“Who exactly is Devlin?” Kitambaa was asking her. “I told you,” she said, being extremely careful to look him right in the eye. “A guide, a hunter of some sort. We don’t know all that much about the man.” The black man nodded. “Now what about yourself, lady? Are you worth anything to anyone?”
“If you’re talking about ransom,” she said, “my family retains attorneys in Mawitaan.”
“That might be something to think about,” he told her. “Because if you’re not worth anything, there’s no reason for keeping you alive.”
The blond girl took another careful look beyond him.
There was the mysterious, masked figure, again. He’d come up silently behind another of the unaware Swamp Bats. He felled this man without a sound, too.
Eric was also aware of what was going on. He began talking now to keep Kitambaa from looking back.- “My people are quite well to do, too,” he said. “Of course Father’s main office is in London. It’s Haggard Unlimited, you know. There are, however, branch offices all over the world. As Father often puts it, there’s no place on the four comers of the earth where you can’t find a Haggard office.”
The Phantom was ten feet from Kitambaa now. Then, though the masked man didn’t know it, the remaining upright Swamp Bat happened to turn his head and see him. The man’s mouth fell open and he stood paralyzed for a moment. Quickly he swung his rifle up and took aim.
“Look out, the other one sees you!” cried Peg. Kitambaa swung around.
The other Swamp Bat’s rifle went off.
Just at that moment the Phantom had leaped at him, drawing his .45 automatic while he was still in midair. Two shots rang out and the rifleman collapsed. “Who the hell is that?” Kitambaa raised his rifle.
Eric sprang, knocking the barrel down.
As Kitambaa struggled to regain control of the weapon, he saw something.
Two men in the uniform of the Jungle Patrol, both of them armed, had emerged from the jungle.
That’s who was in the damned helicopter, Kitambaa realized. He should have sent some men to take care of that. But he’d wanted them all here to help with the siege of the shack.
There was no way of telling how many cops were coming.
Kitambaa kicked out, catching Eric in the knee cap with his foot. As Eric let go, crying out in pain, the black man shoved him aside. Then he grabbed Peg.
He twisted her arm up behind her back and pulled her in front of him. “Too many of them to fight,” he said. “So you’re going to get me by these JPs and into the swamp.” His rifle had fallen in the scuffle with Eric. In his right hand now was a .32 revolver. He touched the barrel to Peg’s throat. “Let’s move it, lady.”
CHAPTER 29
There was one further snare.
But Otter saw it in plenty of time. He backed away from the entrance of the moss-covered hut, located a length of straight branch. Narrowing one eye, he tossed the branch ahead as he jumped aside.
Just as he’d anticipated, the branch tripped the length of vine he’d noticed. A spear snapped out of the brush, rushing harmlessly by, several feet from him.
Otter trotted after the spear and picked it up. He walked to the doorway of the house. The door’s hinges were prickled with rust. The wood was smeared with streaks of blackish mildew and some kind of fuzzy, white fungus.
He reached out and pushed the door with his spear. The door, as he’d first surmised, was a fraction open. It swung, with much creaking and sighing inward.
There was no one in there. Otter had been sure of that. The footprints going away from the nearly-hidden, old place had indicated that, as well as the general feel of things.
“This must be Diamond Jack’s digs for sure,” said Otter. “And wherever he is, he isn’t here.”
The light of the new day reached only a few feet into the damp, musty room. There were no windows. The light coming in through the open door was cut off sharply by a wall of shadow.
Out of that blackness walked a huge, grey rat. It blinked in the sunlight, its head drifting from side to side, its nose quivering. Then it scurried away, not fearfully, but as though it were indifferent to Otter.
From the low, wooden ceiling splotched with mildew hung hundreds of dusty ribbons of spider webbing. Dead flies dotted the webs, along with the wings of moths, and bits of dead leaves.
“Not much of a housekeeper is old Diamond Jack,” said Otter, looking over the room from the threshold. “Not much of a housekeeper at all. But then I suppose it’s tough to get decent help out here.” Laughing at his own joke, he entered the house.
Otter felt as though he had dived under water. There was a chill green dampness all around. He stayed in the sunlit portion of the room for a moment. “What’s that over there? Looks like trunks. Yeah, it is. Big trunks, three of them.”
For years, since he was a boy hunting in the Great Swamp with his father, he had heard stories about Diamond Jack. “They say he made millions in the diamond fields,” Otter said to himself. “Millions of dollars, and he brought every damned penny of it into the swamp with him.”
There was a table to his right. The wood had turned a dull black, the table legs looked as though they were growing into the warped, wooden floor. The one chair, too, had undergone changes. It was a chalky, grey color, lopsided. A metal dish, much tarnished by time, rested atop the table. A few crumbs remained in the plate and a single file of red ants was at work carrying them away.
“Imagine having millions and living like this.” Hands on hips, Otter moved further into the room. “If I had millions, you wouldn’t see me in the Great Swamp at all. I’d buy me a villa, yeah, a villa all made of marble. Pink marble and it’d sit on its own private hill and look down on the sea. The Riviera or someplace, that’s where they got setups like that. What the hell, there’s no need to stop at one villa.”
It occurred to Otter that there was also no need now to ever go back to the Swamp Rats’ camp. Because this was, it must be, Diamond Jack’s hideout. The old miser had millions, money he’d had no chance to spend in the Great Swamp. So the money was still here. “Probably in those trunks over there.”
Otter slowly approached the three trunks, which sat side by side, narrow end foremost, against the rear wall of the hut.
Another rat came out of the shadows to look, with little interest, at him.
“Swamp rats,” said Otter, chuckling. “I’m finished with all kinds of swamp rats.”
Let the rest of the gang fend for themselves. Otter saw no reason to share what he’d found. You learned that early on, you had to look out for yourself. If everybody was starving and you were eating, then that was good. He’d borrow enough of old Diamond Jack’s stash to get him out of Bangalla safely, out of Bangalla and off to someplace where it was mild and warm and there was an ocean.
“The swamp brought me here,” said Otter as he knelt and pulled the first trunk away from the wall. There was a sound of scurrying both inside the trunk and out. “The swamp’s always looked after Otter, and the swamp wanted me to find all this.”
A padlock held the lid shut. It was old, rusted. Otter 124
grabbed hold of the ancient lock and pulled hard. He forgot all about his wounded hand.
The lock snapped. He yanked the trunk lid up and open.
A rat jumped straight out at him. Otter dodged it, stumbling back. “Damn.”
He looked inside the open trunk. There had been money in there. But that had been years ago, before the damp and the rats had gone to work. Now there were only moldy lumps of paper, shreds of bills, a useless confetti. He recognized shreds of American dollars, English pounds, French francs.
The trunk must have held several hundred thousand dollars in cash, all in paper. None of it had survived. Otter sadly dipped his hand into the mass. It was like some complicated jigsaw puzzle he knew he’d never be able to solve.
“Maybe the other trunks held up better.” Otter tugged the second one out of the shadows. “Maybe he had enough sense to s
tore it in jars or something.”
The second trunk was the same as the first. Rats and tatters of paper money inside. A million dollars had been chewed up.
Otter was tugging the ancient lock off the third trunk when he heard a footstep on the path.
“You won’t steal my money, damn you!” cried Diamond Jack in his thin, raspy voice. “No one will!” He fired his shotgun.
The full charge hit Otter, throwing him back into the shadows. His body made a brief X against the wall before he tumbled down dead.
He never got to know what was inside the last trunk.
CHAPTER 30
Sgt. Barnum looked back over his shoulder and saw that the Corporal was awake on the litter made of bark, vine and branches. “How you doing?” he asked, regripping the front poles.
Mchanga ran his tongue over his lips. “Let me ask you a question first,” he said. “Where are we exactly?” “On our way back to the Swamp Rat base.”
The Corporal took a look at Ted, who was carrying the rear end of the stretcher. “They caught us, again?” “Nope,” answered the squat Sergeant. “As I understand it, the camp’s been captured.”
“By the Jungle Patrol?”
“Not exactly.”
Mchanga had risen up on his elbows. Now he sank back down. “You can tell me all the details later,” he said, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead.
Old McWorth was traveling close behind Ted and the litter. “Decided on anything yet?” he asked the young man.
“Well,” replied Ted, “I think I have, but I’m not too happy about it.”
“That probably means you’re planning to give yourself up.”
“Yeah, I figure I might as well,” Ted replied. “I suppose if I had a temperament and personality like Otter or Glaze . . . well, maybe I could fit into this kind of life . . . this kind of life I’ve been living.” “People like Otter don’t have some of the problems you have,” said McWorth, “that’s true. That’s because he doesn’t have much of anything to think with.” Mchanga partially-raised himself again, saying to Sgt. Barnum, “I just remembered you fell into quicksand. You did, didn’t you, or is that something I hallucinated?”
“I fell in sure enough,” said Barnum. “I still haven’t got all the traces of that stuff off my uniform.”
“How’d you get free? I don’t remember helping you,”
“I’m glad you asked me that.” From his pocket, he again took the map the Phantom had drawn him of a safe route back to the camp. Making sure he was still heading right, he added, “A fellow showed up. He pulled me out of the quicksand.”
“A fellow? Who?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the matter and I’m fairly sure he was the Phantom.”
Mchanga blinked at his partner s broad back. “The Phantom?” A smile grew on his face. “You’re certain it wasn’t maybe Diamond Jack?”
“No, Diamond Jack didn’t come along.”
“The Phantom? You’re serious?”
“It has to be him,” said the Sergeant. “I know it was.”
After several seconds, Mchanga asked, “What was the matter with me? It was something more than just the fall.”
“A fever,” answered Barnum. “The Phantom helped you get rid of that, too.”
“I’m the one who had the fever,” said Mchanga. “I should have seen the Phantom, not you.”
“He wasn’t a ghost, and he wasn’t imagination” Sgt. Barnum assured his partner.
From up above the sheltering trees a helicopter sounded.
“Hey,” exclaimed Barnum, “maybe it’s the JP looking for us.”
They all halted, staring skyward.
The mist blurred the copter. Barnum could, though, make out the Jungle Patrol insignia and identification number on the ship’s belly. “Hey, we’re here! Here we are!”
The copter paid them no attention. It kept rising higher and higher away from them.
This is what Kitambaa had done.
Holding the blond Peg in front of him, he’d walked by the Phantom. He walked right up to Colonel Weeks and Sergeant Yates.
“Where’s that copter of yours?” he asked.
Colonel Weeks said, “You’d best let the girl go and ton yourself over to us. You haven’t a chance.”
“Shut up and listen,” said the long, black man. “I want that helicopter. I want that and I want your pilot here. You got one minute to make up your mind. Then the lady gets shot dead.”
The Colonel studied the man’s face. Then he said to Yates, “Go to the chopper with him, Sergeant. Fly him were he wants to go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll come to the ship with you,” Weeks told Kitambaa. “When you’re safely in you can turn the girl over to me.”
Kitambaa laughed. “No, that’s not the way it’s going to be at all,” he said. “You stay right here. She goes along with me. Anybody who follows gets killed.”
“Listen, once you have the chopper, you won t need her.”
“She’s my guarantee,” said Kitambaa. “In case the Sarge tries some hotshot tricks while we’re in the air. No, she comes along.”
Peg remained silent. Her arm, the one the black man held twisted behind her, was nearly numb. She could still feel the pistol against her skin.
“Very well,” said Colonel Weeks, “have it your way.”
‘Yeah, my way.”
“Don’t let him take her,” said Eric. He took two steps forward, but the Colonel waved him back.
Kitambaa laughed again. “Okay, let’s get going, Sarge.”
“I’m glad my old pappy can’t see me now,” said Yates.
The three of them left the camp.
CHAPTER 31
Eric kept his eyes on the hazy sky long after there was any possibility of seeing the stolen helicopter up there. “We should have stopped them,” he said to Colonel Weeks.
“He would have killed her,” said the Colonel. “He wasn’t bluffing, of that I’m sure.”
“You don’t think he’ll let Peggy live, once he’s safely where he wants to go? Why he’ll kill them both, Peggy and your Sergeant.”
‘Tates is a capable man,” said the Colonel. “And as soon as we get clear of the swamp, I’ll alert the Jungle Patrol to start hunting for that chopper.”
“That’ll be hours from now.”
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing else to do,” said the Colonel. “Now suppose you tell me who you are, and something about what’s been going on here.”
After one, final look at the sky, Eric said, “Well, I’m Eric Haggard.” He gestured at the Swamp Rats who were scattered, unconscious or tied up, around them. “As to what’s happened...”
The Phantom was looking after the injured Kling. He’d located a first-aid kit in one of the huts. “The bullet isn’t in there,” he said.
“Sure as hell feels like it is,” complained the old man, moaning. “It’s terrible to be old. When you’re old, they leave you lay around and don’t pay no attention to you.”
As he bandaged the now cleansed wound the Phantom said, “He could have taken you with him.”
“Who? Kitambaa?” Kling shook his head feebly. “Naw, they’re all a selfish bunch. Don’t think of nobody but themselves.”
“Did you know Kitambaa in prison?”
“Not all that well, he was in a different cell block,” answered the old man. “Couldn’t help noticing him, though. He’s a tall drink of water.”
“I imagine all his people are as tall as he is.”
“Yeah, and he liked to brag about that,” said the old man. “His whole tribe is beanpoles. Kitambaa used to say as how he was the runt of the pack, everybody else in Gonjwa being at least a head taller than him.”
Picking up the old man, the Phantom carried him into the shade of a shack. “Gonjwa? Does he still have people there?”
“Sure, some brothers, anyway. He bragged about that, too. Said he’d rather be hiding out in the Gonjwa territor
y than here in the Great Swamp. Claimed with his brothers to help him, no cop alive could ever find him. I passed through Gonjwa once in my wanderings and they can have it. Mostly dry plains and rocky hills. Lots of old people like a warm dry climate, but it’s not for me.”
The Phantom was no longer standing beside him. Colonel Weeks and Eric were still talking. “Then we don’t yet have all the Swamp Rats,” the Colonel was saying.
“There’s another batch still off in the swamp, three or four of them,” said Eric, “including their leader, a guy named Otter.”
“You don’t know where Corp ... what is it?”
Eric was watching the forest. “Somebody coming.” He drew his revolver. “Maybe the rest of the Swamp Rats.”
Squinting, Colonel Weeks said, “No, by golly, it’s Sgt. Bamum 1”
“Hey,” shouted the Sergeant, “hello, sir.”
The Colonel moved double-time to meet the procession. “Good to see you again, Sergeant,” he said. “And you, too, Mchanga.”
The Corporal was sitting upon the homemade stretcher. “Luck must have been on our side,” he said. “A few times there, I didn’t think we’d ever be seeing you again.”
“It wasn’t only luck,” put in the Sergeant. “It was this guy they call the Phantom.”
The Colonel said, “What’s that, Sergeant?”
“That,” answered Mchanga, “is his own personal will-o-the wisp. Bamum thinks he saw the Phantom.”
“I did,” insisted the Sergeant. “He got me out of a mess of quicksand, and kept Otter from shooting us.” “It’s true,” said Ted. “We all saw the masked man, except for the Corporal.”
Colonel Weeks frowned at the young man. “Who is this, Sergeant?”
“Name’s Ted Sills,” said Bamum. “The older gent who’s just catching up is McWorth.”
“They’re Swamp Rats then?”
“Used to be,” explained Bamum. “They both helped us out a heck of a lot. They came along here of their own free will.”
Nodding, the colonel said, “I’ll remember that.” Then suddenly his eyebrows shot up. He slapped his hand against his thigh. “Why, of course.”
Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 11] Page 9