“Still, they’re an audacious bunch. I think they’re going to go ahead with their original plan.”
“Which,” said the lieutenant, pointing at the two sets of blueprints, “brings us back to the original question . . . will they hit the Bonita or the Hermosa?” The Phantom stood back from the table. “We’d better have men on both.”
After biting at his lower lip and staring at the parquet floor, Kiwanda said, “I don’t know if I can muster enough men to safeguard both ships.”
“Perhaps Lumbard and Bockman can lend a hand.” “I’m going to need more than two extra,” said Kiwanda. “Well, let me talk it over with the powers that be later this morning. By the way, Lumbard says his insurance company agrees you’re entitled to part of the fee for recovering the loot from the Paradiso raid.”
“I’ll give him a list of charities to distribute it to.” Kiwanda asked, “You’re not doing all this for money then?”
“I have other reasons,” replied the Phantom. “And now I’d better see about arranging a passage for myself.”
“Which ship have you decided to sail on?”
“I favor the Hermosa.”
“Very well. If you have any trouble booking passage this late, let me know.”
“I won’t have any trouble,” he said. “If you sail on the Hermosa, don’t look for me as Walker. I’ll be a slightly stuffy man with a beard. My name will be Devlin.”
“Do you want to study these plans any further?” “No, I’ve already memorized them.”
The lieutenant gathered them up, walked to the door. “Well,” he said, “bon voyage.”
Lumbard picked up another flat stone and skimmed it across the water. “Let’s split up then,” he said to his partner.
Stooping to roll up his pants’ cuffs another turn, Bockman said, “I know which liner you’re going to pick.”
“Right, the Hermosa” He sent another rock sailing through the bright afternoon. “Walker picked it, so that’s where the action is going to be.”
“Looks like me for the Bonita then,” said Bockman as they resumed their walk along the beach. “How come you’re so sure about Walker? You don’t think he could be in cahoots with the pirates or something?” “Nope. If he’s who I think he is, then pirates are the last guys he’d be likely to work for.”
“Still working on the notion that he’s this mysterious Phantom?”
“I think maybe he is.”
“Well, you’re going to be sailing with him. Maybe you can work up enough nerve to ask him this time.”
“I will.”
“Never fails. I always get as excited as a pup before a trip.” Brupp, chuckling, was neatly putting casual clothes into a suitcase. His skin was now deeply tanned, his hair longer and black. A bushy mustache decorated his upper lip. “I’ve got goose bumps all over.”
Slouched in an armchair, Brian Folkestone said, “Maybe those are a warning.”
“Not on your life. This job is going to go real smooth.”
“One can’t help feeling the sand is running out for the lot of us.”
“You’re really spooked since the cops hit our little mountain hideout, young fellow.”
“Doesn’t it spook you to have four of our men grabbed by the minions of the law, not to mention losing almost a million dollars worth of swag.”
“The dough hurts,” admitted Brupp. “But I don’t care a damn about those four clowns. None of them knows anything about our plans, or even where our real hideouts are. No sweat.” He slammed the suitcase shut. “On top of which, old Walker is dead and done for.”
“The way things have been going, he’ll probably come back to life.”
“You’re getting to be a real Nervous Nelly. What you need is a nice relaxing ocean trip,” said Brupp, chuckling. “Too bad you can’t come along on the S.S. Hermosa with me.”
“That’s all I'd need to go completely crackers.”
‘It’s going to be one terrific cruise,” Brupp told him. “I can feel it in my bones.”
CHAPTER 28
The Phantom sat in a deck chair on the Boat Deck of the S.S. Hermosa reading one of the novels of Tobias Smollet. He was Mr. Devlin at the moment, slightly round-shouldered and with a trace of a paunch. He was wearing a conservative tweed jacket and had a neat small beard which circled his mouth.
The liner had sailed out of Mawitaan Bay three hours ago. He’d been on board early, to watch the passengers come up the gangway. He’d seen no one he recognized from the cruise of the Paradiso.
A man in a peppermint-striped shirt stopped at the rail to watch the glistening ocean. “That’s sure something,” he said. Turning to face the Phantom, he asked, ‘This is your first cruise?” It was Lumbard, trying to look and act like a tourist.
“Not at all,” answered the Phantom in a mildly stodgy voice. “I have made frequent trips by sea.”
“Not me, this is my first,” said Lumbard. “Can barely afford this one. I work for an American outfit in Mawitaan. What line you in?”
Tm with the English Department of the Virginia Commonwealth University.”
“Must be a lot of fun.” He came over to sit in the deck chair next to the Phantom. “Spot anybody?”
“Not as yet, no.”
“The lieutenant is with us, I noticed. He’s a steward on the upper deck.” He leaned back in the canvas chair. “Gives him a chance to look through some of the rooms for goggles and masks and so on. But there are a hell of a lot of cabins on the Hermosa.” The Phantom tinned a page in his book, saying nothing.
“Still,” Lumbard went on in a low voice, “we should be able to nab them. They always follow pretty much the same plan. This time the lieutenant's got men at all the key spots—radio room, engine room, Lido Deck and so on. Yeah, we should nab them.”
“If you don’t mind, I should like very much to continue with my reading.”
“Sure thing, sorry to have bothered you.” Lumbard stood up. “Speaking of festivities, there’s going to be a costume ball tonight. You going to show?”
“I may perhaps look in for a few minutes.”
“Got anything you can use for a costume?”
“I fancy I can come up with something,” the Phantom answered.
The small orchestra, all its members wearing tuxedos and domino masks, was living in another era. They were playing a freewheeling sort of 1930s swing while the passengers of the Hermosa came filing into the Promenade-Deck ballroom. Possibly a hundred of the passengers were in full costume; the rest had limited themselves to masks and odd headgear purchased from the liner’s shops.
From the ballroom’s ceiling hung a huge globe surfaced with octagons of colored reflecting glass. It slowly rotated, splashing multi-colored light down on the gathering crowd.
Toward the rear of the big room, near the rows of small, white-covered tables, the Phantom had stationed himself. He was wearing his tight-fitting costume and mask.
A slim blond girl dressed as a jungle princess went by on the arm of a Roman soldier. “Those are very authentic-looking guns in your holsters,” she called to the Phantom. “They look almost real.”
“They are real,” he said, smiling.
She was lost in the crowd before she could hear his answer.
Lumbard stopped beside him. “Quite a costume, professor.”
“Why, thank you, young man.”
The insurance man had on a mask which was a caricature of the face of the president of the United States. “Not so sure it was a good idea to have this costume shindig,” he said. “Makes it a lot easier for them to dress up without attracting attention.”
“The ball was already scheduled, announced in the cruise brochures,” said the Phantom. “It would have looked suspicious if they had canceled it.”
Turning his false face to the masked man, Lumbard said, “Let me ask you something about that getup of ”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced the orchestra leader, “that concludes our special salute to the
golden age of the big bands. Now we will turn to a more contemporary style for your dancing pleasure.” “I’d better mingle,” said Lumbard. “I saw a jungle princess who looked moderately intriguing.”
The Phantom stayed where he was. I wonder, he thought, if they’ll strike tonight.
The music suddenly came to a disjointed halt.
Four men had leaped to the platform. Three of them were holding submachine guns. The fourth, dressed as a clown, walked to the microphone. He was dark, with a bushy black mustache. “I regret we must interrupt such a fun-filled evening, folks,” said Brupp. “We have an urgent message to deliver. Pay real close attention, because I won’t repeat any of this. The most important point I want to get across is this—the S.S. Hermosa is going to blow up in exactly two hours.”
CHAPTER 29
“Now don’t go thinking this is a practical joke, folks,” continued the clown-suited Brupp. “Because it sure isn’t. Just to give you an idea of who you’re dealing with, we’re the fellows they’ve been talking about so much over the news. We’re the goggle-eyed pirates. Tonight we’re trying out a little variation on our usual plan.”
The captain had come into the ballroom during this speech. A portly man of sixty with white hair and a stiff walk, he was making his way through the crowd toward the bandstand. “Get down from there at once,” he called out.
“Don’t take another step, Cap,” Brupp advised, “or we’ll have to cut you down. In fact, I wouldn’t advise anybody to move. All of you stay very quiet and still while I finish my spiel.”
The captain said, “What sort of outrage ?”
“I won’t warn you again, Cap,” cut in Brupp. “You stay right smack on that spot. Don’t you move a peg. Okay, that’s fine. I see you finally took notice of these machine guns we got up here. Now then, earlier today, we planted a bomb somewhere on this fine ship. It’s set to go off in two—nope, correction—make that one horn* and fifty-six minutes. There are two ways you can stop that bomb from blowing you all to glory.” He held up one hand to tick off fingers as he spoke. The slowly spinning mirrored ball turned his pudgy hand gold, scarlet, green and a deep underwater blue. “First off, you can all start looking for the bomb. Might be you’ll find it in less than an hour and fifty-four minutes. Second way, and this is the one I recommend, you all talk to the captain here and you tell him to get the owners of this liner to come up with one million dollars. When we get the money, we’ll let you know where the bomb is hidden and how to render it inoperative.”
“You can’t make me believe you’ll risk your own lives,” said the captain.
“Oh, you misunderstand. We aren’t going to be here more than about—” Brupp pushed back the ruffles at his cuff to once again check his cheap watch— “about five minutes. Then we’re all going to fly away home. Tell your owners, Cap, to start getting that money ready. You radio them right now. And when we contact them, they better be all set to move fast and deliver it to the dropping-off place. That’s it.” Ringed by the three gunmen, he started moving across the bandstand.
On the dance floor, Lumbard lifted his mask up to rest atop his head. He looked back to see how the Phantom was reacting to all this.
The Phantom was gone.
“That went over real good,” said Brupp as he glanced from his watch to the night sky. He and his
three associate pirates had stationed themselves on the Hermosa's sundeck.
“If this works,” said one of the others, who was in a wild-man costume, “we can use it again. Lot easier than collecting stuff from the passengers one by one.” “It’s no good to get in a rut,” observed Brupp. “The secret of success is to keep the other side guessing. Just when they’re getting used to one kind of attack, switch to something else.”
A hooded pirate swung his machine gun toward the top of a stairway. “Hold it right there.”
Standing above them was the captain of the liner. “I must radio the owners,” he said.
“You wait till we’re gone,” Brupp told him.
“I hope you realize,” said the captain, “that you’ve
hardly given us enough time to ”
“This is the computer age, Cap,” said Brupp. “Big business can get done in the twinkling of an eye. Besides, we’ve picked us a ship company with its main office in Mawitaan. They’ll be able to come through, don’t you fret none.”
“It’s coming,” said the wild man.
The lights of a helicopter were bobbing down through the night. The chugging of the engine grew louder.
Brupp reached into his clown suit for a revolver. Pointing it at the captain, he instructed his men, “You boys climb on up first, I’ll bring up the rear. That way the cap and I can have a nice little last-minute talk.” “Isn’t it,” asked the captain across the distance between them, “possible to reason with you?”
“Money, cash money, is the only reason we’re going to pay attention to.”
The copter was fluttering down nearer. A rope ladder was unfurled. The hooded pirate fixed his machine gun to a cord at his waist, then leaped and caught the swinging bottom rung of the ladder.
Brupp was standing alone on a stretch of deck, a few feet away from the other three pirates.
All at once, a figure came hurtling down at him.
Brupp’s head snapped back, the breath bellowed out of him, his hands flapped.
The Phantom got a half nelson on the pudgy man. At the same time, he clasped his other hand around Brupp’s wrist.
“Ow, ow!” The pirate leader let go the revolver. It clanged to the deck.
One pirate was half-way up the ladder. The other two hesitated, shuffling, shifting position on the deck, machine guns trained on the struggling pair.
“Get the hell away,” yelled Brupp. “Beat it.”
The Phantom had maneuvered Brupp between himself and the gunmen.
“But—” said the wild man.
The third pirate hooked his weapon to his belt, jumped, and caught the ladder. “Orders are orders.”
In another moment, die third man was climbing up through the dark.
Brupp brought an elbow ramming back into the Phantom’s stomach.
It didn’t phase the masked man.
The helicopter was rising, the three other pirates safely inside.
As soon as Brupp had made his initial threat down in the ballroom, the Phantom had realized the pirates must be planning to leave the ship at once. Making use of his knowledge of the liner s layout which he’d picked up from studying the plans, the masked man had managed to slip out a side door and get up to the sun deck. He’d climbed the mainmast and waited.
When he saw he had a clear chance at Brupp, he’d jumped.
“Looks like you’re going to blow up with the rest of us,” the Phantom told his captive. “Or will you tell me where the bomb is?”
“You can go to hell,” replied Brupp.
CHAPTER 30
The curtain was pulled back from the oblong porthole of the cabin. You could see the crew out on the upper deck preparing the lifeboats for possible use. There was an hour and twenty minutes left.
“I’m telling you,” said Brupp, seemingly at ease in an armchair. “There’s only one way you’re going to find out where that little old bomb is. You’re going to have to deal with me.”
The captain was standing near the door. “Perhaps,” he began.
“No deals,” said the Phantom. “You’re caught and you’re going to stay caught.”
Brupp chuckled. “You look pretty good for a fellow who was only recently blown to smithereens, Walker. Remind me to ask you sometime how you managed to save your bacon,” he said. “Be that as it may, you got no business butting in here. I’m dealing with the captain and maybe the insurance company.”
The mask still resting on top of his head, Lumbard
said, “You ought to start thinking about yourself. You might get an easier sentence if you cooperate.”
“You trying to pull my leg, sonn
y? You got me on piracy, attempted murder, and lord only knows what else,” Brupp told him. “Last time I checked they were still hanging pirates in Bangalla.”
“I must radio the owners again.” Moving stiffly, the captain opened the door and went off down the corridor.
“There’s the only one of you with any intelligence,” remarked Brupp. “If the owners come up with a million bucks and a guarantee of my safe conduct off this tub, then everything’s going to be hunkydory.” He studied his watch. “You got about eighty minutes to come to your senses.”
Lumbard looked out into the corridor, then closed the cabin door again.
“I wouldn’t count on your cop buddies finding the bomb in time,” said Brupp. “It’s mighty compact, hid real good.” He crossed his pudgy legs. “Anyhow, the cap is going to get his bosses to fork over. See, even if you can get all the passengers and crew safely away before the big blowup, you can’t save the Hermosa. This is a mighty pretty boat, lives up to its name. Be mighty expensive to replace.”
The Phantom had moved near the wall light switch. “The best thing you can do is talk.”
“Says you.”
All the lights went out.
“Hey, Walker,” said Lumbard.
“Oof,” said Brupp.
Someone knocked into Lumbard, tumbling him over into a sofa. “What’s going on?”
The cabin door opened and closed, letting in a brief splash of yellow light.
Lumbard untangled himself, and felt his way over to the switch. When the lights came on, he confirmed his suspicion that the Phantom and Brupp were gone.
The insurance man located Lieutenant Kiwanda down in a corridor of B deck. “Any luck?”
“We have not found the bomb,” he answered. “I’ve radioed to Mawitaan for a bomb squad to be flown out here. But by the time they and their equipment get here....” He stepped into the next cabin in the row. “I’m afraid this is an empty exercise.” He bent, looking carefully under the furniture. “I only have seven of my men on board and we have hundreds of cabins to search, plus the engine room, radio room, and so on. I began searching down here because an explosion will do more damage at this level.”
Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 10] Page 9