Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 11]

by The Swamp Rats (v0. 9) (epub)

  PROLOGUE

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN

  Over four hundred years ago, a large British merchantman was attacked by Singg pirates off the remote shores of Bangalla. The captain of the trading vessel was a famous seafarer who, in his youth, had served as cabin hoy to Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to discover the New World. With the captain was his son, Kit, a strong young man who idolized his father and hoped to follow him as a seafarer. But the pirate attack was disastrous. In a furious battle, the entire crew of the merchantman was killed and the shvp sank in flames. The sole survivor was young Kit who, as he fell off the burning ship, saw his father killed by a pirate. Kit was washed ashore, half-dead. Friendly pygmies found him and nursed him to health.

  One day, walking on the beach, he found a dead pirate dressed in his father’s clothes. He realized this was the pirate who had killed his father. Grief-stricken, he waited until vultures had stripped the body clean. Then on the skull of his fathers murderer, he swore an oath by firelight as the friendly pygmies watched. “1 swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, and my sons and their sons shall follow me.”

  This was the Oath of the Skull that Kit and his

  descendants would live by. In time, the pygmies led him to their home in the Deep Woods in the center of the jungle, where he found a large cave with many rocky chambers. The mouth of the cave, a natural formation carved by the water and wind of centuries, was curiously like a skull. This became his home, the Skull Cave. He soon adopted a mask and a strange costume. He found that the mystery and fear this inspired helped him in his endless battle against worldwide piracy. For he and his sons who followed became known as the nemesis of pirates everywhere, a mysterious man whose face no one ever saw, whose name no one knew, who worked alone.

  As the years passed, he fought injustice wherever he found it. The first Phantom and the sons who followed found their wives in many places. One married a reigning queen, one a princess, one a beautiful red-haired barmaid. But whether queen or commoner, all followed their men back to the Deep Woods to live the strange but happy life of the wife of the Phantom. And of all the world, only she, wife of the Phantom, and their children could see his face.

  Generation after generation was born, grew to manhood, and assumed the tasks of the father before him. Each wore the mask and costume. Folk of the jungle and the city and sea began to whisper that there was a man who could not die, a Phantom, a Ghost Who Walks. For they thought the Phantom was always the same man. A boy who saw the Phantom would see him again fifty years after, and he seemed the same. And he would tell his son and his grandson, and his son and grandson would see the Phantom fifty years after that. And he would seem the same. So the legend grew. The Man Who Cannot Die. The Ghost Who Walks. The Phantom.

  The Phantom did not discourage this belief in his immortality. Always working alone against tremendous —sometimes almost impossible—odds, he found that the awe and fear the legend inspired was a great help in his endless battle against evil. Only his friends, the pygmies, knew the truth. To compensate for their stature, these tiny people mixed deadly poisons for use on their weapons in hunting or defense. But it was rare that they were forced to defend themselves. Their deadly poisons were known through the jungle, and they and their home, the Deep Woods, were dreaded and avoided. There was another reason to stay away from the Deep Woods—it soon became known that this was a home of the Phantom, and none wished to trespass.

  Through the ages, the Phantoms created several more homes or hideouts in various parts of the world.' Near the Deep Woods was the Isle of Eden, where the Phantom taught all animals to live in peace. In the southwest desert of the New World, the Phantoms created an aerie on a high steep mesa that was thought by the Indians to be haunted by evil spirits and became known as Walkers Table—for The Ghost Who Walks. In Europe, deep in the crumbling cellars of the ancient ruins of a castle, the Phantom had another hideout from which to strike against evildoers.

  But the Skull Cave in the quiet of the Deep Woods remained the true home of the Phantom. Here, in a rocky chamber, he kept his chronicles, written records of all his adventures. Phantom after Phantom faithfully wrote his experiences in the large folio volumes. Another chamber contained the costumes of all the generations of Phantoms. Other chambers contained the vast treasures of the Phantom, acquired over centuries, used only in the endless battle against evil.

  Thus, twenty generations of Phantoms lived, fought,

  and died, usually violently, as they followed their oath. Jungle folk, sea folk, and city folk believed him the same man, the Man Who Cannot Die. Only the pygmies knew that, always, a day would come when their great friend would lie dying. Then, alone, a strong young son would carry his father to the burial crypt of his ancestors where all Phantoms rested. As the pygmies waited outside, the young man would emerge from the cave wearing the mask, the costume, and the Skull Ring of the Phantom; his carefree happy days as the Phantom’s son were over. And the pygmies would chant their age-old chant, “The Phantom is dead. Long Live the Phantom.”

  The story of Killer s Town is an adventure of the Phantom of our time—the twenty-first generation of his line. He has inherited the traditions and responsibilities created by four centuries of Phantom ancestors. One ancestor created the Jungle Patrol. Thus, today, our Phantom is the mysterious and unknown commander of this elite corps. In the jungle, he is known and loved as The Keeper of the Peace. On his right hand is the Skull Ring that leaves his mark—the Sign of the Skull—known and feared by evildoers everywhere. On his left hand—closer to the heart—is his “good mark” ring. Once given, the mark grants the lucky bearer protection by the Phantom, and it is equally known and respected. And to good people and criminals alike in the jungle, on the seven seas, and in the cities of the world he is the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, the Man Who Cannot Die.

  Lee Falk

  New York

  1973

  CHAPTER 1

  The lightning sliced the sky into jagged, black fragments. The huge rumbles of thunder seemed to shake the whole world. Pelting rain filled the darkness all around the slow moving train.

  The train was only six cars long. Its engine was struggling hard to pull it up the narrow pass which wound through the Bangalla hills. The passenger cars were among the oldest on the line, windows cracked and pitted, sides in need of new paint. The engine’s headlight was hardly able to penetrate the rainy blackness through which he moved.

  Inside the ramshackle train, there was silence. The men riding in the ancient passenger cars all wore similar grey clothes, workshirts and trousers. They were going to a new prison in the interior, a prison recently built for those serving life sentences. Most of the joking and laughing which had filled the cars earlier stopped when the storm began to work on the train. Most of the men were afraid now, afraid the old train would go plunging off the tracks and careen down a jungle hillside.

  But in the last car, one of the prisoners was grinning. He was a big, rough man of about forty, fat around the middle. His short, blond hair looked more like a hairbrush than hair. “Makes me feel real good,” he said aloud. “Real good.”

  The plainclothes guard in the seat across the aisle from him asked, “You like this damn weather, Otter?” Otter gestured toward the black window next to him with his handcuffed hands. “I feel at home around here, Garret,” he said chuckling. “Don’t you know where we are?”

  “Who can tell in this damn storm?”

  “Didn’t you see us pass Tiger Lake a while back? That means we’re pretty near the Great Swamp.” Wrinkling his nose, the guard said, “If it wasn’t for this damn weather
you could smell the swamp by now. It’s one of the foulest places on the face of the earth. Miles and miles of the most treacherous country you can imagine.”

  Otter only laughed.

  “Why,” continued the guard, “there’s nobody hereabouts who’ll go anywhere near the Great Swamp. The natives and the settlers both steer clear.”

  “Didn’t you never hear of Diamond Jack?” said Otter. “You must’ve heard of Diamond Jack.” “Nothing but a story. Jungle people tell lots of stories and not one in a dozen is anywhere near the truth.”

  Otter said, “They say old Diamond Jack went into that swamp thirty years back with a fortune he’d made in the diamond fields. Yeah, in the diamond fields. And he’s still in there somewhere, living like an animal and hoarding his money like a miser. Course, myself, I never seen him.”

  Garret sat up, turning to stare at the prisoner across the aisle. ‘You’ve been in the Great Swamp?”

  “Grew up there,” replied Otter. “I know that swamp better than I know anyplace else. My dad was a trapper in the Great Swamp most of his life. A few men have made their living that way, though most people think nobody goes into the swamp at all.”

  “You lived right in the swamp?”

  “No, but we should of. Because of my mother we had us a little house in Nyokaville. And it was in Nyokaville, not in the swamp, where I got in trouble.” “Murdered two men while robbing the Nyokaville bank,” said Garret. “That’t trouble sure enough.” Otter’s smile did not leave his broad, flat face. “Matter of fact, I’ve killed at least seven men in my time, but the cops around here were too stupid to figure it out.”

  Garret suddenly stood up. “What’s that?”

  The wheels of the old train were making a grinding, screaming sound. As though the train were trying desperately to stop and couldn’t.

  Otter dropped to his knees on the floor, shielding his head with his chained hands.

  Garret had stepped completely into the aisle, so when the train went careening off the tracks, he was thrown the length of the car. His head smashed into the handle of the metal door. When his body came to rest, he was dead.

  Garret’s body lay crumpled on what had been the ceiling of the passenger car. The car was overturned, wedged in the thick foliage beside the roadbed.

  The roar of the heavy rain and the booming of the thunder muffled the moaning and crying coming from inside the ruined car.

  CHAPTER 2

  The three, small, silver keys jiggled and tinkled on the palm of Otter s big hand. Laughing, he closed his fingers over them. With his other hand, he flung his handcuffs away into the wet jungle night. “Okay, now who’s with me?” he said. “And who isn’t with me?” Nine men were huddled round him in the rainswept jungle, the other survivors of the car Otter had been in. Up through the trees they could still see the ruined train. The engine was on fire, burning a stark orange in the rainy dark. Other men, prisoners and guards alike, were stumbling around. Some were crawling along the wet tracks.

  A husky, blond man named Glaze grinned. “Sure, I’ll come along. Sounds like great fun to me.” Kitambaa, a lean, black man nearly seven feet tall, said, “The Great Swamp’s a bad place.”

  “So’s a prison cell,” said Otter, his hand resting on the gun he’d taken, along with the keys and a flashlight, from the body of the dead guard.

  Kling was a frail man of sixty. “How would we stay alive in there, Otter? What would we eat?”

  “I told you, I know this swamp. I’ll take care of getting us food to begin with. Then I’ll teach you guys how to hunt and how to survive.” He gestured toward the nearby swamp. “We can live in the Great Swamp as long as we want and nobody’s going to come looking for us. The reason nobody’s going to come looking for us is because there’s nobody left alive who knows the swamp like I do.”

  McWorth was older than Kling, past sixty-five, but he still held himself straight and his hair was hardly grey. “How will we get by in there, over the long run?”

  Otter laughed. “I got lots of plans,” he told them. “Now we got to move.”

  Jaspers, a fat, freckled young man, said, “We ought to go back up there and help the others. That would look good on a guy’s record. They might knock some time off for helping out in an emergency like this.” “You want to go, you go ahead,” Otter told him. “Yeah, I think I will then.” Jaspers turned his back on them and began moving away uphill. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell nobody where you went.”

  “No, you won’t. You won’t do that at all.” Otter shot the fat, young man twice in the back.

  Jaspers took three steps more before collapsing into a tangle of thorny brush.

  “Now,” said Otter, ‘let’s get going before anybody comes hunting for us.”

  “Sounds great to me,” said the grinning Glaze. “Let’s go.”

  “One thing you got to remember,” continued Otter. “You got to remember to follow me exactly. You walk where I walk and no place else. Gome on.”

  With the big man in the lead, the eight others plunged into the jungle.

  The rain continued hard. It made a clatter on the big palm fronds, splashed and bounced from branch

  to branch. Very soon, all sound from the wrecked prison train was lost, the glow of its burning no longer visible.

  Kitambaa was walking closest to Otter. “You got some kind of long-range plan in mind?”

  Not looking back, Otter answered, “I like to kick ideas around in my head. Kicking them around in my head is better than talking about them.”

  “Yeah, but if we’re going to throw in with you, we better know.”

  Otter pressed on in silence for several minutes. Then he glanced back at the giant black man. “The Great Swamp covers something like fifty miles square,” he said. “And all around it are cities and towns, towns like Nyokaville where they got banks and business offices and jewelry stores.”

  “You figure we could raid the towns?” asked Kitambaa.

  “Yeah, that’s just exactly what I figure.”

  The landscape was changing. The trees were shorter, stunted and gnarled. Stringy moss hung down from bare, twisted branches; ghostly splotches of fungus dotted the trunks. New shades- of green showed up— muddy, yellowish greens; thick, slimy greens.

  Otter halted and turned to face the line of men behind him. “Let me say this one more time,” he said. “You got to follow me exactly or you ain’t going to make it. You got to watch two things, this flashlight in my hand and the man in front of you. We have to cover about ten more miles tonight, and those are going to be ten of the toughest miles you ever been across.”

  “Doing it at night in a rainstorm don’t help,” said Glaze down the line. “But, like the man said, I’ll try anything once.” He was grinning.

  Otter made two sweeps of the ground ahead with the beam of the flashlight, then resumed walking.

  High grass grew all around. The patches of ground they could see in the pale light of the flash looked soft and oozy, insubstantial.

  After they had been working their way through the swamp for ten minutes or so, Kitambaa said, “Suppose we do bring off a job. What good is money or jewels going to do us around here?”

  Otter laughed. “I know people,” he said. “I know people who’ll buy whatever we get. They’ll give us food, supplies, liquor and good weapons. And maybe we won’t live in the Great Swamp forever. Maybe someday we’ll have enough dough to go away from liangalla and live real good someplace else.”

  “They’ll come after us if we do.”

  “No, not if we lie low, long enough. After we been in the swamp a few years, they’ll forget all about us.” “A few years?”

  “Sure, a few years. You didn’t think we was only coming on a weekend picnic, did you?”

  Behind them a man screamed.

  Otter halted, swung the beam of light around.

  Off to the right, one of the prisoners was up to his waist in soft, sucking mud. He was waving his arms, beating at the ea
rth, screaming.

  McWorth, the old man, was about to make a move toward him.

  “Stay back,” shouted Otter. “That’s all quicksand over there.”

  “We have to save him,” said McWorth.

  “There’s no way to save him,” said Otter. “He’s dead and that’s it.”

  The man kept screaming, begging for help. He was up to his chest in quicksand now.

  “But we can’t just leave him,” insisted the old man. “The quicksand will take care of him,” said Otter. “Now the rest of you pay good attention. You follow me. If you don’t, the same thing’s going to happen to you.” He frowned. “Who is that, anyhow?”

  “I think it’s that little Dutchman,” said Kitambaa. “Named Baldker or something.”

  “Good think we go rid of him right off,” said Otter. “A guy who can’t follow orders, he’s no good to us. Come on, let’s get going.”

  The men moved on. Only McWorth looked back. The little Dutchman went on screaming for only another thirty seconds.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ted Sills didn’t enter the Great Swamp until six months later.

  He was a lanky, young man with sandy hair. By the time he turned up in Nyokaville, on a warm night in early spring, Ted was about ten pounds underweight. He had a deep tan, having been outdoors a good deal lately, but sooty circles under his eyes showed through the tan. And there was a deep cut, still in the process of healing, running from his left eyebrow to his hairline.

  The buildings in this part of town were constructed mostly of earth-colored brick. Low squat buildings, shops and storerooms, nearly all closed up at this time of night. There weren’t many street lights.

  This was a good thing, from Ted’s point of view. His clothes weren’t in very great shape, tattered and muddy, his trousers splashed across the seat with oil, a stain from some kind of sticky tree sap on the sleeve of his windbreaker. He knew he was the kind of guy cops were going to notice.

  He didn’t want to be noticed tonight. He couldn’t go another day with nothing to eat, nothing to spend. He had to find money tonight. Somebody else’s money.