The Golden Circle

by Lee Falk

  "Go away to where?"

  She folded her arms. "You'll think I'm square and ail-American under my glittering fagade. I was thinking I'd go back home maybe."

  He nodded, concentrating on driving through the Stormy night.

  Mimi asked. "What do you think I ought to do?"

  "What you feel you have to do."

  "Thank you, Zen master," she said. "I mean, Walker, you saved my life. Besides which, you could have turned me over to the cops. Did you find Beth, by the way?"

  "Yes, I did. I'd guess the police have her in custody by now."

  "What about Mara?"

  "Didn't see her," he said. "Once I knew the police had arrived, I left."

  'I thought you might really be going back to see Mara, that you were intending to maybe ditch me," said Mimi. After a moment, she continued, "I'm a crook, too, you know. The same as Beth and Mara."

  "No, not the same." He looked toward her for a few seconds before returning his gaze to the narrow road they were traveling. '1 made a judgment about you, Mimi. I think you can be... salvaged."

  "By you?"

  "By yourself," he said. "All I've done is give you a chance. If you want to talk to Colma and see what happens, or if you want to go back home, it's up to

  "You're washing your hands of me?"

  "I'm giving you a chance, not advice."

  "Okay," she said. "Thanks." She closed her eyes, leaned against the side window. "I'm still puzzled somewhat about your motives, Walker. What's in this for you?"

  "A man was killed," he told her. "I decided the people responsible should be brought to justice. That meant locating Beth and Mara. It also meant, though I didn't know it when I began, breaking up the whole golden arrow setup."

  "But why did you get involved at all, you're not a cop or anything?"

  The Phantom answered, "Because it's what I had to do."

  Wearing a new gray suit, again known as Devlin, the Phantom sat in an easy chair in his rooms at the Woolrich Hotel and watched the morning news on television. On the coffee table were spread the morning papers. The headline on the front page of the New York News said: "Nab Girl Gang on LI." The Times did not mention him at all in its page-fifty-three account of the rounding up of the golden arrow organization. The News made one reference to "a certain mystery man" who might or might not be connected with the gang.

  On the newscast, a black announcer with a very up- to-date mustache was giving a description of the apprehension of the golden arrow girls. He covered the same facts the Phantom had gleaned from the newspaper accounts. Beth had been killed, or was at least presumed dead. All in all, twenty-nine girls had been captured in the raid. It was believed several of them had escaped and they were being sought. The police also promised a crackdown on the fences and underworld figures who had been cooperating with the jewel thieves. So far, mainly through the efforts of Lt. Colma of the New York Police Department's robbery division, well over one million dollars in stolen gems and jewelry had been recovered.

  The Phantom got one final glimpse of Mara. The image of the mustached newsman gave way to some blurred and badly lit footage of several of the girls being taken into a Long Island police station. Mara was one of them. She was still pretty, but she looked very frail and tired.

  He crossed the sunlit room to turn off the set.

  The Phantom stood before the coffee table for a moment, looking down at the newspapers. He picked up the phone and asked the switchboard to place a call for him.

  "Good morning, Fox Kennels."

  "Good morning, this is Mr. Devlin."

  "Oh . . . yes. .. . Ah .. . hold on a minute, please."

  Presently a new voice spoke to him "Uh . . . good morning, Mr. Devlin," said this new man in an overly loud voice. "Well, how are you?"

  "I'm fine," the Phantom replied. "I'd like to pick up my .. . dog sometime this afternoon."

  "Oh . . . this afternoon. Yes . . . uh. Yes, that's fine,

  just fine," said the man. Ill have him all wrapped up ... all ready to go rather. And your bill ... I'll have your bill. This afternoon, you say? Uh . . . about what time exactly, Mr. Devlin, sir? So I can have Devil all shipshape."

  The Phantom smiled to himself. "Three o'clock," he said. "Did you get that? Three this afternoon."

  "Three. Good. We'll see you at three o'clock then, Mr. Devlin."

  The Phantom hung up. "Something is not quite right at Fox Kennels," he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  VerPoorten was stooped over, his head tilted to one side, looking into the wire cubicle in the back room of the Fox Kennels offices. "That's a wolf for sure," he said. "Don't you think?"

  Colma was at the swinging door to the outer office, frowning through the small square of blue glass in the door. "It's eleven minutes after three."

  "Mr. Walker said it was a rare type of African hunting dog," said Mr. Fox. He was a small round man, wearing a white medical-style jacket with a fox-head emblem on the breast pocket. He sat, bouncing nervously every few seconds, on a wooden chair in front of the row of animal cages. "An African hunting dog."

  "Nope, that's a wolf," repeated VerPoorten. 'I remember seeing what you call a documentary film a couple years back about wolves. And this sure is one." He put his head nearer to the cage which held the Phantom's Devil. "Hello, boy. Pretty tame for a wolf, isn't he?"

  "You sure he said three?" Colma asked Fox.

  "Yes, here's the sheet of memo paper I wrote the time on as he spoke to me," said the little round man, waving a yellow slip of paper with the fox-head emblem in its left-hand corner. "As I told the local police, the minute I hung up I phoned them. They, I guess, notified you."

  A loud many-voiced barking began outside. Then came much growling and yelping.

  "What's doing that?" Fox left his chair and bounded to a back window. "Good Lord, the dogs are all running loose. I've got to go round them up before there's serious trouble."

  "I'll give you a hand," offered VerPoorten. He looked toward the lieutenant. "Is that okay? I've got a way with animals."

  "Go ahead," said Colma. "I'll wait here to see if our Mr. Devlin-Walker shows at all, which I'm starting to doubt."

  "He did say three o'clock," insisted Fox as he rushed out the back door into the kennel yards.

  VerPoorten trotted after him.

  Lt. Colma turned his head suddenly to the left. A window had been opened. Down beyond the row of cages. He reached a hand inside his coat toward his gun.

  "Leave it there," suggested the Phantom. He was still wearing the gray suit, and a pair of wraparound dark glasses. He grinned at the lieutenant, walked by him and locked first the door VerPoorten and Fox had used and then the door into the outer office. During all this, the barrel of his automatic never ceased pointing at Lt. Colma. "You wanted to talk to me?"

  Colma pushed his tongue into his cheek, watching the big man. "Yeah, there are a few questions which have been running through my mind."

  "Perhaps I can answer them here," said the Phantom. "A few of them anyway."

  Taking a few steps toward the chair Fox had vacated, the police lieutenant said, "It would be better if you came back to Manhattan and we talked at Centre Street."

  "That won't be possible."

  Colma's stubby hands slapped the side of his wrinkled pants. "Why are you in this thing? You're not a private dick or an insurance cop. I checked all that out."

  "The women on the train," said the Phantom, "brought me into this."

  "You mean you wanted to clear your name, because I suspected you'd knocked off Pieters and swiped his gems?"

  The Phantom laughed. "No, I wasn't worried about my reputation, lieutenant," he said. The look of amusement left his face as he added, "I felt the murder shouldn't go unpunished. Since I knew who'd actually done the killing, I made up my mind to track them down."

  "That was your reason? You didn't, maybe, also want to try a little hijacking operation?"

  "Do you really believe that's what I had in mind?"


  The policeman's hand slapped his sides again. "No, I guess I don't. I guess when you come down to it, I can't figure you at all, Walker. I don't understand your motive."

  "I've told you."

  "A desire to see justice done? Huh," said Colma. "I haven't run into that for a long time." He rested a hand on the back of the chair. "Still, I would appreciate it if you'd come along and make a statement. I can guarantee. . . ." Colma shoved the chair straight at the Phantom. At the same time, he made a diving grab for the Phantom's gun. "I'm going to take you in."

  The Phantom, dodging the chair, sidestepped out of the way of the charging Lt. Colma.

  Colma slammed into an animal cage, causing a poodle to start yelping. One foot shuffling to the left, he swung on the Phantom.

  Once again, his opponent wasn't there.

  I'm sorry we can't continue our talk," said the Phantom. He gave the lieutenant two sharp blows to the side of the neck with the side of his hand.

  Groaning, Colma took three wobbling steps. One knee went slamming into the floor, then the other. Then, he fell over onto his side, unconscious.

  The Phantom tore a sheet of paper from a memo pad on a nearby desk. He pressed his skull ring on it, leaving a skull image printed on the page. Dropping this on the fallen policeman's chest, he turned his attention to Devil.

  "Time to go, Devil," the Phantom said to the gray wolf. With a twist of his powerful wrist, he forced the locked cage door open.

  Devil growled a friendly growl of appreciation at being free and with his master once more.

  "It's the Deep Woods for us," the Phantom told the animal. With Devil at his heels, he went out through the front office and away.

  When VerPoorten returned to the room, he found the lieutenant slumped in the wooden chair, looking very pale. "What's wrong, lieutenant?"

  "Just had a talk with Walker."

  "Where is he? I thought you wanted to persuade him to come back to New York City with us."

  "He wasn't in the mood for that." Colma rubbed at his neck, then held out the slip of paper.

  "Hey, that looks like a face of some kind." The big detective leaned closer. "No, you know what that mark looks like? It looks like a skull."

  Tracing his fingertips over the sign of the skull, Colma said, "Yeah, it does."

  "Is that what you would call a trademark of this Walker guy?"

  Colma didn't immediately speak. "Let's go home," he said after a while.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Some days later, and many thousands of miles distant from New York, the jungle drums beat out a message. "The Phantom is back!" they said. "The Ghost Who Walks has returned!"

  The message went speeding across Bangalla, from the fringes of the capital city of Mawitaan, where the Bangalla Airways jet had set the Phantom down, deep into the most remote stretches of dense jungle.

  Soon the word had penetrated to that part of the jungle where modern civilization has been unable, or perhaps unwilling to reach. To the untamed and mysterious area known as the Deep Woods. It was here, at the very heart of this strange and secret area, that the Phantom's Skull Cave lay.

  The Bandar, the pygmy tribe who were the only people who dared to dwell in the Deep Woods, heard the message, the drums brought.

  And so when the Phantom, dressed again in his tight-fitting costume and mask, set foot once more on the jungle paths of the Deep Woods, with Devil padding beside him, he was greeted by Guran, his longtime friend.

  The little gray-brown man raised a hand in greeting, as did the dozen of his tribe who had accompanied him on this trek to meet the returning masked man.

  "Welcome to your home again, Ghost Who Walks," said Guran.

  "Hello, old friend," replied the Phantom.

  Devil barked a greeting.

  As they began the journey to the Skull Cave, Guran said, "You have been gone longer than I anticipated, Phantom. I feel it was because you have had even more adventures than you expected."

  "That is so, Guran," the masked man said. "Tonight, round the fire,I'll tell you about them."

  The procession continued on its way. When the hot jungle sun was at its highest, they reached the Phantom's cave home. The cave goes deep into the side of a high gray cliff. The jagged mouth of the cave resembles nothing so much as an enormous grinning skull.

  The rest of the Bandar people remained outside, while Guran followed his friend inside.

  For a moment or two, the Phantom paced the familiar cavern which held his skull throne. Then, nodding to himself, he announced to Guran, "I'm going to visit the treasure rooms for a few minutes, old friend."

  Deep within the Skull Cave were the treasure rooms, a minor one and a major one. These rooms held precious stones, gold plates, silver trinkets, ropes of pearls and countless other treasures which had been gathered by the many generations of Phantoms.

  'I will wait here, Phantom," said the little gray- brown man, squatting on the stone floor. "Have you brought back a great new treasure from far-off America?"

  Reaching into his belt, the Phantom held out the golden arrow pin he had first found on the train. "Only this," he answered.

  Guran narrowed his eyes to examine the pin. "Surely that cannot be worth much, Phantom."

  The Phantom's gloved hand closed over the pin. "Several people's lives," he said, "were lost because of this."

  "Is that why you wish to preserve it?"

  "No, I'm keeping it as a memento, Guran. To remind me of some people."

  "The ones who died?"

  "No, two of the ones who lived." The Phantom turned and walked away.

  THE END