Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 14]

by The Assassins (v0. 9) (epub)

  The idol’s face was a grinning bulgy-eyed gargoyle of horror, but the body itself was an instrument of death and destruction. The goddess Seva was a many-armed deity, symbolizing the “many arms” of the Assassins who worshipped her. Each arm was extended like the spoke of a wheel, with a sharp knife clenched in the fist. The many arms of Seva were mounted on a wheel that rotated mechanically and was controlled by a switch concealed in the idol’s body at the rear.

  The knives rotated harmlessly as the wheel turned slowly—all but one.

  That one arm extended out from the others, plunging downward onto the death couch in front of the idol. On this couch, a sacrificial victim could be secured by straps and chains until the machine within the goddess Seva’s body whirred and plunged the blade into the victim’s heart.

  Sheik-al-Jabal Hara Kali brooded in front of the ancient idol, touching his chin with his fingers, then slowly pacing back and forth.

  “Bah! My men are errant fools,” Kali said to himself. “They’ve allowed that man to wander all over the island—in the radio shack, on the dock, in the dungeons. It’s a wonder he hasn’t found Diana Palmer and freed her. But, of course, he would have to break into her cell to do that—and then where would he take her?”

  Kali’s eyes glittered.

  “To stop him, I can’t rely on my men anymore. I must flush him out myself.”

  Kali ceased his pacing, staring at the idol in the gloom before him.

  “Seva! My goddess of murder! Just the one to help me find this elusive, invisible Phantom!”

  His voice echoed in the chamber.

  “Ibn!”

  Soon the bald-headed Assassin approached. His hairless head was now patched with a large bandage on the spot where he had been knocked unconscious in the radio shack.

  “I come, sire.”

  “Get Diana Palmer.”

  Ibn’s eyes widened. “I advise against that, Jabal Kali. The Phantom—he will know!”

  “Yes,” muttered Kali. “Get her, fooi!”

  Ibn inclined his head and left the chamber.

  When he returned, he brought Diana Palmer with him. Diana’s face was pale and shadowed. Kali approached one of the oil lamps in the wall and touched his cigarette lighter to it. The wick took flame and brightness poured from the lamp, casting enormous shadows in the room.

  He turned to observe Diana.

  She was a beautiful creature. Perhaps he should give up his idea of ransoming her, he thought, and take her as his queen.

  “What do you want?” she snapped at him, her eyes terrified at the sight of the bloodstained idol.

  “My dear, it is good to see you. I have been wondering how to make use of your presence here. Now I have finally decided.”

  “And how is that, Mr. Kali?” Diana asked sarcastically.

  “In the old days we made living sacrifices here to this goddess of the many arms. I’ve been thinking of reviving the ancient custom.”

  Diana shuddered. “No! How can you?”

  “Very easily, my dear. Ibn! Seize her and strap her to the sacrificial couch!”

  The bald-headed Assassin bowed and grasped Diana by the arms. She screamed and jabbed her elbows into his stomach, but he lugged her grimly toward the stone idol and threw her down on the couch, then quickly grabbed the straps, thrust her wrists through the loops and tightened the cinches.

  “Don’t do this to me!” cried Diana. “You’ll never get your ransom money now!”

  Kali smirked. “Won’t I? Who’ll know?”

  Ibn thrust Diana’s ankles through the leg straps and pulled the cinches tightly. Diana gasped and struggled against the grip of the leather thongs. She only succeeded in twisting her blouse and skirt around her straining body.

  “Doesn’t she make a beautiful sight on the sacrificial couch?” gloated Kali. “Let us leave our goddess in solitude, fellow Assassins. When we return, the victim will be destroyed.”

  He leaned over and pressed the hidden switch button behind the stone idol. The goddess Seva’s many arms began their slow rotation.

  Kali smiled at Diana and slowly walked through the gloom with his men.

  “Help!” screamed Diana.

  It was obvious to the Phantom where the activity in the castle was centered. He had followed the first of the Assassins into the darkened recesses of the dungeon chambers, the torture chambers, and then into the sacrificial room. By keeping to the outside of the castle, he could peer in through the narrow window slits and watch what went on inside.

  He saw Kali brooding in front of the goddess Seva with her many-handed wheel of death; he heard Kali send for Diana; he saw them strap Diana to the sacrificial couch, turn on the machine and leave.

  He saw the knife arm of the goddess Seva begin its slow revolution toward Diana’s breast, and that was the moment he ran through the shadows, entered the sacrificial room from the side and pounded across the floor to the diabolical machine.

  “Oh, darling!” gasped Diana. “Hurry!”

  In moments, the Phantom had unstrapped Diana Palmer and held her in his arms. The descending knife plunged into the place where Diana’s body had lain and the wheel stopped with a shudder.

  “Look out!” cried Diana, pointing over the Phantom’s shoulder.

  The Phantom wheeled, still holding her. There stood Kali, with Baldy and Crewcut beside him. As the Phantom debated his next move, a group of six Assassins he had not seen grabbed him from behind, smothering him with the press of their bodies.

  He went down.

  Diana was snatched from him, screaming.

  The Phantom lost consciousness as the pummeling fists of the Assassins smashed into his skull and body.

  He revived to find himself flat on the sacrificial couch, his hands bound in leather thongs, his ankles trussed tightly.

  He was not alone.

  Kali stood above him, a cigarette slowly burning in the ivory holder, his monocle flashing in the flickering flames of the oil lamp in the wall niche.

  “So,” Kali mused. “You avoided all my traps until I used the most irresistible bait in the world, eh?”

  “Yes,” snapped the Phantom, pulling at the thongs, which he knew were far sturdier than hempen ropes.

  “You suspected this was a trap, is that right?” the gloating Kali continued.

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you came,” Kali chuckled. “How stupid of you. Shakespeare was wrong when he said, ‘Men have died, but not of love.’ You will!”

  The Phantom smiled. “It’s as good a reason as any.”

  Then iH the shadows behind the leader of the Assassins, the Phantom saw Diana, crying morosely against the wall.

  “Oh, Kit!” she wailed.

  Kali flicked the ashes off his cigarette and turned to Diana. “You shall remain here while the goddess chooses to destroy your lover. Do you think you’re worth all the trouble you’ve put this brave man to?”

  “You’re a beast,” sobbed Diana. “A beast! No better than Toto!”

  “Better than Toto,” chortled Kali. “At least I have not been bamboozled by the Phantom.” He sneered the word. “Phantom! He’s just another man like the rest of us mortals.”

  “Not like the rest of you,” Diana said defiantly.

  “We’ll see.” Kali leaned down over the Phantom. “I sent out my men because I’m curious about you. Are you really four hundred years old? Are you the mythical Phantom?”

  The Phantom smiled but said nothing.

  “Your silence is deafening,” said Kali, laughing at his own joke. “No matter. My only interest in you is to see you good and dead. At once!”

  Diana came out of the shadows. “Mr. Kali! Don’t do it. Please. I’ll do anything to save him.”

  Kali turned to her scornfully. “No, my dear. You will do nothing to save him. The goddess wants his blood.” Kali leaned over the back of the idol. “I press this button, the arms revolve, all missing you until the long arm reaches you. My followers are superstitious. You’
ve terrorized them with your tricks. I must undo all that.”

  There was the sound of whirring and grumbling. Slowly the arms began to revolve on the wheel of death.

  Diana Palmer burst into tears.

  The knife slowly descended toward the Phantom’s chest. He watched it, unable to move from the death couch. The point was inches from his chest.

  “Have you anything to say?” Kali asked the Phantom.

  “Yes! You Assassins are finished.”

  Kali chuckled. “What colossal nerve. If I didn’t loathe you so much, I think I could almost admire your steel nerve.”

  The knife descended toward the Phantom’s body and he tensed his muscles, unable to stop it. In a moment now, it would pierce his heart and ...

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Watching the knife in Seva’s mechanical arm move toward the chest of the Phantom, Sheik-al-Jabal Hara Kali leaned forward expectantly, his monocle almost slipping from his eye in his eagerness.

  A jarring explosion ripped through the rock upon which the Crusader castle was built, making the ancient stone walls tremble and shake. There was sufficient force from the impact to throw Kali to the floor.

  “What was that?” a voice shouted in the gloom.

  “The Phantom is bringing the castle down around our ears!” Abu shrieked, and began running for the doorway.

  “Fools!” Kali cried, rising and staring about him in rage and puzzlement. “Stay!”

  At that moment another explosion rocked through the castle. The blast’s epicenter seemed somewhat removed from the immediate area.

  Kali sniffed the air, alert as a hunting dog. “Cordite! It’s gunpowder.”

  A third explosion followed, this one nearer still. Now Kali was moving quickly toward the doorway of the sacrificial chamber, reaching up to adjust his monocle.

  “It’s an attack on the island,” cried a disheveled Assassin who rushed in toward Kali, waving his hands in the air. He seemed more than half crazed by fear.

  “Stop, fool,” snapped Kali. “Tell me the facts.”

  “We’re at war,” shouted the Assassin. “Huge warships are In the harbor. Dive bombers. It’s Armageddon.”

  Kali flinched, but held his ground. “Go back into the open, and tell my men to assemble at the rear of the castle. We’ll repel the would-be invaders, if that’s what they are. Ibn!” he shouted. Get to the artillery positions in the rock. Hurry! We’re being invaded.”

  “Yes, sire.” Ibn rushed out into the corridor.

  “Who could have discovered our presence here?” Kali wondered aloud as he hastened through the darkened hallways toward the rear of the castle. “They’ll learn how hard it is to dislodge warriors from a fortress rock.”

  From the shadows of the sacrificial chamber, Diana Palmer ran across the stone floor to the mechanical idol of the goddess Seva. The Phantom turned his head, watching her.

  “Darling!” she cried. “How do I turn the infernal thing off?”

  The Phantom shook his head. “I don’t know, Diana. I saw Kali bend over behind the idol.”

  Diana was weeping during her frenzied attempts to shut the torture device off. She stumbled and finally came to the side of the pedestal.

  “I can’t find it!” she wailed, groping in the darkness for the switch.

  “It’s a button,” the Phantom explained coolly.

  The knife blade touched his chest; he could feel the pressure of the machine behind the blade.

  “A button?”

  The knife went into the Phantom’s suit, cutting it, gashing the flesh.

  “Yes,” said the Phantom, gritting his teeth against the pain. He exhaled all the breath from his chest, bringing the level of his body down at least two inches.

  The blade continued its inexorable movement.

  “I don’t—I can’t-—oh, my darling! I can’t find it—I—”

  The blade pierced the Phantom’s chest just as the machine clanked to a stop.

  “Is that it?” Diana asked in wonder, rising, her face streaked with tears.

  “Yes!” The Phantom tried to roll out from under the blade, but could not. “Get me out of these straps!”

  Diana tugged at the leather thongs, and once again there were explosions that shook the castle.

  “What’s happening out there?” Diana wondered.

  “The island is being attacked by Prince Tydore’s men,” said the Phantom with a faint smile.

  “Who is Prince Tydore?” Diana asked.

  The Phantom pulled his wrists from the loosened straps and rolled out from under the knife, then leaned down and unfastened his ankles. He sat on the edge of the sacrificial couch rubbing his wrists and trying to restore circulation to his numbed limbs.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “But you’re all right now!” Diana blinked back more tears.

  “You’ve saved my life, Diana,” said the Phantom gently. Then he jumped to his feet. “I’ve got to help the invaders smash the Assassins. You stay here where it’s safe.” The Phantom bolted for the door of the sacrificial chamber.

  The shelling of the island began just before dawn, and the final shot was fired not two hours later. Elements of the French navy, patrolling the waters off Tydia, which had been a French protectorate, were able to blast out the gun batteries and smash every military position on the island by means of landing barges, armed marines, and air assault.

  There was very little loss of life on either side. Kali’s Assassins, though skilled in subterfuge, were not adept at open military fighting. They ran when the odds turned against them, no matter how persistently Kali tried to rally them to fight.

  After the gun batteries were seized, spiked, or destroyed, the Assassins were hunted down, disarmed, tied up and removed to the brig of the fleet flagship. Kali was missing.

  The Phantom brought Diana up into the sunlight, at which she blinked briefly until her eyes were accustomed to the brightness of day that her imprisonment had denied her.

  “Darling,” she said. “It’s all over!”

  “We haven’t found Kali yet,” said the Phantom.

  At the height of the mop-up operations, the two of them met Prince Tydore accompanying his marines in the courtyard of the castle.

  “There you are, Mr. Walker,” Prince Tydore exclaimed upon seeing the Phantom.

  The Phantom introduced Diana to Prince Tydore, briefly explaining about the attempted kidnapping of the Royal Princess and Royal Prince.

  “Can you imagine?” Prince Tydore said. “This island is under my domain, and the Assassins have been here all the time. That’s why they chose me to extort money from. I’ll destroy all traces of this infestation.”

  A marine officer rushed up. “We’ve found Kali, Your Highness,” he reported. He explained that Kali had been captured at his post in the main gun batteries next to the Crusader castle after all his men had deserted him.

  In a moment, the monocled crimson-robed fanatic was brought to stand before Prince Tydore and the Phantom.

  “Ah, Your Highness,” Kali muttered with a charming smile. “I heard how you hid in a closet while my men searched for you in the Royal Suite.”

  “Laugh while you can,” snapped Prince Tydore.

  “So you won after all,” Kali acknowledged woodenly, glancing at the Phantom and then briefly at Diana. “Would you mind telling me how, for future reference?”

  The Phantom stepped forward. “You have no future, Kali. You and your Assassins are finished.”

  “Hmph,” sniffed Kali.

  “Take him away,” Prince Tydore ordered loftily. He turned to the Phantom. “And now that we are finished here—will you bring me my daughter?”

  Diana Palmer turned to the Phantom. “His daughter?”

  “The Princess Naji,” said the Phantom. “She’s at the Cave of Skulls.”

  Diana’s face drained of color. “But—”

  “Prince Tydore, would you take care of Miss Palmer while I get Princess Naji?”
<
br />   “Certainly.”

  “I’ll bring her to your palace.” The Phantom turned to Diana. “Then I’ll take you home to America.”

  On the flight from Bangalla to Tydia, the Phantom recounted the seizure of the island where Kali’s kidnappers had hidden out, including his rescue of Diana Palmer.

  “Who’s she?” asked Princess Naji, watching the Phantom’s face closely.

  “Just a girl,” said the Phantom.

  When they landed at the airport near the capital of Tydia, a huge cavalcade of Tydian military escorted them to the palace. Princess Naji waved to her subjects with the Phantom at her side.

  Prince Tydore and his daughter were reunited in a gay and elaborate ceremony, which included the aged and bedridden king, her grandfather.

  Suddenly, the Phantom found himself alone with Princess Naji and Diana Palmer in a small chamber adjoining the throne room.

  “Well?” said Diana Palmer, meaningfully.

  “Well, what?” the Phantom mumbled. He didn’t like the vibrations in the room.

  “Introduce me,” Diana demanded frostily.

  The Phantom turned to Princess Naji. He was taken aback by the icy glint in her eyes as she surveyed Diana Palmer. It was odd. Everybody else liked Diana.

  “Your Royal Highness, this is Diana Palmer,” the Phantom said, feeling perspiration trickle off his forehead.

  “Indeed,” said Princess Naji distantly.

  “And this is Princess Naji,” said the Phantom.

  Diana’s face was carved out of stone. She was staring at the Princess of Tydia with blood-curdling hostility.

  “Just a girl,” remarked Princess Naji, glancing with scorn at the Phantom.

  “I beg your pardon?” The Phantom could feel the Princess’s indignation.

  “She’s very beautiful,” said the Princess, forcing the words out.

  “Of course,” said the Phantom, baffled at the Princess’s remarkable hostility.

  “And she was in the Cave of Skulls?” Diana Palmer snapped bitingly at the Phantom, her eyes cutting Princess Naji like diamond on glass.

  “Why, yes,” said the Phantom, suddenly flustered. “Say, you don’t think there was anything—uh, like that—going on, do you, Diana?”