The girl sat watching the darkness.
Flat on his stomach, Sgt. Yates smiled. “My old pappy taught me real good,” he reflected. “ ’Cause, unless I’m sorely mistaken, that fire up there belongs to Kitambaa, meaning I tracked him clean through the forest.”
Yates was stretched out on leafy ground, still within the woods. About a half mile uphill, across a rocky stretch of open ground, was the throbbing, orange glow.
“Yep, that’s a campfire sure enough,” Yates decided. “The problem is, there ain’t nothing but clear ground twixt me and him.”
The Sergeant eased forward, propelling himself with knees and elbows.
“I reckon I’m sneaky enough to crawl across here In the dark without his hearing me.”
Slowly, patiently, Yates began to make his way across the field.
He’d covered roughly three hundred feet when a large bird shrilled, and with wings flapping, flew up out of the grass directly in front of him.
“Drat,” Yates said to himself, “I might as well come marching in with a brass band.” He stopped where he was, watching the campfire.
Nothing happened. After five long silent minutes, he began to inch ahead again.
When he got closer, he could see the girl. She was sitting to the right of the fire, looking away from it.
Yates lifted up slightly, and drew his pistol out of the waistband of his pants. “That’s Peg McWorth, sure enough,” he said. “But where the devil is Kitambaa.”
A gun barrel was poked into his ribs. “Looks like I’m going to have to kill you twice, Sarge.”
It was Kitambaa, kneeling there in the blackness of the night.
Yates let out his breath, dejectedly. “Now ain’t that something!” he said “I thought I was pussyfooting, but you got me beat all hollow. I never heard you at all.”
Laughing, Kitambaa said, “But I heard you. Up on your feet and walk to the fire.”
“Evening, Miss,” said Yates as he neared the crackling wood fire.
“I didn’t realize why he suddenly left me here,” she said. “I should have and warned you, somehow.”
“No harm done,” said Yates. “This way I got to walk most of the way here. Lot more comfortable than snaking on my belly. How are you?”
“As well as can be expected.”
Kitambaa was rubbing his left hand over his right wrist. His right hand held his gun. “I don’t think I need two hostages,” he said.
“You just might, now,” said Yates. “ ’Cause before I came hunting for you, I radioed in to Jungle Patrol headquarters. By now, they got men on the way here.” The black man, head tilted to one side, looked at the Sergeant. “I don’t think I believe you.”
“Well, Kitambaa, I may be fool enough to try sneaking up on you,” said Yates. “But I ain’t so foolish as to do it without calling in the troops first. Any time now, there’s going to be a whole lot of guys hereabouts with only one notion in mind. They want you. You’re lightfooted enough to catch me napping, but I don’t think you can get away from a couple dozen JPs.”
“Maybe you are telling the truth,” said Kitambaa. “In that case, we won’t camp here tonight after all. We’ll move on up into the hills.”
Yates asked, “Does that we’ include me?”
“I have to move fast,” said Kitambaa. “That means we travel light.” He pointed the pistol at Yates. “Don’t,” said Peg. “Don’t shoot him.”
Two shots blazed out of the darkness beyond the campfire.
One hit Kitambaa’s gun hand and made him throw the weapon away into the blackness. The other slug hit him in the thigh. He howled, doubled up, dropped to his knees next to the burning wood.
The Phantom, holstering his twin automatics, stepped out of the night. “We’ll go back to the helicopter and meet the Jungle Patrol,” he said.
Sgt. Yates glanced from the fallen Kitambaa to the masked man. “Hot dog,” he said. “I thought he was quiet, but you win the silver cup.”
The Phantom moved to the girl’s side. He produced a small knife and began cutting the vines which held her wrists and ankles.
Peg frowned, studying his face. “Say, I know who you are,” she said, finally.
“Do you?” he said as he cut away the last of the bonds.
"You’re Devlin,” said Peg. “But what happened to your moustache?”
The Phantom smiled at her.
CHAPTER 36
Peg, wearing a crisp, linen pantsuit, walked briskly across the Nyokaville square. The afternoon sun was warm, cream-colored doves explored the grass. She was passing the last wrought iron bench in the row, when she noticed the young man. He was coming toward her from the direction of the jail across the square, grinning tentatively.
“Hi,” he said.
“Oh, yes, hello. You’re ...”
“Ted Sills,” Ted answered. “We met, more or less, out in the Great Swamp. I’m a former Swamp Rat.”
“Sgt. Barnum told me something about you,” said Peg. “I’m glad you’re not going to spend any time in jail.”
“Yeah, that’s amazing, isn’t it?” said Ted. “Here I thought, well, thought I’d killed someone. And I hadn’t at all. It’s amazing.” He laughed. “I’m still not quite used to the idea.”
“Got any idea what you’re going to do now?”
“I guess at this point I should say I’ve learned my lesson,” said Ted. “You know, go back home and settle down.”
“Where’s back home, the United States?”
“Yeah, out in the hinterlands,” replied Ted. “But I’m not going back there. I talked to your friend, Eric Haggard, a couple times while I was in jail. That is, he came by to see us. He thinks he may be able to help me get a job in Mawitaan. So that’s where I’m heading.” He took a step away from here. “You’re probably eager to talk to your uncle.”
“I am on my way to see him.”
“He says it looks as though he’ll get a new trial.”
‘Yes, it does.”
“Well,” said Ted. He held out his hand. “Maybe I’ll see you again in Mawitaan or someplace, Miss Mc-Worth.”
“Yes, maybe,” she shook his hand. “Good luck.”
The girl continued on through the square. She went up the marble steps of the jail two at a time.
Moments later, she was hugging her uncle.
Down on the bottom step, Eric was sitting. He had a handful of small white and grey pebbles and was flipping them toward the curb.
Peg came down the jailhouse stairs and sat down next to him. “Do they allow people to loiter out here?” “I’m a good customer.”
“I thought I’d see you before this.”
Eric flicked another pebble. It hit the curb, bounced into the gutter. “You’ve had enough people hanging around you.”
“None of them was you, though,” she said. “Are you angry about something?”
“Yates,” he said. ‘Tates rescued you.”
“It wasn’t only Sgt. Yates. It was the masked man, too,” said Peg. “Sgt. Bamum says he’s sure it was the Phantom.”
“I heard.” He let fly with one more pebble.
“If the Phantom hadn’t caught up with us when he did, Sgt. Yates would have been shot by Kitambaa,” she told him. “I honestly don’t see why you’re sulking about not getting a chance to maybe get killed.”
“You know what I did most of last night?”
“Sulked?”
“I rode a broken-down taxi from airfield to airfield,” replied Eric. “Trying to hire a damned plane.” “To come looking for me?”
“Yes, to come looking for you,” said Eric. “The first two places I tried didn’t have anything. Then at a field thirty miles from here, in some forsaken town called Makaburini, I located a guy with an army surplus helicopter for hire. Except he insisted on a cash deposit of five hundred dollars. By the time I talked him into taking a hundred in cash, it was 2 a.m.” Eric gave a shrug, threw the rest of his pebbles away at once. “I decided to check
in with Bamum first, to see if there was any further news. He told me you’d been found by Yates.”
“And the Phantom.”
“Okay, and the Phantom,” said Eric. “It wasn’t me.” “I don’t hold it against you,” she said, smiling over at him. “I’m going to be staying in Bangalla a while, you know, because of the new trial. I’ll need a guide, again.”
Eric looked at her. “What for?”
“Oh, to show me around Mawitaan,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d be able to find the best restaurants by myself, or the best place to play tennis.”
“You wouldn’t mind having me around then?” “That’s what I’m trying to convey,” said Peg. “I wouldn’t sit around on the front steps of the jailhouse with just anybody, you know.”
Eric looked thoughtful, then he grinned. “You’ve got a guide,” he said to the blond girl.
Sgt. Barnum tilted the hand mirror to another angle above his head. “A little snug across the shoulders,” he said. He hunched his shoulders and took a few steps around his desk. “But all in all, not bad.” He held the mirror straight out in front of him for one more admiring survey of his new uniform, then set it aside.
He and Colonel Weeks had returned to Jungle Patrol headquarters on the edge of Mawitann, late, on the previous evening. It was a new morning now, the Sergeant was back at his old desk.
Bending, he tugged out a drawer. “What the heck did Geiss do with my rubber bands?”
The outside door opened. Colonel Weeks came striding in. “Good morning, Sergeant,” he said. “You’re looking dapper.”
“A little snug across the shoulders maybe.”
“Not at all.” The Colonel crossed to his office doorway.
“Sir,” said Bamum, “I’ve been doing some thinking.” “With what result, Sergeant?”
“Look at it this way,” he said, resting his backside against the edge of his desk. “It’s an established fact that the guy who helped us out in the Great Swamp was the Phantom.”
“Probably so.”
“Okay, and it was the Phantom who showed up in Gonjwa to save Yates and the McWorth girl from Kitambaa,” Sgt. Bamum went on. “This being the case, it occurs to me that, well, have you ever considered the possibility the Phantom might be the secret commander of the Jungle Patrol?”
“Yes, that has occurred to me from time to time, Sergeant,” answered the Colonel. “And I decided there was really no way I could ever be sure.”
“I bet I’m right,” said Bamum. “If I do a little more digging around, I could find out for sure.”
"You’ll do no digging, Sergeant,” the Colonel told him. “You’ll forget about it.”
“Yes, but..
“There’s still considerable paper work to be done before we can mark the Swamp Rats’ business closed,” Weeks said. “I suggest you get to work.”
“I don’t think the business is closed,” said Barnum. “I mean, that Otter guy is still running around loose out there someplace.”
“That, I have a feeling, is not important,” said the Colonel. “We won’t be hearing anything more of the Swamp Rats.”
“Yes, sir.” Bamum sat at his desk and picked up a ballpoint pen.
Colonel Weeks stayed in the doorway, watching him. ‘You know, Sergeant, that new uniform of yours just may be a little snug across the shoulders after all.” He went into his office.
Blood-red moss was dripping down from the low, black branches. Wisps of mist waivered through the swamp, tangling around the dead branches. Damp-looking black birds sat in the trees making sad clucking sounds. They sounded as though they all had head colds.
It was midday, but still chill and damp. The sickly birds, hacking, suddenly flew up off the branches.
The Phantom passed by, moving rapidly through the Great Swamp. ‘Yes, that’s the spot up ahead,” he said to himself. “That’s where the quicksand almost got Sgt. Barnum.”
The masked man mad a careful examination of the area. The signs of struggle were still evident, as was the trail of the fleeing Otter.
The Phantom followed the trail. It led him through blighted groves of trees, across stretches of ground where only a narrow strip was passable. The mist grew thicker, the cold increased. The day seemed to be ending hours too soon, the night was taking over.
The trees all around were black, their leaves a moonlight white. The birds roosting in these black trees were small and deathly pale. They sat still, rigid, and silent. The coming and going of the Phantom meant nothing to them.
An immense rat sat in the middle of the path the masked man was following. He was hunched, eating at the carcass of some small, dead thing.
Then the Phantom saw the shack of Diamond Jack, It sat in the center of a weedy clearing, looking like some huge mushroom which had come bursting up through the earth. He halted, watching the place, on the alert for traps.
“Come on ahead,” called the raspy voice of the ancient prospector. “I haven’t had a chance to set up my snares again.”
The Phantom saw the ragged, old man leaning against the warped doorway of the shack. He took him at his word and walked into the clearing. “I’m looking for someone,” he said.
“A thief,” said the old man. “A filthy thief.”
“His footprints led me here.” The Phantom stopped a few feet from the threshold of the ruin of a house. “Have you seen the man?”
Diamond Jack’s pale face had red flush spots on the cheeks. He coughed into his gnarled hand. “I saw him,” he answered. “Saw him with his rotten hands dipped in my money. No one, as you well know, will ever touch my money but me.”
The Phantom looked around the old man and into the shadowy interior of the shack. “Where is he now?”
Swamp took him,” said Diamond Jack, coughing again.
“You shot him?”
“I have a perfect right, you must understand, to protect my money,” he said. “I caught the thief red-handed and gave him no chance to whine or plead for mercy. Yes, I killed him where he stood.”
“When we met last, I left you to watch over another Swamp Rat,” said the Phantom.
“He belongs to the swamp, too,” said Diamond Jack. “It’s the fate of all who live here, you see. Sooner or later, the swamp takes them back, sucks them down and down into itself.”
Reaching out, the Phantom took hold of the old man’s thin wrist. “You’ve got a fever,” he told him. “Let me take you back to Nyokaville.”
“No, no,” cried Diamond Jack, “Never.” He made a sudden beckoning motion. “Come inside and I’ll show you something.”
The Phantom followed him into the terrible place. Diamond Jack shuffled across the floor, knelt beside the row of trunks. “That fool destroyed the locks and I haven’t been up to putting on new ones.” He smiled a dreadful smile at the masked man. “No one has ever seen my money but me. Look, though, I’ll show you why I must stay here.” With a raspy laugh of triumph, he lifted the lid. “You see.”
The Phantom saw the shreds of paper and the moldy wads that had once been a fortune. Without waiting for permission, he lifted up the lids of the other two trunks.
“It’s been worth it, you see,” Diamond Jack told him. “All the years of watchfulness. I would have been willing to suffer much more than I have to protect all this.”
Gently, the Phantom pressed a nerve in the old man’s neck. Diamond Jack slipped over into unconsciousness.
Lifting the old man onto his shoulder, the Phantom carried him away from there.
He carried him to Nyokaville and a hospital.
But Diamond Jack only lived three days out of the Great Swamp.
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Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 11] Page 11