by Lee Falk
"Over this way," called a man off in the mist. "Sarge was barking at something over here."
"I'm coming, I'm coming," said another man. can't see my nose in front of my—" He had glanced to his left to discover the Phantom standing there.
Before the guard could cry out, the Phantom had pressed one hand over his mouth and hit him three times in the neck. When the Phantom felt the man go limp, he let him fall to the damp ground.
"Diana's new friend," the Phantom said to himself, "is certainly anxious to maintain his privacy.
Then, from within the big house, he heard Diana's voice. She was screaming.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The man in the hallway reached under his coat when he saw the Phantom.
The masked man kept right on coming. He hit the man squarely on the jaw before more than the pistol grip showed outside the coat. The Phantom hit him with the fist which wore his skull ring. The force of the blow etched a skull design on the guard's face.
Snatching the pistol from the man's lax fingers, the Phantom tossed it into a nearby vase. Then he sprinted upstairs. That was where Diana's cry had come from.
He had let himself in through a rear door in the gray stone villa, using a small lock-picking tool from his belt.
There was no one patrolling the second floor. At the end of the shadowy corridor, yellow light was seeping out from under a closed door.
"This will not hurt at all, young lady," said a frail dry voice on the other side of the door. "Please to come back over here, so that we may proceed."
"No," said Diana, "I won't let you do this to
99
me.
"You really haven't much choice, Diana," said another man. His voice was deep, self-assured. "Oh, and don't waste your time on another of those screams. No one's outside but my night
watch."
"Chris, this is all insane," said the girl.
"Please, young lady, let's get on," said the older man. "My time is at a premium and I find these delays most annoying."
"So come on over here and sit in the chair again," said Chris Danton.
The Phantom drew his twin automatics from their waterproof holsters. He raised one booted foot and kicked the door open.
The two men looked at him blankly for a second. Old Dr. Martinson had a hypodermic needle in one dry bony hand. Danton was standing next to a white metal table. The fight from the single hanging ceiling lamp colored his handsome face a watery gold.
"How did you . . ." began Diana. She was in the corner of the small laboratory. "Oh, never mind. I'm so glad you're here."
"Join me on this side of the room," the Phantom told the girl. "Danton, keep both your hands right where they are."
"You have me at a disadvantage, sir," said Danton with a gracious smile. "You know my name and I don't know yours. Looks like you've had a spell in the water. Bit chilly for swimming, isn't it?"
Diana crossed the room, keeping as far away from the two men as she could.
"You're quite well known up and down the coast," the Phantom said to the owner of the Sea Horse Villa. "Particularly to the narcotics authorities."
"All," smiled Danton, "slurs and libels. No one has any proof."
"So that's it," said Diana when she was beside the Phantom on the threshold. "That's what you're using those concealed rooms for—to store narcotics that you must be smuggling up from Mexico on that yacht of yours."
"Diana, you really are starting to sound like a
n arc.
The Phantom gestured at old Dr. Martinson with the black automatic in his left hand. "Set the needle on the table, Doctor, and very slowly hand me that large roll of surgical tape."
The doctor dropped the hypo. "What tape? I don't see—"
Diana walked back into the room and picked up I the tape. "Let's have your hands behind your back, Doctor. It won't hurt a bit."
While the old man mumblingly Complied, the Phantom cautioned, "Go carefully, Diana."
"That's a very individual outfit your champion is decked out in, Diana," said the handsome Dan- ton. "It reminds me of something."
"Turn around, Danton, with your hands behind you," ordered the Phantom.
Danton had moved slightly so that Diana and the old doctor were between him and the Phan- lom's guns. "Oh, of course. Anything to oblige, my mysterious friend." Suddenly Danton dived to his right and clutched at something on the wall.
The lights went out. Then glass was shattered.
The Phantom stepped into the room and caught hold of Diana. "Let's go."
Out in the hallway she asked, "Aren't you going after him?"
"He's off in the fog outside by now." He guided her down the stairway. "My first concern is to get you safely off this island."
"Jumping out the window like that," said Diana as they ran toward the front of the house. "It must be fifteen feet to the ground."
"I'd guess Danton is pretty good at surviving."
The Phantom opened the door. Fog came swirling in. He had holstered one of his automatics. He took hold of the girl's hand and led her out into the night.
Roughly fifteen minutes later, they were down the black cliffside and on Danton's private dock. The two motorlaunches, pale and chill in the mist, were bobbing gently in their berths.
Coming down here from the villa they had encountered one more guard.
The man had gotten off one shot before the Phantom had blasted the man's pistol from his hand and knocked him out.
There was no one watching the boats.
Diana climbed into the nearest launch while the Phantom prepared to cast off. "We're in luck," she called softly. "The keys are in this one."
"What?" The Phantom straightened.
"I said they'd left the keys, which will . .
The Phantom moved down the mist-slick planking to the other boat and hopped aboard. There were no keys in this one. "Well take this one," he said to the dark-haired girl.
Diana gave a puzzled shrug and left the boat to join him in the second. "Don't you like to do things the easy way?"
"Maybe too easy," he answered while he knelt below the wheel and sliced the wiring so he could run the launch without a key. "Maybe somebody would like us to use that particular boat."
"You don't think Danton can have come down here to booby-trap one of his own motorboats?"
"There," said the Phantom. The engine was turning over, chugging loudly. He returned to the dock, cast off, and jumped back to the launch to take it out of the little harbor and into the ocean.
Diana sat near him with her arms folded. "I thought you were ... I don't know—at one of the other ends of the earth someplace."
"And I thought you were spending a sedate vacation in polite Santa Barbara society," the Phantom said as he headed the launch back toward the California coast. "Instead I find you involved with a dashing playboy."
Diana laughed. "You're not jealous, are you?"
"No," he answered.
"I have to admit Chris Danton seemed . . . well, charming at first," the girl said. "But, Kit, he really turned out to be a pretty dreadful person. How did you hear about him, and all this narcotics business?"
"A federal agent I ran into up in the Bay Area happened to mention your playboy friend," answered the masked man. "As Danton pointed out, no one's ever been able to prove anything against him. Quite a few people, however, are convinced he's pretty deep into narcotics smuggling."
"I think they'll be able to prove something now," she told the Phantom. "I stumbled into a concealed part of the villa. I'm fairly certain they've still got drugs stored there."
"That's why Danton was holding on to you?"
"I'm not as subtle as you, I guess," she said with a sigh. "He found out I was in there and—this is really fantastic to me—they were going to brainwash me. So I wouldn't remember anything."
The Phantom said, "That's what the little doctor was for?"
"Yes," she replied. "Oh, and a funny thing, Kit, about the doctor . .
."
The rear end of the launch exploded with a great belching boom, spewing flame and twists of metal up into the misty night.
CHAPTER NINE
Danton stood with his hands on his hips high up on the black cliffs. When the sound of the motor- launch exploding reached him, his first reaction was deep hearty laughter. "One up on you, my masked friend," he said into the foggy night. Then his face became momentarily sad as he turned away from the sea. "But it's a shame poor Diana had to go as well."
He made his way back toward his villa, one hand in the pocket of his slacks, whistling an old European folk tune. "Yes, too bad about the girl. She was quite lovely," Danton reflected. "But there are more lovely girls in the world than million-dollar business enterprises. So there can never really be any question about which one has to be sacrificed. And I did, sincerely, try to spare— what's that?"
Someone was groaning off to his right, hidden by the thick fog.
The last guard the Phantom had knocked out was coming to. "Some guy," he said, "in a trick suit... he really clobbered me."
Jerking the man roughly to his feet, Danton told him, "You were hired, Hugo, because of a reputed ability to clobber others. I must say I—"
"He had something in his hand," complained Hugo, rubbing his injured jaw. "He must of had a sackful of nickels or a pair of knucks or something. Because it sure as hell felt like it."
"He wasn't carrying a sack of nickels when I
saw him last, Hugo." Danton strode off in the direction of his house.
Trotting after him, Hugo said, "Well, he left a funny mark on my face. You don't do that with your bare hands." He was rubbing his fingertips over his cheek. "Feels like some kind of funny drawing or . . ."
"What?" Danton stopped. He pulled out his cigarette lighter and flicked it on.
"Right there, see? It feels like I been tattooed." Hugo poked a finger at his injured face.
"Ah," said Danton, studying the mark the Phantom had left on his henchman's face. "This confirms what I suspected earlier." *
"What is it?"
"Over in Bangalla, they call it the Sign of the Skull."
Hugo scowled, rubbing hard at the skull mark. "That don't sound so good. Is it some kind of disease I caught?"
Danton smiled. "It's the trademark of our late visitor," he said. "He's known as the Phantom."
"The Phantom? Never heard of him."
"Nor is it likely you'll hear of him again," Danton assured him. "And yet . . . they do say he can never die."
"This is all getting to sound very spooky." Hugo dropped back, started off toward the side of the villa.
Chuckling, Danton walked on into his giant house. "I wonder now how true all the tales about the Phantom are."
"Hey, boss," called a guard from the other end of the hall. This was the man the Phantom had felled on his way out.
"What is it, Steranko?"
"That guy in the funny costume who came bar-
reling out of here a while back," said Steranko moving toward his employer. "He socked me in the mouth and you know what it left on my face? I was just looking in the mirror and—"
"A skull sign, yes," answered Danton.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
Danton stepped into the library and shut the door. "I'm absolutely certain they're both dead," he said as he crossed to the phone. "I don't want to let myself be hoodooed by a bunch of native superstitions, but it won't hurt to be absolutely sure in this case." He dialed a mainland number.
Laura, the red-haired girl, lived in a small rented cottage quite near the ocean. Her favorite room was the yellow-and-white kitchen. At the moment she was in there, indulging in her most recent hobby of pastry-making. She often fooled around in the kitchen like this late at night when she couldn't sleep.
She was sifting flour into a bowl with a pale- blue stripe around it when the phone began to ring, "in a minute," she said in the direction of the wall.
The tan wall phone went on ringing while she set down the sifter, and wiped her hands on the backside of her tight blue-denim slacks.
On the eleventh ring, she picked up the instrument and said, "This is an ungodly hour."
"Did I awaken you, little Laura?"
"We never sleep," she answered. "I'm getting flour all over everything, damn."
Danton said, "Get all the whimsy out of your system as soon as you can. I have something serious to discuss."
"Fire away," said the redhead.
"Perhaps," said Danton, "I'm being overly cau
tious. Yet I feel that I've built my various successes out of a careful and cautious approach."
"You're about as cautious as Jean LaFitte," she said. "What's the trouble now, Chris?"
"You recall my weekend guest?"
"Miss Sweetness and Light, sure. How's she get- ling along?"
Danton said, "I'm afraid she's passed away."
"That's too bad."
"However, the thought occurs to me that, she may not have," said Danton. "It's a very remote possibility. Still. . ."
"You want me to check something out for you?"
"Yes, little Laura," said Danton. "You might watch her place of residence and determine whether she returns to the living."
"I understand," said Laura.
"She may be accompanied by a man, a tall rela- lively young man," continued Danton. "I'm anxious to learn of his fate, too."
"Yes," said the small girl. "Suppose I can't really see to—?"
"I suggest you go in the company of someone else," said Danton. "I'd be truly disappointed if you can't, should the necessity arise, settle this problem for me. However, if you absolutely can't . . . then you might recall to mind, at least, the fate of poor Carlos."
"That one again?"
"If it's the only way," said Danton. "In which event, please notify me. And you will then have to make arrangements . . . well, you do understand my meaning."
"Oh, sure," said Laura into the phone. "But let's put on a happy face and hope for the best. Bye."
She hung up, then made another call. The con- tent of this one, to any outsider, was even more
cryptic than the conversation with Chris Danton.
After thoroughly washing the flour from her hands and face, Laura went into her bedroom. Carefully, she slid the bed a foot to the left and knelt. By pressing a board in the hardwood floor in two places, she caused it to pop free. In the long trough below lay a rifle. And beneath that a small plastic bag full of white powder.
Laura took both these things with her when she left the cottage ten minutes later.
CHAPTER TEN
There was blackness all around him, a chill, engulfing blackness. Kicking with his powerful legs, (he Phantom shot upward through the water. He erupted up into heavy fog.
"Diana! Diana!" he called as he treaded water.
There was no answering cry.
He could only see a few feet in aiiy direction. Off to his right there was a faint orange glow, which must be the burning launch.
"Diana!" he called again.
A faint answer came from off in the fog.
He called her name once more, but got no reply this time. The Phantom began swimming in the direction the voice had come from. The mist clinging to the night sea swirled up as he passed through it.
"This is about the spot," he told himself after swimming a few yards.
The girl was not there.
The Phantom inhaled air through his mouth, then dived beneath the surface.
He circled through the cold darkness. Something brushed against his side.
Reaching out, the Phantom caught hold of the girl's wrist. He slipped one arm around her and pulled her up with him.
When her head was out of the water, Diana blinked. "I thought . . ." she said. "I thought I could . . . stay afloat. . . but—"
"Never mind," he told her. "Are you hurt?"
The girl thought. "Not physically injured I don't think," she answered. "But I feel awfully .
. . worn out, I guess."
"Relax now," the Phantom said. "I'll get us back to the coast."
"It must be-miles and . . ." She stopped, then said, "Yes, I'm sure you can."
Holding her with one arm, the Phantom began swimming.
"I thought Chris—I didn't think he . . . wanted to kill me."
The Phantom did not reply.
"Kit," said Diana after a moment. "I hear something."
The masked man had heard it, too. "Sounds like a boat. Your friend Danton may have come out to make sure his booby-trap worked. Be ready to duck underwater if he passes close by."
The sound of the boat's motor grew louder behind the mist.
Diana took a deep breath and held it.
"Mr. Walker! Mr. Walker, are you around here anyplace?"
The Phantom grinned. "It's the curious Cap Nordling," he told the girl. "Yes, over here, Cap," he called.
"Who's Cap Nordling?" Diana asked.
"The man who's going to give us a lift home."
The lights of Nordling's craft caught them. "I been circling around out here," he said, killing the engine and bringing his boat up beside them. "Got to admit, I took to wondering what was going on over on San Obito. So I stuck around for a spell. When I heard that explosion, I said to myself, I bet that's Mr. Walker. I bet he borrowed one of them boats and—'" "Help her in." The Phantom lifted the dripping Diana up toward the boat.
"Evening, miss." Nordling got hold of both her hands and pulled her in. "My name's Cap Nordling. Usually on Sunday nights, I devote myself to viewing a private-eye show I'm fond of, but I-"
"We appreciate it," Diana said.
Nordling moved to a cabinet. "Yeah, here's one." He tossed her a large fish-patterned beach towel. "Dry off some."
The Phantom was climbing into the craft. "It would be a good idea to get back to land as soon as we can." j #
"Might be more explosions?" asked the fat boatman, starting his engine again.
"That's one possibility," replied the masked man.
Nordling looked him up and down. "I still got them clothes you left," he said. "Are you . . ." His voice trailed off.
"Yes?"
"I was going to ask why you was dressed up like that," Nordling said. "Decided it's none of my business."