wolf's men. Chip suddenly beat his numbed hands into action.
"Phantom!" he screamed shrilly. "Don't let Mantha drown! I'll make it! Save her, Phantom! There ain't another woman like her! Let me go, Phantom!"
Van could not see Mantha Strong now. She had said she could swim. He hoped she could, that she had not been lying. He touched the rough concrete of the dam and eased Chip along it to a buttress shelf. There he turned back, and he could but hope they were far enough from the dynamite raft. He did not see Mantha now either.
Suddenly he did not see anything. It was as if the river around him had arisen in one great tidal wave. The air above it was shattered and seemed to become a vacuum, drawing the water upward.
The explosion was a terrific blast that must have dissolved the log raft and the chain boom. Only the wash of tons of displaced water prevented Van and Chip from being crushed to jelly. Then the water was receding. The displaced air was rushing back with an ear-cracking roar.
There were no more red flashes of the guns...
Chip Dorlan was crying as if he were a little boy again. The Phantom was rubbing the youth's numbed limbs on the sandy shore at one end of the high dam. Across the Roaring River, Van could see figures moving about.
He thought perhaps Black Wolf's men must believe those on the log raft had been annihilated. Never in all of their time together had he ever seen Chip Dorlan break down like this.
"Easy, Chip," he said gently. "You liked Mantha Strong?"
"She said—she had a younker like me once—"
Chip's voice quivered. Van was bitter inside at the circumstance that had compelled him to believe Mantha Strong and go to Chip's rescue.
Then—
"I made it, by heck!"
Mantha Strong's voice boomed out only a few yards away. The big woman seemed to arise from the river bed in the shallow water near shore. She managed to stand, but halted when she tried to wade ashore.
"Reckon you'll have to come an' help me, Phantom!" she said then. "I've got a bullet in my leg so deep they'll have to drill for it. Just wait till I get a chance at them hellions!"
CHIP DORLAN was smothered in the huge arms of Mantha Strong. He was glancing sheepishly over his shoulder at the Phantom. And the Phantom pretended not to notice.
Then the Phantom had other business. Some hundred yards away, across the river above the wrecked dam, shooting broke out again. This time the guns were aimed away from the river.
"Stay with Mantha, Chip!" ordered Van, making for the end of the dam, judging he might see more clearly what was happening from the high wall.
As he ran along the parapet of the wall that was left from the shattering explosion, Van saw that this power dam was far too narrow and lacked the strength it should have had. His engineering sense told him that such a thin wall never would have withstood the enormous pressure once Roaring River had been confined.
"And that fits right in with Harry Lant's queer contract with Cyrus Starke," he murmured, touching his shirt where this same contract was concealed. "It was never meant that the dam should be finished, but the Echo Voice didn't know that. Therefore he embarked upon a campaign of murder and terrorism to gain his own ends.
"It seems that all of the Roaring River tragedies have resulted from the old case of wolf eat wolf, only some of the wolves were simply playing a shrewd business game, and were not killers or committing any crime."
His thinking was cut off. For the shooting he now could see across the river had become a bedlam of battle. One line of men with guns were holding off other fighters who were dodging from one big tree to another.
He could not clearly identify the men with guns, but he suddenly heard the lethal song of a machine-gun break out. At that there were wild yells of fury from back in the trees. One or two death screams punctuated the howling voices.
Then it was that the big trees appeared to erupt half naked savages. At least half a hundred burly loggers, stripped to their waists, burst upon the gunmen along the bluff.
Van knew then the gunmen were Black Wolf mobsters. They were flattened on the ground. Van was sure these were the killers who had made a final try to rub out Mantha Strong, Chip and himself as they were escaping from the log raft.
Black Wolf's killers had made a serious error this time. Van knew they were accustomed to city fighting, the alley-in-the-back kind of murderers. For even though they were not now facing guns, they were beginning to break, to flee along the bluff up the river.
There was no Echo Voice now to command the killers. They were still shooting, but trying to retreat when the stripped loggers came down upon them.
VAN saw a wild figure spring suddenly into view. Two great, tawny dogs were beside the figure, and they leaped toward a big logger who was armed with a steel-pointed pike pole.
Van saw then that the odd figure was that of the yellow, flat-faced Siwash who had been fighting for the Black Wolf mob. The big logger sent one big tongueless dog spinning with a blow from the pike pole.
Siwash leaped forward, and Van saw a spear poised in his hand. Then pike pole and spear clashed. The spear pierced the big logger's shoulder.
But it was Siwash who was lifted, writhing upon the steel point of the pike pole. The logger sent the Indian down into the white water of the river with the pike pole all the way through his body.
A queer thing happened. The lone, surviving dog turned. Then with one mighty leap it cleared the bluff, falling over and over in what must have been a heroic attempt to save its brutal master.
Siwash and the dog disappeared together in the cauldron of water from which no living thing would ever emerge.
On the bluff, axes were making glittering arcs. Peavies slammed down upon men's skulls. Van had never witnessed a bloodier slaughter where guns had not been used.
He was watching a bearded mobster turn end over end, not more than fifty yards from where he stood, and a machine-gun flying from the gunman's hands. Then a line of yelling lumberjacks held the bluff.
Van started to turn back, to return to Mantha Strong and Chip Dorlan. A crushing weight struck him, flattening him to his back on the dam parapet. His head hit the concrete with a force that converted the sky into a galaxy of stars that were not there.
"Damn you! You're one I'll finish for keeps this time! You think you can throw Black Wolf, huh? When I finish you'll be only a smear of blood!"
The breath driven from his lungs, his senses whirling as his brain took the impact at the back of his skull, Van could only pull in his chin to try and fend off the thick fingers reaching for his throat.
The furry-haired face of Black Wolf hovered so close that a foul breath blew in his face. Little, piggish eyes were gleaming with murderous intent. The enormous fingers that had left their marks on victims with twisted necks were like thick rope cords grinding into Van's jaws.
"So you brought back Cyrus Starke, huh, after I sent him to Hades on Green Glacier?" roared Black Wolf. "You make a fool of Black Wolf so the Echo Voice won't pay off! You have the luck to throw Black Wolf into tree! Now your luck is gone! The Phantom is finished!"
At this moment, Van was inclined to agree bitterly with Black Wolf's pronouncement. His arms seemed powerless as Black Wolf lifted him bodily, the great fingers vised about his head and face.
It was the deadliest hold ever fastened upon him by any man.
THE usually efficient hands of the Phantom swung helplessly. On either side he could see the sheer empty space between the top of the dam and the river below. Black Wolf whirled into the beginning of a spin, a wrestling trick.
Van sensed the intent to throw him free, to hurl him to his death. Black Wolf mouthed mocking words.
"You think I believe Cyrus Starke come back alive! I sent him to death when my axe cut his rope! Nobody see in the fog! That Ralph Larch sees the cut rope and think he will be accused! He is afraid! A tree topper sees me come from the fog! I send him to death, too!"
So that murder was cleared up. Not that it seemed the Phantom would ever survive to tell of it.
But in this moment, the instinct of long training asserted itself. The sporting creed of the Phantom came uppermost, even if his life paid for the cleanness of his fighting.
Black Wolf was, or had been a professional wrestler. Van met him at his own game. The numbness from the blow of his head upon the concrete seemed to extend through only his shoulders and his arms.
Van's body suddenly bent at the waist. His legs doubled and came up. His feet shot forward, and the toe of one foot locked into the ankle of his other foot.
Black Wolf's spin stopped abruptly. His taunting words ending in a wheezing grunt. The air was expelled from his lungs with a whooshing sound.
Van had caught him in one of the holds of his own game. He had fastened a scissors around Black Wolf's middle. Van's powerful legs contracted. Black Wolf attempted to stiffen his muscles to resist, but his ribs bent and cracked. If he had been locked in jaws of steel he could not have been more powerless. He teetered perilously upon the three-foot parapet, attempting to free himself. He loosened one hand and heeled Van's chin with a forceful blow that drove his head back.
Van's legs only tightened. Black Wolf's ribs made crackling sounds like dry sticks breaking. He staggered backward, just missing the edge of the precarious foothold.
Then Black Wolf's other hand left Van's head. He clawed at Van's legs, and came forward, trying to butt the Phantom's face with his hard head as Van's body again sagged to the concrete.
Both fell, but Van's legs were as fixed as fate around Black Wolf's huge body. At last, Black Wolf wheezed, "Enough!" One of his enormous hands pounded feebly upon the concrete, as if he imagined himself in a ring, and was indicating that he was beaten.
Van's arms and hands were alive again. He released his legs, pulling himself back. He got to his feet as Black Wolf came up groggily to his hands and knees.
Van could have heaved the human brute off the parapet then. Black Wolf had merited death many times over by the ruthless murders he had committed. But the Phantom could not bring himself to be the executioner of any man, even if he had not wanted to keep Black Wolf alive.
There was still the identity of the Echo Voice to be proved. Van had no doubt of this identity. He had talked with Chip Dorlan briefly when they had come out of the river. Chip had followed his instructions to the letter.
VAN now had in his possession circumstantial proof against the murderous plotter who was known only as the Echo Voice. He knew also why the Echo Voice had sought the removal of Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman, and had terrorized the loggers in the Tom Randall camp on Roaring River.
Mantha Strong had given him a part of the key to that. The rest of it he had discovered in the private files of Cyrus Starke at the Seattle bank.
It was simple enough. The Echo Voice, through Old Proverb, the hermit, and through dummy settlers from the city, had taken over vast holdings of spruce and fir inside the peninsula. This had been obtained at little more than the cost of delinquent taxes.
There was but one easy, inexpensive means of getting millions of feet of high priced logs out of the interior. That was the channel of Roaring River. Tom Randall and his partners controlled the river with their own timber lands, which would require five to six years for the logging. Tom Randall could legally block that river, as it was not controlled by the Government as navigable water.
But Tom Randall, Bill Summers and John Hart had owed back taxes. They'd had to have machinery and men to log off enough trees to pay their debts, and their expenses. By private arrangements, made personally, Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman had advanced money.
Over a six months period, Starke and Cushman were to have supplied $300,000, at $50,000 a month. Before the end of that time, Tom Randall and his partners would have paid off their debts, getting high prices for their timber.
The Echo Voice had determined to terrorize the logging camp and stop the work. He had caused the murders of Starke and Cushman.
Once the logging was stopped, the Echo Voice could acquire the Tom Randall timber. Then he would have controlled the Roaring River outlet.
The Phantom, now fully aware of the identity of the Echo Voice, knew also that the Tom Randall timber would have been taken over for another purpose than taking out the trees. It would have seemed to be a conservation idea, the use of the timber and the river as a great resort.
But then the huge fortune in interior trees would have started floating down that same river. Without the stream, it would have been necessary to construct expensive tractor roads, and to have used a dangerous mountain pass, the only other outlet.
The roads and pass outlet would have cut the profits in defense timber to almost nothing. The deal could not be delayed. If the effort should be ended, the prices would drop.
Van was juggling all of this in his mind as he watched Black Wolf on his hands and knees. The huge killer was virtually out, his big head shaking slowly from side to side.
Van knew also why Lela Starke had to be removed. She had planned to use a personal fortune to carry out her father's wish to aid Tom Randall. The loggers had stuck to the job in spite of murders by the Black Wolf.
THE Phantom thought of Mantha Strong's hatred for Harry Lant, and his power dam.
"And Mantha had good reason for that," Van thought. "Only she didn't know that Harry Lant never intended to finish that dam for power. That was only a bluff, financed by Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman as a side issue of their own. The Echo Voice did not know the dam was a phony either, so he wanted to blow it up."
The private contract that Van had taken from Cyrus Starke's private files explained the dam. It was an agreement to pay Harry Lant a big sum for his work, leaving the private power dam uncompleted even after Tom Randall's trees were logged off.
Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman had been playing a separate business game. The threat of the dam had enabled them to get title to a big lot of the interior timber from owners and settlers who feared the dam would make the trees valueless.
"And that was straight, if ruthless business," said Van. "I imagine both Starke and Cushman would have pulled out of their scheme when the Echo Voice began his reign of terror and murder. And Starke was square enough to insist upon a share of any profits to be made by him and Cushman going to the owners from whom they bought land at bargain prices, or for back taxes."
It pleased the Phantom to know that this was written into the agreement he had taken from Cyrus Starke's files. It made it easier to tell it later to Lela Starke, the loyal girl who had thrown over Ralph Larch to carry out her father's plan to aid Tom Randall.
Now all of this was but a series of flashes through Van's quick brain. And he was awaiting for Black Wolf to climb to his feet. He intended to keep the huge furry human beast alive, so that his story might confirm what Van already had unearthed.
There were quick shouts from the end of the dam, and a squad of the state police came into view. The moonlight revealed Black Wolf fully, as the big killer came upright.
Before Van could call out, a gun exploded. It was the quick fire of an automatic.
Slugs thudded into Black-Wolf's back. The huge killer gave one hoarse scream. He threw up his hands and pitched from the high parapet. His body splashed in the river below.
LOOKING swiftly in the direction of the gunfire, the Phantom saw red-faced, bluff Captain Harvey heading the police. Beside Captain Harvey was Thurman Trulow, the owner of the highway tourist camps. An automatic smoked in Trulow's hand. The tall camp owner was swearing bitter oaths. He stared down from the dam at the spot where the body of Black Wolf had made its final splash.
"The dirty killer!" raged Trulow, his blue eyes fixed and hard as he came close to the Phantom. "He murdered my best friends, Starke and Cushman! He tortured Lela Starke!"
"I wouldn't have killed him though, Trulow!" commented Captain Harvey in a hard voice. "The police need live murderers for evidence, not dead ones! We could have taken him!"
Trulow turned coldly upon Captain Harvey.
"If I had to depend on the police, I would see all of my guests chased from the tourist camps!" he said angrily. "If I hadn't stirred up the loggers, Black Wolf's men would have got away! And if that red-headed newspaperman hadn't brought the word, the police wouldn't be here!"
The Phantom saw Steve Huston with the police. Tom Randall was there, an arm around Lela Starke. Van judged Huston had got out and made contact with the police as soon as the Phantom had dived into the river to save Mantha Strong and Chip Dorlan.
Van stepped closer to Trulow.
"I suppose you thought Black Wolf had me cornered, Trulow," he said. "I wanted Black Wolf alive, but I can see where you were justified." Trulow stared at the Phantom, looked more closely.
"I wouldn't have believed you could look so much like Ralph Larch, Phantom," said Trulow. "Yes, I thought Black Wolf was about to rush you, Phantom, or I never would have shot him in the back. I'm sorry about it."
Van looked past Trulow. He saw the swarthy Harry Lant coming onto the dam. With him were Bill Summers and John Hart, the lanky timber partners of Tom Randall.
"Bill Summers," Van said suddenly, "I have been informed you placed a chain log boom to catch that dynamite raft, so the dam would be destroyed? Is that true?"
Bill Summers' bony face turned this way and that.
"Why, yes, I had the boom placed," he said grimly. "So far as I could see, that dam was going to hold up some of our timber, and it would have ruined the owners of timber farther in. Old Proverb put it into my mind, about the dynamite raft and the log boom.
"Old Proverb was a queer, old coot, but I sort of liked him. I knew he had some of that timber that would be blocked off by the dam. And I've got some friends among other settlers that I didn't want to see shut off from profits.
"The dam was private, and not under Government control, and I figured the timber was more desirable than waterpower to be sold privately by Harry Lant. I guess there was a sight more to it than Old Proverb told me, and I heard Old Proverb was killed in Honeycomb Caves when they blew up tonight."
Captain Harvey stepped over to Bill Summers.
"I'll have to put you under arrest for that statement," he said. "You can't take the law into your own hands."
"Just a minute, Captain Harvey," interposed the Phantom. "What do you think of it, Harry Lant?"
THE swarthy builder of the dam gave a short laugh.
"I guess it wasn't any crime trying to blast the dam," he said. "Seeing I never had any intention of finishing it. I had an agreement to build it part way, then quit. I was getting sick of bluffing honest settlers into selling out for nothing, and I have been telling some of them the truth. There is an agreement in the bank at Seattle to prove what I say, and now that Cyrus Starke and Anton Cushman are dead, I wouldn't have gone ahead with the dam anyway."
"That sounds crazy to me," said Captain Harvey.
"But it isn't," said the Phantom. "The agreement was in the bank at Seattle. I have it with me now. Harry Lant has cleared himself nicely." Thurman Trulow's blue eyes were widened.
"It wasn't intended to complete the dam?" he demanded.
"No," stated Van. "I found that out while I was tracking down Ralph Larch's part in all this. I discovered that Larch was under control of the murderer behind all of it, the Echo Voice. The Echo Voice was close enough to Larch to learn that Larch had control of Cyrus Starke's personal books, and the books of the bank. So, as bank cashier, when Starke and Cushman agreed to lend Tom Randall three hundred thousand dollars, Larch played a double entry game.
"He placed the record of the three-hundred-thousand-dollar note in Starke's private account, and payments were being deducted from the personal accounts of Starke and Cushman. Larch also recorded the same note as a bank transaction. And he had taken fifty thousand cash for himself as a payment to Tom Randall, which never was made.
"That was why the Echo Voice dominated Larch, and why Larch was frightened when Cyrus Starke was killed by the cut rope. Larch was afraid that if the fraud he had practiced was discovered by a bank examiner, it would be suspected he had murdered Starke. But the Echo Voice knew all about that cut rope. That gave him a further hold upon Larch."
Captain Harvey looked puzzled. "But, Phantom," he said, "the rope end was frayed out by Larch, and others must have known it. I mean others beside the Echo Voice."
Captain Harvey was looking intently at Thurman Trulow.
Trulow spoke before the Phantom. "Yes, I knew it," he said. "In fact, I kept quiet about it for the sake of Lela Starke. She intended to marry Ralph Larch, and I was afraid a double shock of her father's death and Larch's crookedness would be bad for her."
The Phantom turned slowly toward Trulow. He walked close to him, his hands idle at his sides.
"I still say only the Echo Voice knew it." Then one hand suddenly darted out. "I'll take that gun, Trulow!" snapped Van, wresting the weapon away. "You might make another 'mistake', as killing Black Wolf. I suppose you were afraid Black Wolf would talk too much, Trulow, after you had refused to pay him off. And you were not thinking of protecting Lela Starke."
"What the devil?" raged Thurman Trulow. "Are you crazy?"
"Not much, Trulow," said Van, and one hand made a lightning move.
A BIT of skin-colored plaster tape tore from Trulow's upper lip. The flesh under it was split and it bled instantly.
Trulow made a quick step backward, but Van locked him in a hold that stopped further movement.
"Chip, come here!" said Van. "See this, Chip! Is that where you punched Old Proverb, the hermit, in Honeycomb Cave?"
Chip Dorlan stared, looking as nonplussed as the others about him.
"It's where I hit the hermit, Phantom," said Chip. "On the mouth, and his lip was cut, too. But Phantom, Old Proverb had only the two yellow teeth I gave you—"
Van's hand moved like that of a magician making a quick pass. Thurman Trulow gulped out an oath, jerking his head back. But he was too late.
Upper and lower plates of false teeth were in Van's hand. Faster than the eyes watching could follow, Van's fingers moved.
A pair of yellowed fang teeth appeared in Trulow's upper jaw. His mouth instantly took on the hideous appearance of Old Proverb, the hermit.
"Take him, Captain Harvey!" Van pushed Trulow into the captain's hands. "Now all he needs is his cougar-hide dress, and the skin mask with the black hair, and Old Proverb can recite for you. He could also use his microphone system to show you how he concealed his identity as the Echo Voice.
"He can tell you how he intended seizing Tom Randall's logging land to provide an outlet for the vast acreage of timber he has acquired inside the mountains. How he probably intended to pick up Randall's land, with the good excuse that he would preserve the trees as a park for a big cabin tourist camp.
"Then he intended to have his own trees from inside come down Roaring River. He would still have maintained his dual identity of Old Proverb. I first noticed that whenever Old Proverb appeared, Trulow was absent.
"In the murder of Anton Cushman in Seattle, and the attempted killing of Tom Randall on the cable car, Old Proverb was there. Trulow later told of coming back to Seattle and he explained his absence by saying he was looking for Tom Randall on the Skidroad at about that time."
Red-headed Steve Huston was puzzled.
"But he was knocked out when Lela Starke was seized by the men on horses, Phantom," said Huston.
"Many a man has been knocked out, and not badly hurt," said Van. "Trulow made a mistake in saying he saw Ralph Larch running away after that accident, without trying to stop him or find him afterward.
"Then he came up to Roaring River and immediately disappeared. Old Proverb came on the scene about that same time. In Trulow's bathroom I found powder for false teeth, and it seemed strange that so young a man should need that.
"Trulow used a towel in his bathroom to cleanse a cut on his head. The blood stain was grease paint, and you won't find any cut under the taped bandage Trulow now wears over his temple.
"I directed Chip Dorlan to pay some attention to Old Proverb's teeth. He did better than I hoped. He smashed Old Proverb's mouth, and he brought me the yellow fang teeth on their false plate that are now fitting perfectly in Trulow's mouth."
A DEEP, bass voice broke in. "Land's sakes!" rumbled Mantha Strong. "That means all the old-timers get their land back, and as soon as Tom Randall finishes logging, we can get out our timber through Roaring River!"
Lela Starke was talking in a low voice to Tom Randall.
"No, Mantha," said Randall. "It means that the old-timers can start logging down Roaring River through our camp at any time. My partners and I will see that their logs go out with our own. I guess Thurman Trulow's crooked dummies will get out, and the land that went to Old Proverb can be reclaimed."
"THAT'S right, and it's fine of you, Tom Randall," said the Phantom. "Old Proverb died on Green Glacier when Chip Dorlan knocked out his teeth. Thurman Trulow will not find it profitable to bring Old Proverb back to life, seeing that he will probably pay the penalty for all of the Black Wolf murders. The timber fortune of the old-timers is made safe."
"Glory be!" said Mantha Strong, her huge body shaking.
The Phantom smiled at her once, before he turned away. It was time for him to return to Seattle now, to see Frank Havens, and give his publisher-sponsor a full account of the eerie murder cases.
After that, New York would claim Van Loan for a time, perhaps the social whirl in which Richard Curtis Van Loan was such a bright, particular star. But not for long—never was it for long that the Phantom idled, taking a well earned rest. At any moment a call might come for him, to pit his skill and experience and wit against some too ambitious member of the underworld. And when that call came—from East, West, North, or South—the Phantom would hear. He would be there, waiting and ready for action.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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