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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Phantom Detective, June 1941, with "The Grim Shadow Of Hate"
The Reaper registers at college for a sinister degree in mysterious death! The Phantom takes a perilous trail when evil killer snakes bare their ugly fangs!
ONLY Death beat Jimmy Rice to the tape in the two-twenty dash. Jimmy could not see the invisible sprinter. He never did. Only one among all of the five thousand-odd spectators knew that death was pacing Jimmy, and would be the ultimate winner.
Jimmy was taking the two-twenty by a photographic margin. He sensed the movement of a runner edging up to his shoulder. Jimmy's wide-open mouth sucked air into his aching lungs.
His heart seemed pounding with an all-out fury that threatened to burst his ribs.
He felt as if he had been running for long minutes instead of but eighteen seconds. Then there was the tape, a blurred white thread. Exultation drove the ache from Jimmy's lungs.
He could see Billy Rice, his twin brother, standing and yelling in a box at the track-side just beyond the tape. And he could see Thelma Evans, his grandfather's ward, standing beside Billy. With flashing, luminous black eyes and blue-black curls in a cluster about her small ears, Thelma stood as straight as an arrow, one white hand lifted.
Jimmy was telling himself,"If I win this, I'll sure enough have the edge on Billy with Thelma."
Jimmy saw his grandfather, Harvey Rice, in the box. Old Harvey was not cheering, but Jimmy was sure that pride was burning in his grandfather's eyes. For only the importance of seeing Jimmy win finally needed points for Brookvard College could have brought Harvey Rice there in his wheel-chair.
Jimmy may have marveled at the multitude of thoughts that could be compressed within the space of a few flying steps. Then the blur of tape ahead suddenly seemed to be receding queerly. His thoughts crowded together, because he was already dying.
Suddenly Jimmy had the sensation of running in slow motion. Yet his body forged ahead to snap that tape. He had to hit that tape!
Five thousand-odd spectators were on their toes. But only one among the five thousand knew of the slowing of Jimmy Rice's brain while his flying body went on to break the tape and win.
"Brookvard! Brookvard! Jimmy! Jimmy Rice!"
The yell leaders broke out the cry of victory for Brookvard. The crowd took it up until it echoed from the domed roof of the big indoor stadium of Brookvard College. Then—
>
A GIRL'S frightened scream started a spreading terror in the great pool of sound. Other women cried out. They were in the boxes and the seats closest to the finish line. Several men nearest to old Harvey Rice cursed deeply.
But old Harvey himself just sat there with his knuckles showing white as his hands clenched, and his blue eyes burning deep in their sockets. Young Billy Rice appeared to have been frozen into the pose of a statue. One hand was still lifted above his flaming red head. His mouth remained open upon the yell of triumph that had died.
Jimmy Rice heard none of the screams, nor the hush of stark fear that followed it. His body pitched forward a few more running steps after the tape was broken. He was dead when he fell, cold dead.
Perhaps he had heard the vicious whizzing of the knife that now showed only a smooth, white bone handle protruding from his neck below his ear. More likely he had not. One of the other runners was the first to see that knife. The other runners saw it then. They saw the blood welling over Jimmy Rice's tanned skin with all the redness painted by a youthful heart. And, for the first time, more than one person in the big stadium knew that Jimmy Rice had won the two-twenty, only to be beaten in the end by that invisible sprinter. Death.
Now there was swift movement throughout the stadium. One well-dressed man, his lapel button showing him to be one of the college alumni, muttered to the paling woman beside him:
"Let's get out of here. There is a curse on Brookvard! That's the third one—"
The muttering of other voices held the same import, if not in the same words. Many were speaking in hushed tones of the"curse of Brookvard."
In the press box a sports reporter was announcing the tragic horror as Jimmy Rice's inert figure lay motionless under pitiless spotlights. The reporter, too, mentioned the"curse of Brookvard," except that he referred to it more vaguely.
His message sounded in thousands of homes:
"Jimmy Rice, one of the twin grandsons of Harvey Rice, multimillionaire shipping man and founder of Brookvard College of Chemistry, has just been murdered before the eyes of thousands. A near panic has been created, this being the third coincidental murder connected with the college in the past month. From here your sports announcer can see Harvey Rice, with Billy, the twin brother of the dead Jimmy Rice; and Thelma Evans, the beautiful ward of Harvey Rice. Now Billy Rice is jumping from his box onto the track. Jimmy Rice apparently was killed by a thrown knife just as he won the two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dash in the inter-sectional college meet."
At this moment, a dry sob was trapped in the white throat of beautiful Thelma Evans.
"Dad, I'll get you out of here!" she said, her voice tight and strained."It's too much for you."
Being his ward, the daughter of a dead friend, the vivid, black-eyed girl called Harvey Rice"Dad." He had been a hard man in his day, this shipping millionaire. But there was nothing of this to be seen now in the parchmentlike, gray face. Only his blue eyes burned bright and steadily.
"TAKE me to Jimmy," he commanded in a low, tense voice."Perhaps he can still speak. I think I'm beginning to understand now about those other murders, and why students are leaving in fear of what they call the 'curse of Brookvard.' "
"No, Dad, no!" protested Thelma."You are ill! The shock may be too much!"
"The shock is over," said Harvey Rice with dry harshness."Take me to Jimmy, at once."
Wordlessly, the girl inclined her head. Her face was dead white now. A sob pulsed in her throat but she did not permit it to escape.
Between the aisle leading to the running track and the Harvey Rice box, the crowd moved. Women were murmuring, hurrying away from the murder scene like frightened birds. Their spring hats, bright with flowers and feathers, made a little sea of moving color.
On the track, a big policeman had taken charge. He was waving all of the crowd back to the stand, except for Billy Rice who knelt beside the body of his twin brother.
"I wouldn't be touchin' him or the knife, laddie," said the bluecoat."We must wait for the medical examiner."
With all eyes fixed upon that horribly still body, or upon Harvey Rice in the wheel-chair which Thelma Evans was moving slowly into the aisle, none seemed for the moment to remember that there had to be a murderer, a sinister killer who had managed to throw that knife without being seen.
Even the one track policeman was too engaged with guarding the body and holding back the crowd to concern himself directly with the slayer. His gaze did sweep the rows of horror-stricken faces, but he saw none on which guilt was stamped.
At the moment of the tragic finish of the dash, one queer figure had been apart from the crowd. He was a chestnut vendor with a dried, leathery face. His equipment was a charcoal bucket and an old box mounted on wheels.
As the triumphant yells of Brookvard had changed to cries of horror, the little chestnut vendor appeared to have been overtaken by individual panic. He abandoned his charcoal bucket and slipped along in front of the boxes, making for one of the exits.
Some women had fainted, or remained in their seats, overcome by the shock of murder. One enormously fat woman, with too much jewelry on her arms and ample chest, and with small eyes that were almost buried in the rolls of fat that were her cheeks, was supporting another woman who had passed out. And in wheezy, hoarse tones she was attempting to make her cries heard above the waves of sound.
She was pointing toward the exit where the chestnut vendor had disappeared.
"That chestnut man!" she was calling raspily."He's running away! Someone go after him!"
After trying three times, the bejeweled fat woman gave it up and turned all of her attention to the woman who had fainted.
Except for her bright, bird-like eyes, the obese woman was commonplace in appearance. Perhaps that was why she loaded herself with costly jewels, to call attention to the fact that she was Mrs. Loren Hart, the Mrs. Loren Hart. A newcomer in Manhattan society, Mrs. Loren Hart had taken the newspapers by storm because of her lavish entertainments at her Park Avenue apartment, and in her country home in Greenwich, and was not used to being ignored by anyone.
But just now no one had eyes or ears for the Mrs. Loren Hart, who alone had seen the chestnut vendor's swift exit. And his charcoal bucket smoked unattended at the side of the running track.
WOMEN and men moved aside, making way for the wheel-chair of Harvey Rice. The millionaire's eyes were steady, burning blue lamps, fixed ahead. Thelma Evans was intent only on the easy movement of the wheel-chair.
"The poor dear!" exclaimed a woman."Wasn't she engaged to Jimmy Rice?"
"No," said a companion."I believe it is Billy Rice. Anyway, gossip columns have mentioned her as the only glamour girl with twin admirers, each to be exactly as rich as herself at some, future date."
Both Jimmy and Billy Rice had been in love with the lovely ward of their grandfather. She had given neither twin a definite answer. She could not decide between them. It was too hard.
Perhaps the invisible sprinter, Death, had made the decision for her now.
A man spoke beside Thelma."May I help with the chair?" he asked.
He was just one of the crowd. The girl shook her head. The man sprang to open the little gate leading to the track, pushing past several women who were close to Harvey Rice. And it was at this instant that Thelma Evans, glancing down at the millionaire, cried out:
"Dad! Dad! Oh, I told you it was too much! Please—someone help me! Gall a doctor! Quickly!"
As air might have left a suddenly deflated tire, all of the stiffness seemed to go out of Harvey Rice. His head dropped forward, his chin buried in his gray blankets. It might have been believed that old Harvey Rice had merely been overcome by shock, but the scream of a woman, who saw his face plainly, told the tragic truth.
Those nearest the wheel-chair surged away. The man opening the track gate turned. He looked at Harvey Rice and his jaw dropped.
"Good Lord," he gulped."Him, too!"
YEARS sometimes may pass, and nothing happens to break the monotony of staying alive. At last, there comes a single minute. Within sixty seconds the dull, charted course of many lives will be altered, new destinies written for many. This was true now, as the grim tragedy of Brookvard College was being unrolled before the eyes of thousands.
When Jimmy Rice lost the two-twenty dash finally to Death, Dean Horace Doremus, head of the big, exclusive college, was seated beside a bulky young man who had the blinking eyes and owlish face of a scholar who devotes all his days to delving into abstruse subjects.
Professor Jeremy, as Dean Doremus had known him for the past few days since he had come to Brookvard, claimed notable achievements in research in prehistoric tombs. He had selected Brookvard now, he said, as the place most eminently fitted for his attempt at analysis of a long-lost chemical formula which he believed had been employed by the ancient Aztecs for producing prolonged coma, or a state bordering upon suspended animation.
At least, the Aztec writing on slate stone he had showed Dean Doremus was so interpreted by Professor Jeremy. Coming well recommended, he had been given the use of the big, modern laboratory. But even a student of the dusty remains of a lost civilization requires some recreation, so Professor Jeremy had been seated with the college head in one of the boxes when Jimmy Rice had broken the tape of death.
For a long minute the scholarly and apparently absent-minded Professor Jeremy hardly appeared to comprehend what had happened. Until a clucking sound of distress in Dean Doremus' throat seemed to arouse him. He turned his blinking eyes upon the dean.
Dean Doremus was a short little man of no outstanding dignity. Perhaps that was why he wore graying sideburns and long hair, which gave him an odd, old-fashioned dignity otherwise lacking. With his rather weak chin, and pale blue eyes, Dean Doremus might have stepped right out of some old family album where photographs stressed mutton-chop whiskers of the Gay Nineties. He even wore a wing collar of the same vintage.
"Something has happened to Jimmy Rice," said Dean Doremus, in his voice a restrained note of anxiety."If it's anything serious, it will mean more of my students lost. I must see about it."
How disturbed he was showed plainly in the way he held his left side and breathed shallowly.
"Yes?" said Professor Jeremy, as if he just realized that something had happened."Don't distress yourself, Dean Doremus. I'll get over there at once and see about it."
For all of his sleepily blinking eyes, and his face that gave an impression of premature age, Professor Jeremy moved his bulk, his broad shoulders and tall figure, with amazing speed. Those same slow-blinking eyes had missed nothing, although Professor Jeremy had appeared to be completely absorbed in his own scholarly thoughts.
However, he had missed seeing the flash of the thrown knife, although he had been watching Jimmy Rice at the finish. Only the cries of the crowd had told him the truth.
It was just as Harvey Rice slumped in his chair that Professor Jeremy forced his way through the throng that gave back before his amazing strength. He heard Thelma Evans' outcry, caught the movement of those closest to her, then this surprising Professor Jeremy forced through the remainder of the crowd in an impetuous rush.
WHEN he reached Thelma Evans, the beautiful, black-eyed girl was bending over her adopted father, but she swayed a little on her feet. Professor Jeremy's gaze centered upon the blanketed figure of Harvey Rice.
The millionaire's face had turned blue. His eyes were half-closed, but there was a flutter as if Harvey Rice were fighting the foe he had conquered once, but who now was too powerful to be overcome.
Death was creeping over the millionaire's face.
"Please, Miss Evans," Professor Jeremy said,"go back to your box and sit down. A doctor will be here-at once. Everything possible will be done for Mr. Rice. You need a stimulant yourself."
At that moment, a young voice strained with desperation, cried out beside Jeremy.
"Granddad! What is it?"
Young Billy Rice dropped on his knees beside the wheel-chair. Some alchemy of affection, greater for a few seconds than the power of death itself, opened Harvey Rice's eyes.
The millionaire's lips moved, but his voice only whispered.
"Billy—it has come! I am—Billy! The will—in library—get it, Billy! Now I know—I know—"
The faintly whispered message that rode just ahead of death reached but two persons. Billy Rice heard it, for his head was bent over the old man. Professor Jeremy did not hear it, for he was standing away, but he read it as distinctly, on Harvey Rice's lips, as if the dying millionaire had shouted.
Harvey Rice's head dropped. He did not raise it again. The millionaire founder of Brookvard College was dead. Murdered!
Only one of all there, at the moment, knew it was murder. Professor Jeremy knew it. No one saw the quickness of his hand as he touched the blanket near the angle of Harvey Rice's jaw. The bit of fluff he removed was so small that probably it never would have been noticed by any other man.
Jeremy looked at Billy Rice. Deep grief was pictured in his clear, young eyes. It twisted his cleanly chiseled lips.
"Granddad!" he cried, clutching the blankets.
Jeremy's blinking eyes took in the little sea of faces. He peered at the brightly featured feathered hats of several of the women. Some of them had been close to Harvey Rice's chair.
"Any one of them might have been quick enough to commit the murder and not been seen," Jeremy thought grimly."The lethal weapon may even now be bobbing among the feathers of one of those hats."
The policeman was coming forward now, toward the boxes. In one box close to the aisle, where Harvey Rice was slumped dead in his wheel-chair, several middle-aged society matrons seemed all to be trying to talk at the same time, seeking to attract the policeman's attention.
Jeremy recognized several of those who were trying to make themselves heard. One of them, a Mrs. Randolph Hawley, was a scrawny, stiff-backed social arbiter. Another, a dumpy little woman who was always in the club news, was Mrs. Peter Ramsbell.
ONE by one, Jeremy marked them, in the swift passing of a second for each face. A Mrs. Thurston Young, whose divorces had become her badge of importance. Mrs. Loren Hart, fat, much bejeweled, whose extravagant parties always gave the tabloid sheets something to write about. Mrs. Andrew Crouch, of the Boston Crouches, who never forgot her Back Bay accent.
The policeman had too much trouble on hand with the collapse of Harvey Bice to listen to women, but their chatter gave pause to Professor Jeremy.
"But he did run away!" Mrs. Hawley was saying, as Jeremy noted the agitation in the little group.
"He was out there close to the runners, so he might have only been frightened!" declared Mrs. Andrew Crouch.
"But he would have known better than to bring suspicion upon himself by running!" was the fat Mrs. Loren Hart's contribution.
Jeremy moved closer to the box.
"Someone ran away?" he asked.
"Yes!" exclaimed thin Mrs. Hawley."The man selling chestnuts out there!"
"Yes," repeated Mrs. Loren Hart."The chestnut vendor left his stand, just as Jimmy Rice fell down. He went out that way."
For a reputedly absent-minded professor of archeology, Jeremy was taking an astonishing personal interest in this crime. With a murmured word of thanks to the excited women, he moved back beside Harvey Rice's chair. He spoke quickly to Billy Rice.
"Billy, I would see that Miss Evans is escorted to the dean's office at once, if I were you," he said."And stay with her."
Billy's eyes were vacant, as if his brain had been numbed by the shock of grief. He nodded without speaking. He had hardly turned away with the girl before Professor Jeremy was slithering along the boxes, making for the charcoal bucket and the wheel stand of the vanished chestnut vendor.
The odor of roasted chestnuts was pleasing and sharp. It was the kind of an odor that would cling to the clothes of the man handling them. Jeremy filed this thought away for the future.
He saw that a small board had recently been loosened in the box on the cart. His hand probed inside. He touched the sharp edge of steel, and carefully removed a knife. It had a smooth, white bone handle. It was heavy at the point. It was old. It was of the type once used in vaudeville knife throwing.
Jeremy's gaze flicked back to the groups in the stands and boxes, then quickly he made his way to where the body of Jimmy Rice still lay. Growling an oath, the overwrought policeman banged toward him.
"For Pete's sake, Professor! I wish you'd stay back with the others until Homicide gets here!"
Professor Jeremy, as the track policeman who knew all the Brookvard faculty had come to know him, blinked and smiled slowly. At the same time he palmed something that gleamed in his hand. It was of pure platinum, in the shape of a domino mask. It was set with tiny diamonds.
"Keep my name out of it," Jeremy said.
The policeman stared.
"The Phantom?" he gulped."Lordy I'm glad you're here. That takes a load off of my shoulders!" He grinned, nodded admiringly."Well, you sure are a man of a thousand faces—Professor!"
That policeman had just looked at a badge that would have been identified by law officers in any land where police law still remained in the world. The badge of the Phantom Detective!
THE Phantom! The world's most famous Nemesis of criminals.
In the art of makeup alone he outranked all other sleuths, which this policeman had been quick to note. For this apparently near-sighted Professor Jeremy could never have been suspected as being other than he posed to be, such was his perfect simulation of archeology. Also, his knowledge of chemistry was greater than that of the most erudite instructor at Brookvard.
In his real identity the Phantom was Richard Curtis Van Loan, a seemingly useless spender of his dead father's money. And only one person in the world knew that the apparently indolent, bored playboy of café and more authentic society was, in fact, one of the mightiest man-hunters of all time.
This one man, Frank Havens, publisher of a chain of nation-wide newspapers, chief of which was the New York Clarion, had first suggested to Dick Van Loan that trying his hand at solving a difficult murder case might relieve the young man's obvious boredom. And so successful had young Van Loan been, that it was not long before crime solution had become his life work.
Soul, body and mind, Dick Van Loan had gone into the highly dangerous career of tracking down the cleverest and most ruthless criminals. With Havens as his enthusiastic sponsor, he trained himself mentally and physically with that one purpose in mind. He absorbed criminal technology from his own library, and conducted his own advanced experiments in scientific detection in his amazing laboratory at the edge of the Bronx.
That vast laboratory, with every modern device for fighting crime, was located in an old building. The neighbors about there knew the Phantom as only a rather near-sighted old man, the mild Dr. Paul Bendix, whose one interest in life was to putter about with some sort of vague experiments, and he was never disturbed.
Physically, Dick Van Loan had better than great strength. He was trained in every angle of fighting. His countless adventures were recorded in that case book from which the prowess of the Phantom has been converted into the many stories of a matchless career.
Just now, he had come to Brookvard College because of what had been suddenly named"the curse of Brookvard." It had arisen through the association of two previous murders, but there had been an appeal from Harvey Rice to Frank Havens, stating the belief that a grave menace hovered over others at the college.
While Harvey Rice had not divulged his reason for this belief, the big college had been losing many students, and would be ruined unless the menace could be removed—something the millionaire had believed the Phantom alone could do.
James Howard, a professor of chemistry, had been murdered in his college office. His body had disappeared, but the amount of blood remaining, and its type had made it certain that Professor Howard was dead.
Then Anson Hardwick, a member of the small board which aided Dean Doremus in managing the school founded by Harvey Rice, had fallen from a window of his apartment. That might have been regarded as an accident, but there had been distinct fingermarks to indicate that Anson Hardwick had been strangled.
So, from Dean Doremus down through the lesser members of the faculty, the Phantom, appearing at Brookvard as Professor Jeremy, had discovered fear. Now, without a hint of warning, Harvey Rice, the founder, and his grandson, Jimmy Rice, lay dead—murdered!
POLICE sirens wailed outside the big stadium. The Phantom worked fast as he took a small tube from his clothes. It was probably the most powerful microscope of compact size ever perfected, for it rivaled the greater and more complicated electronoscope.
The Phantom had devised this glass, which magnified many hundreds of times. It was sufficient to transfer the imprint of a thumb on the murder knife in Jimmy Rice's neck to Van's imperishable memory.
Van noted especially a triangular scar in the thumbprint of the hand that had thrown the knife. Coarse ridges indicated that the thrower had been a man. The position of the thumbprint told that the knife had doubtless been flicked with a movement of the wrist alone. This meant that only an expert could have thrown the knife true to its death mark.
In a few seconds more Van had examined the knife he had taken from the chestnut vendor's cart.
It also bore prints. But they were not the prints of the wielder of the murder knife.
"So the chestnut vendor probably is not the killer," murmured Van."His abrupt flight then may have been meant to draw attention from some other person."
That might connect the vendor as an accessory to the murder, through his flight, but it was likely that when the vendor was overtaken his fingerprints would clear him.
"When the police find his prints do not match those on the murder knife, that chestnut vendor will probably have a story of the knife either having been planted in his box, or of owning the knives and one having been stolen," mused Van.
It annoyed the Phantom that most of the crowd had moved away from the scene of the double deaths. It confused any clear separation of those who might be suspected from others who were above suspicion.
Van was erect, watching the stadium crowd, the society women still in the box, the bright hats floating up the aisle, as state police streamed into the big stadium.
Making his identity known, the Phantom halted a sergeant in charge of the small squad.
"It might be well for the surgeon to perform an immediate autopsy on Harvey Rice," advised Van."There are some rare types of poison that disappear in a few hours. That which caused the death of Harvey Rice may be one of them."
"The old man himself has been poisoned?" the sergeant asked, astonished."If this keeps up there'll be no students left in this school. You are sure, Phantom?"
Van smiled."The poison was injected where that red spot appears on Harvey Rice's neck," he said."I can't be sure of the poison, but I am sure that a tropical bird had something to do with it."
Looking closely, the sergeant saw the tiny spot Van indicated on the dead man's neck. But as the Phantom merged with the nearby throng, the sergeant was still muttering:
"Now what could a tropical bird have to do with it?"
The Phantom made directly toward the office of Dean Doremus where he had sent Billy Rice and Thelma Evans.
"It's an even bet that both Billy Rice and that girl face the same danger as the others," Van was thinking.
HE did not see either Billy Rice or the girl when he had reached the office of Dean Doremus. The old-fashioned, scholarly dean looked as if he were about to collapse. His face seemed actually to have turned green around his grayish mutton-chop whiskers. Three of the faculty were present.
The dean glanced up as the Phantom entered, seeing, as he believed, Professor Jeremy.
"This is awful, Jeremy," said Dean Doremus."We might as well close the school. None of us can be sure we are safe."
From the way Dean Doremus was rubbing his hands, it was evident that fear for his own personal safety was riding him.
"It would be well for everyone to look out for his own safety," Van agreed."Has Thelma Evans been here, or Billy Rice?"
"I have seen neither of them," said Dean Doremus.
Van turned and went outside and almost at once saw Thelma Evans. She was going out through an exit at the southern end of the big stadium. A middle-aged man with a bearded face was holding her arm.
The Phantom never depended upon hunches, but sometimes intuition played a part in his work. A warning of danger suddenly rode his mind. Jimmy Rice and Harvey Rice had been murdered, and now Thelma Evans who had been grief-stricken only a few minutes before, seemed to be walking out on the tragedies. And why had she left Billy Rice?
"Harvey Rice mentioned a will to Billy," mused Van."Undoubtedly the girl, beautiful, poised, charming, intelligent, would share with the twin grandsons in the immense fortune of Harvey Rice. The college would receive a liberal bequest. Why had Harvey Rice, with his dying breath, warned Billy Rice to get the will from his library?"
Pushing his way through the still milling crowds, the Phantom made his way outside the stadium where the pale half moon over the Connecticut hills gave some light.
Van saw Thelma Evans and the tall, stoop-shouldered man beside her. They entered the door of a brick building half buried in the ground.
"The chemistry rooms," Van mattered softly.
Gliding swiftly across the campus. Van had almost come to the low doorway of the chemistry room when the attack that came was without warning. Something like a wire noose was whipped around Van's legs, throwing him heavily.
A pair of bulky figures hurtled toward him. Van's grip was upon his heavy automatic in his shoulder hoister, but he hesitated to start shooting. The stadium was far from cleared, and shots, even from outside, might cause a disastrous panic.
Although his feet were held by the looped wire, Van's lithe quickness handed the first of his attackers a surprise. A stout figure was coming down upon him when the Phantom shifted, hit a short straight punch to the man's middle, and sent him flying through the air, to strike the ground heavily.
His feet bound tightly together, Van heaved himself erect. His punching fist stopped the second man so suddenly that the fellow's hat went on over Van's shoulder. With both men down, Van bent to free himself of the wire. One man was scrambling up.
THE little hissing Van heard might have been made by escaping gas. He realized too late it was the sound of some kind of a blowgun. There was a sharp, stinging prick on the side of Van's face.
His hand darted upward and his fingers encountered feathers. Then quick blackness, a paralysis of his muscles halted the Phantom's movements, although his hearing remained.
"The Doctor knows what it takes," said a muffled voice.
"Button your tongue!" snapped the other man."Take his feet!"
Van was sure he heard the shrill scream of a woman inside the chemical building where Thelma Evans had disappeared. Then a wave of nausea swept over him. Had he received the same lethal dose that had killed Harvey Rice?
Apparently he was expected to live, for he was being tightly taped, with his wrists behind him. A big man and a small man lifted and carried him.
"If he's the Phantom, as the Doctor believes, this is a good night's work," one man said, in a voice that plainly was muffled to prevent identification.
The Doctor? So there was some masterful brain behind all the sudden crime at Brookvard College!
As Van was carried, he could hear hundreds of voices back in the amphitheater. But they might as well have been over in the next state for all the help they could be to him.
A door opened and closed. Blinding light from an old-fashioned incandescent carbon struck the Phantom's eyes. The little man made no effort to conceal himself, but the larger man who had led the attack, remained in the blackness of the doorway.
Electrical machinery hummed. Van was laid upon a floor that was black and slick with oil. One wall was covered with brass and copper switches which had their explanation to the Phantom since he was aware Brookvard College supplied its own light and power. And he was in the dynamo room, of course.
"The machine is set to go at promptly ten o'clock," the big man said hoarsely from the doorway."Check your watch with that clock on the wall and be prepared to leave at two minutes before ten. Be sure of your time, Joker, if you want to stay in one piece."
Van's acute senses picked up something else then—a clearly definable odor. It could not be mistaken by anyone who had ever smelled chestnuts roasting on a Manhattan corner.
The hands of the rat-faced little man were blackened by charcoal too, and the chestnut odor came from him. And the bigger, hidden man had called him"Joker." The missing chestnut vendor on whom the fat woman had attempted to pin the knife murder.
The rat-faced Joker was left alone to guard the Phantom. In moments more Van discovered that there was another occupant of the dynamo room, but he could not be of much help. Van judged he was the dynamo tender. He was tightly bound and gagged, over by one of the huge, humming machines.
The rat-faced chestnut vendor became loquacious when his big companion had departed.
"So you didn't think the Doctor was onto your makeup, Phantom?" he said, and grinned maliciously."And I wouldn't be surprised but what you imagine you've got some evidence about who threw that knife."
BECAUSE of the humming dynamos, there was little chance that Van might raise a quick alarm, though he was not gagged. Also, the paralysis was quickly leaving his nerves and muscles.
"Your pals got Jimmy Rice and his grandfather, so now they have to kill Billy Rice and Thelma Evans," he ventured as a statement to Ratface, rather than a question."They have to do away with them quickly, too."
The little man spoke as if he had been praised.
"How'd you guess it?" he said."Though they say you are the terrible Phantom, I don't see anything special about you."
Van was not feeling any too"special" himself right then. He was not proud of having blundered into a trap. It was not too far-fetched to have imagined that Thelma Evans might have helped to bait that trap by leading him to the chemistry building.
"Something is due to happen at ten o'clock?" he suggested.
"Yeah, Phantom. There's a machine back there that'll blow this dump sky-high when the Doctor pushes a plunger. That's why I have to watch the clock. The chemical building will burn too. It's a big idea of the Doctor's."
"Why?" snapped Van quickly.
"Why, the chemical building tells too much and—"
He clicked his teeth tight shut.
The Phantom was silent a moment, during which he discovered a pair of wires along the floor. He was sure they must lead to the bomb to be exploded. It had been placed over near the buzzing dynamos.
The Phantom was chilled in spite of himself. Between him and certain, horrible death, probably the murder of others, was only this one man now guarding him. And he was convinced that this chestnut vendor had been used by the man he called Doctor as a smart throw-off for the police on murder fingerprints.
Van was watching the face of the wall clock. Like indicators of doom, the minute and hour hands moved. And the little chestnut man kept glancing nervously at the clock.
It lacked twenty minutes to ten o'clock. Van judged the delay was for the purpose of getting set for the destruction of the chemistry building. Was Thelma Evans to die in that building? Or did Thelma Evans know that the Phantom was here? Who were the men who were responsible for all this?
"If only Muriel Havens were safely out of it all," Van muttered."But she was determined to be in on what mystery was going on at this college!"
His alarmed thoughts now were for Muriel Havens, the dark-haired, velvet-eyed daughter of Frank Havens. More than once she had aided the Phantom, although she never had known his true identity.
Always, however, the Phantom had known that beautiful Muriel Havens would be the girl of his heart, were it not for his dangerous life. As it was, he knew that his love for her must be kept a secret in his heart, and the ironical part of it all was that though Muriel Havens was a close friend of Richard Curtis Van Loan, and was fond of him, that there were times when she chided Dick Van Loan for being a useless playboy, having no slightest intimation of what was his real career, or that he had a dual identity.
The Phantom was thinking of Muriel now, because she had enrolled at the college for a post-graduate course in chemistry. She was here to keep watch for the Phantom over some of the college affairs.
"And if these killers have reasons to suspect that Professor Jeremy is the Phantom," Van groaned inwardly,"it may be that Muriel also is suspected—or has already been taken a prisoner!"
THE Phantom felt cold beads of sweat on his forehead. The minute hand of the clock seemed to be moving faster than a minute hand had ever moved before.
Van suddenly spoke to the fidgety little chestnut man.
"So the good Doctor had put your scarred thumbprint on that murder knife, Joker," he said."It wouldn't do for you to get caught now. It would lead the police straight to the Doctor and some other killers with him."
The man's head twisted as he looked at the clock. It lacked but fifteen minutes now until an inferno would break loose.
"Shut up, you!" he snarled at the Phantom."You can't fool me with any smart talk!"
"If the Doctor has discovered I've guessed all about those death knife prints, and I am sure someone else than you threw the knife, he might believe the police would catch on, too," Van said musingly."It would be funny, wouldn't it, if he'd left you here and set his time for the bomb to go off ahead a little. Perhaps you know too much. Anyhow, if you were blown to bits, the police would still think those were your prints."
Cursing, Joker walked over and kicked Van in the ribs. Van merely grinned up at him.
"I knew a mobster once who was to watch on a bridge for a certain boat to come under it," he said quietly."He didn't know the boat was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, but his boss knew it."
Joker goggled at him and rubbed at his sloping chin.
"Wh-what happened?" His voice quivered.
"Nothing much," Van said carelessly."One of his real friends in the mob warned him and he got off before the boat blew up and took the bridge with it. But then he was a big, husky killer and not just a shrimp who wasn't good for much."
The little man moved toward Van, his eyes glittering. It was nine minutes before ten o'clock now. The minute hand seemed to be jumping spaces. If the Phantom could only bring Joker a little closer...
He thought of a new angle to what was being planned by the"Doctor." What if the body of the missing Professor Howard was in that chemistry building?
Joker was shaking with fear, but rage was in his eyes. Van could see that the little man was on the verge of beating him for the fear he had created.
Joker stopped and lighted a cigarette. A fiendish glare came into his ratty eyes. He glanced at the clock.
Van was looking at the gleaming panel of the switchboard with its bright copper and marble. Some switches were open; some were closed.
"Even when a man is about to be burned in the chair they give him a meal and a smoke," the Phantom drawled, grinning at Joker."How about staking me to a draw on your cigarette?"
Joker leered at him."Wel-l-l, if a smoke's all you want, I'll give it to you."
His pointed chin stuck out. His fingertips were slim and pointed, too, and his thumbs smooth. Van's theory about the prints on the knife had been correct.
JOKER leaned over, and Van plainly read his intention. He meant to jab the lighted cigarette into one of the Phantom's eyes. Van's head jerked in time, but his cheek was seared.
It was the most witless move Joker could have made. Van had been playing him into it. The little man's bent body was directly between him and the switchboard wall.
Van's bound body doubled and both feet shot out. Joker screamed in midair. He smashed into the switchboard, writhed as his body shorted one or more switches.
A blinding blue flash filled the dynamo room. There was instant darkness. One of the dynamos screamed as if it were running away. Fervently Van hoped that many lights of the college had been blacked out.
Van judged he had less than three minutes now. Perhaps he had less time, if this unexpected happening stirred the killer outside to action. An electric spark might flash along those wires to the high explosive at any second now.
Unable to employ his hands, Van found the wires with his face. He bit into the insulation and the soft copper with his strong teeth, his head twisting as he tried to break the death wire.
At any instant the death spark might pass through his mouth to the planted bomb. The ratlike Joker moved and moaned. He had only been shocked.
Time became endless to the Phantom. His mouth was cut as his teeth twisted at the copper core of the insulated wire of doom. Vaguely he could hear cries around the big school where the abrupt blackout of the wrecked dynamo room had created more confusion to add to the night's tragedies.
Van could hear the ratty guard crawling along the floor. Then, just as his teeth severed the copper that spelled annihilation by a single spark, the wire jerked away.
The Phantom had saved himself and the bound dynamo man, as well as the guard. But the terrified guard had also made an effort to save himself, probably by ripping the fuse wires free from the explosive bomb.
"Over here!" Van called out."Get this tape off of my hands!"
With a squeal of fright, the chestnut vendor guard started to shuffle toward the outside door.
Often the life of the Phantom had been saved by his recalling little things about his surroundings. So now in his retentive memory was a picture of the moving drive shaft of the dynamos.
He rolled his bound body until his back rested against the smooth metal that connected the speeding dynamo with the steam engine power. It revolved at probably 150 times per second. Van recalled a rough, set screw that held this shaft in place near the dynamo. The set screw's square head protruded from the collar around the shaft.
At the high speed, the screw head was no more than a blur. If it caught a man's clothing or flesh, the man's whole body could be whirled around the shaft. Yet the Phantom rolled closer until he could feel the speed of the shaft burning his arms behind him.
One false move now, and his arms could be torn off or his body shredded. Van edged his taped wrists nearer and nearer to the blurring speed of the set screw. Suddenly he felt the square head of the screw bite into the tape as if he had been struck a solid blow.
All of Van's great strength was required to hold his body in position, Skin and flesh tore from his wrists, but he was freed with a wrench that seemed to loosen his arms in their sockets.
An instant later, the Phantom was on his feet. He carried the heavy, bound figure of the dynamo engineer outside. By this time, scurrying figures were descending upon the dynamo house, their voices indicating the near panic that had been created.
Hastily Van slipped into the shadows around the darkened amphitheater in which tragedy had first struck, and evaded the oncoming rush. A moment later he entered the darkened chemistry building.
"Miss Evans!" he called."Thelma Evans!"
Receiving no response, he was about to employ one of his own flashlights when someone got the dynamo switches back into place. Light leaped into the chemistry building.
This was more than a chemical laboratory. Its equipment showed experiments with the latest in electronoscopes, a subject in which the Phantom was deeply interested, as his earlier use of the small magnifying tube he had himself invented proved.
Van slipped quickly among the tables, covered with instruments and retorts, but with little hope now of finding Thelma Evans in here. Then light struck upon a fresh wetness on a marble slab. The color was that of blood. And on a corner of the table was a shred of a lacy, black scarf he had seen Thelma wearing.
Living or dead, it was from this laboratory that Thelma had disappeared. Van could only hope that this would not prove to be another Professor Howard murder, with no body to be found.
The Phantom glided from the chemistry building, headed for the executive offices of the college. It seemed certain to him that Thelma Evans was already dead or seriously hurt. The blood on the marble table was real.
Van wished to reach Dean Doremus quickly. It was his belief that the old-fashioned dean, long the close friend of dead Harvey Rice, was in grave danger. And the dean was a weak sick old man, incapable of coping with any desperate situation.
As he hurried on, he was remembering how Dean Doremus had once saved the life of Harvey Rice, years before. Having the same type of blood, Dean Doremus had sacrificed more than he could well afford, to keep Harvey Rice alive after a serious operation.
Dean Doremus had then been only an instructor in chemistry in another college. The grateful shipping millionaire had founded Brookvard College of Chemistry and had placed Dean Doremus at its head. A small board of business directors aided in administering the affairs of the big school.
"So it's more than likely that a fair-sized slice of the Harvey Rice fortune will further endow the college," Van was thinking.
When the lighted square of the dean's office was directly in front of Van, just a short distance away, the Phantom suddenly swerved into the bushes. Against the light from a window, he had seen a queer head and shoulders.
The head was so bald that it shone like a billiard ball. A turtle neck shifted it up and down, as its owner peered into the window.
Van could see that the window was raised a few inches for ventilation. The man with the bald head was watching, listening. He raised a black object to the opening under the window.
The Phantom flung himself forward. It was impossible for him to tell what the black object was that was held close to the window. But even as his attack, as swift and silent as that of a panther, hurled him upon the bald-headed man, he heard a little click.
As the Phantom's weight pinned the bald-headed man to the ground noiselessly, a little square black box rolled to one side. The bald-headed man was no match for Van's strength, but he was game, so, as he was pinned down, he kicked out and brought one foot down on the black box. It was broken into bits—and the bald-headed man ceased to struggle.
Light from the window showed the bony, skull-like features of the other man.
Van knew him now—Professor Arlow, one of the chemistry instructors. Arlow looked at Van and saw only Professor Jeremy, with whom he had been friendly since the supposed archeologist's arrival at Brookvard.
Arlow made no further show of resistance after breaking the black box.
He glanced up at the dean's window, but apparently Dean Doremus had not heard the silent encounter.
"Well, Jeremy," said Professor Arlow,"you can let up on me. I assure you I mean the dean no harm. And you've been getting around quite a bit since Jimmy Rice was killed. It might almost seem that you have other interests besides archeology."
Arlow seemed not in the least upset by the Phantom's sudden balking of his activities, whatever they were. Certainly his calm tone and manner were not those of a man surprised in guilty actions.
VAN had to admit to himself that he was puzzled. He decided to play along with Professor Arlow and see what came out of the bag, but it would still be in his role of Professor Jeremy, the archeologist.
"Perhaps I have other interests, especially an interest in preventing more murders, Arlow," he said."Mind telling me why you smashed that box?"
"There's no way to prevent you finding out," Arlow said coolly."The box contained an extra-sensitive microphone attached to a dictograph record. The record has been smashed."
Van came to his feet, Arlow beside him. Through the window he saw that Dean Doremus was alone at his desk. As Van looked, the dean poured a drink from a decanter and downed it. His face was pale. Van could see the blue veins under the transparent skin of his hands, even at that distance.
"Sorry I was so rough, Arlow," Van said, after a moment,"but after all that's happened, I couldn't be sure but that Dean Doremus was about to be added to the murder list. Mind informing me more about your listening in on the dean? Was he talking with someone?"
Arlow's bony features showed a shadow of a smile.
"Dean Doremus has a habit of muttering to himself at times," he said."That dictograph could pick up what he was saying. I thought perhaps the dean might be living under a threat, and that I might collect some information for the police."
Van nodded, and accepted the statement with an off-hand remark. But no man ever directly lied to the Phantom without being suspected. And Van knew that Arlow was lying now.
He picked up the black box, saw the record was broken to fragments. But he also saw the flicker of a smile that touched Arlow's bony face, and the look of sardonic amusement in the man's eyes.
Van changed his tactics abruptly. His voice was grim.
"You wouldn't happen to be known as the Doctor, would you, Arlow?"
"I have been so called, Jeremy," Arlow said quietly, still smiling a little."But I'm not the Doctor of death, to whom you no doubt refer. I was only seeking some information for my personal use."
"Suppose we both go in and talk it over with Dean Doremus now?" Van suggested."If it is as you say, I may tell you something about myself which may interest you."
Van had met many tough and dangerous men, quick men. But this bald-headed Professor Arlow handed him one of the rare surprises of his career.
"Perhaps I have guessed more than you think, Jeremy!" Arlow's voice crackled."So I'll say good night! Don't move! I don't want to kill you! But I assure you this weapon will put you out cold on your feet! I have other work to do, so stay where you are!"
The weapon—in Arlow's hand was flat. He must have had it concealed inside his shirt. A rising hump at the back suggested it was either some new variety of gas gun, or perhaps an air-gun. The Phantom had a recent rueful memory of a hissing weapon that had put him out most unexpectedly.
ARLOW was backing into the bushes. Van knew calm conviction when it was in another man's voice. Arlow was sure of himself and of his weapon. Van did not greatly desire to again be removed from the picture, even temporarily.
"I have no reason to try stopping you, as yet, Arlow," Van said grimly.
"That's right, you haven't"—Arlow hesitated—"Phantom!"
As he spoke, Arlow darted into the bushes. Suddenly bitter at not having acted more directly against Arlow, Van sprang toward the place he had disappeared.
Professor Arlow was as fast on his feet as he was smart. He had every advantage, twisting and turning through the shrubbery. But Van was faster. Passing up the danger of Arlow's strange weapon, the Phantom went through the bushes with the speed of a jungle cat.
Suddenly there was a hissing sound. A wavering blue haze shot out and spread in front of Van. He protected his eyes with one arm just in time, but even so he felt the sting of blinding gas briefly. He fought against breathing it and was forced to retreat.
Ahead of him there was no more sound or sign of Professor Arlow. Van heard Dean Doremus calling from the window behind him. The dean at last had become aware that something was going on.
"Well, Professor Arlow is out in the open at least," Van told himself."He knows I am the Phantom. Of course, there could have been a police leak, or he might be one of the murder mob, or the Doctor himself. But somehow I don't think so. Anyway, if he's okay, he'll be back in his office later."
Van turned back and answered the dean. Then he went around and entered the dean's office. Dean Doremus stared at Van with his pale eyes.
"Professor Jeremy? Where have you been? What's happened?"
The dean held his left side as though suffering intense pain.
"It's quite a story, and you would be wise to relax, Dean Doremus," said Van.
"But I've asked for police protection!" the dean cried."And they haven't any men yet to spare! Someone tried to blow up the dynamo room—someone who knows I have a weak heart and wants to cause my immediate death!"
Van scrutinized the old-fashioned professor. The dean's lips were thin, and quivered as he spoke. His neck also was thin, to the point of emaciation. In a way, he looked pitiful to the Phantom, but Van could not get away from the thought that the dean was more concerned for his own safety than he was for the good of the college. He was being thoroughly selfish in his display of fear.
"How long has Professor Arlow been an instructor here?" Van asked abruptly.
"Why"—the dean pondered—"some ten years or more. He is a good man, but troublesome at times. Rather radical about some things. Why do you ask that, Jeremy?"
Van came out with it then.
"I am the Phantom Detective, Dean. I am not a professor as I represented myself to be. I came here because of the murders of Professor Howard and Hardwick. And after these murders tonight, I am afraid there may have been another. In the chemistry rooms, this time. I saw blood—"
DEAN DOREMUS turned to a ghastly blue, and the Adam's apple in his thin throat shuttled up and down.
"I'll never forget that room!" he choked."Howard's blood was splattered all over it!"
Dean Doremus sagged forward upon his desk. Van lifted the man's head and poured a stiff drink between the pallid lips. The dean revived and smiled wanly.
"Sorry," he mumbled,"but I never have been able to stand the sight of blood after what happened years ago when Harvey Rice was close to death. Now he is dead, murdered. I saw the room where Howard died, and—" He paused, looking into the Phantom's eyes.
"Did I understand you, Jeremy, to say you are some kind of a ghost detective? Or was I mistaken?"
Van smiled a little. With all of his world-wide reputation as a man-hunter, here was a man so old-fashioned that his worldly contacts were about as up-to-date as his ancient garments.
"Never mind it, Dean," said Van."I am a detective who was called in by Harvey Rice. In spite of my presence, he was killed in the stadium. Perhaps you can supply some direct motive for all of this tragedy, or at least some hint. Before he died, Harvey Rice seemed to think it vitally important that his surviving grandson, Billy, go at once and get his will from his private safe at home. Possibly you might know something of that will?"
Before Dean Doremus could reply, a strikingly handsome woman entered the office, accompanied by a genially smiling middle-aged man.
"Mrs. Jennings—Mrs. Alford Jennings," Dean Doremus promptly greeted, wheezing and holding his side,"this is one of the detectives. I did not catch his name... And Charles Turner, my attorney."
"If I was your doctor, instead of your attorney, Dean Doremus," boomed Charles Turner,"I would insist that your place is in bed right now."
Mrs. Alford Jennings talked fast in a sophisticated voice. She was dressed to the minute, but it seemed to the Phantom, who knew that she owned more blue ribboners than any other woman in Connecticut, that she would have been more at home among her horses. Nevertheless, she had been a close friend to Harvey Rice and had taken a deep interest in his Brookvard College of Chemistry.
"I'm telling you, Dean Doremus, you have to do something about all this murdering and trouble, or you won't have a student left in the school," declared Mrs. Jennings."And here you sit doing nothing while Thelma Evans, the sweetest girl in the world, has been snatched off the face of the earth."
Dean Doremus spread his hands."After all, Mrs. Jennings, what would you advise me to do?" he asked."Surely the police are doing all they can. This detective here... What did you say your name was, young man?"
Van smiled.
"I'm known as the Phantom Detective," he informed.
"The Phantom?" exclaimed Mrs. Jennings."Now perhaps we'll get somewhere! Great heavens, Dean Doremus! You never heard of the Phantom?"
"I'm sorry," said the dean apologetically."But I'm afraid I haven't."
"We don't need the Phantom or any other private detectives messin' around Brookvard!" another deep voice that was distinctly antagonistic suddenly shouted behind Van."Let the regular police handle this, and go after it in our own way! If you're the Phantom Detective, we will have no use for your services!"
The voice sounded much like the bark of an angry bulldog. The Phantom was watching Mrs. Jennings' strong, handsome face. She was smiling at the speaker as if he were a peevish small boy.
"Meet Jason Jones, Mr. Phantom Detective," said Mrs. Jennings."He's always like that. I think he was once the captain of a ship. Now he owns all of the ships, and he still believes he's all the law there is."
EASILY the Phantom took in Jason Jones. He was a short man with black eyebrows and a black mustache, both of which were bristling belligerently. The Phantom had heard of Jason Jones, owner of a ship line, and one-time associate of Harvey Rice.
"Thanks, Mrs. Jennings," said the Phantom."I judge that we now have here the living members of the Brookvard College board? You, Mrs. Jennings, and Mr. Jones, and Dean Doremus?"
Mrs. Jennings nodded."Mr. Jones and myself are only members of the board," she said."Dean Doremus has always run the school according to Harvey Rice's wishes. I judge it will continue to be that way."
Dean Doremus fluttered his blue-veined hands.
"Under the circumstances, I expect arrangements must be made for the others to take over more of the work," he said."That is one reason I have engaged an attorney, Mr. Turner here, to provide for more authority by the board. I am not a well man."
"Nonsense, Doremus!" growled Jason Jones."You are as well as I am, and you know more about chemistry than any other man in the country!"
The Phantom had been informed of that by Frank Havens. Dean Doremus was supposed to be a wizard in chemistry.
The smile of chubby Charles Turner, the lawyer, was friendly. He nodded.
"I agree with Mr. Jones," he said."Except for the excitement of tonight, Dean Doremus is well enough. Now"—he looked at Van—"is there anything we have to give the Phantom in the way of new information? I disagree with Mr. Jones about needing a special detective, and it is well known that the Phantom is the best."
Once more Jason Jones bristled.
"Harvey Rice is dead," he said firmly."I believe all that has happened, including the unfortunate death of Professor Howard, the accident to Hardwick, and the killing of a track runner tonight is the result of personal feeling against Harvey Rice himself. He made many enemies."
Mrs. Alford Jennings seemed surprised by this statement, but Dean Doremus rubbed his blue-veined hands together and nodded.
"That is true," he said slowly."Harvey—Mr. Rice—warned me to watch out for trouble at the school as the result of an enemy he had made earlier in life. But he never mentioned who this enemy might foe."
The Phantom's eyes were narrowed as he listened, remembering the queer actions of Professor Arlow.
"I'm afraid I can't agree that these murders are the result of personal feeling against Harvey Rice," he said."For example, I might question Harvey Rice ever having been associated with either a professional knife thrower or a poisoner who could have come from the South American jungles."
The quiet words seemed almost like an explosion in the room. Jason Jones let out a harsh ejaculation.
"Perhaps I am wrong, and we do not need the imagination of a detective," Mrs. Jennings said flatly."We need to exercise common sense and not fantastic theories."
Charles Turner laughed shortly, skeptically.
"It has been pretty well established that Harvey Rice must have died of a heart ailment," he said."The knife-throwing was probably the work of some demented person. But it is bad, very bad publicity for the college. I hope wild theories do not get into the newspapers."
THE Phantom smiled grimly. He had been expecting Frank Havens, the publisher, to arrive soon. Havens had sent word he had expected to see the Phantom during the indoor track meet, but that he had been delayed in New York. And it was at this instant, which some might have considered inopportune, that an owl-eyed instructor came to the door and announced that Frank Havens was downstairs and had sent up word he would like to talk with Dean Doremus at once. The dean nodded.
"Havens was a close friend of Harvey Rice," he said."We can trust him to ignore anything that might reflect upon the high character of the college. Dear me, but there is always too much that gets into the papers about our sporting events, and too little about our achievements in chemistry."
Dean Doremus was taking the same old-fashioned view of publicity and graphic news common to many men of books who live in a world of their own.
When Frank Havens entered, his rugged face, his searching eyes, and his grim features bespoke more than the purveyor of the news. He was clearly a man who felt the wide responsibility of his position. His first words indicated he felt the need of action.
"My daughter is greatly worried about Thelma Evans," he said."Has any word of her been received?"
"No, we have no word," said Mrs. Jennings, as Muriel Havens herself came into the room after her father.
"I've just told my father that many students are packing, and planning to leave," Muriel informed."Some parents who attended the track meet are insisting that their sons and daughters quit Brookvard before something more happens."
"I hope the police are doing all they can," said Dean Doremus helplessly."Possibly Miss Evans left the college."
"Or was taken away," murmured the Phantom.
Frank Havens was signaling the Phantom with his steady gray eyes. Van moved to one side with the publisher.
"I had been looking for you, Phantom," said Havens."All the police can do has not turned up the knife killer, or the murderer of Harvey Rice—if he was murdered."
"He was murdered," asserted the Phantom.
"The police are holding a little fellow who was escaping from the dynamo room," said Havens."But they have not come upon any other suspicious persons. Mrs. Loren Hart has identified the man the police are holding as a chestnut vendor who ran away after the knife-throwing, but they have nothing on the chestnut man."
The Phantom smiled grimly."The chestnut man is unimportant except as a throw-off," he said.
Frank Havens' face became set and hard.
"What I really want you to know," he said in a low tone,"is that Billy Rice, in spite of his grandfather being killed, slipped away in a car only a few minutes ago. And I saw a bald-headed man with a hooked nose trailing him in another car."
"Professor Arlow!" exclaimed Van."Come on, we have no time to lose. Billy Rice is headed for his grandfather's home and the will in Harvey Rice's safe!"
AS the Phantom strode out into a wide corridor, slender, brown-eyed Muriel Havens was beside him.
"I have found out that the Professor Arlow you have just mentioned is very much in love with Thelma Evans, Phantom," she told him quickly."I have watched them, and it seems to me that he is looking out for her in the school and outside, also."
The whole pattern shaped up in Van's mind. Professor Arlow had escaped after spying upon the dean. Now he was trailing Billy Rice. Muriel had just said that Arlow was deeply in love with Thelma Evans, the niece of the dead Harvey Rice. Just what was the answer to the odd actions of that odd assortment of characters?
The Phantom's thoughts jumped to the little chestnut roaster who had possessed a knife like the one which had killed Jimmy Rice. The police had gathered him in. But already the Phantom had established the fact that the chestnut man's fingerprints did not match those of the knife thrower.
Next among the odd lot of persons was old-fashioned Dean Doremus. In the Phantom's opinion Dean Doremus would have been more in his metier conducting some rich boys' school of at least forty years before instead of this essentially modern institution.
And Mrs. Alford Jennings, noted as a horsewoman, and winner of blue ribbons. Well—the Phantom surmised that Mrs. Jennings possessed a mind as quick acting as a steel-trap.
Then there was Jason Jones, once a hard-handed shipmaster who had come up from the days when he was all the law there was among his own hard-fighting sailors.
Dean Doremus, Mrs. Jennings and Jason Jones certainly made up the queerest college board with which the Phantom had ever come into contact.
Now, as the Phantom and Frank Havens moved down the high-ceilinged corridor of the college, a stately and costly hallway with the walls decorated with futuristic art, Muriel Havens left them long enough to make sure that the door to Dean Doremus' office was closed.
"I believe I have something important, Phantom," she said quickly when she rejoined them."I have been here only a few weeks, but I have been keeping my eyes open."
They were nice eyes to watch when they were open, he thought swiftly. Big and limpid brown and intelligent. And Muriel had learned considerable of the Phantom's system of running down criminals during the various times she had been privileged to aid him.
"We seem to have many things of importance, Miss Havens," said Van."Perhaps one more will not matter."
"But this might!" insisted the girl."It's about two chemistry instructors. One is Professor Arlow, and the other one is Mademoiselle Aimee Corre. Mademoiselle Corre, from France, is here to conduct some experiments in chemistry."
"Yes?" said the Phantom.
"During the past few days, Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow have been working together mysteriously," said Muriel."And I believe they have been watching Dean Doremus. Mademoiselle is very pretty, but she knows a lot about chemistry. She—"
Muriel suddenly touched the Phantom's arm.
"There she is now, crossing the corridor," she said excitedly.
The Phantom was compelled to agree at once with one part of Muriel's statement. Mademoiselle Corre was indeed pretty. She was small and chic. Her hair, glossily black, was fluffed into little curls. Her face was oval and white, like a flower, and she had red, curving lips.
But the Phantom saw more than the attractiveness of Mademoiselle Corre. As the little Frenchwoman crossed the corridor, her head turned a little. Van's experience and instinct told him that Mademoiselle had missed no detail concerning Frank Havens, Muriel and himself.
"So she has been closely associated with Professor Arlow?" Van said slowly.
"Yes, Phantom, and I have watched them going over the college stock of chemicals and making up lists when they thought they were unobserved," said Muriel.
"Good!" approved the Phantom."But there is nothing more for tonight. I'd advise you to get some rest, Miss Havens. Your father and I have a little visit to make and we have delayed too long now."
AT the wheel of his own powerful coupé the Phantom raced down the curving hills of Connecticut toward the shore of Long Island Sound. His next stop would be the all-year home of the late Harvey Rice.
The Rice mansion was situated directly upon the Sound shore, some ten miles below Brookvard College. Although an invalid, Harvey Rice had contrived to remain near the big school he had founded and financed.
Once more the Phantom was adding up the oddness of the characters who had so suddenly appeared in tonight's tragic happenings. Mostly now, as he drove, he was thinking of Mademoiselle Corre.
"I suppose Mademoiselle Corre would be from Paris," he said to Frank Havens in a musing tone."She must have been up on the latest fashions—at least, before the war—so probably she would know a lot about feathers. Perhaps Muriel has something worth following up."
Havens stared at the Phantom."Feathers? I don't quite get what you mean, Dick?"
Havens was often startled by the Phantom's theories, but what sometimes seemed the most fantastic had the most logical origin.
"Harvey Rice was murdered by a feather, Frank," the Phantom said quietly."Mademoiselle Corre is associating with Professor Arlow, and I trapped Arlow spying upon Dean Doremus. Then Arlow surprised me with a gas gun, which isn't standard equipment for a chemistry instructor. And from the description, it is Arlow who is trailing Billy Rice."
The Phantom then sketched briefly all that had happened.
"It's because I'm sure Thelma Evans is a prisoner or perhaps dead, that I am striking at this other angle," Van said firmly."We may be in time to save the life of Billy Rice. And in spite of the blackness of the evidence, I have a lingering doubt as to where Professor Arlow fits into this pattern of crime."
Van was hitting sixty now. He slowed his coupé only for a light while crossing the Boston Post Road. Five minutes out of Stamford, he was sending his car over the curving concrete through the exclusive residence community of Old Greenwich. His high speed through the business section pulled a police car from the curb.
Van nodded to Frank Havens. There was more than a possibility that the arrival of police at the Rice home might be welcome. Van ignored the police siren and pulled the car after him, although he quickly outdistanced the law.
A narrow road turned off along the shore of the Sound toward the Rice country residence. Van slowed some. Then a huge, old tree loomed directly in the middle of the road. The tracks divided to pass around it.
Van swung into the right-hand track. At that instant, the twin lights of a car flashed around a curve a short distance ahead and hurtled toward Van and Havens.
"Look out, Dick!" grated Havens.
But the warning was needless. The driver of the speeding car was an expert. In the nick of time to miss Van's coupé, he swung to the other track around the tree.
Van's hand had been as quick as that of some magician. His spotlight flicked on. Its beam sliced into the windshield of the other car. Like the passing of some ghostly face, the Phantom saw the bony features and the shining bald head of Professor Arlow.
"Looks as if we're too late!" grated Van."Possibly the police will stop Arlow. But we must see first what has happened at the Harvey Rice residence."
GRAVEL pounded the shrubbery as Van swerved into the driveway before the big house. There was only the faint glow of a single light in the hallway.
As Van and Havens landed from the car, running across the lawn, the motor of a speedboat roared somewhere not far away. Van noted its riding lights as the craft turned into the channel and headed southwestward.
"I'll wager that Billy Rice is a prisoner on that boat!" shouted Van."Let's see what we have inside the house!"
First, there was a dead man. He was lying on the stairs. The Phantom and Havens were making their way toward that dead man when the big house trembled from a muffled explosion in the upper part. Acrid smoke billowed through the upper hallway with a swiftness that proved a door had been opened in the room of the blast.
Van instantly judged that the originators of that explosion were not now in the hallway or in the blasted room. He halted Havens, playing a strong light momentarily over the dead man's face. Undoubtedly he had been Harvey Rice's valet.
Van saw a tiny red spot on the cheek. Gripped in the dead man's fingers was the torn-off tip of a feather. And as Van took this bit of evidence he was sure it would match with the fluff he had removed from Harvey Rice's coat.
"Poison, Frank," he said to Havens, as he moved swiftly onward."Injected with a sharp feather quill."
They were going into the upper hallway as the powder-smoke lifted. Downstairs, somewhere, a door slammed with a bang. Havens halted.
"Let's look this blasted room over first," Van said grimly."I have reason for wanting to see it before the police arrive."
Smoke had been drawn through an open window of the room, which proved to be Harvey Rice's library. Van entered with automatic ready, watchful for a trap, his eyes sweeping over the interior.
There was no movement, no suspicious sound. The Phantom could look out across the river bay of Old Greenwich, which lay smooth and calm in the moonlight. He could no longer see the speedboat.
A police siren wailed in the quiet night. Van made a queer remark, even as he moved toward a small wall safe that had been blown out onto the floor in its entirety.
"I hope the police miss Professor Arlow, Frank. I have an idea he's one of our best leads. You can't catch the oldest fox if all the younger foxes are blocked out of their den."
Havens was staring at the wall safe. Its combination had held. The door was intact. Again the police siren wailed closer. Van indicated the table phone.
"Before the police arrive, Frank, call Muriel at Brookvard, and tell her to be on her guard, but to watch Mademoiselle Corre. Then get Chip Dorlan on the phone—downstairs, if the police barge in here—and direct him to pick up the trail of Jason Jones who's probably at his Gramercy Park apartment, and stick to it. And watch out, Frank. That noise we heard downstairs might not have been one of the servants making a getaway."
"Jason Jones? You suspect him, Dick?"
The Phantom shrugged.
"Everyone is a suspect up to this moment, Frank. It is beginning to become a much twisted pathway of crime."
AS Havens used the phone, Van worked fast. He judged now that the explosion was only a cover-up, but had been intended to break the safe, making it appear to be a cracksman's job.
Van's sensitive fingers roved over the dial around the knob. He had the safe open as Old Greenwich policemen pounded up the stairs.
There was a single metal box inside the safe. Some letters and papers were scattered about. There was no will or other document of that character.
Police guns bore down upon Van and Havens as the policemen in the library doorway saw them bending over the safe. Van was still keeping to the role of the blinking, nearsighted Professor Jeremy. He smiled a little at the gruff command to get up his hands. Then one policeman recognized Frank Havens, the noted publisher, and turned questioning eyes upon Van.
"I am the Phantom," Van announced, as he put the tubular glass over the surface of the box."Billy Rice evidently opened this safe and removed a will, as requested by his grandfather just before he died. Apparently he was surprised by some of the Brookvard College murderers who killed the valet on the stairs. I would say the safe was blown to cover up traces of Billy Rice having found the will, but we will prove it."
The Old Greenwich police were instantly respectful. They well knew the world-wide reputation of the Phantom. They saw him dust the surface of the metal box, then dust a light leather glove which he had Havens bring from the room that unquestionably belonged to young Billy Rice. He examined each through his powerful pocket microscope as the police watched every move.
"You can see for yourselves the fingerprints are the same on both articles," he told them."Young Billy opened this safe recently, I am positive, from his prints on this box. But I believe Billy Rice has been abducted, and that the will now is in the hands of as clever and as ruthless crooks as we have ever encountered."
The policemen marveled at the magnified prints they saw.
"A speedboat turned toward New York City," Van told them."It was using its lights, and my idea is that Billy Rice was aboard that boat. But I also have an idea that the lights were intended to be seen, and that the speedboat has some other destination."
The police were moving about, some of them going through the house.
The Phantom went to the telephone. He called Brookvard College, contacted the dean's office and asked a question. He listened as the faint, timorous voice of Dean Doremus replied.
"This is the Phantom, at Harvey Rice's house," said Van."Will you ascertain if Professor Arlow has returned to his rooms?"
Arlow had not been seen. Apparently he had not returned to the school.
"I'd advise you to be on your guard, Dean," Van said."Have you some of the state policemen there?"
Dean Doremus' voice quivered as he replied that two were then in his office.
"Have them stay with you closely," advised Van."You might pass along that same warning to be careful to Mrs. Jennings and to Jason Jones."
"Why, Jason Jones left the college while you and Mr. Havens were talking with Miss Havens," said the dean."Charles Turner left at the same time."
VAN thanked the dean, and hung up. As he turned away from the phone he saw a policeman going along the hallway, opening doors of rooms and switching on lights. The scarcely perceptible movement of another door across the hallway caught Van's eye.
Van went along the wall with a gliding movement. The door was closed. He turned the knob softly, then slammed it open with his full weight, crouching at one side. The room was dark, but the hall light revealed the quick movement of a shadowy figure inside.
Van hurled himself upon the shadowy figure with all of his weight. A man cursed loudly as he was pinned to the floor.
Behind Van, a policeman switched on the room lights.
The bristling person in Van's grip was none other than Jason Jones. The former associate of Harvey Rice and college board member spat out an oath as he demanded:
"Who do you think you're slamming around?"
Van released Jones, and the belligerent director got to his feet. He glowered at Van and the policeman.
"You might explain what you are doing here, especially why you were keeping under cover?" said Van.
"That's no one's business but my own!" snapped Jason Jones."But as a Brookvard director, I have a right to know what is happening. As I drove up, I heard a police car ahead of me, and there was an explosion."
"Taking a big chance with killers, weren't you?" put in the policeman.
"I wasn't taking any chances! I could have blasted the ears off the Phantom as he busted into this room!" Jason Jones produced a heavy caliber automatic."And don't ask me if I've got a permit, because I have!" he said in a hostile tone."I've found out what's happened by listening, so now if you don't mind I'll be getting into New York."
He turned his broad back upon Van and the policeman and started through the door.
"Mr. Jones does have a right to be here as he said," said Van.
Van watched the man stride angrily out of the front entrance, then got to the door himself in time to see Jason Jones turn in among the ground shrubbery. A moment later a car was driven from under the trees, to speed down the driveway.
"Chip Dorlan will have a little wait to pick him up, but it will be valuable to know just where Jason Jones goes and what he does now," was in Van's mind."He did not arrive here after we did. So he must have been in the house when the safe was being robbed."
SELDOM had the Phantom been confronted by so many abstruse angles. It was difficult to decide which single side of the series of crimes should first be taken up.
However, Van decided that the angle involving the disappearance of Thelma Evans, ward of Harvey Rice, and one of his principal heirs, deserved immediate attention. He was not satisfied that Thelma Evans had been spirited away, or that she was dead.
Someone at Brookvard College had mysteriously discovered that he was the Phantom. Then Thelma Evans had openly left the stadium with a stranger, and if she had known Professor Jeremy to be the Phantom, she could have been a lure to draw him into the hands of those who had attempted to end his career in the dynamo room.
The girl might have acted willingly, or under compulsion.
"She was close to Harvey Rice, and he might have told her that I had been summoned to the college," he mused."Then when a strange, experimenting professor appeared, she could have drawn her own conclusions. But I don't want to believe she would betray me into the hands of killers, and if she is a prisoner or has been murdered herself, that is the most important angle at this moment."
Another police car arrived, and behind it came a long, low limousine driven by a chauffeur. The chubby lawyer, Charles Turner, climbed out, came up to the front entrance.
Despite the horrors of the night, Turner was genial and smiling. When he saw the Phantom with Havens, he mopped his perspiring face with a spotless white handkerchief. He was puffing as if he had been running, instead of having arrived in a car.
"I'm glad to find you here, Mr. Havens, and you, Phantom," he wheezed."I've come on behalf of Dean Doremus. In the interest of Brookvard College, I am asking that the police impound the Harvey Rice safe and its contents for protection. Harvey Rice's will must be in that safe."
"The safe isn't of much use now," Van said wryly."Its contents are only personal letters. The will is missing. So is Billy Rice."
"What? What?" Turner's geniality vanished."The will is gone! Then that's what's behind all of this murder business! Someone is trying to rob the college of part of the Rice fortune. I demand that the police at once find who took the will."
The lawyer, a man of about thirty, who looked older because of his obesity, fumed and swore for a full minute before he quieted down.
"It would seem that Billy Rice got the will, then someone took Billy Rice away on a boat," said Van."You were a little late in arriving Mr. Turner." Van walked a little closer to the lawyer. Every sense of the Phantom was trained to the finest degree. In his years of tracking down criminals, he had discovered that trivial things often were the most important.
The salt air of the Sound permeated the hallway they entered. But to Van there seemed an even saltier tang when Charles Turner entered. Then Van saw faint, white streaks along the lapels of Turner's dark serge coat that could have been made by the drying of salt water. That meant salty spray. And Turner's coat had borne no such marks when Van had seen him at the college.
"SO Mr. Turner has been in a boat, and the boat was traveling fast in the swells," went through Van's mind."That speedboat seemed to be headed for New York harbor, but if Turner was aboard, that boat is now somewhere above Old Greenwich and not between here and the city."
"It's regrettable, Mr. Turner," Van said,"but I would say that unless Billy Rice knew he was being followed, and succeeded in hiding his grandfather's will, the document probably now is in the hands of those who have been committing murder to get it or something else of equal importance."
Turner's lips were tightly compressed.
"Perhaps you're right, Phantom. I would say it would be well for the police to make a thorough search of the house and the grounds."
"Not a bad idea," agreed Van."But I have other more important business myself. You might see that the police make the search, Mr. Turner."
The Phantom was probing possible reasons for Turner's appearance now. He was just as sure that the lawyer had been in the house before the safe was blown up as he was sure that Jason Jones also had been there.
And with Professor Arlow speeding away from the scene of the murder and safe blowing, that made three prominent suspects who could be directly connected with the crime. But if Billy Rice had managed to conceal the will before it could be taken from him, Van believed it was neither in the house nor about the grounds. Perhaps Turner knew this, which could account for his willingness to have the search made.
The Phantom also juggled another idea. The safe could have been opened by an expert before Billy Rice arrived. The will might have been removed, and all fingerprints rubbed off the metal box inside. So obviously when Billy Rice opened the safe and possibly found the will already taken, only his fingerprints would show. Then a slow fuse could have been lighted to make it appear the safe had been blown.
As these thoughts went through Van's mind, he reached his battered old coupé with Havens. He started the powerful motor under the hood, then spoke.
"At this moment, Frank, I would like to be able to be in at least three or four places at once. We are going back to the college, but I would like to be searching the Sound. Or it might be worthwhile to return to New York City. I have the little matter of a vaudeville or circus throwing knife to investigate there. It might lead to the murderer of Jimmy Rice."
Van swung his coupé onto the curving concrete that followed the Sound shore from the Old Greenwich beach around a back route into Stamford. What happened then came with such suddenness that only eyes and a brain as quick as the Phantom could have recorded it.
Around a sharp curve the coupé lights struck upon a high stone wall surrounding an estate. Two men were beside the wall. As the lights picked them out, their movement was quick and surprising.
Possibly it was because he had the vaudeville or circus knife in mind, at this instant, that the little scene connected up in the Phantom's thoughts. For one of the men ahead had leaped with dexterous skill to the shoulders of his companion and caught the edge of the high stone wall. He swung upward, turned over, catching by his legs. His hands reached and the other man caught them. The little performance would have done credit to any acrobatic team.
IN ten seconds, both men had rolled over the wall and vanished. But Van's glimpse of them probably saved Havens and himself from instant death. Instinctively he clamped his foot on the brake. Those agile wall climbers must have some reason for their flight.
The coupé was gliding downward around a sharp curve. It was slowed to forty as a strip of smooth, gleaming water and a stone shoulder of the road loomed directly ahead. A giant hand seemed to lift the car's front wheels. The coupé crashed and went on over the stone shoulder.
There was a zinging snap. The steering wheel swung uselessly under Van's skilled hands. A heavy wire had been strung across the road, slanted, to throw any car toward the water!
The car's steel top took the impact of the somersault. Van pinned Havens back with one arm, gripping the wheel, as firmly as he could, with his other hand.
The car landed upright in some four or five feet of Sound water.
Havens was stunned, but Van quickly had him out of the car through the driver's door. As Van held Havens erect, his gaze swept the shore under the yellow moon. He could see no residence lights. This back road to Stamford was little traveled after midnight.
Van surmised that the two men he had seen must be a part of the murder gang. They must have remained near enough the Rice residence to have known when the Phantom was preparing to leave, and have known he would take that short-cut back road toward Brookvard.
Havens was recovering, was able to stand on his feet, though shaken up, when Van saw two figures coming down through the rocks, moving as if they wished to keep concealed as much as possible.
Van pulled Havens down, with only their heads above water close to the submerged coupé. The furtive figures came into the open moonlight. Van saw the gleam of weapons. So the dexterous wall climbers had come to make certain their death-trap had worked!
Van saw a tied motorboat floating to a keg buoy some fifty yards away, out in the bay, and was sizing up the distance to it when Havens, chilled by the icy water, sneezed abruptly, violently.
The weapons of the two men ashore instantly spewed fire. They made only a little crackling sound.
"On your back, Frank!" Van said in a whisper."I'll get us out of this."
He lined up the jutting steel top of the coupé with the anchored boat fifty yards out. If he could keep that protection between him and the guns, it would be possible to make the boat.
The guns cracked again, bullets whining off the steel of the car. Van went under silently. He swam with his feet and one hand, towing Havens, with only the publisher's face exposed in the vague moonlight.
Water sprayed into Havens' face from a random bullet. Van swam unerringly toward the floating motorboat. Nearing it, he lifted his head and saw that the motorboat had high gunwales. If he could reach it, they would be temporarily safe, or he could fight it out with his own guns which fortunately were protected in oiled holsters...
MURIEL HAVENS was on the phone in her room at Brookvard College, not long before the Phantom's car struck the wire trap and was hurtled into the Sound. Chip Dorlan's high voice came to Muriel from where he was calling in New York. His words brought a smile to the girl's lips.
"I'm to shadow Jason Jones," said Chip."Has he left the college? I am waiting near his Gramercy Park apartment, but he hasn't showed up."
"He left here some time ago," Muriel told him."He should be there at any time. Have you heard any more from my father and the Phantom, Chip?"
"No, I had only one call," said Chip."Gee, Miss Havens! I wish I was with the Phantom. Or where you are. But all I've got to do is watch a guy who like as not will turn out the lights and go to bed when he does get here."
"I am here only because I have studied chemistry, Chip," Muriel said soothingly.
"Darn it, Miss Havens!" Chip flashed back at her."Some day, I'm going to be a chemist as great as—well, as nearly like the Phantom, as I can make it."
"I'm sure you will, Chip," Muriel said warmly."But just now don't ring me again tonight. I don't want it to be known I am out of my room. I have something special to do."
The phone clicked. Muriel switched out her room lights. She could see the darkened windows of Dean Doremus' office. Undoubtedly the dean had retired—guarded by two state policemen.
A few policemen still moved silently about the campus and poked around among the buildings. The black tragedies of the night seemed to be brooding in the shadows of the huge elms under the yellow moonlight.
Muriel had become well acquainted with Thelma Evans. She had been fond of the vivacious ward of the murdered Harvey Rice. She shared none of the Phantom's doubt of the girl, but Muriel had all the soul of a woman and none of the realistic hardness that must sheath the emotions of a great detective.
Muriel also liked the chic, lovely Mademoiselle Corre. She knew her as a refugee from war-enslaved France. Therefore, her sympathy was stronger than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, she had learned from the Phantom never to judge any person's character too quickly.
She had been almost compelled to grow suspicious of the charming little Frenchwoman. She had watched Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow when they were together. They appeared to share some secret, and just recently, Muriel had become certain that they desired to have their meetings unobserved by others.
Muriel was about to go into the corridor to make her way toward Mademoiselle Corre's door in the came dormitory when she saw a light appear briefly in Dean Doremus' window. It was a vague light, and it moved about.
Muriel acted upon impulse. A minute later, she was slipping across the campus, careful to avoid any watchful state trooper.
Through the dean's window, she saw the pencil flashlight that had drawn her attention. The little beam came on for several seconds, then was flicked off, and Muriel drew in her breath sharply.
For Mademoiselle Corre's small, dark face had been fully revealed! Her head was close to Professor Arlow's shining bald dome, as the two crouched near one of the dean's files. Books and papers were piled under the light.
THE light flicked on and off again, and Muriel heard them moving. She darted back into the tree shadows. The faint sound of the dean's office door opening and closing came to her.
But Mademoiselle Corre and Arlow did not come out onto the campus. Muriel waited until she was positive they'd had plenty of time to leave the executive building, then she turned back, feeling balked and angry.
"If I could have only heard them talk, or have seen those books, I might have something," she told herself."I wonder if they are going to Arlow's rooms now?"
Two squares of lights glowed over in the women's dormitory. Muriel glided toward this as silently as the Phantom himself could have done. It was as she had expected—the lights came from Mademoiselle Corre's room. The Frenchwoman and the professor must have gone there, instead of to his rooms.
In the semi-darkness, Muriel saw the skeleton framework of the fire-escape, and her heart leaped as she noted that the fire-escape passed one of Mademoiselle Corre's windows. In moments, she was cautiously climbing the fire-escape, holding her breath.
"I hope one of the troopers doesn't see me, and shoot before he asks questions," she was thinking.
Muriel was both elated and unhappy when she peered through the half-closed draperies of the window that was open an inch or two from the bottom. Pretty Mademoiselle Corre was seated at a table. She was copying rapidly from one of the dean's books, apparently setting down figures on paper. Muriel was a bit sick at heart. Mademoiselle Corre was sweet. She had been especially friendly.
Professor Arlow was standing near the closed door, as if he were watching out for an interruption. His bony face was grim and hard.
"Don't take too much time, Aimee," he said in a low tone."I must return the books as quickly as possible. Only make sure the figures check."
Muriel could not imagine what crookedness could be involved. Perhaps the Phantom might have some clue to this mysterious theft from the dean's files. Evidently Mademoiselle Corre and Arlow did not want the books to be missed. But surely Mademoiselle could not be involved in those terrible deaths, Muriel told herself. And Arlow was terribly in love with Thelma Evans, even if he was old enough to be her father.
Suddenly that idea was completely wiped from Muriel's mind. The bald-headed professor came across the room, bent over the little Frenchwoman and kissed her. Muriel shivered.
"You watch awhile, darling," said Arlow."I can copy much faster than you."
Mademoiselle Corre's small hand caressed his cheek. Possibly it was because this unexpected scene upset Muriel's faith in humankind that she was not her cautious self but, as she started to move from her cramped position, her high heel caught between iron slats of the fire-escape.
The heel tore loose suddenly, throwing Muriel backward. The next instant, she went crashing into the window. The glass broke, but she was still tangled helplessly in the draperies.
There was a sharp exclamation of fright, an oath in Arlow's voice. Instantly the lights went out.
MURIEL had escaped being cut by the broken glass, but she had to move cautiously to gain her feet inside the room. She was tempted to call out who she was, for fear one of them would shoot.
But her white teeth clicked together as she thought of the Phantom. She had invited this danger in her desire to become one of his valuable aids. But she was not happy about it now. Her flesh seemed to be chilling and shrinking.
Neither of the room's occupants had spoken. She could not hear either of them moving. Muriel fully realized then what it was to have cold panic clutching at her heart until it pounded fiercely.
Then that all ended abruptly. Lurid fire leaped up in the middle of the room.
Mademoiselle Corre and Arlow were destroying those books!
Muriel got the small automatic with which she was armed into one shaking hand, then pushed the draperies aside. The room was filled with a roaring fire. It was a strange kind of fire, seeming to have greenish tongues running through it. Her breath was choked off.
Then something seemed very queer. The flames were close, appeared almost to touch her. But there was no heat in them. There were only blinding, choking fumes in that strange, cold fire that drove her back through the window onto the fire-escape.
Her eyes blinded by the fumes, Muriel failed to see the cold fire die as quickly as it had flamed. Nor did she see the sinuous figure that was crouching below her on the fire-escape, waiting.
State troopers were rushing into the dormitory, shouting. They had seen the fire. Muriel felt her way cautiously down the fire-escape steps. Her feet had just touched the ground when a hard, brutal hand suddenly was clamped over her mouth. Fingers gripped and bent her wrist before she could use her automatic. She tried to struggle, but the fingers slipped to her throat and tightened. Two men lifted her and carried her away.
At this same moment, state troopers burst into the room of Mademoiselle Corre. The lights were on again and Mademoiselle Corre was standing in a corner of the room, staring at the table in fright. The books from the dean's office had disappeared. So had Professor Arlow.
"I was trying an experiment," Mademoiselle Corre said wistfully."The chemicals exploded. I can't see. I must have stumbled and fallen against the window. The glass is broken."
There were some chemicals in bottles on the table. A stone mortar appeared to have contained the cold fire. The troopers were only human. They vied with each other to give first aid to the pretty Frenchwoman...
When Muriel's throat and eyes were freed, she was in a long, dimly lighted room. She was placed in a chair. Four men were there, all wearing masks.
"Who are you?" one of them demanded."Why were you spying up there?"
Muriel's lips tightened and she remained silent. Another masked man stepped closer.
"She's Muriel Havens, Marino!" he exclaimed."That means she was working for the Phantom! Well, this is one time he will be sorry! He's stepped into something too big for him at last!"
ONE of the men walked over to a huge metal trough and stirred some kind of a mixture with a long-handled paddle. Then Muriel identified the long room. It was one to which but few students ever were admitted.
Muriel had been in the room but once—with Mademoiselle Corre. This portion of the laboratory was far underground. It was used for advanced and dangerous experiments.
"When we finish, the Phantom will have something to follow," the man stirring the mixture said."They've been wanting to try this quick drying plaster on something alive."
"It'll take care of both the dames, and fast!" said another man harshly."Color it green when you put in the dryer! The Phantom can feast his eyes, if he lives to see them, upon two green goddesses of death!"
"They can't do that!" a girl's frantic voice cried hoarsely."Muriel! Tell them we know nothing!"
Muriel's amazed eyes saw beautiful Thelma Evans. The ward of Harvey Rice, bound with tape, was lying on the floor. One masked man came over and looked down at her.
"How about making them real goddesses?" he said.
"None of that goes with the Doctor!" another man sharply admonished."We'll use the plaster on them as they are! Give them the bath when it's ready, clothes and all!"
IT was when the Phantom had the floating motorboat between him and the still watching men ashore, that he heaved himself in without a sound. His powerful hands lifted Havens over the high gunwale with the same silence.
"Don't speak, Frank," he cautioned."I'm sure the men who set that deathtrap think we are dead, but they may not be quite sure. If they investigate out here, I'll have to take care of them."
Van was slipping what appeared to be tiny, rubber plugs into his ears. These contained miniature microphones of his own devising. They could pick up even a whisper at a considerable distance.
The river bay of Old Greenwich lay as smooth and as quiet as a millpond under the moonlight. Voices carried along the water almost as distinctly as they would have over a phone wire, especially to Van with the aid of his microphones.
"Tony," one man ashore said,"you take the rowboat and go out to the cruiser. Tell them we've finished off the Phantom and Havens. It will be safe to bring Billy Rice back to make him show where he hid the will. If he doesn't talk now, he never will."
"Right, Kiel!" replied the other man."And you?"
"I'm beating it back to the college. The Doctor wants to make sure that Muriel Havens girl is out of the picture. She has been working with the Phantom out there, and they were getting pretty close to something."
"Okay, Kiel! I'll row around a bit, just to make sure the Phantom is dead all right. They say he's a regular magician at getting out of pinches."
The killer who had been left to search apparently was convinced that the Phantom and Havens were now at the bottom of the little bay, but nevertheless he did not overlook the motorboat where they were hidden—just in case. When he reached it, he caught the edge of the boat and, with the silenced pistol held ready, poked his head into view.
He had no chance to use his weapon. Van's snapping blow with the flat side of his automatic landed on the killer's head. The man groaned once, lurched over, and his silenced gun went to the bottom of the bay. Van pulled his inert body into the larger boat, then fastened the rowboat.
From under Van's clothes came that famous make-up case that aided the Phantom so greatly in preserving his reputation as a man of a thousand faces. He had heard the unconscious man's voice. He could reproduce that fellow's face under a searching light as he looked from the man to the mirror of his make-up case.
"Huh!" he grunted."That scar, Frank. See it? And this is one of two men who went over a walk like circus acrobats. There are four deep scars from the ear to the chin. I would say they were made years ago by a big cat, say a tiger or a leopard. These men have been with a circus. This one may have been an animal tamer."
"IN what way would that connect up with these murders, if in any way, Dick?" Havens asked.
Van was studying the long face, the scars, and a mat of thick hair that was turning gray. The Phantom judged the man to be in his fifties. His circus or vaudeville days must have been years before.
"A circus or vaudeville throwing knife killed Jimmy Rice, Frank," said Van."This man and the other one with him are old-time circus men. When I get the chance, I'll find out what firm made the knife I found in the chestnut vendor's box. It's an old knife, and the firm name that was originally stamped upon it has been worn away. I found that out with the microscope."
Van was putting plastic inside his lower jaw. He manipulated more of it into his nostrils. Shading pencils in waterproof colors fairly flew over his face. And his face grew queerly longer, or so it seemed.
The hair he had worn as Professor Jeremy was changed with dyeing powder that transformed it to a grayish mat. He slipped different eye-shells into place over his own warm brown orbs.
The terrible scar proved the most difficult. But in about five minutes it was along Van's jaw.
"Think it will pass, Frank?" asked Van, and his voice had changed to the tones of the man for whom he was about to substitute.
"Every time I see you make such a change, I don't believe you're quite human, Dick," Havens said gravely.
Van's hand just touched Havens' shoulder affectionately.
"Sometimes I feel the same way when it's other lives at stake, and I try to keep from feeling vengeful, Frank. But only a few minutes ago, I discovered I'm still pretty blamed human. If anything had happened to you, I would have made sure this fellow here never regained his senses. But you are alive, so he has a break."
Van swiftly changed clothes with the unconscious man. The first thing to do was to find that cruiser of which the men had spoken and the missing Billy Rice. He stood up, ready to take to the rowboat, but stopped long enough to handcuff the prisoner's hands behind him.
"I'll make it quick, but keep a close watch, Frank," said Van.
Havens nodded."I'm sticking right here."
As great as was Van's own apprehension for Muriel Havens' safety, making him hasten, Van was devoutly thankful that Havens had not heard what the men on shore had said about her.
Two score small cruisers swung at anchor near the middle of the little bay. All were dark as Van rowed toward them silently. Again he put the tiny microphones in his ears, listening.
The vessels were like floating gray ghosts in the yellow moonlight, with a rising fog drifting about them. Van dared not make a mistake. In this disguise, he was supposed to know where the cruiser he wanted was anchored. Also he knew he was supposed to be"Tony," but the last name was still to be learned.
Once again the clever mikes performed their service. A voice floated over the water. It was poignant with pain, but it held no note of fear.
"I'll never tell you, never! You are lying! You haven't got Thelma! If you tear off all my fingers, I won't talk! I—"
The words ended in a groan that must have been evoked by unbearable agony. Van shot the rowboat straight toward the cruiser from which the sounds had come.
"Hold it!" rapped a voice.
Van saw a man with a raised weapon on the afterdeck of the cruiser. A silenced pistol.
Van turned full around in the rowboat, so that his face could be seen. A flashlight snapped on, then off.
"Okay, Tony!" said the man with the gun, putting it away."We saw the car take the dive! You got the Phantom?"
"Both the Phantom and Frank Havens," called out a voice that the man would know as that of Tony.
Van pulled alongside. He heard Billy Rice utter a moan of unendurable anguish in the cruiser cabin as he sprang lightly to the deck.
"We've been waiting, Tony," said a dark-skinned man."We are taking this Rice fellow back to find that will. How in time did he ever get rid of it?"
Van's eyes shifted to the door of the dimly lighted cabin. He saw Billy Rice falling back into a chair. A big, heavy hand bent one of his fingers back. Van heard the snap of the bone in his sensitive mikes, and fury surged through him.
His right hand came up, snapped back. His automatic crunched alongside the deck guard's head. The guard dropped.
The man who had broken Billy Rice's finger turned an apelike face quickly toward the door. A thrown knife just missed Van's face and stuck in the jamb of the cabin doorway.
The torturer was bringing an automatic from his pocket. Van had no choice. His automatic exploded. The torturer went to his knees, then to his face.
It was almost pure instinct that caused Van to duck, throwing himself forward as another knife hissed toward his throat. It was so close, the handle rapped him cruelly across one ear, staggering him. He brought up his automatic.
A lean, bony figure dived through an open cabin window. The water splashed. Van sprang across the cabin. He saw the knife thrower's head bob up only a short distance away. It would have been an easy shot. But though Van's fury was still boiling, he could not shoot even a would-be murderer, now helpless, swimming under his sure aim.
Van let the man go. Billy Rice, he saw, was mercifully unconscious. A minute later he breathed a little heavily. The small-eared torturer was dead. The guard on the deck would never breathe again.
Van picked up Billy Rice and put him in the rowboat. He shot the boat back toward the craft in which he had left Frank Havens with the prisoner, Tony.
"That you, Dick?" called Havens, in a tone that told him something had gone wrong."Hurry! The prisoner's gone!"
Havens was sitting up weakly in the bottom of the boat.
"He is a devil, if there ever was one," said Havens."He has the strength of a bull. Before I knew he was no longer unconscious, he rolled, got to his feet and rammed me with his head. Then he went into the bay and, with his hands shackled behind him, he swam on his back to shore."
Van nodded. He had intended to make the prisoner talk. But there was other more critical business calling him now.
"It doesn't matter, Frank," he said."We're getting ashore and grabbing the first car we can find anywhere! I have a feeling we are needed at Brookvard."
"You mean Muriel?" said Havens."You think something has happened to her?"
Van tried to smile."I hope not. But something may break there next."
HELD firmly by tape that bound them rigidly, lovely Muriel Havens and Thelma Evans were exemplifications of dark beauty at its best, even in their distress.
One of the masked men in the deserted laboratory was stirring some new element into the soft, oozing mixture in the metal trough. Muriel recalled that several students had spoken to her of that new quick-drying plaster. It had been spoken of as a discovery by Professor Arlow. She scrutinized the four masked men. One was tall and thin, but all had plentiful hair. None of them could be Professor Arlow.
"He would keep himself clear of anything like this, even if he's behind it," ran Muriel's thought."If only I had been able to leave some sign for the Phantom! Surely he will come back to the college."
The mixture in the metal trough began to smoke as if with heat.
"You don't believe they'll do it, do you, Muriel?" Thelma Evans whispered, terror riding her stricken voice."I could offer them money! Muriel, have you ever suspected Mademoiselle Corre?"
Muriel looked into Thelma Evans' fear-filled eyes. She shook her head.
"I wouldn't want to think Mademoiselle Corre wasn't all right, Thelma," she murmured."She's too sweet to be mixed up in anything like this."
Muriel disbelieved her own words, but she would tell that to no one but the Phantom. She still hoped she was wrong, and that Mademoiselle Corre might have some reasonable explanation of what had happened.
One masked man was consulting a paper as the quick-drying plaster, intended now for plaster casts of death, was being mixed.
"You pour in that powder cement last," he said, and Muriel felt icy ripples run along her skin."Don't mix it too hot. We wouldn't want to burn the little ladies, anyway not before the Phantom's sweet little friend has a chance to tell us what her smart detective has discovered."
Muriel fully believed that she and Thelma had no chance now. Yet she found that she was thinking not of herself so much as of the Phantom. Her mind seemed now to be whispering to her heart, or was it her heart whispering to her mind?
"If I live, it will be because it's important to the Phantom. He must know what I have discovered. He means more to me than I do to myself—than my life means. I've been a fool not to have known how I felt about him."
The fleeting thought suddenly vanished, for strong hands pulled a cloth about her white throat and fastened it loosely. Thelma was similarly fastened.
"Pour in the stuff," ordered a masked man.
A grayish, powdery substance came out of a sack, and was stirred rapidly in the oozy contents of the trough. Muriel had her teeth set upon her lower lip. One thing she could do. She could die bravely, as the Phantom would have died.
She was lifted in powerful arms. Thelma cried out, but Muriel swallowed her own choking fear, as warm, thick liquid covered her body to her throat.
A MASKED man stepped close. She could see his eyes glittering behind the holes of his mask.
"Now suppose you start telling us what the Phantom knows," he said."If you talk fast enough, perhaps we shall not cover your face."
Muriel's eyes were twin blazes of defiance. Even Thelma was strengthened by seeing it. She became quiet, her own black eyes fixed upon Muriel.
"I'll never tell you anything about the Phantom," Muriel said to her inquisitor firmly.
A man who held four queer, paper cones cursed.
"You'll never tell the Phantom anything about us either," he said mockingly."Within ten minutes after your face is covered, you will never speak again."
Thelma Evans screamed then. But a hand was clamped over her mouth. Muriel watched with fascinated eyes as the ends of the cones were inserted into Thelma's nostrils.
"No use perking up because of the cones, sister," one of the men said."You'll only live until that plaster dries, and begins to shrink."
With the paper cones in her nose, Thelma's face and head were pushed under a warm, thickening plaster. For one moment, while Muriel's determined silence threatened to drive her mad, the Phantom's nervy aide watched the awful smoothness of the stuff that oozed in a bright green wave over the other girl.
Then Thelma was lifted up, and the plaster clung, seeming to stiffen instantly as the girl was carried from the metal trough. Thelma was making horrible sounds, trying to scream, but forced to keep her lips tight shut.
She was a terrible green figure without a face or shape as she was placed in a chair. The men turned back to Muriel. The little ends of the cones were pushed into her nostrils.
A steady hand pressed her head backward, downward.
At that moment, Muriel was convinced that she had lost her mind. The horror of a slow, torturous death should have been chilling her heart. Yet she could think of but one trivial, unimportant thing. Her hair. It was saturated with the plaster that would dry, harden within a few minutes, and would never come off without pulling out all her hair.
"I'll be bald-headed and have to wear a wig," was the hysterically grotesque thought that came between her and the fear of death.
The Phantom could have told her that men facing death often have strange, inconsequential thoughts. One may think of a letter he forgot to mail. Another may recall some escapade of childhood.
As Muriel was lifted to a chair, she imagined she could feel the plaster already drying, drawing her hair from its roots. Her eyes were tightly closed. So were her ears. She knew now what it must feel like to be a deaf mute—and blind.
She squirmed, moving as much as she could under the tape and the plaster. She hoped she might prolong the hardening of the terrible plastic matter encasing her, which was supposed to become her coffin in a very short while.
For a long minute, none of the four masked men spoke.
"We had best call the Doctor," one finally said."He will want to know this is finished."
The tone did not have the ring of a mobster voice. He pulled off his mask. His hair was slightly gray. It seemed to run with this organized murder that its perpetrators should be older men.
The unmasked man walked to a wall. Over a small, portable, shortwave radio set on the floor, he called for the Doctor...
As if subconsciously aware of what was going on in that subterranean room at that minute, the Phantom fairly straightened out the curves of the twisted roads in the Connecticut hills as he drove at eighty in the car that had been provided by an Old Greenwich resident. The Phantom had desired to avoid seeking more police help just now. Though Billy Rice had been left with a physician and police guard, safe, but unconscious.
"When we come near Brookvard," Van said to Frank Havens,"I would suggest that you leave me outside the college. After I have entered, you go directly in. If Professor Arlow has returned, I would like to see him, as soon as I have made sure that Muriel is all right."
"You believe Muriel is in danger?" was Havens' apprehensive query.
"Yes, Frank," Van said soberly,"I fear she is being threatened. I want her to leave Brookvard College at once—tonight."
Outside the entrance to Brookvard, Havens climbed from the car. It was then, under the instrument lights, that Van noted stains of three colors on the right sleeve of Tony's coat which he was still wearing. He left Havens, and parked the car.
Sinister silence hung over the high canopy of elms on the Brookvard campus. The state troopers who had assisted the lovely Mademoiselle Corre when she had, as she said, set a"cold fire" of chemicals had left her and were nowhere in sight. They had no inkling of the tragedy that was being enacted within a structure that had been built underground because of the danger embodied in its experimental contents.
Although Van's apprehension for Muriel Havens was riding his nerves, and every minute might be important, he had to know about those stains on Tony's coat. He wasted no more than three or four minutes in finding out, at that.
From a concealed pocket he took a small, metal container. He poured its colorless contents upon the stained sleeve. The colors there changed swiftly.
The colorless liquid was an active reagent for certain chemicals not widely used. Van's eyes narrowed as he saw the reaction on the sleeve.
"In some manner the murderers have gained access to all of the college laboratories," he muttered."All the stains picked up by Tony are from elements to be found only in one spot because of their rarity."
Van quietly left the car, knowing that if Muriel were in danger that an alarm would only increase her peril. The shadows under the stately elms swallowed up the Phantom.
LIKE some gray ghost, the Phantom drifted across the campus. He was unobserved as he slipped into the women's dormitory. Less than one minute later, he knew that Muriel Havens was either watching someone who had no business stirring at this unseemly hour in the morning, or that something had happened to her.
Muriel's door was unlocked. One quick flick of his flashlight and Van knew she had been gone for some time. Hurrying back to the campus, he made direct contact with a state trooper. In his scar-faced guise of Tony, Van encountered a little delay in convincing the trooper of his identity.
Then Van learned of the queer cold fire in Mademoiselle Corre's room. Taking the trooper with him, Van went directly there. His suspicion of the Frenchwoman which had been aroused by Muriel's suggestion, had to be satisfied now.
Mademoiselle Corre might know more than she had told. The trooper had mentioned the broken window and the Phantom was quick to doubt the mademoiselle's story about it. He suspected that Muriel had been at the window.
The trooper rapped on the door of Mademoiselle Corre's room. There was no response. Ten seconds later, that trooper saw the quickest picking of a lock he had ever witnessed.
"It's a break for the law that you are the world's best detective and not a burglar," the trooper whispered, grinning.
"Thanks, but I won't be needing you from here on," said Van."I've an idea I may get further working alone."
As Van saw that Mademoiselle Corre's room was empty, that her bed had not been slept in, he swiftly cautioned the departing trooper against raising an alarm. For Van had recalled a rather secret entrance to the experimental laboratory of the college.
Because of the nature of their work, it had been arranged that those engaged in experiments underground should cross a short causeway from the main buildings, go down a stairway, and enter the danger zone without being observed by students in the outer labs. This causeway was on the second floor.
The Phantom moved with silent speed. He reached the stairway and went down. The heavy door in a passageway leading underground was locked. Again Van employed his own methods and the door opened.
A dim light shone in the long room ahead. And Van went cold all over. He saw two horribly grotesque, almost shapeless figures seated in chairs. They were colored a violent green.
It was impossible to detect the identity of the figures until Van, keeping to the wall, moved closer. Something that seldom came to his cool nerves tightened, the muscles around his heart. He saw several strands of hair that had remained outside the soft plaster, now fast drying upon one of the terrible figures.
Muriel!
The truth hit his brain devastatingly. With clenched hands he held himself. Then he saw three masked men in the middle of the room, and another man was starting to talk into a small short-wave, two-way radio set.
"We have both of them, Doctor," the man was saying,"and the plaster has been applied. Once they are in the Sound, they will never be discovered."
VAN'S fingers gripped his heavy automatic. He knew now what it meant to have a direct, personal interest in murders about to be committed.
But he must waste a few seconds. For the lives of others were in the balance. The Doctor was the one man he must reach. Killing his henchmen would accomplish little.
The Doctor's voice was a heavy bass, deep and low. In it Van could detect no familiar ring.
"That is good," the Doctor's voice said."For I have just learned that the Phantom escaped a death we had planned. He killed two of our men on the cruiser. He took Billy Rice away. Tony got me the word, after making a getaway in handcuffs. When the girls are removed, I may have further orders. I'll see you at the Horse Show."
The Phantom's brain was pulsing furiously. At this moment, he would have liked nothing better than to shoot it out with these men. But that would mean risking the lives of Muriel Havens and the other green figure, which he now was convinced was that of Thelma Evans. Van had no doubt of his own ability to take care of these four masked men, but feared one of the torture murderers might be smart enough to use the girls as a shield, or send bullets smashing into the fast-drying plaster that was now doubtless inflicting agony upon the sightless, deaf and mute figures.
Van drew a breath of relief when the mysterious Doctor cut off without telling these men that the Phantom was wearing Tony's clothes and probably was disguised as Tony. Now he might have a chance! That was far more important than speculating about what the Doctor had to do with the Horse Show, or what he meant by saying that he would meet one of the men there.
The masked man moved back from the radio. He went over and poked at the plaster encasing Muriel Havens.
"The stuff ain't what it's reported to be!" he spat out."Or maybe we didn't mix it right. It ain't drying fast! Maybe we'll have to move them the way they are. We can't hang around until daylight."
In the deep shadows, the Phantom's hands moved swiftly. An extra pair of handcuffs came from a pocket, where he had transferred them from his own clothes. He slipped his hands behind him, and locked the cuffs on his wrists.
Van alone knew a secret spring in those cuffs that would release him. He moved back to the door, opened, then closed it with a bang. He sprang back into the light, his face working.
The surprised masked torturers whirled, grabbing for their guns. Their hands dropped.
"Tony Marino!" one exclaimed.
So that was the last name, thought Van, But oaths dripped from his lips as he came forward. And for a man who had heard the voice of Tony Marino only through sensitive mikes at a distance, he gave a remarkable imitation of what he believed that voice would be, used louder. He simulated hoarseness, to be sure, as he cursed and cried out.
"The Doctor told me over the phone you had that Havens girl, and I wanted to tell him something, but I was cut off! Get that plaster off both the Havens girl and Thelma Evans! I found out that the Harvey Rice will might not have been in that safe! Billy Rice knows where it is, and he's with the Phantom! Thelma Evans may know, or the Phantom may have called the Havens girl and she knows! Get the plaster off, quick! I'll call the Doctor!"
ONE masked man moved closer. Van's hand was itching for his gun, in case the trick failed, but the man spoke sympathetically.
"You hurt, Tony? Your voice sounds queer!"
Van could see glittering eyes studying him, and cursed roundly again.
"No, I'm not hurt! Got a rap on the head, that's all! And I can't get these blasted handcuffs off! Don't wait! Break off that plaster before it's too late!"
Van breathed easier as all four men set to work. The plaster would have needed a hammer in another five minutes. It was hardening, but still in a semi-plastic state. Van controlled himself with, an effort, when the plaster peeled off Muriel Havens' face and she cried out as some of her hair was pulled by brutal hands.
The Phantom backed up to a table that contained a small vise. He cracked the handcuffs hard against it. He continued to clink the cuffs.
"Stop it!" Muriel protested, as more of her hair was yanked out."Go easier, can't you?"
One man laughed raucously. Van's handcuffs seemed to break and fall to the concrete floor. He sprang forward, confronting Muriel. As he did, the lobe of his left ear appeared to be bothering him. He was tugging at it with his fingers, his eyes looking straight into the girl's brown eyes.
He saw the quick light of understanding come into Muriel's eyes, her bosom lifted with an involuntary breath of relief. For that tug at his ear was a signal understood only by Chip Dorlan, Frank Havens and Muriel Havens. In any guise it said,"I am the Phantom."
Van's eye was cornered upon the masked man who had spoken to him. The fellow seemed to be puzzled as he walked over and picked up the handcuffs.
"Maybe you'd be knowing, Miss Havens," Van said quickly,"if your great Phantom got hold of the last will of Harvey Rice? Or you might even know where it is?"
Muriel's reply was clipped and even. Van admired the calm courage of the girl who had been so close to terrible death.
"I'm not talking," she said."Why don't you find the Phantom and ask him, or try Billy Rice?"
"Still playing smart, huh?" Van snapped."You'll talk all right! You're getting a little breathing spell, that's all!"
The eyes of the masked man holding the handcuffs were focused on Van. The Phantom's hand was ready for a quick grab at his gun. His whole body became rigid, alert, as the man with the handcuffs spoke.
"How come, Tony, you said you'd call the Doctor? Since when have you had his radio signal?"
The Phantom realized he had made a mistake."Tony" was not supposed to know the Doctor's short-wave signal letters! All Van could do now was to strike first!
The man who suspected him was already reaching for a weapon. The other masked men half turned, as if puzzled.
To win against long odds, the Phantom had long ago learned to hit first, and keep right on hitting. He sprang sideward with the agility of the big cat that might have put that scar on Tony Marino's face, the scar which was now marked on his own.
His heavy automatic jolted as the other man also slammed out a shot. Van did not wait to see the effect of his bullet. He was sure. Thinking of Muriel's suffering, he had aimed at a button, knew he had hit that button high up on the man's coat near his collar-bone.
One of the other masked men stood as if paralyzed, the other two stared.
"Tony! Tony!" one burst out."You gone nuts? Why you turnin' the heater on your brother?"
That was illuminating to Van. Tony Marino had been with a man who might have been his twin, down by the Sound. That man had fallen, writhing with a broken collar-bone. If this bigger man was also a brother, that made three Marinos.
Again the thought of a circus, or of vaudeville flashed into Van's mind. The Three Marinos? The Marino Brothers? They would have been acrobats. A knife-thrower had killed Jimmy Rice with a knife in the stadium. Another knife-thrower had tried to nail the Phantom when he had rescued Billy Rice.
But Van's fast thinking did not slow his movements. For the space of mere suspended seconds, the three standing men imagined he had shot one of his brothers. But the wounded man was already crying out:
"He ain't Tony! Get him! He's the Phantom!"
Van's byplay with Muriel Havens had been wasted because one man had discovered that the handcuffs off his wrists had not been broken.
NOT bothering to shoot again, the Phantom struck swiftly and hard. As his right hand whipped back his gun across one masked face, crunching into bone and dropping the torturer cold, Van's left fist blurred into action, swift and sure.
A second man took a punch that traveled less than five inches to the under side of his chin. The fellow was lifted clear, his spine appearing to snap as he went backward. His heels hit the edge of the metal trough, and he fell, floundering and groaning in what was now a half dried, soggy-mass of the green plaster.
The fourth masked man was too quick for Van's whirling movement to bring him in range of a fist. The man threw himself behind Muriel's bound figure, his rod coming into crackling action.
Van could not shoot. Only his amazing speed and his forward dive threw him under the stream of belching death. At the same time, the man wallowing into the plaster thought of his rod and it flamed out. Van felt a slight jolt across the lower part of his spine that numbed his muscles some.
He was rolling, seeking a clear shot at the man behind Muriel, when the man's rasping voice cut in.
"Drop your gun, Phantom, or I'll let your girl have it!"
The killer's rod was jammed into the back of Muriel's neck.
"Don't shoot!" Van shouted.
His hand weaved to one side and his heavy automatic bounced on the cement floor. The killer behind Muriel laughed.
"I've got him, Joey!" he gloated."Now you can even up and find out what he's done with Tony!"
Van was standing as if helpless, his automatic on the floor and his hands half raised and empty.
"Hold it!" snapped Joey Marino."The Doctor will want to see the Phantom! Nail him down!"
Those men had missed out on some information concerning the Phantom. They would have been surprised to know that had it not been for the two girls that Van would have like nothing better than to fake a surrender and be taken to the Doctor.
But as it was—
>Van's left hand moved with the speed of a snake's head when it strikes. The sharp crackle of a smaller caliber automatic made exactly three shots that rippled together. The little gun came from his sleeve.
The man behind Muriel was first to drop, with a hole in his forehead. The man who had been shooting from the plaster trough seemed suddenly to become tired. He rolled over into the quick drying stuff that was likely soon to be buried with him.
Joey Marino's gun was again coming up and Van aimed for the man's fingers. He wanted to take this Marino brother alive. But Joey Marino met with a sad accident. The lead ricocheted from his own rod and pierced his throat. He fell with his life's blood pumping out.
The Phantom saw Muriel Havens close her eyes, evidently sickened by the killings that the Phantom could not avoid.
Van hoped there and then, it would be a lasting lesson for the girl to keep out of detective work. Her life was worth a lot more to him than the aid she was able to give.
ALTHOUGH the shots had been underground, they had been heard outside. Gun butts were hammering at the door. At the moment the door was about to yield, the Phantom again heard the voice of the Doctor.
Over by one wall moved a figure that must have been hooded and robed, for it was all flowing blackness.
"You win this heat, Phantom, but there will come a finish!" the deep bass voice rumbled."I am the Doctor. I have never failed. All that saves you now is that I never have killed by my own hand when there were others to do it for me. So you may look forward to swift extinction!"
Van sprang toward the shadowy, robed figure as troopers burst through the door. But when he reached the darkness where the Doctor had stood there was nothing there but blank wall.
"Don't shoot him!" the trooper to whom Van had identified himself outside was shouting."It's the Phantom! And would you take a look at that!"
A sergeant of the troop spoke accusingly."You might at least have left us one prisoner, Phantom."
Thelma Evans, sobbing hysterically, was put under the care of a physician. Van listened to Muriel's story of Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow, both of whom were still missing.
He was thinking of the Doctor, trying to call up a vague memory of that voice. But the Doctor's deep bass was unusual and had a peculiar tone all its own.
Frank Havens was holding Muriel in his arms. Her hair was stuck full of plaster.
"So you think it looks bad for the Frenchwoman and Arlow, Muriel?" Van said slowly."It does, but from my way of seeing it, not as you may suspect. I'm only hoping they can be found before they are murdered."
"But they did have Dean Doremus' books!" insisted Muriel.
"That doesn't prove they have committed any crime," said Van."Even if Professor Arlow did make a fast getaway from the Harvey Rice residence tonight."
Frank Havens shook his head, puzzled. He was trying to figure out what might be in the Phantom's mind. Van did not trouble to enlighten him. He was thinking deeply about the Doctor.
That mysterious leader of murderers must be in the college. And strangely, Van believed what the Doctor had said. He never had killed anyone, and probably never would.
"For the present," stated Van,"we should not further alarm Dean Doremus. He looks like a man already close to the edge. We'll take up the matter of those books of his later. Right now, I have business in the Bronx. Muriel, I believe you'll agree with me that you have accomplished enough for this time, so go home with your father and get some rest.
"And Frank, call me at the Bronx place any time up until noon when you get in touch with Chip Dorlan. I have a stop to make there. I need at least two hours sleep, and this afternoon I'll call you."
"Two hours sleep?" repeated Havens."Aren't you wasting too much time resting?"
Van grinned crookedly as he left them.
A state police car took him away from Brookvard just as daylight streaked through the tall elms on the campus. He heard a lark singing, as if its night had been peaceful enough, close to where the dark wings of murder had cast their shadow over the great school.
WHEN Van left the police car and walked to his laboratory in the Bronx, he went into an old building that once had been a factory. He took pains that he should not be seen by any of his neighbors who knew him only as the mild-appearing, stoop-shouldered old Dr. Paul Bendix.
Inside the building, he stepped into one of America's most marvelous crime laboratories. As soon as he had attended to the bullet crease across his back—a clean flesh wound—he stretched in a low chair. He slept two hours to the minute and awoke refreshed.
Ten minutes after he awoke. Van put his electronoscope, which magnified many thousand times, onto the blades of two knives. They were of the same type that had killed Jimmy Rice. He had used a cutting acid before the electronoscope magnified the steel.
Although deeply worn, a name and a few other words came plainly to view. Van had known that the firm making the knife must have stamped the hard steel with a cutter press. What was only smooth steel to the human eye, now showed:
ABNER BROTHERS, FINE TOOLS
(Crown Circus Special)
With confirmation of what had become evident to the Phantom, he made a swift summary of all that had happened, the individuals connected with it, and reached the conclusion that murder was still waiting for others.
The"curse of Brookvard," its bloody crime wave, apparently was aimed at destroying the school. With Harvey Rice undoubtedly leaving a big slice of his fortune to Brookvard, it seemed that someone had wanted to keep that money from going to the college.
"But I don't believe that's the answer," mused Van."Dean Doremus, head of the school, Mrs. Alford Jennings, and Jason Jones, for all of his bluster, probably are still in grave danger. And who would get the Rice fortune if Thelma Evans and Billy Rice were dead?
"And I have the feeling that Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow are also in personal danger, although they seem to have been playing some secret, crooked game. There is the lawyer, Charles Turner. He's lined up with the killers somewhere. There is no doubt but that he was out on the Sound after Billy Rice was kidnapped. And the Doctor was there in the college last night.
"But that doesn't account for the knife-throwing murder in the stadium, or the feathered dart that killed Harvey Rice. The feather murder was committed by a woman, and—"
The Phantom stopped his musing, harking back to the stadium murders, and those he had seen near Harvey Rice.
"Mrs. Loren Hart saw the chestnut vendor had not thrown that knife. She could have noticed others close to Harvey Rice. She has sharp little eyes, that woman, even if she is a social climber."
Deeply thoughtful, Van went over and thumbed through a Manhattan phone book. The name of Abner Brothers was there, listed in downtown Manhattan on the East Side. The voice that replied to Van's call for Mr. Abner told him that he was talking to a very old man.
"Yes—yes, I am of the Abners who once made the best known throwing knives in the circus and vaudeville world," said the quavering voice.
VAN asked a quick question.
"Yes—yes—glad to help you. Yes, we have better than just names in books. We have the posters and photographs of all the great circus and vaudeville artists of the day who used our fine knives."
"Ever hear of the Marino Brothers?" questioned Van.
"The three death-defying Marinos!" exclaimed the old man, as if he were living in the past."Yes—yes—we have their photographs and their posters, with the Great Loretta. She wouldn't throw any knives but those that came from the Abners. We have a testimonial letter from her that we made the finest steel, better than Spain's or Sheffield's. We have—"
Van interrupted him.
"I will call on you in a short time, Mr. Abner. I would like to see a photograph of the Great Loretta."
WHEN the Phantom called Frank Havens, it still lacked an hour until noon. Van came directly to the point.
"If Chip Dorlan calls you, Frank, have him call you back again at exactly noon. By that time I will have some past history that may be interesting. If Steve Huston isn't busy, it might be worthwhile to have him run through circus and vaudeville press clippings of Nineteen-eleven, if you have them that far back in your morgue."
Steve Huston was a red-headed reporter for the Clarion who often had risked his neck to aid the Phantom. He would be happy to do this research work for Van, and the Clarion had the most complete newspaper filing system in New York City—"the morgue" being the newspaper name for the permanent filing rooms.
"We can go back farther than that, Dick," said Havens.
"Is Muriel recovering all right?" Van tried to keep undue anxiety out of his voice. Havens replied with a chuckling laugh.
"Muriel is doing all right, with the assistance of three beauty operators, a hairdresser and a nurse. They'll be all day pulverizing dried plaster to save her hair."
When the Phantom started from the Bronx in one of his own cars, it was in the role of the graying, mild-appearing Dr. Paul Bendix. He judged that character might inspire more confidence in the old tool and knife expert, Abner, of Abner Brothers.
Van's back ached from the bullet wound, and his muscles had been put to a severe test during the night. Otherwise he was fresh and fit. His constant physical training gave him a resistance that quickly restored a depleted vitality.
The sign of "Abner Brothers, Fine Tools," was dimmed with age. It was a small works, housed in an old frame building. The place appeared ready to collapse, waiting only for the deaths of its owners.
It was the last building before arriving at the new East River Parkway. The contrast between the structure and the modern motor drive was like one of those pictures of"Past and Present." As the Phantom parked his coupé half a block from the building, and walked slowly toward it, he saw a veiled young woman come from the Abner Brothers' office door.
The woman moved with the lithe grace of youth. A car with a dark-skinned chauffeur was waiting just beyond the building. When the woman entered the car it moved away, turned right, and on into one of the East River Parkway passes that would swing it to the uptown side. Van had automatically taken the license number. It would remain printed on his brain.
Van saw a middle-aged office secretary standing in the doorway. The man was looking after the woman in the car. His tongue licked at thin, dry lips. As Van paused close to him, the secretary pulled at a green eye-shade, then rubbed at his glasses.
"Either I'm losing my sight, or I've been seeing a ghost," Van heard him mumble.
The man was startled when Van addressed him quickly.
"You think you saw a ghost?"
"Sure as sin!" the old fellow said eagerly."She ain't changed a mite in thirty years or I'm crazy! She—"
HE trapped his loose tongue, seeming to realize that a stranger had asked the unexpected question. He stared at Van.
"I'm here to see Mr. Abner," said Van."I don't know which one, but I was speaking to him over the phone."
"There ain't but one Abner now, Mister," Van was informed."Leonidas Abner died ten years ago. There is only Truman now. You have some business, perhaps?"
"Serious business. So you thought you saw a ghost?"
"That young woman, Mister. She came to see Mr. Abner. She lifted her veil, and I could have sworn it was more than thirty years ago, instead of today. She hasn't changed a particle. I imagined I was seeing things, so while she was with Mr. Abner, I got her old photograph from the files. It's the same. And she has to be more than fifty years old."
Van saw a photograph on the man's desk. He looked at it closely. The picture showed a shapely girl in tights, posed in action, her right hand drawn back.
The Phantom was a little startled. For the young woman in the picture held a throwing knife in her hand.
"And who might she be?" he inquired.
"That is or was the Great Loretta," said the office man."She was a regular hummer. She had—"
"Did Mr. Abner see her out of his office?" Van's voice was startled, abrupt.
"Why, no, she just came out by herself, and Mr. Ab—"
Van was already pushing through an inner door. For the business office of a fine tool works, the place was fantastic. Its walls, even the ceiling glared with many colors. One-sheet posters of circuses and vaudeville performances, somewhat faded, were all over the place.
Van shifted his eyes to a corner. He saw the most wrinkled face he had ever encountered. Sunken, pale blue eyes stared at him. This Mr. Abner must have been close to ninety. He was alive, and that was a relief to the Phantom.
Murder had been much too much on the loose during the past eighteen hours.
Mr. Abner, however, was rubbing his chin, shaking his head as if only partly awake.
Van leaped to him, started rubbing his thin wrists. Mr. Abner blinked, gazed at Van with unseeing eyes which gradually filled with life.
"Who—who are you?" he said."Where did she go? She was here. She hasn't changed in all the years. Why—"
Van followed the old eyes. He saw a heap of scrapped paper on the floor. Several circus posters had been torn to bits. They had been ripped from the wall behind the desk.
Mr. Abner waved his thin hands.
"Why did she want to destroy the old posters, if it wasn't her? She tore up that big one of the Great Loretta."
Van was holding the faded photograph of the girl in tights in his hand.
"This is the way she used to be?" he asked.
"Yes—yes. That's the Great Loretta, and up there are the Three Marinos, the brothers, acrobats... Why, dear me, they have been torn down, too."
Van saw blank spaces on the wall.
"What did the woman say when she came in?" he asked.
"Why, dear me, Mister, she didn't say a word. It seemed as if a feather brushed across my face—then I couldn't see her. I couldn't seem to talk and I must have fallen asleep."
A FEATHER! The information fitted in with other angles of the most incredible murder trail that the Phantom had ever followed. Mr. Abner was lucky to have been only put to sleep.
Van talked briefly with Mr. Abner. Yes, the Great Loretta had once had a troupe of her own, thirty years before. She had been with the Crown Circus, Mammoth, Mastodonic and Marvelous, as proclaimed by the posters.
Van picked up pieces of a torn poster. He fitted these together on Mr. Abner's desk, then found more pieces.
Even on the poster, two of the Marino brothers were enough alike to have been twins. The third, Van knew, was dead. But the other pair still lived and were dangerous.
The other poster shaped into a single figure. A circus poster is far from being a photograph, but this picture was distinctive. Van knew he had seen a figure like that. He placed the pieces of this last poster in a pocket.
He wondered why the incredibly resurrected Great Loretta had not burned the posters and set the place on fire. And why had she not looked for the old photograph?
Perhaps Mr. Abner would receive another visit. Van advised him to close his place of business and go home.
"But I couldn't just up and go home," quavered Mr. Abner."Rain or shine, I haven't missed a day for fifty-eight years. Leonidas worked every day for forty-four years. Then he had a chill one day and stayed home. It killed him, it did."
"See that he goes home," Van said to the office man."I am sending police to guard the place."
"Police?" whimpered Mr. Abner."We haven't done anything wrong, have we?"
Van reassured him. Mr. Abner's mind was in the past. For the moment Van's thoughts also went far back. He was trying to make a figure on the torn poster in his pocket harmonize with someone he had met, but had not known long.
Van called the police license bureau on the phone.
The car he had seen going away was owned by Miss Olivia Hartwell. She was listed as having an exclusive woman's shop. It was on Fifth Avenue, in the Fifties.
"Hartwell—Hart?" jumped into Van's mind, as he made himself known on the phone and asked for a special detail to look after Mr. Abner and his quaint and silent tool works.
He went to a window and studied the old photograph by the vague light coming through the unwashed panes. Then he closed his eyes, visualizing the shapely Great Loretta, the knife-thrower, with her piquant, saucy face, and her slim, strong arm.
In his mind he fleshed over the face and the body. That left two bright, snapping little eyes almost buried in rolls of fats. It brought to mind enormous, fleshy arms covered with too many jewels.
He was seeing Mrs. Loren Hart. The social climber with her extravagant parties was visualized, as she had appeared when she had informed him of the chestnut vendor fleeing from the Jimmy Rice murder at the Brookvard stadium.
Van waited until a police car wailed into the block. He went out, identified himself, and told the two squad men to be on the lookout for one, or both of the Marino brothers.
"And don't start after me for speeding before I hit the uptown parkway," said Van.
HIS coupé shot through the pass and the East River's dirty surface flowed by him at high speed. He turned off in the Fifties. In a side street, he made a remarkable change. When he parked off Fifth Avenue he was again the blinking, nearsighted Professor Jeremy who had been seen by Mrs. Loren Hart.
Van strode briskly to the entrance of the small, exclusive shop. It bore only the small gold sign,"Olivia Hartwell." There were a few of the Fifth Avenue style models, meaning three times the price of the same things down in Lexington Avenue, in a wide window.
Van paused before the window. Two hats mounted on dummy heads were at the sides. Both were gay with dyed feathers. Van could just see into the little reception room of the shop, off which other doors led into fitting rooms.
The time had arrived for some direct action, even if it shocked a few stray socialites shopping at the noon hour. Van pushed open the door and stepped inside. As he did, he saw a door open, at the back of the reception room.
A white-faced girl, evidently a fitter, hurried out. She headed for another door across the room, noticed Van and paused, apparently believing him a customer.
"I'm sorry," she said in a strained voice."I'll have to ask you to come back a little later. We are closing for the afternoon, right away."
From behind the door through which the girl had come a shrill scream of fear rang out, then was choked off as abruptly as if the screaming woman had been throttled. Van hit the door, slamming it open.
He hesitated in his forward rush for only a part of a second. For in that lightning space of time he saw the lovely Mademoiselle Corre again. The beautiful Frenchwoman was bent far back over a chair.
Another woman, heavier, with marks plain enough where her face had been lifted and sagging wrinkles removed, had one of Mademoiselle Corre's wrists. Mademoiselle Corre was apparently fighting with her other hand, yet was handicapped by trying to keep the other woman from striking or touching either the hand or her.
It was a ludicrous spectacle for anyone who was less informed than the Phantom. For the attacking woman held only a harmless-looking feather in her hand, a bright, gay feather that might have come from a hat.
"Drop it!" Van ordered harshly.
He threw himself forward. The heavy woman uttered an oath and drove the quill of the bright feather at the white face of Mademoiselle Corre.
CHIP DORLAN, home from military school where the Phantom had sent his young protege, was never so happy as when he could do work for the Phantom whom he idolized. Sometimes, though, he was afraid that he would never make a good shadow, for his patience was short.
His nerves were tense, and he was on edge before the big car of Jason Jones, bristling board member of Brookvard College, appeared in front of a Gramercy Park apartment house. The belligerent Jason Jones crossed from his car, and it was driven away.
Jones paused, looking quickly up and down the street, then over across the small park, with its trees. To Chip, it was evident that the man was acting furtively.
"Wonder if he's expecting somebody to be watching for him?" Chip thought."Maybe some guy's been following him."
It was after midnight. If Chip could have been informed of the queer actions of Jason Jones at the Harvey Rice residence in Old Greenwich, he would have been more alert than he was. For the Phantom had been convinced that Jason Jones must have been in the house when the Harvey Rice safe had been robbed and the valet had been killed by a poisoned feather.
At last Jones turned and went inside. Chip shivered with the night chill. The hours would be long until morning. But he had been told by the Phantom to stick to Jason Jones, so he would be there when daylight came, and until the man again appeared.
After endless hours, the sun came up in a sickly fog over the East River. Finally it brightened. Chip was young enough to miss his night's sleep. His eyes kept closing. Something had to be done about that.
Chip got an idea. Producing an envelope from his pocket, he sauntered across the street. He went into the classy corridor of the apartment house.
"I'm the boy from Mr. Jones' office," he told the lone elevator operator on duty."I've brought over a report he asked for."
The operator nodded dully, shot the car up to the ninth floor. Chip was left standing in a hallway with but two doors. One door matched with the number opposite Jason Jones' name downstairs. If he could get Jason Jones to his office on some pretext, then Chip Dorlan could get some sleep.
Chip walked slowly past the apartment, turned and came back. Now that he was up here, he realized this was contrary to the Phantom's directions merely to keep Jones in sight. Then Chip halted abruptly.
Jason Jones' door was not quite closed. An inch ribbon of light showed in the vertical crack. Chip thought that was funny. New Yorkers did not leave their doors open at night in apartment houses.
Chip listened, but there was no sound inside the apartment. Watching the hallway, he pushed the door slowly. Perhaps it was only the dead silence that caused his skin to start getting goose pimples.
When the door was half open Chip could see a swanky room back of a little entryway. Lights blazed brilliantly, although the sun was hitting the room's windows brightly.
"The Phantom says, never follow hunches unless they get behind you and push," whispered Chip."Well, I guess I'm being pushed."
He knew he might easily be taken for a burglar, but he kept to the wall and entered the big living room. Something there sent his hand darting inside his coat, touching the automatic he was permitted to carry"for emergencies only."
A small table that had contained a few bottles of liquor and some seltzer lay overturned on a rug that had cost a lot of money. Whiskey had spilled out, its stain spreading over the rug. Without doubt no servant had been in the room this morning, or since Chip had seen Jason Jones enter the building.
Chip gripped the automatic. As yet there was no reason for the apprehension that clutched at his heart. But he knew well enough that the lights should have been out, and had anyone been about this morning, the liquor stand would have been righted.
"Jason Jones didn't look like a guy who'd take on a load like that," murmured Chip."But maybe he was lit up when he arrived, an' I didn't notice it. Then he'd come in, have a few more drinks, forget to close his door and upset that table."
STILL Chip could not convince himself. He moved silently toward a door that opened into another hallway off to one side, trying to act as he believed the Phantom would have acted. He went on along the hallway, listening at each door. But Jones' apartment might have been a tomb for all the sound Chip heard.
With infinite caution, he opened a broader door than the others. He judged this must lead to a library. It did. Chip stood in the opened door, his lower jaw dropping, and his eyes riveted upon a chair.
The chair was beside a wide, opened window. A breeze blew at one drapery. The other drapery was on the floor in a heap. But it was the position of the chair that gave Chip an empty feeling inside.
One leg of the chair had broken off. The corner of the chair seat tipped downward. Chip could visualize how anyone standing on that chair, trying to fix the torn drapery, would have pitched through the open window into space.
His heart double-timed. For as he went toward the window, listening intently, he was wondering why, if Jason Jones or some other person had fallen through that window, the police hadn't been called?
CHIP had been out in front all the time himself. And there had been no sound or sign that a tragedy had been discovered.
Chip got to the window, drew in a long breath, and looked down.
Jason Jones was there. Eight stories below, the stocky Brookvard College director lay sprawled. Dead, of course.
Chip saw then why there had been no alarm. The body had fallen on the roof of a one-story structure joining the apartment building. A blind areaway ran along this building. The body was close beside a long ventilator.
Chip glanced at other windows. The Jones apartment seemed to be the only one in line of vision with that gruesome death spot.
Chip backed slowly from the library, the skin puckering at the back of his neck. His first thought was to get help, to tell the elevator operator of what he had found. But the Phantom had trained him well.
"Maybe I can get to the Phantom before the body is found," he thought."He might want to know about it first."
Chip closed the Jason Jones' door with its spring-lock after him. He drew in a long breath and hoped his face did not look too white. But he felt as if he had gone all white inside as he rode down in the elevator.
Outside the apartment house, Chip found the blind areaway. Jason Jones was lying up on the roof of a heating plant. The body could not be seen from below.
"So he must have taken that dive just after he went into the house," Chip thought, then paused."But he wasn't tight, and that don't account for that upset table."
What would the Phantom do in a case like this? Well, he guessed, the Phantom would have a look at the body before the police were called. Chip went onto the roof with the nimbleness of a monkey.
Down behind the ventilator, Chip shivered. But he had to learn to meet death close up like this. If it had been some mobster who was rubbed out, though, it would be different.
Jason Jones' face was untouched, although his bulky body was badly broken. Chip crouched, and peered closely.
"I'll say the Phantom will want to know about this quick," he muttered as he saw the faint marks of fingers on Jason Jones' throat."This guy didn't fall by accident. He's been strangled, but somebody counted upon the marks not showin'!"
Chip admired and respected Frank Havens. But Havens was not the Phantom.
When Chip called, Havens was out of touch with Van. Chip said he would report later and hung up.
And about this same time, the Phantom was walking right into another murder, the oddest and the most unaccountable of any of the ghastly series of crime. This was a killing for which there seemed no reasonable explanation.
QUICKLY the Phantom trapped the wrist of the heavy woman as she struck at Mademoiselle Corre. His weight threw her back, just as the pointed quill of the feather she held was touching Mademoiselle Corre's throat.
The woman had a flat face and opaque eyes. She was of good size, but even the Phantom was taken by surprise. Words hissed from her mouth, much as if she possessed the soul of a venomous reptile. She freed Mademoiselle Corre, sweeping her other arm around, her hand balled into a fist.
Van knew what it was to be knocked out by a blow from a man's fist. But never until now had he been hit so hard by any woman. He was wide open for the blow that drove into his throat, making him gasp for breath.
Then the big woman twisted, as Van clung to the wrist above that poisoned feather. His quick Oriental hold on a nerve caused the feather to drop. The surprise of the staggering blow to the chin was no greater than when the big woman's knee rammed into his stomach.
Ready now to employ rough tactics to subdue her, Van shot his fingers toward the nerve ganglia at the base of the woman's jaw. Her eyes partly glazed, but she was strong, and tried to fight him off.
Words sputtered.
"She killed her—I saw her! I'll get her! She killed her—"
Who had killed whom was a mystery as Van's irresistible fingers reduced the big woman to helplessness. As she dropped to the floor, Van turned.
Mademoiselle Corre seemed to have been most ungrateful for Van's effort that had probably saved her life. The lovely, chic mademoiselle was no longer visible.
Van sprang to the reception room door. The girl he had first seen was standing there, staring out at the street.
"Where did that woman go who came out of that room?" he snapped at her.
The girl stuttered with fear.
"I'm quitting—I won't stay here! They're all crazy!"
The words had hysteria behind them. Van caught the girl's arm, shaking her.
"Quit it! Where did that woman go?"
The girl blinked at him stupidly. Then her mind stopped doing a merry-go-round. She sobbed her answer, collapsing in Van's arms.
"Mademoiselle Corre, she ran out—into the street and got into a taxicab—it went away—I'm quitting! Something happened to Miss Hartwell—they wouldn't let me see her."
"Miss Olivia Hartwell, the owner?"
But the girl had passed out. Van deposited her gently on the floor. He went to the street door and looked out. Fifth Avenue traffic flowed by. Women laughed and chattered. If there was tragedy a few feet away, they knew nothing of it.
Van closed and bolted the street door. He wanted a few minutes without interruption. Back in the fitting room, the big woman was still sleeping on the floor. Van's eyes swung around.
THEN he saw it. A closet door had a space at the bottom. A slow, little stream had seeped out and added a touch of vivid red to the brightly patterned rug. The scarlet design was not in harmony with the rest of the rug.
Van got the closet door open with an effort. It had stuck, as if someone had kicked it shut and broken the lock.
Hardened as he was to seeing death by violence, Van was sickened. The body in the closet was crumpled, as if it had been doubled up by the hand of some giant. Purple pansy eyes were wide open, glazing, but staring at nothing. The white throat was still white, but only above and below where some ruthless force appeared to have tried to twist the head from the body.
It seemed incredible. For if it had been Olivia Hartwell, veiled, whom he had seen leaving Abner Brothers, she could not have been in the shop more than a few minutes ahead of Van.
The murder had been committed within the past half hour, figuring on the greatest possible time. The blood showed bright, and it had been a crime inspired by furious rage.
Van glanced at the inert big woman. Lightly built Mademoiselle Corre never could have committed this crime, he thought. For hands like claws had torn that white throat, and the twisting and the crumpling of the body must have required the strength of a brutal fiend.
Van examined the big woman's hands. There were no stains of blood upon them. She could not be guilty. Again that left Mademoiselle Corre.
"Impossible," murmured Van."Someone else was in here."
Then he saw the edge of another door behind a screen. When he got it open, there was a long, narrow store room full of musty clothing and small bales of bird feathers. A low window was open at the back.
Van sidestepped possible footprints in the dust. When he reached the window, he saw where anyone could have gone out by it, then climbed over a brick wall The top of a truck showed behind the wall.
Van vaulted over, and two truckmen stared at him. One laughed.
"What's this—a parade, brother?" he asked."You're the second guy that's come shootin' over that wall!"
"What did the first guy look like?" demanded Van.
"Him? He streaked out of here, so fast I didn't see much."
"I saw his face," volunteered the other truckman."He had a nasty scar along one side of his jaw, like somebody had ripped him four times with a knife. He beat it like a police squad was after him."
Van went back over the wall and into the window. He never before had wished so strongly that he had killed a man as he wished now that he had killed Tony Marino when he'd had that chance up in Old Greenwich. There seemed no doubt but that Tony Marino was the brutal killer of Olivia Hartwell.
"Which makes it a crosswise murder, and loops this whole business up into a Gordian knot," Van thought grimly."Unless I am off on my figuring, Olivia Hartwell would be the daughter of the get-rich-quick Mrs. Loren Hart. And Tony Marino is working for the Doctor who must be in this with Mrs. Hart and several others."
HE was sure that strange visit to Abner Brothers, the destruction of circus posters, had been on behalf of the whole murder gang. It left one of Van's previously formed theories dead and cold, or so it seemed.
But where did Mademoiselle Corre fit into the picture?
He determined he would get the truth out of the big woman who had attacked the young Frenchwoman. He pushed open the door of the fitting room and stared. The big woman was gone.
The salesgirl who had been going to quit because everybody was crazy, was also missing. The street door was still locked, having apparently been shut on its catch from the outside.
"I only hope that scared little girl isn't in the hands of that fighting Amazon," murmured Van.
The murder here was now an open police case. Van decided to make one phone call before giving the alarm. Just now he could accomplish nothing more here.
The Phantom's keen, deductive reasoning was being taxed to the uttermost. Murders appeared to be jumping the fence between the original killers and their prospective victims.
Olivia Hartwell would logically be expected to be in league with Mrs. Loren Hart, figuring that Mrs. Hart was her mother. It seemed to be the reason Olivia had gone to Abner Brothers, to destroy circus posters she knew was there, and which she knew must show her to bear a striking likeness to her mother, the Great Loretta, as Mrs. Hart had been thirty years before.
Right here, the Phantom's probing brain found another possible solution. Could it be that Olivia Hartwell merely feared for her own reputation in her swanky Fifth Avenue shop?
Perhaps she had heard her mother speak of those posters, and of course the girl would have known of the remarkable resemblance. Widespread news of the Brookvard murders, the knife-throwing, might have aroused the girl to protect her own name and reputation.
She might have feared that Abner Brothers, or the surviving Abner, might somehow connect all this up with the Great Loretta, now the Mrs. Loren Hart. Then it was possible that Tony Marino had trailed Olivia Hartwell to the place, followed her to the shop, then killed her brutally.
"He might have believed she was planning to expose them, and was after the circus posters for that reason," decided Van, as he picked up the phone.
Frank Havens replied.
"Here's hot news, but hold it for a time, Frank," Van said."This is a murder in a Fifth Avenue shop. The victim is Olivia Hartwell. I'll tell you the rest of that later... Have you heard from Chip Dorlan?"
"Good grief, Dick! Another one! You will see Inspector Gregg now, won't you?"
Inspector Gregg had worked with the Phantom on many involved cases, and had been grateful for his aid.
"Not for the present, Frank. I'm on some other angles alone. Has Steve Huston dug up anything?"
"He surely has, Dick. He came upon an old clipping of the death of a lion tamer in the old Crown Circus. It happened at Elmira, New York, early in Nineteen-fifteen. The man killed had a name you will recognize. He was Loren Hart."
"Good for Steve. Is that all?"
"No. It seems that Hart was married to a knife artist known as the Great Loretta. There were two young children. A boy and a girl. The girl's name was Olivia, so that checks up. The son's name was not given."
"Great, Frank! But I asked about Chip Dorlan."
"Yes, he called, but wouldn't talk to me. He sounded excited. Wait a minute, Dick. Here is Chip now. I'll connect you through our switchboard."
TWO minutes later, the Phantom was listening to Chip's mixed up words. The"accidental" death of Jason Jones piled the chips of murder so high, that the stack of possible theories as to motive and actual identity of the mysterious Doctor fell into an apparently inextricable heap.
Suspicion of the truculent Jason Jones apparently was removed. For it seemed he had been killed immediately after he had come from the Harvey Rice residence, though he had lied concerning the time of his arrival there.
Or was this another crosswise murder, and had Jason Jones been playing along with the original plotters?
Van's next intended movement was altered.
"Stay in Gramercy Park, Chip," he said,"and talk to no one. I'll be with you in a short time. I want nothing to happen to create any alarm."
He called Frank Havens back. Havens uttered a rare, bitter oath at news of this latest tragedy.
"Van, what do you think should be done? The police might begin a general roundup. It would remove the possible killers from the scene, or at least remove Mrs. Loren Hart and the Marinos, if we can find them. Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow also must be found and brought in."
"Whereupon the mysterious Doctor behind all of this will pull into his shell, Frank, and nailing him might become next to impossible. Anyhow, all we know now, for a fact, is that Mrs. Loren Hart was a knife-thrower. But the thumbprint on that Jimmy Rice death-knife was that of a man. I don't believe even the once Great Loretta has a skin of that coarse texture. It probably will turn out that she also has no triangular scar on the thumb, and that would put the Jimmy Rice murder right back where we came in."
"Of all the confounded, mixed-up murder tangles!" groaned Frank Havens.
"Now listen, Frank," said the Phantom."I'm calling Inspector Gregg. In the news today, it might be well to mention that Jason Jones will attend some public event tonight. And get into it some sort of an interview or supposed expression directly from Jones, as given to Steve Huston this same afternoon."
"Dick," said Havens,"I never know whether you're still in your right mind, or have gone all the way over the edge. How will you keep Jones' death covered?"
"I'll see to that," stated Van, then his memory clicked, recalling the words of the mysterious Doctor. If the Doctor was behind the Jason Jones killing, he would have been informed immediately that Jones had been removed.
"I've an idea, Frank," he added quickly, to Havens."Let the Clarion state that Jason Jones is attending the Horse Show at the Garden tonight. He'll be there, too, in form if not in person."
A minute later, Van called the nearest police precinct station and was just starting to inform the law of the Olivia Hartwell murder when a hostile voice interrupted.
"Who is this?"
"It doesn't matter," said Van."You'll find the body in that Fifth Avenue shop."
"Wait a minute. We've just had a call telling us the same thing. From a woman with a foreign accent, and she refused to give her name, too. I'd like to ask you some questions, even if you won't tell me your name."
Van heard a police siren screaming outside. He hung up the receiver quietly. The sergeant was trying to hold him on the chance he might be at the shop, he judged. Swiftly he went through the back room, out the window, and over the wall. One of the truckmen, still there, goggled after him.
"What the what?" he grunted."Now there goes that other guy on the lam! What is this?"
GRAMERCY PARK is one of the most peaceful spots in all of teeming, thundering Manhattan. Early this afternoon, the sun had a mellowness of springtime as it bathed the green of the little park.
Hundreds passing along the streets never knew that they were walking close to a gruesome tragedy. And a jump or a fall from a window in Manhattan usually jams the scene with morbidly curious persons.
No one gave any special notice to a small truck with a bakery sign that went into an apartment house areaway. The one-story roof of a heating plant was just alongside the truck. It was concealed from the street.
The men from the truck were in plain clothes. They were policemen, with gruff Inspector Thomas Gregg in charge. The police doctor made his examination quickly. The nearsighted man with them was known as the Phantom only to Inspector Gregg.
The Phantom, again in his role of Professor Jeremy, confirmed all that Chip Dorlan had told him concerning the strangulation marks. Here was the second murder of the"Brookvard curse" in which an"accidental" fall had been cleverly planned. Director Hardwick, the other college board member, had gone the same way.
The police quickly covered the body with blankets, so that it had little shape. It was moved into the small truck, and the vehicle came out of the alleyway.
"The commissioner would have my neck for this if he knew it, Phantom," said Inspector Gregg, watching the truck drive away."What's your next move, and how can we help?"
The greatest police department in America, if not the world, respected and liked, and often worked with the Phantom.
"My next move," stated the Phantom,"will be to visit the morgue. After I leave there, my course is still more or less vague. I would ask though, that you be at the Garden Horse Show events tonight, Inspector. Jason Jones will occupy a prominent box."
"It's no less than crazy, that's what it is," protested Inspector Gregg."Here we have a man who has just been murdered, so you take his place and appear alive. That's what I call asking for it, Phantom."
Van smiled grimly."That's correct, Inspector Gregg. That's what I'm planning. I'm asking for it. But there probably will be several assorted headaches among those I wish to reach before they wake up to the idea that a man might be slightly choked, then pushed from a window to fall eight stories, and still show up in a formal suit at the Horse Show." Here, Van spoke to Chip Dorlan."You've done your share, Chip. You're out of this case from here on. But you can attend the Horse Show. And remember—whatever happens, you keep out of it."
Chip frowned, then brightened, and nodded. He liked to see the horses strut their stuff.
It was not the first time the Phantom had employed a still, dead face as a mirror for making up. Simulating the bulky figure of Jason Jones, and his bristling, truculent appearance and mannerisms, was a job requiring some time.
BUT Inspector Gregg said later,"Good Lord, Phantom! I wouldn't be surprised any day to walk into my office to find myself already sitting in my chair, and it will be you."
The Phantom was deadly serious in his next words.
"Inspector, I understand that when Professor Howard was murdered at Brookvard College, and the body disappeared with only a blood trail, that the New York Police Department received a sample of the blood for the usual tests."
"That's right, Phantom."
"I would like to have a bit of that sample, if it is still to be had, Inspector."
"We always keep that sort of thing, Phantom. It will be in our laboratory any time you want it. What's the idea?"
"I'm thinking of doing a little blood letting myself," Van said seriously."It is a theory I want to work out. By the way, it might be well in checking on the Olivia Hartwell murder, to search the Fifth Avenue shop for evidence of some virulent poison that might kill when smeared on the sharpened quill of a feather. I would seize all of the baled feathers there."
Having given Inspector Gregg plenty to keep his mind in a turmoil for several hours, Van believed it unnecessary to mention Mrs. Loren Hart, Abner Brothers, the Marinos and several other angles of the Brookvard murders, for the time being...
It was mid-afternoon. Up in Frank Havens' office, the Phantom and redheaded Steve Huston were going through clippings and newspaper photo prints of yellow pictures.
The Phantom shuffled an unusually clear and well preserved newspaper spread from the pile. This showed a beautiful woman and two small children. It had been printed in connection with the death of Loren Hart, lion tamer, back in 1915. The fat, chubby little girl did not then look as if she would become the slender, lovely Olivia Hartwell. The children's caption called them "Olivia" and "Karl." The fat little boy in the picture had an oldish face for so small a child. And then it came to the Phantom like a bolt of thought lightning where he had seen just such a face, many years later, on a man who was still fat but who appeared to be older than he really was.
Van was virtually passing the afternoon, made up as the murdered Jason Jones. But he started up, a glint in his eyes. Steve Huston knew that sign all too well.
"Okay, Phantom!" Steve chuckled."Where do we go and when do we start? You've hit something?"
Van smiled."I'll be getting along, alone," he said."You will be sure to be at the Horse Show tonight, Steve?"
"Sure," growled the fiery, undersized reporter."I have to be, and I'm allergic to horse hair. But I was thinking of now. I have the whole afternoon off."
The Phantom nodded."All right, Steve," he said."When I leave here, I am taking a limousine with a chauffeur. I am visiting an office near Times Square. I may go into the office, and come out again in a few minutes. If I'm not out, say in half an hour, you might make inquiries."
Steve was already swinging into his topcoat. A broad grin lighted his freckled face. He had been pulled out of a death vat once by the Phantom. He had been rescued from under the river, and saved from other diverse tight spots.
But he was always rearing to go again. Steve Huston could take it...
NO one appeared to notice the Phantom especially as he entered the skyscraper office building just off Times Square. He went up to the eleventh floor and stopped before a door with a gilt legend. He was perfect down to the last bristling hair in his role of Jason Jones, belligerent shipping man, and member of the Brookvard College board.
A pretty young stenographer looked up in the reception room as the Phantom pushed the door open.
"Your boss in?" he demanded truculently."Sure. I see his door's partly open! I'll go right on in! This is personal business, young lady, so keep your ears out of it!"
Quite evidently the stenographer had met Jason Jones before. She smiled.
"Very well, Mr. Jones," she said cheerfully."Go right on in. You always do anyway, so why bother to ask questions?"
It was a tipoff that Jason Jones had often been here.
Van grunted and strode over to push the door open. He was watching the man behind the desk in a luxurious private office. His keen eyes missed no move or gesture. He closed the door between him and the pretty stenographer. This might be unpleasant.
The man was Lawyer Charles Turner. Van had last seen him at the Harvey Rice home. Salt spray dried on Turner's clothes had convinced Van then that Lawyer Turner had been for a boat ride, about the time that Billy Rice was first known to be missing.
Turner's eyes leveled with those of the Phantom. Whatever expression might have been there when he had heard the voice of Jason Jones outside, nothing now was there but a flat, hard smile. Only the Phantom would have detected the knuckles of a plump hand turning white where Turner's fingers gripped his desk, or the long, deep breath Turner took.
Jason Jones had been under suspicion himself, before he had been killed. Van was walking a tight wire of chance. If Jones had really been mixed up in the Harvey Rice and other murders, and Lawyer Charles Turner was also involved, then they would have something in common that must betray Van.
On the other hand, if Jones had been on the square, and had been murdered by the Doctor's clever killers, then Turner would have been informed of that, assuming that Turner was linked up with the crimes. The Phantom was prepared for almost any kind of a break, and was set for it.
For this fat, too old face of the nearly always genial Turner was still the face of that boy in the circus picture. He was the son of Mrs. Loren Hart and the dead lion tamer, and the brother of Olivia Hartwell. This was adding up to quite a family of murderers.
The Phantom broke the ice.
"Hello, Turner," he grunted."Heard you were conducting a search for the Harvey Rice will. As a member of the college board, thought I'd drop in and see what you found, if anything. Called Dean Doremus this afternoon, but he's still under the weather after what happened last night."
For long seconds, the Phantom's apparently casual words hung upon the air without a reply. Turner was leaning forward in his chair. His hand left the edge of his desk, and a drawer was sliding slowly open.
"I—I... Jones! I saw you—"
THE words jumped from Turner's tongue as his face became the color of gray chalk. His eyes rolled frantically. But he suddenly slapped his hand back upon his desk, leaving it flatly in view, without gripping the gun or whatever else it was the Phantom was sure was in the drawer.
Van permitted his own left hand, with its ever ready sleeve gun, to relax. His eyes jumped to a half-opened Clarion on the desk. The latest murder, that of Olivia Hartwell, Turner's sister, was played up in headlines and pictures.
Possibly it was the newspaper that distracted Van at just the wrong second of time. Still he heard the soft step in the thick rug behind him. He started to whirl, but a silenced gun was punched into his ribs before he could turn. He could not see who was holding the gun.
The voice that spoke behind the Phantom was low and husky—deadly."Keep your eyes straight ahead." The Phantom looked only at Turner. The fish-belly color faded from Turner's face.
"Good!" he exclaimed."Now tell me, Jason, how you come to be here without a mark on you? I was informed you had met with a bad accident."
"Two canvas window awnings will break any hard fall," the Phantom said coolly."Now that I am here, what do you propose to do, Turner? If you have the will of Harvey Rice, it has to be destroyed, and then—"
Turner's eyes narrowed. The Phantom realized he had uttered the wrong supposition, and he had said something before this that must have warned Turner that he was other than Jason Jones.
The Phantom gambled right then, in his own mind, that he knew what his mistake had been. But his senses were on the alert for something else. It came when Van felt the gun wielder relax. The hard muzzle shifted slightly to one side. Van needed no more than that.
In the midst of his own speech, he jerked away. The movement would have beaten any gun finger. But this trigger was quick enough. The rod cracked. A searing sting went along Van's side, but that was all.
Van was all the way in the clear, turning. He heard the gun drop to the floor. That husky, low voice cried out, but it was no longer deadly.
For once, Van was subject to something of a shock."Karl—Karl!" the voice was crying."I didn't mean to do it! My baby—my Karl! What evil has come onto us! First my little Olivia! Now you! Karl!"
Turner was sliding slowly from his chair. Blood was welling from his neck. The bullet that had burned Van's ribs had caught him.
Van was staring at the gun wielder. It was the flat-faced, big woman from the Fifth Avenue shop. She went around the desk, kneeling, pillowing Turner's head in her arms and rocking back and forth.
At that moment a deep bass voice filled the room.
"Hercula! Hercula! This is the Doctor speaking! I heard the shot over the mike! I hope you made sure you got Jason Jones this time! I heard him talking!"
The flat-faced woman, if she it was who was known by the strange name of Hercula, continued to rock back and forth, murmuring endearing words to Turner, calling him"her baby" and"Karl."
Van was quick to take full advantage of the turn of events. The Doctor had asked a question. Undoubtedly he had heard all or part of the conversation in the room, enough to believe that Jason Jones was there. Van himself replied, and his voice was low and husky, imitating perfectly the tone of the grieving woman.
"I tried to kill Jason Jones, but the bullet hit Karl—it hit Karl! He is dying! What will I do?"
"Leave Karl, you fool!" rolled the bass voice of the Doctor."You should not have gone there! Where is Jason Jones?"
"He ran outside," Van answered, as his eyes picked out the half-open drawer in the desk,"Should I go after him?"
"No!" boomed the Doctor's heavy voice from the speaker that Van now saw in the drawer, together with a sensitive microphone pickup."Get out, Hercula! Go down the stairs—not the elevator!"
THE voice cut off. So the big woman was Hercula!
"Circus stuff again," murmured Van, piecing together the big woman's actions, her name, and her reference to Olivia Hartwell and Charles Turner, as her babies."Hercula! No doubt the old strong woman act from a Crown Circus sideshow, and in some manner devoted to the children of Mrs. Loren Hart."
The big woman was still moaning, when Lawyer Turner slowly opened his eyes. His voice was whispery, but distinct.
"Go away now, Hercula," he said."It was not your fault. Jones, let her go. She meant only to save me. Once she nursed my sister and—long ago—she was as strong as many men but gentler than the frailest woman. My uncle—he kept her in the show for us. He—he owned the—the—show—" Turner's head dropped and he ceased speaking. The big woman sobbed brokenly. Someone was hammering at the outside door. Van took Turner's pulse. It was still strong. He whipped a handkerchief from Turner's pocket and staunched the welling blood.
Van opened the door. Steve Huston stood there. His freckles polka-dotted by the whiteness of his face. Steve's one swift glance encompassed everything in the room.
"You're all right, Phantom? A girl ran out screaming. She's routed out a crowd from the offices! The police are sure to be on the way!"
"Keep everyone out until the police get here, Steve!" Van ordered crisply."I want to talk only with Inspector Gregg! Tell the first police arriving to call him!"
Steve went into the outer office. Gun in hand, he restrained the crowd now at the door. Inside, Van traced tiny wires under the rug to the street window. The side street below was a crosstown express lane. No parking was permitted. The angle of the wires slanted down from the high building to a street lamp post.
"The Doctor could stop in a car, connect up, and talk directly with Turner at any time, or listen in on what might be going on in his office," reasoned Van."That way the Doctor could judge when it was reasonably safe to confer with Turner on their own private murder affairs. The Doctor happened to be down there when I entered the building as Jason Jones." Van gave a thought to pieces of a circus poster he had made into a complete picture. What he had derived from that poster would seem fantastic. It would create one of the greatest scandals ever to be made public.
Van nodded grimly, as he turned from the window. No time now for further investigation, for the police were coming in.
"Anyway the Doctor knows now that Turner has been shot," he was thinking."And he believes that Jason Jones still lives, because it must have been Turner who killed Jason Jones and reported to the Doctor that Jones was dead. Everything is shaping up."
JUST a little while after the police arrived, Inspector Gregg also barged in. His scowling red face was heavy with worry. The medical examiner had just announced that Turner would live, but might be in a coma for a good many hours.
The big woman, Hercula, was in custody. She did not seem to notice that this was so, nor to care what was done with her. Her pale eyes never left Turner. She thought he was dead.
At one side, the Phantom talked fast to Inspector Gregg.
"I would suggest holding this woman, Hercula, as a material witness," he said."She is more a victim of circumstances than anything else. True, she was trying to kill Mademoiselle Corre, but she honestly believed the Frenchwoman had just murdered Olivia Hartwell—believed that possible, having such tremendous strength herself, and little brains. Olivia and Turner were her babies."
"Her babies, Phantom? This gets screwier by the minute—and bloodier. You'll want to talk with Turner?"
"Perhaps later, Inspector. And I'll explain to you about Hercula, also. Now I have a few hours in which to make a call, before time for the Horse Show in Madison Square Garden starts tonight. And there is one thing I would like you to have done in the Garden tonight, Inspector. I suggest that several fast plainclothesmen be staked out near the box that will be occupied by Mrs. Loren Hart."
"Mrs. Loren Hart, Phantom?" Inspector Gregg was beginning to show all the symptoms of acute apoplexy."That Park Avenue biggy, with her society monkey parties? She would never be knowing such people as these, or that Olivia Hartwell who was murdered, or—" Gregg's eyes suddenly widened."Hartwell—Hart!" he exclaimed."Good grief! You mean they're connected, Phantom?"
"As closely as any other mother and daughter, Inspector," Van said laconically, leaving him with that thought.
When the Phantom reached the corridor, Steve Huston walked beside him toward the elevators. Ahead of them an odd-looking man was just coming from an elevator. His sideburns were a holdover from the Gay Nineties. His frock coat and wing collar brought covert smiles from passersby. But Van recognized Dean Doremus of Brookvard College.
The dean looked waxen and ill. He lifted his eyes and saw the man he believed to be Jason Jones. A great relief seemed to come to him, as if he were lost in the thundering ways of Manhattan, and had found a friend. It was said he seldom, if ever, left Brookvard College.
"Jason!" he exclaimed."I'm glad to run into you. I have called you a dozen times without response. I was going in to see our attorney. Gracious! Why is there such a crowd around his door?"
The Phantom emitted one of Jason Jones' typical growls.
"Turner took sick, and his stenographer fainted," he said quickly."I'm afraid you'll have to put off your visit, Dean. They're taking Turner to the hospital."
"Goodness me! Jason, I feel all bewildered. We must have a talk. Billy Rice has come back to the college. He's all right, but I talked with him. He doesn't seem to know what became of Harvey's will, but he seemed to be holding back something. We must take steps of some kind for the sake of the college. And I can't find Mrs. Jennings either. We must have her."
VAN nodded and smiled.
"Finding Mrs. Jennings will be simple enough," he said."She's riding Topnotch, a triple-gaiter, in the Horse Show tonight."
"Topnotch? Triple-gaiter? My, oh my! How could she ride upon a gaiter, Jason?"
"Forget I said it," grunted Van."I propose that you stick with me, and we'll have dinner together, Dean."
"That will be fine—fine," said Dean Doremus, with vast relief in his voice."But I must he back at the school early. I slipped away from the police guard. We must have the police removed, Jason, or we'll lose all of our students."
"Yes, I suppose that's right, Dean. Wait just a minute. Dean Doremus, this is Steve Huston, one of Frank Havens' best reporters."
"You mean, Jason, all of this, everything has been getting into the newspapers?" Dean Doremus asked weakly."I never read anything in them but the science columns."
"Some of our affairs of the past forty-eight hours have had a few lines of mention, Dean," Van said dryly."They even printed a piece about the Brookvard indoor track meet, on the sporting pages."
"I never read the sporting pages, Jason, and you know it," said Dean Doremus."How many times have I tried to abolish this frivolous waste of school money—"
"Sure, I know," interrupted Van hastily."Excuse me a minute, Dean, while I have a word with this Steve Huston."
At one side, Van talked swiftly to Steve.
"You know the hospital then, Steve?" he concluded swift instructions.
"Sure, it was a big story back there then," said Steve."And that hospital files away everything from the color of prominent patients' hair to their footprints. Harvey Rice was there when he was ill that time before he founded Brookvard College. I know the head guy of the laboratory. I'll get the samples for you."
Dean Doremus was staring about vacantly, but he kept glancing at Jason Jones, as if he were afraid to tackle the Big Town street canyons again without him.
"I have my coupé outside," the Phantom suggested to Doremus."We can take our time at dinner, and you can freshen up at the Athletic Club. While you're about that, I have some phone calls to make."
At the Athletic Club, Van directed Dean Doremus to the washroom. As the dean left, almost feeling his timid way, Van smiled and spoke to one of the clubroom servants.
"Keep an eye on him or he'll get lost," said Van."Tell him I was called out, but will be back in half an hour or so, and don't let him wander away. He'd forget his shirt, if he didn't need it to fasten his wing collar."
When Van shortly reached Jason Jones' Gramercy Park apartment, he found that it hadn't been disturbed, as the Phantom had requested. Apparently the movements of the grouchy Jason Jones had been little noticed. The elevator operator who had come on since morning did not even trouble to speak to"Jason Jones" when Van arrived in that role.
Van let himself in with Jason Jones' own keys. He went in and looked at the neatly framed-up chair and torn drape. He went over everything quickly for prints, but only Jason Jones' prints could be found.
Then Van saw the little wax cylinder setting on a table in the library. He looked around for a dictaphone machine, but there was none. It seemed as if Jones had brought a record from his office and had left it there carelessly.
Van slipped the record into his pocket.
In less than twenty minutes, he was speeding back uptown. He parked near a phonograph shop and went in. He laid down a dollar, and a clerk pointed to a little private room. Patrons often came in to use dictaphone machines.
The machine whirled when the little wax record was slipped on. At the first words, the sound of the voice, the Phantom uttered a quick, low exclamation.
"Who would ever have thought of that?" he muttered."And it fits, in with everything else. It's the one link. So that's why Billy Rice wasn't talking, even when they broke his fingers."
Jason Jones was dead. The Phantom heard a dead voice speaking in measured tones, a voice entirely unlike Jason Jones' customary belligerent voice. He slipped the little wax record into his pocket, left the shop and took a taxi back downtown.
When he entered the Athletic Club, Dean Doremus was waiting, fidgeting in a big chair.
"There's a call for you, Mr. Jones," an attendant said, and handed him a slip.
The slip read:
Call Frank Havens at once.
"I'll be only a minute, Dean," Van apologized."Then we'll polish off a couple of red steaks."
The dean's shoulder twitched."Red steaks? Please! I don't eat meat, and you know it, Jason."
There seemed to be several things about the dean that Jason Jones had known and the Phantom did not. Van went to the phone booth.
"A woman called for the Phantom," Frank Havens said as soon as Van got his connection."She said the Phantom will learn something of immense value if he will come secretly to the main laboratory at Brookvard College just after midnight. She said she will meet you there."
"A woman, Frank?"
"Yes—Mademoiselle Corre. She did not hesitate to give her name. It's she all right, for I have heard her talking with Muriel several times. What do you make of it?"
"Everything is shaping up nicely, Frank," Van said cryptically."It's a long and rambling story, though, so it will have to keep. You will be at the Horse Show? And Muriel?"
"Muriel will be there if she has to wear a wig," Frank Havens chuckled."Watch your step, Van. The Clarion has the story of the Turner shooting. Have you any idea where all of this is leading, Dick?"
"I know exactly where it's leading, Frank," Van said flatly."I'll see you at the Horse Show. And I will go on to Brookvard College alone."
When Van came out, Dean Doremus was emerging from another phone booth.
"Everything is all right out at the school," said the dean,"so I suppose I can stay for this Horse Show, although I never could see why anyone would want to ride a horse."
During dinner while the Phantom put away the rare steak that caused Dean Doremus to shudder over his spinach and potatoes, the dean was unusually silent. He was obviously nervous, distraught.
AS Van was drinking his coffee, the dean seemed to come to a decision.
"You know, Jason," he said, glancing around as if the private booth walls might have ears,"I have been thinking of all these murders, especially that of Harvey Rice. It has come to me that all of this might be because of a personal matter, an act of revenge upon Harvey Rice."
Van nodded absently. In the role of Jason Jones, he had to feel his way. He had to be on guard against betraying how little he knew of the affairs of the college board of which Jones had been a member.
"Remember the letter Harvey Rice showed us once, that came from someone who had been with a circus?" asked the dean.
Again Van nodded, his skin prickling. Had he said or done something to destroy his careful build-up as Jason Jones?
"Well, Jason, that letter might have been more than merely a threat," said the dean."Someone might have been remembering, for years, the time Harvey Rice tied up the circus and practically ruined it. Dear me—and to think the whole trouble was over animals on one of his ships, and that tiger that broke loose and killed two passengers."
The words impinged upon Van's brain with startling effect, which his voice and manner concealed. So Harvey Rice had once crossed the path of the Crown Circus. Quickly, it came to him that here was the one link that had been missing.
This was the tie-up that must have kept the circus performers in contact with later affairs of Harvey Rice. At least one member of the circus organization had been smart, most thorough, and well informed of Harvey Rice's huge donations to Brookvard College.
Van's eyes did not appear to do so, but they did not miss a flicker of Dean Doremus' facial muscles as the scientist spoke. Then he took a long chance on what Jason Jones' reaction to such a letter must have been at the time.
"Stuff and nonsense," he growled."Like I told you, the kind that writes threatening letters don't follow them up. It's like a man always talking about suicide. It's the fellow who doesn't talk who acts."
"Perhaps you're right, Jason," Dean Doremus said meekly.
But from that minute, Van was more than ever on guard. In all of the murders, the ruthless Doctor had apparently left no loopholes of danger. But there had been one, and Van was convinced that tonight's Horse Show would bring the Doctor from under cover, if the Phantom could contrive the proper circumstances.
ON the way to the Garden, Van bought a Clarion. In the Horse Show notes he noted this:
Jason Jones and Dean Doremus, of Brookvard College, will be among the occupants of boxes at the Garden Horse Show finale tonight.
Boxes in the great indoor Garden were filled with the socially elect. White shirt fronts and low-cut evening gowns made a gay and colorful setting for the final showing of the top horses of the wealthy set that went in for them.
Van's eyes found Mrs. Loren Hart only half a dozen boxes away. Her immense bare arms glittered with jewels. Van could see her little eyes in the rolls of her cheeks, and they also seemed to glitter as the massive woman surveyed those about her.
Van saw Muriel Havens, with her father and Chip Dorlan, in a box between himself and Mrs. Loren Hart. Muriel's hair was tightly covered by a neat turban. Van thought she was prettier than ever, but perhaps her having been so close to death made her all the dearer to him.
Muriel's gaze swung to the box, lingered upon Jason Jones and Dean Doremus. Van caught her little start of surprise at seeing the dean and Jones at the Show. Van smiled a little, and his left hand tugged gently at his ear lobe.
He knew that Muriel had not been informed of his dangerous role. She smiled as she recognized the Phantom's signal of his identity, but her smile was shadowed almost instantly by concern, and she whispered to her father. Frank Havens replied, but he looked straight ahead as he spoke to her.
Chip Dorlan had been well trained. He knew the Phantom was there, but Chip paid attention to nothing but the horses, the finest in the show class to be found anywhere in the world.
Van noted certain of Inspector Gregg's men in seats not far from Mrs. Loren Hart. Then he saw the inspector himself down near the doors to the arena. The inspector was taking no chances, Van judged.
Applause rippled politely for the first horses and their owners. The show went on. Dean Doremus hunched down, a colorless, almost invisible figure, beside the bulk of"Jason Jones." He seemed half asleep. Twice he aroused to question Van upon only one subject.
"Will it last much longer? I don't like being away from the school so late."
"You'll make it well before midnight, Dean," growled Van.
Dean Doremus straightened in his seat only when the loudspeaker made the announcement:
"Mrs. Alfred Jennings, up on Topnotch, last year's best horse at the Show, again in competition as one of the rare all-gaited animals!"
Van's eyes slanted toward Mrs. Loren Hart. That huge bejeweled woman appeared to be dozing. The dean was leaning forward, apparently interested in seeing Mrs. Jennings ride.
The horse, a graceful sorrel, with a white-starred forehead, came into view, near where Inspector Gregg was standing. One of the grooms was holding its bridle at the bit.
Then Mrs. Alford Jennings appeared. She swung into the saddle with all the ease of a real horsewoman, gathering up the reins with their special check bit, and petting the horse's glossy neck.
The band started up, playing in quick marching time. Mrs. Jennings raised her hand. The groom released the reins, stepped back, and Van saw him rubbing his hand across his face.
VAN was tense, one eye cornering upon Mrs. Loren Hart. Mrs. Jennings' mount stepped high to the music, in perfect timing. The beautiful horse was single-footing, but in harmony with the rhythm of the band.
Applause broke out. Mrs. Jennings, seeming to be a part of the swaying, fiddle-footing horse, was controlling the animal's slightest movement with the twitching check reins in her gloved hands. Her circling of the big indoor stadium would carry Mrs. Jennings past Van's own box and close to that of Mrs. Loren Hart. Never had the Phantom been confronted by a more critical situation.
Eyes of the socialites were fixed upon the rhythmic performance of the Garden Horse Show's greatest horse. Topnotch stepped as if aware of the attention focused upon him. Mrs. Jennings appeared to be too intent upon the animal's showing to realize that thousands of persons were watching.
Blood pounded at Van's temples. He was divided between two courses of action. He wanted to take a hand himself, because somehow he sensed that all of Inspector Gregg's men could not be quick enough to prevent a knife being thrown, and he wanted also to hold strictly to his Jason Jones role.
As at the Brookvard stadium when Jimmy Rice had been killed, Mrs. Loren Hart was hidden among others by her very prominence. An expert knife thrower could flip a murder blade from low down, and not even the woman's jeweled arms would seem to have moved.
Van debated swiftly. Should he act now, get to Mrs. Hart and nail her? But suppose she did not have a throwing-knife concealed in her clothes?
He swiftly dismissed the idea for the other. He must provide some interruption that would send Mrs. Jennings and her horse farther from the boxes. It must be something that would cause the show horse to break, to shy away.
Van's hand slipped into his pocket. But he did not have time to produce the tiny smoke bomb he had placed there. From the entry where the rider had emerged came a choking scream that sounded above the muted music of the band.
There came that momentary hush that always follows something startling happening before a huge crowd. Then Van saw the groom who had held Mrs. Jennings' horse run, staggering, into the arena. He pitched to his face, his body twitching a second or two. Then he was still, with the awful quietness that only death can bring.
Mrs. Alford Jennings was as cool as they come. In the face of the awesome hush that followed the groom's scream and his fall only a little way from her, the horsewoman held Topnotch to his single-footing, gracefully dancing stride.
Inspector Gregg and others were running toward the fallen groom. Fortunately only Van, the inspector and perhaps few others realized that the groom was dead. So there was no panic.
"They don't make riders like Mrs. Jennings every day," said a man not far from Van."She never even glanced around to see what was happening. That's what I call nerve, downright horse sense."
MRS. JENNINGS was almost opposite Van's box. Dean Doremus was hunched forward, staring at the dead man in the arena.
"Jason! Jason!" exclaimed the dean hoarsely."I feel sick! Can't we... Must we stay?"
Van growled a reply. No one could have seen the lightning movement of his hand. No one could have seen the tiny object that was flicked directly in front of Mrs. Jennings' horse.
There was no sound, but there was an explosive mushrooming of blue smoke. The little cloud of it shot upward. It enveloped the horse's head and its arching neck. It spread, covering Mrs. Jennings for a brief second or two, then her face emerged.
Mrs. Jennings apparently lost her nerve then. She was looking directly at Van and Dean Doremus, and only a few yards away from them. The frightened horse broke. He suddenly reared high, beating at the smoke with his forefeet, his eyes blinded by the fumes of the tiny bomb.
Mrs. Jennings cried out, desperately gripping the reins. The horse plunged and reared again, driving directly upon the box occupied by Van and Dean Doremus.
"Jason! Jason! Stop him! Help me!"
Mrs. Jennings was toppling from the saddle, but she seemed to cling miraculously before she could strike the ground. In the arena a score of men, grooms and policemen were rushing toward the endangered woman. But her appeal had been to"Jason Jones."
The crowd was hushed. The band stopped playing.
None would have believed that the burly, formally clad Jason Jones could have moved with such celerity, for Van landed in the arena with one clean jump from his box. His movement was almost too fast to be followed as his hand shot out to grip the bridle bit close to the horse's mouth, pulling the animal down.
Mrs. Jennings appeared to have fainted, for she let go her clinging hold, rolling to the sawdust. And just as Van's grip fastened upon the bridle, the panicked horse ground the steel between his teeth and bolted.
The animal's first wild jumps carried Van from his feet. He clung to the bridle, throwing his weight upon it. But the horse was suddenly mad, squealing, and striking with his forefeet. Van evaded the flying hoofs by a narrow margin.
Then as the horse reared, lifting him, Van's quick eye cornered on the box where the mound of jewels and flesh that was Mrs. Loren Hart was seated. No other person saw one of the woman's great arms move.
It was but a thrice split second of time, the experienced, unerring action of a trained knife-thrower. The blade may have come from a stocking holster. Then in the other part of the same second, Mrs. Loren Hart was sitting rigidly upright, motionless.
The flying knife in the air was too fast to seem to be other than a shimmering of light. Yet Van saw it, marked its course and dived, letting go of the horse's bridle. Even though he made use of all of his incredible speed, in a movement that could have been duplicated by few other men, Van still heard the whisper of the murder knife past his face, felt the touch of the handle against one ear.
The maddened horse screamed and reared high, his forefeet directly over Van. Van rolled and the hoofs missed him. The horse plunged forward, and then the crowd roared in terror.
POLICEMEN and ushers were fighting to avert a panic. The band struck up a blaring march.
Mrs. Jennings' horse made only three or four jumps ahead. Then the beautiful animal reared again, squealed in pain, and fell. Topnotch, the wonder horse of the Garden Horse Show, lay kicking feebly, dying.
The white, bone-handle of a knife protruded from his neck. The knife that had been intended for the Phantom, he believed—but not because he was the Phantom.
"It was meant to kill Jason Jones certainly this time," ran through his mind, even as he was hurling himself as fast he could go toward Mrs. Loren Hart's box.
Van went into the box, calling out:"Everyone be quiet! It's all right!" Then he was beside Mrs. Loren Hart. She sat motionless, looking up at him stonily.
"Your last knife, Mrs. Hart," he said softly."And just in case you have another one, I would as soon remove the Great Loretta as see her locked up."
She had been looking at him in silence. All the venom of years of hate was in her voice, when she finally spoke.
"So you are not Jason Jones, after all," she said gratingly, looking at the small automatic concealed from others in Van's hand."You are the Phantom, and—"
Gregg's men were descending upon the box. A mocking, terrible laugh burst from Mrs. Loren Hart's thick lips. Her jeweled flesh shook like so much jelly. She lifted her hands, empty, and cried out:
"But I'll never burn—never!"
The hand that went across Mrs. Hart's mouth was too quick for Van to reach it. Or it may have been that inside the great and understanding Phantom was the feeling that the passing of the Great Loretta was best this way.
Mrs. Loren Hart's lips seemed to congeal upon her cry. Her huge body relaxed abruptly. She was dead, the rolls of her cheeks swiftly turning blue. Gregg's men stared at her, at the Phantom, whom they believed to be Jason Jones.
Van concealed his gun with a dexterous movement.
"Cover her death, boys or there'll be a panic," he said hurriedly, his platinum and diamond-studded badge held for those nearest to see."And don't remove that skin glove on her right hand."
One of Gregg's men lifted Mrs. Hart's hand, as other women moved and surged away from the box. The fingers of the gloved knife-hand looked as coarse as those of a man. And there was a triangular scar upon the thumb.
Long before Van had guessed that Mrs. Hart had used just such a glove, this same skin-tight impression of some unknown man's fingerprints. He believed it to have been on her hand when she had killed Jimmy Rice.
The Phantom was moving out of the box. Quickly he was back in the arena, where Mrs. Jennings was being assisted by Inspector Gregg and others. Van saw that she was still wearing her riding gloves.
Mrs. Jennings had quickly recovered her poise.
"Jason, oh, Jason!" she said, her tone sharp with grief."Topnotch is dead! He was human, Jason, more human than most of the people that I know."
"Stand still, Mrs. Jennings!" Van said quickly, in a low voice."I want to remove your riding gloves. You're alive because you did not happen to touch your fingers to your lips. Your bridle reins are covered with poison. And I suspect I have enough deadly poison on my own hands to kill a dozen men."
HE removed her gloves. She stared at him. He wrapped the gloves, in protective paper.
"I'll wash this stuff from my hands and return," he said.
"Jason, what is it? Is it because of Brookvard? Is it intended to annihilate all of those connected with the school? It is my one interest besides my horses."
"It would seem that that is the way of it, Mrs. Jennings," Van said."Prepare yourself for another shock. I am not Jason Jones. He met with a fatal accident. I am the Phantom."
"The Phantom?" she breathed in a low tone."I might have known that Jason Jones could not have moved so fast, have caught up Topnotch as I was thrown off. I... Well, I guess I'm a bit ill. If you'll see me home, we'll have a talk."
"Sorry, Mrs. Jennings, but I have another pressing engagement," Van told her."Your friends will look after you. I expect to find out something within the next hour or two at Brookvard College. I will get in touch with you when—"
"Phantom!" exclaimed the determined woman, whose underlying coolness was unshaken."If there's something wrong there, take me with you to the college! I don't want to go home! I won't be in your way, but I would like to know—"
"I'm not sure, Mrs. Jennings, what I'll find," said Van, then."All right. I like good horses myself. I know how you feel. This may be the kind of a fast ride that will help you."
FROM where he stood in the arena, Van was drawn by a commotion in the box where he had left Dean Doremus. He saw two plainclothesmen slamming their fists into the face of a fast moving man who was giving them a battle. The man's features showed as a knife gleamed in his hands.
One of the detectives whipped out a gun and let it fly with deadly accuracy. Then Van was moving swiftly. He had seen the deeply scarred jaw of the man with the knife—the man who had just gone down. Tony Marino!
Tony was out cold when Van reached the box. One of the plainclothesmen was lifting Dean Doremus from the floor. The dean's old-fashioned sideburns stood out from his face like gray hairs in green chalk.
The dean was rubbing one shoulder. He seemed making an effort to speak, but could only sputter. When Van got to him he saw that the dean's coat had been cleanly cut where a knife blade had been deflected.
"What happened here?" Van demanded.
"I guess all of us were watching the wild show you were putting on down there, with that horse, Mr. Jones," said one detective who did not know he was speaking to the Phantom."But Dolan and me were close enough to hear this little old man cry out, and we saw this mug here jumping toward him with that knife. The old man fell down and the knife missed him, and we got to the mug before he could do any more damage."
"You're one hundred percent lucky to be alive, Dean Doremus," said Van.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed the dean at last."So they are trying to kill all of us! Is Mrs. Jennings all right?"
"She's safe, Dean," said Van."But now the police will want to question you a bit. I must get some poison off of my hands, so I will have the police put you on a New Haven train for Stamford. I'll phone for a Brookvard car to meet you. I have other pressing business. I'm sure you'll be all right now."
"But, Jason, couldn't I go with you?" pleaded the dean.
"The ride I'm about to take might be too much for your nerves, Dean. I would rather leave you to police protection."
The Phantom went back to Mrs. Jennings and Inspector Gregg who were still in the arena. He related briefly the attempt upon Dean Doremus' life.
"I'm afraid, Phantom," said Mrs. Jennings."Whoever this terrible monster of murder may be will get all of us who are connected with Brookvard."
"Perhaps tonight will bring it all up short," said Van, and turned to Inspector Gregg."Inspector," he said,"the poison Mrs. Jennings got on her gloves off the horse's bridle may be the same you found on the feathers from Olivia Hartwell's shop."
"And Mrs. Loren Hart has ended her own life," said Gregg."That may clean things up, Phantom. She may have been behind all of the murders."
"I must go with you now, more than ever, Phantom," Mrs. Jennings said, firmly heroic."I don't believe Dean Doremus' heart will stand much more shock."
"We'll probably reach Brookvard ahead of the dean, and you can help look after him then," Van told her.
INSPECTOR GREGG was burning with more questions. But the Phantom spoke to him quickly in an aside.
"Brookvard isn't in your jurisdiction, Inspector," he said,"but because it touches these Manhattan killings, it might be well if you and some of your men take a little ride up that way for your health. But don't come into the grounds until you hear from me. Find Steve Huston and bring him along. Tell him to fetch the blood-test data."
Mrs. Jennings was a cool woman, a quiet woman. She said little as the Phantom fed the gas to one of his fastest coupés. They were stopped once by the patrol on the upper New York parkway above the Bronx, but Van again went away at better than seventy.
It was clocking almost exactly midnight as Van turned into the grounds. He drove directly to the executive building.
"You'll wait in Dean Doremus' office, Mrs. Jennings," he directed."I'm fairly sure the dean has not yet arrived. As soon as I learn what I have come to find out, I'll be with you."
The woman's face was strained. In spite of her apparent coolness little lines appeared about her mouth and eyes.
"Phantom, why can't I go with you?" she begged."As a member of the board, the only living member now, except the dean, I have a right to know everything."
"You will know everything, Mrs. Jennings," assured Van."But this is for me alone. After all, it might be a death trap. Wait in the dean's office."
Then the Phantom was gone so quickly and silently, fading into the shadows, that Mrs. Jennings' protest was left upon her moving lips.
As the Phantom moved noiselessly under the shadows of the great elms, a car whirled into the campus driveway. Flattened to the wall, the Phantom watched Dean Doremus alight before the executive building.
"Dean?" came the voice of Mrs. Jennings."Are you ill? Driver, wait a minute! Help me with him to his office."
Dean Doremus crossed under the broad light of the entry porch. Van saw he was clutching his left side, staggering a bit. Evidently the events of tonight had been a little too much for the mild and aging educator.
Van had an impulse to join the dean and Mrs. Jennings, but his watch showed twenty minutes after midnight. He remained motionless only long enough to convince himself he was not now being observed by anyone.
The long chemical building that slanted to the underground structure of dangerous experiments was all dark. Van was almost invisible as he softly tried the main door. But as he touched it, the door swung slowly open.
Van's fingers gripped his heavy automatic, and his pencil flashlight jumped into service. The little torch caught a piquant face within its circle.
"Mademoiselle Corre, I am here," said Van."In spite of my appearance, which I have not troubled to change for several hours, I am the Phantom, the friend of Muriel Havens."
Mademoiselle Corre shut the main door and locked it as she spoke.
"I know," she whispered."I can only hope you will be all that we have heard of you." Oddly there was no trace of accent in the tones of the lovely Frenchwoman."Professor Arlow, Billy Rice and Thelma Evans are waiting in the underground chamber. We thought it best to meet you there, where it is reasonably safe."
IF she had known then what was in the Phantom's mind, Mademoiselle Corre would have had grave doubts of the"reasonable safety" in the underground room. Van wished he had been given the time to discover more about that wall where the Doctor had made his one and only appearance to the Phantom. Even then, the Doctor had been no more than a vague, cloaked shadow. Well, he would look into that, as soon as he had talked to these others.
Mademoiselle Corre led the way, and explained to the waiting three that"Jason Jones" was the Phantom.
"We meet again, Phantom, and this time I'm glad to see you," said the bald-headed, bony-faced Professor Arlow."This time, I hope I may be able to remove a suspicion that I judge must be lingering in your mind."
Arlow was beside the table of retorts and chemical containers. Before him, under a ceiling light, lay several small ledgers, numerous papers and a pile of what might have been receipted bills.
Billy Rice, his broken fingers bandaged, had a quick, warm smile.
"I surely owe you one, Phantom," said Harvey Rice's heir,"Although, I faded out before I even got to see you last night on the boat. Thanks a million, Phantom."
"And that goes for me, too," spoke up pretty Thelma Evans, and smiled a little wryly as she looked at Van."The word just came over the radio down here that Jason Jones is dead," she said."It gives me the creeps to look at you. You're more than his identical twin."
It also must have given Thelma the creeps merely to return to this place that had so nearly been her tomb, the Phantom thought, as he smiled at the girl.
He was about to excuse himself for a moment, wanting to investigate the mysterious wall where the Doctor had appeared. But Arlow interrupted.
"Aimee—Mademoiselle Corre," he said,"I have forgotten the regular school lists, and we need them. They are in my office. If the Phantom doesn't mind, you might be explaining what we ran onto in the books while I get the lists."
Watching Arlow go out through the rear underground door, the Phantom thought that the tall, stooped figure of the bald professor looked oddly like a bird of prey as he moved into the shadows.
"I take it you have brought me here to point out some discrepancies in Dean Doremus' book," Van said quickly,"and you believe that perhaps they offer a solution to the tragedies?"
"How did you guess that, Phantom?" said Mademoiselle Corre slowly.
"I was here as Professor Jeremy for some little time," said Van."During that time, I noted that many of the chemicals being employed for experiments were of an inferior grade. Brookvard can afford the best." Mademoiselle Corre shrugged her shoulders resignedly.
"And we imagined we had something we could tell the Phantom," she said apologetically.
"You have, if you have made a discovery," assured Van."I'm interested to know what might have become of the much more costly chemicals that probably were purchased in quantities running into a huge sum."
MADEMOISELLE CORRE smiled at him.
"I'm glad there's something we have that can be useful," she said."Big shipments of chemicals, much more than Brookvard would ever use, have been diverted to the Champion Corporation, now believed to be producing various war gases. Cheaper chemicals were brought to the college, yet the higher prices remain on Dean Doremus' books."
"Dean Doremus?" said Van.
"Yes, that may check with a wing collar."
"A wing collar, Phantom?" exclaimed Billy Rice."What could that have to do with all this? Sure, I know the dean wears one all the time. Has worn it all his life."
"That's just it," stated Van."Dean Doremus has always worn a wing collar. We'll come to that later, perhaps."
Van was watching the door where Arlow had disappeared. He was hopeful that Arlow would return quickly. He heard Mademoiselle Corre speak.
"Billy, did you bring this book down from the dean's office?" the Frenchwoman asked.
Van looked at the book she indicated, one that appeared to be an old-fashioned ledger with a polished brass clasp. Billy Rice reached over and picked it up.
"Why, no, didn't Professor Arlow have it with the others?" said Billy."He put all of them here."
"I'm sure Professor Arlow did not have that book," said Mademoiselle Corre."Let's see what it is."
A warning bell of danger sounded in Van's brain. He started toward Mademoiselle Corre.
"Wait!" he exclaimed."Perhaps I can discover the—"
Van was too late. Mademoiselle Corre's white fingers snapped open the clasp of the book. A puff of smoke shot out from between the old leather covers. Van hurled himself toward Mademoiselle Corre with the speed of a projectile, striking the book from her hand and throwing the Frenchwoman to the floor.
Thelma Evans screamed. Vivid fire, blue with its intense heat was projected like a flat sheet across the long room. Its sizzling edge seemed almost to cut through the retorts and containers on the table.
Van caught Thelma Evans, pulling her to the floor, as Billy Rice swore and slapped his hands over his face where the flame had struck him. A container of metallic composition exploded on the table, sending a fiery shower throughout the room.
"Pyrosulphuric!" grated the Phantom."Stay on the floor! Crawl to the outside door!"
"We can't—we can't!" screamed Mademoiselle Corre.
One chemical retort after another was letting go. Only at one side of the table were they still untouched by the fire. And lurid flame ran up like a living, seething wall of death across the outer door of the underground room.
"Back this way!" shouted Van."The door we came in."
There was a mocking, terrible laugh. A deep, bass voice spoke.
"You will find the doors held with bars that not even the great Phantom can tear apart in time! So you imagined the Phantom was smart enough to outwit the Doctor! I have been playing with him all of the time! Now he dies with those of you who have interfered in my affairs."
VAN found the door he had entered was barred on the other side. Billy Rice was carrying Thelma Evans toward the only corner where the fire had not yet shot its spreading blaze. Mademoiselle Corre stayed close beside the Phantom.
"Whatever happens, I don't—I can't believe Professor Arlow had anything to do with it!" she choked."Phantom, he loves me. We are to be married."
"Yes, I know," Van said quietly."And perhaps all men do not kill the things they love. I believe Arlow is on the square."
Thelma had quit screaming. Billy Rice was holding her tightly in his arms.
"And this will appear as if we were down here experimenting and some chemicals exploded," Billy said bitterly."Then only the college, and that means Dean Doremus will be left to inherit Granddad's fortune—all of the forty millions. I would have thought that Granddad, as smart as he was, would have suspected the dean."
"Perhaps he did, Billy," said Van."Possibly that was why he had me come out here as Professor Jeremy, though he did not mention his own suspicion."
"No, Granddad trusted Dean Doremus above all other men!" insisted Billy."And now... Phantom, do we have to die like rats in a trap? Surely, there is a higher justice that—"
"There was no higher justice for Jimmy or for some of the others, Billy," Mademoiselle Corre said with amazing calm."And now all of the evidence Professor Arlow and I have collected will be destroyed when we die."
A squashy explosion rained liquid fire upon Mademoiselle Corre. Van smothered the blaze by rolling the Frenchwoman upon the floor and beating out the fire with his hands.
"Back—over by that wall!" he commanded."All of you! We have only minutes, perhaps no more than seconds! It's our only possible chance! Look for a knob, a button, anything that might be connected with a door that must lead to a passage!"
RACING over to the wall, Van discovered that it was smooth to his hand. The cement was solid and no hollow sound responded to the pounding butt of a gun. Thelma Evans apparently had fainted, and Billy Rice was trying to revive her. The air in the long room was diminishing with the spread of the leaping fire and choking chemical fumes.
Van's own lungs were aching, and he knew the others must be worse off than himself. He was forced to admire the sheer grit of the little Frenchwoman. Although she had been burned some, she showed a tight smile in the fire's bluish light.
Billy Rice sprang up, his bare fists beating at the cement wall.
"Phantom!" he screamed."You only told us there was a way out to raise our hopes! This wall has always been here!"
But Billy Rice received no reply. Mademoiselle Corre was staring straight into the heart of the flames. The Phantom had disappeared.
"Why, he went right into that fire!" cried Mademoiselle Corre."He'll never come out!"
Billy Rice was kissing Thelma Evans' blue lips. Then he was uttering oaths, staggering to his feet.
"He saved my life," he muttered."I've got to pay him for that! I'll get him!"
"No, Billy, no!"
Mademoiselle Corre was frantic. She threw her arms around Billy's legs, hurling him to the floor. At that instant, the Phantom reappeared, moving flat on his stomach, with tongues of fire coming from his coat.
Van had covered his face with a special gas mask handkerchief he had recently devised for just such a situation. His extended hands carried two gleaming containers that had been untouched by the fire, as he hunched toward the others.
Two-thirds of the long room was now a mass of flames. Only the pull of the laboratory ventilators was preventing the final spread, but another explosion or two, bound to come, would finish the tragedy intended by the murder fire-bomb book.
Van came to his feet, the two containers in his hands. His eyes fell upon the metal trough of now dried plaster that had so nearly brought terrible death to Thelma Evans and Muriel Havens.
"Billy, see if we can up-end that trough!" he commanded.
He set down the two containers, swung Thelma Evans into his arms, placing her back of the trough, several yards from the stubborn cement wall. It was his own strength, rather than Billy's that put the metal trough with its thick plaster content on edge.
"Now, Billy, you and Mademoiselle Corre stay down behind this trough!" ordered Van."Don't move, whatever happens!"
Heat seared their backs as Mademoiselle Corre and Billy Rice watched the Phantom. He went to the wall, and set the containers he had brought close against the cement, near the box that he knew contained a shortwave radio through which the Doctor had once talked.
"The exit ought to be near here," he muttered.
Knocking off the brittle top of one container with his gun, he opened the other container and poured out part of its contents. Then he emptied it into the first container.
Next, Van caused Mademoiselle Corre and Billy Rice to gasp with amazement. For he produced a gleaming bit of metal shaped like a domino mask. It was set with tiny diamonds—his badge, the mark of the Phantom.
He dropped the solid platinum badge into the broken top of the container, which now contained a mixture of both liquids. Almost immediately, blue smoke started from the broken top.
Van carried this just beyond the radio where there was a sharp angle in the smooth cement. He placed the container beside the wall, then glided back to the others.
With fire hedging them in, they were as far as possible from the mysterious mixture. A new explosion behind them increased the heat. Mademoiselle Corre moaned. The fierce heat was agony, touching her bums.
"What is it, Phantom?" Billy Rice asked."Is there any hope?"
"Perhaps one chance in a thousand," Van said grimly."One of the containers held tetraethyl. Pure alcohol was in the other. And you are about to witness or be destroyed by a terrific explosion. Either way, it will be over."
"But tetraethyl and alcohol will not explode," said Billy Rice.
"They will in about two minutes or a little more," said Van grimly."When tetraethyl is mixed with alcohol it causes a catalistic action of atoms. In contact with pure platinum, the resultant atomic action sends the platinum molecules into such rapid motion that a powerful heat is generated. This heat becomes so intense the blast results."
"But we'll never survive!"
"It's the only way," assured Van."Now lie flat. This explosion is always upward, never downward. When I tell you, cover your faces and hold your breaths."
"But that was your famous badge, Phantom!" protested Billy Rice.
"Platinum is considerably cheaper than life," Van said, without humor."Now lie down... Here it comes!"
There was a bright flare, a little hissing, then it seemed as if the whole room had been shattered. The thick metal trough took the solid impact of the hard driven air, and metal and plaster cracked.
Van could not hear the others speaking, if they did. The ears of all were completely deafened for the moment. The explosion gave them quick respite, however, for the force of the blast had blown out nearly half of the chemical blaze.
Then Van saw the yawning hole in the cement wall. He took Mademoiselle Corre in his arms. Billy Rice was carrying Thelma Evans. A six-foot tunnel opened before them.
Some fire was drawn into this new opening, but Van reached stairs that led upward, before the heat became unendurable. There was a flat door over his head at the top of the stairs.
Van hammered at it with the butt of his gun. There was no response. He found a lock, put the muzzle against it and pulled the trigger. The door slapped open.
There was a strange exit. Clothes hung on racks and there was another door with a light beyond it. The tunnel had opened into a clothes closet. Putting Mademoiselle Corre to one side, the Phantom found the closet door unlocked. He snapped it open abruptly, gun in his hand.
The room beyond was empty. One table lamp was burning. One quick glance at the clothing in the closet, and articles in the room, and Van knew they were in Dean Doremus' room.
Billy Rice was muttering low oaths.
His condemnation of the dean was bitter. But he had one thought.
"What proof have we, though, that Dean Doremus had anything to do with the murders?" he questioned. Outside the college grounds, Inspector Thomas Gregg had been waiting for the Phantom's signal, calling him into the campus. A rumbling underground blast made Gregg forget all about the signal. Other cars were arriving, two coming at high speed.
State police, keeping an eye on the ill-fated school, came roaring along as the muffled explosion spelled out more trouble. Frank Havens and Muriel Havens were in one of the speeding cars, coming from New York. Steve Huston was in another car, breaking the laws.
SO the Phantom, now a much disheveled"Jason Jones," and his rescued companions, walked into a reception in Dean Doremus' office. Dean Doremus was slumped in his big chair. Mrs. Jennings was fuming, complaining that any more excitement would be the death of the fluttery little old man.
Just to clear the record for all present, including state police, Van announced:
"I seem to be Jason Jones. I am the Phantom. Jason Jones is dead. He was killed to prevent him becoming the new executor of Brookvard College and manager of the considerable fortune willed to the school by Harvey Rice."
Dean Doremus grabbed at his left side, gasping, staring at the Phantom.
"You're lying!" he screeched in his high voice."You tricked me, so you could kill me with a shock! They tried to murder Mrs. Jennings, too!"
"Dean Doremus," the Phantom interrupted coldly,"you saved Harvey Rice's life by a blood transfusion some twenty years ago, so he founded this big college for you?"
"Yes—yes, I did save his life then," said the dean."But—"
At this moment, the bony face of Professor Arlow showed up. He came into the room almost furtively. Mademoiselle Corre ran to him, with a little cry of emotion.
Arlow pushed her from him almost roughly. He had a book in his hand, evidently a ledger, one he had said he had left in his office. It seemed convenient indeed, for Arlow, that he had missed being in the underground lab when the fire-bomb book had exploded.
Arlow was staring at the Phantom as he brought up the subject of the transfusion given Harvey Rice years before by Dean Doremus, saving the shipping magnate's life. Arlow looked as if he wished he had not come in.
Mademoiselle Corre glanced at the Phantom, then talked rapidly to Arlow in such a low tone that those nearest them could not hear her words. Van disregarded all of this. He went on.
"For several months, Dean Doremus, cheap chemicals have been substituted for the high-priced chemicals which show on your books," he said inexorably."And a war gas company had been getting thousands of dollars' worth of the good chemicals, shown on your books as coming to the college."
DEAN DOREMUS seemed to forget his heart. He reared to his feet.
"Another lie, Phantom!" he squealed."Where are the books? I'll make you prove that!"
"Unfortunately the books have been destroyed in the fire that was meant to erase Mademoiselle Corre, Thelma Evans, Billy Rice, Professor Arlow and myself, but by good luck Mademoiselle Corre and Professor Arlow remain alive to testify about the chemicals."
The dean pulled at his wing collar, as though it was another kind of collar that was choking him.
"Mademoiselle Corre and Arlow are both thieves and liars!" he got out.
Professor Arlow poked his bony face above other heads in the room. He was holding Mademoiselle Corre's hand. Inspector Gregg moved where he might intercept him if he made a break.
"It seems, Dean," went on Van,"that you have always worn wing collars. Then how about that permanent line about your throat which shows you must have worn tight, round collars for years?"
Dean Doremus kept his hand down, but his head twisted, as if he could feel a modern collar choking him.
"That started me on the blood trail, Dean Doremus," Van said tightly.
"The blood trail? You're crazy, Phantom. I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Steve Huston will tell you, Dean."
The red-headed reporter stepped forward with three cards in his hand.
"I have here the record of Harvey Pace's and Dean Doremus' blood types, taken at the hospital twenty years ago," he said."The Phantom has given me a record of the blood type of Professor Howard who was murdered, but whose body never was found."
Dean Doremus appeared to be frozen on his feet.
"And you are of the same size and weight as was Dean Doremus, and a finished actor besides, Professor Howard," Van accused."But blood types never change and never lie. Years ago, you were known as Howard Hart, owner of the Crown Circus. There was trouble which linked Harvey Rice up with the circus—"
"The blood! I forgot the blood!"
DEAN DOREMUS' words, or more correctly the words of Professor Howard, alias Howard Hart, were hoarse squawks. But he was quick. His hand darted under his frock coat. The Phantom appeared slow to move. A wicked automatic in the hand of the bogus dean was waved at those nearest him, and he backed toward the window and its fire-escape.
Inspector Gregg swore, and state policemen held off, seeing the desperation in the dean's eyes. Dean Doremus had his back to the open window when he reached it.
The dean's gun flamed twice. The bullets went into the ceiling. A quick, thin hand had fastened on his wrist, coming over his shoulder from outside the window.
Chip Dorlan's face appeared."Hold it, Mister!" he snapped.
The dean attempted to whirl. Chip's hand twisted and the dean went to his knees, groaning. Then Mrs. Alford Jennings intervened.
"Stop it!" she cried."I've known Dean Doremus too long to believe any of that! The Phantom hasn't any evidence in the record of blood types! It's all a bluff!"
The Phantom turned slowly toward Mrs. Jennings.
"You did your best, out of sympathy, Mrs. Jennings, to try and make yourself believe this Dean Doremus was real. I happen to know that you suspected him, but you had occasion recently when the dean met with a small accident to acquire some blood stains. These you checked with the old records at the hospital."
"Yes, I did, Phantom, and what of it?" flared Mrs. Jennings."I discovered that the Harvey Rice and Dean Doremus records show that Dean Doremus here has the same type of blood."
Dean Doremus was swallowing hard. Chip Dorlan was holding him firmly.
"It is regretted that Dean Doremus had a gun so handy, and that his character underwent such an abrupt change, Mrs. Jennings," the Phantom said quietly."He has virtually convicted himself by that bad break, because you never mentioned your vague suspicion, and he himself naturally concluded the game was up, because he believed that his blood did not match that of Harvey Rice and the real Dean Doremus. But it did!"
Inspector Gregg was scowling heavily. He called Van to one side.
"All of this is outside of my jurisdiction," he said."But mere resistance after an accusation, right or wrong, will never convict the man in court."
The Phantom smiled a little. He produced a folded circus poster, so old the paper threatened to fall apart. It had been neatly pasted together on cellophane.
"I have here a poster, supposed to represent the owner and a troupe of performers of the Crown Circus thirty years ago," he pointed out."You will note that the one designated as Howard Hart, the owner, is dressed in a ringmaster's costume. Observe the size of the figure, its posture, and forget the mustache. Then note that Howard Hart is standing with his left hand firmly pressed to his left side. Evidently he has suffered from acute indigestion for many years. He has the deep bass voice of the ringmaster also—when he wants to use it, as he did in his role of the Doctor. In fact, he has considerable ability as a voice mimic, as witness how he has been able to imitate the voice of his poor victim, the real Dean Doremus.
"Still, even if he hadn't followed the pattern of some of the shrewdest criminals, and retained the Howard part of his name, he can be proved to be the same man by the French Surete method of bone and body measurement."
FOR all of her horsiness and sophistication, Mrs. Alford Jennings was as soft-hearted as they came, ready to take up the cudgels for one accused.
"Dean Doremus!" she murmured."Why, then, you mean he was sitting in the Garden show, expecting to see me poisoned on Topnotch? But, Phantom, that knife—Tony Marino tried to kill the dean, too."
"I doubt that," Van said dryly."For a trained acrobat, with an eye for timing and distance, Tony Marino made a woefully ineffective attack upon the dean, or the 'Doctor.' He knocked him down and the blade only slit the shoulder of his coat. Doubtless, Tony Marino expected to be sprung from jail quickly, even if he had been charged with felonious assault.
"It was a neatly framed cover-up for the Doctor, who actually believed me to be Jason Jones. He must have doubted that, though, when I employed a smoke bomb to prevent your horse carrying you in line with Mrs. Loren Hart and her ready knife."
Mrs. Jennings did not reply. A tear coursed down one wind-browned cheek.
"You see," went on the Phantom,"I judged that Karl Hart, or Charles Turner, the lawyer, as you knew him, reported to the Doctor that he had pushed Jason Jones from a window. But the police had made no report of finding a body, so when I showed up as Jason Jones, the Doctor and Charles Turner were much confused.
"Mrs. Loren Hart also knew of this, and she tried to make sure that Jason Jones died—but she missed. She did not want Jones to live, for Jones had been named by Harvey Rice to become executive administrator of Brookvard College—not because he suspected this bogus Dean Doremus, but because he thought that the financial burden was too much for his old friend at his age."
"Great Glory, Phantom!" ejaculated Inspector Gregg."That is a complicated set-up."
"There is still more," said Van."For years this Howard Hart, who became Professor Howard, had been following the fortunes of Harvey Rice. He nursed revenge in his heart because Harvey Rice once had stopped his show through an animal accident on shipboard.
"When the circus business petered out, the Harts—Mrs. Loren Hart, Olivia and Karl Hart, and the uncle, Howard Hart—went into a smalltime murder racket in Chicago and later in New Orleans. Some of their old circus performers, out of the show business, became members of their killer mob.
"They operated almost the same as the killers known as Murder, Incorporated, in Brooklyn, killing for small fees. But they got away with it, accumulated some money, and became ambitious to become big-time murderers, extortionists, or whatever their ruthless business made them."
"Yes," Inspector Gregg nodded."We have Tony and Kiel Marino, and several others, including that chestnut vendor who was used as a red herring at the time Jimmy Rice was murdered."
"So Howard Hart and his murder family came East more than a year ago. Howard Hart had learned that Harvey Rice was worth some forty millions. He saw the means of grasping a huge fortune there, and at the time, evidently believed it would be the stepping stone toward a nationwide, unusual racket by having a big college under his direction.
"Howard Hart probably had teaching credentials, faked or otherwise, so as Professor Howard he was employed by the real Dean Doremus. He studied Dean Doremus' habits, learned the routine of his office, then removed him. Wherefore, the disposal of the dean's body as that of Professor Howard."
THERE were concerted gasps—at that announcement.
"It was unfortunate for Howard—or Hart—that Dean Doremus wore wing collars," the Phantom went on,"because they showed the line that had been on Hart's neck for years, even through his make-up.
"Then Howard Hart was compelled to act quickly after he learned that Harvey Rice intended to write a new will making Jason Jones responsible for the finances. The old will split the Rice fortune four ways—one-fourth to the college, the remainder divided equally between his twin grandsons and Thelma Evans.
"But in event of the death of either of these, their inheritance also went to the college. So Hart was out to make a clean sweep of the entire forty millions. Also, it was the plan of the Hart death family to work through control of the big college on higher class killings, extortion and other profitable ventures.
"The Hart murder family was simply moving from the lower criminal brackets into upper brackets as big-time killers.
"But the inevitable happened. Uncle Howard Hart had forty millions and control of the college in sight, and it was too much for him. By removing the others of his own family, he would be left with the millions and the college for himself. He had made a good start by putting Olivia and Karl out of the way."
"But the will, Phantom?" said Mrs. Jennings,"Dean Doremus had the old will, and none of us ever saw a new will."
"Harvey Rice never wrote a new will," stated Van."But he talked it into a dictaphone. He signed it with fingerprints in red ink inside the cylinder, making it as good as a written document and—he believed—more indestructible. In which he was, of course, mistaken.
"Billy Rice was told by his dying grandfather to gain possession of the new will, then in his wall safe, at once. Jason Jones followed Billy closely, interested in his welfare. Billy knew of the wax record, knew it was in the safe. He got the will and passed it to Jason Jones for safekeeping as he heard prowlers around the house.
"Charles Turner, or Karl Hart, was one of the prowlers. He killed the Rice valet with a poisoned feather. The safe was blown when the will was not discovered elsewhere, but that was a blind. The killers knew Billy had managed to secrete the new will somehow. He was tortured, but he kept his secret.
"Jason Jones was in another part of the house when Billy Rice was seized. When Jones went home, he put the wax record on a table. Charles Turner strangled him and pushed him from a window, never having the faintest idea that the will, in Harvey Rice's own voice was on a table in the library, right at his hand.
"By that will, Harvey Rice appointed Jason Jones administrator of the financial affairs of Brookvard College, with Dean Doremus to be freed of this executive burden because of his apparent infirmity and age."
Dean Doremus' head was bent and he made no reply. He had come close, very close to an immense fortune, but the cards played by the Phantom were all trumps.
MURIEL HAVENS stood beside the Phantom, smiling. Thelma Evans was sobbing in Billy Rice's arms. Professor Arlow looked at lovely Mademoiselle Corre, his bony face lighting up.
"Lucky you don't do anything halfway, Phantom," Arlow said."You knew that I also followed Billy Rice when he went after the will, and that I ran away to keep from tangling with the police before Aimee and I could make certain of Dean Doremus' crooked books."
The Phantom nodded."The chemical substitution provided money when the murder family from New Orleans ran short," he said."It kept Mrs. Loren Hart in her society spot, and maintained Olivia Hart on Fifth Avenue."
Muriel Havens smiled at the Phantom. Her hair was concealed under the tight turban she had worn at the Horse Show.
"I'll be ready for another case when my hair grows out. Phantom," she said eagerly."It won't take long."
The Phantom grinned at her. Then he was deadly serious.
"In that case, I will see to it that you are kept well supplied with the best hair remover I know," he said."I'm certain my own hair has turned gray under my make-up—and you're responsible, young lady!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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