The Golden Circle

by Lee Falk

  "Martian," suggested the Phantom, grinning.

  "In a way, yes." Mimi smiled back at him, gave a small shrug. "I don't know. Maybe it's only because you're not like anybody I've met up until now."

  "Running with a gang of jewel thieves can restrict your social opportunities."

  Mimi said, "Don't start a sermon. I heard enough of those back home in . . . well, back home." She crossed to the doorway. "I hope you make it, Walker. YouH get my vote, for what it's worth."

  "A lot," he told her.

  She started to say something more. Instead she turned away.

  "Nothing but familiar faces," said the Phantom when his cell clicked open many hours later.

  This time it was Nita, the black girl who worked 67

  for Sweeney Todd. "Hi. They sent me to fetch you." Lamplight poured in from the corridor, the sun had set. "Come along and stay just ahead of me." She beckoned with the snubnose .32 revolver in her right hand.

  "Everyone's assembled?"

  "Everyone who's going to be."

  "Have they voted already?"

  "Nope, they want to get a look at you first."

  Two other girls were waiting in the corridor, both carrying hand guns.

  The corridor floor consisted of unfinished planking. The stairs at its end had ten steps. The Phantom started toward the swayback steps, with the three girls trailing behind.

  When they were up on the ground floor, Nita told the Phantom, "Walk straight along here and on through the doorway up ahead."

  The upstairs hall was carpeted. There was a pale rose and a thorn pattern underfoot. An authentic looking Tiffany lamp glowed on a sandlewood table midway along. The Phantom became aware of talking on the other side of the carved wooden door.

  When he turned the gold knob, the talking ceased abruptly.

  An intense glare hit him when he stepped into the big meeting room. All the light was concentrated on a circle in the center of the floor. Tiers of seats rose up in circles around the brightly fit area. It was like an operating theater. "And I'm the patient," said the Phantom.

  "What?" Nita pushed him toward the desk and chair which were the only pieces of furniture in the glaring circle.

  "I get the feeling I'm going to be operated on."

  "Maybe so," said Nita. "Go and stand by the desk."

  The low-hanging overhead fights burned directly

  down on him. He was aware of many women seated all around him. He could sense them, at least two dozen or more. A few of them shifted in their chairs, some whispered. A complex mixture of several par- fumes drifted down to him, along with wisps of cigarette smoke.

  The Phantom's jungle life in the Deep Woods had developed many characteristics in him. One was patience. He stood calmly beside the desk, waiting. Not uneasy, not restless. Simply waiting.

  As the minutes passed, the whispering changed to murmuring. The masked man caught an assortment of comments about himself coming down out of the circling darkness.

  Then Mara, wearing a dark floor length gown, was beside him. She held up one slim hand and silence returned. "Sisters," she announced, "this is Walker. You've already heard him discussed. Now you have had a chance to study and appraise the man. All that remains is to vote."

  She took hold of the Phantom's hand, leading him to the edge of the circle of light Pressing his hand, she whispered, "Good luck."

  Nita met him in the shadows. "We go back downstairs."

  Out in the hallway, the Phantom asked, "Don't you get to vote?"

  "I already filed an absentee ballot."

  "Pro or con?"

  "What do you think?" She nudged him ahead with her gun.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mara lit a lavender tinted cigarette. From the window beside her she could look out on the Sound. Their big old Victorian house stood on the edge of a cliff, three hundred feet above the beach. The water was a glistening black and across it the Connecticut coastline was only a few faint pinpricks of light. Exhaling smoke, she returned her gaze to the five other women in the room. "It's not that at all," she insisted.

  Beth, a gaunt colorless woman of fifty-six, shook her head. She was sitting unright in a hardback wooden chair she always chose when the ruling six of the golden arrow circle had their meetings in this library. "Certainly, it is," she said in a low voice. "You've developed . . . developed what I can only characterize as a schoolgirl crush on this man. Because of that you want us to jeopardize the entire organization. We've had, as I shouldn't have to remind you, two very successful years. We did what we did with a minimum of masculine assistance."

  Seated at a small drop-front desk was Mimi. Twenty-five unfolded slips of paper were scattered on the blotter in front of her. "Beth, the girls don't seem to agree with you. The vote was unanimous. They all want Walker to join the golden arrow."

  "Walker," snorted the gaunt Beth. "I'm beginning

  to wonder if we were wise to include you on the governing body of this organization, Mimi. Sometimes you act as moonstruck and immature as the rawest recruit." She plucked a tiny cigar out of her coat pocket, lit it with a bullet-shaped lighter. "All the sisters know about Walker is what you and Mara told them. Most of that, I must remind you, is based entirely on what the man himself chose to tell. Any attorney worth his salt would call that nothing more than hearsay evidence."

  Mara said, "You've just admitted we've been highly successful, Beth. That success isn't based on your judgment alone, you know. It's been due to all of us, the six of us in this room in particular."

  The three other women, who had been silent up until now, murmured their agreement.

  "I'd say I'm a pretty good judge of people," continued the blonde Mara. "I feel Walker will be valuable to us."

  "Feel," snapped the gaunt woman. "There's the real rub, dear Mara. You feel but you do not think. You accept this man simply on his word, without doing one single bit of checking. For all you know he's a police stooge, someone planted on us."

  "The cops tried to shoot him at the masked ball," Mimi pointed out. "They don't do that with their usual undercover men."

  Beth sucked on her little cigar. "Our old friend, Lt Colma, is not above staging an incident Bullets are relatively cheap."

  "Come on now, Beth," said Mara. "If Colma, or anyone else in the robbery division, so much as suspected any of us, he would have been much more obvious that this. He's a blunt man, fast-acting."

  "So you believe," said Beth.

  Mimi placed both her hands flat on the ballots. "Why don't we aim for a compromise, Beth? Since

  everyone except you would like to have Walker join, why not let him and ..

  "I fail to see a compromise in that, Mimi."

  "I'm coming to that," said the dark girl, tossing her head impatiently. "We can let Walker join on a trial basis. Say for a week or two. It shouldn't be too tough to keep an eye on him, monitor his actions."

  "It would be much safer," said Beth as she blew smoke toward the shadowy ceiling, "to drop him into the underground river which runs underneath this place and let him disappear into the Sound. Much safer, and a damn bit smarter."

  Mimi said, "He can't do us any great harm in a week."

  "That's what they said about the Trojan Horse." Beth held the cigar between her small even teeth and cracked her knuckles.

  "We've made concessions to you in the past, Beth," reminded Mara. "Why can't you...."

  "Very well," said the gaunt woman in a resigned voice. "Let your buddy boy join. But, mind you, if he makes one false move, I won't wait for any more votes. I'll shoot him down where he stands."

  "Did I wake you?" asked Mimi. She was standing in the doorway of the Phantom's cell.

  The masked man shook his head. "No."

  The dark girl took three steps forward, smiling. "You made it, Walker. Welcome to the club," she told him. "It was ... it was unanimous."

  The Phantom said, "You hesitated. Do I have some opposition?"

  "Well, you might as well know it, since
youH find out soon enough. Beth doesn't like the idea at all."

  "Sounds like Beth simply doesn't like me," he said, "I guess I didn't impress her during our brief meeting on the train. Or last night when she tried to crack my skull."

  "Beth is . . . well, sort of strange," said Mimi. "She's very clever really, much more so than I am. She's very good at the logistics end of our business."

  "A criminal mastermind?" suggested the Phantom.

  "Almost," said the girl. "Anyway, watch out for her. She's got the notion you're some sort of fake. A cop, maybe."

  The Phantom laughed. "Law and order is the furthest thing from my mind. What I'm interested in is the size of my percentage."

  A cough sounded in the corridor. "So this is where you've wandered to, Mimi." The blonde Mara came, tentatively, into the cell. '1 hope I'm not intruding."

  "Mimi brought me the good news," said the Phantom.

  Mara said, "I believe you have a few things to take care of upstairs still, Mimi. I've come to show Walker to his new quarters." She came over and took the masked man by the arm. "Now that you're a member of the firm, we can't have you sleeping in a dungeon."

  "I can show him to his new room," said Mimi.

  "There's no need," said Mara. "I'll do that. You run along and tackle the jobs you deserted to sneak down here."

  After the dark girl had departed, the Phantom said to Mara, "Go easy with Mimi. She's on my side. I understand that isn't the case with all the members of your board of directors."

  "You don't have to worry. Everything will work out line. I know I'm right about you," said Mara. "I have a feeling this is one of the most important things I've clone in a long while."

  "That it is," agreed the Phantom.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Stubbing out his cigarette in his saucer, Lt. Colma said, "I'm getting so I can smoke them only halfway down. I'm coming closer to kicking the habit entirely."

  "My sister-in-law in Yonkers tried that," said VerPoorten.

  "Did it work?"

  "She got so worried and upset about wasting all that tobacco, she took to drink."

  "Huh," said the stocky lieutenant. He and his detec- tive partner were having breakfast in a narrow little cafe a few blocks from their Centre Street office. It was the second day after the theft of the Eye of Isis. "Let's take another look at the statements of those nitwits who were milling around the old dame when the damn stone got grabbed."

  Taking a wad of yellow second sheets out of his coat pocket, the big VerPoorten handed them across the booth table. '1 brought them along."

  Colma was waving toward the cafe counter. "More coffee, Eli, huh?" He tapped the streaky formica with the papers several times before looking at them. "Most people don't see anything," he observed as he began flipping through the thin pages.

  "They're not what you call perceptive."

  "Yeah, right. They . . . huh! Here's something I

  didn't catch before." His finger jabbed at a paragraph.

  VerPoorten adjusted his large body on the small booth bench in an effort to read upside down. "What's

  it say?"

  "One of the guys . . . that fag in the butterfly costume ... noticed something."

  "Some of those gay ones have a good eye for detail."

  "Here it is. 'There was one girl standing quite near poor dear Corky. . „ .* That's what they call the old dame, Corky. Huh. '. . . poor dear Corky. When the lights were turned on, she was gone. Well now, sergeant. ...' He thought you were a sergeant. 'Well now, sergeant, I don't wish to point the accusing finger unjustly, but I'd venture to say... .' Blah blah and so forth. Okay, here comes the thing I should have seen before. He's describing the girl. '. . . and the loveliest little gold pin on her bosom, sergeant. Beautifully fashioned in some strange looking gold. An arrow crossing a circle. I noticed it right off and made a mental note to ask the little thing wherever she. , . You see?"

  VerPoorten was watching Eli, the cafe proprietor, refill their coffee cups. "Can't say I do, lieutenant."

  "The pin." Colma slapped the page in his hand. "The damn pin."

  After a second or two of looking blank, the big VerPoorten snapped his fingers. "On the train. Right?"

  "Right. That guy Walker showed me a pin like that, golden arrow and a circle," said Lt. Colma. "He said one of the mysterious dames dropped it."

  "And now the gal who maybe swiped the ruby is wearing one," said the detective. "That's no coincidence."

  "Can't be." He tossed the yellow sheet across the (able. "Go talk to this fag again. Get him to draw you a picture of the damn pin. Then start checking it out

  I want to find out who makes pins like that, who sells them, and who buys them."

  After stuffing the page back into a coat pocket, VerPoorten said, "Could mean a lot of checking."

  "Yeah," said the lieutenant. He slouched ba against the booth wall. He'd shaved in a hurry this morning and there was an overlooked clump of stubble on his left jaw. He fingered it now while he sipped his coffee. "Eli's coffee is almost as rotten as ours."

  "I think he got the recipe from somebody over Center Street."

  "Huh," said Colma. "Three girls on the train, another girl at the charity thing. I wonder."

  "Think maybe we got some new kind of gang going, nothing but women?"

  "It's crazy," said Colma, 'Taut then a lot of things are these days. Take the Walker guy. I can't figure him at all."

  "He could be working with the gang."

  Shaking his head, Colma said, "I don't read it that way."

  "He was on the train. He was at the costume ball."

  The lieutenant slapped the statements again. "Nobody saw him anywhere near the old Mott-Smith dame."

  "Every guy involved in a heist isn't standing on top of the victim."

  "Granted." Rolling up the yellow sheets of paper, Lt. Colma rested his chin on them. "This Walker guy . . . no, I don't quite figure him as a jewel thief. Don't ask me why." His chin ticked up and down a few times. "He didn't have his wolf with him at the party."

  "I noticed."

  "Where was it?"

  "Waiting in his car?"

  "Maybe," said Colma. "And maybe he left it someplace, someplace like a kennel. I'd like to have the

  kennels and vets between here and Thornburg checked out. Get in touch with the appropriate people."

  "You'd like to bring Walker in?"

  Lt. Colma didn't answer at once. 'I don't know," he said finally. "I'd like to talk to the guy anyway. Yeah, I d like to do that"

  CHAPTEr FIFTEEN

  The sand on the narrow beach was pale yellow, flecked with colored pebbles. A mild morning wind was blowing across the Hue-green water. From down here on the beach the big Victorian house seemed almost to be teetering on the edge of the cliff high above. Further down the private stretch of beach a wide stream rushed from the eliffside to the Sound. This was the open end of the underground river that flowed beneath the house of the golden arrow.

  "Here she comes at last," said Mimi, pointing at the weathered wooden stairway that wound down the steep hillside to the beach.

  The Phantom, in slacks, golf pullover, and dark glasses, was standing next to the dark girl. "We can get started then," he said.

  The gaunt Beth was making her way slowly down the twisting stairs. In one hand she carried a thin stick, a dry branch broken from one of the many trees that dotted their three acres of grounds.

  Mara sat in a striped canvas beach chair smoking and watching the lapping waves. When she'd arrived on the beach a few minutes earlier she'd found Mimi and the Phantom in conversation. Saying nothing she'd walked to the green and white chair and dropped into it.

  The three other women in the ruling circle were her e, too. Silent, as usual, and watchful.

  When Beth's foot touched the sand she said, loudly, You're all absolutely sure you want buddy boy to sit In on this session?"

  That's all been settled, Beth," said Mara, still watching the ocean.
r />   The gaunt woman shrugged. "Very well, it's out of my hands."

  The Phantom watched her making her way across the beach. "I thought we were gathered here to plan a job," he said. "So far this sounds more like a soap

  opera."

  Beth halted, pointed the stick at him, thrusting it hard against the air. "Nobody's asking you to attend, buddy boy."

  "I'm asking me to attend," he replied. "And before we get to new business, I'd like a couple of answers. For one, what's my cut on this next caper going to be?"