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Roy Glashan's Library
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The Phantom Detective, December 1934, with "Crime Castle"
PROGRESS in criminology has been rapid! Today, with improved fingerprinting systems, infrared rays, prowl cars equipped with radio, a deeper understanding of criminal psychology and a thousand and one new inventions aiding the eyes of law enforcement, the old adage, "Murder Will Out" is truer than ever before.
The killer who believes he can "get away with it" has but slim chance of success. For powerful forces are opposed to him, and all civilization is allied in a crusade against the underworld, armed with scientific weapons hitherto unknown.
Join the winning side in this mighty life-and-death struggle between modern society and its foes! Express your faith in the law, in honesty and square-dealing, at every opportunity. Obey the law and influence others to do likewise. Support legislation that tends to stamp out crime. It's your duty as an American!
Grim, ghastly death and blood-curdling terrors stalk the house of a hundred murders! Thrills, suspense and action in one of the most baffling cases ever tackled by The Phantom!
THE Phantom's dark eyes, blazing through the slits of his black silk mask, fixed intently on the face of J. Perry Montague, head of the internationally famous banking house of Montague and Son.
It was incredible that this mild-mannered fabulously wealthy man who was almost a recluse, could have any connection with the weird mystery that was driving the police nearly frantic. What could a shy and retiring philanthropist like Montague know of the invisible specter of Death that had mowed down nearly a hundred unsuspecting victims, in a manner that left no inkling as to whether the deaths were murders or suicides?
A strange Nemesis appeared to be stamping through the city, selecting his victims from every walk of life. Bankers and brokers, clerks and petty crooks alike, had been cut down by the scythe of the Grim Reaper who was mysteriously stalking about, leaving a welter of terror and hysteria in his wake. Every day—for nearly a month now—bodies had been dragged from the Hudson River—all of them apparently suicides by drowning.
Baffled and driven nearly frantic by the ever increasing list of victims, the police had appealed to Frank Havens to enlist the aid of the Phantom in the solution of the terrifying mystery.
The Phantom's brain clicked fast, endeavoring to link up J. Perry Montague with this list of sudden drownings. Could it be that behind these mysterious drownings was a plot that was aimed at the financial structure of the city—or could the vast wealth of the nation be the goal of some clever ruthless fiend!
Richard Curtis Van Loan, known to the world as the Phantom, leaned forward in his chair and addressed the banker.
"Frank Havens said," he clipped, "that you thought you had a clue that tied up with these mysterious drownings."
"Do you think they are accidental deaths—or suicides—or murders?" Montague asked soberly.
"From the investigating I have done—I'm inclined to think they are murders," the Phantom said flatly. "Accidents don't happen to so great a number of people all in a month. Nor is it likely that approximately one hundred people in the same city would suddenly decide to commit suicide in the same way in the space of a single month. My own theory is that they are murders, committed by one of the brainiest criminals in the country."
"Then I think I have something that may be of importance to you in proving that theory," Montague's voice was excited. "As perhaps you know, I've made a hobby of helping out impoverished young people who have shown a talent in any of the arts."
THE masked man nodded. Montague's philanthropies were known throughout the country.
"Recently a young girl named Peggy Manning was sent to me, for financial help in finishing her art studies," the banker went on. "She showed real talent as an artist. She was very beautiful, too, a natural blonde with hazel eyes. I wondered at first why a girl so beautiful couldn't earn the money she needed by posing as a model. When I saw her work, I forgot all that. She really was a genius. Naturally, I had her investigated. Her story, in the main, was true. But I learned that she frequented the Hi-de-ho Club, the notorious gangsters' hangout. When I read that you and the police—"
Montague stopped abruptly. Into his eyes leaped a startled, terrified look.
The Phantom's head slued around as Montague pointed toward the window. Then he hurled his body out of the chair, trying to sweep the banker to the floor, away from the danger that he saw lurking outside the window.
The Phantom's attempt to save Montague was a split second slow. A bullet crashed through the window—and buried itself in the breast of the millionaire. A second shot flicked the edge of the Phantom's hat brim, as Van hit the floor on his hands and knees, beside the crumpled body of J. Perry Montague.
THE Phantom's eyes narrowed on a startling vision that showed through the shattered glass of the window. He caught the dim outline of a dark, bulky figure, wearing a black hood, with eyes that blazed like balls of molten fire through holes in the black sack.
Van's gun whipped up and his finger squeezed on the trigger, but even as the lethal bullet went speeding out into the darkness, he knew he was too late. For the dark figure of the killer had faded away from the window.
A quick glance showed Van that Montague was beyond all help. The Phantom raced across the room, smashed out the rest of the glass with the butt of his gun and vaulted to the ground. There was no sign of the masked killer.
Racing footsteps sounded on a gravel walk. Van whirled about, and a man in the olive drab of the Homes Service Patrol came piling around the corner. At the sight of the masked man, the patrolman reached for the gun at his hip. Then he seemed to recognize the Phantom.
"What was the shooting?" he cried excitedly. "You're the Phantom, aren't you? Mr. Montague said you were expected."
Van stared at the guard, said in a brittle voice:
"How long have you been on the job?"
"Been here every night for a week," the man answered, "Why—has anything happened?"
"Why did Mr. Montague hire a guard?" Van asked tonelessly.
"I don't know. He called our office a week ago, and said he wanted a man to patrol this place every night, from eight p.m. to eight in the morning. I'm on until two; then I get relieved."
The Phantom studied the man silently but found nothing suspicious in his face or manner.
"Did you see or hear anyone running across the grounds?" he asked.
"Haven't seen a soul about the place. What's happened?"
"You're certainly a splendid protection," Van said bitterly. "A masked murderer just fired through the window—and killed your client."
THEN he turned on his heel and went back through the window. His jaw was set in a grim line, as he let his eyes rest on the crumpled body of the millionaire. Once again the scythe of the Grim Reaper had swung, and this time, in a murder that threatened to overshadow all of the other ninety odd.
A bitter curse wrung from the Phantom's lips. J. Perry Montague murdered—before his very eyes. The biggest financier in the country struck down by the fiendish king of crime. Cold fingers of fear wrapped themselves around Van's heart as he thought of the possible results of this awful catastrophe. It was a blow at the financial stability of the country. The very foundations of Wall Street would rock, when the news of Montague's murder screamed from the headlines of the morning papers. A panic might be precipitated that would destroy the splendid work that had been done by the nation's leading executives. Montague's murder was the most serious blow that could have been struck at the forces of stabilization.
VAN'S face was hard and grim and his eyes looked like chiseled bits of agate, glinting through the slits of his mask. For as he thought of the ruthlessness of the crime, he felt that he was on the trail of a master criminal who would be a most fitting foe for the Phantom. Van knew it was going to require every last bit of his ability to trail down this killer, who had coolly murdered the leading financial power of the nation as daringly as he would have shot down some thug from the netherworld.
Montague's butler rushed into the room, saw the blood-stained body of his master, and cast a horrified glance at the Phantom.
"Who—who did this horrible thing?" the butler quavered.
"I don't know," Van snapped. "You can help me find out. Do any of the help sleep outside the house?"
"The gardner and the chauffeur have living quarters outside," the butler replied.
"Get hold of them right away. I want to talk to them," the Phantom ordered sharply.
He went to the phone and dialed Police Headquarters. He asked the desk sergeant to put Inspector Crowley on the phone. When Crowley answered, the Phantom imparted his information tersely:
"I'm at J.P. Montague's house, Inspector. There's just been a murder committed here."
He could hear Crowley draw in his breath with a whistling sound.
"Not Montague himself?" the police officer gasped. "My God—don't tell me that they've gotten him, too!"
"Montague has been murdered," the Phantom said harshly.
Crowley swore softly and tragically.
"Now there will be the devil to pay," he said. "It's going to cause a panic, when this news hits the Street. This is about the finishing touch that's going to demoralize the whole city completely. No one is safe any longer."
The Phantom could sympathize with the harassed official. For weeks the Police Department had labored day and night, had traveled in dizzy circles, trying to find a single clue to the chain of strange deaths confronting them. And now, to add to their desperate burden, came the brutal murder of one of the country's leading citizens. The higher-ups were going to squawk plenty, just as Crowley had intimated.
TWENTY minutes later, Crowley rocketed out of a police car in front of the Montague mansion. The police inspector's eyes were grim and hard as they rested on the Phantom's masked face.
"What do you make of this killing?" he asked blankly.
The Phantom briefly described the murder. Then he said slowly:
"It must be the work of a murder syndicate, Crowley. I'm inclined to believe that one man or a small group of men are responsible for all of these deaths. I say one man, because it all seems to be so carefully planned to make it look like a series of accidents, that only one brain could be responsible for the fiendish cleverness of the scheme. If a single man is heading the syndicate of death, he's one of the most ingenious devils alive."
"All of the other deaths have been by drowning," Crowley pointed out. "But Montague was shot. Do you think that can possibly link up with the other deaths?"
"MONTAGUE was killed—because he had discovered something that might lead to the solution of these mysterious drownings," the Phantom said levelly. "He had an investigator checking on something personal—and the investigator stumbled onto the trail. Somebody knew of Montague's investigation and murdered him before he could tell me what the investigator had found. The shooting was too timely to have been anything but an attempt to seal Montague's lips. But the murderer didn't entirely succeed in his nefarious purpose."
"Then you did learn something before Montague was killed?"
"I learned very little, but it tied up with the point that we turned up in our investigations—that many of the drowning victims had been patronizing the Hi-de-ho Club, just before they died."
The Phantom related what Montague had told him about Peggy Manning, the blonde art student, and the banker's discovery that the supposedly impoverished young artist was a patron of the famous gangster hot spot.
"Montague had something else in mind," Van said. "It was something connected with the Hi-de-ho Club—something so big that some ruthless criminal dared to murder a nationally famous man like Montague in order to keep it silent."
Crowley shook his head emphatically in negation.
"I figure this was a separate crime," he said. "We'll probably find that some enemy of Montague's bumped him off. It just happened to take place when he was telling you something important."
"Maybe you are right," the Phantom clipped. "But I feel differently about it. I believe Montague's death will tie in with the others, once we've solved this case."
"But Montague wasn't a night club patron," protested Crowley. "In our investigations we learned that, in practically every case, the victims of these mysterious drownings had been blowing bankrolls in night clubs, mostly in the Hi-de-ho Club. Clerks and mechanics who were known to be poor, had suddenly come into the money class and had been spending their wealth recklessly, just before they died. That's the fact that we base our theory on, down at Headquarters—that all of these deaths point to a gigantic clip racket.
"There's an organized gang working these clubs, spotting their victims who flash heavy rolls, then robbing them and dumping them in the river. It looks like the only possible theory to me. And Montague certainly wouldn't be a victim in a plot like that."
"Perhaps you are right, Crowley," admitted the Phantom. "Though no signs of violence have been found on any of the victims. If they were robbed, why weren't they beaten or strangled? And how were they drowned so easily? Surely some of them could swim. I want an autopsy made on all the bodies that are still at the morgue. If these deaths are murders, there must be some indication that we can find of how they met their deaths."
"BUT we did that," Crowley pointed out. "There was no sign of poison in the victims, nor could we find traces of a drug. Their lungs were filled with water, showing that death was due to drowning, in every case."
"That's true," the Phantom agreed morosely, "How about including the brain in the next autopsy? If these deaths were murders, as we suspect, the victims must have been overpowered in some way. Have a complete autopsy made on several of the victims, will you?"
Crowley agreed and started his men on the routine work of checking with the servants and examining the grounds of the Montague estate. The Phantom stayed about for a few minutes longer, watching and pondering.
"There's a lot of truth in what you said about some enemy of Montague's gunning for him," he finally told Crowley. "Just recently he hired a guard to patrol his place, which means he must have been afraid of something. Better have a close check-up made for possible enemies. I'll leave that in your hands. I'm going down to the Hi-de-ho Club to see if I can learn what it was that Montague intended to tell me. Perhaps I can pick up a trail down there."
SHRILL laughter mingled with the syncopating notes of Ted Weldon's Collegians, effecting a weird cacophony of sound. The diffused, dim lights from the vari-colored bulbs that were placed in the ornate chandeliers overhead, stabbed through swirls of cigarette and cigar smoke. Out on the tiny dance floor, bald, paunchy men fox-trotted with blond sirens; and slick-haired, narrow-eyed men dipped and swayed to the Carioca with hard-eyed, lissom partners. It was one o'clock in the morning and the Hi-de-ho Club was going to town.
At a secluded corner table, a tall, well-built man, with the smooth black hair and the dark olive skin of a Latin, casually eyed the occupants of the closely packed tables. A passing glance would have tabbed him as one of the Broadway gigolos. A closer scrutiny would have revealed the purposeful set to the lean, dark jaw, and the piercing quality of the dark eyes that roamed lazily around the tables.
Some of the sleek-haired youths who tangoed so gracefully would have fled the place had they known the identity of the dark-haired man. A few of the cold-eyed men at the tables would have reached for their guns and a fusillade of lethal lead would have turned the Broadway hot spot into a bloody shambles had they known they sat near their hated enemy—the Phantom, Richard Curtis Van Loan—had proceeded to his Park Avenue apartment after leaving the Montague mansion. Here he had effected a complete change of identity. A master of make-up, it had been but a few minutes' work to achieve his present disguise.
A grim smile twisted his lips as his roving eyes met the stares of three different criminals who had publicly sworn death to the Phantom. But the smile soon faded from his lips, and a deep frown wrinkled his forehead. Van realized that he was undertaking what might well prove to be his biggest case.
Following the vague lead that Montague had given him, he had come to the underworld resort on a gamble. Somewhere out on the floor of the Hi-de-ho Club was a clue that might lead him to the super-villain who he believed headed the murder syndicate that had committed nearly a hundred murders.
NO ordinary murders were these strange drownings. The bodies that had been found floating in the Hudson bore no sign of violence. There was nothing to prove that they were murders; all too readily they could have been suicides by drowning. The fiendish ingenuity behind them made the case the most difficult problem that the Phantom had ever tackled.
The scythe of the Grim Reaper had mowed down these countless numbers indiscriminately chosen from varying ranks of life; bankers, artisans, brokers and bums, artists, models and chorus girls, dancers and dope fiends—all had been plucked from their haunts of pleasure and business by some foul, unseen hand and cast into the turbid waters of the Hudson, to be found by the river patrol and to come to rest, at last, on a grey marble slab in the morgue.
THE newspapers, daily, broadcast news of still more victims. People read the appalling list of deaths, and cast furtive glances at their neighbors, never knowing when the grim specter of death might be lurking beside them, to sacrifice themselves or their dear ones in the mad orgy of murder that seemed to have descended on their city.
Bestial, purposeless murders they seemed—but the Phantom knew that some grim, relentless motive lay behind these baffling crimes. He knew that some evil genius had conceived a stupendous scheme in the depths of his foul mind; and that a warped and twisted brain was plotting more deaths to come. It was a seemingly impossible task that confronted the Phantom—but a task that he had grimly sworn to accomplish.
Van's pulse quickened now as a party of three took a table nearby—a lovely ash-blond girl accompanied by two men. One man was dark and a sulky scowl marred his good-looking face. The dinner clothes he wore showed signs of long use. The other man, big and florid-faced, was dressed in a business suit of checked material. A large diamond glittered on his finger and a lodge emblem dangled from the gold chain that stretched across his paunch. A typical butter-and-egg man, Van thought.
The blonde was talking in low tones to the sullen young man, trying to cajole him into a better humor. She was seconded in her efforts by the big, ruddy-faced man, whose laugh boomed loudly and mirthlessly above the din of the night club. The dark-haired youth's eyes lifted to the big man's face. Van was startled by the murderous look in their dark depths.
A movement at the next table caught Van's attention. Two thin-faced men with sharp, beady eyes watched the blond girl and her escorts. Van's pulse quickened as he saw the thin-faced men move back slightly from the table. One of them turned his head and said something to his companion out of the corner of his mouth. The Phantom caught the movement of the man's lips, and saw them frame the name of Peggy Manning.
The blood hammered in his veins. The blond beauty was the girl artist. Then he stiffened in his chair, as he caught an unobtrusive movement of the hands of the two rat-faced men, toward the lapels of their tuxedos.
Quick thoughts raced through the Phantom's mind. Someone at the girl's table was marked for the killing. Was it the blond girl, or the butter-and-egg man; or was the dark-eyed youth the victim who was on the spot for the gunmen's lethal slugs?
THE big man in the checked suit said something in a low voice. There was no smile on his face as he said it. The dark-haired youth catapulted out of his chair, and his fist smashed into the obese face across the table from him.
In the same split second, Van snapped out of his chair. He had seen the two gunmen rise and he caught a glimpse of their hands darting beneath their coats. The Phantom shot forward, and his hand grasped the shoulder of the blond girl who had screamed and risen from her chair. He spun her sideways and then shoved her roughly. She staggered away from the table. Then, with a suddenness that was almost terrifying, the club was plunged into darkness.
BURSTS of laughter and mock screams of terror emanated from tables where guests thought the sudden transition into Stygian blackness was a new thrill supplied by the management. But the screams took on a quality of shrill reality, as two orange lances of flame pierced the deep shroud of black, and the walls of the club reverberated with the double roar of barking guns.
Van moved swiftly around the table, guided by his keen sense of direction. Fleeing guests surging up the narrow aisle buffeted him against the table. Curses mingled with screams as panic-stricken patrons tried to flee the club before the police arrived. The Phantom heard the thud of fists against human flesh and the grating rasp of cursing voices as men fought to clear a path for themselves and their partners.
The Phantom had moved swiftly from the second he left his chair, just before the lights went out. He saw a slender figure ducking around a table—the table where the two gunmen had been seated. His hand darted out, grasped the shoulder of the fleeing man. His eyes tried to pick out the man's features in the darkness.
Another blue and orange flash split the black murk and the Phantom felt the pluck of the bullet as it snicked through the cloth of his dinner coat. A surge of murderous rage swept through his brain. He forgot the fact that he had a gun in his pocket; his fist whipped up and across, hurtling like a thunderbolt toward the spot where he figured the gunman's chin would be. His knuckles crashed against flesh and bone. The man whose shoulder he gripped slumped to the floor.
Then, as suddenly as they had failed, the lights came on. Van's eyes raked the scene of the night club. The dark-haired young man lay crumpled on the floor. Blood stained his dress shirt front just over the heart. He had been murdered!
Close beside him was one of the gunmen, the man whom Van had slugged. Van bent low, scanned his face, but failed to recognize him. The man had been sent out to commit this murder. Who had sent him?
The Phantom's deft fingers rapidly went through the pockets of the unconscious man, seeking some identification, some clue that might tell who had commissioned the thug to perform his wanton killing. Van's spine tingled as his fingers touched a folded bit of paper in the vest pocket of the killer. Then he straightened up suddenly, as the police whistles shrilled at the entrance.
The Phantom saw that the florid-faced man had made a clean getaway. His eyes, flicking the crowd that was surging back before the advance of the police, sought the girl. He heard a low moaning cry and turned to see her crouched against the wall, trembling and utterly unnerved. Tears were coursing through her make-up and her face was a mask of terror.
The blond girl's eyes moved toward the uniformed police, then jerked toward the Phantom. Ghastly fear showed in her face. Her lips moved. "Help me get out."
Swift thoughts rushed through the Phantom's mind. Montague had intimated that this frightened girl was tied up with the mysterious deaths. The thought flashed through Van's head that if he helped her to escape, he would gain her confidence.
But to chance an escape now would be to court death at the hands of the police. To the cops, he would be just another thug trying to evade the law. If he stopped to explain, he would forfeit the girl's trust.
Van decided to risk flight. To his mind, the killing he had just witnessed was connected in some way with the chain of drownings. The whole thing had been perfectly maneuvered, from the switching off of the lights to the firing of the fatal shots. The Phantom believed that the same devilish ingenuity at work here had planned the murder campaign terrorizing the city.
His eyes jerked toward the cops, who were herding the guests toward the dance floor. He reached out and grasped the girl's wrist.
"Come on," he rasped. "There's a side door we can make."
RAPIDLY they made for the back of the club, but not rapidly enough to avoid the eye of one alert cop.
"Stand still, you two," a hard voice barked. "You, I mean the greaseball with the blonde. Halt or I'll plug you."
Van's speed increased. The girl raced at his side; he could hear her breath exhaling in choking gasps. A gun cracked in back of them, and Van knew the cop had shot high to frighten them. They were only a few yards from the orchestra dais. The sound of the shot checked the girl's stride momentarily.
VAN'S feet hit the carpeted floor in faster cadence.
"Keep going," he growled. "The next shot will mean business."
He half jerked her forward as the policeman's bullet roared a second command to halt. Van heard the whine of the bullet as it passed under his arm pit, and beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead. One more stride and they raced around the sheltering structure of the orchestra stand. They were none too soon, for a third bullet splintered through the woodwork right beside them.
The girl was over her paralyzing fear now and her swift stride matched Van's as he plunged along the passageway toward the door. He reached for the knob, jerked the door open and pushed her through ahead of him. They went down three steps and out another door into an alleyway.
The blond girl started toward the street but Van jerked her hurriedly back.
"Not that way," he said. "The cops have the front of the place picketed by this time."
He moved along the alley to the rear entrance of a garage that was next to the club. Three or four roustabouts turned back from the front door where they had been watching the exciting scene of the police raid. Van folded a bill, slipped it to one man who seemed to be the night foreman.
"Can we use your side exit, buddy?" he asked. "We didn't want to get booked in the shooting scrape next door."
The man looked at the bill, tipped Van a wink.
"Sure—I know how those things are, mister," he grinned. "A lot of unfavorable publicity can hurt a feller"—he looked at the still terrified blond girl, and smiled more broadly—"or a dame," he added.
He led them between the rows of parked cars, and opened a door that led to the street.
"Hope you make it okay, buddy," he said.
"Thanks. We will," Van said. "It was a gangster shooting—nothing that concerned us—but we didn't want to spend the night answering questions and all that sort of rot."
They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Van flagged a cruising cab. When they were several blocks away from the scene of the murder, he looked inquiringly at his blond companion.
"Where do you want to go, Miss—?" he hesitated purposely over the name.
"Down toward the Village," she said in a shaky voice. "I live there."
Van leaned forward, told the driver to head east to Fifth and then south to Washington Square. His dark eyes rested searchingly on the pallid, terror-stricken face of the girl. She felt his probing glance and looked up, essaying a weak smile.
"I HAVEN'T thanked you," she said. "It was mighty nice of you to take a chance like that just to help a stranger. You might have been shot doing it."
Van smiled.
"It wasn't anything much," he shrugged. "Want to tell me about yourself—and the killing?"
He felt a spasm of compunction as fear gripped the girl again. The memory of the murder was still vivid in her mind. Her head dropped into her cupped hands and sobs wracked her slender body. Van let her give way to her pent-up emotions.
Only when the paroxysm of grief had spent itself did the Phantom start to question her. At first she was hesitant in her replies. Then, as the realization of her debt of gratitude to this dark-eyed, soft-spoken man came home to her, she talked more freely.
HER name, she told Van, was Peggy Manning, and she was an artist, living in the Village. The Phantom's face was expressionless, but a thrill of exultation went through him. By remarkable good fortune, he had so easily come upon the young protege of J. Perry Montague.
He kept his voice low and sympathetic as he asked her about the man who had been killed. Sobs racked her slender frame again, and a note of fear and hysteria showed in her voice as she told him that the dead man was her fiancé, Tommy Dagmar, also an artist. Dagmar had been employed by the C.W.A. and his work had been most favorably commented on by several critics. A brilliant future had been ruthlessly blasted by the assassin's bullet, she stated bitterly.
The third member of the party was named Orrin Wilkerson. Peggy was vague in her reference to the big man. He was a millionaire from somewhere in the West. They had met him at a Village party the week before, and he had insisted on taking them to the Hi-de-ho Club.
Van's trained faculties detected a false note in her cataloging of the butter-and-egg man. He tried to elicit more information about Wilkerson, but was unsuccessful.
And when he asked Peggy Manning about the motive behind Dagmar's murder, her lips locked tight and stark terror showed in her eyes. She said, through clenched teeth:
"Don't ask me about that. You wouldn't want to know. It would mean death for you—if you did know."
"Won't you let me take that risk?" the Phantom asked quietly, "You seem to be in trouble—very serious trouble. I'd like to help you. I think I can—if you'll take me into your confidence."
For a long second she stared at him. Then she asked suddenly:
"Who are you, anyway? Why are you so interested in this killing?"
"It doesn't really matter who I am," the Phantom said evenly. "I know that the same people who killed Dagmar will put the finger on you next. You can save your own life—by trusting me."
Peggy Manning's stare was intense as her hazel eyes stabbed at the inscrutable face beside her. There was something in the level glance of her companion's dark eyes that reassured her. When she spoke, her voice was calmer.
"I think you are a shamus," she said directly, "but I also think you are on the level. Where can I get in touch with you if I need you?"
VAN gave her the address of his hideout on West 8th Street, and the name Lester Cornwall under which he rented the basement apartment there. She repeated it to herself, but got the street number wrong. "Here, let me write it down for you," the Phantom said.
He scribbled the address on a scrap of paper he took from his pocket. Their cab had stopped for a traffic light as he wrote. She reached over, grabbed the paper and tore it into shreds, tossing it out of the window of the cab. Half to herself, she repeated the address. Then she muttered:.
"I've memorized it now. Papers are dangerous. Scarponi might—"
She caught herself, and her eyes darted to the Phantom's face. He gave no sign that he had heard her. Their cab started to move again.
Van's head turned suddenly. His dark eyes probed at the girl's face.
"Did you know Montague was murdered tonight, Peggy?"
FOR a split second he watched the color drain from the cheeks of the blond girl. Her lips went pale and he heard her teeth chatter. Then her hand reached for the door handle, and before he could reach to stop her, she jerked the door open, leaped on the running board and swiftly swung to the ground.
The Phantom jerked to his feet as he heard the squeal of brakes and the scream of tires against the asphalt. A car behind them came to an abrupt stop to avoid crashing into the running figure darting in back of Van's cab. He started to follow, but gave up the idea as he saw the girl graze the bumper of another cab and reach the sidewalk. She was gone from sight when he dropped back against the cushions of the cab. No use in trying to ferret her out now. She had probably disappeared in one of the houses along the block.
The Phantom felt that he didn't need the blond girl for the moment. Crowley's men could pick her up any time they wanted her. In blurting out Scarponi's name, she had furnished him with the lead he wanted.
Swift thoughts coursed through the Phantom's brain. Phil Scarponi, one of the cleverest counterfeiters in the country, was evidently tangled up in the activities of the murder syndicate. A deep V showed between Dick Van Loan's brows. He tried to puzzle out the connection.
It couldn't be the counterfeiting racket. There had been no unusually large supply of queer money turned loose anywhere in the country. Scarponi was supposed to have quit the counterfeiting game after his last narrow escape from the Federal authorities. Had the clever criminal turned his talents to some other field? If so, what was the new field of Scarponi's endeavors?
COULD it be that the police were correct in their theory that all of these killings were incidents in a gigantic, wholesale scheme of robbery? Scarponi headed a cruel, ruthless mob, and had plenty of men to patrol the night clubs, spotting victims who seemed to have a bankroll.
But the Phantom still couldn't agree to that theory entirely. What possible connection could Scarponi have with the murder of the nation's biggest financier—or the murder of an artist so poor that he was on the government C.W.A. payroll—or the drowning of a dancer whose body had been taken from the river, that very morning? How could the slickest counterfeiter in the country be connected with the many other victims, whose lives, good or bad, had been so ruthlessly cut off, in recent weeks?
Van suddenly remembered the paper he had taken from the unconscious thug. He opened it in the palm of his hand, spread it carefully; and his brow knitted as his eyes read a row of figures:
34726 21106 06115 16407
81006 37427 80214S 80801
75310 00416S 52021
But it was not the figures that brought the gleam of interest to the Phantom's dark eyes. It was the signature on the slip. For beneath the row of figures had been stamped a facsimile seal, a picture of a crown, with the word "REX" superimposed on the outline of the crown.
Van knew that the figures represented some sort of a code message. The author of the message had signed himself as "King." A fitting title, the Phantom thought sardonically; for if, as he suspected, a single ingenious brain was behind these cruel deaths, the man was a king—a Crime King—who would be difficult to apprehend.
Van carefully folded the paper, and put it back in his pocket. He would decipher the code later. His brain busied itself now with the conflicting aspects of the case. The mystery was deepening, instead of clearing up. There must be connecting links somewhere. Peggy Manning hadn't been faking; the fear she had registered when she let slip the name of Phil Scarponi had been the real thing.
Van's jaw set in a hard line. There was a connection and he was going to find it. But he knew it was going to be a case that would require all of his talents.
Van gave the address of his West 8th Street hideout. He'd go there, remove his present disguise and then run up to Frank Havens' place, before he turned in for a few hours' sleep. Then he would start on the trail of Phil Scarponi.
For the Phantom believed that through the handsome gangster he would get his first contact with the Crime King, the evil master mind who was the guiding spirit of nearly a hundred murders.
THE newspaper publisher was busy with a stack of correspondence at the library table, when the tall, masked figure of the Phantom appeared outside the French doors leading from the veranda. Havens slipped the lock on the door and greeted Richard Curtis Van Loan eagerly.
"I couldn't sleep until I heard from you, Dick," he said. "I expected you hours ago. When you didn't show up, I was pretty badly worried."
"I've been rather busy since you phoned me that Montague wanted to see me," the Phantom said wearily.
"Did Perry Montague have anything that gives you a clue to these mysterious drownings?"
The Phantom slipped off his mask, dropped into a chair and spoke tonelessly.
"Montague has been added to the list of deaths, Frank," he said. "He was shot while I was talking to him tonight."
Havens' face blanched and he swore bitterly under his breath.
"My God, that's terrible, Van," he said jerkily. "How did it happen?"
Briefly, the Phantom related the events of the evening, up to the time when Peggy Manning had abruptly leaped from the cab. Then, apparently irrelevantly, he asked:
"Have you got a standard desk dictionary here, Frank?"
Havens looked puzzled, but reached across the desk and obediently handed the Phantom a bound volume. Van took the paper he had removed from the gunman at the Hi-de-ho Club and spread it on the table before him.
"I'VE spent some time on this code message, Frank, trying the various codes that I know, but none of them worked with the Crime King's message. I believe it is a simple dictionary code, such as was used by the German Secret Service in the war. You see, each group of figures has five digits. It's possible that the first three digits refer to a page in the dictionary, and the last two numbers signify the position of the word on the page. I'll read the page number and you look up the word."
Havens got a pencil and pad, to write down the message as they hunted it out.
"The first number is 34726," Van said. "Look on page 347, then count the twenty-sixth word on the page."
"The word is 'get,' " Havens said.
"The next number is 21106. That would be the sixth word of page 211."
"IT isn't a word. It's an initial D," said Havens in a tone of disappointment. "I guess we're on the wrong trail."
"Not a bit of it," Van said quickly. "The man who was murdered was named Dagmar. The 'D' could mean him."
Quickly they ran through the message, and, decoded, it read:
Get D at club tonight he threatens to squeal about murders.
Van leaned back in his chair and eyed the message grimly.
"That goes a long way toward proving my theory that these killings are all related," he mused.
Havens squared his jaw in an ugly grimace.
"It's the most amazing situation I ever heard of," he growled. "It must be the work of a maniac or a group of insane murderers. There seems to be absolutely no connection between the murders and the drownings, yet they all center around this club."
The Phantom shook his head somberly.
"Far from being the work of an insane criminal, Havens," he objected. "It must be the work of a devilish fiend, working for some tremendous objective. I feel certain that the man who is behind this gigantic scheme is one of the cleverest criminals alive today. Every move he makes is carefully calculated. And there's a reason behind every one of those apparently mysterious killings."
"If he isn't apprehended soon, there's going to be a panic," the publisher remarked slowly; "There's likely to be one on the Street tomorrow, when the news of Montague's murder leaks out. He practically controlled the destinies of several nations. Do you suppose that could be the motive behind these murders—to throw the country into a state of fear, so that some dastardly scheme can be put across?"
"That's what I've got to find out," Van said grimly. "I got my first real lead tonight. This code message links the Crime King up with the murder of Dagmar the artist. Dagmar was going to squeal about other murders—and there haven't been many of late except these mysterious drownings. I'm sure I'm right in figuring the Crime King who typed these figures in the code message is the man behind the drownings."
Van's eyes narrowed on the code message. Then he said:
"Let me have a glass, Frank," he requested. "A reading glass if you have one."
HAVENS bent over Van's shoulder as the Phantom scrutinized the paper.
"Notice the oblong impression, like a frame around the signature?" Van murmured. "Looks like the shape of the stamp that was used to imprint that crown."
"Have you an idea who this Crime King may be?" asked Havens.
"I didn't have the remotest idea until tonight, when the Manning girl made the slip about Scarponi."
"Do you figure that Scarponi is the Crime King?" asked Havens.
"He's certainly open to suspicion," Van replied. "But I haven't been able to figure the play yet. Scarponi's line has been counterfeiting; but there hasn't been any queer money distributed lately. So that seems to be out, as a motive. Yet—this Manning girl and her sweetheart were both artists, and they are tied up in the racket somehow. Several of the murder victims have been artists; others were bankers and brokers. There's a connecting link there somewhere, that I've got to locate."
"Scarponi is a tough customer to tackle," Havens said soberly. "He's reputed to be quite a gunman and he has a big drag in the underworld. You'd better watch your step, Van, if you go after him."
For a minute the Phantom was silent. Then he laughed, but there was little mirth in his voice.
"I guess that's one of the things that keeps me interested in this Phantom role," he said. "The danger in coming in conflict with the Scarponis of the world who simply won't believe the indisputable fact that you can't beat the law."
No one knew better than Frank Havens that the serious-visaged young man before him spoke the truth. For Havens was largely responsible for Richard Curtis Van Loan's having devoted his life to the extinction of crime.
LEFT an orphan at an early age by the death of his wealthy parents in an accident, Dick Van Loan's life had been cut from the same pattern that shaped the existence of most of the wealthy young men of his set. He had been content to idle away his days and nights in a fruitless round of social gaieties.
Then the war had broken out and young Dick Van Loan was one of the first to enlist and go overseas.
He had entered the aviation corps, and soon qualified as a pilot. There, over the bloody fields of Flanders, a metamorphosis took place. The wealthy young playboy learned of the realities of life. He learned the mad thrill of facing death thousands of feet in the air; and he also learned of the aftermath of battle: of famine and suffering, of heroism and cowardice, of the savage exultation of merciless combat and of the sorrow at the loss of comrades.
IT was not until after the Armistice, when Richard Curtis Van Loan had tried to return to his former meaningless and placid existence, that he realized that life had suddenly become a terrific void. He tried to throw himself into the round of pleasure that was the only diversion of his set, but found only ennui and boredom.
Psychologically, Dick Van Loan was in desperate straits when his father's friend, Frank Havens, owner of a nation-wide chain of newspapers, conceived the idea of having Dick Van Loan attempt to solve a crime that had completely baffled the police.
Originated on impulse, Havens' scheme had furnished the young clubman with the thrill of adventure that his whole being had craved. So successful had Van Loan been, that he felt that here was exactly the career he had been seeking. Thus was the Phantom born.
Never did a student training for a profession enter more assiduously into his task than did the Phantom in preparing himself to match his wits and, in fact, his very life, against the great forces of crime that had sprung up as an aftermath of the war. He steeped himself in criminal history and in the science of criminology as practiced by the masters of detection. He studied languages until he spoke more than a half-dozen like a native. Histrionics and the art of make-up and disguise were at his finger tips. Even the craftsmanship of stage magicians, escape artists, hypnotists and ventriloquists became a part of the training that served to make Richard Curtis Van Loan the world's greatest sleuth.
The reputation of the Phantom had gone almost around the world, and though his real identity was known to only one man, Frank Havens, the Phantom was known and feared by the underworld of two continents.
Danger had become a part of his very existence in his relentless war on crime. Yet it was not alone for the vicarious stimulant that Dick Van Loan had pledged his life to the hazardous career of the Phantom. A deep and abiding hatred of the geniuses of evil who preyed on innocent victims drove him on relentlessly; and would continue to drive him until, perhaps, Death proved to be the victor in one of their pitiless struggles.
It was against just such a genius of evil that Van was now pitting his life. Dick Van Loan knew that to trap the Crime King, whose fiendish plotting was undoubtedly responsible for the scores of murders that had been committed, would be a task that was worthy of the best efforts of the Phantom.
HIS jaw was grim and set as he stood up to go. He nodded briefly and said:
"I'll get in touch with you some time tomorrow, Frank. I'll be at Police Headquarters in the morning. Crowley seems inclined to believe that Montague's murder may be attributed to some personal enemy, rather than to the Crime King. He may as well check up on that angle. He'll probably be calling on you for information, since you were such a close friend to Montague."
The French doors opened and closed softly and the dark-clad figure faded into the night. The Phantom was on the trail again.
INSPECTOR CROWLEY'S face creased in a scowl when Van told him about the murder of the C.W.A. artist at the Hi-de-ho Club. He stared at the code message the Phantom had obtained and swore fervently.
"Great Gods!" he rasped. "A millionaire and a starving artist murdered on the same night; and there is no doubt about the rest of the killings being connected. The autopsy showed chloroform in the brains of the drowned victims. The deaths were from drowning, after they had been drugged by the Crime King. What sort of a maniac is he?"
"A clever one," Van said grimly. "It's hard to conceive of a motive that would include all of the different types of victims that the Crime King has destroyed. But there is a motive—and I'm going to find it."
Crowley cursed. "What did the men look like who bumped off Dagmar?" he queried.
Van described them, then said:
"I think I slugged the man who did the actual shooting, just before I beat it with the Manning girl. He was still unconscious on the floor when I left. Did the police get him?"
"They did—and they didn't," Crowley rasped. "Artie Dubois, the man you slugged, was still unconscious when the police rounded up the guests. He was searched. His gun had been fired, so he was collared as a red hot in the killing. In the patrol wagon on the way to the station, he beat the rap. He swallowed poison—was dead before we could get him to a hospital."
Van whistled softly.
"Another indication of the power of the Crime King," he murmured. "The killer was afraid that the police had found this message, and that they would sweat some information out of him about the plot behind these murders. He knew what to expect, if he squealed. He had just bumped a man for threatening to squeal. Dubois took the easiest way out. How about the other man?"
"From your description, that would be Frankie Gillis. He usually pals around with Dubois. Both of them are professional torpedoes. Gillis must have escaped, for he wasn't caught in the round-up. I'll have a drag-net thrown out—but it won't do much good. If he belongs to the Crime King's mob, he's probably halfway across the country now, making a getaway."
Van asked for a list of the guests who had been picked up by the police at the Hi-de-ho Club. He perused it carefully, and noted the names of at least a dozen known criminals who had been present at the time of the murder of the C.W.A. artist. According to Crowley, they had all been brought to Headquarters, searched and questioned. Dubois had been the only man whose gun had been fired. The others either were unarmed or carried fully loaded pistols. All of them had been turned loose; but the inspector said they could be picked up if the Phantom suspected any of them of being connected with the Crime King's mob.
VAN shook his head. He preferred to check on them himself.
"How is Phil Scarponi's record these days, Inspector?" he asked.
"I've been thinking about that since you told me what the girl let slip," Crowley answered. "As far as having anything on him, Phil's in the clear. He rates high on our list of Public Enemies, but there isn't a thing we could charge him with right now. And here's an added complication that's going to make your job even more difficult than it already is. We've learned through some of our stool pigeons that Scarponi has turned private shamus."
THE Phantom's eyes widened, and he asked sharply: "You mean that someone had hired Scarponi as a private detective? Who would hire a racket chief like him? What sort of a case is he working on?"
"We haven't found out. He hasn't a license and couldn't make an arrest if he wanted to. We figure that he's tied up with some insurance company on a jewel theft. There's been a couple of important ones lately. Scarponi may be working like Joel Stratta is supposed to work. No one knows whether Stratta is on the level, or whether he works with the thieves for a percentage of the reward. Scarponi knows all of the big shot ice boys, and may be working a split reward racket."
Van talked for a minute or two about the Montague murder. So far, Crowley had been unable to find any trace of a single enemy of the big financier. For a man who had amassed such a great fortune, Montague seemed to have made very few foes. Crowley was more inclined now to side in with Van's theory that the Crime King had daringly murdered the banker to keep him from disclosing some information. The inspector said they would continue trying to locate the murderer of J. Perry Montague amongst the few enemies that the dead banker might have made.
The Phantom's mind was busy digesting the facts of the case as he rode downtown to his West Eighth Street apartment. He couldn't agree with Crowley that Phil Scarponi's new role as a private detective was as innocuous as the inspector would have it. Scarponi was undoubtedly mixed in the fiendish plot, or Peggy Manning would not have been in such deadly fear of the handsome counterfeiter. Scarponi might be the Crime King himself—the evil genius who was daily sending the Grim Reaper out on the ghastly assignments that ended with luckless victims meeting their strange fate in the calm waters of the Hudson.
Van got out of the cab and let himself in at the front door of a three-story house. His apartment was on the basement floor in the rear, where he could slip out into an areaway, unseen in any disguise he assumed. As the Phantom slipped the key into the lock of the apartment door, his eye caught a white corner of an envelope sticking under his door. For a second, he was startled into immobility. He had never received mail at this address. Had someone ferreted out the hideaway of the Phantom?
He unlocked the door, stepped in swiftly, scooping the note from the floor. Inside, he closed and locked the door. His eyes narrowed on the inscription. "Lester Cornwall" on the cheap envelope, written in a woman's hand, in clear, flowing script. He knew the handwriting could not be that of his landlady, for she barely spoke English.
VAN'S finger ripped the flap of the envelope. He took out the single folded sheet. Then a slow, hard grin twisted his lips as he read the terse message:
Only the police and the Phantom knew of Montague's murder at the time you spoke of it. I don't think you are a cop. Better watch your step, Mister Phantom. The murderer knows you are trailing him.
There was no signature to the note, but none was needed. For some reason, Peggy Manning had gone out of her way to warn him. A frown wrinkled Van's forehead. The girl had figured it out pretty well—and she had been in communication with the murderer since the killing. Otherwise, she would not have known that the Phantom had been at the scene of the banker's murder. When had Peggy Manning met the Crime King? Had the master mind of the murderers been at the Hi-de-ho Club? Or had the girl encountered him after her reckless leap from the cab?
DICK VAN LOAN'S hands were as busy as his thoughts. He jerked down the shades, rapidly divested himself of his street clothes. From a battered trunk in the corner of the bedroom, he took out a make-up kit and his practiced fingers effected a startling transformation.
A layer of liquid cream gave his face an unhealthy pallor as it dried on his tanned skin. He treated his throat, arms and hands with the same liquid. Clever shading brought wrinkles of age to his face; and before the liquid had completely dried, he lightly dusted his jaw with a powder that dried in and brought an artificial iron-grey stubble out on his jowls. From a small bottle he extracted a few drops of liquid that he carefully spread on his eyelids. They immediately seemed red and inflamed, and as the liquid evaporated his eyes took on a decided squint. Under his deft manipulation, his brown hair became an unkempt shock of iron grey.
Van rapidly donned a grimy, threadbare suit and pulled a dingy black hat over the tousled mop of greying hair. From the pocket of the coat, he took a pair of dark glasses which he donned.
A glance at the mirror showed him that the make-up was perfect. The Phantom was now Blind Pete, wandering beggar, a character which Van had previously established in the underworld. Blind Pete was well known in most of the dives in the underworld as a pleasant-mannered, harmless old fraud, who had a penchant for going off on alcoholic jaunts whenever his begging brought him enough money for a spree. It was in this way that his numerous disappearances from the haunts of the gangsters and racketeers was accounted for.
Van found the cane, pencils and tin cup of Blind Pete in the closet of the bedroom, and started out for a tour of the various sources of information that were accessible in his present disguise. Ordinarily close-mouthed inhabitants of the demimonde talked freely to the old beggar.
As the Phantom locked the door of the apartment behind him, he knew that he would have to give up the apartment as a hideaway. It was true that the girl had seen him in the make-up of a gigolo and would never recognize him again. But she suspected that the West Eighth Street address belonged to the Phantom, and that was the end of its usefulness.
THE Phantom spent most of the day drifting about the various haunts of the better known criminals. In the guise of Blind Pete, he wandered through the underworld, chatting with friends and asking questions. In a few hours he had eliminated most of the names from the list of the suspects who had been at the Hi-de-ho Club.
He picked up furtive scraps of information that warned him that something big was seething in the underworld. He could glean no actual information, even from friends who were usually communicative with old Blind Pete. The very secrecy regarding the mysterious plot that was hinted at, warned the Phantom of the power of the man he sought. The Crime King must be a dangerous enemy to be able so tightly to seal the lips of all of his organization. And the suicide of Dubois bore vivid evidence to the fact.
Of Scarponi and his new activities, Van learned very little. He got a vague report that Scarponi had been hired as a private shamus by a group of bankers, but the idea seemed preposterous. However, Van decided to check later with the Bankers' Association.
THE Phantom considered the advisability of having Peggy Manning picked up by the police for questioning. By her own admission, in the letter he had received from her, the blond artist knew the identity of Montague's murderer. But if she were picked up by the police, she, too, might follow the example of the gunman who had killed her sweetheart.
Van's jaw hardened at the thought. The Crime King certainly inspired a desperate fear in his followers. What sort of a hold did he have on Peggy Manning? Even the few minutes he had spent with her in the cab had convinced Van that the blond girl wasn't a criminal type. She had been sporting enough to warn him of his danger. He couldn't turn her over to the police—not while the Crime King was still alive. It would be a death sentence for the girl. He decided to use her as an instrument to lead him to the Crime King. By so doing, he might be able to help her, in partial return for the favor she had tried to do him by sending the note of warrning.
If Crowley was right, the girl might be one of the decoys that the Crime King was using to ensnare the unfortunate victims of his robbery scheme. But somehow, Van just couldn't see Peggy Manning as a come-on girl for a clip-joint racket. Two names on Van's list were marked with a heavy check when he had completed his rounds of the underworld. Both were prominent figures. From the vague hints that had been dropped, Van was positive that Captain Tim O'Mara, a coldblooded, ruthless adventurer and confidence man, was connected with the mysterious plot. So, too, was Carl Krug, better known as The Fixer. Krug was a political ward-heeler who served as a contact man between the underworld and the political organization which was then in power. The Phantom was indeed having his work cut out for him.
OLD PETE spent the early hours of the evening visiting the hot spots in the Village, hoping to pick up anew the trail of the blond girl. When he was almost ready to admit that he had run up against a blank wall, he saw her moving swiftly down the street, a block ahead of him. She turned in at the canopied entrance of "The Stable."
Van's pulse beat faster. "The Stable" had a reputation almost equal to that of the Hi-de-ho Club. It was the favorite spot of the racketeers and gangsters in the Village. The Phantom moved slowly along the sidewalk until he reached the entrance of the club. He halted a minute, and, conscious of the hard stare of the big doorman, he straightened the threadbare lapels of his coat, took off the dilapidated black hat and gravely punched it into some semblance of shape. He stuck his cup and pencils into his pocket and started toward the entrance.
He fully expected to be halted, for blind beggars seldom had money enough to contribute to the profits of Village night clubs. And patrons who were dressed like Blind Pete were not welcome guests, even in "The Stable."
As he started toward the door, the big doorman stepped into his path and growled.
"On your way, feller. Bums not allowed."
The Phantom paused, reached up and took off his dark glasses. He peered through his red lidded eyes, sizing the bouncer up from head to foot. Then he reached into his pocket, extracted a small roll of bills, and said in tones of dignity:
"You are mistaken, fellow. Blind Pete is no bum."
The doorman stared at the roll of bills, saw that the outer one was a twenty. He lifted his brows, and said gruffly:
"My mistake, brother. Go on in. I guess your money is as good as the next one's."
The headwaiter of the club knew him as Blind Pete, and escorted the fake blind mendicant to a distant corner table. If Van had been selecting his own position, he could not have chosen a more favorable spot. He could view the whole floor without being noticed.
Once he was seated, he removed the glasses, and his gaze was busy roaming around the floor. His red-lidded eyes narrowed as they rested upon Peggy Manning. The gorgeous blonde was sitting at a table with Orrin Wilkerson.
THE Phantom's brow furrowed in a frown as he saw the wealthy playboy from the West, engaged in earnest conversation with the girl. Van was convinced that it was no love tale the big man was telling her, for his flaccid face had a hard, ugly look. Peggy Manning's face seemed sullen. When she talked, her hands moved in gestures that were either excited or angry.
Van's gaze moved around the room. Though it was still early, most of the tables were filled. He knew that many of the gangsters made a practice of dropping in to the Village pleasure palace for a few hours until the theater crowds enlivened the uptown spots.
His interest centered on a tall man with fiery red hair who sat at a table further along the same row as the table of Wilkerson and the blond girl. The red-haired man was Tim O'Mara, and seated with him was the squat, thick-shouldered Krug, the Fixer. Both Krug and O'Mara seemed interested in Wilkerson and his companion.
The Phantom's thoughts centered on the butter-and-egg man. What was Wilkerson's spot in the mystery set-up? Was he just a wealthy visitor who was marked for plucking, and was the Manning girl serving as a lure? Or did Wilkerson occupy a more prominent place in the picture? At the Hi-de-ho Club, Dick Van Loan had sized the big man up as a grade A sucker, out to scatter some wild oats on a trip to the city. But as he watched the face of the man who was talking with Peggy Manning, his opinion changed. There was little of the country playboy about Wilkerson now.
A STRANGE idea clicked in the Phantom's brain. Was it possible that Wilkerson himself played the leading role in the nefarious drama? Could the florid-faced man who appeared to be a perfect sap for the smart money boys to pick, be the Crime King? Van mentally resolved to learn more about the background of Orrin Wilkerson.
The Phantom's eyes continued to search the tables out on the club floor. He saw Dave Dominick, rated as one of the smartest detectives in the District Attorney's squad, sitting at a table near O'Mara and Krug. But as Van watched, he saw that the city detective was not interested in the Fixer and his companion. Dominick was covertly watching Peggy Manning and Wilkerson.
OF a sudden, there seemed to be a certain tenseness that came over the people he was watching. Heads turned toward the door, and as the Phantom, too, craned his neck, he saw Phil Scarponi and his bodyguard, Jee Weiler, coming down the aisle.
The Phantom felt his pulse quicken, as he caught a look of open hostility on the faces of Tim O'Mara and Carl Krug. Peggy Manning looked terror-stricken as her eyes lifted to fix on the big, lithe frame of the gangland celebrity. Wilkerson's face was a blank, inscrutable mask.
The Phantom's keen intuition told him that things were going to happen on the other side of the night club floor. He took a quick look, saw that the headwaiter was at the far end of the room. Then he spotted a couple of small-time crooks at a table not far from the group he had been watching. These petty larceny lads were friendly to Blind Pete.
Van left his table and circled the back of the orchestra platform. Under the make-up of Blind Pete, his face was bland and guileless as he approached the table where the young crooks sat. They greeted him joyously and invited him to join them in a drink. The fake beggar accepted with alacrity.
As he sat down, his eyes moved toward Peggy Manning. His stare widened as he saw that Scarponi had taken a place at their table. He could see Scarponi's face, and though he was too far away to catch the low tones, he made use of his faculty of lip reading and caught most of Scarponi's conversation with Wilkerson.
The red-lidded eyes of Blind Pete looked dull and vacant as they rested on the handsome counterfeiter's face. But his brain whirled as he saw the thin lips framing the words:
"You'll come to see me at the meeting tonight. I'm cutting in—or else—" Scarponi's expression was hard and implacable.
Wilkerson's lips were hidden from the Phantom's eyes, but the expression on his face showed neither fear nor subservience as he replied.
One of the young thugs spoke to Blind Pete. He dared not evince too much interest in Scarponi, so he turned to laugh at the wisecracks of the patronizing young crooks. When he did get the opportunity to look again, Scarponi was just finishing a sentence. Van caught the words:
"—dame is too clever. But I know it's her work. I'll be waiting at my place—at midnight tomorrow."
Wilkerson made a derisive gesture. Jee Weiler, the bodyguard of the gangster chieftain, reached for his gun.
THEN Van saw Dave Dominick leap from the table and start across the floor toward the table. As the detective was halfway across the floor, a shot rang out, and Dominick staggered backwards, then started forward again.
The Phantom's eyes jerked across the dance floor, in the direction from which the shot had come. He saw the smoke of a gun eddying around a screen that shielded a door in the far corner.
He leaped from his chair, and started for the spot, but his path was suddenly blocked with fighting, cursing men.
Peggy Manning had screamed, almost in echo to the shot. With the girl's shriek of terror, Krug, the Fixer, leaped from his chair and started toward her table. O'Mara was right at his heels, reaching toward the right-hand pocket of his coat. Men surged in from the tables around, and Dominick was hidden from the Phantom's sight.
The two crooks at the Phantom's table leaped up and started to join the free-for-all. One of them screamed:
"Get that lousy dick. He sent my brother up the river for a ten spot."
VAN tried to rush around the fighting mob, tried to head for the spot where the hidden assassin had fired the shot. But he was hopelessly caught in the swirl of the battle.
The Phantom's grip on his cane tightened, and he shoved it between the legs of the crook who was going to get Dominick. The man pitched on his face to the floor.
Scarponi had whipped around in his chair. He saw Krug and O'Mara charging toward him, caught the menacing lift of Captain Tim's hand toward his coat pocket. The dark-skinned gang leader leaped to his feet, spat a curse at O'Mara and turned to Wilkerson with a snarl.
"You double-crossing rat," Scarponi grated.
Peggy Manning screamed again, and threw herself out of her chair. Van saw her crawling under the tables, beating a swift and safe course toward the exit. Then another gun cracked, and it seemed as if every gangster in the club arose to join in the fray.
The Phantom saw that he would literally have to beat his way through the mob if he were going to get on the trail of the man who had downed Dave Dominick. A blackjack swished past his ear and then the blind beggar metamorphosed into a grim fighting machine. The heavy cane swung viciously and the blackjack wielder went down like a poled ox.
A gangster who stood next to the Phantom widened his eyes, and then his hand flashed toward the lapel of his coat. But before he could unlimber his gun, Blind Pete's cane smacked against his skull and the gunman slithered under a table five feet away. Fighting, snarling men milled around the table where Phil Scarponi had been seated.
Van plunged forward, trying to clear a path to pursue the hidden gunman. Guns roared in his ears; the screams of women who had been left by their escorts made a bedlam of the place. The orchestra had fled from the stand and the crash of falling instruments told of the speed of their departure.
A bullet snicked through the shoulder of the Phantom's coat; then two more men went down before the deadly sweep of his cane. He was almost clear of the mob, when he saw Wilkerson staring at him from the fringe of the pack. The big man's fist, gripping an ugly automatic, halted in mid-air. His bulging eyes were riveted on the aged and decrepit-looking man in the tattered clothes who was smashing men down, moving swiftly in and out of the path of danger like a trained athlete.
IN a flash the Phantom knew that Wilkerson's quick brain had figured out the answer to that inconsistency. For a hard look came over the big man's face and his right hand swerved suddenly. The squat, ugly automatic lined on the Phantom's chest. Wilkerson's eyes hardened in a murderous glare.
Van's body jerked sideways, to avoid the lethal bullet that the fat man was going to drive at his heart. As he shifted his body, he sensed that Krug, too, was charging toward him, swinging a blackjack. He tried to spin on his heels, to swing the loaded cane. He heard the roar of Wilkerson's gun, just as something crashed against his skull.
The room pitched and tossed before the Phantom's eyes. He got a blurred vision of Phil Scarponi fighting his way toward the edge of the mob. Then the dazzling lights that were dancing before his eyes seemed to be blotted out. He went down beneath the trampling feet of the raging, snarling mob.
WHEN consciousness returned, Van's eyes stared blankly up at the clear, starlit sky. For a second or two his brain moved sluggishly as he tried to figure out where he was and how he had gotten there. He attempted to lift his head, but a terrific pain that caused his brain to throb made him desist. His hands and feet were tied and he was lying on a hard, boarded surface. As his brain began to function more normally he got the sensation of rapid movement, the low, muffled throb of an engine and the soft swish of water. He was a prisoner on the deck of a swift-moving boat.
Van turned on his side, strained his eyes and saw that the boat was a fairly large motor cruiser. He glimpsed the familiar sky line of Manhattan and knew they were headed up the Hudson.
His ears caught the low hum of voices. Lifting his eyes, he saw that he was beside the cabin of the motor yacht. He tried to roll, found he was lashed to an upright strut of the bridge, over the cabin.
The voices were more distinct now. He listened to the coarse, rasping tones, but he could not remember ever having heard those voices before. There were three men in the cabin.
He shifted his body as much as his bonds would permit, and found that he could catch most of the conversation. He listened; and then he swore softly under his breath. For he knew from the conversation that his real identity had been guessed, in the fracas at "The Stable."
"There's no doubt about it," one of the men was saying. "It's the Phantom all right. And the Big Shot has offered twenty-five grand for him, dead or alive. We ought to collect a nice haul, on this job."
"Yeah. But it's going to be a devil of a job carting him to the hideout. That bozo weighs nearly two hundred pounds. And it's a mean haul to lug him up from the boat," another voice chimed in.
"What are you kicking about?" the first speaker demanded. "We get paid plenty for it, don't we?"
"Sure, we get paid all right. But we get the reward just the same, whether he's dead or alive, don't we?"
"What are you figuring on, Jimmy?" a third voice asked.
"HOW about tying a weight to him, and dumping him overboard? We'd save ourselves a lot of work—and besides, I know the Phantom's reputation. I don't like taking a chance on his getting away on us, while we're lugging him to the hideout. He's slippery as an eel, and he's gotten out of a lot of tight places. It might be just our luck to have him break loose on us."
There was a heavy silence for a few seconds. The Phantom's blood ran cold. He could picture the three thugs in there considering the possibility of dumping him into the river.
"Maybe the Big Shot won't pay off, unless we produce him," one of the men protested. Then Van heard Jimmy's voice saying:
"What the heck! He'll be glad to know that the Phantom is dead. The Big Shot will take my word for it, that he's croaked. He's got a lot of confidence in me."
"Oh, yeah?" rasped the man who had objected before. "If you're so close, Jimmy—who is the Big Shot?"
JIMMY was silent for a minute. Then he said:
"I'm not sure—but I think the Fixer is the Big Shot."
"You're batty," said the first speaker. "The Fixer ain't got brains enough to run this mob. It's somebody smart, like Captain Tim O'Mara or this fat guy Wilkerson. I'm figuring that one of them is the Big Shot."
Then Jimmy picked up his argument again.
"It don't make any difference who the Big Shot is," he cut in. "Are we going to give this bird to the fishes, or do we have to cart him?" Cold chills ran up and down the Phantom's spine, and despite the coolness of the late fall night, beads of perspiration formed on his brow. He shivered at the thought of an immersion, bound and helpless, into the icy river.
"Gripes, I hate to think what would happen to us, if the Big Shot got the idea we was double-crossing him," the man with the whiney voice said. "We'd be fed to the fishes, like all the rest of them have been."
"I've got it," Jimmy said excitedly. "We'll say that he was making a getaway and we had to plug him. Then we was afraid of meeting the river patrol with a stiff on board, so we ditched him."
"It looks to me as if you were doing a lot of figuring, just to get out of carting him," said one of his companions.
Then the man called Jimmy swore viciously.
"Okay then," he said, in a harsh, brutal tone, "I'll tell you why I want to dump him overboard. This so-and-so bumped my brother off, in a case he was working on once. I want to have the satisfaction of sending him to hell myself. I'll take the responsibility of squaring it up with O'Mara, or Wilkerson or whoever the Big Shot is."
So intent was Van on the conversation that he failed to hear the soft footsteps that sounded on the deck until they were very close. He jerked his head around, and caught the white, strained expression on Peggy Manning's face as she bent over him. Something in her hand glittered in the starlight. It looked like a knife.
A thrill of exultation went through the Phantom's veins. A knife meant freedom—a chance to capture the three killers in the cabin—and then, perhaps, a chance to get to the Crime King himself. One of these men could be made to squeal.
These thoughts darted through the Phantom's brain as Peggy Manning bent toward him, holding her finger to her lips. But at the same second Jimmy's voice rasped:
"We'll feed him to the fish right now."
HEAVY footsteps sounded in the cabin, and the girl's body grew taut and stiff. Deathly fear registered in her face, as her head turned toward the corner of the cabin. She shoved the knife close to the Phantom and then sped swiftly out of sight.
The footsteps sounded on the deck now. Van's fingers clawed for the knife, grasped it, and tried to pull the sharp edge across the ropes. But there was no time to cut the bonds.
The three killers were in sight now.
He could see the bulky outlines of their bodies, but their faces were hidden by masks.
A surge of bitterness went through the Phantom's heart. Safety had been in his grasp—only to be lost by a brief minute. In desperation he tried to figure some way of escape, but there was none.
He shoved the knife up his sleeve, worked it down so that the point was caught in the upper tier of his bonds, holding it in place.
THE heavy footsteps pounded on the deck. The Phantom closed his eyes and simulated unconsciousness as they drew nearer.
"He must have been handed an awful wallop," the man called Jimmy rasped coldly. "He's still out."
"Maybe he's just faking," a second voice said. A heavy boot crashed against Van's ribs and he gritted his teeth to choke back the cry of pain that rose to his lips. He hoped he hadn't flinched too much.
"He's still ga-ga," the third man chuckled. "He didn't bat an eye on that one."
The Phantom felt rough hands cut the lashing that fastened him to the strut. Someone said:
"This chain is heavy enough to anchor him to the bottom."
He felt the chains being looped to the lashings at his ankles, then his body was lifted and for a second he balanced on the rail.
He heard Jimmy snarl:
"May your bones rot in the mud of the Hudson River. I hope you meet my brother in hell."
He was lifted again, swung back and forth, and then he felt himself flying out into space.
His body catapulted through the air, and he hit the river with a heavy splash. The icy water closed around him, and the shock seemed to freeze the blood in his veins. He felt numb all over.
As Van went down, his body turned in the water. He had filled his lungs with air before he hit the icy river. All the while the three killers had been carrying him to the rail, and as they had swung him in the air, Van's dexterous fingers had been busy, behind his back.
He was thankful for the time and effort he had spent, while preparing for his career, in studying the methods of Harry Houdini, the world's greatest escape artist. Van had practiced and perfected all of the great magician's startling escapes, including those that were made under water. But he had never undertaken an escape in the frigid, numbing water of an icy river. It looked like a hundred to one chance that he wouldn't succeed, against the odds he now faced.
His breath almost left him from the paralyzing shock when his body struck the river. Down he went. The iron chain jerked his body in a half circle, then he plummeted down.
Desperation gripped the Phantom. Was this to be the end? Had grim Death finally triumphed? Then savage fury sent the blood hammering at his temples. He must escape. He had to succeed—to gain vengeance on the evil genius who had plotted so many deaths—and to save the hundreds who might yet be wiped out by the fetid hand of the Crime King.
Van's fingers worked desperately at the knife until he could grip it with his fingers. Strange noises sounded in his ears and his brain was swirling giddily. He knew he could remain under water for about four minutes. Could he free himself in that brief space of time? Indomitably he told himself that he had to succeed.
Now his descent checked. His feet struck the sandy bottom. Van dropped to his knees and sawed frantically at the bonds at his ankles. His ears were ringing and blood trickled through his nostrils.
At last the knife bit through the strand, just as it seemed his lungs must burst. He was free from the iron weight. He gave a mighty kick and started for the surface, wondering if he could ever reach the top. Seconds seemed ages long. His head pounded from the terrific, well nigh unendurable strain. Finally his head cleaved the surface of the river.
For a long minute he lay supine, exhausted by the physical and mental struggle with death. The knife was still clutched in his hand. But his hands were still tied behind him, and he was more than half a mile from shore, with the coldness of the icy river gradually creeping into his very bones. The chill seemed to be slowly sapping away his vitality.
HE lifted his body in the water, sighted the lights on the nearest shore and then commenced the arduous task of propelling himself on his back to the distant bank. It was a long and difficult task, and one that would have proven too great for one who was less of a trained athlete than Dick Van Loan. The distance seemed interminable. He fought against exhaustion and the numbing grip of the icy river. At times it seemed that his weary aching muscles couldn't perform the stupendous task of another threshing movement. But his indomitable will drove him on and on, until finally he could drop his feet and stagger drunkenly to the shore.
He fell on a short, sandy strip of beach and weariness all but overcame him. For a few minutes he lay there until the cramped muscles of his legs flexed and lost their rigidity. He staggered to his feet and ran, with crooked, halting steps, up and down the sandy strip, to restore the circulation to his numbed body. Then as the blood coursed through his veins again, he found a cleft in a rock, where he could wedge the haft of the knife. After that it was but a few minutes' work to slash the bonds that lashed his wrists.
Once free from his bonds, the Phantom moved toward the lights that had guided him to the shore. As he drew nearer to the building, he oriented himself as to his location. He had landed on the beach of a private club almost at the city limits.
Van slipped past the clubhouse like a dark shadow, made his way to one of the main arteries of traffic, flagged a cab, but the driver cast a suspicious look at the Phantom's bedraggled clothing and started his car in gear again. However, the sight of one of the wet, crumpled bills from Van's pockets soon changed his mind.
Dick Van Loan slipped into his West Eighth Street apartment through the rear entrance, peeled off his still damp clothes, rubbed himself warm with a coarse towel and then dressed and returned to his Park Avenue home for a few hours of much needed sleep.
CHIEF INSPECTOR CROWLEY was pacing the floor like a caged tiger, when Van visited Headquarters the next morning. The police officer's face was like a bleak, granite mask and his blue eyes blazed with murderous rage. His violent emotion made his voice husky as he growled:
"By heaven, the Crime King has got to be captured. I'm going to throw out a dragnet and pull every last crook in this town into the hoosegow today. I'll crack down on these lousy, murdering devils if I have to go back to walking a beat to do it."
The Phantom had never seen Crowley so furious. Quietly he asked:
"What's happened now, Inspector?"
"They've taken to killing cops," raved Crowley. "Last night Dave Dominick, the crack detective of the District Attorney's Squad, was murdered down in a dive in the Village."
"Then they did get Dominick," the Phantom said in a brittle voice. Crowley stopped swearing and stared in amazement.
"You talk as if you expected it to happen," he snapped.
"I was there when it happened," the Phantom said savagely.
He told the inspector of the fight at the "Stable." Crowley resumed his futile pacing of the floor.
"They won't get away with that killing," he turned and said heatedly. "Every cop on the force will have blood in his eye. We'll round up every gunman in town, including Scarponi, O'Mara, Wilkerson and Krug. One of them will burn for Dominick's death."
THE Phantom shook his head slowly. "I don't think you'll get the killer, Crowley," he said. "I know that neither O'Mara, Wilkerson nor Krug fired the shot that downed Dominick. In fact, I think the whole thing was staged, just to get Dominick. And the three men who got me have fled to some hideout they have up the river. I couldn't identify them anyway. You won't find them around town. They'll know the cops will be hot to avenge the death of one of their own. The man who shot Dominick will be too smart to show up in the city where he can be picked up."
"Then I'll round up Scarponi and his men, and find out what they know about this hideout," stormed Crowley. "A few hours in the sweatbox, with a couple of good strong-arm dicks, will loosen their tongues."
"I'M NOT sure that Scarponi knew anything about Dominick's death," Van said seriously. "But whether he does or not—I'm going to ask you to lay off him for at least twenty-four hours. We've got to locate their hideout, to get the Crime King. Scarponi may be the only means of finding it, since the other three have fled, I want him to lead me to the headquarters of the mob. It's somewhere up the river, but there's miles and miles that we'd have to comb unless we can pick up the trail down here."
It was a tribute to the reputation of the Phantom, that the raging inspector finally agreed to let Phil Scarponi run loose for another day. But Crowley still stubbornly insisted that he was going through with his plan of rounding up all the undesirable characters in town and attempt to get some information concerning Dominick's murderer. The Phantom agreed to that. It might be barely possible that some weak member of the Crime King's gang would weaken under the tough cross examination.
When he had calmed down a little, Crowley said shortly:
"I'd like to know what Dominick was dong down there with that mob. He wasn't connected with the case we're working on."
"It may be that he stumbled onto something, while working on something else. I'm convinced that Dominick was murdered for the same reason that Perry Montague was killed—because he knew something important about the Crime King and his nefarious plot."
"He might have picked up something in Little Italy that tied up with the crimes that have run us dizzy," Crowley admitted.
The Phantom nodded.
"That's what I figure," he said. "Have you had a chance to check on Scarponi's private detective racket?"
"He's been hired by the Bankers' Association, all right, but it's some kind of a secret job. The executive secretary who hired him is up in Canada on a three weeks' trip. No one that we've questioned seems to know just what he is supposed to be doing. It's got me batty. Hiring a bird like Scarponi is like getting a wolf to tend a flock of sheep. It looks to me like a protection racket."
"You think Scarponi is pulling an extortion stunt?" asked Van.
"He may have threatened to flood the country with counterfeit money unless they paid him a protection fee. Scarponi's got nerve enough to tackle something like that."
"Maybe you're right," said the Phantom. "I figure it different, myself. I'm interested in this man Wilkerson right now. I wish you'd have your department get all the information they can on him."
"Do you think he's a big shot in the racket?"
"HE might be. From the talk I overheard on the boat, either Wilkerson, O'Mara or the Fixer is the Crime King. They are all important men in the plot. There's a chance that one of them may be the man we are trying to get. Or there may be still a fourth man who is the master mind."
Crowley agreed to check back on Wilkerson's trail, and Van left Headquarters a few minutes later. An idea had been born in his active mind while he was talking to the veteran police inspector.
Dominick was an Italian, and enjoyed the confidence of most of the Italian population of the city. In fact, many of the difficult murder mysteries that the ace of the District Attorney's Squad had solved, had been cleared up through intelligence that Dominick had been able to obtain from people of his own race who had divulged information that they would not have considered giving to anyone else outside of their own circle.
THE Phantom had established a new hideout that day, and had moved his things from the West Eighth Street hideaway to a tiny apartment on Carmine Street, in the heart of the Village. He repaired to his new place and started the process of building himself a new identity.
For a half hour he worked, molding his face into different contours, changing the color of his hair and staining his skin a swarthy olive shade. When he looked in the mirror at the finish of his work, it was to face a reflection that was startlingly like Dave Dominick, the deceased detective. It was Dominick's face, as the ace detective must have looked ten years before. With his perfect make-up, the Phantom would pass for Dave Dominick's brother.
That was exactly what he intended doing. For he knew that Dave had a younger brother who had gotten into difficulties with the law some years before and had suddenly left the city. Rumor had it that Dave had given the black sheep of the family twenty-four hours to leave town, promising to forget their blood ties at the end of that time—and to pick his younger brother up on sight if he saw him in the city again.
The Phantom talked Italian fluently, had even mastered several of the dialects, amongst them being Sicilian. He believed that he might be able to pick up a lead, among Dominick's Sicilian friends, that would show him what had brought Dominick on the trail of the Crime King and his associates.
The Phantom spent several weary and profitless hours touring the Italian quarter of the city. Although his story that he was Joe Dominick, the younger brother of the slain detective who had returned to wreak vengeance on the murderers, was accepted, he found little to guide him on the path he sought. It wasn't long before he realized that he was combatting a stronger force than the friendship these people had had for Dave Dominick. He saw that though some of them would like to talk, fear had clamped their tongues.
Fear of whom—or what?
The question puzzled the Phantom. Certainly it must be one of their own race who had sealed their lips so effectively. No outsider could have prevailed on them to keep silent regarding the murder of their hero, Dave Dominick. There was only one person that Van could fit into the picture. That person was Phil Scarponi. Once, in his tour of the Italian section, Van thought he had unearthed a definite clue. As he passed a small branch of the Bank of Italy, a man rushed out, gesticulating frantically and declaring to the high heavens that he had been robbed of his life's savings. The man looked like a poor tradesman, perhaps a grocer or a tobacco shop owner.
The man ran past the Phantom and rushed along the sidewalk, still lamenting vociferously in Italian. Van's eyes followed him in a sympathetic glance. Then he glimpsed something green crumpled in one of the hands that beat the air so vehemently. The Phantom started swiftly in pursuit.
Halfway down the block, Van's pace checked abruptly, as two men stepped out of a doorway and fell into step with the Italian, one on each side. He caught a glimpse of their faces, saw that they looked like small-time crooks. Thin lips were twisted in a sneer, and cold eyes turned back and stabbed at him with frosty glances.
The Phantom's eyes narrowed as he saw the man on the left lift a hand that was buried in a coat pocket. Something hard pressed against the Italian's side, made him wince, and instantly stilled the clamor he had been making. Van knew the meaning of that furtive movement. The dazed Italian had a gun pressing against his ribs.
THE trio went down the rest of the block and turned the next corner. Van hesitated not a fraction of a second. He was working on a big case, and could hardly afford to take the time to stamp out a petty larceny protection racket, such as he took this to be. But no case was too important to cause him to fail in aiding a poor fellow who needed help. The Phantom moved swiftly around the corner, but the three men had disappeared. He walked down the sidewalk, his eyes stabbing at each doorway that he passed.
His heels planted hard against the sidewalk as he heard the sound of a muffled scream. It seemed to emanate from the vestibule of an apartment house he was passing. Van's eyes jerked toward the glass in the door; then his flying feet raced up the short flight of granite steps. He jerked open the vestibule door and his jaw hardened, his eyes gleamed with anger, at the sight that greeted his eyes.
THE Italian was sitting on the floor. Blood oozed from a cut in his scalp where one of the thugs had gun-whipped him. The clubbed automatic was raised for another cruel blow as the Phantom burst through the door. The second thug was bending the half-unconscious man's fingers back, trying to loosen his grip on the green paper. It looked to Van as though the man clutched a bank note.
As the Phantom hurtled through the door, the thug with the gun shifted his grip on his weapon. But before the muzzle could line on the dark-skinned intruder, Van's fist whipped up in a perfectly timed uppercut. His hard knuckles cracked against the gunman's jaw, slamming his head against the wall. The thug slumped to the floor, knocked out cold.
The other man straightened up. From the corner of his eyes, the Phantom caught the glitter of light on flashing steel. The second man plunged toward Van, his vicious-looking knife sweeping toward the Phantom's back.
Van was slightly off balance after the knockout wallop he had just delivered. He knew there was no time to turn to meet the second attack. To attempt such a move would mean that the knife would be sunk in his heart, instead of his back.
But while these thoughts were flashing through his brain, Dick Van Loan's supple body was moving in a swift, co-ordinated motion. He bent low at the hips, swung his body out of the arc of the descending knife blade. Almost in the same motion, he pivoted on the ball of his left foot and his right foot whipped upward. His toe cracked against the knife-man's wrist. The knife flew out of the thug's grasp, struck the wall and clanked to the floor.
The Phantom had disarmed the thug by la savate, a measure of defense he had learned from a French apache.
Van's body snapped erect. His hand flew out and gripped the wrist of the murderous knife-wielder. He jerked hard at the imprisoned wrist, twisting his body and pressing his elbow down hard, clamping the thug's arm against Van's own side. Then Van snapped his body forward, exerting all the leverage he could, as he threw the thug over his shoulder.
THERE was a sound of cracking bone, as the would-be killer's body catapulted up and over. A single scream burst from the man's lips. Van let go his grip; the man crashed against the wall and sloughed to the floor. The thug's arm was broken and he had fainted from the pain.
Van's eyes were like glittering agates as he stared down at the cowardly assassin.
"It will be a long time before you try to stab someone else in the back, you rat," he rasped.
Then he turned his attention to the injured Italian, who was staring at him with wide, dazed eyes. Van spoke swiftly, in Italian. "Did they hurt you much?" he asked.
The Italian swore luridly, invoking the wrath of all his saints on the two unconscious strong-arm men. Van had to hide a grin. Then he became business-like.
"We'd better get out of here," he said. "Unless you want to hand these men over to the police?"
A spasm of terror showed in the Italian's face. He shook his head vehemently.
"No—no!" he objected. "Not the police. Anything but that. See—they have not hurt me. What is a little cut on the head to Tony Marinito? Let us go."
VAN helped the man to his feet, and they went down the steps to the sidewalk. The man who called himself Marinito stared at the Phantom with wondering eyes.
"You look like the detective, Mister Dominick," he said softly. "But they said that the detective was dead."
A scowl creased Van's forehead and he spoke gruffly.
"Dave Dominick had a brother, Tony. Perhaps this brother has returned to avenge Dave's murder."
For a few seconds, Van thought that Tony was going to let his gratitude overcome his fear of the murderer of Dave Dominick. The Italian started to speak, then his lips clamped shut. Fear showed in his eyes, and he muttered:
"I don't know anything about it."
Van threw himself into the character of young Joe Dominick, the brother of the slain man. He talked rapidly and impetuously, pointing out how he had saved Marinito from death at the hands of the thugs; and extolling the merits of the murdered detective who had been a bitter foe of the racketeers preying on the poor business men of the neighborhood. But Tony was sullenly taciturn. Finally Van gave up the effort. He swore under his breath and said:
"What did those birds want, Tony? Trying to hold you up for protection money?"
"Yes—yes," Tony said quickly. It was a shade too quickly, the Phantom thought. "They want me to join the association for twenty-five dollars a week. I don't make much more than that on the store."
Van shook his head.
"You fellers are to blame," he said. "If you'd go to the cops when these muscle men try to hold you up, the rackets could be stamped out."
Tony muttered profanely under his breath.
Van's eyes dropped to the engraved green and gold paper that the storekeeper still held tightly clutched.
"I heard you squawking that you'd been gypped out of your whole bankroll, when you came out of the bank," he said softly. "What's that you've got? A phony grand note?"
The storekeeper spread the paper and Van saw that it was a bond, a municipal bond of one of the upstate cities. It was inscribed for two thousand dollars.
"My daughter works for a broker and he had these for sale. It pays good interest so she told me I should buy the bond. When I took it to my bank as security for a loan, the bank says it is forged."
The Phantom's eyebrows lifted. Something clicked sharply in his brain.
"Let me have that, will you Tony?" he asked.
BUT the storekeeper's eyes lighted with suspicion. He clutched the bond tighter and shook his head.
"No—no," he cried. "I will find the broker who sold it—even if he has closed his office and gone. I will make him give me my money back."
Van knew that Tony would be undertaking an impossible task. The clever sharper, who had sold him the forged bond was probably miles away now. A sudden impulse moved him. Two thousand dollars was but pin money to the wealthy young man who was the Phantom. And it meant a life-time of saving and scrimping to Tony Marinito. He said suddenly:
"Come with me, Tony. I have a reason for wanting that note. I'll give you what you paid for it."
The storekeeper's face registered doubt. He couldn't figure why Dave Dominick's brother would give two thousand dollars for a phony bond. Then he shrugged his shoulders. The Americanized foreigners were all crazy, he thought.
"Sure, I'll go with you," he agreed.
VAN flagged a cab, rode to his new apartment on Carmine Street. Tony Marinito's nerve had plainly faltered and suspicion gleamed out of his dark eyes, as the Phantom told him to wait in the tiny living room. Van went into the room where he had changed clothes, lifted a tray in the big trunk and from a hidden compartment he took a supply of money that he kept there for emergency use. Stripping two five-hundred dollar bills, and five-hundred dollar notes from the packet of bills, he slid the remaining packet back into the hidden receptacle and locked the trunk.
He went back to the living room and handed the bills to the startled Tony. The storekeeper fingered each bill, assured himself that they weren't counterfeit, and then surrendered the bond, which the Phantom tossed carelessly on the living room table.
He went down to the street with Tony, who was now jubilant and showering him with blessings. Van watched the delighted Italian start home, anxious to tell his family of the good fortune that had befallen him. The Phantom's lips curved in a smile and his heart tingled a little. It was an unusual role for the master sleuth, but he had to confess that he got a kick out of playing the Good Samaritan.
THEN he went back to his less pleasant task of locating the nefarious Crime King. He returned upstairs to the apartment, threw himself into a chair and lit a cigarette. His eyes, somberly studying the blue rings of smoke that drifted toward the ceiling, were deep set and a hint of bitterness showed in their dark depths.
Was the Phantom at last going to meet with failure? His afternoon's work, in the role of Joe Dominick had netted him practically nothing. The only information he had gleaned was that some powerful force was behind the murder of Dave Dominick; and he had reason to suspect Phil Scarponi of being the one who had sealed the lips of his countrymen in the Italian section.
But that information brought him no nearer to the trail of the Crime King. Unless—and Van's eyes narrowed at the thought—unless Phil Scarponi was, himself, the Crime King. In which case, his job as a private detective for the Bankers' Association was simply a smoke screen thrown out to cover his more nefarious activities.
Van swore under his breath.
Everywhere he turned, he seemed to run into a blank wall—the mysterious barrier that screened the identity of the Crime King.
He jabbed out the cigarette viciously against the bottom of an ash tray. The Phantom had never met with defeat—and he would not even contemplate the thought now. Somewhere in the vast metropolis was a fiend in human form who was murdering citizens on a wholesale scale. A cruel, inhuman beast was preying on the city, taking a terrible toll on innocent lives. The police—Havens—even the citizens themselves who were beginning to feel the hysteria of fear at the continued chain of mysterious murders—all looked to the Phantom to save them from this horrible menace. Van's jaw stuck out grimly. If it was humanly possible to capture this foul fiend he'd accomplish the task—or he would sacrifice his life in the attempt.
As his strong fingers crushed the paper tube in the ash tray, his eyes fell on the forged bond that his kind-hearted impulse had brought him. As he examined the clever bit of forgery, his thoughts went to Phil Scarponi, the master forger. Had Scarponi forsaken his professed reformation and gone back to his old trade? Van was inclined to doubt it. If Handsome Phil had wanted to turn his talents to forging, he was a genius at reproducing the currency of the United States. Bonds were out of his line.
Then a sudden gleam lighted Dick Van Loan's dark eyes. He drew in his breath with a sharp, hissing sound. He believed that he had found the clue for which he had been searching.
VAN was humming softly to himself as he stepped into the bathroom. A colorless preparation from a bottle he had taken from his trunk removed the dark stain from his face, and dissolved the bits of wax that he had used to change the contours of his face. He rinsed his hair with another solution, bringing it back to its natural color.
He quickly changed into the clothes of Dick Van Loan, and left the apartment in a rush. At the corner of Carmine, he caught a cab and went to Police Headquarters. A few minutes later, the tall, well-dressed figure of the masked Phantom walked into Crowley's office.
The inspector gave him a mirthless smile, and asked quickly:
"Made any progress?"
"I think so," Van said levelly. "I'm after some information concerning the Manning girl. Have you got anything on her yet?"
"Nothing but her address," the inspector said. "We've been combing the Village for her all day, but I guess she flew the coop."
"Her address will do just as well," Van said. He noted it down as the inspector read it from the dossier on the case. They talked for a few minutes, then Van rose to go.
"How about Wilkerson?" he asked. "Any report on him?"
"He's a sort of a will-o'-the-wisp feller," grumbled Inspector Crowley. "But I'm afraid you're wrong in figuring him for a big shot in this racket. He's a millionaire grain broker from Chicago; at least, that's as far as we've been able to trace him so far. He does a lot of traveling around the country; got plenty of dough, all right. We checked on the banks out in Chi, where he has his main office. So it looks as if he's just a come-on that these crooks have roped in on some deal. He may be just another sucker that's being marked to be robbed and drowned, like the others were."
"MAYBE you're right," the Phantom agreed. "I'll probably be able to tell you more about that tomorrow. Right now, I'm off to do a bit of fancy burglaring. So if I get picked up by your men—I'll need you to keep me out of jail."
Crowley's eyes brightened. "Going to check up on the Manning girl, eh?" he said. "Want me to go along with you? Everything seems to be at a standstill here, for the minute."
"I'd like to have you along, but I think I'd better tackle it alone," Van said soberly. "There may be other members of the Crime King's gang living at that address. If they saw you coming in—we never would get the girl back into the city again. They'd know that she was listed as a suspect."
Crowley agreed and Van left him sighing regretfully, fretting at the enforced inaction.
VAN found that the address the inspector had given him was a small apartment house on Gay Street. He went a block past the house, got out of the cab and paid the meter. As soon as the taxi had rolled out of sight around the corner, the Phantom walked swiftly back to the apartment house.
His eyes ran over the names beneath the bells and he pushed the ivory buzzer marked "Manning." It was Apartment 1D, on the first floor, probably in the rear. There was no answer to his ring. He tried two bells on the fourth floor and one on the third before the door clicked open.
Van crossed the foyer and went down a short hall. He halted in front of Peggy Manning's door, and as his eyes scanned the hall, his hands were busy adjusting the black silk mask that covered the upper half of his face. A few seconds later one of his skeleton keys had clicked the lock and he was in the foyer of the apartment. The door closed softly behind him. He tried it to make sure that the lock had caught.
For a minute he stood motionless, his ears keenly attuned for the slightest sound that would indicate there was someone present. The apartment was quiet as a tomb.
Guided by the tiny beam of a pocket flashlight that was hardly the size of a fountain pen, the Phantom moved across the foyer to the living room ahead.
The house was an old brownstone mansion that had been remodeled. The rooms were large and spacious, and the furniture, though worn, looked comfortable. Van was a little surprised, for he had expected the apartment to reflect the artistic temperament of the girl artist. Peggy Manning's art was more practical than aesthetic, evidently.
He went through the rooms quickly, to make doubly sure that he was alone in the apartment. There were four rooms and a bath, besides the tiny kitchen, and each of the rooms was empty.
One room which adjoined the bedroom interested the Phantom particularly. It was fixed up as a studio. Easels and half completed canvasses were scattered around the place. But Van spent little time on the paintings, though a brief survey showed him that J. Perry Montague hadn't been wrong in declaring that the girl had talent. Some of her sketches were lovely.
A LARGE drawing board was mounted on an easel by a window on the east side of the room. Van walked over and examined it with minute care, measuring the groups of thumb tack holes that showed on the bare surface of the board. Then he scrutinized the pens and brushes that were on the rack beside the board. His eyes roved about, seeming to seek something that was not visible.
He tugged at his lower lip and a thoughtful frown creased his brow as he walked about the room. He lifted curtains, examined shelves and boxes of paint, and even went so far as to lift each stack of canvasses on the floor.
He muttered impatiently as he failed to find what he sought. Then he went back to the corner by the drawing board, and started a methodical search of every square inch of the room. He thumped at the walls, and pried at the boards in the floor.
At the opposite corner from where he had started his search, Van's breath suddenly escaped through his teeth in a soft whistle. He was kneeling on the floor and he had found a piece of the flooring that lifted. It was only a six-inch length, but Van's fingers probed into the cache and brought forth two bottles of ink. He let a tiny smile of triumph twitch at the corners of his lips, as he examined the bottles under the spot of his flashlight. One was green and one was white.
Suddenly Van stiffened. His keen ear caught the sound of a lock clicking. Someone was coming into the apartment.
The flashlight snapped out. Van slowly and silently lifted himself erect, then moved toward the door of the bedroom, feeling his way gingerly to avoid crashing over a pile of canvasses. He wanted to get close to the girl, to prevent her from screaming when she turned the light on and saw a masked stranger in her apartment.
As he moved through the bedroom, the hair along the back of the Phantom's neck lifted. His hand moved to the gun that was strapped in a special holster in his waist band.
For no light clicked on in either the hall or the living room. Instead, the beam of a flashlight moved along the floor. There was another uninvited guest in Peggy Manning's apartment.
Van froze in his tracks for a second. Someone had come to pay a surreptitious visit to the girl's apartment, possibly for the same reason that Van had come. Or perhaps for a more sinister reason—seeking the girl herself.
The Phantom turned and swiftly and silently retraced his steps. He wanted to hide the evidence he had uncovered. He found the loose board, slipped the bottles back in and noiselessly, replaced the piece of flooring. He wanted to cover the spot with a couple of the canvasses, but was afraid to risk the noise.
AS he made his way back to the bedroom, he glimpsed the vagrant beam of the flashlight moving around the desk that was in the living room. He could make out the dim outline of a big, bulky form bent over an open drawer.
Van's pulse beat faster as he crept toward the intruder. Exultation gripped his heart, for he felt that the man with the flashlight might lead him to the super-criminal he had been tracking. The Crime King had sent someone to destroy the evidence that would incriminate the girl—to wipe out all traces of her connection with the nefarious plot, before the Phantom uncovered it.
The Phantom moved around the end of the bed and his fingers closed around the butt of the flat automatic in his pocket. Only a matter of twenty feet or so separated him from the agent of the fiend who had completely baffled the cleverest detectives on the city force.
VAN moved past the bed, and like a dark, avenging ghost he slid his feet across the carpeted floor, toward the door that led to the living room. He had almost reached the door, when his foot struck against something hard.
The Phantom choked back a curse, as the footstool which he had kicked in the gloom turned over and hit against the baseboard. The man at the desk jerked erect and the flashlight blinked out, leaving the room in total darkness.
Bitter thoughts filled the Phantom's mind. Fate had dealt him a card from the bottom of the deck. The success that was almost within his grasp had been struck from his hand by that slight sound.
The Phantom's feet moved quickly, carrying his crouched body into the living room. Then began an eerie and dangerous pursuit. Van felt that the man with the flashlight, whether or not he was actually the Crime King, would have no scruples about murdering the man who had interrupted the investigation he had been making.
Van himself asked for nothing better than to come to grips with the big intruder. He would willingly risk his life, if he were successful in getting his hands on the menacing figure that was probably circling toward him there in the darkness.
For a few seconds the Phantom crouched motionless, listening intently, trying to catch the sound of the man's breathing, or the light scuffing of his feet across the carpet. Deathly silence reigned in the room. His enemy was employing the same tactics.
Van mentally damned himself for his foresight in drawing the shades in the room, to keep the gleam of his flashlight from being seen from a neighboring apartment. Not a bit of light filtered into the room. Nothing but Stygian blackness, that seemed charged with an electric current.
Van had held his breath until it seemed that his lungs must burst. Just when he believed that he'd have to exhale, his ear caught a faint sound, like a soft sigh, and he knew it was the breathing of his enemy. The noise came from his left, just on the other side of the small gateleg table that was in the center of the room.
The Phantom took three swift strides in the direction of the noise. His head was craned forward and his eyes stabbed at the darkness, seeking a deeper blob.
THEN like two big ships crashing in a dense fog, their bodies came together. Hands flashed out instinctively, seeking strangling grips. Van's fingers brushed past human flesh. He figured it was the man's face and his fingers clamped into a fist and lashed at the spot where he thought the object had been. But as Van swung his fist, a powerful pair of arms encircled his body and he was pulled close to his barrel-chested foe.
Van's fist scraped the back of his antagonist's head, then whipped back and slid under the man's chin. As the pressure of the gorilla-like arms tightened against Van's backbone, his own arm was forcing the man's head back.
For a long minute they stood, chest to chest, each exerting every ounce of strength at his command. It was like a battle of giants, two big men locked in deadly, silent combat.
Van thought his ribs or his spine would crack under that torturing hug, and at the same time he wondered what was keeping the other man's neck from snapping under the pressure he had applied. But his foe was a powerful brute, the strongest man that the Phantom had ever tackled.
THEY swayed fiercely back and forth; then suddenly the pressure against Van's backbone released and the intruder stepped back. Van was off balance but he sensed what would happen. He ducked his head as a big fist whipped through the air. He moved his jaw out of range, but the blow landed high on his temple and knocked the Phantom to his knees.
A big body came hurtling through the darkness, and Van felt himself enveloped in a tangle of arms and legs. His fists lashed out furiously and he heard the man grunt as Van's iron knuckles sank into his midriff.
Then Van was on the floor, with the big man on top of him. Two powerful hands gripped at Van's throat, and it felt as though a pair of steel bands had clamped there, slowly closing his windpipe.
Van fought furiously, smashed his fist into the face that was just above him, so close that the strangler's hot breath fanned his cheek. But the man absorbed the punches like a punch-drunk sparring partner. The grip on Van's throat tightened, choking the very life from his body.
A black haze was settling over the Phantom's brain. His hands grasped the powerful, hairy wrists of the strangler, tried to tear them loose, but it was like tugging at heavy-limbs of a sturdy oak. Van felt himself getting weaker.
He let his body go limp, and for a long second, he lay supine and unresisting as those cruel fingers tightened around his throat. Then when his enemy was satisfied that the Phantom was completely out, the grip slackened.
Van filled his lungs with a sudden gulp; then he arched his back and twisted sideways. His assailant pitched and rolled. Van jerked back the other way, bringing his fist from the floor as he twisted. He felt the impact of knuckles against bone and the man toppled to the floor.
In the same split second the door from the hall slammed open and a man rushed in, yelling:
"What's the trouble, Chief?"
"Get this—" Van's enemy rasped—and then Van's fingers choked off the rest of the sentence. The Phantom swore softly to himself. There had been a lookout posted in the hall, and he had heard the sound of the fighting. The Phantom now had two enemies to battle in the dark.
Van jerked to his knees, and his fists drove mercilessly at the man beside him, who was also struggling to his feet. The man retaliated with a blow that flattened Van's ear against his skull and made stars dance before his eyes.
A FLASHLIGHT beam stabbed the darkness, as the lookout sized up the situation. Van caught a brief glimpse of a masked face in front of him. Then something swished through the air and settled over Van's head. He felt soft cloth clinging against his face and the deadly fumes of chloroform cloyed his nostrils. Waves of blackness beat against his brain as he tried to rip off the chloroform bag.
But the drug was too powerful. He stopped breathing, tried to fight off the effect—then he remembered no more.
YEARS seemed to have passed. When the Phantom came to, he heard the sound of voices. As he tried to gather his wits, he sensed that he was being jolted terribly. His brain functioned slowly, and he recalled the events that had led to his present predicament. He had been chloroformed by the understudy of the man he had been fighting with.
The faint, sickly odor of chloroform still clung to his nostrils; and he could see nothing. He knew that the bag was still tightly around his neck. For the present, at least, the identity of the Phantom was safe.
He listened to the voices, which seemed to come from in front of him. His jaw hardened as one voice said:
"Look back, Ike. See if that blasted prowl car is still tailing us." The voice was Phil Scarponi's. Van sensed that he was a prisoner, lying in the tonneau of an automobile that the gangster chieftain was driving. A radio patrol car was evidently trailing them.
The man called Ike answered, and his voice had a worried note.
"Still dogging our trail, Chief," he said. "It would be our luck to have them come along just as we dumped this mug into the heap. Hadn't we better ditch this guy in back?"
"Ditch him, nothing," snarled Scarponi. "What you call a mug is the Phantom. Do you want to do a stretch up the river for attempting to kidnap the most important dick in the city?"
"What do you plan on doing with him?" asked Ike.
"Just as soon as I can shake these coppers, I'm going to take him to our headquarters and find out what he located at the Manning dame's place. I figure he's got hold of evidence that will break that twenty million dollar racket on us."
"Suppose he hasn't got the dope?"
"Then the coppers will pick up their boy friend in some gutter in the morning. I owe that bird plenty. What are the cops doing now? I can't see them in the windshield mirror."
"They're pulling outside and moving up fast. Looks like they've decided to crowd us to the curb and look us over. Better step on the gas, Chief, or else slow up and take it."
"Take it, cheese," rasped Scarponi. "Hang on to your hat. I'm going to step on the gas. We'll be hitting Seventy-second in a few minutes, and I'm going to swing left as if I was heading for the ramp. When I make the turn, you get set to fan some hot lead at those nosey coppers. See if you can drill the guy at the wheel."
"Hey—I don't like plugging cops," Ike protested.
"You don't like doing time, either, do you?" snarled Scarponi. "You do what I tell you. I'll get you out of it. How's the mug in the back there?"
VAN lay motionless for a few seconds. Then he heard Ike say: "Still dead to the world. That stuff won't work off for an hour yet. That was a great idea of yours, Phil. Beats a blackjack all hollow, when you want to get a bird alive. A sap is apt to crack a guy's skull." Van's brain was whirling in dizzy circles. There was no doubt in his mind as to the fate that awaited him at Scarponi's hands. The handsome gangster would unmask him, then find some devilish way to torture him until he learned what the Phantom had found at Peggy Manning's place.
Then he would be taken for a oneway ride.
COLD sweat beaded Van's brows, not alone for his own safety, but for the two smart cops in the radio car who were riding into a death trap. Their lives would be sacrificed, because they had just happened to catch a glimpse of something that seemed suspicious. Probably they had merely seen Scarponi and Ike straightening up in the rear of the car after dumping his body in. And now their suspicions would soon be verified—by a hail of lethal slugs from Scarponi's companion.
Van's fingers reached up and found the knotted rope of the sack. He moved silently and deftly as he found the razor-like strip of steel that he kept inside the cuff lining of his coat, for just such emergencies as this.
A swift slash and he was free from the stifling sack. He touched his coat pocket, but as he suspected the gun had been lifted from its resting place.
The car he was in had picked up speed now and was rocketing along at a fast clip. Van moved his eyes toward the door, and a desperate plan entered his mind.
He drew his knees up until his feet were flat on the floor. Then he snapped his body upward, like an acrobat. His hand reached out and yanked at Scarponi's right arm. The car swerved sharply toward the curb.
As Van had hoped, Scarponi's foot instinctively lifted from the accelerator and jammed at the foot brake; he followed the first impulse of a driver who sees danger ahead.
The Phantom caught the startled look in the eyes of Scarponi's thin-faced companion, then saw the gun in his lap lift and swing around. But the plan had worked by then. The car's terrific speed had been cut in half by Scarponi's reflex action.
Van's hand reached for the door, slammed it open. For a split second he stood poised on the running board, before Ike could squeeze the trigger of his automatic. Then the Phantom hit the asphalt, running furiously with the car to keep from pitching to his face.
The automatic roared, as Scarponi jerked at the wheel, heading the car away from the curb. A bullet whistled past the Phantom's ear; and then the car whizzed past him, and rubber shrieked, as Scarponi fairly lifted it around the corner.
Van turned quickly, and waved his hands toward the patrol car which was hurtling along in pursuit. Brakes screamed and the car came to a stop a yard from the Phantom.
A service pistol showed over the top of the door and a harsh voice rasped:
"Get your hands up, feller."
FOR a split second, Van felt a cold chill running down his back. He hadn't figured on the cops' mistaking him for one of the suspicious characters they were chasing. They had mistaken his mask for the emblem of a criminal. As he pulled out his platinum badge, with a mask raised in diamonds, Van silently prayed that the cop with the gun didn't have a nervous trigger finger. He breathed a little sigh of relief, as the officer at the wheel yelled:
"For cripe's sake, Pete, hold your fire. It's the Phantom!"
The gun slid out of sight, and its owner shouted:
"Hop on the running board. We'll pick them babies up in ten blocks."
"Better not risk it, officer," the Phantom said. "They were planning on ducking around a corner and then blasting you down when you showed up."
THE cop at the wheel swore luridly, "The murdering devils," he growled. "Come on board; we'll get them anyhow."
"It isn't worth the risk," Van said levelly. "I know who they are and Inspector Crowley can pick them up, if we want them. For the present, I'd rather have them loose. They may lead me to something I want to find."
The cop called Pete touched his cap in a salute. Men on the force had been instructed to take orders from the mysterious man with the black silk mask.
"Just as you say, sir," he said. "Can we take you anywhere?"
"No. I'll go back to Headquarters by cab," Van said pleasantly. "I'd like to have your names. I'll see that you get proper credit for some fine police work. If you hadn't gotten suspicious and trailed that car—I might have been decorating some gutter in the morning."
The officers grinned with pleasure. They knew that a recommendation from the Phantom would be a sure step toward promotion. Van took their names and shield numbers, then thanked them again and waved in answer to their parting salute. Ten minutes later he was in a cab headed for Police Headquarters.
His brow was furrowed as he tried to figure out recent events. It looked as if his previous reasoning had been wrong. Phil Scarponi was certainly mixed up seriously in the crime wave. So much so, that Van was about ready to tab him as the Crime King.
Inspector Crowley's eyes grew hard as the Phantom recounted his adventures of the previous night. When Van had finished, Crowley growled:
"We'll take Mister Scarponi for a long ride on that one. He'll take a nice rap for attempted kidnapping. We've wanted to get something on him for months."
"Sorry, Inspector, but I guess you'll have to pass up the chance. I'd rather have Scarponi running loose for a few days, until these murder mysteries are satisfactorily cleared up."
"Do you think you'll have them solved in a few days?" Crowley's voice was eager.
"I hope to have the Crime King within the next twenty-four hours," Van said grimly. "That's why I don't want Scarponi taken just yet. If he is the Crime King—the rest of the mob would scatter, if they knew their leader was captured. We want to get them all."
"That's okay with me," Crowley said.
"I'm still not entirely sure that Scarponi is the man we are after," the Phantom went on to say. "O'Mara, the Fixer and Wilkerson are still possible suspects."
Crowley caught his breath quickly.
"Lord," he growled. "I was so stirred up by what happened to you, that I almost forgot to tell you. O'Mara and Wilkerson may be suspects. One of them might be the Crime King—but Carl Krug certainly isn't. His body was picked up by the River Patrol early this morning."
The Phantom whistled softly, knit his brows together.
"SO the Fixer got it too, did he?" he said slowly. "Drowned, I suppose, like all the other victims?"
"Yes. He was drowned. But here's a peculiar point. Where the other bodies failed to show any sign of violence, Krug's back and shoulders were bruised and lacerated. One shoulder was dislocated and the wrist of the arm on the same side was broken."
Van's eyes grew thoughtful.
"How about his face and skull?" he asked. "Any signs of his having been beaten up, before he was drowned?"
"Not a mark," Crowley answered. "That's what puzzles us."
The Phantom paced the floor for five minutes, his brow tangled in a frown as he revolved the information Crowley had given him in his mind. Somewhere—in the fact that the Fixer's body had been so badly battered—Van thought there was a clue to these startling murders.
HE stopped short, in the middle of the floor. His eyes were wide, behind the silk mask, as he asked quickly:
"Can you get hold of a good, fast motor boat, Crowley?"
The inspector stared at him blankly, then nodded.
"Sure," he said wonderingly. "I can get one of the River Patrol boats. What's the idea?"
"I'm afraid I've been pretty dumb, Crowley," the Phantom confessed. "All of these murders have been drownings. The night I was captured down in the Village and the Crime King's men tried to drown me, I thought I had a partial solution to the question that had bothered me. I figured that the victims had all met the fate that had been intended for me. It seemed a simple solution—the victims would be drugged and then thrown overboard from the boat.
"But I missed the big point—the headquarters of the Crime King must be along the river somewhere. We've got to locate the central meeting place of these murderers, if we want to stamp out this mob entirely."
FORTY minutes later the Phantom and Crowley were seated in the stern of one of the high powered motor cruisers of the River Patrol, and were skirting the west shore of the river heading north.
Van scanned the shore line through a pair of powerful glasses. He wasn't entirely sure what he was searching for. But he was positive that somewhere, up beyond the spot where he himself had made his miraculous escape, the Crime King had some sort of a headquarters. It had been this hideout that the three men had been headed for with the Phantom as their prisoner.
As the sharp-prowed cruiser cleaved the waters of the Hudson, the Palisades loomed toward the sky on their left. Working on a hunch, Van had asked their pilot to keep fairly close to the Jersey shore. It struck him that the high, and in some spots almost inaccessible, terrain of the Jersey shore would offer more fitting spots for the headquarters of this ingenious monster who had embarked on a reign of terror.
They had proceeded several miles up the river when Van sighted a small group of people gathered on a jutting ledge, high above the river. As he focused the glasses on the group, he saw that two of the group were dressed in blue uniforms.
"Looks as though there's been an accident up there," he remarked to Crowley.
"That's the spot they call Suicide Point," the inspector nodded. "Half a dozen people have leaped off that ledge to the river below."
Van moved the glasses slowly down the surface of the cliff, then he stiffened suddenly.
"There's a body out on the ledge about halfway down," he snapped. "Not the top one, but the second ledge down. A woman's body, I should say. And one of the River Patrol boats has landed down below. Tell the pilot to pull in there."
Crowley gave the order and the motor boat nosed onto the sandy beach beside the patrol boat that was grounded there. The officer in the boat saluted Inspector Crowley and the Phantom.
"What's happened up there, officer?" asked Crowley.
"There's a girl's body up on the ledge," the river patrolman explained. "We can't figure how she got there. She couldn't have jumped from above. The edge is overhanging and she would have gone straight into the river."
Van's eyes were busy scanning the surface of the cliff. He noted a trail leading up, about fifty feet to their left.
"No way for her to have been carried up either," he said. "That trail doesn't reach within thirty feet of the ledge where she is. Her body couldn't have been thrown there from the path. Let's go up and investigate, Inspector."
THEY went up at a swift pace and despite the chill of the autumn day, Crowley was perspiring from the effort of keeping up to the pace set by the Phantom. They found the two men from the River Patrol completely non-plussed; they could figure no way of getting to the body.
Van studied the situation for a minute or two. "Get me a long rope," he finally said. "I think I can get to the ledge."
"We figured that, sir," one of the patrolmen objected. "But the ledge of the cliff here overhangs so much that you won't come anywhere near the ledge, if you go down on a rope." The Phantom smiled grimly.
"I think I can make it," he said. "It's about fifty feet down there. Get a hundred feet of good strong rope. It's part of your boat equipment, isn't it?"
The river policeman saluted and started down the trail. While he was gone, Van took off his topcoat, and his suit coat. There were a half a dozen or more spectators, who had left their cars on the narrow road that skirted the Palisades at that point. The main highway was about four hundred yards to the west. The spectators were whispering in low tones, as he started uncoiling the rope the patrolman had brought. They recognized the masked man, whose orders the police obeyed go unhesitatingly; and they were thrilled at a sight of the world's master sleuth.
Van made a slipnoose at the free end of the rope, pulled the loop over his foot and jerked to make sure that the knot was tight. Crowley saw what he was going to do, and registered a protest. "Let one of these men go down," he said.
Both of the patrolmen volunteered for the dangerous task. But the Phantom shook his head.
"I WANT to do some looking around down there, Crowley," he insisted. "This may be just the lead we've been looking for."
The Phantom placed his topcoat at the edge of the precipice as a pad, then told the men to fasten the other end of the rope to a sturdy scrub oak a few yards back from the brink of the overhanging cliff. He turned to Crowley.
"One of these men can lie on his stomach," he explained, "with someone holding his feet, and get my signals when I'm going down. I want to be lowered to the level of that ledge. Then the man who is getting my signals up here, can start the rope swinging. I figure that I can get enough of a swing to carry me in to the ledge, and I can anchor myself with my feet, enough to stop the return swing."
VAN slipped his foot into the noose, lowered himself over the edge of the cliff and hung by his hands for a second. A hundred feet or more below him the turbid river water broke over jutting stones and rocks that meant instant destruction, if the rope should part. But the Phantom wasn't bothered with thoughts of that. He was bothered by the thought of the girl's body sprawled face down on the cliff, wondering if there was still a spark of life in the huddled shape that he had glimpsed through the powerful lenses of his marine glasses.
He nodded his head and the men above started lowering on the rope. It moved a little on his coat, as he gripped the thin strand with his right hand. Now he was swinging free, a tiny atom swaying far above the surface of the river below.
The rope bit a groove into the edge of the cliff, under the padding. Foot by foot he went down. A breeze from the river swung his body as the length of rope above him increased. It was a cold wind, and it cut at his arms and shoulders. Despite himself, he shivered.
Van let his eyes drop, and felt a peculiar sensation at the pit of his stomach. It was the same feeling he had encountered when he made his first solo flight overseas. Once again there was nothing to check his precipitous downward flight if any mishap occurred.
Van's eyes jerked upward from the dark, white-flecked ribbon of water below. He was slipping past the first ledge, a narrow projection that was covered with scrubby brush. The face of the cliff sloped out a trifle from that point, though not enough to be reached in a perpendicular drop from the top of the precipice.
Down and down he went on his precarious journey, until he reached the level of the second lip of rock that jutted out from the surface of the cliff. He lifted his eyes, and his hand cut the air in a signal to the man above. In response to his order, the rope started out from the cliff.
VAN felt himself swinging through the air. Like a pendulum, he rose in a long arc. Then his upward flight stopped and he started back. He gripped the rope with his hands and pulled against it, arching his body to give further impetus to the swing. He went in toward the cliff, reached the end of the arc of flight and curved back again. Once more he repeated the maneuver. This time the arc was longer and he came within six feet of the cliff.
Again and again he swung out into the dizzy height, until he saw that on a return swing his body was going to thud against the surface of the cliff.
Now came the most difficult task, finding a foothold on the ten-foot ledge. A single slip, a miscalculation or a twist on a pebble, and he would go hurtling downward into the greedy maw of the churning river below. For a second Van's palms were moist with cold sweat.
He had started a reverse of his final swing, and was driving back toward the cliff. With both hands, he gripped the rope, hung limp for a second with his entire weight on his hands. Then he kicked his foot loose from the noose, until he hung on the rope, with only the powerful grip of his hands safeguarding him from the certain death below.
The cliff seemed to be hurtling toward him at a fearful rate. Van tensed his body, and just before he was about to smash against the solid wall of rock, he let the rope slide through his fingers. The palms of his hands felt as though they had been seared with a red-hot poker.
His feet hit on the ledge and the momentum of the swing carried him on until his shoulder hit against the face of the cliff. A sudden pain shot through his shoulder and arm, and for a moment the Phantom feared that he had broken some bones.
Somehow—Van himself wasn't quite sure how he did it—he managed to keep his balance and still retain a grip on the rope. For a few seconds he stood there breathless, waiting for the numbing pain to leave his shoulder. He slipped his wrist through the noose and then walked over to the side of the crumpled body.
His eyes narrowed on the profusion of blonde hair that spread across the girl's shoulders as she lay face downward, her head pillowed on her right arm. A twinge of pity shot through the Phantom's heart and a low, bitter curse escaped his lips. He turned the girl over on her side, and his premonition became a certainty. The dead girl was Peggy Manning!
THE Phantom crouched beside the crumpled body, stared down at the lovely face that still retained its beauty in death. The pupils of his eyes dilated, then narrowed to pin points. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath; and, beneath his mask, deep frowns corrugated his forehead.
Then he straightened, placed one foot on each side of the gild's body, and slid his hands between the crumpled form. He lifted her with his hands around her waist, so that her head and feet hung pendant. He pressed against the girl's sides sightly with his knees—and water poured from her lips. Peggy Manning, like all of the other victims of the Crime King, had met her death through drowning.
A puzzled look had come into the eyes of the Phantom. It was incredible—absolutely unbelievable. Drowned —a hundred feet above the surface of the river! Her body lay in an inaccessible spot where it couldn't have been carried up from below; nor could it have been dropped down from above. By the wildest stretch of his imagination, Van couldn't conceive of such a situation. Yet here was the indisputable evidence right before his eyes.
The Phantom's eyes raked every square inch of the surface of the ledge and the wall of the cliff beyond. But there was nothing there that even hinted at the solution of the baffling mystery. His eyes moved on up toward the overhanging brink. He could see the white face of the patrolman staring down at him. The sight brought him back to the realization of the task yet ahead of him. He had to get Peggy Manning's body up to the top of the Palisades.
LOWERING the girl to the rock again, Van slipped the noose over his wrist, loosened the knot and fastened the rope around his body under his arms. Satisfied that it was securely knotted, he bent and picked Peggy Manning up in his arms. Her hundred and fifteen or twenty pounds seemed like two hundred under the dead weight. Van slid her body over his shoulder, in a fireman's hold, then jerked twice on the rope. It was the signal he had arranged for the men above to pull him back upward.
As the slack of the rope tightened he walked to the edge of the shelf of rock, and then stepped out into space. Swinging free from the ledge, once again he was suspended in mid-air.
The combined weight of himself and the girl drew the rope tight across his chest until it seemed to be cutting into the very flesh. The limp form of the girl was a dead weight on his shoulder. A faint flicker of apprehension went through him, as he wondered whether the rope would stand the double strain.
THEN in a slow, jerky fashion, they started the dizzy ascent. Foot by foot he was lifted, swaying and bobbing like a marionette on a string. He was utterly unable to help himself in any way. His safety depended on the strength of the rope and the pulling power of the men above. And full well the Phantom realized the magnitude of the task. His own hundred and ninety pounds, plus the dead weight of the girl, made a heavy burden for the men up there to inch up over the edge of the precipice.
He passed the top ledge, and Van's eyes stabbed at the growth of shrubbery that hid the surface of the wall. A wild theory checked in his brain as he stared at that scanty shelf of rock.
His arms ached with the strain of carrying the girl and his chest and arm pits seemed to be enveloped in red-hot iron bands. Thirty feet to go, then twenty. He could see the look of encouragement on the face of the officer hanging over the brink. Ten feet more, and the task would be done.
The rests between the upward jogs were getting longer now. The strain was telling on the men above, too.
Five feet to go. Had Van's arms been free, he could have reached the edge of the cliff now. Then finally hands reached down and fastened on the girl's shoulders, reached under her arms and lifted her weight from his aching arms. She was dragged up over the edge, and then strong hands gripped the Phantom, and he scrambled up to safety.
More people had stopped to witness the daring performance. A faint cheer emanated from the lips of the spectators as Van clambered to the brink of the precipice. Crowley rushed to his side, pumped his hand warmly.
"That was swell going, feller," he ejaculated. "There's nothing wrong with your nerves."
The inspector started to unfasten the rope around Van's body, but the Phantom halted him.
"Leave it there for a minute or two, until I get my second wind," he said. "I'm going down again."
Crowley stared in stupefied amazement. Then he sputtered:
"Going down again? Are you crazy? There's no one else down there. What are you going back for?"
"The key to our mystery is down there, Crowley," the Phantom said grimly. "At least, I'm fairly positive that it must be down there."
At Crowley's bewildered look, he continued:
"Take a look, Inspector, and you'll see that Peggy Manning was drowned."
THE veteran police officer's jaw fell.
"Drowned!" he muttered. "But how—how did her body get up there, if she was drowned?"
"That's what I'm going to find out," the Phantom said levelly. "I don't believe that her body was placed there just to mystify the police. Some material agency is responsible for its presence there. I'm going to locate that agency. It won't be so bad this time. I only want to go down to the first ledge. I'm satisfied that there was nothing on the ledge where I found her that would account for her being there. Therefore, she must have come down from the one above."
NEARLY fifteen minutes later, the Phantom was again swinging out into space, this time on a level with the first shelving rock. As the rope swung back and forth, he reached out and grasped one of the thick, scrubby bushes that grew on the narrow shelf, pulling himself toward the cliff until he could push through the fringe of bushes.
Once inside the sheltering row, his eyes gleamed as they rested on a circular iron door that had been set in the face of the cliff. There was a narrow space between the bushes and the door, and also at either end of the shelf, where no bushes grew. The shrubbery had all of the appearance of a rough, artificial hedge; and when Van's eyes noted that each of the shrubs was firmly fixed in place with cement that had been poured around its roots, there was no doubt in his mind that the bushes had been set there to screen the door.
He paid a mental tribute to the brain that had planned the clever camouflage, then gave all his attention to the door. There seemed to be no lock of any sort. The big, circular disc of steel had been set flush in the iron ring that was held in place by big bolts, in holes that had been drilled into the side of the cliff. The door looked like a flat manhole cover on a sewer, except that it was about twice as big.
Van could see no way to open the door from the outside, except by blasting, and that would be an almost impossible task. To try to shatter the door with high explosives would probably mean that the side of the cliff would be blown away.
He examined the cliff on either side of the circular door. At the right, as he faced it, the cliff was marred and scratched, as though the door had swung back against it. There was powdered rock and shale on the door, strengthening the Phantom's belief that there were hinges of a sort inside the door, that permitted it to swing out against the cliff.
Some sort of a passageway extended behind the iron barrier, for it gave forth a hollow sound when Van thumped on it with a piece of broken rock.
But what could be the use of such a passageway? It couldn't be used as a secret entrance, for nothing short of a bird could land there. The thought flashed through the Phantom's mind that this might be the execution spot where the Crime King's victims met their fate. Then he had to discard the idea. For bodies dropped from the ledge would certainly be dashed to pieces on the rock below, unless some great force propelled them out beyond the jagged stones that bordered the river.
It would be impossible for two men to stand on the narrow ledge and swing a body far enough out to clear the rocks. Van knew that he would not find the key to the mystery until he had located the other end of the tunnel or room that lay behind that iron door.
HE pushed his way through the bushes, balanced on his toes at the edge of the shelf, beyond the fringe of shrubbery, and jerked twice at the rope. A second time he was slowly pulled up to the top of the abutment.
This time he voiced no objections when Crowley unfastened the rope from around his body. Van donned his topcoat, and said to the inspector:
"I guess that's all we can do here. We ought to get the girl's body down to the boat and have her taken to the morgue. I don't know whether or not there are any relatives that will claim the body."
CROWLEY asked the river patrolmen to carry the girl down, and the policemen started ahead. The Phantom's eyes burned like vivid coals as they fixed on the pathetic figure being moved down the path ahead of him.
"Kind of tough, a kid like that getting rubbed out," Crowley said with a note of sympathy in his voice. "But I guess there's no doubt but what she was hooked up with the Crime King, somehow or other."
"Yes—she was in with the mob all right," Van said huskily. "But I think if she had had a chance to break from them, she would have. Probably that's why she was killed—because she wanted to break away. I owed a debt of gratitude to that kid. If she hadn't been nervy enough to slip me a knife on the boat that night, I probably would be at the bottom of the river now. I wasn't in time to save her—if she did want to be saved. But I'll get the foul beast that murdered her, or I'll go into the river like the rest of his victims in the attempt to bring that killer to justice."
Crowley was silent for a minute or two.
He had never seen the Phantom so moved by his emotions. Finally he spoke.
"Did you learn how she was drowned," he asked, "and left up there high and dry?"
"No. That is still a mystery to me," the Phantom confessed. "But I think I'm well on the road to the solution of that, and the other mysteries that have surrounded the operations of the Crime King."
They had reached the boats now. At Van's suggestion, the inspector asked the two river patrolmen from the other boat to take Peggy Manning's body down the river and to arrange to have it taken to the morgue. Then the Phantom and Crowley climbed into their boat, and started the return journey.
As they backed away from the shore, Van asked their pilot to mark their exact location on the map that was spread beside the wheel, in the little cabin. When this had been done, he went out on the deck with Crowley, and tersely told him what he had found on his second descent. When he had finished, the inspector said:
"It sounds as though the answer ought to be right there—but I'm blamed if I can see it. Can you?"
"That tunnel or passageway must lead to the hideout of the Crime King and his crew of murderers. Do you know anything about that locality?"
"Not much," Crowley confessed. "It's Jersey territory, so we wouldn't know anything about it."
"Well, I think I do," Van said. "Did you ever hear of the Castle of the Palisades?"
CROWLEY'S eyebrows lifted, and he whistled softly.
"I believe you've hit it, square on the head," he finally said. "I read about the Castle in one of the Sunday supplements, but I've never seen the place. The story had it that a prominent refugee from France, I think it was, escaped to this country, more than a hundred years ago. He built a castle on the Palisades, and lived there the rest of his life, always hoping that his Royalist party would stage a successful revolution, and set him back on the throne.
"He wanted a place near the river; one of his country's gunboats could steam up to get him, if he were to be restored, or where he could make an escape in the dark of the night, if he learned that his enemies were coming to get him to finish the execution which they had planned for him."
"THAT'S the story," Van said. "And it's backed up by history. I've flown over the Castle a few times, and when I discovered that door in the cliff, I remembered that the Castle was somewhere about that spot. After checking it on the pilot's map, I'm certain of the fact. That tunnel behind the door must lead to the Castle, and—I'll lay a big bet that the Crime King is using the deserted Castle as his headquarters.
"Why don't we go up and investigate the place now?" asked the inspector.
"I didn't want those people who were watching us up there trailing at our heels," Van answered. "And if the Castle is the hangout of the murderers, it will be much easier to get in after dark."
Crowley had to admit the wisdom of Van's reasoning. There was a note of regret in his voice as he said morosely:
"And I'll bet you are planning right now to try to crash in up there tonight—all alone."
"It's a one man job, don't you think, Inspector?" Van smiled faintly. "I'd certainly like to have you along with me—but our chances would be only one-half as good."
Crowley agreed grumpily, and for the rest of the trip down the river they talked about the peculiar angles of the case. As Van shook hands with Crowley, the grizzled police officer growled:
"I hate to think of you tackling that crew alone, my lad. It's a bad place you're heading into. A regular Castle of Crime, I'd call it."
"You're right about that," Van said soberly. "Though I'd be inclined to call it the House of a Hundred Murders."
"I'll be hoping and praying that it doesn't become the House of a Hundred and One Murders," Crowley said seriously. "If I don't hear from you by morning, I'll get in touch with the Jersey authorities, and between our combined forces, we'll tear down every brick of the blasted place."
"Thanks, Inspector," Van said sincerely. "Here's hoping that it won't be necessary." Then he rode uptown to map out his campaign for that night.
A FEW stars dotted the sky, their faint glow obscured by swift dark clouds, as the Phantom parked his car on the side road not far from the spot where he had twice risked his life that day. He had crossed the river on a downtown ferry, and had driven up along the Boulevard until his road map showed him the narrow winding road that skirted the edge of the Palisades.
He might have been in the heart of the Catskills, so quiet and sylvan were his surroundings. It had been miles since he had passed a house. The road he had followed after leaving the broad, main highway was traveled but little at night. The French Royalist who sought seclusion had picked an ideal spot for the location of his castle.
Van backed his car into a sheltered nook by the side of the road. He switched off the lights, and pulled down the curtains. Then, with only the beam of a pocket flash for illumination, he effected one of his startling transformations.
From a belt that he wore around his waist next to his skin, he took a flat make-up case. With deft touches of a special grease paint and crayons that were practically waterproof, his youthful face became like old, soiled parchment; his firm lips changed their contours and grew loose and flabby. Tiny bits of adhesive tape and faint scores from his crayon brought synthetic pouches under his eyes. He dusted his hands with powder and ran them through his hair, giving it a silvery, grizzled appearance. Heavy pencil shading made his perfectly manicured nails black and grimy, and the make-up turned the skin of his hands and arms to a leathery shade.
From a flat bundle on the seat beside him, he took out an old, disreputable suit of clothes and a felt hat that had seen better days. Even the shoes were scuffed and cracked. When he had changed into the outfit he had brought, the Phantom looked like one of the myriad of tramps that infest the hamlets of the country.
HE hoped that his preparations would be unnecessary. But his successful career was predicated on preparedness. He wanted to be sure that if he fell into the hands of the enemy, the real identity of the Phantom would be guarded. Then, too—if he were discovered prowling around the deserted Castle what better alibi could he have than the fact that he was a knight of the road, who had sought shelter from the storm that was due to break very shortly?
Satisfied with his preparations, Van slipped the flat make-up kit back inside his shirt, touched his belt to make sure that his flat automatic was strapped in place, and then started across the road and through the growth of trees toward the Castle. The old house, he figured, should be just over the crest of the wooded hill.
It was difficult going, in the dim starlight. He pushed through bushes that lashed at his face. Twice he stumbled over unseen roots of trees. He dared not risk a light, even though the hilltop screened the Castle from view.
At last he reached the summit of the hill, and saw the huge bulk of the grey stone structure looming ahead of him, on a level spot in the valley between the hill he was on, and another hill just beyond. Van turned and sighted toward the river, located the single scrub oak where the rope that had lowered him had been fastened. It was in a straight line with the Castle. And the door was practically in line with that tree.
The Phantom's pulse beat fast. So far, his theory had worked out perfectly. For Van believed that the door in the cliff concealed a passageway to the Castle, perhaps built as a secret exit by which the refugee prince could escape in case of an attack. By means of a long rope ladder, the Royalist might have reached the river in safety from the cliff, in case his Castle was stormed by enemies.
THE Phantom's eyes were accustomed to the dark now, and he made his way noiselessly down the hillside toward the big building. As he reached the level valley, he discovered that a deep, wide ditch, like a moat of feudal days, had been dug around the Castle.
He slowly circled the building, seeking some means of crossing. He had completed half his circuit, when he caught a faint gleam of light through one of the shuttered windows. The Castle was occupied!
A few feet ahead of him was a sort of drawbridge across the ditch. Van approached it cautiously, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. The last few yards he made on his hands and knees, with his eyes stabbing at the darkness beyond the bridge, his ears strained to detect the movements of a guard, if one were posted.
BUT evidently the occupants of the Castle felt secure, for he could see no figure in the gloom beyond the little bridge, nor could he catch the sound of any movement. Still on his hands and knees, he went across the bridge, which was in reality a heavy iron plate suspended by chains. From the grass that had grown over the edge of the bridge, Van judged that it no longer could be raised. It was down for all time, or at least until someone rehabilitated the Castle and the grounds.
He was tense and alert as he ducked into the shadow of the building on the other side of the bridge. The light he had seen was slightly to his right and above his head, evidently on the second floor of the old mansion.
Again the Phantom paused and listened. Nothing but the faint whispering of the breeze disturbed the stillness of the night. He felt his way along the narrow strip of ground that lay between the moat and the house. Ahead of him he saw a dark recess that might be a door. He moved silently toward the dark rectangle.
Inside the recessed aperture, in the wall of granite blocks, Van risked a flash of his torch, shielded by his fingers over the bulb. The heavy door had been supplied with a modern lock. It was only a few seconds' work to find a skeleton key that would fit that lock.
A twist of the key, and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Van slipped through into the darkness beyond and softly closed the portal behind him. Another masked beam from his light pointed the way to a flight of stairs leading up. The room he was in was some sort of a storeroom. Cases and barrels were stacked along the floor.
Van's feet found the bottom stair, and he commenced his stealthy flight upward. He was thankful for the expert workmanship that had made the stairs so sturdy and durable. By not so much as a creak did the steps betray his presence.
A door at the top of the stairway led into a wide hall. The Phantom inched the door open, and caught the faint hum of voices as he stepped into the corridor. Light streamed out from beneath three doors along that hall. Just ahead of him was the room that he had seen lighted from outside. And the voices seemed to come from that room.
THE other lighted rooms were on the opposite side of the hall, nearly at the far end. For a second or two the Phantom crouched against the wall, studying the situation. Then his feet sped noiselessly past the room that he knew was occupied, along the hall to the first of the other rooms. He hoped to find one of the chambers occupied, for that would afford him the opportunity that he sought—the means to enter the first room, where a meeting of some sort was convened. It was a desperate measure, but the only one he could think of at the moment. For the Phantom planned to capture one of the Crime King's men and to take his place in the gang.
Van's ear flattened against the door of one of the lighted rooms at the end of the hall. As he leaned against it, the panel slid open a trifle. The Phantom whipped away from the jam, flattened against the wall just beyond. His automatic slid out of his belt spring holster, and he grasped it by the barrel, waiting for one of the enemy either to come to close the door or to investigate.
He waited for three or four minutes, but could hear no sound from within the room. He moved back to the door, placed his back against it and inched it open slowly. Then he whirled, shoved it with his hand and stepped into the room.
ONCE inside, he smiled at his elaborate precautions, for the room was empty. He cast a swift glance at the big canopied bed, at the sumptuous furnishings. It looked like the bedroom of a prince. Van made a hasty conjecture that this was the room that the Crime King reserved for his own sleeping quarters.
Then he stepped back to the hall, closing the door softly behind him. As he approached the second door, he heard the thump of a heavy object, as though a piece of furniture or a box had been lifted and dropped to the floor.
A tight smile pulled the corners of the Phantom's mouth down, and his eyes had a hard, frosty gleam. He didn't have to investigate this room.
He knew it was occupied.
Van's left hand dropped to the door handle. His automatic was clutched in his right hand, and rested against his hip, as he pressed down on the knob and leaned his shoulder against the panel. As the door swung inward, the Phantom slid inside the room.
His dark eyes, peering coldly from beneath the floppy brim of the battered felt hat, fixed on a dark figure bent over a trunk at the opposite side of the room. The figure straightened, and Van saw that a black hood completely covered the man's head. Startled eyes gleamed out through slits in the hood. A hoarse voice rasped:
"What's the big idea?"
Van lined the muzzle of his gun on the hooded man's heart. His own voice sounded like a file on steel as he spoke.
"Get your hands up, feller," he snapped. "One little yip, and it's curtains for you."
The hooded man stared at the cold, implacable face of the disreputable tramp, read the message of death in the gleaming brown eyes that stabbed at his face. Then his hands slowly lifted.
Van moved slowly toward him, the gun menacing the hooded man as he drew near.
"Turn around and face the wall," the Phantom ordered.
The man started to turn. Then suddenly he whirled and his hand darted toward his coat pocket.
Swift thoughts rocketed through the Phantom's brain. He dared not risk a shot; the whole murderous pack would be on him in a few seconds if he did. But the man in the hood had evidently figured out just that fact for himself.
Van's hands moved as fast as his thoughts. The gun reversed in his hand, swung up and down, and the butt cracked down just over the hooded man's ear. For a fraction of a second, a surprised look shone in the man's eyes. Then he slowly sank to the floor.
THE Phantom jammed the automatic back in his belt clip, reached down and yanked the man's hood from his head. The face was a strange one, not one he had ever seen before. Van swore softly. He had hoped that he might recognize the man. It would have made the impersonation easier.
For a second he contemplated changing his make-up so that he could masquerade as the man he had slugged. But that would take time. Van had no way of knowing how long the meeting in the first room would last. He decided to risk it with only the hooded mask for a disguise.
This room was also a sleeping chamber, though not as pretentious as the one he had just left. Van ripped a sheet from the bed, tore it into strips and after removing the man's coat, he tied his hands behind his back. Another swift motion and then the man's ankles were secured. A third strip of the sheet was twisted and tied in place as a gag. Then Van dragged the man across the room to a closet that was partly open. He tried the bonds to make sure they were secure, then dumped the victim inside.
There was no lock on the closet door, so Van dragged the heavy trunk the man had been examining, against the door. His eyes widened as he saw the contents of the trunk. It was filled with green certificates. He fingered one, examined it and saw it was a municipal bond!
Van shoved the bond into the pocket of his trousers. Two minutes later he had donned the hood that he had confiscated. Then he started down the hall toward the conference room.
PERHAPS for a second the Phantom, wearing the hood, paused outside of the door where he had heard the voices. Harsh, rasping tones reached the ears of the Phantom. The hooded speaker was saying:
"Scarponi has called a meeting for midnight. You know what that means. He must be removed. Scarponi and his gorillas must die!" The Phantom's hand descended to the doorknob. Beneath the tattered coat his heart was thumping against his ribs. At last he was going to stand face to face with the Crime King, the evil genius who was responsible for a hundred deaths or more. He had no plan, but he was resolved that somehow he would find a way to end the reign of terror of the arch criminal.
The door slowly opened under the pressure of his hand. The Phantom's dark eyes, peering through the holes in the black hood, saw a dozen or more chairs arranged in a semi-circle around a table at one end of the room. Each chair but one was occupied by a man wearing a black hood.
Seated at the table was a big man, dressed all in black. Even his hands were covered with black gloves. It was the voice of the black-clad leader that Van had heard. He glanced up now as Van stepped into the room. Then he went on with his instructions, planning a raid on Scarponi and his men.
Van saw an empty chair at the end of the second row, which had evidently been vacated by the man he had captured. He moved across the floor and slipped into the seat.
BENEATH the hood, Van's brow was furrowed with wrinkles as he listened to the rasping voice of the leader. He was trying to place those hoarse tones, trying vainly to connect that voice up with one of the men he had tabbed as the Crime King. But this was the voice of neither Wilkerson nor O'Mara. Unless—and the thought seemed altogether likely—unless the voice was disguised also.
The Phantom's brain was clicking fast. The man who was talking hated—and evidently feared—Scarponi, and was plotting to wipe out Handsome Phil and his mob. Why?
Was Scarponi threatening the safety of this mob? Or had Van intruded on a meeting of revolution that was being plotted against the real leader? Was the masked speaker the Crime King, or was he an insubordinate lieutenant who was trying to overthrow Phil Scarponi and usurp the leadership of the gang?
THE Phantom's eyes furtively ranged over the men who listened so intently, trying to pick out a familiar figure or to identify the clothing of any of the listeners. His eyes narrowed on a stout man dressed in a flashy suit. Wilkerson had a penchant for clothes like that. His eyes moved along the semicircle, halted on a tall, wide-shouldered man at the far end of the first row of chairs. That man could be Tim O'Mara. There was something about the set of the man's shoulders that was reminiscent of the carriage of the big soldier of fortune.
Perplexity showed in Van's eyes. If Wilkerson and O'Mara were both in the audience, who was the masked man at the table?
Van's eyed slued back to the leader with a sudden jerk. The leader was staring directly at him, and the Phantom heard him ask:
"Did you get them?"
The Phantom's brain worked fast. The man he had slugged had been sent to get something from the room down the hall. What had he been sent for?
Van felt the palms of his hands grow moist, as he saw heads turning in his direction.
From the front of the room, the leader's hard, expressionless eyes seemed to burn through the hood that masked the Phantom's face. Van tried to remember the manner of speech of the man whose place he had taken. He changed his own voice to a fair imitation of the husky growl as he said:
"I couldn't find them."
The masked leader rapped out a savage curse.
"What do you mean, you can't find them?" he snarled. "Did you look in the trunk?"
Cold beads of sweat formed on the Phantom's brow. The hands that had been folded in his lap moved slightly, and his right hand came to rest near the automatic that was tucked in his belt.
"The trunk was locked," he growled sullenly.
For a long second, a tense silence settled over the room. Then with startling suddenness the man beside the Phantom spoke:
"This man isn't Owens, Chief. His clothes are different."
"Unmask him!" The leader's voice cracked like a whip.
Van's hand shot to his belt, and the automatic leaped into sight. Its muzzle lined on the heart of the masked leader, as the Phantom slid out of his chair.
"Better tell your men to sit still," the Phantom's voice had a sharp edge. "Or you'll join the scores of innocent people you have murdered."
THE masked leader's eyes burned like livid coals through the holes in his mask, following the Phantom as he moved away from his chair. He made no mistake in recognizing the threat in the Phantom's voice. Stark death was in the tones of the masked intruder, and the leader knew it.
The men in the chairs sat like frozen statues, their eyes shifting from the interloper to their leader. They, too, knew that a single false move would send a bullet hurtling at the heart of the man at the table.
Van could feel the electric tenseness in the air. There were a dozen men in the room—savage, desperate men who had participated in nearly a hundred murders. These men knew their lives had long since been forfeit to the law and that the law would unhesitatingly collect that forfeit. A single man who had daringly intruded himself into the very heart of their stronghold, had brought with him a threat to their well laid plans—had brought the shadow of the electric chair into their secret meeting place.
THEIR eyes were swiftly moving from the Phantom to their masked leader, and back again. Like a pack of wolves, they waited for the word that would send them tearing at their prey.
The Phantom's eyes were riveted on the man at the table. His sole hope of salvation rested in the courage of the leader of the masked mob. If the Phantom made a break for liberty, the mob would get him. If the masked leader treasured his own life, as the Phantom figured he would, there was a chance to make an escape—and Van grimly resolved to take the leader with him!
The Phantom edged toward the table, with his automatic menacing the man he intended to capture if possible. A chair scraped against the floor. Van's eyes slithered in the direction of the sound, ready for the first sign of the attack, if it should materialize.
As Van's eyes moved, the masked leader threw himself sideways out of the chair. His rasping voice boomed:
"Get him, men. It's the Phantom!"
Van's gun roared, but even as he fired he knew the leader had thrown himself out of the path of the bullet. There was a low, rumbling sound, like the savage growl from the throats of a wolf pack. The masked men started out of their chairs.
The Phantom's eyes whipped toward the door; saw that he couldn't make it. He whirled, faced the approaching mob, with his back against the wall.
From the edge of the pack, a gun roared and a bullet thudded into the wood an inch from the Phantom's head. His finger squeezed on the trigger, and the man who had fired first went down with a bullet hole between his eyes. Another bullet crashed against the wall, coming from an angle. Van's eyes darted to the right, and he saw the masked leader firing from the protection of the heavy table, which he had dragged down to the floor.
A chair hurtled through the air, aimed at the Phantom's head. He swung his body low, ducking the heavy missile. It crashed against the wall and splintered. Pieces of wood flew about the Phantom's head.
Before he could straighten, the mob had rushed him. Twice more he squeezed the trigger of his gun. Frenzied curses sounded in answer to his shots. Then the pack was on him, goaded by the rasping commands of the leader.
VAN swung the barrel of his automatic viciously, felt it smash against flesh and bone in the face of one of the masked killers. He smashed out with gun, fists and feet, trying to fight his way clear to the door. But it was like trying to check the advance of an avalanche. By sheer strength of numbers they overpowered him. A heavy fist drove into his face; heavy hands fastened around his arms. Bodies flung themselves upon him. The Phantom went down in the midst of a snarling, fighting mob. Something hard crashed against the side of his head. It felt like the butt of a gun and it flashed a million stars in front of his eyes. Then everything went black.
CONSCIOUSNESS returned quickly. He was on his feet, braced against the wall. There was a masked man on either side, grasping him by the arms and holding him erect. His head throbbed and the cruel voice of the masked leader seemed to come from miles away. His eyes focused with difficulty on the big man who stood in the middle of the floor, heaping curses and vituperation upon the prisoner.
"The master sleuth came to capture us single-handed," the leader taunted. "The Phantom—the Nemesis of Crime—was going to break up our easy money system, all by himself. And now look at him."
Low chuckles emanated from the throats of the waiting mob. Their eyes burned with feral hatred as they fixed on the man who was hated and feared by every criminal in the country. Van could read the death sentence in their glittering eyes.
Black despair gripped the Phantom's heart. He had failed—and his life would be the penalty of failure. But that bothered him less than the thought that this fiend in human form would now be free to go on with his hellish plans. The Grim Reaper would continue his horrible march through the city. Countless other lives would be sacrificed to the greed and murderous lust of this pack of beasts.
Red rage flooded the brain of the Phantom. His eyes measured the distance to the masked leader, and he calculated the chances of leaping across the intervening space and throttling the leader of the killers before a bullet laid him low. If he could get the men who gripped him to relax their vigilance for a split second, he would make the attempt, as he had no fear of death; he had gambled with the Grim Reaper too often to have any craven thoughts when he finally lost in the desperate game he played. And if he could take the evil genius who guided the nefarious activities of the mob with him, the Phantom felt that he would not have sacrificed his life in vain.
"You shall pay the penalty exacted from all those who have opposed our plans," the leader was saying. His voice was low and appallingly ruthless. "You will find the answer to the mystery which you sought to solve—but the knowledge will do you no good, unless you can use it in hell."
The words were like a red-hot iron searing into the brain of the Phantom. He bared his teeth in a savage snarl, and rasped:
"I had solved the mystery before I came here. Inspector Crowley and the police know the answer to the riddle. They are on their way here now—to tear this murderer's den to pieces."
For a second the masked leader stared at him. Then he laughed.
"I know you are lying," he jeered. "The Phantom always works alone. The police may come tomorrow—but it will be after they have picked up the body of the Phantom from the river. The world will never miss you—for you will die in disguise, just another tramp who found life too much for him."
THE Phantom jerked suddenly with his arms. But he had failed to take into consideration the fact that he was still weak from the blow he had received in the fight. There was no strength in his arms.
The masked leader caught the futile attempt at escape and a mocking laugh burst from his lips. His voice was taunting, as he said:
"See, men. The Phantom wants to go places and see things. That's okay with me. Take him to the guest room."
Rough hands pulled at his arms, and the Phantom was half led and half dragged from the room. Light flooded the hall and the lower floor. He was marched down the stairs and through the storeroom, past the stacks of wooden cases. Behind him pounded the mob. He could catch the half intelligible murmur of the voices of the leader and another man, who were arguing in low tones about something. Finally, just as they reached a door in the wall at the opposite side of the room, the leader snapped:
"We'll see Scarponi first, then come back and clear out this place. The police won't come before daylight—if they come at all. He's probably just throwing a bluff."
A MAN from the mob brushed past them, carrying a big bunch of keys. He fitted one into the padlock on the door ahead of them and pushed the panel open. Van saw a small room that looked like a cell. He was thrown bodily within and the door clanged behind him.
For a few seconds Van stood motionless, puzzled by the strange procedure. He had expected to be lined up against the wall and shot, or to meet death in some other sudden manner. But it looked as if he were going to be held prisoner, for a while at least.
His eyes roamed around his gloomy cell. It was solidly walled on three sides, including the front, where the door was. The fourth side seemed to be glass, with a curtain on the outside. A frown creased the Phantom's brow.
Then the curtain rolled up, and he saw the malevolent eyes of the masked leader and his men, gazing in at him with curious, interested stares. He stood motionless in the middle of the floor, tensely waiting—waiting for something—he didn't know what.
A faint, sickly odor reached his nostrils, and horror crept into his brain. Realization of this part of the Crime King's nefarious plot came home to him, as he recognized the odor of chloroform. The room was a gas chamber, in which the victims of the Crime King were stupefied and rendered unconscious. And outside, the cruel eyes glinted at the expression on the Phantom's face.
A SUDDEN thought flashed into Van's brain. He turned his back to the staring audience, ran to the opposite side of the room and his fingers plucked at the make-up kit around his waist. He found the tiny nose plugs of cotton that were there for just such emergencies as this. The Phantom never knew when he would run into tear gas or some more deadly lethal gas. The nose plugs were treated with a special preparation, known only to himself, and would nullify the effects of most of the known gases.
There might be a chance to outwit the Crime King yet. If he could convince the evil genius that he had been overcome by the anaesthetic, he would have an opportunity to catch the murderers off their guard.
Some of the chloroform he had inhaled before he had managed to insert the cotton nose plugs, and it was already working at his brain. The weak-kneed, staggering progress he made back across the gas chamber wasn't entirely faked.
He started staggering around the room, magnifying the dizziness that had reached his brain. He turned and rushed toward the glass wall, as though an insane frenzy spurred him recklessly on, to make a futile attempt to smash through at his executioners. He went a couple of steps on tottering legs; then he pitched to the floor as though chloroform had taken its deadly toll.
As he breathed through the nose plugs, practically all of the stupefying effect of the chloroform was eliminated. He faked an attempt to rise; then he collapsed on the floor again, quivered and finally lay still.
He had pillowed his head on his arms, and by slitting one eyelid, he could see the glass wall. He risked a glance, and saw the masked leader staring at him intently. If he could only make the ruthless murderers believe that they had accomplished their purpose, and that he was completely unconscious, the gas would be shut off. They might send a man in to pick him up. If they did, Van resolved to make a desperate break for liberty, for he didn't know what the next step on the program of death would be.
He slitted his eyes again, and his heart beat faster. He saw the masked leader raise his hand and signal to someone in another part of the storeroom. His ruse had worked.
Then, just at the moment when a new courage was buoying him up, the Phantom felt the floor give way beneath him. Helplessly, he started slipping. His fingers clawed at the smooth boards of the floor but found nothing to grip. He rolled and then pitched downward into a black void that had opened up when the trap was sprung and the floor of the room dropped underneath him.
DESPERATELY Van twisted his body in the air. He didn't know how far he would drop, but he tried to save himself as much as possible by protecting his head. He had been catapulted head foremost when the floor swung down. His neck would have been broken if he had landed in that position.
His flight was checked abruptly, with a force that almost knocked him senseless, as his body slammed against hard stone. For a second he lay there, dazed and inert, trying to gather his scrambled wits. Above him, the square of light was gradually diminishing, as the floor swung back up into place.
In the gloom, Van saw that he was in a big sunken room, nearly thirty feet square. A tunnel led from one wall. The other walls looked solid. Ahead of him was a flight of stairs leading upward, only to end at the floor of the house above.
A square opening, leading up from the ceiling of the room, marked the height of his fall.
Van knew that there was no way of reaching the mechanism that operated the swinging floor above. The stairs were too far to the right. And the shaft through which he had pitched precluded any chance of reaching the mechanism from the tunnel. He was cornered like a rat in a trap.
THE floor had swung back into place and the Phantom was in complete, utter darkness. His fingers felt at his waist, and found the flat make-up pack that was strapped there. He fumbled in the packet and found a waterproof case of matches. Scratching one, he moved toward the stairway, walked up a few stairs and sat down, his thoughts busy with his plight, and seeking some means of escape.
Van figured that the tunnel in the wall led to the iron door he had discovered in the side of the cliff on the Palisades. If he could make his way out through that, and find some way of operating the mechanism of the door, he could reach the ledge, and perhaps signal for help. It was a slim chance, for he didn't know whether or not he could open the door. Then again, the ledge was so far above the river that it might be days before his signal would be seen through glasses by some boatman. But at least it was a chance. Anything was better than starving to death, or dying like a rat in his present trap.
THE Phantom's feet were on the stairs going down, when he heard a strange sound in the underground room. It was the sound of rushing water coming into the room. His fingers hastily groped for another match. In the tiny flare that stabbed at the murky gloom, the whole devilish ingenuity of the Crime King was revealed.
A slab in the wall opposite the tunnel had slid back and a stream of water was pouring in, filling the room. It had reached the level of the lower stair already and it was rising fast. Van's eyes grew wide with horror as he realized his predicament. He could retreat up the stairs, but the level of the water would follow him—up—up—until he would be entirely submerged.
The tunnel—could he reach it? It was already half filled. The door at the cliff end sealed it, and the tunnel would fill before the room did. The ingenuity of the ruthless fiend who had trapped him was apparent now. This was the answer to the mystery of the hundred bodies that had been found in the river. Each of them had been trapped in the Castle's underground room. Most of them, probably all of them, had been rendered senseless with the gas, pitched into the subterranean pit and then drowned. Their lungs would fill with water, and the deaths would appear to be suicides.
The evil destroyer planned so that when his victims were lifeless, either from the gas or from drowning, a mechanism would be operated that would open the door in the cliff side. The water would rush out over the ledge carrying the body of the lifeless victim, to spew it out into the waters of the Hudson. The current of the river would carry the body miles, before it was picked up.
Now the water had risen to the fourth stair. Van knew that it would creep up, until finally the air supply would be cut off, and he would be entirely submerged. There seemed to be no escape from the death trap. The evil genius of the Crime King had triumphed.
Desperately Van's brain whirled in dizzy circles. There must be a way out. He couldn't resign himself to his fate. Too much depended on him. The life of every citizen of the city was his responsibility. For with the Phantom's death the man who preyed so indiscriminately on rich and poor alike, would be free to carry on his ghoulish activities. To be sure, Crowley might lead his men in an attack and destroy the Castle, but the chief demon would be on the watch for such an attack, and would escape, to resume his diabolical scheme in some other part of the country.
Van stepped back down toward the water. Something brushed past his ankles, splashed along the top of the water. In the light of another match, the Phantom caught a glimpse of a silvery form darting through the clear water. There were fish in the water that was pouring into the room!
THE Phantom's brain began to click feverishly. He remembered a tiny lake just beyond the hill on the other side of the Castle. It must be from this lake that the water was pouring into the subterranean chamber. The Crime King had hewed a sluiceway from the lake to his execution chamber.
Van's eyes lifted to the ceiling, above the stairs. Feverishly he tried to figure a way to use the knowledge he had acquired about the operation of the trap.
His eyes moved to the circular opening that led to the trap door through which he had been pitched. His pulse quickened, and he thought he saw a way of outwitting the Crime King. The floor above the opening would be airtight. The water would rise into the cylindrical opening, compressing the air above it as it rose. But it could only rise to a certain point, when the pressure of the compressed air, between the water and the floor above, would be equal to the pressure of the water below.
AS in a caisson or a diving bell, there would be a layer of compressed air that the water could not force out. Van could swim about up there, and could avoid drowning. Perhaps when the water receded, he could make an escape.
Every other avenue of escape seemed to be blocked. Death stared the Phantom in the face. Inch by inch the water crept up the walls of the room. Van retreated before the rising tide, stair by stair. Then as the water had almost reached the ceiling, Van slipped in and swam to the cylindrical opening. New hope was born in the heart of the Phantom. He could swim about after the room had been entirely filled. Sooner or later, the water would have to be released and drained from the room.
Like a fish in a bowl, he paddled and treaded water in the narrow confines of the cylindrical opening.
And then, with a thrill of exultation, he saw that the water was receding. The murderers above figured that their diabolical task was accomplished.
But the Phantom's exultation was short lived, for as the water level dropped below the bottom of the cylindrical opening, he felt himself caught in a maelstrom of churning water that was like a whirlpool, dragging him down—down—toward the tunnel. The rush of the water through the outlet had caused the vicious eddy. Once he was sucked into the mouth of the tunnel, he would be swept through by the rushing stream, and then hurled over the ledge to the river below.
Van's arms cleaved the water in powerful strokes, fighting his way out of the tenacious grip of the whirlpool that clutched him like a giant octopus. He fought furiously, gaining inches. But at last his shoulders and arms were outside of the suction of the whirling vortex of water.
Savagely and desperately he battled, until he fought his way to one of the walls, where he managed to find a jutting stone in the rough-hewn rock that offered a grip for his fingers. The sharp edge of the stone bit into his flesh like a knife blade, lacerating his fingers, as the swirling water gripped at his legs, dragging him back toward the vortex of the pool.
Van clung in desperation, until he felt as though his arms were being pulled from their sockets. But the water was rushing out with terrific speed now; the outlet draining it faster than the inlet could let it in.
THE Phantom's brain had never given up the task of finding a method of escape. Even in the face of certain death, he had refused to resign himself to his fate. His courage and resourcefulness were rewarded. A desperate plan entered his mind. It would require all of the trained strength of the Phantom, for it meant that he would have to battle his way through the whirlpool again. But he knew that he could not cling to the jagged bit of rock until the water receded to the floor of the room. He would be swept into the whirlpool again, when his cramped muscles and lacerated hands were no longer able to combat the resistless pull of the swirling waters.
Van let go his hold, thrashed the water savagely, trying to keep at the edge of the whirlpool. Slowly he fought his way across the surface of the water, until he was in front of the opening in the sluice through which the water had been pouring. The force of the incoming stream had been abated. Van knew that he would have to work fast if he was going to accomplish his well-nigh impossible task.
HIS cut and bleeding fingers grasped the stone inside the opening. He exerted all of his magnificent strength in a dual battle against the suction of the water rushing out, and the force of the stream pouring in. Foot by foot he dragged his body into the opening, until he was entirely in the sluice.
Then he started crawling and dragging his body up the sluice toward the lake. The water, which reached his chin as he crawled, threatened to sweep him back into the churning maw of the whirlpool. But ahead was safety, and the opportunity again to take the trail of the Crime King.
The way seemed interminably long. Only the iron muscles of a trained athlete like the Phantom could have withstood the superhuman effort. Foot by foot, he struggled, his shoulders raw and bruised from the crushing impact against the walls of the rough-hewn sluice, each time he lifted one hand to grip against the rough bottom to pull himself along.
The impossible deed was finally accomplished. Van found himself free from the tunnel, and out into the waters of the lake. Never had a star-lit sky seemed so beautiful to the Phantom as did the silver-dotted expanse that canopied above him as he fought clear of the mouth of the sluice and swam to the shore of the lake, beyond the steep, flat abutment where the mouth of the inlet had been hewn.
The Phantom splashed to the shore, staggered up the mossy bank, then dropped in exhaustion. Every muscle in his body ached with a separate pain. The flesh on the palms of his hands seemed raw. But he was free—he had escaped the fate of the other unfortunate victims of the house of a hundred murders. Once more, the Phantom had triumphed over Death!
BUSY thoughts crowded Van's mind as he sprawled on the lake bank, recovering from the struggle he had undergone. And he realized that the Crime King—if the masked devil who had ordered his execution were the Crime King—had undoubtedly left the Castle by this time, bound for the meeting with Scarponi.
The Phantom plunged to his feet and drove his weary muscles into action. There might still be time enough to get to town, round up Crowley and some of his men, and capture the murderers at Scarponi's headquarters in the Village.
Van circled the dark bulk of the Castle. Recklessly he smashed through the undergrowth that covered the hill, and down the other side, until he located the spot where he had hidden his car. The cold night air cut through his wet clothes, chilling him to the marrow. The Phantom spent a few valuable minutes in stripping off the saturated garments, and donning his own outfit. He couldn't take a chance on some lynx-eyed cop's noticing the discrepancy between the expensive car and the tattered clothes of his tramp's disguise.
The Phantom fished a key out of his flat make-up kit, fitted it into the ignition switch and turned it. His jaw was set in a grim line and he stepped on the starter. The motor purred; the car wheels threw a shower of gravel as he spun around in a swift turn and then headed down the narrow road to the Boulevard.
He stopped at the first all-night restaurant he saw, went in and called Police Headquarters. He located Crowley and tersely told him of the planned meeting at Scarponi's headquarters. The inspector promised to meet the Phantom at the ferry, with a picked squad of detectives.
Van piled into his car again, and broke all speed laws in his mad race to the ferry. Twice he was halted by the state troopers who patrolled the Boulevard, but a glimpse at the platinum badge, with the mask set in diamonds, speeded him on his way.
The insignia of the Phantom was indeed recognized by organized police the world over.
A FERRYBOAT was leaving as the Phantom reached the slip. It would be fifteen minutes before another one made a departure. Van ran his car onto the dock, burst through the waiting room and raced to the end of the slip, before the startled guard could check him. His eyes measured the distance to the boat and he took it in stride.
Passengers screamed as the black-masked figure raced along the boards, then hurtled out over the gap of water that separated the pier and the boat. Van's heels cleared the grilled gate on the end of the ferryboat by a matter of inches.
One of the deck hands rushed toward him, shouting angrily. But at a glimpse of the masked face, the boatman said excitedly:
"Jehosaphat—it's the Phantom!"
Van pushed through the crowd and made his way to the forward end of the ferryboat. He pressed against the gate, seemingly unaware of the stares and the whispers of the passengers behind him.
His mind was occupied with the chase, filled with angry, turbulent thoughts. The trail was getting hot; and shortly after the lumbering, crawling ferryboat pulled in at the slip on the other side, he hoped to have his hands on the arch fiend who had murdered J. Perry Montague, Dave Dominick, Peggy Manning and scores of others. There must be no slip up this time. The Crime King must be taken, dead or alive. It would be a fight to the finish.
Van's thoughts went back to the lovely blond girl, and a bitter grimace twisted his lips. Poor, foolish little kid. She had let the vision of easy money temporarily blind her. Then, when she had tried to break away, she had paid the penalty exacted from all who crossed the ruthless devil who ruled the mob of killers. All had paid but one—the Phantom, who was now hot on the trail of vengeance.
AGAIN and again Van tried to puzzle out the status of Phil Scarponi. For the identity of the masked leader was still a mystery. If the two men he had seen sitting in the common council of the masked leader had really been Wilkerson and Captain Tim, there seemed no one left to be assigned to the leading role except Scarponi, himself. And if Phil was the leader of the mob, what did the raid on the Scarponi headquarters signify? Could it be that Scarponi was pulling the raid as a fake, in order to keep his own identity a secret? Or was the raid really on the level and staged to wipe out Handsome Phil as a dangerous enemy?
It mattered little either way, to the Phantom. He was not interested in saving the counterfeiter. If Scarponi went down under a lethal hail of bullets from the Crime King's mob—it would simply be fit retribution for the many killings that had been done in the past at the behest of the gangster chief.
THE Phantom had not settled the question to his own satisfaction, when the ferryboat nosed into the slip. Almost immediately he saw the squat, solid figure of Inspector Crowley waiting there. Van vaulted the gate, and had leaped to the gangway before it was fully lowered.
Crowley shook hands briefly.
"The men are waiting outside, two cars full," he said. "Have you any plan?"
"None—except to drive like fury, and to get to Scarponi's place of business before the Crime King has had a chance to finish his work and get away. Do you know where Scarponi's headquarters are now?"
"My men have been trailing him for two days. He's at his club in the Village," said Crowley.
They stepped into one of the waiting police squad cars, and while one detective leaned on the siren, the chauffeur whipped the car through the city streets at a breakneck pace. They headed for the West Side location where Scarponi's men camouflaged their headquarters under the sign of "The Village Improvement Club."
The Phantom glanced at his wrist-watch, and with trepidation saw that it was fifteen minutes past midnight. He was afraid that they might be too late, and that the Crime King would have slipped through his fingers before he got to Scarponi's headquarters.
They were two blocks away from the so-called club rooms, when a fusillade of shots rang out. The Phantom's eyes, peering through the slits of his mask, were hard and implacable as they fastened on the tense face of Inspector Crowley.
"Looks as if we'll be just about in time," grated Van.
"I hope to God we are," Crowley said fervently. "I want a shot at the rat that blasted Dave Dominick through the back. Just one shot is all that I ask."
"I've got a few scores to even up myself," the Phantom said with a tight-lipped smile. His mind went back to the harrowing minutes he had spent in the death trap of the Crime King, and his eyes blazed.
The chauffeur of the car they rode in had jammed the accelerator to the floor at the sound of the shooting. They took a corner on two wheels, then the brakes screamed as the car slewed to a halt by the curb in front of the club rooms.
The night was split with the roar of heavy guns, and shattered glass flew from the windows above the sidewalk on the second floor. Van's eyes swept across the glass-windowed front of the club, as he sprang to the sidewalk with Crowley at his heels. He could see dark figures milling and rushing up there.
THEN the Phantom was racing across the sidewalk. Over his shoulder he shouted:
"Have your men cover the rear. There may be a back exit."
While Crowley was issuing the necessary orders, Van raced into a dim doorway and up the stands that led to the club room. The firing had stopped as the siren of the second police car had shrilled its last blast before slewing to the curb.
The Phantom heard the pound of the feet of the policemen on the stairs, as he swung around the bannister at the head of the stairway and headed for the open door. Firing broke out anew just before he reached the door, but this time it seemed to be at the back of the building.
VAN plunged into the room, and as he did, a burst of flame seemed to explode in his face. His head jerked aside, and by some miracle, the bullet missed him. Three men, wearing the hoods of the Crime King's men, had been racing toward the back of the club. One of them had paused, and spent a split second in trying to gun out a hated foe. The attempt cost him his life, for Van's automatic barked once and the man pitched headlong to the floor.
Crowley was at the Phantom's elbow as he plunged across the room, toward the double door where the masked men had whipped out of sight. Just as they reached the door, they heard the staccato rattle of a tommy gun. The inspector cursed savagely under his breath.
"They're shooting their way out with a machine-gun," he yelled. "My men have pistols and shotguns. I hope to God they can stop them."
As if in answer to his prayer, the heavy reverberation of a shotgun sounded over the sharper bark of the automatics. Another shotgun roared in echo to the first.
They could hear the mingled screams and curses, then a rush of feet. Eight or ten figures plunged back into the room before Crowley and the Phantom. Some wore the hoods of the Crime King's men; others were unmasked, evidently members of the Scarponi mob. The guns in their hands blazed on the law officers, and an answering fusillade thinned the ranks of the outlaws.
The Phantom's eyes were busy as he moved like a dark wraith, his gun barking and spewing forth a stream of bullets. Whining lead plucked at the cloth of his coat; a shot went through the crown of his hat. Two gangsters went down before his expert shooting.
But the man he sought, the big bulky figure in the dark clothes, was nowhere in sight. The masked leader of the mob seemed to have disappeared.
Caught between two deadly fires, the gangsters went completely yellow. They dropped their guns, screamed for mercy and lifted their hands. The inspector shouted a command to cease firing, and a sudden stillness settled over the room.
CROWLEY lined the gangsters up against the wall, and the detectives quickly jerked the hoods from the heads of the Crime King's men. The Phantom's eyes raked the faces of the captives. There was not one whom he recognized.
His eyes stabbed at the figures that sprawled on the floor. He saw Phil Scarponi, bleeding from a dozen wounds, and ran to his side. The counterfeiter was trying to drag his riddled body toward a gun on the floor.
The Phantom bent over him, spoke sharply.
"You're going out, Scarponi, you're dying," he snapped. "Tell us who led this raid."
Scarponi's bloodless face contorted in a mask of hatred. His lip lifted in a savage snarl. His voice was barely a whisper as he said: "Go—to—hell!" Then his eyes closed and he slumped on the floor.
A deep sense of frustration burned within the Phantom. Had the Crime King escaped? He whirled to Crowley.
"Unmask these men that are dead," he ordered. "I think our man has escaped."
Detectives ripped the hoods from the men on the floor. The Phantom saw Tim O'Mara's face, a bestial mask of hatred, with a berserk, murderous grin that had remained frozen to his lips when a bullet had pierced his heart. A few feet beyond him lay Wilkerson, his face a bloody mask, and his checkered coat pierced and blood-stained.
The detectives who had been guarding the rear had rushed up the stairs when the firing ceased. Van turned to the sergeant who had been in charge of the rear guard and rapped:
"Did any of them get away, Sergeant?"
"A couple were legging it just as we got around the corner. We fired at them, but I don't think we got them. The others came down at their heels. We didn't have any time to spare on the ones that were getting away."
The Phantom turned to Crowley.
"I don't know, Crowley," he muttered. "I was certain that it was either O'Mara or Wilkerson that was heading this mob. It may be that we've got the Crime King—or he may have been one of the men who got away. Send your prisoners down to Headquarters with one of the squad cars. We'll take a couple of men and start for the Castle right away. If the Crime King did get away, he may head back there."
CROWLEY transmitted the orders to his men, and detailed a man to stay with the bodies of the dead men until the morgue wagon could pick them up.
Then he joined Van in the other police car.
"The fastest way would be by police boat," Crowley snapped as the squad car rolled toward the river.
HURRIEDLY entering the river patrol station, they learned that all three boats were out on patrol. The Phantom swore under his breath, as the lieutenant flashed signal lights ordering one of the boats to return to the station. It was twenty minutes before the signal was caught and answered. Five minutes later a boat roared in at the dock.
The trip up the river was made in grim silence. Crowley and the Phantom were engrossed in their thoughts, each wondering if their chase were over—or whether the criminal genius had again slipped through the fingers of the law.
The police boat made a record trip up the river, and nosed silently ashore at the beach in front of the cliff with the iron door. Van led the way as the police ran up the trail to the road, across the hill and down the valley bottom to the Castle. As they drew near the drawbridge, the Phantom grasped Crowley's arm and pointed toward the door beyond the moat. A faint stream of light showed at the top of the portal.
"There's someone there, Crowley," he rasped. "I've got a hunch that we've reached the end of our trail."
Crowley growled: "Will we rush them, or creep up on the place?"
"Let me go first," the Phantom whispered. "I've been over and I know the way the ground lays. I've got a key that will open that door. You and your men can start as soon as I've got it open. They would hear us if we all charged across the bridge together. And if that door is barred or bolted from the inside, we'll never get in."
Crowley voiced a futile protest, but before he could finish it, the Phantom's rubber-soled shoes were padding noiselessly across the bridge. Van crouched low as he ran, and breathed a little sigh of relief as he gained the entrance. He hadn't been spotted, for the light still gleamed.
His hand darted to his pocket, found the skeleton keys and fitted one into the lock. His fingers trembled a little as he turned the key, and the blood pounded at his temples. Was this to be the end of the long, arduous, dangerous trail? Was the masked leader of the mob inside the Castle?
Slowly the key turned in the lock, then Van's shoulder leaned against the door, swinging it inward. He bent low, and dove across the threshold. As he plunged in, his eyes caught the blur of moving figures. He dropped to his knees and crawled swiftly to the left, as a gun lifted and roared in the hand of one of the hooded figures who was partly shielded behind a pile of boxes. The bullet ricocheted from the stones in the doorway.
Van hit the floor and rolled, snapping to his feet as he reached the shelter of another pile of cases. Bullets smacked into the wood around him, and his automatic roared a defiant answer.
FEET pounded on the drawbridge, and Crowley and the two detectives, together with the two river patrolmen, charged through the door, into a barrage of fire.
One of the detectives went down. The Phantom leaped from behind the pile of cases and his cross fire kept the four men who were in the storeroom ducking behind their impromptu bulwarks.
Crowley had been unharmed in the fusillade that blazed as they came through the door. He spread his men in a skirmish line, and they started closing in on the masked killers. The roar of their guns thundered through the low-ceilinged storeroom.
Van's gun lined on a skulking figure behind one of the piles and his finger squeezed the trigger. The figure pitched out from behind the boxes, and the masked killers were cut down to three.
Then the Phantom saw one of the men racing toward the opposite end of the storeroom. His eyes riveted on the racing figure and a low ejaculation of surprise escaped his lips.
He dashed after the running man, heedless of the bullets that followed his swift movements. The man was running toward the door of the lethal gas chamber, where Van had nearly lost his life.
The man plunged through the door, and was lost from Van's sight. The Phantom reached the door, saw the black pit yawning in front of him and unhesitatingly leaped out into the dark square. He went down and his body went slack as he dropped. His feet hit solidly on the stone floor below, and the force of the drop plunged him to his knees.
In the dim light that streamed down from above, Van could see the mouth of the tunnel. The man he was pursuing must have plunged into the tunnel. There was no place else he could have gone.
VAN whipped across the room, and along the rocky floor of the dark cavern. He had to bend low, and his progress was slow. Ahead of him, he could hear the rattle of the masked man's feet against the stones. As he moved deeper into the tunnel, he could make out the dark outline of the man's figure. The door at the cliff must be open.
Van bent low, and charged forward as he had in his line plunging on his varsity football team. He was closing the gap between himself and the fleeing killer. He could have dropped the man with a shot from his automatic, but Van wanted him alive.
Only a few feet separated them, as the man dove out of the entrance onto the cliff shelf. He whipped around, and Van saw a gun lift in his hand. For a second, the Phantom looked into the face of Death. Then his body surged forward in a low dive, just as the gun roared.
VAN'S shoulders hit his opponent above the knee, swept him backward, and the man screamed in fright as they rolled toward the edge of the ledge. For a second or two there was an empty feeling in the pit of the Phantom's stomach, as they rolled toward the bushes that fringed the lip of stone. Would the force of his tackle carry them both over, and down to the rocky shore below?
The man beneath him struggled furiously, fought now to carry Van with him. The Phantom read his purpose and his hands moved almost as swiftly as his thoughts.
Van's left hand reached out and grasped one of the bushes near the roots that had been cemented into the cliff. He knew now that cement had been used to keep them from being washed away with the furious rush of water that came out of the tunnel after one of the executions. He braced himself for a split second, to stop his rolling sliding flight.
When that had been done, the automatic in Van's right hand swung viciously, as the man in the hood tried again to roll them toward the edge, to take Van to eternity with him. The gun crashed against the black hood. The man's deathly grip relaxed and he went limp.
Van staggered to his feet, and the breath escaped from his lungs with an explosive sound. The masked man had come within an ace of accomplishing his horrible purpose. A few inches more and they would have plunged down to destruction. As he looked down, he saw a rope ladder by which the man had intended to flee.
The Phantom reached down, fastened his fingers in the collar of the checked coat the man wore, and started dragging him back through the tunnel. He could use his flashlight now, and the return trip was easier. Inside the walled room he met Crowley, who had started in pursuit after his men had wiped out the two remaining thugs.
Above, two of the detectives were posted, awaiting word from the inspector if their services were needed.
"So that's where you disappeared to," Crowley grunted as the Phantom emerged from the mouth of the tunnel, dragging the unconscious, hooded form behind him. "And you got your man, too."
"I got him," the Phantom said. "But the problem is getting him up. Will you have your men see if they can find some rope up there?"
"They've already got it," Crowley said. "That's how I got down."
"Fine," said the Phantom. "We'll hoist this fellow up, and then we can climb up ourselves."
Five minutes later their still unconscious prisoner was on the floor above. Crowley looked at the Phantom and asked:
"Who is it—the Big Shot?"
"Yes, it's the Big Shot—Orrin Wilkerson!"
"WILKERSON?" Crowley sputtered. "Are you crazy, man? Wilkerson's dead. Didn't we see him back there at Scarponi's place, dead as a door nail?"
"Wilkerson is the Crime King," the Phantom said levelly. He reached down and unfastened the engraved silver buckle on the belt that Wilkerson wore around his waist. He turned the buckle over in his hand, showed Crowley the inside. The stamped metal bore the signet impression of the crown that had shown on the code message Van had gotten from Artie Dubois. Van took his knife, pried at the edge of the buckle and it split in even halves. A tiny ink pad was concealed inside of the buckle.
"WELL, I'll be darned," Crowley said. "Carried it right with him, all the time."
"I figured that he would," Van said. "When I examined the note under a glass, I saw the indentation that marked the edge of the die that held the signet crown. It looked too big for a square ring, and I didn't think the Crime King would carry a loose signet stamp around in his pocket. I read of a similar stunt in the papers about six months ago, and figured that the Crime King might be using the belt buckle idea. I guess if your men search the place here, they'll find the typewriter that was used to write that message."
"But how did he slip it over on us, about being dead?"
Van pulled the hood off Wilkerson's head. He pointed to the bandage that covered the top of the man's head, and said slowly:
"That gave me quite a start, too, when I saw the checkered suit racing across the floor. I thought I was seeing things—then I remembered that we hadn't actually checked to see if Wilkerson was dead. His head was covered with blood, and we took it for granted that the bullet had gone through his brain. Instead, he got a bad scalp wound, and was smart enough to play dead until he had a chance to make his escape. I wouldn't be surprised if you learn that the man you left with the dead bodies reports that one of the corpses rose up and banged him over the head."
Crowley growled savagely.
"If he did let this baby escape," he grated, "he'll be pounding pavements for the rest of his term of service."
"Don't be too hard on the man, Crowley," Van said. "Remember, he fooled us, too. He's a brainy, designing devil. We've known that all the way through."
"How did he get here ahead of us?"
"He probably had a fast boat at some dock. While we were waiting at the slip for the police boat, he was racing back here, trying to salvage part of his stock-in-trade."
"I'm all in the dark about this," Crowley said as his eyes moved around the cases, "What's in these boxes?"
"Bonds," the Phantom said quietly. "Forged bonds that were counterfeited by artists like Dagmar and Peggy Manning. That's the Crime King's big racket. We've done a better job than we realized, Inspector. This man was aiming the biggest blow at the New Deal that possibly could be struck at the Administration. He had a crew of clever artists forging state and municipal bonds. He was getting ready to flood the country with these counterfeits, and had he succeeded, he would have wrecked the whole financial structure of the country.
"NO one would dare to buy a bond, for fear that it was bogus. The big projects that are being partly financed by the Government would all collapse because the city governments wouldn't be able to do their share in carrying them on. This man intended to clean up millions, by having his staff of trained men spread these bonds all over the country."
"I don't see how he could have worked it," Crowley said. "I'm no financier, but I thought all of these bond issues of the State and Government were bought up by bids from some bank or financial house."
"They are," the Phantom replied. "That's why this racket was so timely. Lots of such bond issues have been made lately. Then the bidders sell the bonds to their customers. But that would have been too slow a process for Wilkerson. He made his clean-up by having his men take these forged bonds to banks as collateral for loans."
CROWLEY swore softly. But his understanding was still incomplete.
"But why all the murders," he questioned. "Montague and Dominick and the others?"
"I figure it out this way," the Phantom said. "Wilkerson had plenty of money and was spending it freely. He hung around night clubs and places like that, looking for suckers. He'd get girls to rope in bankers and brokers or even poor tradesmen with a few hundred dollars, and then either blackmail them into taking a flock of the bogus bonds or else sell them as a legitimate proposition. When the suckers squawked to the girl ropers, they would be enticed to the Hi-de-ho Club, doped and then carried up here where they would be disposed of, unless they enlisted in the Crime King's army."
The Phantom's face twisted with bitterness. "Human life meant nothing to those fiends; they killed anyone who might cause them trouble.
"You see, Wilkerson had an almost perfect plan. He knew that banks are on the lookout for bad money; and bills circulate so much that forgery is recognized almost as soon as the bills are put in circulation. But bonds are bought as investments and are held in safety deposit boxes. With bonds as carefully forged as Wilkerson's, about the only chance of detection comes when the buyer tries to cash the interest coupons. That gave him months to clean up and get out of the country. And those who threatened to squawk—died!"
"Do you think that Montague was roped in that way?" asked the inspector. "He didn't hang around night clubs or play around the bright light boulevards."
"Wilkerson was aiming for big stakes when he sent Peggy Manning up to rope him in. Being the biggest banker in the country, he naturally handled millions in bonds each year. He'd soon discover any big forgery. The scheme was for Peggy to compromise him in some way or other, and then he'd have to cash the bogus bonds, and say nothing to buy his way out of a tough position. But Montague was suspicious after he found that the young artist he was supposed to help was fraternizing with crooks.
"He probably played her along—enough to get an idea of the racket. That was when he sent for me. I think the girl got cold feet and bucked on the proposition. Wilkerson had Montague's house spotted and when he saw me going there, figured that one of his prospective victims was about to turn the tables. I'm sure that Peggy Manning wanted to back out of the blackmail end of it. That's why young Dagmar was killed—because he objected to her playing a dangerous role like that."
CROWLEY'S eyes blazed angrily. He turned toward the unconscious man on the floor, and snarled:
"I've met a lot of heartless crooks in my day, but this devil has them all stopped—"
A startled look showed in Crowley's eyes, and his hand flashed toward the pocket of his trousers. But before he could grab the service revolver that was holstered there, the Phantom had shoved him aside. Two guns roared; and so closely were the shots fired that they seemed like one.
Van's body had jerked sideways as he shoved Crowley. For Van had seen Wilkerson's hand moving with the speed of a striking rattler, and had seen the gun leap into the hand of the master criminal who was feigning unconsciousness. The Crime King's bullet grazed the Phantom's coat.
BUT Van's bullet had sped true and lodged in the chest of the man who would have had to walk to the chair to account for a hundred murders.
Wilkerson's body twitched on the floor. His hand reached up to claw at the bullet hole in his chest. Venomous hatred gleamed in his eyes and his face was a mask of evil as he turned toward the Phantom. His lips flecked with blood and then moved wordlessly. His last breath was expended in heaping a curse at the man he hated.
Van stared at the dead man with bitterness in his eyes.
"I'm sorry I had to do that," he said. "I wanted him to live through the torture that would have come. Shooting is too easy a death for the man who has done what this one dared to do."
Crowley glared malevolently at the corpse. A bitter curse wrung from his lips.
"That's true," he said. "Shooting is too good for a cop-killer, a murderer like him. But—anyway, Dave Dominick's been avenged."
"Yes. Dominick has been avenged. It was really Dominick who put me on the right trail," the Phantom said. "Some of his friends in Little Italy bought those forged bonds. Dominick was working off duty, trying to help his friends. It was through one of them that I got sight of one of the bonds for the first time.
"Then, when I investigated Peggy Manning's apartment, I found the green and white ink that she used. It's a special kind of ink, one that counterfeiters use. When I found it, I knew that she was forging bonds or money. Phil Scarponi was hunting for the same evidence, I guess."
"Then Scarponi was really on the level, in working for the bankers?" Crowley asked in surprise.
"I think that Scarponi wanted to cut in on the deal; and when Wilkerson refused to let him in, he went to the bankers and told them he could get the men who were shoving the forged bonds into their banks. Phil was playing both ends against the middle. He would win either way. If Wilkerson could be bluffed, Phil would cut in on the profits. If the bluff didn't work, Phil could collect a nice fee from the bankers for turning Wilkerson in."
"It was a smart idea—but Scarponi didn't know what he was bucking up against. He took Wilkerson for what he looked like, a big, soft sucker with a smart idea."
"That was part of Wilkerson's racket," explained the Phantom. "None of his men knew who the Crime King really was. That gave Wilkerson an opportunity to get around, as a big butter-and-egg man, and keep a constant check on all of his operatives. He wasn't missing a single trick, whether it was at the Hi-de-ho Club or up here at the Castle. He even had a man in his mob who looked and dressed like him, so no one would suspect his real identity."
Crowley nodded his head, stared at the body on the floor. "Well," he sighed, "I guess there's no doubt now about his being dead. Let's get out of this place. It gives me the creeps."
The Phantom's eyes were somber as they walked out across the drawbridge. The detectives followed, carrying the remains of the Crime King. The procession moved up the hill in silence, but as they reached the top, Van looked at the gloomy, forbidding outline of the Castle. His voice sounded weary, though filled, with the relief of work accomplished, as he said:
"Tomorrow the newspaper reporters will be flocking up here, and pictures of the Castle will be on the front pages of every paper in the country. I hope some editorial writer will be smart enough to give it its right name—The Crime Castle!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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