Absently, Lumbard opened a closet and searched
it. “What I came down to tell you is ”
“Yes, I was wondering why you left Walker and the captain and our prisoner.”
“Other way around,” corrected Lumbard. “They left me. The captain took off to radio his home office one more time. A few minutes later, the cabin lights went out. So did Walker and the pirate.”
“You mean this Brupp, or whatever his name is, escaped?”
Lumbard raised a hand to scratch his head, instead scratching the mask which was still sitting up there. “No, I got the impression Walker took him someplace.”
“I don’t understand it.”
Loud angry steps sounded in the corridor. Then they heard the captain’s brisk voice calling. “Lieutenant, where are you?”
“In cabin B-217.”
“Oh, and you’re here, too, Mr. Lumbard.” The captain stayed out there looking in at them. “What’s become of that pirate fellow?”
“We were just now discussing that,” said Lumbard. “Don’t you know?”
“Afraid not.”
Scowling at the black policeman, the captain said, “I want him found at once, Lieutenant.”
“My first responsibility is to locate that bomb.”
“You can forget about finding it,” the captain told him. “The steamship company has agreed to pay what these people are asking. You’ve got to find the man so I can negotiate with him. Find him at once.”
CHAPTER 31
The small room had metal walls, thickly painted a dull gray. The light came from a screened bulb in the ceiling. The room was hot.
Brupp opened and closed his mouth, rubbed his palms over the metal floor he found himself on. His head ached. Very cautiously, he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
“That Walker fellow sure packs a wallop,” he mused as he touched, gingerly, a sore spot on his jaw. “Knocked me cold.”
He was alone in the small room. He could hear the ship’s engines, and feel them. There were no windows in the little room. Brupp rose unsteadily to his feet and made a zigzag walk to the metal door. It was locked.
Some of the ruffled trim of his clown-suit cuff had tom loose. Brupp looked from that to his watch. “Holy smoke!” he exclaimed. “Have I been out that long?” According to his watch, the bomb would go off in fifteen minutes.
Brupp pounded on the door several times, shouting. “Hey, somebody! Let me out of here! You better let me out! Or we re all going to blow up!”
Nothing happened. No one came.
When there were only twelve minutes to go, Brupp began beating both fists on the thick metal door. “I’m the only one can save you! You got to listen to me!” Again, there was no response from outside.
Brupp rubbed his palms together, did some fretful pacing of the little room’s metal floor. “Suppose they already found the damn thing? That was my ace in the hole—but if they found it, maybe that phony limey is right— maybe this Walker guy is a jinx.”
Only nine minutes left.
The door opened. The Phantom, still masked and in his costume, came into the room and shut the door behind him. In each hand, he held a .45 automatic.
Brupp backed against the far wall. “You kill me and everybody’s in trouble,” he warned.
The Phantom stopped directly beneath the light. It caused ominous shadows to stripe his face. ‘1 won’t have to,” he told the pudgy pirate.
Brupp noticed the masked man was carrying a coil of rope over his shoulder. “What do you mean? What-?”
“I mean your very own little bomb is going to kill you, Brupp.”
“Oh, yeah? When that bomb goes, it’ll kill everyone, you included.”
The Phantom laughed, a grim harrowing laugh. “There’s no one left on the ship. While you’ve been dozing down here, all the passengers have been put
into lifeboats ”
The pudgy man licked his upper lip. “What about your
“I’ll be leaving in a moment myself. I’ve still got ten minutes.”
“No, it’s only six and a half minutes now.” Brupp poked at the face of his watch.
“There’s still plenty of time to get up to the rail and dive over. I’m a pretty good swimmer.”
Brupp said, “You ... you’re bluffing. Listen, I know how these steamship companies think. Why, they’re not going to let this one blow. Do you realize what—?”
“Of course they wouldn’t. They probably would have given in to you. But they think you escaped, Brupp.”
“Escaped?”
“You managed to switch the lights off in the cabin where we were holding you. You overpowered me and ran out. I followed, but was too late to keep you from leaping overboard into the sea.”
“Who’s going to believe that?”
“So far, the captain, the liner’s owners, Lumbard of MultiWorld Insurance and Lieutenant Kiwanda of the Mawitaan police,” replied the Phantom. “They all agreed the only rational course of action was to abandon ship.”
Brupp took another quick look at his watch. ‘Look, there’s only five minutes. We got. .. we got to make a deal.”
The Phantom holstered his twin guns. He began uncoiling the rope. “Do you know who I am?”
“No. What are you getting at?”
“Have you ever heard of the Phantom?”
“Stories,” answered Brupp, “I’ve heard stories. He’s some kind of folk hero or something. An imaginary character.”
“Oh, is he?”
“You’re not trying to tell me ?”
“They say the Phantom has lived for generations, Brupp, and that he devotes his life to tracking down criminals of all kinds. Thieves, murderers, and particularly pirates. Tracking them down and wiping them out. Turn around.”
“What for?”
The masked man took hold of his shoulder and turned him to face the wall. “To be on the safe side, I’m going to tie you up and gag you. Then there’ll be absolutely no chance of your escaping. No, Brupp, when the Hermosa sinks, you’ll go down with her. One more pirate wiped out.”
“That... that’s murder.”
“No, that’s only justice. Letting you get caught in your own trap.” He grabbed the man’s wrists, held them together, and bound the rope around them. “Listen, Walker, we can still work something out.”
“I don’t think you understand yet, Brupp. I’m not interested in deals. I’m only interested in getting rid of you.”
The ropes tightened on his wrists. “Suppose I tell you where the bomb is.”
“Too late for that now.” The Phantom wrapped the rope around Brupp’s ankles.
“My lord, Walker, you’ve got to listen to reason,” cried Brupp. “Even if you want to kill me, think of this valuable ship.”
“Stand still.”
“What deck are we on now?”
“You’ll die as surely on one deck as another.”
“Is it B or C maybe?”
“C”
“Listen, the bomb ... we hid it here on C.”
“You’ll be quite close to it when it explodes.”
“It’s in a room marked ‘Laundry Supplies,’” went on Brupp. “There’s an air-conditioning outlet right beneath the wall light.”
“If you’re through talking, I want to tie on the gag.” “We stashed the bomb in behind the grill of the air-conditioning vent, see. It’s a plastic explosive with a timer. All inside a tan suitcase. Small tan suitcase,” said Brupp, talking fast. “There’s no booby traps or tricks about it. You can just open the suitcase and turn the bomb off. We made it that way so when the payoff came, the captain could deactivate it easy.” “Who’s we?”
“Us, the goggle-eyed pirates.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Ninety. No, it’s eighty-six now. But I don’t see ”
“Where are the rest of them?”
“Man, we’ve only got two minutes or so to live and—”
“Where is your hea
dquarters?”
‘Well, in Mawitaan...Brupp blurted out several addresses.
“Is there someplace else they’d go? If they were afraid to use Mawitaan?”
“There’s a chateau down in Port Nyama,” said Brupp. “Look, Walker, you ve got to get that bomb.” “Yes, I’ll do that in a while.”
“A while? All this jawing ... you’ve hardly got sixty seconds left to get to that laundry supply room.”
The Phantom stepped away from him. “No, actually I’ve got an horn-.”
“What?”
“I set your watch ahead,” the Phantom explained and left him there.
CHAPTER 32
The Phantom unscrewed the last screw on the air-conditioning grill. He eased the grill off, handed it to Lieutenant Kiwanda. "There’s the suitcase.”
“Go ahead. Brupp may not have told you everything.”
Shining a flashlight into the recess at chest height in the supply-room wall, the masked man said, “He was telling the truth.” He put a hand into the hole and took hold of the suitcase by the handle.
Lumbard watched, his mouth slightly open.
The Phantom got the suitcase out, and placed it gently on a porcelain table. Without saying anything further, he opened the case.
After a second, Lumbard let out bis breath with a relaxed sigh.
“More than enough to do the job,” observed the police lieutenant as he looked into the suitcase.
Swiftly, the Phantom disconnected the exploding mechanism. “There, it won’t do any harm now,” he said. "And forty-five minutes to spare.”
Kiwanda nodded at the open suitcase. “You took a great chance, my friend, gambling that Brupp would talk.”
The Phantom smiled. “Not really,” he said. “I was fairly certain Brupp was the kind of man who would crack under pressure.”
“What did you do to him? I didn’t think torture was in ”
“All I did was set his watch an hour and some minutes ahead,” said the masked man. “When Brupp came to, he thought he had only a few minutes to live.”
“He might have remained stubborn,” said Kiwanda, “beyond the supposed deadline. Then he would have realized you’d tried to trick him.”
“Not Brupp,” said the Phantom. “He may be indifferent to the deaths of others, but his own death is something else again. No, I was pretty sure he’d crack before the time supposedly ran out.”
“You’ve saved our company another couple of million,” said Lumbard.
“More than that in the long run,” said the lieutenant. “Because the goggle-eyed pirates are finished. There will be no more raids.”
“That’s right, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Which reminds me,” said the Phantom. “Brupp also gave me the locations of the main pirate hideouts. We’d better radio those to the mainland.” He closed the suitcase and walked with it toward the door.
“Did he tell you the size of his organization?” asked Kiwanda.
“There are about ninety of them, including the underlings.” Opening the metal door, he stepped into the hall. “The pirates who took off from the ship have
certainly warned the others by now that Brupp is in our hands.”
“They may have a higher estimation of his ability to keep a secret than you do.”
“If they haven’t moved yet, they’ll at least be packing,” said the Phantom. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to catch some of them. There’s also a hideout chateau at Port Nyama.”
“I’ll order a series of raids at once,” promised Kiwanda. “We may have to ask the army for help, since a good many of my men are either on the Hermosa or the Bonita tonight.”
“Hey, the Bonita,” said Lumbard, bringing up the rear. “We better let them know they’re not going to be raided. Bock will be glad to hear.”
One deck down from the radio room, they encountered the captain. “So there you are, Mr. Walker,” he said. ‘1 demand an explanation.”
“Well,” said the Phantom as he held up the suitcase, “this is the bomb.”
The captain jumped back. Good lord, don’t—1” “It’s been rendered harmless,” he said.
“Harmless?” The portly man cleared his throat. “Well, then, you mean there’s no danger? I was about to order the passengers into the lifeboats.”
“There’s no danger,” the lieutenant said. “You can, depending on how your owners feel, continue with the cruise exactly as planned. We’ll be picked up by helicopter.”
The captain was frowning at the masked man. “I still feel, sir, that your conduct has given us a good deal of needless worry. Abducting that pirate at the very moment I was in the process of negotiating with him.”
“Captain,” said Lumbard, “be saved you people a million bucks.”
“Well, I suppose that’s so,” he admitted. “Still I don’t relish the idea of my wishes being gone against. You see, Mr. Walker, a ship cannot function if the captain’s authority is questioned. To have a smooth sailing—”
“I can assure you, it won’t happen again,” said the Phantom, grinning. He gave the captain a casual salute and walked on.
CHAPTER 33
A light rain was gently falling down through the morning. The sky was not completely clouded and splotches of sun showed through. It made rainbow patterns in the oily pools on the small airfield. The field was ringed by jungle. Along one edge, standing haphazardly between the jungle and the field, were three thatch-roofed houses.
On the small porch of the middle house, Brian Folkestone was standing, hands on hips, and squinting out at the fuzzy yellow morning. “I suppose were in for a bloody thunderstorm,” he said. “Complete with cosmic effects.”
“So?” A thin dark girl, dressed in a lime-colored blouse and tan slacks, was leaning in the doorway.
“Those of us who have some familiarity with the romance of aviation, Nita, know that lightning and thunder don't make for the best flying conditions.”
“So we’ll stay here another day.”
At the other end of the field was a hangar of corrugated metal, with two single-engine prop planes inside. “Bangalla at its best has never been one of my favorite spots,” said the lanky young man. “Now with the ruddy bobbies beating the bush for members of the pirate gang, it has even less charm. One should like to shake its dust from one’s heels pronto.”
“Then go.”
“It’s a bloody joy to me, fair maiden, that of all the members of our now defunct organization with whom I could have shared this oasis, I drew you.”
“So? You made the deal.”
“I was in urgent need of transportation out of Mawitaan” he said, continuing to watch the hangar through the rain. “When I popped by your digs to warn you the jig was up, I happened to notice your charming Datsun resting at the curbside.”
“It’s not a bad car.”
‘It brought us here quite efficiently.”
“As long as we’re complaining about this and that,” said Nita, “I might mention I think it would have been one hell of a lot more comfortable if we’d holed up at the chateau.”
“We’d be in the Port Nyama bastille now had we done that, sweet. The odds are pretty good that when our commander-in-chief decided to spill the beans he spilled the whole pot and gave the law the location of the chateau along with the Mawitaan addresses.” “Could he tell them about this setup?”
“Ah, but he never knew of this little oasis,” answered Brian. “I made a deal with the owners of this field entirely on my own a bit back. Very few people know about it.”
“So, I guess maybe this is the best deal.”
Frowning up at the sky, Brian said, “Mayhap, it’ll clear after all. I’m going to trudge over to the hangar and see which of the ships we can use for our dash to freedom.”
“You’re not thinking of ditching me, leaving me behind?”
“That would violate the code of the Folkestones,” Brian assured her as he went down the steps.
He had covered
more than half the distance, walking in long strides, when something inside the shadowy hangar caught his eye. Sunlight, working its way through the tatters in the rain clouds, had hit something and made it flash.
Brian slowed, narrowing his eyes. He had the distinct impression someone was standing in the hangar watching him.
He had told the two men who looked after the field to clear out when he and Nita had arrived late last night. He could service a plane himself and he didn’t want anyone around to tell when he’d taken off, or where he’d headed.
But the sun had flashed on something, a belt buckle maybe.
He might be able to bluff it out. Still he wasn’t sure how many of them were in there. Might be a whole ruddy regiment of cops. In the holster at his side, he had his .32 revolver. No match for a gang of police. Back in the house, though, there was a rifle and a machine gun. Should be able to make some kind of stand there.
Snapping his fingers, he said, “Drat, forgot it.” He pivoted, turning back toward the house as though he’d forgotten something.
“Wait, Folkestone.”
He spun again, fired two shots toward the hangar and then ran toward the house.
“Walker,” he said to himself, “in some kind of strange outfit.”
The Phantom, automatics drawn, came sprinting out of the hangar.
“No bloody chance to get to the house.” Brian swerved and headed for the jungle.
He bounded over the low hurricane fence, began thrashing through the brush, flailing with his arms like a man who’s afraid he’s drowning.
The young man kept it up for five minutes, ten. He didn’t seem to be able to breathe after that. He gasped in air, but it didn’t seem to reach his lungs.
With sweat rolling off him, he threw himself against the bole of a tree to rest. The revolver was slippery in his perspiring hand.
He got his other hand on it, steadying the weapon. “Bound to hear the beggar approaching,” he told himself.
Little by little, he found he could inhale and exhale again. He stood, panting, watching the tangle of jungle surrounding him. The rain came spattering down, bouncing from leaf to leaf to the ground.
Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 10] Page 10