Van puffed at his cigarette slowly. “Feeling a bit under the weather?” he asked.
Havens raised his eyes and stared at the speaker. As Van met his gaze he felt a little chill run down his spine. For if ever hate and murder were written in a human face they were indelibly stamped on the features of Havens at that moment.
Van Loan was puzzled and his worry increased.
“Well,” he said with a nonchalance he did not feel, “I had something of an adventure last night.”
“Yes,” said Havens in a horrible monotone. “What time is it?”
That made the second time he had asked that question in five minutes. Van decided to humor him until he found out what the trouble was.
“Five to twelve,” he said quietly. Then he crossed the room and dropped a fraternal hand on the publisher’s shoulder.
“Listen, Frank,” he said. “We’ve been pals a long time. Now tell me what’s the matter with you? You look all in.”
Again that chill ran down his spine as Havens looked up at him. A cruel smile distorted the publisher’s lips. He rose slowly to his feet. His hands trembled. He seemed in the grip of some terrible emotion.
“It’s nearly twelve o’clock,” he said thickly.
For the third time Van glanced at his watch. Then there came to his ears the slow tolling of the sonorous bell in the Metropolitan Tower.
Havens stood stock still listening. For twelve long seconds he did not move, save for the slight tremble in his hands. Then, at last, as the final note reverberated and died away, he uttered a shrill cry. His hand flashed to his pocket in a lightning-like gesture. It came into view again holding a slim pearl-handled revolver.
He whipped it up and, aiming point blank at his best friend, he pulled the trigger.
“There,” he cried, in a mad frenzy, “you die at noon. Master, I have obeyed.”
But Van Loan was not taken unawares. He had been expecting something to happen, and the fact that he did not know what it would be did not render him any the less ready for it.
He leaped aside with the speed and grace of a panther. The steel slug from Havens’s revolver whizzed over his head and buried itself in the wall. Then, in a flying tackle, Van crashed against the other’s knees and brought him to the floor.
And in that second, in that instant when his life had hung in the balance, he knew the answer. In a single swift illuminating flash, his brain saw the only possible explanation.
Havens lay on the floor with Van’s strong arms still about his thighs. The revolver had slithered underneath the couch. Havens stared blankly up at the ceiling. Then suddenly Van released him. He bent over the publisher, staring steadily into his eyes.
“Listen, Frank,” he said. “Listen to me. It’s Van. Van. Do you understand?”
He bent closer and struck Havens twice on the cheek with the flat of his hand. Then he snapped his fingers in front of the other’s eyes. During this peculiar process, he kept up a steady stream of words.
“Frank! It’s Van! Van! Come out of it. Out of it.”
He accompanied the last word with another stinging blow on the check. Then he breathed easier as he saw the dull glaze suddenly leave the other’s eyes. Life seemed to return to his dead irises. His face lost cruel relentlessness. Van helped him up and sat him in a chair.
Normal once more, Havens stared at his friend in a bewildered manner.
“Van,” he said in a questioning, puzzled voice, “where did you come from?” He looked around the room, recognized it, and went on: “How did I get here. What —”
“Take it easy,” said Van gravely. “I’ll explain everything to you. You see that?”
He pointed to the revolver on the floor. Havens’s eyes followed his hand. The publisher nodded.
“Well,” said Van, “you just tried to kill me with that.”
Horror shone in Havens’s face. “What?”
Van nodded. “It wasn’t your fault, though. You were hypnotized.”
“My God,” said Havens, now thoroughly comprehending. “Go on, man. Tell me what happened.”
Briefly Van told him of his own deeds since he had arrived in the apartment. When he finished, Havens stared at him aghast.
“But, good heavens,” he exclaimed. “Why? Why should anyone hypnotize me? Why should anyone want to make me kill you?”
“Because,” said Van gravely, “you are the only living person who knows the identity of the Phantom. They can’t kill the Phantom, because they don’t know who he is. But they could hypnotize you and while under the influence tell you to kill the Phantom, because you knew what they did not. You knew that I am the Phantom!”
Havens nodded slowly as the reason of Van’s explanation came to him.
“But who?” he said. “I appreciate the fact that you’ve made enemies among crooks. But who is so diabolically clever to be able to conceive and carry out a scheme of this sort?”
“The same person that waylaid me last night.”
“But I sent my car for you? Didn’t it get there? If not, where’s the car? Where’s the chauffeur?”
“The car picked me up in Baltimore as per schedule,” said Van, “before we got waylaid. Your chauffeur is probably a corpse somewhere in Maryland. God knows where the car is.”
Havens nearly bounced out of his chair.
“What? You mean you never saw —”
“No. I never saw him.”
“But I received a confidential message from Washington late last night saying that you had been there.”
“Not me,” said Van grimly. “That was the enemy impersonating me.”
“But who? Who is this enemy?”
“That,” said Van very gravely, “is what we must find out if we care at all about living.”
There was a short grim silence in the room.
“Now,” said Van, “you’re beginning to realize what I came to realize last night. We’re dealing with a great man. A man capable of giving genius to crime. A man capable of welding the whole underworld together in a war on society. I have some papers here which give me certain information. Not a great deal, but at least something to work on.”
He broke off for a moment, then told Havens the whole story of his adventures of the night before.
“Now,” he went on, “if we can find out who it was that hypnotized you, we have a real first-class clue. Think, now! Did you come in contact with any suspicious characters this morning. Anyone at all, who you think might have hypnotized you?”
Havens wrinkled his brows and thought profoundly for a minute or two. Then he shook his head.
“No-o,” he said slowly. “I can’t say that I did. I — I’ve got it. The cripple!”
Van leaned forward in his chair. His eyes shone eagerly.
“Go on,” he said excitedly. “What cripple?”
“Well,” said Havens, “of course, I’ve no evidence to go on. But his eyes. I’ll never forget his eyes. I grew dizzy looking at him.”
“Go on,” said Van. “Give me all the details you can think of. Where did you meet him?”
“I ran into him as I was leaving the Pneumatic Rubber Company’s directors’ meeting. I left with Bursage — you know Bursage. He’s head of the board. Well, we were going out of the building together when this cripple beggar came up to us whining something about a nickel for a cup of coffee.”
Van nodded and scrawled something on a desk pad. Havens continued: “I reached in my pocket for some silver before I really saw him. Then when I looked at him, I noticed his eyes. He was dirty and unshaven, yet those eyes stared out of his head like glittering diamonds in a setting of mud. I never saw anything like it. They were filled with hatred — hatred and dominance.”
“Dominance is hardly a quality you’d expect to find in the eyes of a bum,” observed Van.
“True. I thought of that. As I handed him a quarter, his hand touched mine, and our gazes met. As he looked at me I got a trifle dizzy. My head buzzed. It was all over in a minute and I paid
no attention to it. But I distinctly remember that I was frightfully dizzy at the time.”
Van nodded. “Did Bursage notice anything?” he asked.
“No. I mentioned the cripple to him as we walked away. He dismissed my ideas. Said the man was just an ordinary tramp. He saw nothing out of the ordinary about him.”
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about him, except for his eyes?”
“No. But, God, Van, those eyes were enough. I tell you, I’ve never seen anything that had such a weird effect on me. It was awful.”
“Awful enough,” said Van grimly. “They were the eyes of death. The eyes that we must find if ever we are to break the power of the man who plans to devastate society.”
CHAPTER III
THE PHANTOM MEETS THE FOE
HAVENS sat silent for a moment, as his mind absorbed the dire situation that they faced. When he spoke his voice trembled slightly, for Havens was a man of imagination.
“Does anyone know you’re here, Van?”
“Not a soul. I checked in early, this morning, under the alias of Smith. You’re the only living soul who knows it.”
Havens nodded, satisfied. Then he asked with a clouded brow:
“But what are we fighting, Van? Who is it? What is his aim? Have you no information?”
Van jerked his thumb in the direction of the papers that scattered the escritoire.
“Only what’s there. His name’s Hesterberg. From those Department of Justice reports, he’s mad, and he’s a Red. They’ve got a good line on him up till three years ago. Then it becomes mostly guess work. Anyway, he’s got a good head on him. But it seems he’s hipped on Communism. He’s drawn pay from Russia for years. And since he quit the university, where he was Professor of Economics, he’s devoted himself to breaking down all American ideals.
“He’s plotting a tremendous, world-wide revolution. As I understand it, his aim is to get all the civilized nations at each other’s throats through his machinations; to tear down governments and law by his alliance with the underworld, and then, when we’re weak and impotent, to crush us all with the mighty Red armies.”
Havens reached for a cigarette.
“A nice customer,” he said. “God, Van, if he can force his will on people as easily as he did on me, we’re done for.”
A vague fear was reflected in the publisher’s eyes as he spoke. Van Loan crossed the room and slapped him confidentially on the shoulder.
“Don’t let it get you, old man,” he said. “You’re naturally upset after what you went through this morning. Hesterberg hasn’t won yet. He —”
His words trailed off into nothingness as there came a sharp staccato rap at the door. Havens’s eyes stared into the detective’s.
“Who’s that?” he asked in a low tense voice.
Van loan stood perfectly still for a moment, yet the complete immobility of his body indicated that his mind was functioning smoothly, rapidly.
“You’ve been followed,” he said in a low voice. “Some one’s followed you to see if you really killed the Phantom. Open the door. I’ll stand back here. Pretend you’re upset. Act as if you’d really killed me, until I think of some way to turn this break to our advantage.”
Havens rose and walked toward the door, while Van carefully flattened himself up against the heavy drapes near the window. Havens opened the door, and did his best to look like a man who has just slain his best friend. His hands trembled as he held the door ajar.
His head was hung on his chest, and his voice broke as he asked:
“What is it?”
A burly man pushed past him, and glanced around the apartment.
Havens clutched at him.
“What is it? What do you want?” he demanded in a shrill voice.
The other pushed him aside brutally. “I’m looking for a corpse,” he said callously. “Did you do your little job?”
Havens uttered an exclamation of fear and shrank up against the wall. The visitor laughed harshly.
“Where’s the body?” he said.
Havens caught Van’s eye. With the air of a man who has been cornered he nodded his head toward the bathroom. The stranger took a step in that direction.
Van Loan made a swift movement with each hand. His right whipped an automatic from his shoulder holster, while the left slipped a black silk mask over his head. Unconcerned, the intruder walked toward the bathroom and looked in. Then he turned savagely to Havens.
“You rat! Don’t lie to me. Where’s the body? Where’s the Phantom?”
“The Phantom’s here. Both his body and his soul. Put up your hands!”
Havens laughed grimly. Their visitor turned an astonished face to the masked man who held the gun aimed directly at his heart. For a moment, Hesterberg’s henchman was too utterly amazed to move. Then an exclamation fell from his lips.
“God!” he said. “God!”
“So you’re rather surprised that I’m alive?”
“It’s never failed before,” said the man speaking more to himself than the others.
“But it’s failed now,” said Van. “But there’ll be another killing here that won’t fail unless you give me some information. Now talk.”
By now the stranger had taken a grip on himself.
“Talk?” he repeated. “About what?”
“Just talk,” said Van softly, but his eyes were hard. “About anything. But particularly about a Mad Red called Hesterberg, or about a cripple with remarkable eyes that impels men to go gunning for their friends. Best of all, tell me, where I can meet these charming gentlemen.”
The stranger frowned, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He stared steadily at the gun.
“I’m not talking,” he said laconically.
“Yes, you are,” contradicted Van. “You’re talking or you’re dying. I don’t bluff. I mean it.”
The other gazed at him steadily. Whatever his faults may have been, cowardice was not among them.
“I die anyway,” he said simply. “If I do talk, I’ll get worse from someone else than you can ever give me.”
“I’ll count three,” said Van, and his voice was jagged ice. “Then you get it.”
He began to count in a slow deliberate voice, and for the second time that day, death was in the room.
But the henchman of Hesterberg was not of the breed that waits for the reaper supinely. With a sudden swift motion he ducked his head. At the same moment his hand flashed to his hip. Something black and ominous appeared in his hand. Two staccato reports ripped through the room. One steel slug tore angrily through the plaster of the wall. The other crashed into human flesh, ripped a heart to shreds and wrenched a life from a body.
Van stood over the crimson torso of his fallen foe. He spoke rapidly to Havens. “Get out,” he said. “I can handle this better alone. I’ll communicate with you through our usual channels.”
For a moment Havens thought of protesting, but he had learned that when the Phantom issued orders it was expedient to obey. Silently he let himself out the door.
Van Loan bent swiftly over the corpse and ran facile fingers through the other’s pockets. He piled up on the table the articles he took from the dead man, then regarded them with no little wonder.
First, there was a red band, about six inches wide, with the Number 8 painted on it in white. Its use he could only conjecture. But he was quite familiar with the second object, though it was difficult to understand what a man was doing with it in the heart of New York at high noon.
It was a small rubberized silk gas mask of the type which covers the nose, leaving the mouth free. Van stared at these for some time. Then he began to go through the sheaf of papers that he had taken from the man’s inside pocket in the hope of finding some clue that would put him directly on the trail of the Mad Red.
Luck was with him. His pulses pounded with excitement as he stared at the yellow slip of paper in his hand. Typed neatly upon it was the message that would, God willing, give him the fi
rst personal contact with the man who had twice tried to slay the Phantom.
It read:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR NUMBER 8
You will appear at midnight at the Morton Bank. You will wear your identification band. You will bring your gas mask. I shall lead the horde in person. You shall wait for me and remain by my side while the work is done.
O.
Van Loan sat down. He lit a cigarette and for a long time remained lost in thought. He was impervious to the bloody figure upon the floor. Impervious to everything save the fact that at midnight he was prepared to risk his life in order to come close to the man that he had vowed to track down.
The message was by no means clear to him. Then, too, there was always the alternative of calling in the police. Undoubtedly, the bluecoats, massed in sufficient numbers, could frustrate whatever plan Hesterberg had made. Yet that course would get the Phantom no closer to the Red madman.
No, to be successful, he, the Phantom, must play it alone. Number 8 had probably been sent to see that Havens carried out the instructions of the crippled hypnotist. Or, if not, he had come on his own to see the Phantom’s finish. In any event, it was a break Van could not afford to pass up.
Here at last was the chance to meet Hesterberg, to find out the man’s plans, and then to foil him. Once again, the Phantom would play a lone hand, spurning the aid of the police of the city, spurning all aid save that which his keen alert brain and his steady, courageous heart and hand could give him.
He glanced at his watch. It was almost five o’clock. That gave him over seven hours until his rendezvous. Until then he would rest, he decided. He might need that rest later. He glanced down at the body on the floor, and shrugged his shoulders. He had no time to bother with that.
He would check out and leave it there. After all, who could connect the entirely mythical Mr. Smith who had registered that morning with the Phantom?
He threw away his cigarette, removed his coat and lay down upon the bed. It was characteristic of him that neither the hazard that lay seven hours before him, nor the ugly shattered thing that lay on the floor, prevented him from falling into peaceful, untroubled slumber.
The Emperor of Death Page 2
