The silhouettes of different types of dust, Van knew, were different. He looked again at the label of the bag from which this dust had come, then abruptly he got up, lighted a cigarette, and paced his laboratory, deep in thought. He had run across one of the most interesting leads he’d met in the whole case.
The jangling of the telephone roused him from his reverie. It was Frank Havens of the Clarion, his voice crackling with emotion.
“Van, the big break has come! I’ve got a visitor who wants to see you. Simon Blackwell’s housekeeper — you remember, the old woman — is here asking for the Phantom. She won’t tell me what she wants; but she hints that she’s representing her master. She knows where he is, I think.”
“Good!” said Van. “That will be one point cleared up, anyway.”
“But don’t you get it?” snapped Havens. “It’s a trap obviously — a trap for you! It can’t be anything else. This woman is working with the Chief to bring about the death of the Phantom.”
“You think so?”
“I do, certainly. But you can turn the tables against him. You can outwit this woman into making her betray her master.”
“There’s only one trouble with that,” Van answered. “It would take time — lots of it. And right now I’ve got something else on my mind — a direct clue to the Chief’s whereabouts. I’m practically certain he plans another murder tonight.”
“Where is he?” asked Havens. “If you know why not go get him?”
“To convince the police that I have the right man,” said Van tensely, “I’ve got to catch the Chief red-handed.”
“How?”
“Just this way,” said Van. “Judd Moxley’s coming out of prison tonight. He’s the one I think the Chief has marked for murder. So Moxley mustn’t leave the pen. It’s as much as his life’s worth. I want you to call up Farragut and ask him to meet me immediately in your office. I’m going to make arrangements to impersonate Moxley and leave jail in his place.”
CHAPTER XVIII
DEATH IN THE DARK
LATER, they met in Havens’s office, and Inspector Farragut shook his head.
“I’m against it!” he announced positively. “It’s dangerous as hell, Phantom, besides being unethical. Caulder’s dying and wants to see his cousin. You can’t play a trick like that with a man on his deathbed.”
Van shoved his hands in his pockets. His face was troubled.
“I know it seems like a dirty hoax, Inspector. But I’ll do my best to make Caulder think I’m his cousin visiting him. If I can make it stick he’ll be satisfied. Meantime we’ve got to consider that a man’s life’s at stake. I swear I’ve definite grounds for believing that Moxley’s marked as the next victim.”
Farragut frowned. “Havens here says that Blackwell’s old housekeeper wants to see you. She’s hinted that she knows where Blackwell is and has a message from him. We all think Blackwell’s the Chief. Why not get a little tough with her and make her lead us to him?”
“She wouldn’t,” snapped Van. “Not even if you used third degree methods. I sized that woman up the night we were out there. She’s loyal to her boss. It’d take patience, argument, and a lot of time to find out what she knows. And time is one thing we can’t spare, Inspector. Moxley will be leaving prison in less than an hour. How about it? Do I impersonate him, or are you willing to have another murder on your hands?”
Farragut weakened under Van’s steady gaze. He respected the Phantom’s judgment too much to keep on blocking him. He shrugged at last.
“Okay, Phantom,” he grumbled, “but you’d better let me go along with you to explain things to the warden and to Moxley.”
Van agreed willingly. There was a big possibility that Moxley might not take to his plan. If persuasion were necessary Inspector Farragut could help in his official capacity as Homicide Squad head by making Moxley realize his danger.
They took Farragut’s own car, a trimly uniformed police chauffeur at the wheel, and raced through the night with siren blaring till they got outside the city limits. Farragut’s face still showed disapproval.
He spoke grumblingly again.
“I’m not reconciled yet. You’ll be running a hell of a risk. We don’t know how or when the Chief will strike.”
His words echoed Van’s own thoughts. He didn’t know either just how or when the Chief would strike. If he made a miscalculation this time it might easily result in his own murder. He felt sure the Chief would attack again tonight somehow, somewhere. He had an idea — They rode on in silence for many minutes. Then Van was jerked out of his grim reverie by the squalling of the police car’s brakes. They’d been tearing over the State highway at a sixty-mile-an-hour clip. Now something white showed up under the long beam of their headlights in the exact center of the road. So great was their momentum that the police chauffeur had all he could do to stop before they reached it.
But Van, eyes hawklike, already saw that that white thing was a human figure. A woman! She was wearing a light polo coat. She lay half across both lanes of concrete, her silk-clad legs in one of them, her shoulders, arms and hatless head in the other. It seemed that she must have fallen or been thrown from a speeding car.
The sedan came to a stop twenty feet from her, and the chauffeur tooled it off to the side of the road. They all leaped out, eyes intent on that prone figure. It was a lonely stretch of highway, with barren ground and scrub thickets on both sides. Was this, Van wondered, another victim of cold-blooded murder?
“A girl,” breathed Farragut. “Look at that figure and those legs!”
They couldn’t see her face. Her head was turned away and covered by streamers of dark, wind-blown hair. Farragut spoke again as they reached her.
“She’s tied up! Her ankles and wrists are wired. She looks — dead.”
Horror gnawed at the Phantom’s mind. The girl seemed young, attractive. In trying to prevent one murder it looked as though they’d stumbled on the victim of another. But his feelings changed a moment later, when he stooped and touched her. For his hands encountered warm, yielding flesh.
“Not dead,” he said. “Knocked out or wounded.”
Farragut caught hold of the girl, too, and they lifted her easily. The muscular tension of her lithe body told Van at once that she was conscious, aware of what they were doing. They got her face into the beam of the car’s headlights, and then Van gasped.
She was pale, drawn, her eyes filled with abject terror. Adhesive tape had been plastered over her lips. But Van knew instantly that he’d seen her before. She was the night club dancer, Dolly DeLong!
Farragut straightened and spoke beside him.
“I don’t get it! She seems okay. If anybody wanted her to get run over they should have made her wear something besides that white coat. You can see it a mile away. What do you make of it, Phantom?”
FOR answer, Van suddenly straightened and struck the inspector in the chest with the flat of his hand. Struck him so hard that Farragut went spinning back across the road and fell sprawling in the ditch. Van followed this seemingly mad movement by diving headlong himself. He shouted a hoarse warning to the police chauffeur.
“Run!”
But the man didn’t understand. Van’s lightning move was all that saved any of them. For the darkness a few feet away, just outside the glare of the police car’s headlights, broke into pinpoints of flame. The wicked chatter of three machine-guns sounded.
Van, landing in the ditch on his shoulder, with lead fanning the air above him, caught a glimpse of the police chauffeur moving like an automaton, reaching for his service automatic. But the gesture was mechanical, hardly more than a reflex action. The man had already been struck.
Horror filled Van as he saw the policeman’s face disintegrate before his eyes, saw his body double up as he pitched forward onto the concrete, spouting blood.
Van had had no possible time to prevent this cold-blooded murder of a fine young cop. He and Farragut were marked for death, too. The instant he’d r
ecognized Dolly DeLong his quick brain had sensed the reason for her being there, the reason for that white coat, that tape across her mouth.
Bullets were probing for him again, kicking up a spray of frozen dirt beside the road. Van hurled himself forward, grabbing the inspector’s arm as he went past, dragging the inspector with him down the bank of the highway, pulling him through a white fence into a rocky gully. Quick flight at the moment was their only hope against that cyclone of flying lead.
There would be three bloody corpses instead of one if those machine-guns had their way. It was one of the most deadly ambushes the Phantom had ever run into.
Farragut recovered his breath from the blow the Phantom had struck him.
“They got Sheehan!” he gasped fiercely. “The dirty, lousy murderers!”
“It’s the Chief’s men,” Van said. “The ones who slipped through the drag-net. Somehow the Chief got to them, hired them to get us. They used Guido’s girl for bait. They knew we wouldn’t stop unless —”
There wasn’t time for more explanations. Van had delayed their murder, but hadn’t as yet prevented it. For slugs were raking the darkness, searching for them now. Van jerked out his own gun, fired back, and tried to circle along the side of the road toward the police car.
HE saw what the Chief’s motive was now. Somehow the Chief had guessed his move to impersonate Moxley. He had hired these men to prevent it at any cost. He wasn’t going to let the Phantom stop Moxley’s murder. Not only that, orders had been given for the Phantom and Inspector Farragut to be ruthlessly destroyed. Van knew it was a fight to the death now — a fight with the Chief’s three remaining men, while the Chief carried out his sinister plan.
And the killers hiding in darkness on the other side of the highway obviously didn’t intend to let Van and Farragut make a getaway in the parked police car even if they could reach it. One of the yammering machine-guns was turned on the police sedan suddenly. Van heard glass shatter, heard bullets strike against metal. The next instant the big headlights went out as the car’s wiring was chopped to pieces.
In the impenetrable darkness that followed the killers crept forward. Van and the inspector were to be hunted down like rats.
“Drop!” hissed Van as machine-gun fire from two different angles swept toward them.
It was closer now. The murderers were advancing. Van and Farragut had found momentary shelter in a rocky hollow below the road. By lying flat against the cold ground they escaped that second fusillade. By keeping up a steady fire themselves, they held the killers at bay. But the flashes of their own guns let the others know where they were; and they dared not cease firing, for that would let the gunmen creep in close and slaughter them.
Farragut spoke hoarsely. “it looks like the fade-out for us, Phantom. I’ve only one extra clip. We can’t keep this up. Even if I had more, the two of us with these rods can’t expect to hold off three guys with choppers.”
Van’s teeth were clenched. Their lives, he knew, hung by a slender thread. They’d been lucky to find this momentary shelter. But it would cease to do them any good when their clips were exhausted. And they had no chance to run. The others would hear them. Already they were partially surrounded.
“Can you handle a gun in each hand, Inspector?” asked Van suddenly.
Farragut turned in the darkness. “I can use both hands all right, but I’m no two-gun marvel, Phantom. My left’s pretty weak. Why?”
“Just this,” Van whispered. “We’re trapped. Our only chance is to get one of those machine-guns. But if I stop firing and leave this hole now they’ll be onto it. You’ve got to cover me, Inspector. You’ve got to take my gun and make them think I’m still here.”
“Let you go out after them Unarmed!” growled Farragut. “Nothing doing!”
“It isn’t only our own lives. We’ve got to get out of here in time to save Moxley. I know for certain now that his death’s in the cards.” Before the inspector could protest further, Van shoved his own automatic into Farragut’s left hand. “Keep firing!” he whispered. The next instant he’d slipped over the edge of the rocks.
Flat on his chest, snakelike against the hard ground, Van crawled forward. He stopped a moment, listened to Farragut’s firing. The inspector was playing his part well, blasting away with both guns almost simultaneously, two points of flame in the darkness that the killers could see. And that murderous stream of machine-gun death was still converging on the hollow.
Lead screamed past Van’s head so close he could have lifted his arm into the path of it. Grim-eyed, he continued up the slope toward the nearest of the crouching gunmen. But not straight. He made a cautious circuit, inch by inch, foot by foot, trying not to stir a leaf or pebble, testing each foothold and handhold before he trusted his weight to it.
And the bursts from one of the machine-guns sounded nearer and nearer. Van edged off to the right of it — then edged back. The noise of the gun told him that the mobster who held it was crouched behind a rock just in front. Van would have to run the risk of being struck by one of Farragut’s bullets, too. In his haste he hadn’t told the inspector which man he planned to attack. It would be bitterly ironic if a slug from Farragut’s automatic ended the life of the Phantom!
Now! Could he make it? The spewing, flaming muzzle of the machine-gun was not more than six feet ahead! But that six feet held countless possibilities of death. One of Farragut’s bullets might strike him. The gunman might turn on him in time, and literally chop him to pieces as Sheehan, the police chauffeur, had been cut down. The Phantom drew his knees up slowly, spread his arms out.
Then he leaped like a puma, leaped into utter darkness — and felt a squirming human body at the spot where he struck. There was a single hoarse cry close to him. The machine-gun whipped around for a moment, its hot breath searing the Phantom’s face.
STRUGGLING, clawing, Van and the machine-gunner fought madly behind the rock. They fought with Death leering down as the referee. For there could be no quarter. The man Van had jumped was still trying to force the barrel of his weapon around into Van’s chest. And Van, recalling vividly the brutal murder of the police chauffeur, was trying to get his fingers into that twisting neck.
The man squirmed like some kind of loathsome reptile. His clothes and flesh were wet with ground dampness. Van couldn’t get a clutch on him. And every second the machine-gun’s muzzle was coming nearer. Eternity seemed to hang in the balance.
Van felt hot metal touch against his throat. He struck then, struck savagely, smashing his right fist into the mobster’s face. This man was a killer, a mad human wolf in the pay of the Chief. He deserved no mercy.
Van felt savage joy in the stinging contact of his fists. He battered the man’s head back against the rock; battered till the machine-gun was silent, till there was no movement in that squirming human form. He didn’t know whether the man was dead or alive. But he was out, anyway. He would be out for many minutes. Van snatched up the hot gun. There were two other killers out there in the darkness.
He jabbed the black muzzle viciously toward the next mobster, pressed the crescent-shaped trigger, and sent lead hurtling into the night. A man fifty feet away cried out in sudden fury.
Then bullets came back at Van, screaming, rocketing, striking the stone beside him, whining off into the darkness like demons gone mad. For a moment it was nip and tuck which gun would get in its inning. But cold anger filled Van — anger at the murder he had witnessed, anger at the knowledge that the Chief had almost beaten him with this latest trick. He found a mark suddenly, heard a man gasping and thrashing among the bushes.
The third machine-gunner tried to flee then. He was higher up. He sent a burst down where Van was, then took to his heels. Van shouted for him to halt. But the man went on. Up by the fence he turned again, lashed out at Van with murderous fire; and it was there that Van’s burst got him instead. He cried out once. Van heard the clatter of metal on concrete as his machine-gun fell.
Van called to the in
spector. Together they climbed back up the slope to the highway and Van turned on his flash.
The man lying up there beside the road was the sinister “Doc” whom he had seen in the Chief’s hideout.
Four of Van’s slugs had stitched him across the chest.
CHAPTER XIX
SHOWDOWN
QUICKLY looking over the police sedan, Van saw it was hopelessly out of commission. He stared at it grimly till Farragut called in excitement:
“There’s a car coming up the road.”
Van stepped aside, waving his flashlight. But instead of stopping the car speeded up and roared by. Van got a glimpse of it and swore harshly. It was a big limousine with four men in it and with a low official number.
“Moxley!” said Farragut. “Those were some of my boys with him. They couldn’t see who we were. They had orders from me not to stop for anything or anybody. I’m afraid you’re too late, Phantom!”
Too late! Van feared it also. Unless he could reach Moxley within the next half hour the man faced certain death. He grabbed Farragut’s arm.
“That girl must be around here somewhere,” he said swiftly, “and the car they came in!”
Farragut nodded, and they began a frantic search. They found Dolly DeLong, still wired and helpless, lying in the shadow of a culvert. Her face showed deathly pallor. She shrank away as Van reached down to touch her, mistaking him for one of the killers and thinking her own end was near. But when he drew the adhesive tape from her mouth, when he spoke quietly and she realized she’d been rescued, she broke into a torrent of words.
“I’m innocent,” she pleaded. “I’m a good girl, and I don’t play ‘round with criminals. They snatched me, brought me out here, made me lie in the road as a decoy. I didn’t know —”
Van silenced her quickly. “Tell all that in court when you testify against Blackie Guido. What I want to know now is — where’s the car?”
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