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Roy Glashan's Library
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The Phantom Detective, April 1943, with "Murder Money"
The Phantom Detective pits himself against The Lynx, sinister fiend of crime, when a great war industry city is threatened with grim doom and destruction! The world's greatest sleuth tackles a mystery that menaces the entire nation!
BLEAKNESS imprisoned the log cabin off that muddy side road. The first breath of winter had stripped trees of their leaves and the November wind howled through the gaunt branches.
The old man trudging with a suitcase along the deserted side-road felt a chill when he saw the cabin. There was something forbidding in its desolation. That lonely cabin, thought Otto Warner, was a perfect setting for murder! And at the thought a grayish tint crept into his kindly, wrinkled face.
"He—he has no reason to kill me," he muttered with a heavy Teutonic accent. "I obeyed his orders."
The wind mocked him, and terror began dogging Warner's footsteps as he approached the door and unlocked it. It was dark in the living room which faced him, and it had the cold dankness of a tomb.
The old man's fingers trembled as he struck a match. There was a stub of a candle in a bottle on the mantelpiece. Warner walked over and lighted the candle.
Newspapers and empty whiskey bottles littered the floor of the roughly-furnished, untidy room. Ash trays, overflowing with cigarette butts, stood on the round table in the center of the room. But it was the telephone on a table near the wall which held Warner's attention.
He stared at it, breathing heavily. Two minutes at that phone, and he could wreck the plans of the vicious devil who would soon arrive. But what would then happen to Otto Warner? Prison gates would close behind him!
Lieber Gott, was it so long ago that he had walked the earth an honest man, his conscience clear, his head held high? Maybe he should have listened to what little Nickie kept insisting. Nickie, a hero-worship glow in his eyes, had spoken often of the one man who could always be trusted, a world-famous detective called the Phantom. Was it too late now to try to reach him?
Indecision twisted Warner's face. Yes, it was too late. He was in too deep, and there was a strangle hold on his throat that even the Phantom could not tear loose. He had to go through with it, then perhaps he would be left alone.
THE howling wind outside seemed to mock him. It seemed to say: "You're an old fool, Otto Warner. You can expect only treachery from that fiend!"
A trapped, haunted look crept into the old man's eyes. Why had that devil arranged the final rendezvous in this lonely place?
He heard a car outside, and listened tensely. There was a brief pause, then the cabin door swung open and a man and a girl entered the cabin.
The girl was tall, smartly dressed, exotically handsome with her olive complexion and blue black hair flowing in a long bob from beneath her turban. Her companion was a macabre and sinister figure as he stood, facing Warner.
He wore a belted trench-coat and a gray hat tilted at a rakish angle. But black cloth dropped in a hood over his face and neck. A face was painted in white on the black cloth, the triangular, slanty-eyed, whiskered face of a lynx!
"Greetings, Herr Warner," came with soft mockery from beneath the hood. "I suppose the suitcase there represents the final fruits of your labors?"
"Yes," Otto Warner quavered. "It's—it's all there."
The lynx man opened the suitcase and examined the contents. Then he snapped the lock, straightened.
"Excellent, Warner," he murmured. "You were careful to destroy all evidence, as I instructed you?"
"Yes. I was very careful."
"The kid living with you—does he know what you've been doing?"
The old man looked shocked.
"Nickie? No, of course I haven't told him anything. My little Nickie—he thinks I am an honest man."
"The tears in your eyes are touching, Herr Warner," the masked man sneered. "At any rate, you've done an excellent job. Now how may I reward you?"
"I want no reward for this dirty business," Warner said.
Soft laughter bubbled from beneath the black hood.
"A man who puts half a million dollars in my pocket deserves some remuneration, Warner. I feel it would be a crime not to give you some token of my gratitude. How about gold? Would you like that?"
"Must you play with him?" the girl said quietly. "Get it over with!"
The hooded face swung in her direction.
"Lola, sometimes you woefully lack in imagination. Just let me handle this... How about gold, Warner?"
"I did what you said I must do," the old man said hoarsely. "Now that I have, I just want you to leave me alone. May I go home, please?"
"Without a reward? Nonsense, Warner! If gold doesn't appeal to you, how about another metal—say, lead?"
Otto Warner's old hunched shoulders straightened up slowly. His face was still grayish, but fear no longer twitched it. And he achieved a kind of dignity as he said with soft bitterness:
"I've been a fool to trust you. I should have guessed that this is how it would end. Years ago, good Germans also were fools to trust the evil madman who calls himself Hitler. Today they are paying for their folly, just as I am about to pay for mine."
"A nice speech, Herr Warner," the masked man drawled. "I do hope that the other men whom I've slated for—er—liquidation in North City make equally interesting final speeches. It will relieve somewhat the relatively dull business of murder!"
"You devil!" Warner panted. "There will be a day of reckoning—" The Lynx's right hand came from the pocket of his trench-coat. It held an automatic. Once, twice, the ugly snout belched flame. Otto Warner lurched into the table, slid along one side of it. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. Then his knees buckled, he crashed to the floor and lay still.
"And I had a part in that," the girl said thoughtfully. "It's—been years since a woman was executed in this State."
"Now don't get morbid, darling."
The masked man laughed as he put away the automatic. He stooped and rolled the body over on its back. Crimson stained the old man's silvery hair. The killer reached in his pocket again, and the light reflected evilly on the thin, long blade of a stiletto. And the girl choked as, with swift strokes, the killer branded a crimson swastika on the old man's forehead.
"Let's get out of here!" she said.
He wiped off the stiletto, put it away, and picked up the suitcase.
"Yes, my dear," he said, "let's start on our lovely rainbow toward the pot of gold awaiting us."
Again soft, devilish laughter came from beneath the hood. The candle flame was extinguished as the girl opened the door. The wind had reached a near-gale proportion, and they had to fight against it to reach their car.
Even as the masked killer outside was grinding the self-starter the old man groaned and stirred. Pain and bewilderment held him still a few seconds. Outside, above the howling of the wind, he heard a car grind away in low gear, climbing the hill which led away from the cabin.
The instinct of self preservation, rather than any conscious plan, drove Warner now. On hands and knees, he began creeping across the floor. A wall finally checked him. Panting, he clawed at tile crevices between the logs, pulling himself to his feet. And as he stood there, swaying, the effort driving red torment through his body, his groping hand encountered a light switch.
Hardly realizing what he was doing, he flashed on a large unshaded bulb in the ceiling. Blood from the swastika carved in his forehead blinded him. He brushed it away. And the first thing he saw was the telephone a half dozen feet away.
Close as it was, he fell twice before he reached the phone, the second fall sending the little table on which the instrument stood crashing to the floor. Lying on the floor, he heard the operator's voice:
"Number, please?"
"I—I want New York City," the old man panted. "The New York Clarion. Mr. Frank Havens. Hurry, please! It—it's a matter of—life and death!"
CHANCE and Destiny began shuffling the pawns, mockingly defiant of manmade plans. The girl with the killer glanced back at the cabin as the car reached the top of the hill.
"A light just went on in the cabin!" she screamed.
The killer jammed on the brakes. Then he, too, saw the rectangles of yellow light which the cabin's windows made.
"The old fool is still alive!" he said with soft viciousness. "And he has a telephone there!"
The killer could not make a U-turn in the narrow, tree-flanked road. He was forced to take the slower, more laborious return of backing down the hill, giving Warner additional precious seconds. And the second quirk of chance was the presence at that moment of a tall, handsome young man in Frank Havens' private office in the Clarion Building.
Feminine eyes in the Clarion office always lighted when the publisher's young friend visited him. Richard Curtis Van Loan had good looks and charm, and the glamorous aura of being one of society's most eligible bachelors. He was a millionaire playboy without any offensive notoriety, an habitué of Manhattan's snootier night spots, a blithe and carefree young man whose sole interest in life seemed to be the pursuit of pleasure.
He looked the part now as he sprawled in a leather chair near the publisher's desk, his lithe body immaculately groomed. Shaking his head when Havens extended a cigar humidor, he said with a note of annoyance:
"Of course, I'll be just too thrilled by that Westchester Kennel Show! Darn it, Mr. Havens, I hate the idea of an evening wasted that way."
Frank Havens, stocky, ruddy-faced publisher of the Clarion and a chain of other Coast-to-Coast newspapers, shook his head.
"It won't be wasted, and you know it, Van. You haven't been seen around for a couple of weeks, and people are beginning to wonder. Last night, at the club, a couple of men asked me what had become of young Dick Van Loan. I couldn't tell that you—"
"That I was conducting experiments in my secret laboratory on a new and revolutionary theory of ballistics," Van concluded, grinning. "Hardly an occupation to absorb a playboy, is it?"
Havens smiled. He alone knew that Van's playboy activity was a deliberate affectation, masking a world-famous personality who called himself the Phantom!
The publisher was indirectly responsible for the Phantom's existence. Some years before, when Van's parents had died, leaving him a great fortune, Havens had become alarmed by Van's restlessness. The young man could not find an avocation to serve as an adequate outlet for his terrific energy. Ordinary pursuits of a wealthy bachelor seemed meaningless to him.
Havens suggested that Van try his hand at solving a crime which baffled the police. Van did it, in disguise, and achieved startling success. And in so doing he gained the respect and admiration of the police, as well as a deluge of publicity. Everyone wanted to know who the "Phantom Detective" was.
DELIBERATELY, Van had refused to have his identity known. His initial excursion into crime detection convinced him that he had found his avocation, however, and he decided to make a career of it, accepting the name of the Phantom Detective with which the newspapers had dubbed him. Since then he had made that name dreaded and hated in the underworld.
Now, although the Phantom's reputation had reached the far corners of the earth, only Frank Havens knew the Phantom's identity. And therein lay one of the Phantom's greatest assets, though he had many others. A master of disguise—the Man of a Thousand Faces, as the underworld called him—he could never be spotted by criminal rats.
Complete anonymousness—always. Yet Van was not satisfied with that alone. In all ways he had fitted himself for his self-imposed task. He had the greatest crime library owned by any single individual. In his secret laboratory he constantly experimented with the latest scientific developments in crime detection. He was proficient in the use of weapons, and practiced daily. And few athletes could boast of the splendid condition in which Van always kept his body.
That was the "playboy" who lolled indolently in Frank Havens' office when the call came from Otto Warner.
Van was thinking about the series of experiments he was currently conducting as he vaguely heard the publisher answer the phone. Then he was startled by the sudden sharp note in Havens' voice.
"What? What did you say?"
Van glanced up, to see Havens gesturing toward an extension phone on another desk. Van hurried to the other desk and snatched up the phone.
"Please repeat what you've just told me," he heard Havens say.
On the floor of the cabin, Otto Warner fought the unconsciousness which threatened to engulf him. The pain in his chest felt like avid hot claws tearing through his flesh.
"I am hurt, Mr. Havens," he said with slow, panting deliberation. "I—I may not have much time. So listen carefully, please. My little Nickie—told me that—people can contact the Phantom—through you. My Nickie thinks the Phantom is a great—" His voice cracked, and he moaned: "Oh, it hurts! Oh..."
Clapping his hand over the mouthpiece, Van snapped:
"Let me take over, please, Mr. Havens."
Havens nodded, and Van said, mimicking the publisher's voice perfectly:
"What's happened to you? What would you like the Phantom to do?" The old man tried again, forcing himself to speak clearly.
"I am phoning from North City. The man who shot me—who left me here for dead—he is a devil. He plans many crimes, big crimes. The Phantom must come to North City—try to stop him—before other innocent people die. That devil plans a crime wave—"
A blast of air struck Warner as the door was flung open. He saw the Lynx, brandishing a gun, leap into the cabin. The girl was behind him.
"He's back, Mr. Havens!" Warner screamed. "Tell the Phantom this! The tilted flagpole and Jackson's nose mark—"
Two shots drowned out the rest of the old man's words. There was a thud, a clattering sound.
"Hello!" Van shouted. "Hello!"
THE line was dead.
"Van!" Havens exclaimed. "What does all that mean?"
"Murder!" Van clipped. "Mind if I impersonate you a little while longer?"
"Go ahead!"
Van got the switchboard operator. Imitating Havens' voice again, he said tersely:
"Get me the North City Police Headquarters."
There was a brief pause, then: "Hello! North City Police? This is the New York Clarion. The publisher. Someone had just telephoned here from North City. I am certain that a crime has been committed at the source of that call. Will you check through your local telephone company where that call came from? Immediately? This is Frank Havens speaking."
"Certainly, Mr. Havens. Do you want us to call you back?"
Van made a wry face at the superfluous question.
"Yes, please..."
IN the cabin, the Lynx crouched over Warner's body. There was a bluish hole in the old man's forehead, and the back of his head was gory horror.
"To whom was he talking?" the girl with the Lynx asked tersely.
"Frank Havens, publisher of the New York Clarion."
She bit her underlip.
"Frank Havens is more than that. He's—"
"I know," the Lynx interrupted viciously. "Havens is also the Phantom's contact. Darling, I don't want the Phantom messing around North City!"
"I'm scared," she said.
He made a savage gesture with the automatic.
"I'm not—though I don't care for such a dangerous adversary. I don't believe the Phantom will make much sense out of Warner's last words. He couldn't guess what was meant, since he doesn't know who was killed here. Besides, the Phantom never takes on anything but important cases, something too big for the police to cope with. An ordinary murder never interests him."
"But all of your plans are tremendous!"
"How could the Phantom guess that from my initial moves? Our first job is to get rid of this body. We'll dump it where we dropped the other. But we must move fast. Havens is probably in touch now with the local police."
She put her hand on his arm. "Suppose the Phantom does come to North City?"
The ugly, painted lynx's face stared at her for seconds.
"If the Phantom shows up here—he will die! I will kill him, even if I have to shelve my other plans to accomplish that!"
"I wanted to hear you say that," she said softly. "You may sneer at a woman's intuition, but you may trust mine. You must do what you have just said, or both of us will be through—the painful way, if you get the idea!"
"Lola," he murmured, "you're a remarkable woman... All right, come on and give me a hand with Warner's body."
WHEN they drove away from the cabin and reached the top of the hill, the Lynx slammed on the brakes. In the valley below were the shimmering lights of North City.
"That's what I'm going to take over, Lola," the Lynx said in a sibilant whisper. "A boom town, slapped into life by great defense plants, boiling with activity. I'll make that town pay golden dividends. Millions—and power! Growing power, expanding power!
"A town first, then the county, then other counties. Then the control of the State. Maybe I'll go further yet! Nothing—nothing can stop me, now, Lola!"
The wind howled in the tree-tops and the girl shuddered.
"I've faith in the strength of the forces of evil," she said quietly. "You'll make it!"
DIGGING hands hard in his pockets, Van had dropped his lassitude. He tigerishly paced Frank Havens' office, his face set and grim. He knew that he had just heard—murder! The pain-choked voice, the scream, the shots were grimly realistic and convincing.
"I don't understand those last words," he said, pausing. "The man screamed them when the killer returned. They must have some vital significance. 'The tilted flagpole and Jackson's nose mark—' Mark what?"
The publisher shook his head.
"It baffles me, Van. You don't think it could be some sort of a crazy prank?"
Van made an impatient gesture. "No one could act as well as that. And those were shots, all right. I've heard enough of them. Besides, what would be the point of someone playing such a stupid joke on you?" Dragging minutes passed, then Havens' phone rang again. Van lifted the extension when the publisher answered.
"This is Chief Morris, of the North City Police," a gruff voice said. "We traced the call, Mr. Havens, but no crime had been committed at the place from which it was made."
"What sort of place was it?" Van asked, imitating Havens' voice.
"An outlying log cabin."
"Who owns it?"
"It's jointly owned, as a kind of private little club, by a dozen leading citizens of North City. I suspect that some swell poker sessions—"
"Have you personally visited the place, Chief?" Van interrupted.
"Yes. I got the key from one of the owners. No one in it. There was nothing inside that indicated a crime."
"No blood stains, bullet-holes?"
"No, sir. What led you to believe that a crime had been committed there?"
"An interruption, by gunfire, when someone spoke to me from there. The man wanted to contact the Phantom. He claimed he'd been hurt. Apparently the killer returned and finished him before he could identify himself and complete what he wanted to tell me. He also said that someone was planning a crime wave in North City."
"If someone is," the police chief replied curtly, "then we'll make short work of him. It's my honest opinion, Mr. Havens, that the call you received was a deliberate phony. Somebody may want to exploit the Phantom in a trick of dirty politics."
"What do you mean by that?" Van asked, startled.
"There's an election campaign going on now in North City. A supposedly reform crowd—a bunch of hypocrites, actually—are trying to oust some of us from the offices we've held for years. You must know about it. One of your star reporters, Steve Huston, has been snooping around here."
"What could the Phantom have to do with it?"
"Anything to discredit the present administration and the police department is ammunition in the hands of the reform crowd. They control a newspaper, which is beginning to run out of scare headlines. It wouldn't help our cause any if the Phantom should be lured to North City on the trail of a mythical murder, and especially should the Phantom be tricked into believing that there was an impending crime wave."
"It wouldn't take the Phantom long to find whether it was a false alarm or not."
"That's true," the police chief admitted. "But the opposition newspaper would make the most of it while they could—more headlines, attacking the administration and the Police Department. I tell you, Mr. Havens, that phone call was just a political trick. Pay no attention to it!"
"Okay, Chief," Van said slowly. "Thanks very much."
HE HUNG up, and found Havens staring at him.
"You believe that, Van?"
Van hesitated, frowning.
"It sounds thin to me," he finally replied. "Yet we might have heard some fine acting. What's that about Steve Huston snooping around in North City?"
"If he has been he's been acting on his own initiative. I know nothing about it."
"Call him in and ask him about it," Van said. "I'll sneak into your private washroom there. If it'll help any you can say the Phantom wants to know why he had been snooping around in North City."
HAVENS lifted the phone and called the city room.
Van was behind the washroom door peering through a crack, when Huston walked in. The redheaded reporter had a jaunty cockiness, laughing blue eyes, and a freckled, merry Irish face.
Van, who had allowed Huston to help him on occasion, liked the reporter, and respected his shrewdness and initiative.
"A summary call to the publisher's office always rings an ominous note," Huston said grinning. "It's my guilty conscience, I guess."
Smiling, the publisher shook his head.
"No, Steve. There's no call-down in prospect. But I've just heard from the Phantom."
Huston hunched forward eagerly, his eyes glittering.
"The Phantom?" he exclaimed. "He wants me? He asked you to—"
Havens shook his head.
"No, the Phantom merely asked me to find out why you'd been snooping around North City."
"Oh!" Huston said, disappointed. "He didn't explain why he'd like to know that?"
"No."
"Well, I had a tip from a stool pigeon I know that Chris Luding and several of his men had left their Manhattan haunts and gone to North City. The stoolie did not know why, but any migration of a guy like Luding might always be considered significant."
"I'm not particularly well posted on the who's who of the underworld," Havens said. "Who is Chris Luding?"
"A big-shot racketeer. A smooth, smart gunman who is as deadly dangerous as a high tension wire. He's plenty bad medicine, and so are the killers who make up his mob. I checked with the cops, and they regretfully informed me that, at the moment, they had nothing on him. So why did he migrate with his mob to North City?"
"That's why you went to investigate?"
"Yes. I like to be around when things break. Ordinarily, North City wouldn't intrigue a big shot like Luding, but the set-up there has changed tremendously during the past six months."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, normally. North City is a quiet manufacturing town, mildly prosperous, definitely on the dull side. Nothing there to interest Chris Lading. But the war changed all that. The town being strategically located, three enormous defense plants sprang up there. Now it is a roaring boom town, its population doubled by thousands of defense workers. It seemed like a perfect set-up to take over, vice, gambling and all the things that go with it."
"That's why Luding went there, eh?"
"I thought so. That, or a stick-up of the huge weekly payrolls. Apparently, I was wrong. No stick-ups. And no vice spots in town, either. They have Blue Laws which are rigidly enforced. The gruff old police chief there merely sneered when I tried to tell him to be on the lookout for New York gunmen."
"Are you sure that Luding and his men are in North City?"
STEVE HUSTON shrugged.
"The guy who tipped me off usually is pretty dependable. I saw no trace of Luding and his killers, but with thousands of strangers in town—defense workers—it's a cinch for Luding and his gang to lay low without arousing any comment or suspicion."
"What about the election campaign going on there?"
Huston gave Havens a shrewd look. "I was coming to that. A supposedly progressive crowd, led by a North City business man, are trying to ease out the men who for years have had undisputed control of the local political machine. Maybe Luding has been invited to lend his support—with a few properly timed and directed tommy-gun bursts. However, so far there has been no violence. Just a lot of campaign speeches and mud-slinging."
HAVENS lighted a cigar.
"So you think the so-called progressive crowd might be tied up with those killers, eh?" he asked.
"Not necessarily," Huston replied. "The men now running the works—the old timers—also might be the ones who have plans for Chris Luding's trigger finger. It's true that the Blue Laws and apparently honest Police Department are products of the present administration. Yet it's equally true that there never has been such a golden opportunity to make vice pay as exists today in North City. A half-million-dollar payroll is handed weekly to those defense workers, most of whom are earning more money than ever in their lives. They'll be only too eager to spend it, the sucker way, if spots are provided where they can be taken over."
"It makes a grim picture," Havens commented.
"It does," Huston agreed quietly. "Though I returned empty-handed, I still have the feeling that plenty is about to break loose in North City. I've a pal there to tip me off the moment anything happens. Call it the 'smell' of a front-page yarn; call it whatever you like, but I'm willing to bet my prediction will come true."
Havens stood up.
"Okay, Steve, that'll be all. Thanks. If something does break in North City and your pal there contacts you, let the Phantom know about it, through me. He seems to be interested in the developments taking place there."
Van walked out of the washroom when the outside door closed behind Huston.
"Well?" Havens prompted.
Van shrugged.
"Well—what?" he countered.
"Don't you think that Steve Huston painted an ominous set-up?"
"It might be interpreted so," Van agreed. "Yet most of it is pure supposition. Huston has no proof that Chris Luding and his killers are in North City. He admits that no violence has taken place there—only the usual mud-slinging in an election campaign."
"What about the phone call we received?"
"You know my policy, Mr. Havens. I don't go around muttering about police inefficiency, and sticking in my nose wherever I suspect that a crime may have been committed. I'll accept Chief Morris' explanation, until something happens which proves to me that he was wrong. Otherwise I'd be heartily detested by every police official in the nation, and I have never flattered myself that I could get along without police cooperation."
FRANK HAVENS looked at him curiously.
"Yes, of course, Van."
"Nor," Van went on, "do I like to deviate from the policy of never taking on a case unless I feel that it has elements unusual enough or sinister enough to warrant my efforts. The North City business doesn't come up to those qualifications. So it's the Kennel Show, Mr. Havens. And a night-club afterward. Dick Van Loan, playboy, will make merry tonight!"
As great an actor as Van was, he found it difficult, during the subsequent few hours, to play his deliberately affected role of society playboy. Mechanically, he would nod and smile at people who knew him. He made light, bantering conversation, and he danced.
But always, just behind his smile, was grim tension, a mounting, ever-growing restlessness. The screaming voice—and the gunshots which cut it off! The migration of killers to North City! Huston's eyes when he predicted that plenty would soon break loose there!
Van also had the sixth sense that made Huston a great reporter. And, like Huston, he intuitively felt that forces of evil were poised over North City!
VAN'S intuition was correct. Even as he sat in a night-club, his supple fingers twirling the stem of a champagne glass, deviltry was beginning to be blueprinted in North City.
Rain slashed the squalid streets of the night-life district as a green coupé slid to the curb. The man driving glanced at his wrist-watch. He relaxed, sat there until he finished his cigarette. When he threw the butt out of the window, he looked up and down the street, making sure that it was deserted.
Removing his soft gray hat and twisting out the inner sweatband, he released the black cloth hood attached to it. He slipped the hood over his face, which enabled him to wear the hat again, and adjusted it so that the diamond-shaped slits fitted over his eyes.
"A simple gadget, eh, Lola?" he said, turning the painted Cat's face toward the girl next to him. "But I think the art work is swell!"
"That's the way you really are—cruel and cunning and evil," she told him.
"But you love me, darling."
"Unfortunately, yes."
The man laughed softly. He drew an automatic and pumped a cartridge into the firing chamber.
"It's a misfortune that's keeping you in furs and diamonds," he drawled. "You can still back out, if you like."
"No," she said, "I've lots of faith in you—as a devil. Crime is your natural vocation."
He laughed again, slipped the gun into his pocket, threw up the collar of his trench-coat.
"Thank you, darling. Now let's go! We don't want to keep that mug ex-sweetie of yours waiting."
"A word of advice seems to be needed here," she said, making no effort to move although he had already opened the car door. "Chris Luding was never anything to me, although he's crazy about me. And, definitely, Luding is no mug! He's smart and he's dangerous. Begin by underrating Luding, and you'll be heading for a fall. I warn you!" There was a brief pause, then the Lynx said softly:
"I don't underrate anyone, my dear, if that means being incautious and over-trusting. It includes you, too, Lola. And you may consider that as a warning, too!"
"Let's go!" she said, breathing heavily.
He grabbed a black satchel from the car floor, took another swift look up and down the street. He got out, and the girl joined him. They darted through the rain toward the black mouth of an alley.
The Lynx risked a flashlight beam when they ducked into the alley. In the murk, it showed battered garage doors in the brick building which made the dead end of the alley. They reached the doors and the Lynx pressed against them.
Only a strip of a rubber inner tube, nailed on the inside, kept those double doors closed. They yielded to a push and the girl slipped through first. The Lynx followed, and the rubber strip, springing back, closed the doors again.
FOR a long time the garage had been untenanted. Its cement floor was broken here and there, the brick walls mildewed. A relic of a moving van which had been in a crack-up was backed against the far wall. Its radiator was smashed. The wheels and the motor had been removed. Blocks of wood supported the rusty axles on which the body rested. Obviously, it wasn't worth dragging away even for junk.
Rusty hinges groaned as the Lynx wrenched open the windowless door. He climbed in, turned to help the girl, then swung to the steering wheel and pressed the horn button, continuing for several seconds the apparent insanity of pressing on a noiseless horn in a motorless truck.
Finally he turned from the wheel and directed the beam of his search light over the front seat into the black interior of the van. The circle of light paused on the rear doors, the other sides of which were flush up against the garage wall. A sudden scratching sound came, like a rat gnawing. Then a square section of one of the rear doors swung back into the wall where a hole had been broken in.
"Okay, come on in!" a clipped voice invited.
Carrying his satchel, the Lynx climbed over the seat, and crawled, on hands and knees, into the tunnel leading away from the rear of the van. He had only a few feet to go to reach the opposite end, also a square cut in the wall of the adjoining building. He dropped lightly to the floor, turned and helped the girl who had followed him.
A pressure gasoline lamp, hissing snakelike, illuminated the vast, barren room. It had once been a factory, but now was abandoned to dust and rats and decay. Torn-up sections in the rotting floor boards indicated where machinery had been bolted to it. The few windows were boarded over, with rags wadded in some of the cracks which might betray light.
There were eight men there, and the air was blue and rank from the cigarettes they smoked. Several were crouched over dice and a pile of money on the floor, their game interrupted by the arrival of the Lynx and the girl. Others slouched on empty packing cases. All but one were roughly dressed in dungarees, heavy shoes of workmen and caps, but there was a pallor in the faces, and a certain tough self-assurance, that belied their garb.
The one man who was well-dressed stood near the tunnel entrance. He was a big fellow, with a massive under-jaw, brutal mouth and cold gray eyes.
"Hello, Beautiful!" he said to the girl.
"Hello, Chris," she replied, and the masked man greeted:
"Hello, Luding."
There was another pause as the painted Lynx's face turreted slowly, his eyes resting a moment on each of Luding's henchmen, as if trying to impress their faces on his memory.
"You won't find any fault with my boys," Luding said.
"I'm afraid I must disagree with you," the Lynx murmured, as he indicated a skinny, insignificant-looking youth with a pasty white face and sleepy eyes, the pupils of which were abnormally dilated. "I find fault with that one."
Luding smiled crookedly.
"Don't let Tony's looks fool you. A coral snake is little, too. Tony is more dangerous."
"I don't care what your men look like," the Lynx said pleasantly. "I trust your judgment in picking them. But I like my orders obeyed. I asked you to have them pose as defense workers. And this man's wearing a diamond ring that must be worth several thousand dollars. He must not wear it."
TONY glanced at the flashy diamond ring on his little finger. He looked up, and softly told the Lynx: "You go to the devil. I like this ring and I'm goin' to wear it!"
The Lynx reached into his pocket. And as if by magic, there was suddenly a big blue automatic in Tony's fist.
"Stop him, Chris!" the girl cried. "You know Tony!"
The big man's eyes were narrowed and thoughtful as he merely looked on. The Lynx's hand emerged, slowly, from his pocket. It held a stick of chewing gum. Clumsily, because he wore gloves, he removed the paper wrapping. He lifted the edge of the hood and placed the chewing gum into his mouth.
"It's intelligent, I think, to have a showdown this way, early," he drawled to Luding. "We make up our minds who gives orders. Or we quit, right now. Which is it going to be?"
"You brought the hundred grand?"
"It's in the satchel here."
Luding turned his head.
"Put the gat away, Tony. And stick that ring in your pocket."
There was a murderous glint for an instant in Tony's eyes. Then he nodded. The automatic disappeared and he slipped the ring off his finger.
"Tony will get too high some day and kill the wrong guy at the wrong time, Chris," the girl said. "Why don't you get rid of him?"
"Tony's all right," Luding said, and grinned.
He picked up the satchel from the floor and carried it to a packing case. The other men began slowly to edge closer to him. Luding opened the satchel and dipped in a hand. It came out holding a square packet of green paper. "$2,000.00" was printed in black crayon on the orange band which held it together.
"You'll find fifty of those packages there," the Lynx said quietly. "They make up a hundred thousand dollars in twenties—cut in half! Count 'em, if you like."
Luding slipped out one half-section of a twenty-dollar bill. He examined it, then dropped both the bill and the package into the satchel. Saying nothing, he lighted a cigarette, dragged the blue smoke deep into his lungs. The only sound was the hissing of the gasoline lamp.
"Let me get this," Luding said then. "You took a hundred thousand dollars in twenties. You cut the bills in half. One half is in the satchel here. The other half?"
"Hidden."
"What's the gag?"
"I had a nightmare," the Lynx drawled. "I dreamed I came here with a hundred grand. The money was supposed to be an advance payment for certain things I want you and your boys to do for me. But I dreamed that once you got the hundred grand, you figured—why bother with the guy! And so you put a couple of slugs in me and traipsed back to New York. It kind of upset me, that nightmare."
"Keep talking," Luding said, out of the corner of his mouth.
"Okay. We've been recommended to each other by Lola here. She told you that you stood to gain by playing ball with me. She told me that you and your mob could give me invaluable assistance. She assured me you could be trusted, and she told you the same thing about me. But Lola might make an error in judgment, so it's only wise to begin our association with a certain degree of—er—caution. Right?"
"Keep talking," Luding repeated.
DELIBERATELY the masked man stepped closer.
"You don't know me. You only have Lola's word that I'm not some crank. I don't blame you for insisting on a hundred grand advance payment before you put yourself and your men at my disposal. On the other hand, you can't blame me for being cautious too. If there'll be a double-cross, I won't be caught on the short end of it."
"Pretty sure of that, aren't you?"
The Lynx shrugged, and there was faint mockery in his voice as he murmured:
"Why shouldn't I be? I've shown you that I have a hundred grand to pay off with. By cutting the bills in half, I tied up the money. If you decide to knock me off, you'll gain nothing. Equally, I gain nothing by cheating you out of the other half."
"When do I get the other half?"
"One week from today. The hundred grand pays for a week's use of a tough mob and a smart lieutenant. I want unquestioned obedience, and my demands shall never incur an unreasonable risk. I will claim a share of fifty per cent from any move which yields a financial return. Now do we understand each other?"
A smile flickered over Chris Luding's lips.
"I think we'll get along all right."
"Good!" the Lynx clipped. He reached in his pocket and drew out several typed sheets. "Pair off six of your men!"
Luding was beginning to look amused.
"Okay. Tony and Red. Fritz and Rosie. Smitty and Joe."
"Yes. Each pair will commit three hold-ups tonight. I've each triple job carefully worked out. Here's the instructions that one pair will get: Anson's Bar and Grill, Simon and Jefferson Streets. Go to the pay booths in vestibule off dining room. One man enters first pay booth and phones eight-three-one-seven, the number of one of the adjoining booths. Speaking in low voice and with door closed, he will ask to speak to Anson Burr, proprietor. Burr always carries big roll. Slug and rob him when he enters booth to answer call.
"Proceed to men's room. Window there opens on alley which runs to Hammet Street. Have getaway car there. Proceed six blocks north, four east. Will see Jerry's Diner. Stick-up woman cashier near door. Proceed to Clark Hotel, five blocks north. Lobby should be empty. Stick up night clerk. Proceed to Harvey Street, six blocks west. Abandon car there, return to center of town on trolley.' That's clear enough, isn't it?"
Luding looked slightly dazed as he stared at the masked man.
"Yeah, it's clear enough. You don't leave much to imagination."
"You don't use your imagination when you work for me," the Lynx replied coldly. "You just take orders! Each pair will steal a car and be ready to pull the first hold-up at exactly eleven o'clock. You should be back here by midnight. I want no shooting unless it's imperative. I shall personally handle—murder!"
There was a kind of fascination on the faces of Luding and his men. Hardened criminals though they were even they were impressed by the evil power that emanated from that sinister masked figure.
"When you move, you sure move, don't you?" Luding said finally. "The police chief will have an awful headache in the morning. What assignment do I get—and the extra man who is left over?"
"You two will come along with Lola and me," the Lynx replied. "We're going to give the police chief his headache tonight! And we'll take care of a certain newspaper editor." He laughed his soft, devilish laughter. "It will be a night that this town shall never forget!"
TEN-THIRTY, of a black, stormy night! The gale which lashed North City also affected Manhattan, a hundred miles away. A gray pall of fog and fine drizzle hung over the streets. Dick Van Loan was leaving the nightclub with Havens and his gay party. They had had dinner, and were on their way to another nightspot.
Van paid little attention to the ermine-cloaked girl at his side. Premonition never left him as he watched the fog and the rain, immemorial allies of crime. Even the passersby, appearing abruptly out of the fog, seemed to have a furtive, sinister air.
It all fitted Van's mood as his thoughts lingered on North City. The premonition of evil was a tenacious thing. Should he do something about it?
As if his thoughts had been conveyed telepathically, similar ones were passing then through the mind of Chief Pat Morris of the North City Police. A chunky, iron-jawed, red-faced man, he sat alone in a car in a desolate section of the city. Rain hammered on the roof of his sedan, blurred the windshield, diffused his headlights in a sickly glare.
He was beginning to be suspicious of the phone call which had brought him there. Fifteen minutes ago a man's voice had said quietly over the wire:
"I've some important information for you, Chief. It concerns a planned crime which you might be able to check. If you're interested, drive out to the corner of Lambert and Ninth Streets. Please come alone. You'll understand why when you talk to me. And you'll understand why I can't give you any further details over the phone."
Chief Morris was a blunt and fearless man. He came. And here he was, with a cemetery on one side and a vacant lot on the other. No one, no sign of life, in this rain-pounded desolation.
He stiffened as, in the windshield mirror, he saw the headlights of a car turn the corner behind him. The car stopped. Several figures darted from it and a hand wrenched open the rear door of the chief's sedan. Three figures piled in, and the ceiling light was flashed on, illuminating the interior of the sedan.
Chief Morris had steady nerves, and he did not draw back because the snout of an automatic was covering him. But he did from the shock of seeing the ugly painted face of a lynx on the black hood worn by the man who held the gun.
Incredulously, Morris' eyes shifted to the face of the girl next to the masked man. They shifted again to appraise the third person, with a gun, whose face was masked only by a handkerchief drawn under his eyes.
"Maybe this is all supposed to be funny," he said. "What's the point?"
"Get his gun, Chris," the Lynx said.
With swift efficiency, Luding's gloved hand dipped under Morris' coat and pulled the revolver from the shoulder holster. The girl had produced a pint of whiskey and a collapsible tin cup.
"You're supposed to drink it, Chief," the Lynx said pleasantly.
Morris' mouth tightened.
"What's the idea?"
"Will you drink it if I threaten to put a bullet through your thick skull unless you do?"
"I don't like to be told what to do," Morris said slowly. "Especially by rats who don't dare to show their faces."
"I expected you to be a stubborn old fool about it," the Lynx murmured. "All right, take a look at this!"
THE Lynx brought a hand grenade out of his pocket.
"So what?" Morris growled. "A forty-five is lethal enough."
"The grenade isn't for you," the Lynx said. "Your cottage is on Weimar Avenue. Your wife and daughter sleep in bedrooms on the east side, ground floor, wife in the front bedroom, daughter in the back. Through the window of which bedroom do you want this grenade to be tossed in?" A wild look flamed into Morris' eyes. Sweat began to sheen his face. With gruesome fascination, he stared at the grenade.
"He'll do it, Chief Morris," the girl said softly. "I've seen Ronnie, and she's a cute kid. I'd hate to have anything happen to her."
With an abrupt gesture, Morris tore loose his shirt collar and tie.
"All right, curse you!" he said hoarsely. "I'll drink it!"
The girl filled the cup, handed it to Morris. He tossed down the equivalent of three normal drinks, coughed, and his face became purplish. He stared at the Lynx.
"Surprised that it's really only whiskey, eh?" The masked man laughed. "We'll give it a couple minutes to go down, then you'll have another."
"Why are you trying to get me drunk?"
"Maybe because I feel that you don't enjoy life. Don't ask dumb questions!"
When the girl gave Morris his second drink it brought on a more violent choking spell, and a glassy expression came to his eyes. He was still choking over the drink when the ceiling light went out. Morris could not believe that they had gone leaving the Whiskey bottle and his own gun next to him on the seat.
Stupidly, he watched their car swing away from the curb, turn right at the next corner. He shook his head, and then came the reaction of fury. So it was a stupid joke, after all! Well, he'd make them regret their twisted sense of humor!
He knew that the two stiff jolts of whiskey had affected him—he wasn't used to liquor—but surely he wasn't so tight he couldn't drive. He kicked the starter, snapped on the windshield wiper. And when he turned the corner around which the other car had disappeared, there was their rear red light!
There wasn't much pursuit. The winking lure in the rainy blackness of the other car's rear light soon brought the police chief onto North City's main business street. The Lynx, peering through the rear window, said softly:
"The drug in that whiskey ought to hit him now."
Chief Morris had an abrupt terrifying feeling that he had fallen asleep at the wheel. He shook his head, found that it was lolling. There was a sudden roaring sound in his ears. He lifted his foot off the accelerator, tried to jam on the brakes, missed the foot petal. That was the last thing he remembered.
His car jumped the curb, plowed into the plate-glass window of a drug store. Two women on stools at the soda fountain screamed at the crash of splintering glass. The soda jerker froze with his mouth open. The bald-headed druggist ran outside, swiftly joined by a cab driver and several men from a nearby garage.
The druggist wrenched open the front door of the sedan. He saw Chief Morris slumped over the wheel, smelled the cheap whiskey, saw the bottle on the seat next to Morris.
"That's what we pay taxes for!" he spluttered. "The town's chief of police is driving a car dead drunk!"
A SINGLE light made a yellow rectangle of a window in the neat brick building which housed the North City Chronicle. Jeffery Clark, editor and publisher, was alone in his office. A tired-looking, gray-haired man, wearing the traditional green eyeshade, he sat before a typewriter, composing an editorial.
Absorbed in his work, he did not hear the door opening behind him, the stealthy footsteps approaching. He gave a startled shout as a hand reached over his shoulder, snatching the sheet out of the typewriter. Whirling in his swivel chair, he stared at the painted lynx's face on the mask of a man crouched before him.
"Hello, Clark," the Lynx drawled. "My friends and I thought we'd pay you a little visit."
Clark shook his head, like someone who wasn't quite sure he was awake. He glanced at the trio near the door—two men whose faces were concealed by handkerchiefs, and a calm-faced, Spanish-looking girl with a long black bob.
"What is this?" he growled. "Who are you?"
The Lynx glanced at the paper which he had snatched out of the typewriter. He read aloud:
Proved tests determined quality! The men opposing Judge Bentley and the present administration are attacking a policy of civic government which had been formulated by our fathers and grandfathers and which assure decency and dignity for North City. This newspaper has always had a progressive attitude and has never been silent when it felt that times and changing conditions should institute a certain reform. But we say again, and we say it with all sincerity, that Fred Mason and his clique are not the people who should hold the administrative reins of this city! This newspaper again warns voters of North City that it would be a grave error to—
Calmly he wadded the paper and tossed it into a waste-paper basket.
"Drivel, Clark!" he murmured. "Not only do you compose bad editorials, from a literary point of view, but your political outlook is also most undesirable! In the interests of North City, I'm going to ask you to change it. I'll forgive your past blunders, but from now on the Chronicle will have a sweeping change of policy. You will back Fred Mason as the next Mayor of North City!"
Jeffery Clark had recovered now from his shocked astonishment. And he was not a man who could be easily cowed. Anger and indignation flushed his face.
"How dare you come in here and dictate to me how I should run my newspaper!" he said with cold contempt. "Get out! If you weren't cowards, you wouldn't have masked your faces. Get out, I said!"
The Lynx shrugged.
"You'll need persuasion. I'd anticipated that. If you persist in your stubborn attitude, Clark, I shall kill you on my next visit! And since verbal warnings might be forgotten, I think I'd better leave you some memento of this interview." He waved to the two men near the door. "Okay, boys!"
Luding, trailed by a thick-necked, burly brute, strolled toward the desk. Clark made a wild grab for his telephone, but never reached it. Luding smashed a fist in his face. The blow sent Clark spinning in the swivel chair, and Whitey's fist awaited him when he completed the circle.
BLOOD gushing from his nose and mouth, Clark fell. He screamed as Whitey grabbed his hair and yanked him to his feet. The scream was muffled as Luding again crashed a fist to his mouth. Clark's face became a hideous mask of gore.
"That'll be enough!" the Lynx ordered.
Whitey released his hair grip and Clark's unconscious body slid to the floor.
"Let's go!" the Lynx snapped.
A minute later, they were outside the building. The Lynx waved the others to the car at the curb, then, running in a low crouch, he circled the building to the pressroom in the rear. He drew the hand grenade, pulled out the firing pin. Glass splintered as he tossed the deadly missile through the window.
He had reached the car when there was the roar of an explosion. Flames sheeted the windows. Black, acrid smoke poured from the wrecked pressroom.
"We're on our way, Lola," the Lynx softly told the girl. "The ball is rolling!"
IT WAS eleven o'clock when Jeffery Clark stained the rug of his office at the North City Chronicle with his own blood. Time ticked on—and it dragged maddeningly for Dick Van Loan in Manhattan's swank Alhambra Club.
Several times he considered leaving Havens' party. Each time, for some obscure reason, he refrained.
The midnight floor show went on, but Van saw little of it. He felt that soon something was going to happen.
Then suddenly he caught his breath and half rose in his chair. Steve Huston, trailing a waiter, was nearing their table. The reporter's face was grim, and the merry twinkle was gone from his eyes.
"That's what I've been waiting for!" Van told himself.
He felt a kind of relief as he watched Huston approach the publisher.
"Sorry to disturb you here, sir," Huston said, "but I think you should see this."
He handed Havens a sealed envelope. The publisher ripped it open, read the message inside. Van saw Havens' jaw muscles harden, but the publisher's voice was calm as he said:
"All right, Steve. Thanks." He added to his party as Huston left: "It's just a reminder of a detail I overlooked. Nothing important."
As the others resumed their interrupted conversation, Van saw Havens crumple the message, then his hand moved beneath the table to nudge Van's knee. He reached under the table, and Havens handed to him the wadded paper.
Van quietly excused himself and sauntered to the washroom. Here he read the message, scribbled in pencil:
Dear Mr. Havens:
Have just heard from my friend in North City. All Hades is on the loose there! Imperative that the Phantom gets in touch with me. Will wait all night in my apartment for a call from him. Please try to contact him as soon as you can.
Steve.
A hard glint came into Van's narrowed eyes. His intuition had been sound. Hades strutting in North City!
It would take Huston perhaps fifteen minutes to reach his apartment, and Havens should be given some time so he could supposedly contact the Phantom.
Van shoved the note into his pocket and returned to the party with a fatuous grin on his face.
"I'll have to ask you to excuse me, my good people," he drawled. "The headache that I've been battling all night has finally convinced me that I'd better go home."
There were polite murmurs of sympathy and regret.
"Headache, is it?" one man cracked. "I'll bet it's a blonde at some stage door!"
Van joined in the amused laughter. He broke away, got his hat and coat from the check room—and breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped into a taxi outside. He gave his Park Avenue address.
IT WAS a pretentious building, but Van ignored the canopied entrance with its uniformed lackeys. He turned the corner into a side street. Here was a private ground floor entrance, merely a heavy door for which there seemed no purpose, set into the wall. Van unlocked it, and used another key to unlock the door of a self-service elevator which opened from this entrance. The elevator serviced only his penthouse, an arrangement for privacy which Van found of incalculable convenience.
Noiselessly, the elevator lifted him to the roof level. He entered his penthouse, turned on the lights. Unlimited wealth and excellent taste characterized the huge, magnificently furnished living room. Tossing his hat and coat on a couch. Van began pacing the great room.
Several minutes dragged by before he glanced at his wrist-watch, then approached the telephone and dialed Huston's number.
"This is the man you wanted to reach through Mr. Havens, Steve," Van said guardedly, ever careful when phoning from his penthouse. "Tell me briefly what happened in North City?"
"A crime wave of stunning proportions!" Huston replied tersely. "The friend of mine who telephoned me, a North City newspaper publisher was brutally beaten, and his presses wrecked by a bomb, so he wasn't too coherent. But he did make it clear to me that nine hold-ups—nine!—were pulled in almost as many minutes in different sections of North City. Three people—one, a woman cashier—were murdered when they resisted the bandits. It's a bloody mess!"
"It sure sounds that way. The police chief must have his hands full!"
"He has, though not the way you think!" Huston said. "Shortly before the hold-ups, he wrecked his car on Main Street, apparently dead drunk! When they got him sobered up, he told some weird tale about how he'd been forced to drink the stuff! Citizens are raising Cain. Each political faction is blaming the other, and there's wild talk of vigilantes and gunplay. And with crime on a rampage, it's bound to affect those defense plants, so vital to our Army and Navy. I cannot urge too strongly the need for you to get out there."
"I understand, Steve," Van said. "Okay, I'll join you in North City. Where can I meet you there?"
"At the Chronicle. That's Jeffery Clark's newspaper—the publisher who was beaten by thugs. He phoned me from there."
Van hung up, swiftly crossed the living room, switched on the lights in the bedroom. Stripping off his evening clothes, he opened a huge wardrobe closet. The array of clothes hanging there was impressive, but that closet also held a secret that would have stunned Dick Van Loan's friends.
Van jammed the hanging clothes to one side, exposing the rear of the closet. He touched a secret button. Noiselessly, the cedar panels which formed the back of the closet slid to one side. A light automatically went on in a secret compartment that was half as large as the closet itself, and its contents were startling.
The left wall was a kind of arsenal, clever racks supporting rifles, shotguns, smaller arms. Even a submachine-gun protruded its ugly snout from a canvas protective bag.
A HOLLYWOOD make-up man would have found all he needed for the most complex job on the shelves and racks of the right wall. And the cross bar from which hung perhaps a score of garments might have been obtained from a theatrical costumer and a Bowery cheap clothing joint.
A sailor's uniform hung next to a mechanic's overalls; a Broadway gambler's flashy clothes touched a clergyman's somber garments. Some of the clothes were deliberately torn and greasy, fit only for the back of a Bowery derelict. For this was the source from which the Man of a Thousand Faces drew his marvelous disguises.
There being no need now for an elaborate disguise, Van merely changed to a cheap dark suit. Before putting on the coat, he strapped a shoulder holster over the vest. A .45 automatic was cradled in it, and Van also dropped several clips of cartridges into his pocket.
Turning back into the bedroom he adjusted his triple mirrors and unlocked drawers that held more makeup. The contents of one jar swiftly changed the healthy tan of his face to an olive swarthiness. A shading pencil darkened eyebrows and lashes. A clever curved rubber gadget, which he thrust over his lower gum, lent a tough, pugnacious cast to his underjaw. He painted a white scar on his chin.
The work of minutes—and even Frank Havens would not have associated Dick Van Loan with the swarthy tough who's face was reflected in the mirrors.
Another drawer yielded three objects that the Phantom always carried—a mask of black, the world-famous Phantom badge, a mask made of platinum and precious stones, and his compact portable make-up kit. Climbing into a cheap overcoat, and with a black hat pulled down low over his eyes, Van was ready.
The value of his private elevator was obvious now. There were no elevator boys, no suspicious doormen to question where the tough was coming from, since he hadn't been seen entering the building. He descended in his own elevator and walked out with no one the wiser. The man who strode rapidly up the rain-drenched street had no identity. He was the Phantom!
Four blocks east brought Van to an auto parking lot. He showed a bored attendant a ticket stub, was waved to a shabby looking coupé. Even if it were new, no one would have given that coupé a second glance, but actually, there was no other car quite like it upon the face of the earth.
A special custom-built engine, geared for high speed, was beneath the battered hood. An especially weighted rear enabled Van to make skidding turns that would be suicidal in another car. The windows were not merely shatter-proof; they were bullet-proof. And in a secret compartment behind the seat, Van duplicated, on a smaller scale, weapons and changes of disguise he had in the secret closet in the penthouse.
It would be impossible to trace the coupé by the name under which it was registered. The Phantom's car—as deceptive and mysterious as its owner!
Driving automatically, holding down, his speed while within city limits, Van reviewed what Huston had told him. Nine hold-ups, with three people murdered—a newspaper publisher beaten and his presses wrecked. That all meant that the phone call to Frank Havens, cut short by gunfire, had been on the level. Someone knew what was about to happen, and had been murdered while trying to reach the Phantom.
WHO was that man? "Tell the Phantom this—a tilted flagpole and Jackson's nose mark—" What was the meaning of that message?
Van shook his head. No use guessing now. The answer lay in North City, a hundred miles away.
The storm had blown itself out, and it was no longer raining when Van finally reached North City. He drove through black, deserted streets until he saw an all-night lunch stand near the railroad station. He swung to the curb, walked in.
An old man behind the counter jumped to his feet. He looked at Van with frightened eyes.
"Where's the Chronicle Building?" Van asked. Then he added curiously: "Is there something about me that scares you?"
"Not now," the old man replied. "For a second, I thought maybe you was one of them bandits comin' in to stick me up. There's been a mess o' holdups tonight. My son, who's a policeman, advised me to close up. But I ain't goin' to let—"
"The Chronicle Building?" Van interrupted. "Can you direct me to it?"
"Keep goin' on the street that runs past here until you hit a monument, then turn to the right. It's three blocks from there."
Van's face was grim when he returned to his car. Rats with guns, preying on fellow Americans, while millions of other Americans were shouldering arms to defend freedom and democracy. Anger began smoldering within Van.
He came to the monument, turned into a dark side street and parked, switching off the lights. Van liked his coupé around when he needed it, without advertising that the Phantom had driven up in it.
AS VAN walked up the street it was dark and lonely. The faint echo of his heels on the pavement was the only sound. With his habit of caution when moving as the Phantom, he walked close to the buildings, his body merging with the shadows.
He saw a brick building ahead where lights showed in the third-story windows. One coupé among the several parked cars in front of the building looked like the one Steve Huston drove.
He was about to approach it and make sure when he suddenly heard a peculiar swishing sound behind him. He whirled, pressing his back against the wall of the building. The sound was swiftly increasing in volume. Then a moving blur materialized from the darkness. It was a car, coasting—and moving without lights!
Instinctively, Van's hand darted to the gun in his shoulder holster. He crouched there as he saw the car stop across the street from the Chronicle Building. What did it mean? Why had that car come up without lights, as stealthy as a killer shark? Was somebody waiting with a Tommy-gun until he could be spotted in the darkness?
Van eased out his automatic. He knew that he could not be seen from across the street. Nor, he suddenly realized, could he have been seen earlier. The car had come from the opposite direction than the one by which he had approached the building. No, he must have stumbled onto some new deviltry! It must be that, for decent citizens did not drive furtively with all lights switched off.
The blur of the parked car was plain at the opposite curb, but there was only a dead stillness, suspicious, sinister. Then a small flashlight was blinked from the car, three times. The swishing sound of tires moving. A released brake was sending the car coasting down the hill past the Chronicle Building. It turned left at the next corner.
He listened to hear the engine start. There was a limit to how far the car would coast, and the sound of the engine should carry a long distance in the night stillness. There was none! The ghost car, from which an electric eye winked three times before the Chronicle Building, had disappeared.
Van approached the coupé parked in front of the building. New York plates, a press card in the windshield—it was Huston's car, all right. The radiator was still warm. Huston couldn't have been here long.
Van was about to enter the building, then paused, refusing to shrug away what had just happened. It had some sinister significance, and Van felt it would be an error to ignore it.
The winking light from the car must have been a signal to someone in the building. If there had been a reply, Van hadn't seen it. And the fact that he hadn't heard the motor start after the car turned the corner meant that it was parked somewhere in that cross-street.
Walking swiftly back to his coupé, Van started it, switched on the lights and sent it rolling down the hill past the Chronicle Building. Reaching the corner, he swung right, as the other car had done. He spotted it instantly, at the curb halfway up the block, its parking lights now turned on.
How to find out who was in that car without arousing suspicion—and maybe stopping a bullet? Van grinned crookedly. He gripped tighter the wheel and began swaying the coupé in a kind of erratic "S", imitating a drunken driver. When he neared the other car, he deliberately banged into its rear bumper just hard enough to jolt it, yet not causing any damage.
HE GOT out, just as the sedan's rear door flew open. The ceiling light in the sedan, flashing on automatically when the door was opened, showed two men and a girl on the rear seat, and two other men in front.
One of the two men who piled out, full in the glare of Van's headlights, was thin and pasty faced. A cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth. He wore a cap and blue denim work clothes, as did the two men in the front seat. His companion was well-dressed, a big fellow with hard eyes and a brutal mouth. A scar split his left eyebrow. He approached Van, and although he did not raise his voice, there was ugly menace in the way he said:
"What's the idea, brother?"
Van feigned a silly smile. He caught at the door, as if he had trouble maintaining his balance.
"No idea," he said thickly. "Sorry. Had a coupla drinks. You wanna drink? Got a quart—"
He was sharply aware that the other man was circling to get behind him. The big fellow said nothing, his cold gray eyes studying Van.
"He's got New York plates, Chris," the other man said.
"Sure," Van said, drunkenly waving an arm. "I'm from li'l ol' New York. Drivin' home now. Maybe I ain't gonna get there tonight. So who cares? You fellows wanna drink?"
"So you're from New York, eh?" the big fellow said, his eyes narrowed and ugly.
"Jus' got through tellin' you, didn't I? Wassamatter? You gettin' tough? I can be tough, too, see? You wanna fight?"
There was a sharp click of high heels, and the girl joined them. Van, apparently weaving, took a good look at her olive-tinted, handsome face, blue-black hair in a long bob, good clothes, slim showgirl's body.
"Take it easy, Chris!" she said. Her voice was husky, with a trace of a Western drawl. "The man we're expecting wouldn't drive an old can like that. Let the dope go. We don't want any trouble."
"Sure," Van mumbled. "Nobody wants trouble."
"Okay, scram!" the big fellow said. "Do it now!"
Van climbed back into the coupé. He raced the engine too much in order to back up, came dangerously close to sideswiping the sedan again as he went past it. Keeping up the pretense, but his brain was clicking.
Those men were gunmen. The big fellow called Chris might be Chris Luding, the notorious killer now supposed to be in North City. They were awaiting someone from New York, someone they did not know. They had a confederate in the Chronicle Building whom they had signaled, and were loitering nearby, careful not to show lights when they passed the building. And Van was positive that their object was murder!
Hired killers usually know what their victims look like. He could be described to them. But no one could anticipate what disguise the Phantom would wear, so that was it, all right! The Phantom was driving from New York, due at the North City Chronicle, and it was for him that the murder trap was being set!
"Okay, you rats!" Van muttered. "We'll play it out!"
VAN drove a couple of blocks, then circled back to where he originally left his coupé. As he sneaked back to the Chronicle Building he was even more cautious.
He saw and heard nothing to arouse his suspicions. Trying the downstairs door, he found it open. A dimly lighted staircase faced him. On the right, was a railed-off section which the clerical staff used during the day.
He went up the stairs. At the second-story landing, he heard voices above and as he ascended the third and final flight voices and light came through the transom above one of the doors.
"There are still libel laws in this country," someone was saying harshly. "You'd better remember that!"
"Why don't you remind me of your gunmen, Mason?" another man snarled back. "Maybe that'll scare me more than a libel threat."
"For heaven's sake, let's stick to our decision to keep away from each other's throats until the Phantom arrives," a tired voice put in.
Van checked himself as he was about to approach the door. No, that wasn't smart! Identifying himself as the Phantom would spring the murder trap. Someone in that office must be in furtive contact with the killers in the sedan. Van thought he might spot him doing it, if there was some way he could watch, unobserved, what went on in that office.
The adjoining offices were dark, but there might be an inner communicating door from them to the office now in use. He tried the door of the office on the left. It opened and he saw that he had made a good guess. There was an inner door, ajar a few inches, emitting an oblong of light from the adjoining office.
Softly pulling shut the outside door, he tiptoed to the other door and peered through the space between the door edge and the jamb. An ugly strain swirled like something tangible in that office.
There were perhaps ten men there. Some paced the floor, others were seated. And all had the common bond of strained nerves and anger and hatred. It was manifest in their flushed faces, in the way they glared at each other. They were itching for a brawl, and although they held themselves back, Van could see that it wouldn't take much to send them flying at each other's throats!
Steve Huston was there, grim-faced and tense. He stood near a desk behind which sat a gray-haired man whose face was bruised and swollen, one eye completely closed. Van guessed that must be Jeffery Clark, the Chronicle's publisher. A shabbily-dressed, untidy man, with the thin-lipped, craggy face of a New England farmer, paused as he passed Clark's desk.
"Why must we wait here, like so many jittery school kids, until the Phantom arrives?" he said with soft viciousness. "Isn't there anything we can do?"
A big, red-headed man slouched against a wall, drawled:
"Heck, we've got to give our police chief a chance to get over his hangover."
That brought a strangled curse from the chunky, iron-jawed man standing behind Huston. His fists clenched, his eyes bloodshot and savage, he started across the office. The shabby man who looked like a farmer grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
"Take is easy, Chief Morris," he clipped. Turning to the red-headed man, he went on coldly: "You'll have your chance to talk, Martin Whittier. For the past ten years you've repeatedly tried to introduce vice and rackets into this town. Maybe this time you got too far out on the limb."
"I run a legitimate business," Whittier snarled. "Curse you, Trummer, if you have any facts, not just dirty insinuations—"
"I'll bring out the fact that your license to run an amusement park expires in a couple of weeks," Trummer interrupted evenly. "I don't think it'll be renewed. Where'll your business be then, legitimate or otherwise?"
"Nicely spoken, Trummer, you cold-blooded old vulture!" a lazy voice drawled.
Van's eyes shifted to the speaker—a youngish man, slim, well-dressed, with a saturnine, darkly mocking face.
"For twenty years you ran this town," the man continued in that lazy drawl. "Harvey Trummer, the local banking mogul! You've had your way, through your stooge, the pompous ass over there, Judge Bentley!" He indicated a florid-faced, white-haired man who rose, spluttering. "Sit down, Judge! We all know Trummer owns you, body and soul. Aren't you frightened that if Fred Mason is elected you're liable to share a penitentiary cell with the ex-czar of North City—Harvey Trummer?"
"You've colossal nerve, Greeley, criticizing anyone!" coldly commented a pleasant-faced blond man sprawled in a chair near Martin Whittier. "You, a man who's dragged a distinguished family name through the mud, who squandered a fortune—"
"Oh, skip it, Scott!" Greeley laughed. "What were you before you married Trummer's daughter—the banker's daughter? Does he ever let you forget it? You hate him as much as I do, only I've no reason to be a hypocrite about it!"
Scott rose from his chair, and sagged back when he found himself staring at an automatic in Greeley's fist.
"That's it, relax!" Greeley murmured.
A pudgy, blue-eyed man, with thinning hair and a round, pink-cheeked, cherubic face, took a swift step toward him.
"Put that gun away, you fool!" he said, with curt authority which belied his appearance.
"Okay, Mason," Greeley said.
SILENCE settled down again. The set-up fascinated Van as he crouched there at the communicating door. The vicious deviltry which scourged North City might have stemmed from the under-currents in that office.
Checked hatred! In big, red-headed Whittier's eyes as he watched Trummer. In the banker's eyes as he glared at mocking, saturnine Greeley. In the clenching of Scott's fists, and in the veins which stood out on Judge Bentley's florid face. In the expressions on the faces of the others.
Van shook his head. Ferreting out what motivated those men would, be his next job. Now he had to determine which one of them was the confederate contacted by the killers in the car. With the shades carefully drawn, and all of them watching each other like so many hostile animals, it seemed impossible that any one of them could make a move without the others instantly noticing him.
The Phantom crouched there, puzzled. Then he found himself watching the lighted cigar that Whittier held. Smoke from it spiraled straight up. He glanced upward. A roof skylight supplied added light and ventilation to Clark's office. It was raised a bit, so that a spy lurking up there could hear as well as see what went on in the office below.
"That's it!" Van told himself grimly. "Sure!"
He edged away from the door, came out into the corridor, looked around swiftly. There was probably an outside fire-escape, but there might be another way to reach the roof. All doors but one in this corridor had frosted glass in them. Offices.
The one exception was a plain door at the extreme end of the corridor. Van opened it, nodded grimly. Yes, dusty stairs led upward from here.
He sneaked inside and closed the door, which also shut out all light. Cautiously testing each step before he put his weight on it, he climbed upward until his outstretched hand felt the door which opened onto the roof. He drew his automatic, then slowly, slowly, twisted the knob, pushed the door. It yielded without a sound.
The black roof stretched ahead of him. He saw nothing on it. The skylight must be behind the superstructure from which the roof door opened.
The surface was smooth and, as noiselessly as a stalking Apache, he edged along the superstructure, swung around it. There was the skylight, only a dozen feet away. It had been painted over as an air-raid precaution, but light lanced from a patch where the paint had been scraped off. And light showed around the edges.
Two figures squatted at the skylight.
"I sure hope the Phantom shows up soon," Van heard one of them whisper. "I'm just itchin' to put a coupla slugs in him!"
"Shut up, you fool!" the other whispered back. "You want 'em to hear us down there?"
Van stepped away from the superstructure.
"Okay, rats, here's your date!"
Like puppets operated by the same control string, the two men jerked to their feet. Both held guns. Van's voice was like the crack of a whip as he clipped:
"Drop those gats! Now!"
There was a double thud on the roof as they dropped their automatics.
"How did you spot us?" one man asked bitterly. "How could you?"
THE other man casually moved his right hand, as if he wanted to loosen his tie. Suddenly it swung out and the light from the skylight's edge reflected a glint of steel. With a grim twist to his mouth Van squeezed the trigger of his automatic.
A crashing roar rocked the stillness of the night. Flame spurted angrily into the blackness. Shouts came from the office below. And the gunman screamed as he dropped his vicious little "belly gun." His arm, broken by Van's bullet, hung limply, dripping blood onto the roof.
"If you rats want to learn the hard way, it's okay with me!" Van said tightly. "Start marching to that roof door!"
In that moment, a powerful spotlight from the street settled on the three of them as they stood near the edge of the roof. Half-blinded, Van saw that the spot lanced from a car. Obeying an instinct which had often saved his life, he threw himself down. And even as his body struck the roof, the hellish chatter of a tommy gun hammered from the street.
The slugs splattered the low stone parapet, ricocheting from it with a murderous whining sound. Van saw one of the gunmen collapse, and knew that the man was not following his example in dropping to avoid the blast of lead.
The other man, whose arm was broken, was backing with mincing steps across the roof. He crumpled, as if his legs had suddenly been jerked out from under him.
The submachine-gun ceased hammering, then the spotlight began moving, searching as much of the roof as it could from the street. As it passed over Van he wriggled to the parapet. Rearing up with the gun over the stone ledge, he saw the car below—the black sedan which had aroused his suspicions.
The swiveled spotlight from it was sweeping back when Van sighted on it and pulled the trigger. The sound of glass splintering echoed the crack of the gun. The light snuffed out. There was the roar of an engine racing, and the car shot away from the curb. It showed no lights, and Van merely fired at the swiftly disappearing blur as he squeezed the trigger twice.
With the final cessation of gunfire, a kind of incredible stillness settled down. Then, faint in the distance, a police siren moaned. Van rose to his feet, his eyes slitted and thoughtful. So this was his introduction to North City! A murder trap, for the Phantom before he had a chance to make a single move.
Standing there with the reek of gunsmoke in his nostrils, cold fury began to seethe within Van. All right, then, war it was—right to the bitter end! Those murderous rats would get what they deserved or the Phantom's career would end here in North City!
"Drop that gun and put up your hands!" someone clipped behind him.
That was a command which, Van knew, it was always wisest promptly to obey. He let his automatic drop to the roof, raised his hands, turned slowly. Three men faced him. Steve Huston and the chunky, bulldog-jawed police chief covered him with revolvers. The third, unarmed, was the shabby-looking man who might have been taken for a farmer, but who was Harvey Trummer, the banker.
"WHAT'S going on here?" the police chief snarled. "Who are you?"
The chief's savage, bloodshot eyes warned Van that he had better be careful, with the barrel of that gun three feet from his stomach. Slowly his hand moved to the lobe of his left ear. He tugged on it—a prearranged signal which Huston well knew.
"It's the Phantom!" Huston yelled, the gun sagging in his hand.
Chief Morris began dazedly shaking his head. It was then that a black object sailed lazily between him and Trummer. It thudded on the roof, rolled on. Van saw a blur beyond the far edge of the roof—just the head and shoulders of a man, framed between two iron uprights. He must be standing on the fire-escape. And he had thrown—what?
"It's a hand grenade!" something screamed in Van's mind.
He lunged forward. Chief Morris was between him and the deadly object on the roof, and Van hadn't time to swerve around him. The police chief went sprawling as Van's shoulder hit him full in the chest. His gun went off, ripping a furrow in the roof between Van's legs. And Van kept going, racing death as he dived desperately for the black ball which had just stopped rolling, and was near the stone ledge.
His fingers reached it—and there was no fumbling. With one continuous motion, he scooped it up and tossed it over the ledge to the street. It disappeared in the blackness, and then what might have been an erupting volcano spewed open down in the street.
The crashing roar made the building tremble. Flames geysered upward. Then came the splatter of driving bits of steel, of smashing glass. And the brain-numbing effect of it still lingered when gunshots began supplying a savage echo.
A bullet smashed against the ledge so close to Van's head that it drove sharp particles of stone into his cheek. He hit the roof with his shoulder, rolled over. Then he spotted the gunman who had thrown the grenade from the fire-escape.
The man fired again. Then his head and shoulders, visible only as a blur against the sky over the roof ledge, dropped out of sight. The rat was escaping down the fire-escape!
Van could not see where he dropped his automatic, and he did not pause to look for it. He scrambled to his feet, leaped across the roof. He peered over the edge just in time to see the blur of a man's body entering a window below.
Grabbing one of the iron uprights of the fire-escape which protruded over the roof edge, he swung his body over, dropping catlike on the slatted landing below. The open window faced him. Blackness beyond it. Van reached for his flashlight, but realized that a beam from it would be inviting a bullet. And yet he knew that someone was just beyond that window.
Perhaps if fury had not possessed him then, Van would not have taken the suicidal chance. But rage drove him and he threw himself into the black void beyond the window.
Van was plunging through, when he saw the man darting away from the window. He made a grab, and his fingers were clamped on an ankle as he crashed to the floor. With a snarling curse, the man whose foot Van held imprisoned also measured his length on the floor.
A VICIOUS kick from the man's free foot glanced off Van's head. He yanked, dragging the squirming body toward him, then jerked to one side, anticipating more gunfire. None came. Instead, hands reached for Van in the darkness, clawing at him, searching for his throat.
Apparently the man had lost his gun, which eliminated the chance that death would belch from the darkness. But the hands that found Van's throat, were clawing at it, trying to secure a hold, when Van knew he had him. His hands closed on both wrists. There a trick, a ju-jitsu—
His thumbs dug into the man's wrist, searching certain nerve centers, applying pressure which would bring on excruciating pain. A muffled scream burst from the man. His fingers ceased trying to dig into Van's throat.
"Stop it!" he gasped. "Stop!"
He was panting, animal-like, but no longer trying to struggle. Feet pounding on the fire-escape.
"Phantom!" Huston's voice yelled. "Are you all right?"
Other voices shouted outside the doorway, and more footsteps sounded in the corridor. A flashlight beam, from the fire-escape, settled on the face of Van's prisoner, blinding him. Then overhead lights went on as someone snapped on the switch.
"Do you—mind releasing my wrists?" the man Van held said.
Van let him go. The blue eyes glaring at Van were angry, but held no fear. A pudgy man, whose mussed-up brown hair exposed a bald spot, a man with fat cheeks, a turned-up nose, a wisp of a mustache.
Van's prisoner was Fred Mason, the Progressive Party's candidate for the next Mayor of North City!
GETTING up off the floor, Van edged away from the window as Huston, Chief Morris and Trummer climbed in from the fire-escape. They stood, speechless, gaping. Another group was staring in through the door. No one moved. Including Mason, they were all so many figures of stone.
Feet pounded in the dimly lighted corridor, and several policemen, guns drawn, came charging up.
"Somebody threw a bomb from the roof here, Chief!" one of them shouted.
"I know it, Sergeant," Chief Morris replied, his voice savage. "Did it hurt anyone?"
"No. We came shooting up right after it exploded. It wrecked a big green sedan, but nobody was in it."
"My car!" Harvey Trummer snarled.
Van was staring at the revolver on the floor a few feet from Mason. A white handkerchief was wrapped around its butt and trigger guard. He lifted it, broke it open. Three spent cartridges were in it. Three shots had been fired up on the roof!
Van turned to Mason.
"Even with the handkerchief to avoid fingerprints," he said quietly, perhaps you should have waited a few seconds longer before you threw away this gun."
Mason lifted himself up to one elbow.
"Are you crazy?" he said, as quietly. "I never saw that gun before. Who are you, anyway?"
"I am the Phantom. Should I tell you more?"
"Please do!"
Van watched him narrowly. The man had steel nerves.
"All right," he said. "Someone threw a hand grenade up on the roof. I tossed it into the street before it could explode. The killer tried it again—with a gun. I chased him through that window. I caught—you! Have I put it simply enough?"
Mason stared at him, his blue eyes expressionless.
"Now I'll tell you my story, as simply. I was one of a group of men in Clark's office. There was a gunshot on the roof. Then a machine-gun started hammering. Some of us ran out into the corridor. Some crowded at the windows. I was at a window when the bomb went off. I—"
"Who saw Mason in Clark's office when the grenade exploded in the street?" Van interrupted, glancing about.
There was no immediate reply. Then Clark said slowly through his puffed, bruised lips:
"We weren't paying much attention to each other. I was at a window, too, but I don't remember who stood next to me."
"Go on, Mason," Van said.
Mason shrugged slightly.
"After the explosion, I ran out into the corridor. I wanted to find out what had happened on the roof, and remembered the fire-escape. So I ran into this office, and was groping for the window in the dark when I felt someone brush past me. The next thing, you came plunging through the window. Now have I put it simply enough?"
The blue eyes met Van's without flinching. Van swung to the group at the door.
"Who turned on the light in here?" he clipped.
Martin Whittier took a step forward.
"I did," he said. "I thought I heard someone scream in here."
"Did you notice anyone come out of here before you did that?"
WHITTIER shook his head.
"No. Somebody might have sneaked out, though, without me noticing it. It's pretty dark in the corridor and four or five of us were running up and down. I'd have noticed a stranger, though, I guess."
Van glanced around the office. It was small and had little furniture—a desk and chair, two low filing cabinets. Only one exit from it, aside from the fire-escape—the door leading to the corridor.
"Someone did brush by me, though," Mason said. "That I know!"
"It would help," thin-lipped Harvey Trummer snapped, "if somebody else knew that, too. Curse you, that grenade would have killed me as well as the Phantom!"
"It would also help," Mason said, getting up, "if the Phantom explained to us what happened up there. My explanation doesn't seem to convince you, Phantom. As a matter of fact, even Trummer there, who just made a crack which deserves a punch in the nose, will have to admit that I was talking to him when the deviltry flared up on the roof. If you doubt this, Phantom, ask Trummer, who certainly won't lie to cover me!"
"I'll ask him," Van said quietly. "I'll ask lots of pertinent questions. But first I want to go back and check something on the roof. You come up with me, Chief Morris. You, too, Steve. The rest of you please return to Clark's office. I'll join you there in a few minutes."
Trailed by Huston and the police chief, Van climbed the fire-escape to the roof. He paused near the top of the ladder, turned to Morris.
"Do you remember where I was standing, Chief, when you came up behind me?"
"Sure. On the opposite side of the skylight there."
"Please go over and stand there for a moment!"
Chief Morris walked to the skylight and paused there.
"Do you see how the light from the raised edge of the skylight outlines his body, Steve?" Van asked. "That's how I looked to the killer, who stood on that ladder—a perfect target! And the man was a good shot."
"What're you getting at, Phantom?"
"Steve, that man with a gun and a hand grenade might easily have put a couple of bullets in my back. But he threw the grenade instead. Why? There's only one answer, and it's simple."
Huston stared at him.
"He wanted to kill the rest of us—me, the police chief and Trummer."
"That's it! Chief Morris already is in the shadow of disgrace. No one here could have any great object killing you. That leaves Harvey Trummer. The killer tried to get Trummer as well as me. That's our biggest clue, so far, Steve. The man who threw that grenade is a mortal enemy of Harvey Trummer!"
"Fred Mason hates Trummer," Huston said quickly.
"So do several other men there, judging from the conversation I overheard. I'll dig into that when we go down again."
"You'll find some rich diggings, too," Chief Morris, who could hear what they were saying, growled. "Martin Whittier hates Trummer, and is capable of murder. So is that devil Greeley. And you could include—"
"There's no use guessing now," Van interrupted. "Let's take a look at the two rats who were lurking up here."
HE STRODE to one of the bodies blasted down by the tommy gun from the sedan, directed a flashlight beam on it.
"A pleasant specimen, eh, Steve?" The grisly thing sprawled there had been caught in the chest by the tommy gun. He lay on his back, one arm twisted under him. His eyes were open, and his lips were drawn back in a snarl. With his peaked face and the absence of chin, he looked like a rodent.
"Do you know that man, Chief?" Van asked.
"No. Who blasted him. And the other man there? What in all creation happened here?"
"I'll explain in Clark's office," Van said.
He searched both bodies whose vicious criminal faces, ashen in death, stared up at him, but found nothing of significance. Worn shoulder holsters, a knife, cigarettes, a few dollars in bills and coins, a pair of dice.
"All right," he said, a grim note in his voice. "Let's go."
Tense silence greeted them when they entered Clark's office.
"Huston told you that I was coming to North City?" Van asked Clark. "Yes."
"Did he call you from New York, or tell you when he arrived here?"
"When he arrived here, about an hour ago."
"Up to an hour ago, then," Van went on, "no one knew that I was coming here. Then whom did you tell?"
Clark waved around the room. "These men. I called each and asked him to come here to meet you. I gave Mason a chance to defend himself, because the masked devil who had me beaten and who wrecked my presses told me pointblank that he did so because my newspaper opposed Mason."
"A neat little fairy tale!" Mason murmured.
Clark whirled on him.
"Blast you, do you think I would deliberately take such a—"
"Never mind that now!" Van snapped. "Why did you call these particular men?"
"Whittier and Greeley are Mason's campaign managers. Harvey Trummer and his son-in-law, Edmund Scott, handle Judge Bentley's campaign. Tom Craig is district attorney." He waved to a leathery-faced, gaunt man who had mean little eyes and bad teeth. "The man next to him is Arch Riley, who runs the other newspaper in town, the dirty sheet which is backing Mason."
The burly, red-faced Riley said angrily:
"What are you calling my newspaper, you—"
"Skip it!" Van again interrupted. "To sum it up, these men are the only people who knew that I was coming to your office."
"That's right."
"I suppose all that is most significant, eh?" Greeley said in his mocking, lazy drawl.
"It is!" Van replied evenly. "A murder reception committee awaited me here. It would be pleasant if I knew which one of you gentlemen did me the honor to arrange it! And which of you hates Trummer badly enough to want to murder him—as someone tried to do a short time ago!"
AGAIN silence struck those men.
They stared at Van, tall and grim near Clark's desk.
"Mason!" Trummer snarled. "You—"
"Don't say it!" Mason interrupted softly. "You heard my story. Until you can prove that I'm lying—or the Phantom can—keep your mouth shut!" He swung to Van. "Don't you think an explanation is in order now, after such direct accusation?"
Van nodded.
"I do. I made the accusation because Trummer should be warned. And I want you people to know just where you stand."
Briefly Van outlined what had aroused his suspicions, how he had checked on the sedan, and his part in the subsequent deviltry on the rooftop.
"The killers knew I was due at Clark's office," he summed up. "But they didn't know in what disguise I would show up. So they planted a couple of spies at that skylight. When those men heard me identify myself as the Phantom, they were to signal their pals in the sedan, which was coasting by, without lights, every few minutes. Then—the rubbing out party!"
"The flashlight signal must have been an acknowledgement to a 'not yet' signal from the killers on the roof," Huston put in.
"Precisely. I threw a monkey wrench in that scheme. They heard the shot, spotlighted me on the roof, and realized that I had caught their two men there. So they blasted away, willing to sacrifice their own men in order to get me!"
His voice hardened as he went on: "You men are the only people who knew that I was due here. One of you, then, must have arranged that murder trap!
"The hand grenade sequence narrows it still further. The man who made arrangements for my murder also wants to kill Trummer. He held a gun and I was an easy target. Instead, he tossed the grenade to kill me and those who stood near me. No one could have a motive to murder Huston. And the trick played on the police chief proves that he wasn't slated for murder. That leaves Trummer, only."
"Why should there be any doubts as to who was the would-be killer?" Trummer said, his bony face twitching. "You caught Mason, didn't you? With me out of the way—I swing plenty of power in this town—Mason's election would be assured."
"You old fool!" Mason said with cold contempt. "Why don't you give a thought to others here who dislike you?"
"Listen," said Trummer. "The only three things on this earth that mean anything to me are money, my daughter and my madonna lilies, I don't give a hoot who dislikes me."
"You should, now!" Mason said. "If you're going to begin listing people who hate you and might like to kill you, how about your own two stooges—Judge Bentley and District Attorney Craig? Their reelections don't mean a thing to them, so long as they have to obey your orders. I know you've got some hold on them. The only way they can break it, and cash in on the opportunities now in this town, is to kill you!"
JUDGE BENTLEY leaped out of his chair. He was younger than Van had thought, his hair prematurely white. His face purplish with rage, he looked as if he were going to strike Mason. Then he lowered his clenched fist. Without a word, he sat down. Craig's mean little eyes glared at Mason, but he said nothing.
Trummer's reaction most intrigued Van.
The banker was looking at Bentley and Craig, suspicion, and a kind of thoughtful appraisal in his narrowed eyes. It was as if Mason had suggested something that had not occurred to Trummer before. It looked as if there was something to what Mason had just said!
"It so happens," Trummer said slowly, "that bankers are cautious, and make sure that things are in black-and-white! If I had some hold over Bentley and Craig, I would make sure that documentary proof of it would be found in the event I was murdered!"
Van felt certain that Trummer had spoken directly to the two men, warning them.
"And the hope of such evidence showing up might have been just why Mason tried to kill you!" Bentley said, out of the corner of his mouth.
That made sense, too! Van swung to Mason.
"How do you know that Trummer has a hold on them?"
"I simply put two and two together," Mason replied evenly. "For years Bentley and Craig have had undisputed control of the town's political machine. The town council is composed of doddering old men who, without a murmur, approve anything Bentley and Craig want done. They used that power to enrich Trummer—"
"What do you mean, enrich Trummer?"
"Here's a typical illustration. Bentley and Craig got the town council to appropriate money for a municipal airport. A week earlier, Trummer had bought certain properties belonging to the city. By an amazing coincidence, no other site for the airport could be found but the property Trummer owned. So he sold it back to the city for maybe three times what he paid for it.
"Now why couldn't Bentley and Craig have pulled that themselves? You might think Trummer pays them off. He doesn't! It's known that it is a financial strain for Bentley to send his three children to a private school. And Trummer is a millionaire! What does that add up to? Why should Bentley and Craig be crooked to pile up a fortune for Trummer?"
"Throwing mud around won't help you, Mason," Trummer snapped.
"I'm telling the truth," Mason clipped back. "And there's Scott, your son-in-law. You almost went out of your head when your daughter eloped with him. He was just a hungry actor—and do you ever let him forget it? He has plenty of reason to kill you. Once you're dead, with your fortune passing on to your only daughter, he could begin enjoying life, couldn't he?"
Scott's handsome, tanned face flushed. He jumped to his feet.
"Sit down!" Trummer said harshly. "That happens to be true. But you haven't the nerve to commit murder... Phantom, don't let Mason bluff you. He's your man, I tell you!" Van had not missed the viciousness that had flared for just an instant in Edmund Scott's eyes. And Van, who knew men, did not share Trummer's conviction that his son-in-law lacked the nerve to commit murder.
"Until I can prove otherwise, I'll assume that Mason told me the truth," Van said shortly. "Who else here might have reason to kill you, Trummer?"
TRUMMER waved a thumb at redheaded, hard-mouthed Martin Whittier.
"He owns 'Playland', an amusement park. It's a perfect set-up for gambling and vice, and that's what he's planning to make of it. Maybe Mason and Greeley are in on it, too. But Whittier knows he won't get his license renewed if I am alive and Judge Bentley is reelected."
Whittier's eyes were coldly murderous, but he said nothing.
"You should put me on your list of suspects, too," Hubert Greeley murmured, his dark, saturnine face leering at Van. "My money is financing Mason's campaign. I detest Trummer. I've a reputation as a scoundrel and blackguard. And I assure you, Phantom, that I am quite capable of murder!"
There was mockery in the black eyes, bitterness, but hard intelligence also. Van knew that Greeley was not a small boy showing off his naughtiness. He could be dangerous.
"What's poisoning you, Greeley?" Van asked quietly.
The black eyes looked startled for a moment. He stopped grinning, and something savage flickered over his dark face.
"Boredom," he replied curtly. "And a sense of failure and futility. I'm the last of the Greeleys, who pioneered this town and amassed a great fortune. I am going through it—rapidly. Does it answer your question?"
"You're on my list of suspects—at the top," Van said.
His eyes slowly circled the room. Six of these men had motive to murder Harvey Trummer, and one of them tried it. The same one who had arranged a murder trap for the Phantom! But which one?
"All right, gentlemen," he said quietly. "I'm on this case now, and I won't give it up until I solve it. Or until another attempt on my life is more successful! I would advise you, Trummer, to ask for day-and-night police protection."
"It might be a good idea, particularly since I'll be alone in the house tonight," Trummer said reluctantly. "How about it. Chief?"
Chief Morris waved to the police whom the explosion had brought onto the scene.
"That's your job, men."
"They can watch the house from the outside," Trummer growled. "I won't have a bunch of cops lolling in my living room!"
"Trummer appreciates having things done for him, doesn't he?" Greeley said, with a laugh.
"I suggest you all now return home," Van said. "I'm staying here awhile with Clark and Chief Morris." Narrow-eyed, Van watched them leave. There was a pause, then Chief Morris said:
"You told us that you saw who was in that sedan, Phantom. Wasn't the Lynx one of them?"
Van stared at him.
"The Lynx?"
RAGE again began smoldering in Morris' bloodshot eyes.
"I call him that because of the lynx's face painted on the hood he wore as a mask. He was the leader of the gang which forced me to drink the drugged whiskey before the holdups. Because of that, people are screaming for my resignation. And Clark is my only alibi that my explanation doesn't qualify me for the nuthouse!"
"Because a man wearing a black hood on which a lynx's face was painted was the devil who called on me here," Clark supplemented.
"The Lynx!" Van repeated softly. "Steve, can you describe Chris Luding to me?"
"Yes," Huston nodded. "He's a big fellow. Muscular, not fat. His black hair, brick complexion, a face that looks tough without being battered. Gray eyes, hard mouth. There's a scar over his left eyebrow."
"That's good enough," Van said. "Chris Luding was one of the men in that sedan. Now when the Lynx and his thugs visited you here, Clark, was there a girl with them?"
"Yes."
"A tall, Spanish-looking girl with long black hair in a straight bob?"
"Yes," Clark snapped.
"That girl was with Luding in the sedan. Which means that it was the Lynx's mob which tried to stage the rubbing-out party for me! Clark, what would you say the Lynx's height and weight were?"
Clark made a helpless gesture.
"I really don't remember. It seems to me that he was sort of average. That hideous mask held my attention."
"Mine, too," the police chief said.
"How about the thugs who came with the Lynx? Were they masked? The girl wasn't, apparently."
"Yes, they were," Clark replied. "Two men. They had handkerchiefs tied over their faces."
"Tell me if this description would fit one of those thugs," Van said.
He closed his eyes and brought back to his mind the big fellow in the sedan—the man he now knew was Chris Luding. Drawing on his marvelous photographic memory, he said slowly:
"He topped six feet and has broad shoulders. Wore a brown hat, a tan topcoat which seemed too short for him, blunt-toed brown shoes. His shirt was dark-blue, I think—and a clip kept the collar in place. The tie was loud—red polka dots over blue. He wore gray suede gloves, the slip-on type without buttons."
"That's one of the two men who beat me," Clark shouted. "Sure! I remember those gloves, the collar pin and loud tie, the short topcoat... It's the man, all right!"
"It's the man who took my gun," Chief Morris put in, as definitely. "I'll swear to it!"
Van nodded grimly.
"All right, we've established another important fact. The Lynx is not Chris Luding in disguise! Luding and his killers are the Lynx's henchmen!"
"And they must also be the murderous rats who pulled those stick-ups," Chief Morris said savagely. "Phantom, it was like a pack of wolves running wild in North City! Nine hold-ups within fifteen minutes, each job smoothly executed—and three people dead as the result of them!... Say, Mr. Havens phoned me and told me that somebody predicted a crime wave here in—"
VAN interrupted again.
"I know it," he said. "I was just going to ask you about it. You checked that log cabin and found no evidence of crime?"
"I checked, and found nothing. Got the key from Judge Bentley, who's a member of the club which owns it."
"Who else, of the men who were here, are also members of that club?"
"All but Greeley. They all used to be friends until politics split them apart. Judge Bentley told me that no one has used the place in months."
"Someone used it several hours ago to make a phone call to Havens," Van said curtly. "And someone was murdered there! That's what I'm going to look into, right now. Where's that cabin?"
"It's on a side road which joins the main highway just north of town. Half a mile or so from the highway. Only one cabin in that whole lonely stretch there. You want me to take you to it?"
Van shook his head.
"No, I'll find it. Check on this revolver I picked up in the other office. And you, Steve, had better hang around with the chief. Or go to a hotel and grab some sleep. They're out to get the Phantom. Even if I changed my disguise, your being with me would tip them off. I'll get in touch with you later."
He left the handkerchief-wrapped revolver on the desk and walked out. On the street he saw the car that had been wrecked by the grenade. Van stared grimly at the scarred metal, the smashed windows. He remembered the whine of the tommy-gun slugs up on the roof. Twice, he had escaped death by a hair's breadth!
It was war, all right! War without rules, savage and treacherous! And Van knew that there could be no compromise now. Either he drove the Lynx and his killers to the electric chair, or the Phantom would never leave North City alive!
MAKING sure that he was not followed, Van took a circuitous route in his return through the deserted streets to where he had left his coupé. Dawn was graying the eastern sky when, ten minutes later, he spotted the side road of the main highway and swerved into it. He noticed that there were no recent tire marks in the mud as he followed the twisting road through thick underbrush. Then it dipped sharply, and Van saw the cabin, set back in a clearing.
It was a desolate spot in the gray murk of dawn. Rain still dripped from gaunt branches. An owl hooted mournfully. Van's shoes made a squashing sound in the sodden turf as he walked to the front door. He tried it, found it locked. He had expected that, and it was not carelessness which accounted for his failure to ask Chief Morris if he still had the key. Ordinary locks were never any trouble for the Phantom.
Reaching in his pocket, he brought forth an oddly curved, flexible strip of steel, pointed at one end and bluntly round at the other. He inserted the sharp end into the Yale lock, maneuvered it as if he were operating some delicate instrument, gave it a twist. The bolts clicked back. He opened the door and stepped across the threshold.
His flashlight swept the interior of the cabin. Dust, rubbish, the dank smell of a place long unused. But Van knew that murder had visited here, and he looked for its ugly earmarks. It would be nothing obvious, or Chief Morris would have noticed it. And if the killer had removed the body, he also would have tried to cover over all evidence.
His flashlight beam paused when it spotted the telephone. It was a French phone, the modern design incongruous with the surroundings, and it stood on a little table near a corner. That was where the murder had taken place, since gunshots had terminated the man's use of the telephone.
He began flicking his searchlight all around the little table. There were no bullet marks in the weathered logs, no bloodstains on the dirty floor. Even if they had been carefully mopped up, the cleaner patches on the floor would have been obvious.
Moving the flashlight, he covered every inch of surface near the phone. A couch, draped with a dirty cover, was at the wall which angled from the one where the telephone table stood. Van's flashlight traversed the length of it, slid down to the floor—and paused. Heavier dust made a discernible rectangular patch along the wall. Apparently the couch had once been standing there, and later moved to its present position.
He slid the couch away from the wall, directed a flashlight beam on the floor and nodded grimly. That was it, all right! Dried blood made an ugly patch on the floor there. And he could see two places where bullets had smashed into the wood. That meant that the man had been on the floor, using the telephone—he had said he was hurt—when the killer returned and finished him!
To his own satisfaction Van had proved that someone had been killed in that cabin—someone who knew the Lynx's plans. Now to explore the possibility of some clue having been left here by the killer.
METHODICALLY, Van went over every square foot of the cabin. He found a bullet embedded in the wall, more bloodstains, also covered by a shifting of furniture. That was where the man must have been shot originally, and left for dead.
Van dug out the bullet, saw that it had been fired by a heavy-calibered gun. He dropped it into his pocket. No other clues—and that brought him to his third and most important objective—had the killer taken the body with him, dumping it perhaps miles from here? Or was it hidden near the cabin?
He stood there, narrow-eyed, formulating some logical course of investigation. The front door of the cabin faced the clearing and the road. The killer must have had his car out there. If he had carried the body away with him, then he must have dragged it through the front door. If, however, he had hidden it near the cabin, then he probably would have used the rear door, for there seemed little chance a body could have been hidden near the clearing in front of the cabin, and there had been too great a chance of the killer being seen by someone in a passing car.
The rear door had no lock, a heavy slide bolt holding it on the inside. The door had a round, porcelain knob. If unused for months, there should be a film of dust on the porcelain. He focused the flashlight on it, and knew he was on the right trail. The lower half of the knob had dust on it. The dust on the upper half had been removed by a hand, twisting the knob!
Van opened the door and stepped outside. Some attempt at farming must have once been made here. The thick underbrush, blending with the woods beyond it, was several hundred yards away, but only weeds now choked the cleared space. On the left was a shed, its door ajar and sagging from one hinge. Van's flashlight exposed rusty, broken farm implements, coils of rope, a small pile of firewood. No place here where a body might be secreted.
He walked out, looked around again, darting his flashlight here and there. The savage downpour of a few hours ago had effaced all possible footprints or blood stains. But the weeds were waist high, and a body might easily lie unnoticed among them. Or it could have been taken to the underbrush and the woods at the top of the slope. Van scowled as he realized that it needed a searching party—and hours perhaps—to comb all that section thoroughly.
He stood there, hunching his shoulders against the cold wind which was slashing across the ridge. The tall weeds slanted before the wind, and he kept passing his flashlight over them, hoping to spot a hump somewhere. He saw none, but he did notice that some of the weeds did not yield as much to the wind as did the rest. There seemed a billowy patch there, a path almost, where the weeds showed a greater resistance to the wind.
Suddenly he thought why. Something had been dragged over those weeds in the direction opposite the one from which the wind was now coming. The body?
Excitement glinting in his eyes, he traced that path, if such it might be called. It seemed to peter out near a dog kennel some fifty feet from where Van stood. He threw his searchlight on it.
The kennel was small. No adult's body could be crammed into it. And when he approached it, the wet weeds soaking his trousers, there was nothing inside it, and nothing around it, apparently. But he kept searching in the weeds, each time widening the circle from the hub of the kennel. Nothing!
DISAPPOINTED, he was about to return to the cabin when he noticed stone beneath the rotting boards of the kennel. He thrust out his foot, brushed aside some of the weeds. The kennel rested on a stone foundation—a stone block, six inches thick and four feet square. A stone foundation for a dog kennel? It seemed absurd—
"It's a cistern!" he spoke aloud.
He grabbed the roof of the kennel, tugged at it. The little structure slid off the ledge. And it exposed, as Van had expected, the round metal cover of a cistern. He clawed up the lifting ring. Metal clanged on stone as he heaved aside the heavy iron disk.
He directed the flashlight into the black hole exposed—and he made a sibilant sound through his teeth. It was a cement underground water storage tank, dry now. The first three feet descended in a circular well, then the cement sides slanted out to form a hollow pyramid. And on the stone floor, some twenty feet below, lay two bodies!
A double murder! Two bodies, dumped into that cistern, one falling on top of the other. There was something horribly callous in the way they sprawled there, like some discarded objects carelessly tossed on a garbage heap. The body on top lay on its stomach. Van could only see that it was the body of someone who had had white hair, now hideously stained with dried blood.
Abruptly he removed his finger from the flashlight button and froze, as still as a startled animal. He thought he had heard a furtive sound that was not part of the night. He crouched there, listening, patient as an Indian. There was no repetition of the sound. Some little night animal must have scurried by.
He straightened and plowed through the weeds back to the woodshed. One coil of rope there was fairly new, easily capable of supporting his weight. He picked it up, grabbed a stout plank that was longer than the diameter of the circular well opening.
Returning to the cistern, he noticed a water pipe, terminating in a valve, which protruded into the well. He considered attaching one end of the rope to it, then he decided that it might break.
He used the plank. Lashing one end of the rope to the center of it, he dropped the rest down the well and lowered himself. When he hung with one elbow hooked over the top, he pocketed the flashlight, slid over the plank so that it straddled the opening.
Grabbing the rope, he lowered himself into the dank blackness. Soon he felt his foot touch one of the bodies. Reluctant to descend on them, he hung on to the rope with one hand and got his flashlight out with the other. Then he kicked one slanted wall and dropped when he swung to the other, thus clearing the bodies.
He rolled over the man on top, directed the light on him. He found himself looking at an old man's wrinkled face. The staring blue eyes still held an expression of terror. There was a bullet hole below the lobe of his left ear. A swastika carved with a knife on his forehead held Van's attention. What did that mean?
HE SHIFTED the light to the other man, and now Van's flash spotlighted horror! Horror in suggestion, in implication, as well as actual appearance. This gray-haired, mousy-looking little man had undergone prolonged torture.
His old-fashioned wing collar had been ripped to one side, his shirt opened to expose his bony chest. There were two bullet-holes in his chest. Around and above them, on his chest, his thin neck, his face, the point of a knife had made shallow stabs. And in as many other places, the burning end of a cigarette had left a devilish polka-dot effect in black burns on the skin.
"The dirty rats!" Van muttered grimly.
The white-haired old man, the hideously tortured little man—who were they? Why had they been killed? Which one of them had screamed a message to the Phantom, even as he watched death reach for him?
"Tell the Phantom this—a tilted flagpole and Jackson's nose mark—" What did that incompleted message mean?
WITH this dank underground tomb beginning to scrape his nerves Van checked the impulse to search the bodies now. It would be a nasty place in which to be trapped. And then, his eyes narrowing, he wondered what had suddenly given him such a thought. A subtle warning of some sort?
He made an impatient gesture, and reached for the rope dangling from the plank twenty feet above him. The free end of it was piled up between the two bodies. He looped a section of it beneath the old man's armpits and secured it there. Then he lashed the remaining free section around the other body.
It was as he was doing this that one of the knife wounds on the little man's neck particularly attracted his attention. He bent closer to it—and that quick move saved his life!
A gun crashed above him, the report deafening within the subterranean cubicle. The bullet, aimed for the back of his head, passed so close to his left cheek that he literally felt the air it had displaced. It thudded into the little man's body, as Van threw himself against the slanted side of the cistern.
Crouching, his back to the cold stone, he reached for his automatic, thumbed down the safety. He still held on to his flashlight. It's beam, slanted upward, touched the lower rim of the three-foot circular exit from the cistern. Van, because of the sloping wall, was no longer a target to the killer above. Equally useless to him was his own automatic.
The bodies twitched as the man above yanked at the rope. An instant later, the plank to which the rope was attached came plunging down. The clatter it made on the stone might have been the snap of a trap. Without outside help, Van could never get out of here now. Trapped!
A mocking, sibilant voice came from above.
"You lead a charmed life, Phantom! That bullet should have blown your brains out! But it doesn't matter much. What was it you said! You'll stick on this case until perhaps another attempt on your life is more successful? You were prophetic, Phantom! This is it!"
"Why do you take the trouble disguising your voice now?" Van asked calmly.
"I am speaking through a hood, which alters my voice. I've no more reason now to take precautions with you than you have to learn my identity. You died when I anticipated that you would come snooping around the cabin. I got here first, and found it amusing to watch you prowling. You didn't know that you were searching your own tomb, did you? Well, you found it! And I think you'll soon regret that my bullet missed you."
Van's fist tightened on the butt of his gun. There was deadly menace in the mocking voice. What horror had that devil in mind?
And as if the man read Van's thoughts, he went on:
"Curious how I intend to finish you, Phantom? Of course, I won't take the chance of just leaving you down there. I can't shoot you from where I am. I haven't another grenade with me, which would have simplified matters. So what do you think I'll do, Phantom?"
"Get it over with, you rat!" Van clipped.
"Now that was an unfortunate allusion, Phantom," the voice mocked. "I won't call you a rat. I will simply inflict upon you the usual death that a trapped rat suffers at man's hands! People drown trapped rats. The rat swims round and round, claws at the side of the bucket—"
SOFT devilish laughter reached Van. Then there was a sudden hiss and gurgle of water. It splattered the stone floor, formed a pool which began widening swiftly.
The devil up there had turned on the water valve! He was flooding the cistern! Van felt as if a clammy paw had clutched his heart. A rat drowning in a bucket!
He tilted the flashlight beam downward. With a kind of fascination, he watched the pool grow larger, larger. Within a few seconds, it seemed, the water reached his shoes. He retreated, but the water crept on. It climbed to his ankles. Icy water—like the first touch of death!
"Rather novel, isn't it, Phantom?" the voice above mocked.
Van cursed him softly. He realized that the rising water would slowly and inexorably force him away from the base of the slanting walls, force him toward the center of the cistern. Already, water had risen two inches, taking up that much of the angle between the walls and the floor. And it kept rising.
It was like slow paralysis, creeping upward through the body. He lifted his automatic, threw the flash on the rim of the well top and began firing. Again and again and again, until he emptied the gun. His ears were deafened by the reports, and the acrid stench of gunpowder tore at his lungs.
"And what motivated that bright move?" the sibilant voice queried above the rush of water. "Did you think there was a chance of one of the ricocheting bullets hitting me?"
"I am merely hoping that someone may hear the shots," Van replied calmly, "and send a police car to investigate."
"It's a lost hope. There isn't another house for miles and no one uses that side road since the new highway was built. You just won't realize that you're through, will you?"
"No," said Van. "Not yet!"
The man laughed again.
"All right, keep hoping for a miracle. You should have let that grenade explode. It would have been an easier death than the one facing you now. And Trummer's heart wouldn't be broken—as it will be when he gets his summons at eight o'clock. The police guard won't save his hide."
"What's on the books for Trummer?" Van asked casually.
"You're a dead man, Phantom. Can't you remember that, and stop playing sleuth? That water is pretty cold, isn't it? How long do you think you can live in it?"
The water level was knee high now, and climbing faster as the widest base of the pyramid filled up. And it was cold! Murderously so! It was like standing in icy slush. Van's teeth began chattering. Merely to have something to do, he reached in his pocket and slipped a fresh clip into the automatic.
And then for the first time, a small, furtive voice began asking:
"What's the use? What hope have you left? That devil is right! You are through!"
The water was up to his waist, to his chest. He had the illusion of being frozen into a cake of ice. If he fell, could he get up again? And would it matter?
Desperately, he began flexing his muscles, trying to break the paralysis which cramped them. And found it harder and harder to keep his teeth from chattering.
IT WAS a relief, in a way, when he could no longer stand on the bottom and had to tread water to keep from drowning. He had not believed he could force his muscles to move, his legs to kick, and yet he did, somehow. The vent from which the water rushed was practically just above him now.
He lived now only for the showdown that he knew would come in a matter of a few minutes. The ever rising water would soon lift him so that the waiting killer could open fire. But Van had a chance of blasting him, too. He still clutched his automatic.
And then, suddenly, there was a stillness that was stunning. The devil had shut off the water!
"Good-by Phantom," his sibilant voice said. "Enjoy your swim!" There was a clanging sound, and the gray light which had been filtering down was cut off. The killer had replaced the metal cover over the cistern!
"I should have known he'd do that," Van thought dully. "Why should he risk exchanging shots with me? Why not just leave me here to drown?"
Hopeless desperation began drugging Van, and he no longer tried to fight it. Why prolong the agony? Why swim round and round, torturing himself? A rat did that in a bucket, because all it knew was to obey the instinct of self-preservation. But he had reasoning powers. He should realize there was no hope. This was death, certain, inevitable. Why not get it over with?
Sure, get it over with! Relax! Breathe water into your lungs and go down! This icy water is a deadly enemy which cannot be tricked. Why persist in fighting it?
How much time had passed since the killer had left, Van would never know. There was a blank in his mind, and then he was shouting, his voice a hoarse croaking in the blackness. He did have a chance! This same icy water that was killing him might also be his salvation!
Without realizing it he was still holding his flashlight and his automatic. He pressed the button, directed the beam to the water pipe a few feet above him. Then he lifted the automatic. His hand shook and his fingers were numb. He did not seem to be able to press the trigger, and he was startled when the gun went off, apparently of its own accord.
The valve came flying off where it joined the pipe. Again water rushed down the well. And only then did Van realize that the recoil of the shot had made him drop his gun. But it did not matter. Nothing mattered, except the water pouring down, a deadly foe seconds ago, and now an ally rushing to his rescue!
Water lifted him higher, higher. Lifted him toward the cover of the cistern, and life that was beyond it!
He dropped the flashlight and began splashing madly, desperately. He must keep alive until he reached the cistern cover. And must have strength then to lift it, or he still would drown, for he could not shut the water off now!
He did not know he reached the top of the well until his head struck the metal cover. He placed both hands against it, pushed upward. The cover slid off easier than he expected.
There was a terrible temptation simply to hang on, one arm hooked over the side. But he must fight it! He must get out before the paralyzing cold snatched victory from him at the last moment. Moving his body an inch at a time, he dragged himself out on the stone ledge. He paused there on his hands and knees, water dripping from him.
"I made it!" he whispered through blue lips. "I made it!"
HE STOOD up, fell, forced himself to get up. The cold wind stabbed at him. He began shivering like someone in high fever. But he kept moving, in a drunken stagger. To the cabin, around it, to the coupé. He wrenched open the door, reached behind the dashboard and touched a secret button there.
One half of the upper section of the seat silently slid forward. A light went on automatically in the secret compartment. It was carefully stocked with whatever Van had thought he might need when it would be difficult for him to return to his penthouse or secret laboratory. There were suits for complete changes of disguise, weapons and ammunition, first aid equipment, various other objects in cleverly constructed lockers.
From one of the lockers Van drew a flask of brandy, tilted it to his lips. The warmth of the brandy sent his sluggish blood coursing again. He felt life—warm, surging life—begin to return to his numbed body.
He pulled one of the suits off the rack, found another pair of shoes and socks, a shirt and tie and a change of underwear. Rolling the lot into a rough towel, he grabbed a fresh automatic off one of the racks. He was still shivering, but no longer staggered when he returned to the cabin.
Quickly he stripped his wet clothes, rubbed himself with the rough towel until his skin began to glow. It was luxury to put on dry clothes. And it was then that he permitted himself grim exultation. He was out of the tomb, out of the blackness of death. Thrice they tried to get him—and the Phantom still lived!
Yes, he was alive and free, and there was a gun in his fist! He was again a deadly potential menace to those murderous vermin.
"My turn will come!" he told himself. "We'll see what happens at the final showdown!"
HASTILY Van transferred his make-up kit, his badge and mask and other items that he always carried to the suit he now wore. Examining the automatic, he saw that it was fully loaded and in perfect working order. He slid the automatic into his shoulder holster.
Water, he knew, had not affected his disguise, and he didn't want to bother changing it now. He rolled up the wet clothes, returned to the coupé, threw them into the secret compartment. Another touch of the button, and the lowered half-section of the seat lifted back into place.
Now! Van swiftly summed up the situation as it stood at the moment. The killer, by repeating what Van had told the men in Clark's office, proved that he had been one of them. The hood he had mentioned established him as the Lynx. He must have circled and got on the side road from the opposite direction Van had taken, which accounted for the Phantom not having seen any tire marks in the road.
It would be a waste of time, trying to guess his identity. But Van did not regret his visit to the cabin, despite his bitter experience. He was richer in information, and so, closer to trapping that masked fiend. He tabulated what he had learned.
He knew definitely now that the Lynx was one of the men he had seen in Clark's office.
He had substantiation of his earlier deduction that an integral part of the Lynx's schemes was Harvey Trummer's murder.
He had learned that the Lynx planned to kill Trummer at eight o'clock.
And in that cistern he had discovered two of the Lynx's victims. Their identification should be of vital importance.
He glanced at his wrist-watch which, waterproof, was still running. It was a few minutes past six. Almost two hours before Trummer was scheduled to be murdered. That left plenty of time to check on the two bodies in the cistern, one of whom must have been the man who had contacted Havens.
HE REENTERED the cabin, strode to the telephone. There was a chance that Chief Morris might still be in Clark's office. He was, and Van wasted no words when the police chief got on the wire.
"This is the Phantom," he clipped. "Come out to the cabin—right away. If Huston is with you, bring him along."
"We're on our way!" was Chief Morris' laconic reply.
Hanging up, Van walked out through the rear door and approached the cistern. Water still overflowed the circular opening, and Van felt a faint shudder, reminded of the killing chill of it. Then he was startled to see the edge of the plank turning slowly as it protruded from the hole.
He had forgotten the plank to which he had attached the rope when lowering himself into the cistern. It had bobbed up in the overflow. That simplified the problem of getting the bodies out, since the plank had brought up the rope to which Van had lashed them.
He pulled out the plank, felt the weight of the first body lifting off the bottom. He began pulling up the wet rope, hand over hand.
The old man's head bobbed out of the water like some macabre jack-in-the-box. The water had dissolved some of the caked blood, and it stained his white hair crimson. Van stared again at the wrinkled face, the bulging blue eyes still expressing terror, the swastika carved on the forehead. Van lifted his body higher and lowered it on the stone.
THEN came the nightmarish horror of the little man's mutilated face. His thin body joined the old man's on the ledge. And there they lay—two men the Lynx had murdered! Who were they?
A search of the old man's body yielded a sodden wallet. It held a few small bills and a social security card which merely established the fact that the man's name had been Otto Warner.
The little man also had a wallet. An auto license and personal cards in it showed that he had been Wallace Colby of North City. And although Van went carefully through the other soaked papers in the wallet, and searched both bodies again more thoroughly, all he could learn was the names of the two men.
He shrugged and straightened as the sound of an approaching car reached him. It stopped at the cabin, then Chief Morris and Steve Huston appeared in the rear door. They broke into a run when they saw Van—and then both stopped short, as if they had struck some invisible wire.
Huston could only gasp, staring at the bodies.
"Do you know them, Chief?" Van asked.
Chief Morris looked dazed.
"Why, yes! The old man was Otto Warner, an engraver employed by Mason. The little fellow was Walter Colby, Trummer's private secretary. This is getting to be a longer nightmare than—"
"Hold it, Chief!" Van interrupted. "You say the old man was an engraver?"
"Yes. Mason owns the North City Printing and Engraving Company. Warner worked for him. I got to know him when he adopted an orphaned kid in whom I was interested."
"Was the kid's name Nickie? And did Warner speak with a German accent?"
Morris blinked.
"Yes. But how did you know that?"
"The man who contacted Havens from that cabin spoke with a German accent. He mentioned a kid Nickie, who'd told him about the Phantom. Warner was that man! And now that I know he was an engraver, the incompleted message is beginning to make sense."
"What message?" Huston cut in.
"We'll skip that now, Steve... What else do you know about Warner, Chief?"
Morris shook his head.
"Only that he was a nice old fellow whom everyone liked."
"How about Walter Colby?"
"He'd been with Trummer ever since I can remember. Twenty years or more. A silent little gray ghost of a man. Probably the only man whom Trummer fully trusted."
"Which is what the killer believed, too," Van said quietly. "And it cost Colby his life. He'd obviously been tortured to reveal certain information about Harvey Trummer."
His eyes were bitter as he watched the two bodies. The old engraver employed by Mason, the mousy little private secretary—whatever had motivated their murder must be interwoven with the Lynx's schemes. Van was certain he would crack this case wide open if he could find out why those two men were murdered! He swung to the police chief.
"Do you know Warner's address?"
"Sure."
"Who lived with him, aside from the kid he adopted?"
"Nobody. There's a woman who comes in every day to do the cleaning and cooking."
"Let's get over there," Van clipped. "I want to have a chat with Nickie."
"Okay. I'll leave my driver with these bodies."
"And we'll use my coupé," Van said. "I may need it later, and I don't want to return here."
CHIEF MORRIS spoke to the uniformed driver of the police sedan, then they squeezed into Van's coupé. As Van sent the car up the hill he asked:
"That cistern, Chief—what's it used for?"
"Our water supply often gives out in the summer. So most people have those storage tanks, which they fill when they expect a water shortage."
"And here's my chance to get something off my chest," Huston said. "Look, Phantom, I know you must have dragged those bodies out of the cistern. But it was full of water. How did you know that they were there? If you guessed it, how could you have attached the rope to them the way it was? You didn't dive down there, did you? Besides, your clothes aren't wet."
"They were, a few minutes ago," Van said grimly.
Briefly he outlined the steps of investigation which had led him to the cistern, and the subsequent torture when the killer trapped him.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" the police chief said softly. "Say, we can round up those men and question each for proof that he went directly home after leaving Clark's office."
Van shook his head.
"No, that wouldn't do us much good. At the hour they left, shortly before dawn, they could hardly be expected to produce witnesses to testify just when they came in. We've a better chance of catching our man if he goes through with his plans to murder Trummer at eight o'clock, as he said he would."
"But how could he get to Trummer? I've six men guarding the house."
"Which he knows," Van clipped, "and which doesn't seem to worry him. We're not dealing with an ordinary criminal, Chief. He's fiendishly clever."
"I'm glad you're in North City," Chief Morris said simply.
They were silent as Van drove on into town, following the police chief's directions for Warner's house. Van had an annoying feeling that he had forgotten something, overlooked something.
Presently, Morris said:
"It's the little cottage on the left—where the lights are on."
Van got out before it and the others trailed him as he crossed to the porch. He could see through one of the lighted windows, and found himself looking at an over-furnished yet cozy little living room. A youngster was asleep, curled in a chair beneath a bridge lamp—a black-haired, olive-skinned, handsome kid of twelve or so.
Van tried the knob of the front door. The door was open. When he entered, the others trouping in after him, the kid awakened. He sat up in the chair, still bewildered with sleep. Then fear widened his black eyes as he stared at Morris.
"Somethin' happened to Uncle Otto," he shrilled. "Didn't it, Chief?"
"Take it easy, Nickie," Chief Morris said gently.
A fierce expression twisted the youngster's face.
"You can tell me," he said. "I ain't no girl. Somethin' did happen to him, didn't it?"
"Yes, Nickie," Van said, "something happened to him. I am the Phantom, and I want to ask you some questions."
NICKIE'S black eyes which fear had shadowed began to glitter. "The Phantom!" Nickie said breathlessly. "I—kept tellin' Uncle Otto to get you to help him. You'd have seen right away that Uncle Otto—he ain't my real uncle, though I call him that—couldn't do nothin' bad."
"What made you think he needed my help, Nickie?" Van asked.
"'Cause he come home lookin' scared one day. I asked him, and he said he told a secret to the wrong man, and that put him in trouble. He wouldn't tell me no more. That's when he got to workin' nights at the plant."
"How long ago was that, Nickie?"
"In March. Right after my birthday."
"In March," Van repeated softly. "Eight months ago. He'd been working nights at the plant ever since?" The youngster nodded.
"Yes. He'd come home late, then he'd have to go to work again in the morning."
"Wait a minute," Chief Morris cut in. "Mason's plant had no night shift. You sure he used to work there nights?"
"Yes. He was tryin' to invent somethin', he said, and was usin' the equipment at the plant. Tonight was the first time he came home early."
"What time was that, Nickie?"
"About nine o'clock. He had a suitcase with him, and he said he had to go somewhere, but he'd be back and he wouldn't have to work nights no more, and we could have fun together like we used to. He—he never did come back!"
Nickie took a step closer to Van, and his voice shook as he went on: "Uncle Otto—he wouldn't run away without tellin' me. What happened to him?"
"I know you can take it, Nickie, so I'll give it to you straight," Van said quietly. "Somebody killed him. I'll get the man who did it."
Nickie's eyes became bigger and darker. His throat began twitching spasmodically.
"I can take it," he said in a strangled voice. "Only—only it's kinda hard to know—you're all alone—all over again!"
Van put his arm around the youngster's thin shoulders.
"You'll be taken care of, Nickie. From now on, you've got a friend in the Phantom!"
Nickie's black eyes began to shine. "You—you goin' now to catch the man who killed Uncle Otto?"
"That's right, Nickie. I'll get him!"
RETURNING to the coupé, Van took the wheel.
"We're calling on Mason, Chief," he clipped, "and we're in a hurry. How do I go from here?"
"Straight ahead to the end of this street, then swing left."
Van swung the coupé away from the curb. His grim face, and the speed at which he drove, discouraged the others from asking questions. Tires screeched as the coupé slithered into the tree-lined drive in which the side street terminated.
"Better slow down," Chief Morris said. "It's the corner house past the next intersection."
Van cut the motor and switched off the lights, gliding up to Mason's home as the killers in the sedan had done to the Chronicle Building. It was a comfortable-looking house, fronted by shrubbery. Lights showed in the downstairs windows. Van slipped up to the porch and peered through one of the windows.
Fred Mason, chewing a cigar, his hands jammed in his pockets, was pacing the living room. He was fully dressed, and his pink-cheeked face no longer looked cherubic. He was worried, and showed it in the way he paced the room.
Moving to the door, Van raised and dropped the brass knocker. Mason opened the door.
"Well!" he said, his blue eyes widening. "Quite an early call, isn't it?"
"Yes, I wanted to have a talk with you," Van murmured.
He studied the man. If Mason was the Lynx, then the appearance of the Phantom, supposedly dead at the bottom of the cistern, should be quite a shock to him. But Mason had retreated behind his mask of cold reserve.
"Sure," he said. "Come on in."
He flung open the door. Van entered, trailed by Huston and Morris. Mason led them into the living room. Van shook his head when a cigar humidor was extended to him.
"No, thanks," he said, and asked casually, "You've been suffering with insomnia?"
Mason picked up another cigar, bit off its end, and replied as casually: "I suppose there was some significance behind that remark. You spoke the truth, however. Insomnia, yes! May I be direct and ask you for the reason for this visit?"
Van nodded.
"Of course. We've dug up another murder. The victim was Otto Warner, one of your employees."
Mason stared, and if he were acting, he did an excellent job.
"Good Lord!" he said. "But why should anybody wish to murder him?"
"That," said Van, "is what I thought you might be able to tell us."
Mason shook his head.
"Otto Warner ran my plant. He was a kindly old fellow, sweet-tempered, honest. He knew the printing and engraving business from top to bottom. I can't think of any conceivable reason why someone should want to kill him."
"Did he work nights at your plant?" Van asked.
"Why, yes."
"Doing what?"
"He told me he wanted to experiment on a new process of engraving which might cut out the use of certain vital materials that are now impossible to get because of priorities. I told him to go ahead. I knew that if he hit upon something, I'd profit by it, too."
IT SEEMED to Van that the explanation was too careful and elaborate.
"Was he alone there nights?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"And you never dropped in to check on what he was doing?"
"I don't quite understand what you're getting at," Mason said coldly. "Why should I check on Warner? He was in complete charge of my plant. He'd been with me eight years."
Van decided to slap his cards down on the table.
"Tell me this," he said bluntly. "Was Otto Warner skillful enough as an engraver to make plates for counterfeit money? And have you the equipment in your plant to have enabled him to print counterfeit?"
"I'll answer your question," Mason said slowly, "then I'll tell you that your suspicions are absurd. It's true that Otto Warner was the finest engraver that I've ever known. My plant has the latest modern equipment. Warner could have made the plates and run off counterfeit bills. But there was no reason for him to do that. I paid him a good salary and he was an honest man."
"But sometimes people are forced to do something against their will," Van said. "Which is what I believe happened to Otto Warner. Do you know of anything in his past that might give someone a blackmail hold on him?"
Mason's eyes dropped before Van's steady gaze.
"That hit home, Mason," Van said softly. "You know the answer to what I've just asked you. Now I'm curious whether you'll tell it to me. If you're innocent, there's no reason why you should hold it back. Warner is dead."
Mason watched his cigar, slowly twirling it between his fingers. Finally he looked up, his eyes bright and wary.
"All right, I'll tell you. You'll probably ferret this out anyway, once you start checking into Warner's past. Otto Warner was a leader of an underground movement in Germany, a bitter foe of Hitler and the Nazi party. He was finally discovered, and escaped from Germany. The Gestapo believed him dead. That was eight years ago.
"He entered this country by stowing away on a Dutch freighter. As an enemy alien, illegally in this country, he should be in a concentration camp now. That's one thing that the old man feared. He was even more terrified that terrible reprisals would be taken on his family, still in Germany, should the Gestapo learn that he was alive. That's your answer."
"I see," Van said. "How did you learn that?"
"Warner confided in me, because he felt he could trust me. He wanted to know what he could do, when the shadow of being deported hung over him before the war, about getting around the illegal entry and becoming an American citizen."
"To whom else did he tell that?"
"Three people that I know of," Mason replied promptly. "He told Trummer, because he wanted money to reach his family in Germany without the identity of the sender being known. He told Judge Bentley, who has some political pull. He also told Greeley, who has influential friends in Washington. In a cautious way, they tried to do something for the old man—and couldn't. But they knew!"
"And that's why you felt it safe to tell me Warner's secret," Van said.
Mason shrugged.
"You may put it that way, if you like. All I know is that I let Warner use the plant nights for experiments. If he made counterfeit money, I know nothing about it."
VAN took a swift step nearer, stooped, and brushed Mason's trousers.
"They're damp," he said. "You've been walking in high grass?"
Veins stood out on Mason's temples.
"Yes, I've been wandering about on the ground," Mason said stolidly. "My insomnia."
"Maybe you've a bit more now, to keep you awake," Van said grimly. "We'll run along."
He gestured to Chief Morris and Huston, and they walked out. Back in the coupé, Chief Morris said helplessly:
"This is getting over my head. What connection did Warner have with the Lynx and his schemes? Counterfeit has had nothing to do with it."
"But it ties in," Van said. "It's got to! But first let's make our final call. Where did Walter Colby live?"
"At the Regal Hotel."
Five minutes later, Van led the way into the lobby of a modest hotel. The yawning night clerk came awake at sight of the three grim-faced men.
"How long have you been on duty?" Van snapped.
The clerk glanced at the police chief.
"Since eight o'clock last night," he replied.
"Did you see Walter Colby leave?"
"Yes. At about nine. Some girl called for him."
"Did you notice what she looked like?"
The clerk grinned.
"Yes. Because Colby never has girls calling for him. I don't think he ever had a date in his life. And here he's out all night, almost, and—"
"Just answer my questions," Van interrupted curtly. "What did the girl look like?"
"Well, she looked Spanish. Tall, dark-skinned, long black hair. Kind of exotic."
"That's her!" Morris snapped. "The Lynx's girl friend! She lured the poor little guy out of here—" Van checked him with a gesture. He returned to the coupé, sat quietly behind the wheel a while.
"Look, Phantom," Huston pleaded, "won't you tell us what Warner said to Mr. Havens?"
"I'll try to quote it, exactly," Van said.
And he repeated what the pain-choked voice had said over the telephone before gunshots terminated it.
"Does that incompleted message—'Jackson's nose and tilted flagpole mark'—make sense to you now?"
"No," Huston admitted frankly.
"A twenty-dollar bill has Andrew Jackson's portrait on the face of it and the White House on its back. An American flag flies over the White House. Someone forced Warner, by knowing the jam he could get him in and using it as a club, to counterfeit money for him. That's what he must have had in the suitcase when he went to meet the Lynx at the cabin. He was murdered because he had completed the job, the Lynx muffing the first attempt, thus giving Warner a chance to contact Havens."
"I get it now!" Huston said. "What he was trying to say about Jackson's nose and the tilted flagpole was a tip-off about the imperfections that would enable you to spot the phony twenties he made."
"That's it! Mason might have forced him to do it. Or the others who knew about his status—Bentley, Trummer or Greeley."
"You don't think Mason was just lying about those men also knowing?"
"No. It's too easy for me to check it."
CHIEF MORRIS shook his head, unsatisfied.
"I still say," he cut in, "how does it tie up with the other stuff? With Walter Colby's murder, for instance?"
"That's what I must find out next," Van said firmly. "Colby was tortured probably in an attempt to find out where Trummer kept the documentary evidence of the supposed hold he has on Bentley and Craig. From the way Trummer spoke, I'm sure that such evidence does exist. And that evidence, whatever it is, must be the reason why Trummer's murder is an integral part of the Lynx's plans."
"How can you find that out, since you can't go through Trummer's private papers?"
"There might be a way," Van said, "and I don't mean safe-cracking, either."
Chief Morris shook his head. "Phantom, you don't know Harvey Trummer. He's a tough old bird who can't be frightened and can't be bluffed. And if he has got some hold on Bentley and Craig, he sure isn't going to admit it."
"I think I'll get what I want!" Van said grimly, starting the coupé. "Trummer's home is our next stop." Van parked half a block beyond Trummer's pretentious Colonial house. It was set back from the street, bordered by hedges, and had quite a bit of ground around it. A fog had come rolling in, gray and wet. Van and his companions had swung into the driveway leading to the house when a man, brandishing a gun, stepped out from a hedge.
"Okay, Sergeant," Chief Morris snapped.
The man lowered his gun, saluted. "Sorry, Chief. Didn't recognize you."
"Anything happen?"
"No, sir. His bedroom lights were on a while, then he turned them off. I guess he went to sleep."
"Which is his bedroom?" Van asked.
"The front room on the second floor," the policeman said.
"What are your plans, anyway?" Chief Morris asked Van.
"Wait for me outside the front door," Van said. "I may have a message for you soon."
BOTH Morris and Huston watched with interest as Van opened the locked entrance door with his flexible strip of steel, almost as quickly as if he had the key to it. His pocket flashlight ready, he glided inside and gently closed the door behind him.
He paused a few seconds, listening. The big house was dark and silent. Satisfied, he risked a flashlight beam. He was in a longish hall, in which a staircase curved upward.
A telephone stood on a little table under the stairs. A door terminated the hall, beyond the telephone and Van investigated. It led to the basement stairs.
In his mind he measured the distance between the telephone and the cellar door, and continued prowling about softly, like a burglar investigating a strange house. Off the hall was a huge living room. It was coldly prim, old-fashioned, apparently little used.
Crossing it, Van shone his flashlight on the smaller room beyond it. This was a combination study-office, furnished with a modern desk, steel filing cabinets, book shelves. A pipe rack and a jar of tobacco stood at one side of the telephone here. On the other was a decanter of brandy. At the opposite wall was a smaller desk, obviously used by Trummer's secretary. The evidence Van wanted should be here somewhere.
He backed out of the study, paused again, listening. Trummer, warned that a murder attempt might be made on him, certainly would not hesitate to blaze away with a gun if he heard someone prowling about the house. But all was still. Softly, Van mounted the carpeted stairs, slipped toward Trummer's bedroom.
The sound of snoring came from the open door on the left. And enough gray light filtered in from the windows to show Harvey Trummer, completely dressed, snoring on the bed. A big Army automatic lay next to the telephone on the night table beside the bed.
Van slipped downstairs again, softly opened the front door and joined Huston and the police chief.
"How do Trummer and Bentley address each other, Chief?" he whispered.
"Why, by their last names," Morris said.
"And where is the nearest public pay booth?"
"There's one at the railroad station, a few blocks from here."
"That'll be your job, Steve," Van said. "Get over there and telephone Trummer. When he answers, don't say a word. I'll do all the talking, from an extension in the house."
"Anything you want me to do?" Chief Morris asked.
Van smiled crookedly.
"Sure. You can direct Steve to the station."
He reentered the house, closed the door, winced at the slight scraping sound it made. Then he headed for the telephone on the little table under the stairs. He backed with it toward the cellar door he had left open, hooked the cord under the door, then brought the door almost shut, so that he stood with the telephone in the darkness at the top of the cellar stairs.
He lowered the instrument to the floor, knelt beside it and tied a handkerchief over the lower part of his face. He had several minutes before Huston would telephone, and he concentrated on recalling how Judge Bentley spoke. A deep voice, with a faint suggestion of a midwestern twang—Van knew he could imitate it without any trouble.
HE TENSED as the phone rang outside the cellar door, even as it was also ringing in the bedroom upstairs. Van gently lifted the receiver, just in time to hear a sleepy voice answer.
"Hello, this is Bentley," Van said angrily, in the voice of the man he was impersonating. "Look, Trummer, why did you sell Craig and me down the river? If they scared you into it, you might at least have given us some warning!"
Trummer's voice was no longer sleepy as he snapped back:
"What the devil are you talking about?"
"Don't act so innocent!" Van went on. "I've just had a phone call. From somebody who knew everything. I told the man he was crazy, but he had the facts, all right! And he warned me that the opposition paper will get documentary evidence at noon if I don't publicly announce earlier that I am withdrawing from the campaign. Documentary proof could only come from you! I figure you sold out to Mason and took the roundabout way of having somebody call me—"
"Wait a minute, you fool!" Trummer yelled. "I've had no dealings with anyone. Hold the wire!"
Van heard footsteps pounding down the stairs. Peering through the crack in the door he saw Trummer race down the stairs and dart into the living room.
Van glided out after him. Reaching the living room door, he found that Trummer had crossed the room and switched on the lights in the office-study.
Trummer was at one of the bookcases, pulling down several heavy volumes. The shiny dial of a small wall safe was exposed. The banker began twirling the dial—and Van eased out his gun. If what Trummer was looking for was still there, he would have the unpleasant shock of being held up by an unknown masked man!
Trummer had his unpleasant shock, without any help from Van! He opened the safe, darted his hand inside. It clawed there, then came out—empty! Van heard him curse viciously. And from the rage which twisted, his bony face as he whirled away from the safe, Van knew that what Trummer had been looking for had been stolen by the killer!
Trummer's little eyes, red and glaring, shifted to the telephone on the desk. If he used that phone to continue the conversation with "Judge Bentley," Van had to get back to the cellar door fast!
The thick rug in the living room muffled his footsteps as he whirled and darted back to the hall. And he had just time to swing behind the cellar door when Trummer charged out into the hall. The banker appeared so quickly that Van's first thought was that Trummer had spotted him. Then he was startled to see Trummer pause before a mounted elk's head which hung on the wall halfway between the front door and where Van crouched.
Trummer reached up, grabbed the horns, and twisted them. The elk's head and neck turned, then became detached in Trummer's hands. Trummer stuck one hand into the hollow neck. He drew something out of it, and struck a match to examine some kind of papers. Apparently satisfied, he put the papers back and screwed the head into place.
VAN had a tense moment when he feared that Trummer might use the phone under the stairs, or notice that it was missing there. But the banker ran upstairs. Van lifted the headpiece.
"Hello, Bentley?" he heard Trummer snap.
"Yes?" Van said.
"The original papers are gone. Stolen from my wall safe. Only two people could have done it, and I'll have both of them on the carpet here within ten minutes. In the meanwhile, get this: I've had the foresight to make photostatic copies, see? These I still have! So you still better take orders from me. Do nothing until I get in touch with you again, later!"
Trummer hung up, the bang jarring Van's ear. Then Van replaced the receiver on its supporting bar. Van felt grim satisfaction as he crouched there in the darkness. His clever little trick had worked! He had positive proof that Trummer had a blackmail hold over Judge Bentley and District Attorney Craig. The killer had stolen documentary evidence of it—an important fact, in itself. And Van knew exactly where photostatic copies of it were!
He guessed that Trummer had gone upstairs, rather than use the phones in the study or under the stairs, because he wanted to break the connection in the bedroom and put through a call—probably to contact the two men he suspected of stealing the papers. He gently lifted the receiver again.
It was a good guess! He heard a phone ringing, then a bored voice said:
"Regal Hotel."
"Connect me with Walter Colby," Trummer snapped.
"Sorry, but Mr. Colby isn't in."
"Where else could my secretary be at this hour?" Trummer shouted. "This is Harvey Trummer calling."
"Sorry, Mr. Trummer," the clerk said, "but Mr. Colby left the hotel at nine or so last night and he hasn't returned."
Trummer cursed and hung up.
Van also pressed down the bar. He waited a minute or so, then slowly lifted the finger which held down the bar. Trummer must have put through his second call immediately.
"I won't bother to explain now," he was saying harshly. "You'll find out when you get here, if you're undressed, slip an overcoat on. You're only a couple of blocks from here. Do as I tell you, blast it!"
"Okay," a weary voice said, "I'll be right over."
Trummer hung up again, Van doing likewise. The voice of the man summoned by the banker sounded familiar, but Van couldn't place it. He was about to ascertain if Trummer was using the phone again, when he heard the banker descending the stairs. Muttering under his breath, Trummer walked to the front door, flung it open. Then he fell back.
"Why are you skulking out there, Chief?" he shouted.
"Skulking?" Chief Morris repeated angrily. "Huh! I'm only checking on the men I've got here for your protection."
"You needn't get hot," Trummer growled. "Anyway, my son-in-law is on his way here. It would not please me to have one of your bright cops shoot him by mistake."
TRUMMER reentered the house, viciously slamming the door behind him. And Van now had still another point of information to file away. Walter Colby, the murdered secretary, and Edmund Scott, Trummer's son-in-law, were the two men whom the banker suspected of stealing those papers!
Trummer was pacing back and forth in the semi-darkness of the hall. Van hoped that the banker would not notice the missing telephone, with the wires trailing to the cellar door. But Trummer, occupied with his thoughts, paid little attention to what was around him.
When finally the bell rang, Trummer lunged for the door, threw it open. Handsome, athletic-looking Edmund Scott walked in.
"Hello," he said. "What's happened? Why did you telephone me?"
"Come into my study," Trummer said curtly.
Scott shrugged and trailed the older man through the living-room door. Van sneaked out with the telephone, closed the cellar door behind him and replaced the instrument where it was originally. Then he tiptoed to the mounted elk's head. Grabbing the horns, he twisted them, as he had seen Trummer do it.
The head came off, and Van dipped his hand into the hollow neck. He felt papers inside, slipped them out and jammed them into his pocket. Then he screwed the head back on again, and edged toward the living-room door.
The study door was open, but no voices came from there. Then Van heard Scott say tersely:
"For heaven's sake, will you stop glaring at me? Is this some sort of psychological trick? Why did you want me to come here?"
"Scott, only two people knew the combination of my wall safe," Trummer said slowly. "You're one of them. Walter Colby is the other. Colby has been with me almost thirty years. I trust him implicitly, and I had begun to believe I could trust you."
"What are you getting at?"
"Within the past twenty-four hours, someone opened my wall safe and stole certain valuable papers. I'd stake my life that Colby wouldn't do that. Which leaves—you!"
There was another pause, then Scott said evenly:
"Look, Mr. Trummer, I've taken a great deal from you in the years that I've been married to your daughter. You've never approved of me, but because I love Grace I've put up with the surly and insulting attitude that you've always shown me. If Grace weren't ill, requiring expensive medical attention all the time—"
"Never mind speeches!" Trummer growled. "You're not on the stage now!"
"But you are one short step from a broken jaw!" Scott said, an ugly note in his voice. "To be accused of being a crook is a little too much! I haven't been near your safe in months. If I wanted to be a thief, thousands of dollars pass through my hands every day at the bank. Why should I bother with your private papers? What good would they do me?"
"Just how money passes through your hands in the bank is something else I've been thinking about lately," Trummer said. "There are some peculiar manipulations on the books, and the bank examiners who are due at the end of the week might think the same."
"That's the next mean thing you could think of, eh?" Scott said contemptuously. "So now I've stolen money from the bank!"
"Oh, shut up!" Trummer snapped, but there was a defeated note in his voice. "Have you any idea where Colby can be now?"
"I'll make the brilliant deduction that, considering the hour, he's in bed, asleep."
"He isn't! I phoned his hotel. I—I can't understand it. Colby never gallivants all night somewhere."
"Has it occurred to you, before you accused me, that there might be a link between Colby's disappearance and those missing papers?" Scott said coldly.
EDGING to the front door, Van carefully opened it, slipped through, and pushed it shut behind him. He thought he had heard enough, and he wanted to leave before Scott was dismissed.
Huston had rejoined Chief Morris outside the door, and Van gestured for them to follow him as he darted along the driveway to the street.
"Did it work?" Huston asked, when they reached his coupé. "I couldn't help hearing—"
"It worked, Steve," Van said grimly.
He slid behind the wheel and snapped on the dashboard light as the other two scrambled into the car. Van drew the papers out of his pocket, unfolded them beneath the dashboard light. There were two sheets—photostatic copies of typed letters. The first read:
I, the undersigned, do hereby acknowledge having received on May 11, 1934, the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars from Harvey Trummer, said money to be given to Ethel Warren Bentley, my legal wife, in return for her promise to drop the charges of bigamy which she can truthfully bring up against me. I admit that I was her legal husband at the time when I married Joan Ryder of North City.
Horace Bentley.
"That's it, all right!" Van said softly.
"He'd just been elected mayor at that time," Chief Morris said, an incredulous note in his voice. "And he and Joan had two children. It would have ruined him."
"It would also have put him in jail, as it still can," Van said. "Let's see what the other paper is."
The second sheet read:
I, the undersigned, do hereby promise that, in return for certain considerations, I will not reveal bigamy evidence placed before me as District Attorney of Merrit County by Ethel Warren Bentley, lawful wife of Municipal Judge Horace G. Bentley.
Jefferson Craig.
"And that," Van said grimly, "can cook Mr. Craig's goose, too. Withholding knowledge of a felony, sanctioning blackmail—the easiest that he could get off with is being disbarred. And criminal proceedings could be brought against him, if someone wanted to be tough."
"I don't see why Craig stuck his neck out by signing that," Morris said. "It's true that he and Bentley are close friends. But why did Craig have to sign that paper?"
"That's easy to figure out," Van replied slowly. "Bentley hadn't the money to pay off the woman. Desperate, he appealed to Trummer. Bankers don't casually lend such a large sum of money without adequate security. Apparently, Bentley hadn't sufficient security to get the money as a loan, and he was forced to tell Trummer why he had to have it. The banker saw certain advantages in holding a club over someone at the head of the town's political machine which might be worth twenty-five thousand dollars to him. But there could be no permanency to such a hold if Craig didn't also commit himself, in writing, as being a collusive party."
"I get it now," Huston said. "Craig might have a brawl with Bentley and expose the mess, claiming he accidentally discovered it, which would be hard to disprove. It would drag Trummer into a scandal, in addition to costing him twenty-five grand."
"Exactly. Craig probably signed because he was a pal of Bentley's and those were the only terms under which Trummer would give Bentley the money. I'll ask both of you to say nothing about it when we return to Trummer's home."
"Okay, Phantom." Chief Morris nodded. "But look! These are photostatic copies. Where are the originals?"
VAN thrust the papers into his pocket and glanced at his wrist-watch. It was twenty minutes of eight.
"The Lynx stole the originals out of Trummer's safe, to which the secretary had the combination," he said. "That's why Colby, after being tortured, wound up dead at the bottom of that cistern. But that still gets us no closer to the Lynx's identity. The Lynx may be Bentley or Craig, yes! He may also be any of the other men, who could make excellent use of that blackmail evidence. Like Mason or Whittier, for instance! Our job now is to nip the Lynx's next move—Trummer's murder at eight o'clock."
"You still think he would dare to try it?" Chief Morris said. "With us in the house, with half a dozen cops on guard outside?"
"He's a nervy and clever devil. We'd better get over there!"
He wrenched open the coupé's door, and froze as he heard footsteps across the street. It was Edmund Scott, walking swiftly, with his hands jammed in his pockets. Without looking at the coupé, he strode on, disappearing around the next corner. Trummer was alone again.
A minute later, Van again stood at the entrance to Trummer's house. This time he rang the bell. Trummer opened the door. He glared at Van, then his angry eyes shifted to the police chief.
"Why didn't you tell me, when I spoke to you before, that you were in Walter Colby's hotel asking questions about him?"
"Why should he tell you?" Van cut in.
"Colby is my secretary, isn't he?" Trummer snapped.
"Is there any specific reason why you're suddenly so concerned about Colby?" Van asked slowly.
Trummer stared at him, then he flung the door open all the way. "Perhaps you'd better come in."
They followed the banker into his study. Van noticed that the books had been replaced where the wall safe was. Lighting a cigarette, Trummer said sharply:
"All right, what about my secretary? Has anything happened to him?"
"Yes," Van replied. "He was murdered. Tortured first, then murdered. Apparently someone wanted information from him. Can you tell us what information?"
A grayish tint crept into Trummer's face. He was silent a while, then he said with forced deliberation: "I've no idea what information Colby could have that could warrant his torture and murder. Is that why you came here?"
Van shook his head.
"No. I'm here now because I believe that another murder attempt will be made on you—at eight o'clock."
"Murder attempt?" Trummer echoed sharply. "Police are watching the house, aren't they?"
"Yes. And the killer is fully aware of it."
A haunted look showed in Trummer's eyes.
"How do you know that? Where did you get your information?"
"Since I don't enjoy your confidence," Van said coldly, "I see no reason why I should bother explaining. You may take my word that I've told you the truth. Is there anything you intended to do at eight o'clock?"
"No. I seldom leave the house before nine."
"Is there any particular thing you generally do, at eight o'clock in the morning?"
"No."
"Are you sure?" Van insisted. "You don't take medicine, a pill of some sort, maybe? Or do you expect any one to call you, or telephone?"
TRUMMER began to shake his head, then he said:
"Well, Martin Whittier said he'd phone me at eight. But it's private business that could have no bearing—"
"I'm trying to save your life," Van said sharply. "You'd be intelligent to cooperate with me. Why is Whittier supposed to phone you?"
"He asked me, as we all left Clark's office, if I'd be interested in buying Playland, his amusement park. I said I might consider it, if the price was right. He told me he'd phone me promptly at eight to quote a figure."
"Who was around when Whittier told you that?"
"Why, we were all in a group outside the Chronicle."
Van shook his head. Was it merely coincidence that Whittier would telephone at eight, the time mentioned by the killer? If some murder contrivance was in the telephone, it would have worked when Trummer used the bedroom phone. That's where he logically could be expected to answer the phone at that hour.
What were the Lynx's exact words—"And Trummer's heart wouldn't be broken, as it will be when he gets his summons at eight o'clock. The police guard won't save his hide!"
What could that mean? Did that imply some news about his daughter, who was ill?
Van glanced at his wrist-watch again.
"It's ten of eight," he reminded. "I don't see what other precautions we could take. So we'll wait and see what happens!"
Minutes dragged, in dead stillness. Van stood with his back to the wall, his eyes wary, his nostrils dilating a bit. Chief Morris drew his gun, realized he looked foolish holding it, and put it back. Harvey Trummer divided his time between looking at his watch and helping himself from the brandy decanter. Huston's freckles stood out vividly in the pallor of his face.
Five minutes of eight... three minutes... two... one!
"Eight o'clock!" Trummer panted. "And nothing happened! As I might have known! For what could happen, with—"
He broke off and jumped as the phone rang behind him.
"Just to play safe," Van clipped, "answer the phone on the secretary's desk. I'll pick up the one on your desk."
They did that, simultaneously.
"Hello," Trummer said.
"Hello, Trummer," Martin Whittier's clipped voice said. "Whittier. But before we talk business, maybe you ought to know that some rat ruined your memorial to Ethel!"
"What's that?" Trummer shrilled. "My what? What are you talking about? I—"
But as he paused, Van could see by the expression on his face that Trummer suddenly understood what Whittier meant. There was a clattering sound as the phone dropped out of his hand onto the desk-top. He whirled and darted out of the study, ignoring Van's warning shout.
Van collided with Chief Morris when they both charged after Trummer. When he got through the study door Trummer was running across the living room.
"STOP, you fool!" Van yelled savagely.
Trummer kept going. Through the dining room, where he upset a chair in his headlong rush. Van leaped over it, but Chief Morris tripped over the chair and went crashing to the floor.
Trummer ran into the kitchen. When Van followed he saw the banker frozen before the kitchen windows, looking out onto the grounds at the rear of the house.
Van hardly recognized him when the banker whirled from the window. His thin face was diabolical with mad rage. And he sounded like a hysterical woman as he screamed:
"I'll kill the rat who did that! I'll kill him!"
"Did what?" Van shouted. "What's the matter with you?"
Trummer leaped toward the kitchen door. It was unlocked. He jerked it open and plunged through. And then a submachine-gun hammered its vicious sound of destruction!
ONLY because Van was on an angle from the door, approaching it that way as he pursued Trummer, did he escape death. Nothing could have lived in the prolonged burst of tommygun slugs which screamed through the door. They splintered the wooden cabinet at the opposite wall, smashed dishes into fragments, pockmarked the wall, bits of plaster from it spraying the floor.
Perhaps five seconds of hammering destruction. Then silence. And Van, gun in his fist, leaped to the side of the open door. He saw a patrolman crouching, as he opened fire at the shrubbery and the iron fence a hundred feet away.
"Where is he, Joe?" another cop yelled.
As if in mocking reply, a car's engine raced beyond the fence somewhere, concealed from view by the heavy shrubbery. Gears ground, and the sound swiftly faded in the distance.
"Looks like he got away!" the patrolman on the left shouted back. "I just saw the flashes of the tommy through the shrubbery."
Both cops charged toward the fence. With bitter eyes, Van stared at the broken and bloody thing that now was Harvey Trummer, as he lay at the foot of the back stairs. He had practically been decapitated by bullets, and there was also a crimson devil's stitch of machine-gun lead across his chest.
To the right of the body was a low, squat glass hothouse. Van had clear vision of the inside through the glass of the roof as well as the wide-open double entrance doors. The hundreds of proud and beautiful lilies grown there—superb and rare, waxen-petaled madonna lilies—had been torn, crushed, trampled down! Wanton destruction of lovely things!
And now Van remembered what Trummer had said in Clark's office—"The only three things on this earth that mean anything to me are money, my daughter, and my madonna lilies."
The killer had known that Trummer would go out of his head when he saw what had happened to his beloved lilies. He would rush out, straight into the sights of the waiting tommy beyond that fence!
"I was close enough to Trummer to hear what Whittier told him," Chief Morris muttered at Van's side. "Ethel, was Trummer's wife, dead ten years now. Those lilies must be his memorial to her that Whittier mentioned when—"
Van ran down the stairs and crossed the lawn to join the two cops at the shrubbery just inside the tall iron fence. A drive curved past the fence, and a huge vacant lot was beyond it. No other houses, and people weren't likely to walk past here early in the morning.
It was simplicity itself for the killer to park nearby, sneak up to the fence, find a place where he could see the rear of the house through the shrubbery. Then he merely had to wait, with the tommy gun. The police guarding the house were inside the grounds. A burst from the tommy gun when Trummer rushed out, another few seconds to reach a waiting car—and a clean getaway!
And the spotlight of guilt now pinned Martin Whittier!
"Sure, the killer made it—at the cost of cutting his own throat," Van told Chief Morris and Huston, who had trailed him to the fence. "We know who lured Harvey Trummer to his death, and how it was done. Our case is over, when we get Whittier!"
"Which we can," said Morris, "within a few minutes. He doesn't live far from here."
"Let's go!" Van clipped.
IN THE coupé again, following Morris' directions, Van's nerves began to be scraped by furtive doubt. The other men knew that Whittier was to phone Trummer at eight, the time the banker was killed. Wouldn't it be smarter for Whittier, if guilty, to have called Trummer at some other time—either before or after he was supposed to have phoned?
But perhaps Whittier considered himself safe enough. Sure! If Whittier was the Lynx, he couldn't know that the Phantom had escaped from the cistern, that he would be at Trummer's house at eight, anticipating a murder attempt. He couldn't know that the Phantom would overhear exactly what was told to Trummer to send the banker to his death. No, Whittier couldn't know all that, and he couldn't possibly lie his way out of his self-made trap! He was caught, red-handed!
"He's pulling out in his car!" Chief Morris yelled. "The driveway of the white house on the left there!"
Van shot toward the sedan nosing out of a driveway, cut it off, the tires of both cars skidding as brakes were jammed on.
"Are you crazy?" someone yelled from the sedan.
Martin Whittier stuck an angry red face out of the window. Then his jaw sagged as Chief Morris approached him with a drawn revolver. The police chief wrenched open the sedan's door, made a menacing gesture with the gun.
"Get out!"
Whittier stepped out of the car. "What is this?" he spluttered. "What's wrong?"
"Can't you guess?" Van asked quietly, getting out of the coupé.
Whittier looked at the grim faces of the two men, dropped his eyes again to Chief Morris' revolver covering him. Sweat began to bead his face.
"Yes, I think I can," he said steadily. "Something happened to Trummer, and I'm framed."
Van's eyes narrowed. That was not an answer he expected.
"The old stand-by, eh?" Chief Morris growled. "Framed! It won't work, Whittier. We've got you cold!"
"Just a moment," Van said. "How do you know something happened to Trummer, Whittier? And what makes you say you've been framed?"
Whittier wetted his lips.
"I—I telephoned him. I said something to him. He dropped the receiver and I heard people shouting. He didn't return to the phone. That's where I was going when you came up—to find out what happened to him. If what I told him," he concluded slowly, "had something to do with what happened to him—and you know what it was—then maybe I'm in trouble."
"You may omit the word 'maybe'," Van said curtly. "You are in trouble. We wouldn't be here now, talking to you as we are, if we didn't know what you told Trummer, and that it lured him out to his death!"
"Lured him out to his death?" Whittier choked. "But how could those few words—"
Van took a swift step closer to him. "There was a link between what you told Trummer and what happened to him, and that link was murder! You can't lie out of it, so why keep up this stupid pretense? You had a henchman planted with a tommy gun, and what you told Trummer sent him to his death."
THERE was more sweat now on Whittier's beefy face.
"I—I want to show you something," he said thickly. "It's a piece of paper, in the left pocket of my overcoat."
"I'll get it!" Van snapped. "Keep your hands where they are."
He dipped into Whittier's pocket, felt a piece of paper there, drew it out. Unfolding it, he saw that it was a message, printed in pencil. It read:
Whittier:
When you telephone Trummer at eight, you might get a better deal if you first tell him that he should know that some rat ruined his memorial to Ethel. Trummer will know what it means. And even if it sounds crazy to you, what can you lose trying it? I am a friend of yours who prefers being anonymous for the time being.
"My bell rang at seven or so," Whittier said when Van glanced up. "I went to answer it, and found that message slipped under the door. It made no sense to me, yet it aroused my curiosity. I thought I'd try it, just to see what Trummer's reaction would be. I still haven't the faintest idea what it means. And I swear to you, Phantom, that I'm telling the truth."
His eyes held under Van's steady gaze. Van passed the note to Chief Morris who read it quickly.
"You don't think you'll get away with this gag, do you?" the police chief snarled. "You prepared this note, just in case you were caught."
Whittier made a resigned gesture. "I know it sounds phony," he said quietly. "If you want to put me under arrest, okay! But I've told the truth."
Van had an impulse to put his hands on Whittier's thick throat and find out that way what the truth really was.
"What suddenly made you want to sell your amusement park?" he demanded.
"I thought it might be a smart move," Whittier replied. "Trummer told me point-blank that my license wouldn't be renewed if Judge Bentley is reelected. That would supply motive for me as a murder suspect if Trummer was knocked off. I was already on your list of suspects. I preferred to get out from the whole mess by selling Playland to Trummer. Those others heard me tell Trummer that I'd phone him at eight. One of them slipped that note under my door, trying to frame me for Trummer's murder. And that's the truth, so help me!"
There was another pause. Van knew that a case could be built against Whittier. And yet there was a doubt. He might have been framed. So long as that doubt existed, Van did not want to crack down on Whittier. It was not his policy to furnish attorneys with an opportunity for a battle of wits, and to have guilt determined by a jury's final decision. When the Phantom solved a case, there was never any doubt that he had caught the right man.
Even if Martin Whittier had prepared that printed message, it was an explanation until Van could dig up damning evidence. He masked his disappointment as he said quietly: "All right, Whittier, we won't present you with steel bracelets now. Maybe you're telling the truth. Or maybe you're a clever scoundrel. Time will prove that. But the murderous rat I'm out to get certainly will keep his date with the electric chair!"
SWINGING on his heel, Van went back to his coupé. He was jamming his foot on the starter, when Chief Morris and Huston hurried to join him.
"You don't think Whittier should be arrested?" Morris demanded.
"Not just yet," Van snapped. "I've another angle of investigation. But first I want a couple of minutes with Judge Bentley."
He remained grimly silent until he reached Judge Bentley's home. Then he disappointed the police chief and the reporter by telling them to wait in the car. He ran up the steps, rang the bell.
Bentley himself opened the door. For an instant he fell back, either in surprise or fear, when he saw Van. And Van thought his cordiality was forced as he said:
"This is an unexpected pleasure, Phantom. Won't you come in?"
QUIETLY Van entered Judge Bentley's home. Without saying a word, he drew out the two photostatic copies of the signed affidavits and handed them to Bentley. The judge glanced at them. He made a soft, moaning sound, his eyes closed. For a moment Van thought he would keel over in a faint. If death could ever stamp its imprint upon the face of a living man, it showed itself on Bentley's.
"Where," he whispered, "did you those?"
"We'll skip that," Van replied. "You know the only possible answer, anyway. What've you got to say about it?"
Bentley looked as if some huge invisible paw had him by the throat, strangling him.
"It—it's true," he said in the same hoarse whisper. "Twenty years ago, I married Edith Warren, a night-club hostess in Salt Lake City. It was an impulsive marriage, and a stupid one. She ran away three months after the ceremony. I heard she died in an auto crash in California. I"—he concluded miserably—"I believed it."
"Go on," Van prompted.
"I came to North City, got my law degree and admission to the bar. I never thought of Edith again. It was a sordid business in my past that I preferred to forget. After a few years, I met my present wife, a lovely, charming woman. I married her and we had two children, and I enjoyed the dignity of being elected Mayor of North City. Then Edith abruptly shoved up here in North City. You can well imagine in what position that placed me."
"Go on," Van repeated.
"At first, Edith wanted to ruin me, simply because I was successful and happy. She was tubercular and had only a few years to live. She went to Jeff Craig, my best friend, to get him to start criminal proceedings against me. I might have fought it, but it would bring disgrace upon the innocent heads of Joan and my children.
"Edith finally demanded twenty-five thousand dollars immediately if she were to keep her mouth shut. Trummer was the only person in town from whom I could get the money. Hence those affidavits, which forced Craig and me to grant innumerable political favors to Trummer. Yet nothing that we did for him was criminal. Edith died five years ago in a tubercular home in Denver."
He stepped closer to Van, put his hand on his sleeve, said with soft desperation:
"I don't know where you got the photostatic copies. From Trummer, I suppose. What are you going to do with them, Phantom? You have the power now not only to ruin me, but also to bring shame and disgrace upon my family. What are you going to do?"
Van studied the desperate man facing him.
"Listen," he said quietly. "The originals were stolen from Trummer's wall safe, and Trummer himself has been murdered. You and Craig had motive to do that. So did someone who wanted the same blackmail hold on you and Craig that Trummer had. If you're the killer, I'll get you in my own way, and this dialogue is superfluous. But if you're innocent, listen carefully to what I'm now going to tell you."
BENTLEY stared at him, hunched against the wall, his black eyes moist and pained.
"On the assumption that you're innocent," Van went on, "the papers were stolen because someone intends to put pressure on you soon. The moment that happens, let me know about it. If you don't, Bentley, I'll expose you when I wind up the case. But if you cooperate with me I'll see to it that the existing documentary evidence is destroyed. No point can be accomplished by bringing up a messy scandal at this stage of the game. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly," Bentley said soberly, "And—thank you, Phantom. If I hear from the killer, you will know about it right away."
"That'll be all," Van said, and walked out.
When he returned to the coupé, both Chief Morris and Huston pounced on him with questions.
"No statement," Van said, smiling crookedly. "That should be a familiar crack to you, Steve."
"You said that you've another angle of investigation," Chief Morris brought up. "Is there a statement on that?"
"Yes," Van told him. "The Lynx's identity is now shifting. He might be Mason, or Whittier, Bentley or Greeley, Scott or Craig. But there may be a back door to lead us to the Lynx."
"What do you mean?"
"Chief, I'm thinking of that tall, Spanish-looking girl who is a member of the Lynx's mob. The Lynx himself was masked. So were Luding and his thugs when they went on a job. But the girl was not! Isn't that curious in itself? We have her description. She showed herself to you and Clark. Why isn't she afraid she may be spotted or reported by someone?"
Chief Morris shook his head.
"I spent lots of time thinking about that," he said. "She said she knew Ronnie, my daughter. That was when the Lynx had threatened to toss a hand grenade into my wife's or my daughter's bedroom. The tall girl told me, to quote her exactly: 'Ronnie's a cute kid. I'd hate to have anything happen to her.' "
"You questioned Ronnie?" Van asked sharply.
"Naturally. But she couldn't recall anyone she'd ever met who answered to that girl's description."
"Let's go have another talk with your daughter," Van said tersely.
Ronnie was a cute kid of eighteen or so—petite and blue-eyed, with soft blonde curls framing a charming oval face. Her eyes were fascinated when Chief Morris introduced Van as the Phantom. On the assumption that Chief Morris' description of the Spanish-looking girl had been incomplete, Van described her again.
"No," Ronnie said. "I don't know anyone who looks like that. I've just returned from boarding school, only been in town maybe a week or so, and I've been studying practically all the time for my college entrance exams. And certainly there was no one at the boarding school who suggests that girl to me."
"I've been through all that with Ronnie," Chief Morris said irritably.
"I didn't come here to check on you, Chief," Van said. "I've an idea that I want to explore... Look, Ronnie, I'm going to pursue the theory that the girl was disguised. We know her as someone with the olive-tinted complexion of a Latin and jet-black hair in a long bob. Maybe that's exactly what she wants us to think and isn't at all her normal appearance. I'll take just the opposite. Ronnie, suppose I asked you if you'd met recently a tall, smart-looking blonde—platinum blonde, perhaps—with startlingly white skin?"
RONNIE rose abruptly. She looked frightened.
"Yes, I've met a girl like that," she replied. "At Madame de Sylva's beauty parlor a couple of days ago. We were waiting our turn, and we got to talking, and she said something about parking her car in a wrong spot. I laughed and told her that my father was the police chief. Then she heard Madame de Sylva tell me, 'You're next, Ronnie.' That's how she must have learned my name."
"We're moving again, Chief," Van clipped.
Madame de Sylva was a tremendous fat woman. She greeted them with a haughty manner and a phony accent. A few curt words from Chief Morris, not in the mood for gallantry, reduced her to a quivering mass within a black dress which had enough material to make a good-sized tent. And when, in the privacy of a cubicle of an office, Van introduced himself as the Phantom, she even forgot her accent and spoke pure unadulterated Brooklyn.
Yes, she remembered the girl they described. A tall blonde who looked like maybe a movie star. She had been there only once. But she had left her name and address for Madame de Sylva's mailing list. Was she a crook or somethin'?
"Look up her name and address," Van said. "And forget that we've been asking for her. That's if you don't want to get yourself into trouble."
Madame de Sylva earnestly assured him that she had no desire to get into trouble. And the blonde's name was Lola Forrester and she lived at 731 Croyden Street.
Van motioned to Huston and the police chief and they walked out.
"We part here," Van said. "This may be a false alarm, or it may be what I'm looking for. At any rate, I'm going to play it solo. You'll both hear from me, at Headquarters."
He drove away in the coupé, leaving Chief Morris and Huston on the sidewalk helplessly nursing their disappointment. He found Croyden Street and parked the coupé two blocks away from the address he wanted.
A nasty drizzle was dampening the streets when Van approached the modest walk-up apartment house. There was still an excellent chance that the girl had given Madame de Sylva a phony address. But Van's mouth relaxed a bit when he saw that name over one of the mail-boxes in the vestibule. Lola Forrester had Apartment 3-F.
A few seconds with his flexible strip of steel got him past the locked vestibule door. Swiftly, he went up the carpeted stairs. One of the two doors which faced each other at the far end of the third story corridor was marked 3-F. He sneaked toward it, placed his ear to the door.
He could hear muffled voices inside. The girl was not alone. With the Lynx now? He frowned. There was no use building the thing up too much. The girl whom Ronnie had met might be just another blonde. He considered changing his disguise and then using some pretext for knocking on the door. At least he would see, then, who was in there.
But he turned from the door, then paused as he found himself staring at the other door. Several different-colored circulars showed beneath that door. Obviously they hadn't all been put there this morning. And if anyone was home, they would have been picked up.
Both of those apartments faced the rear of the building. They should share a common fire-escape.
Again Van drew out his flexible strip of steel, inserted it in the lock, threw back the bolts and cautiously pushed the door inward. His caution was superfluous. It was a vacant apartment. He entered, closed the door behind him. Crossing several empty rooms, he spotted the fire-escape beyond the windows of one.
He raised a window, looked out. The windows on the right must be those of the girl's apartment. What seemed like an abandoned factory faced the rear of the building. And there was no one in the filthy alley below. Straddling the sill, he got out on the fire-escape, and edged over to the girl's windows.
The first of these was raised at the bottom for ventilation. Van saw that the room beyond it was a rather sumptuously furnished bedroom. There was no one in it, but light showed beyond the door that was ajar a bit. Gently he raised the window more, climbed inside.
And then excitement began pounding his heart as a woman's voice reached him from the adjoining room.
"Luding might have appointed a smarter guy than you to act as a spy on me," she was saying. "And certainly someone who's better looking!"
That was it, all right! The husky voice with a trace of a Western drawl—the voice of the girl in the sedan with the killers. The reference to Chris Luding clinched it. Van's clever little theory had worked. He found the Lynx's girl friend!
PEERING through the door as he moved closer to it, Van saw that the long-legged girl pacing the living room, hands thrust into the pockets of her raincoat, was spectacularly blonde. And spectacularly beautiful.
Van only vaguely recognized her as the girl he had seen in the car. The black wig she had worn, and the dark make-up over her milky skin made an incredible difference in her appearance. It was much more effective than wearing a mask, and safer. No one could possibly suspect this girl so long as the police were on the lookout for a black-haired, Spanish-looking girl.
A hard-faced bruiser, sprawled in a chair, showed tobacco-stained teeth as he grinned at her.
"Some guys just look dumb maybe, see?" he said huskily. "That's me. And I've met dolls who thought I wasn't so hard on the eyes."
The girl paused to pour herself a drink from a squat bottle of Scotch.
"This doll doesn't, Chick," she drawled. "In fact, this doll has stood about enough of you. Try keeping your mouth shut for a while."
"Is the Lynx a good-lookin' guy?"
"That's being real subtle, eh?"
He laughed.
"Okay, Baby. But I gotta keep tryin'. 'Cause Chris is gonna be real heartbroken if he don't soon find out who the Lynx is."
She tossed down her drink.
"Chris had better mind his own business," she said angrily.
"Maybe you don't get the idea, Lola," Chick drawled. "Chris is nuts about you. But he respects you, too, see? He wants you to be happy, and if you'd rather have another guy, that's okay with him. But he don't trust this Lynx too much. He thinks that maybe the Lynx will give you the double-cross when he can't use you no more. If so, Chris wants to know who the guy is, so he can kinda take care of him, see?"
She looked at the gunman, contempt in her wide, greenish eyes.
"I don't get double-crossed, Chick. I play my cards right."
"The smartest doll, Baby, gets dumb when she goes overboard for a guy. You've seen that happen, and so have I. And we both know—"
"Look, Chick—"
He made a placating gesture.
"Okay, take it easy! So I won't get personal no more. I'm just a guy who has been handed the job to run errands for you, drive your car, and be your bodyguard. And it's somebody that I'm guardin', too," he added, leering at her.
"You'll be fired just as soon as you drive me back to the hideout," she said coldly. "The Lynx never comes here and never calls here, so it's no use you hanging around."
"Do we go to the hideout now?"
"I'll know in five minutes or so, When I talk to the Lynx, whether we go now or a little later. Will you stop asking questions?"
"No," Chick said calmly. "How'll you talk to the Lynx if he never comes here and never telephones? You'll call him?"
She reached for a beret and adjusted it over her gorgeous hair. As the gunman rose from his chair, she said:
"Relax, you dope! You don't have to trail me, because I'll tell you where I'm going. A couple of blocks from here—is a drug store. Five minutes from now—at exactly nine o'clock—a phone will ring in one of the pay booths there. That's how we communicate, and there's no way on earth to lick that! I'll be back in ten minutes. Wait for me here—though you'll probably trail me anyway, you big boob!"
SHE gave a vicious tug to her beret, walked out and slammed the door behind her. Chick ground out his cigarette, then he padded to the door. Van drew his automatic. He stepped into the other room and said softly: "She said relax, you dope! It's still good advice!"
Chick whirled from the door. His right hand darted to his chest, froze there. The barrel of Van's automatic, and the expression in Van's eyes, implied an ugly alternative.
"Okay, brother, I'll behave," he murmured.
Van approached him. He reached under the killer's coat, jerked out the gun in the shoulder holster there, and tossed it on the couch six feet away. It was then that Chick made a desperate break for it. His left hand slashed down, grabbed Van's gun wrist, twisted the weapon away from him. Van might have easily shot him. But alarm from neighbors hearing gunshots was the last thing he wanted.
He bunched his left fist. A hard uppercut to the gunman's chin should end it. He was about to clip him, when Chick made an unexpected move. Quicker than the eye could follow, Chick's free hand slid a stiletto out of a sheath under his coat somewhere. Ten inches of thin, murderous-looking steel drove for Van's throat.
Van caught Chick's wrist a split instant before the stiletto touched his throat. He jerked it down, twisted it. For tense seconds they were locked that way, swaying, each trying to check the death which the other could deal out.
And then Chick made a move that cost him his life. He tried a vicious knee jab to Van's groin. Van saw it coming. He twisted to one side. At that moment, the blade of stiletto was turned inward, pointing toward Chick. Perhaps the gunman had not realized that. Or he just couldn't stop the forward motion of his body when his knee missed Van. He literally impaled himself upon his own stiletto.
The thin steel entered to the hilt. He made a sighing sound. His eyes rolled and looked surprised for a second. Then he collapsed. They were the fingers of a dead man that slid away from Van's wrist. And Chick looked as if he committed suicide as he lay there, his fingers still curled about the hilt of the weapon lodged in his heart.
Panting from his exertions, Van crouched over the body. The gunman's death was a shock to him. He had wanted the man alive, so that he could force information out of him. Now that death had sealed his lips, the gunman could be of no help to the Phantom. Or—could he still, despite being dead?
Van's eyes narrowed. A daring plan was suggesting itself to him. It meant taking a desperate chance, toying with death. And yet, if it worked—
He appraised the dead killer. They were both the same general height and weight. Their faces were dissimilar, of course, but—
He tilted a bridge lamp so that it shone full on Chick's face. Then he drew his make-up kit, opened it. There was a magnifying mirror on the inside of the cover.
He placed the kit on a chair, with the mirror propped up. Kneeling before it, he swiftly removed the disguise he was then wearing. Again he studied the gunman's face, appraising with the eyes of an artist about to reproduce it. Then he swiftly went to work.
Chick had wiry black hair and a brick-red complexion. The contents of a tiny jar darkened and stiffened Van's hair. He combed it straight up and back the way Chick did. He squeezed some paste out of a tube, rubbed it into his skin, and the gunman's brick-red complexion was over his own.
A SHADING pencil thickened and darkened Van's eyebrows, as Chick's were. The gunman's nose had once been broken, the lower part of it bent to one side. A strip of cartilage and some putty-like substance made Van's nose its exact counterpart.
The curved rubber gadget he had previously inserted over his lower gum, to distend his jaw, was pliable. Van reshaped it, after studying Chick's jaw. When he inserted it again he had Chick's massive underjaw. Then he stained his teeth yellowish-black, like Chick's.
Chick's face was now reflected in the mirror of the make-up kit. It was as if they were twin brothers, one alive, the other on the floor with a knife in his heart. A great actor and make-up man was lost to the world when Dick Van Loan chose the career of crime detection.
Realizing that his life depended on how careful he was, Van kept darting his eyes from the mirror to Chick's face. He made an adjusting touch, here and there. Then he shrugged. The rest was on the laps of the gods, with death as certain penalty for a single error or a slip-up.
He removed his hat and overcoat, rolled it in a bundle. The dead man wore a greasy cap and an old coat. Van stripped those from the body, put them on with some repugnance. He took off his tie, since the gunman had not worn any. No other change of clothing was necessary.
He glanced at his wrist-watch. Five minutes had passed. The girl should be back soon. He searched the killer's pockets, found nothing in them of significance. The knife still in his chest held back the blood. There was none of it on the floor when Van dragged the corpse into the bedroom and shoved it under the bed. His own hat and overcoat, and Chick's gun, followed it.
He returned to the front room and said, trying to remember the lazy manner in which Chick spoke:
"How'll you talk to the Lynx if he never comes here and never telephones? You'll call him?"
It seemed to him that his voice sounded pretty much the way Chick's had. He gave a final glance around the room, saw that there was nothing that should arouse the girl's suspicions. There was no reason why she should look under her bed. It might work—if he covered another most important point.
He didn't know where the hideout was, and he was supposed to drive Lola Forrester there.
He picked up the bottle of Scotch on the coffee table. It was three-quarters full. He carried it into the bathroom and spilled half of it into the sink and washed it down. Returning to the living room, he seated himself with the bottle and the glass in the chair Chick had occupied.
He had just poured himself a drink when he heard the click of high heels in the outside corridor. The girl returning—and the first big test!
He was tossing down the drink as she opened the door and came in. He lowered the glass with a somewhat furtive gesture.
"Anyway, I didn't follow you," he said defensively. "So I thought you wouldn't mind if I grabbed a drink on you."
"I don't mind," she replied shortly.
She was studying him. Because she saw something wrong in his impersonation of Chick? Her next words dispelled that idea.
"Boy, you sure can guzzle! Half the bottle is gone. I don't care, but watch the way you drive. We'll be going to the hideout in a couple of minutes. The Lynx will meet us there."
Van made an expansive gesture.
"I'll drive you okay. Just don't worry your pretty little head."
She walked into the bedroom. And as a make-up artist, she was good, too. The black-haired, Spanish-looking girl came out in a couple of minutes. She even used darker lipstick, and again Van marveled at the change in her appearance.
"Let's go," she said.
He began singing hoarsely, as he followed her down the stairs. He stopped it when she turned and glared at him.
"Okay, Baby, okay!"
Outside, he staggered slightly as he accompanied her to the green coupé at the curb. Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing. Van started the car. He made a wild sweep away from the curb, kept grinding it in first gear for a full block, shot past an intersection, although a trolley was then crossing from the right.
"Stop the car!" the girl cried sharply.
He jammed on the brakes, stalling the engine, and stared at her with faked bewilderment.
"Wassamatter? Ain't I drivin' all right?"
She got out and circled to his side of the car.
"Move over!" she snapped. "I want to get there alive, you fool!"
"You don't hafta talk that way," he muttered sullenly. "I ain't plastered."
But he edged over so that she could slide beneath the wheel. And there was exultation in his heart. He had successfully run the first gauntlet. And he was being driven now to the Lynx's hideout. If she saw nothing suspicious about his appearance, and was only annoyed by his apparent semi-drunkenness, then the others wouldn't spot it, either. The thing was rolling out, perfectly!
Lola Forrester drove quickly and expertly.
"Look, Baby," Van said in his role of Chick, "I guess I did get a little too high maybe. Be a good kid and don't tell Chris nothin' about it. He's liable to get sore. Maybe I'll be able to do you a favor some day."
She shrugged. "Okay."
They spoke no more after that. Now she was driving through a squalid tenement section, deserted because of the rain. She swung to the curb, cut the ignition, and got out. Van trailed her to the mouth of an alley, grateful that she seemed in a hurry and paid little attention to him.
She swung into the alley and Van was a step behind her as she approached the battered garage doors of a brick building which terminated the alley. Pushing against the doors, she stretched the nailed strip of an inner tube which held them together. And Van was still just a step behind her when they entered the abandoned commercial garage.
Her high heels clicked on the cement as she walked to the only vehicle here, a stripped moving van, parked against the left wall, its axles supported on blocks of wood.
She opened the door of the cab, climbed up, pressed on the horn button several times, though there was no sound from the horn. Then she climbed over the driver's seat into the black interior of the van.
Van followed her, curious as to where all this was leading. He had a simple explanation when the rear section of the van suddenly was lowered into a hole in the wall it had concealed.
"LOLA?" a clipped voice said.
"Yeah, Chris," she replied.
She traversed the length of the van to the rectangle of light now exposed. Then she dropped to her hands and knees so that she might climb into the tunnel there. Van followed her. It was a short tunnel, merely a four-foot space between the garage wall and that of the adjoining building.
Hands reached out to help the girl down. Then Van crawled through. A packing case made a miniature platform which enabled Van to creep out and clear the roof of the tunnel. He dropped to the floor and swiftly took in the entire scene.
A huge, barren, filthy room. An abandoned and stripped factory, reeking of dust and dankness. A pressure gasoline lamp, hissing snakelike.
Big, red-headed Luding, chewing a cigar, Four other men, Luding's henchmen, at different spots in the room.
And, seated on a packing case at the opposite wall, was the master killer!
FOR the first time Van got a look at the masked fiend known as the Lynx. Mason or Whittier, Bentley or Craig, Greeley or Scott—it was impossible to tell because of the baggy trench-coat he wore and the hideous lynx's face painted in white on the black hood which dropped from the inner band of his hat.
Yes, there he was, the devil who mocked the Phantom trapped in that cistern. The killer who murdered Otto Warner and Walter Colby, who engineered Harvey Trummer's murder; who was behind the bloody deviltry which had scourged North City. Van had to fight to keep anger out of his eyes. And to refrain from pulling his gun!
But the odds were bad for him to try any gun work right now. Six to one, with the girl. No, he would have to be patient a while longer! As an unsuspected member of Luding's mob, knowing who the Lynx's girl friend was and where he could always find her, knowing where the hideout was—he could afford to be grimly patient now!
The Lynx slid off the packing case.
"Time is getting short," he said in his sibilant voice. "I'll sum it up again, Luding, then I'll leave with Lola. It's ten after nine now. The armored truck with the Hammet Mills payroll will leave the North City Bank at exactly nine-thirty. These things operate on a careful schedule. At nine-thirty-seven, the truck will reach the traffic circle. Be there a couple of minutes earlier, trail it when it goes through the traffic circle, and cut it off at exactly nine-forty. That's when the guard in the rear, locked inside with the money, will open the doors."
"You sure he'll open 'em?" Luding insisted. "Otherwise it'll be like cracking a safe, with a guy armed with a tommy gun to fire at you through a loophole while you're doing it."
The Lynx laughed softly.
"He'll open the doors, all right. I've taken care of that. And we'll have another hundred and sixty grand in the kitty. Plus the hundred grand that I gave you in those cut twenties, you boys are going to get lots of money. And this is just the beginning. After you pull the job, come back here. Stay here until I show up. That's all!"
He took a step forward, paused.
"Oh, yes!" he added. "This is important, Luding. If something seems to go wrong, if there's anything that you don't like the looks of, take no chances. Shoot right back here and lay low until I come. I'll probably know what the hitch was. Now you got it all straight, Luding?"
Luding nodded.
"Yeah."
"Okay. I'll probably see you in an hour or so. Let's go, Lola."
The masked man and the girl walked to the tunnel. He paused as the girl climbed in first, standing so close to Van that the Phantom might have touched the killer. And again Van had to fight down the overpowering impulse to crack down on him now.
Then the Lynx crawled into the tunnel. There was silence for a little while, the only sound the hissing of the gasoline lamp. Then one of the gunmen told Luding: "Chris, the boys and me was kinda thinkin'. The Lynx give us a hundred grand, in twenties cut in half. He's supposed to give you the other half in a week, when we wind up what he wants us to do for him."
LUDING scowled
"All right, what about it? He explained why he did it. He don't trust us; we don't trust him, because we don't know who he is. So he tied up the hundred grand that way. You object to that now?"
"No. Only you are holdin' all the dough. It ain't that we don't trust you, Chris, but supposin' somethin' happened to you? Like maybe the cops grabbin' you? Don't you think each of us oughta kinda hold our cut? We'd feel better that way."
Luding shrugged.
"Okay, if that's how you guys want it. Makes no difference to me. There's five of you left now, since I had to blast Red and Smitty to save our own necks while we was tryin' to get the Phantom. I'll give you fifteen grand a piece, and keep thirty for myself. Anybody object to that?"
No one spoke. Luding shrugged, and walked to a packing-case. He ripped up a loose board, dipped his hand inside, and brought up a black satchel. Opening it, he said curtly:
"All right, come and get it, one at the time. These come in two-thousand-dollar packages. I'll give you seven, and will owe each of you a grand. I guess I ought to be good for that."
"Sure, Chris," they chorused.
Van had an excuse for a glint of excitement in his eyes as he approached to receive his cut. Now the counterfeit angle began to tie in. He had proof of it when, strolling to the gasoline lamp, he examined one of the cut twenties. There was a blemish on Jackson's nose, and also a noticeable tilt to the flagpole atop the White House on the back of the bill. Otto Warner had counterfeited the twenties for the Lynx, and a hundred thousand dollars' worth of the counterfeit had been used to engage the services of Luding and his killers.
"Okay, boys, we ought to get started," Luding said, glancing at his wrist-watch. "Let's go!"
Van joined the others as they crawled through the tunnel into the wrecked van. Luding, the last one through, carefully replaced the cut out section which concealed the hole in the wall.
Van had no plan in mind yet. To make a break for it now meant a gun battle with five armed killers. He decided to wait, and grab the first opportunity which arose.
The black sedan he had seen at the Chronicle Building was parked up the street.
"Get in the back with me, Chick," Luding said. "You drive, Nick, and you know where to go. Come on, let's get moving!"
They piled in, Van maneuvering himself so that he sat near the door.
"Find out anything, Chick?" Luding asked out of the corner of his mouth.
Van shook his head.
"No. She's smart, and she guessed why you had me hang around her."
Luding cursed under his breath.
"I don't like it. The Lynx, whoever he is, is plain poison. And when I say that, it means something! I don't like the idea of Lola being mixed up with him. But"—he added this softly—"we'll see what happens."
TEN minutes later, the sedan swung onto a traffic circle from which several roads angled off.
"Park on the left there, Nick," Luding told the driver. "Up ahead is the private road to the mills. That armored truck will swing in there. Keep your engine running. We've got about three minutes."
They waited, and tension began to pile up in the sedan. Van quietly loosened the gun in his shoulder holster. And minutes dragged, dragged.
"That truck is late," Luding growled. "It's nine-forty now."
There was sweat on the killer's beefy face. His eyes were narrowed and worried. Another minute, still another, a third. And then, faintly, they heard the wail of an approaching police siren.
"There's something wrong!" Luding shouted. "Get going, Nick—fast! Back to the hideout!"
Van considered making a break for it, holding them until the police arrived. But that would entail a gun battle in which not only he, but some of the cops, might be killed. No, it was smarter to trap them like cornered rats in that abandoned factory!
The sedan shot away from the curb. It swung into one road, cut over at the first intersection, circled back toward town. They could no longer hear the police siren. The tenement section again. They parked near the mouth of the alley, and Van ran with the others to the abandoned garage.
"Look, Chris, there's somethin' fishy about all that," he said, as they entered. "Maybe I ought to hang around in the street just to see that no cops come sneakin' up on us. I got a kinda funny feeling, see?"
Van worked on the theory that if Luding had appointed Chick to spy on the girl, then the dead gunman must be the man whom Luding most trusted.
"That's a good idea," Luding agreed. "Hang around near the mouth of the alley." Luding ran toward the van. Watching Luding and the others scramble for it, to get inside and through the hole in the wall to the hideout, Van thought grimly:
"And that's that! There'll be cops sneaking up, all right—after the master rat shows up!"
The gunmen had not disappeared into the body of the van when a stunning, brain-numbing thing happened. A thunderbolt seemed to strike that wrecked van. The ancient, dirty wood of its body mushroomed up and outward, playthings of flames and smoke. The terrific force of the explosion threw Van off his feet as he saw, for an instant, the other men being flung in all directions. Then something smashed across his skull.
A black, bottomless pit seemed to have opened beneath the Phantom just as he managed to get his gun out. It was a pit into which he was falling, falling, falling...
VAN had a nightmare in which he was lashed to a raft, helpless, while water continued to wash over him, half strangling him as each wave broke. He fought to tear loose the bonds lashing him to the raft. Then suddenly he was conscious, aware that water was being splashed in his face, that arms were pinning him down. "Okay, brother, take it easy!" a familiar gruff voice said.
The blob of the face above him suddenly was focused clear and sharp—Chief Morris' red face. Huston stood next to him. A fat man in a white jacket and several patrolmen hovered in the background.
Van realized now that he was in a drugstore, lying on the floor of the prescription room. The back of his head throbbed, and he gingerly touched the aching lump on the back of his skull.
"You can talk now," Chief Morris snapped. "What happened in that garage?" Van reached to the waistband of his trousers. When he partially opened his hand a glittering little object reflected light on his palm. It was a tiny mask of platinum and precious stones, known the world over as the Phantom's insignia.
"The Phantom!" Chief Morris and Huston yelled simultaneously.
"Yes," Van said, his tongue thick. "Luding and his men... Did any of them survive that explosion?"
"No. We found, or rather, we sort of pieced together, six bodies. What happened there? What exploded?"
"A bomb planted in the moving van there," Van slowly replied. "That's how the Lynx got rid of Luding and his henchmen. Did the Hammet Mills payroll get through okay?"
There was a queer expression now on Chief Morris' face. "How much do you know about that?"
"Only that Luding and his mob were supposed to stick up the armored truck with the payroll. But it hadn't gone through the traffic circle where they awaited it when they heard a police siren and beat it."
"Listen," Chief Morris said tersely. "An anonymous call reached Scott at the North City Bank, warning him that plans had been made to stick up that armored truck. So he changed its route. That's why it never went through the traffic circle."
"Then the payroll got there okay, eh?" Chief Morris shook his head.
"No. Ten minutes after the truck left, an incendiary bomb planted in the rear, where the guard locks himself in with the money, exploded. The guy tried to get out, and couldn't. The lock on the door jammed. A hundred and sixty grand went up in smoke, and a man died a horrible death!"
Van got up off the floor, winced as fiendish little hammers began pounding within his skull.
"Who owns that armored truck?" he asked.
"The bank."
Van nodded grimly.
"I thought so—and it checks. Chief, where are Otto Warner's and Walter Colby's bodies now?"
"Why, at an undertaker's establishment," Chief Morris said. "We've no official morgue in town."
"Has the medical examiner seen them yet?"
"No."
"Shoot me over there—quickly!" Van clipped.
ONLY minutes later, he pulled back the sheets where the disrobed bodies lay on the slab in an undertaker's parlor. He examined both, particularly the torture marks on Walter Colby's chest, neck and face, left by the knife and lighted cigarette butts. Then he straightened and faced Chief Morris and Huston.
"It's the end of the trail," he said quietly. "I know now who the Lynx is."
"Who?" Morris yelled.
"I'll show you, when I catch him red-handed. And Lola Forrester will help me. Get me to a Western Union office."
In the telegraph office, Van made two phone calls from a booth. Then he consulted the telephone directory and wrote out a telegram.
"I want an official copy of this message," Van told the clerk who was wide-eyed after Van identified himself as the Phantom. "You are not to send it. It's supposed to have come in last night from Miami Beach, Florida. Do you understand what I want you to do?"
"Sure. Any favor I could do the Phantom—"
"Hurry, please," Van interrupted.
When he had the message he folded it, thrust it in his pocket, and led the others outside.
"Now listen carefully," he said. "I'll point out to you the fire-escape and the windows of Lola Forrester's apartment. Go up there, but don't enter the apartment until I call you. I'll be in there with her."
"That's clear," Chief Morris growled.
"You'll know the rest soon, and I think it'll be a show that you won't soon forget," Van said grimly. "Now let's get over to the girl's apartment house."
LOLA FORRESTER was the gorgeous blonde again when she opened the door in response to Van's knuckles.
"What you want to see me so urgently about, Chick?" she asked angrily. "Another of Luding's tricks?"
Van pushed inside and kicked the door shut behind him.
"It seems that there's lots that you don't know, Baby," he said in Chick's lazy drawl, "In the first place, Luding will never try any more tricks, on you or anybody else. Him and the other boys were blown to smithereens by a bomb the Lynx planted in that wrecked van. Dumb luck saved me from going that way, too."
By the sudden widening of her eyes, Van knew that this was news to Lola. She was still a while, breathing heavily, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
"I didn't know that," she whispered. "So you're here now to get me to tell you who the Lynx is? It's no go, Chick. I love the guy. What he does is okay with me. I won't send anybody gunning after him. I'd rather be croaked myself! That's on the level, Chick. Now do I stop a slug, Chick?"
"You love the guy as much as all that, eh?" Van murmured.
"Yeah, Chick, as much as all that."
"What'll you say if I told you that I already know who the Lynx is?"
"I'd say you're a liar, Chick," she calmly replied. "You couldn't possibly know!"
"What would you say if I also told you," Van went on in the same soft voice, "that you're goin' to get the double-cross from him, too?"
She shook her head.
"It's no use, Chick. You know I'm too smart to fall for that gag."
"Listen, Baby," Van said. "When you and the Lynx left the hideout, I was standing close to the tunnel. You remember that?"
"Yes."
"He waited until you got through, and one of his coat pockets was near my hand, and I used to be a dip. I'm pretty slick that way. I picked his pocket, just on the off chance that I'd find somethin' to tip me off who he is. I found it, all right. That's how I know who the Lynx is—and that he plans to double-cross you."
Her greenish eyes stared at him.
"What did you find, Chick?" she asked.
"This, Baby!"
He handed her a telegram. She unfolded the message, read it. A gray tint crept into her face. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were fierce and aglow.
"Chick," she panted, "I want to get him myself."
Van nodded.
"I thought you might feel that way, Baby. But I want to watch you do it! With all the double-crosses back and forth, I'm not goin' to be handed another one by you. Call him up and tell him to come over right away. I'll be watchin' and listenin' from the bedroom."
She looked ten years older, and her lipstick stood out as foreign substance on her bloodless mouth.
"I'll do it, Chick," she said.
SHE walked to the telephone, dialed a number. Then:
"Hello, darling, I'm glad you answered the phone." Calm voice, despite the tragedy on her face. "You must come over, right away. Something happened, which I can't tell you over the phone. But you know I wouldn't ask you to do that if it weren't urgent... Okay, darling, I'll wait for you." She hung up, glanced over her shoulder. "He'll be right over, Chick."
She walked to a secretary desk, opened a drawer. Van had his hand on her wrist when she pulled out a stubby little automatic. He took it away from her, carried it to an upholstered chair and slid it under a cushion.
"You can always reach it there when you want it," he said. "But when that happens, I want to make sure that you use it the right way. I told you, Baby, I won't be handed any more double-crosses."
"You won't be," she said calmly.
She began pacing the room. Van went into the bedroom.
"Remember," he said grimly, as he drew the door toward him until only a narrow crack remained open, "I'll be watchin' and listenin'—and I'll be holdin' a gat."
"I'll remember," Lola said, in the same calm, dead voice.
Van padded softly to the windows. Two figures crouched outside of one of them. Van raised the window and motioned Huston and the police chief to come in. Then he glided back to the door. The girl was still pacing, back and forth, back and forth. Minutes dragged, and then she stopped short as quick footsteps sounded in the corridor.
Van slid out his automatic. A key turned in the lock, and the Lynx entered the apartment. Evidently, he preferred startling someone who might meet him in the hallway, rather than having his description known. Because the black hood, with the hideous lynx's face on it, was draping his face!
"Hello, Lola," he said in his sibilant voice. "I don't like coming here, and you know it. What happened?"
She went to the chair, under the pillow of which the automatic was hidden, seated herself in it, her face white and frozen.
"I hear you sent Chris Luding and his mob off with a bomb planted in that van," she said calmly.
He was still a few seconds.
"Yes, I did! The Phantom escaped the cistern trap. He had Luding spotted. I thought it would be smart to get rid of him."
"How have you planned to get rid of me?" she murmured.
He stared at her through the diamond-shaped slits in the hood.
"What are you talking about, Lola?"
"There are some things," she said slowly, "that are impossible to explain or lie about. Chick, one of Luding's men, found out who you were. He picked your pocket in the hideout and got hold of a certain telegram. Since Chick couldn't possibly know your identity, it couldn't be a frame." Her face twisted. "So your wife is dying, eh? You were just going crazy waiting for the moment she died so that you could marry me? That was your pretty little story, wasn't it?"
Van saw her right hand jerk under the pillow. He flung open the door, just as the girl pulled out the automatic. But it was the Lynx who fired first, through the pocket of his coat. The girl jerked against the back of the chair, as if some invisible paw had slapped her there. She collapsed, her lovely hair falling over her eyes.
AND then flame and hot lead vomited from the barrel of Van's automatic. A scream came from beneath the hood. The Lynx dropped his gun, his arm smashed at the elbow. He cringed back against the wall.
"You can remove that hood," Van said grimly. "The game is up, Edmund Scott!"
It was Chief Morris who, plunging past Van, jerked the hat, with the attached hood, from the Lynx's head. It exposed Scott's ashen face.
Van glanced at the girl slumped in the chair. Crimson was staining the front of her dress, and a thin crimson rivulet flowed down one corner of her mouth. But she was still breathing.
"Grab that phone and call an ambulance, Steve," Van clipped.
As the reporter darted toward the telephone, Chief Morris shouted to the Phantom:
"How did you know it was Scott? What was in that phony telegram?"
Van walked to the secretary desk where he had seen the girl thrust the telegram in one of the pigeonholes. He picked it up and paused a moment, his eyes narrowing, as he noticed the papers which lay beneath it. He turned to the police chief.
Scott watched him like a cornered animal as he handed the message to Chief Morris. Addressed to Edmund Scott, the message read:
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SWEET AND LOVING WIRE STOP FEEL FINE AND AM QUICKLY REGAINING STRENGTH STOP AM COUNTING THE HOURS UNTIL YOU JOIN ME IN MIAMI STOP YOU ARE A DARLING FOR ANTICIPATING THAT AS OUR SECOND HONEYMOON STOP I LOVE YOU
GRACE
Chief Morris read it aloud, looked up.
"Grace is Scott's wife, isn't she?" he asked.
"Yes," Van said. "And she's dying in a Rochester hospital. I checked that. It's what Scott told Lola Forrester, and it's the truth! Yet Lola could not doubt the evidence of this wire. Its obvious implication was that Scott planned to discard her and return to his wife."
"But you must have known that Scott was the Lynx before you could pull that trick on him."
"I did," said Van. "The Lynx stole the blackmail evidence held over Judge Bentley and Craig out of Trummer's safe. Two men had the combination to that safe—Scott and Walter Colby, Trummer's secretary. Scott covered himself by murdering Colby, then making it look as if Colby had been tortured to reveal information, obviously the combination to the safe."
"But Colby was tortured," Chief Morris said.
"Sure, he was," Van clipped back. "After he was murdered. He was shot first, one of the bullets piercing his heart and killing him instantly. Then his corpse—you get it, Chief?—then his corpse was flicked with a knife and burned with cigarette butts to make it look as if he had been tortured. Only Scott had any object in doing that—to shift suspicion from himself. Because, sooner or later, or whenever Scott wanted it so, the body would have been found."
"How do you know that Colby's corpse was treated that way?"
"Because one of the knife wounds on his throat had cut the jugular vein. If he had been alive then, his clothes would have been soaked with blood. But they weren't! Because his heart was no longer pumping. When other things made me suspect Scott, that was the first thing I went to check. And," he added grimly, glancing at gray-faced Scott, "it looks like I rang the bell!"
FOR a moment the only sound was Scott's heavy breathing.
"Just what were his plans?" Chief Morris asked.
"They were based upon three pivoting points," Van replied coldly. "The first was Trummer's murder, so that the banker's fortune would pass on to his daughter, then to Scott when she died. Second, political power, by holding the blackmail evidence over Judge Bentley and District Attorney Craig. Third, possession of a fortune in counterfeit which he had forced Otto Warner to make for him. These three factors were closely interwoven in his scheming for money and power."
Chief Morris nodded.
"I'm beginning to see it now, smart rat that he was! By bringing gunmen into this mess and making it seem that they worked for Mason, it shifted suspicion from himself when Trummer was killed. And it helped assure Judge Bentley's election, the election of the man who would be in his power. How did the counterfeit angle feature?"
"He knew that Luding and his men would not obey unquestioned orders from someone whose identity they did not know. He had to give them a huge advance payment—money which he, of course, did not have. The counterfeit, cleverly cut in half so that Luding could not begin passing it around and perhaps discover that it was phony, tied up Luding's services. He undoubtedly planned to pass the rest when he began running gambling houses and so on. Since Judge Bentley and the district attorney would be in his power, they would be forced to sanction such things here in North City."
"Then what was the set-up on that armored truck business?"
"That's simple to figure out, too," Van replied. "The hank owns that armored truck. That meant that Scott had access to it wherever it was parked. He fixed the lock so that it would not work once the guard locked himself in with the payroll. And he planted incendiary bombs in the satchels holding the payroll. Since the satchels were destroyed by the incendiaries no one could tell whether money actually was in them or not. It wasn't! Scott held back the money, to cover his shortages at the hank."
"And the crime wave already put over," Chief Morris said savagely, "the presence of gunmen in town did not make that attack isolated and startling, with the implication of an inside job, as it would have done if conditions were normal in North City."
"Precisely," Van said. "Luding might have caught on to treachery had he gone through with the stick-up. And Scott knew that I was alive, and guessed that I had Luding and his men spotted. So Scott was forced to change his plans a bit, and destroy Luding and his mob by a bomb planted in that van at the hideout. That sums it up, Chief."
"With one move still to be made," Chief Morris said, glaring at Scott. "That'll be done when he's strapped down into the electric chair!"
"You're wrong, Phantom!" a low voice said. "He isn't going to the chair."
Van whirled, to see Lola Forrester sitting up, swaying gently, her face bloodless, her eyes wide and staring and showing the terrible pain she must have felt. But the automatic was steady in her right hand. And Van had put away his gun.
"Keep them covered!" Scott shouted, sudden wild hope glittering in his eyes. "Just long enough for me to grab my gun!"
HE LUNGED forward toward the gun lying on the floor. A ghastly sort of a smile hovered on the dying girl's lips. And Edmund Scott never reached the automatic on the floor. She began firing—once, twice, three times. Scott doubled up, stunned amazement on his face as the bullets tore into his body. He collapsed. And the stubby little automatic dropped from the girl's fingers.
"Edmund and I," she whispered, "should stick together—to the bitter end! You—you win, Phantom."
She slumped forward, and death glazed her staring eyes. Even as death had now stilled Scott's twitching body on the floor.
Slowly, Van walked to the desk. He removed from a pigeonhole the original evidence stolen from Trummer's safe. He made a wad of the two signed affidavits, added to them the photostatic copies, and touched a lighted match. As the papers burst into flame, making a tiny pyre on an ash-tray where he now dropped them, Van saw the final cleansing of the vicious deviltry he had fought in North City.
Once again the Phantom had triumphed. And though fatigue now poisoned his body, there was grim satisfaction in his heart. Greater reward than that the Phantom never wanted. For a time he might return to his playboy haunts in his real identity as Richard Curtis Van Loan, but that soon would pall. And always he would be ready to answer to the call of the distressed, the victims of the criminal underworld, for righting such wrongs was his real life.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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