Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 12]

by The Vampires

  “As the Imperial German Army crumbled under the ignorant criminal failures of the Nazi trash. . . .” He paused and glared at Gerhart and Wolfgang, both of whom growled. He was obviously mentioning old enmities that existed between them. “Where was I?” he said.

  “When the German army crumbled,” said Greta with a harsh laugh.

  “Yes, let me go back slightly.”

  “Not too far. Time is short,” warned the Phantom.

  “It is necessary. As the world knows, the Field Marshal was an inveterate collector of art. Collector is a polite word for thief.”

  Once again, Gerhart and Wolfgang growled, but he ignored them. “It is fully documented that as the Imperial armies conquered the Low Countries and invaded France, the agents of the field marshal swept the museums clean, taking whatever the inhabitants had been unable to hide first. Even hidden treasures were found, often by torture, all for the edification of the great fat parvenu beast, Goer-ing.”

  The Phantom was amazed by the self-righteous tone of the man who only a few hours earlier was presiding over the torture on the Rack of the police chief. And who had presided over murder as well. But he said nothing.

  “This collection was divided into several parts, and as the war turned against us, due to the criminal negligence of the Nazi trash...Gerhart struggled with the wires at his wrist, but only succeeded into digging them into his flesh. Apparently, Gerhart had been part of this “trash.”

  “As the war turned against us,” continued the colonel, pleased with the reaction he aroused in the helpless Gerhart, “it was decided to conceal the objects in various hideaways. My uncle, General Karl Maximus von der Kotthausen, was in charge of this operation.”

  “Where were you at the time?”

  “I was a very young junior officer on the staff of my uncle,” said the colonel.

  “Were you ever very young?” asked Greta spitefully.

  “I wasn’t even shaving yet,” snapped the colonel. “Now, during an earlier period of the war, when we were winning, when the Imperial General Staff was still running things”—he glanced at the angry Gerhart, still seated on the floor—“my uncle commanded an occupation force for a time here in Koqania. Several times, during quiet days, we explored these ruins and the endless cellars. So when the time came to conceal the plundered treasures, this was a natural place to think of—one of several. But my uncle chose the best items for this place. His technicians installed the equipment here, the air conditioning, the power and other utilities, living quarters, and whatnot. Then these treasures, expertly packed, were brought in. The place was sealed off by our forces, so that no one in the valley knew what we did.

  “When the war ended, my uncle realized it would be difficult to maintain secrecy without armed forces. We had both been amused by the medieval superstitions connected to the castle, the tales of vampires and witches, goblins and other supernatural monstrosities. I’d like to take credit for the idea, but I must admit it came from a fellow junior officer, a young poet who was killed later at Stalingrad, that most colossal of catastrophes engineered by the Nazis.”

  At this point, Gerhart and Wolfgang could only glare at him silently, having worn out all their fury.

  “But Joachim, that was his name, came up with the idea at a staff meeting. Vampires. The tradition already existed and was still strong among these peasants. Why not take advantage of it? We did. While our forces were still here, some of us disguised ourselves as we thought vampires might look, and roamed the fields at night.”

  “And occasionally slashed a throat?” asked the Phantom.

  The colonel nodded. “Yes, that was done now and then under the orders of my uncle, the general. How could vampires be believed unless they acted like vampires? The plan worked. The ruins here were said to be the home of the vampires. In truth, this was a perfect place, with actual torture chambers. They were here when we arrived. We put some of the devices to use now and then, letting the ‘victim’ escape to spread the word.

  “After the war, I remained in hiding with my uncle. The crowd at Nuremberg were searching for him to add to that obscene circus they called the war crimes trials.” “Did they find him?” asked the Phantom.

  Greta laughed at that. “Tell him where they found your precious uncle,” she said.

  “He had an accident. He fell down a flight of stairs.”

  “He was drunk. The stairs led to the local house of ill repute, your high-born art-expert uncle’s favorite spot,” said Greta spitefully.

  “You shut up, you foul-mouthed slut!” shouted the colonel, suddenly furious. She had touched a raw nerve. His adoration of his late uncle, the general, was obvious.

  “Before that awful day,” he went on, “we discussed this place often, my uncle and I. For, if the truth were known, this was his hideout. A few of us came here from time to time, members of his staff, deserters from his regiments. Never more than a dozen. But we kept the treasures intact, and we kept the vampire tradition alive.”

  “The fools stayed on here for years,” said Greta.

  “Only until the war trials were forgotten, until we were no longer hunted like criminals.”

  “Naturally, you never returned any of the stolen art.”

  “I prefer to think of it all as mine, ours, legally by right of conquest,” said the colonel stiffly. “Think what Napoleon brought back from Egypt and Italy. France is full 6f those treasures.”

  “Your logic is curious. You just called Field Marshal Goering a thief for doing the same thing, an opinion I would agree with. However, let’s get on. Have you sold much of it?”

  Greta and the men laughed at that, bitter laughter.

  “How can we sell? These are famous works, known in every country. Major buyers would be afraid. Oh, we sold a few minor works to keep the pot boiling as they say. Nothing big,” said the colonel.

  This was ironic. These conspirators had sat on this vast treasure for over a generation, fearing to dispose of it because of possible exposure. It reminded the Phantom of Croesus in the old myth—everything he touched turned to gold, but there was nothing he could eat or drink.

  “There was that big dealer from Brazil,” said Gerhart in his rasping voice. The others looked at him quickly in annoyance. He smiled guiltily and looked away.

  “What big dealer from Brazil?” asked the Phantom.

  “A gallery owner, one of the few we ever brought here. Offered a half million for the lot—a half million!” said the colonel indignantly.

  “That was a lot of money. We should have taken it,” growled Gerhart.

  “Half a million, you thick-headed peasant,” shouted the colonel. “For these treasures worth a hundred, two hundred million?”

  “What happened to the dealer from Brazil?” asked the Phantom.

  “A good question,” said Greta, grinning like a naughty child.

  “Guess he went back to Brazil,” said the colonel.

  Greta laughed. The Phantom looked around the chamber. The men stared at him coldly.

  “Did he threaten to expose you unless you accepted his offer, or were you merely afraid he might talk?”

  No answer. Gerhart yawned, the colonel looked at his shoes.

  “Where did you bury him?” asked the Phantom.

  No answer. The men looked at Greta as if daring her to talk. She started to speak, then stopped.

  “A dealer from Brazil. He probably was ready to make a cash offer of some kind. You’d hardly take checks down here, or credit cards. I doubt that you buried that cash with him,” said the Phantom. Again, a stony silence.

  “How many other rich dealers or collectors came here through the years and never left these ruins? I begin to get the picture now,” said the Phantom. “Do you know why I picked DV-1, R-2, FH-4, and MA-1 to open? Because they were the only ones I saw that weren’t tied with wire and would be easier to open. Why these?”

  The colonel shrugged. “You have such marvelous powers of deduction, Mr. Mystery Man. Perhaps y
ou can tell us.”

  “Perhaps I can guess. Because those are the treasures you showed the prospective buyers. They would excite any art dealer.”

  “If we are such cold-blooded killers as you would have us, why go to so much trouble?” said the colonel. “Why not just get them here and knock them over the head?”

  “I doubt if such dealers or collectors would come here with large amounts of cash to buy sight unseen, not to these ruins with obvious crooks.”

  The men reacted angrily to that; Greta laughed.

  “But after seeing these four masterpieces, a deal could be made. They would come back with their cash—one thousand, twenty thbusand, fifty thousand—to obtain treasures worth millions. And I would guess those buyers and their cash never left these ruins,” said the Phantom.

  “And when these mythical rich buyers disappeared, would no one ever think to come and search for them?” said the colonel.

  “Fm certain you took care of that ahead of time. The buyers would never be told this location. They would be brought here at night, blindfolded or in a closed car, so they never could relocate the castle.”

  The colonel looked at the others and shrugged.

  “A neat theory. There are no witnesses, no proof,” he said.

  “I’m certain the proof is buried not far from where we are standing in unmarked graves. There will be time to find them,” said the Phantom.

  “I don’t know why you waste time with all of this,” said the colonel. “You try to speak as though you are a policeman. What we see is a masked man, a hijacker come to rob us. Whoever you are, you cannot dispose of these treasures any easier than we could, less so perhaps. At least, through the years we have made the proper connections. We can still find buyers.”

  “To lure here and rob and murder,” said -the Phantom. “If you wish to join forces with us, it may be possible. Alone, you gain nothing. With us, you share all we get, however we get it. As for Greta, if you want her,” the colonel said, shrugging, “That will be a private matter between you. For my part, you are welcome to her.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Greta.

  “Greta, I need one more clue to solve the puzzle. You are it,” said the Phantom.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Greta, smiling softly at him. “How did you get to be the witch?”

  Chapter 22

  “My father was a German soldier, like all these pigs,” said Greta. Gerhart and Wolfgang laughed. The colonel was insulted.

  “Don’t compare me to a common soldier of the ranks!” he snapped. She bowed her head in mock apology.

  “Forgive me Herr Colonel Count von der Kotthausen.”

  “But your mother was from Koqania,” said the Phantom.

  “How did you know that?” she said, startled.

  “You mentioned it before.”

  “Do you remember everything I said?” she said coyly.

  “Yes. Please go on.”

  “From the beginning?”

  “If you like.”

  “There’s nothing important about the early part,” she said bitterly. “My father was killed in the war, at Stalingrad, I think. I was an infant in my mother’s arms. We were sent from one refugee camp to another. I spent my childhood in them. Horrible places. In my teens, I finally escaped to the streets of Berlin.”

  “And she stayed in the streets from then on,” said the colonel, unable to resist the dig. She glared at him but did not reply.

  The Phantom was surprised. The early period she was talking about was the closing years of World War II, over thirty years ago. He hadn’t thought her that old. He had seen her only by candlelight and this pale chamber light. He turned on his flashlight, shining it briefly in her face. She shielded her eyes.

  “Is that necessary?” she snapped.

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  She was not in her early twenties as he had thought. Despite clever makeup, there were tiny lines making her a decade older. The colonel and his hoodlums all had to be older than they looked. Perhaps there had been plastic surgery, not for vanity but for disguise.

  “I did various things to support myself,” she continued. The colonel snorted at that. “Then I became an actress, an entertainer. I sang, I worked in provincial companies. I was quite good. Everyone said so. Film companies were interested. I could have been a star, an international star.”

  “Another Marlene,” said the colonel.

  “You liked me well enough, especially in Hansel and Gretel,” she snapped.

  “Hansel and Gretel?”

  Greta laughed. “That’s where it all started, when he saw me in the play.”

  “You played Gretel?” asked the Phantom.

  “No. I played the witch.” She laughed. “The same costume I was wearing when you first met me,” she said grinning. “The colonel was too cheap to buy me a new one.”

  “And he convinced you to come back here and play the witch?”

  “That came later and it was my idea, not his. He never had an idea of his own in his life,” she said.

  The colonel bristled, but said nothing.

  “I’d heard about the witch of Hunda from my mother when I was a child. She believed there really was a witch. And she told me about the mysterious stranger, called the Phantom, who had chained the witch—a masked man as tall as an oak. That was part of the story, too,” she continued, looking at the Phantom with wide eyes. “And when we got reports there was a masked man seen in the woods, and when you came into the ruins and we saw, I could hardly believe it. Who are you really?” she said, and for the moment, she was the wide-eyed child of long ago.

  “Never mind that. He brought you here to play the witch. Why? They had the vampires. Why did they need the witch?”

  “Added insurance against intruders. It also amused us,” said the colonel. “We learned an interesting thing. These ignorant peasants around here were afraid of vampires, but even the idea of the witch terrified them.”

  “They thought she could hear them wherever they were,” said Greta. “They blamed all their bad luck on the witch. When a cow died, or a horse broke its leg, the witch did it.”

  “It was, you might say, in their folklore,” said the colonel pompously.

  “In spite of warnings from their parents, children sometimes came here to play. We let them see the witch,” said Greta. “So the word would get back.”

  “What about the two you tried to kidnap from the church?”

  “That was different. They saw me changing into my costume. We weren’t too sure how much they saw, or would tell.”

  “So you decided to kill them?”

  “Kill the children? Oh, no,” said the colonel, as if horrified by the idea. “Merely to question them.”

  “On the Rack, or in the Iron Maiden?”

  The men remained silent.

  “What about the young farmer called Raimond?”

  Greta smiled wickedly and glanced at the colonel. “Ask him.”

  “On sunny days, she had the habit of swimming in that pool by the moat—au nature1, you might say,” said the colonel stiffly. “That fool Raimond had, for some reason best known to him, taken to watching these ruins through an old telescope. That day, he saw her swimming.”

  “And reported it?” said the Phantom.

  “Reported nothing. He came charging over, hoping to find what he had seen.”

  “Greta, as you say, au nature1?”

  “Exactly. She saw him coming. Instead of hiding, she waited for him.”

  “I put on my robe,” she said irritably.

  “Yes, and there she sat on a rock, chatting with this boob, ready to ruin everything,” said the colonel.

  “I told you, I told him nothing,” said Greta wearily. “He thought I was a tourist.”

  “She arranged to meet the idiot on the road that night. On the road!” said the colonel scornfully.

  “He wasn’t an idiot. He was young and handsome. I was bored with this place. Bored with you, all of you,” she
•shouted. The men looked at her coldly.

  “It could have ruined everything,” said the colonel.

  “Did you meet him on the road?” asked the Phantom.

  She shook her head and lowered it. “They got there first,” she said in a dull voice.

  “There is no evidence of that, no proof,” said the colonel quickly.

  “Let’s go back,” said the Phantom slowly. He had known many evil people and sordid crimes in the past, but this recital was beginning to sicken him.

  “The colonel saw you play the witch and brought you here?”

  “He persuaded me. At first I thought it was foolish, but he promised me everything, even a castle on the Rhine, jewels, everything I wanted—millions.”

  “You also became his girl?”

  “That went with it for a while,” she said shortly.

  “I gather your duties were not limited to playing the old witch?” said the Phantom.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Buyers were lured here by various means. I’m guessing, of course. Isn’t it possible these men used you as bait to attract their big fish?”

  “Yes, there was a good deal of that. I even flew to Brazil to make sure that one took the bait,” she said.

  “Greta!” said the colonel sharply.

  “I think I’ve heard enough. Come, Greta.”

  The men stared at him. Greta’s face brightened.

  “You’re taking me with you?” she asked eagerly.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re taking those paintings. Is that your cut?” said the colonel anxiously.

  “Yes, I’ll take those, since they’re open.”

  “What about us? You can’t leave us tied up like this,” said Gerhart.

  Greta grasped the Phantom’s arm. Her voice and eyes 140

  were soft as she looked at him, and she pressed against him as she spoke.

  “Listen to me. We don’t need them. They didn’t know what to do with this stuff. I do. There are places. The Middle East, for one. Full of nothing but money. They’ll buy and ask no questions, believe me,” she said intensely.