Phantom Detective - Black Ball of Death

by Robert Wallace

  He stopped. On one side was a strip of loam, half moss and half leaf-covered. A few drops of engine oil, or chassis grease, showed a car had been parked there. Van’s flash focused on the dirt below the moss. He bent closer to scrutinize the unmistakable heel prints of a woman’s shoe.

  Then something white among the leaves caught his attention. He leaned over and picked up a gardenia. White and wax-like, it was as fresh and perfect as if it had just come out of a florist’s refrigerator.

  The Phantom put the flower in his pocket and was turning to go back to the lodge when suddenly his nerves whipped a warning. He clicked off his flashlight, stood immovable, eyes and ears strained. His highly developed sixth sense that told him of impending danger was seldom wrong. Someone — something — was out in the bulking blackness beyond him — watching!

  After a minute the Phantom picked up a handful of gravel He tossed it into the shrubbery, listening to it rattle against the leaves of the plants there. Nothing happened. Turning, he walked a few yards down the driveway, letting the cut stone crunch noisily under his shoes before he stepped over to the soft loam and retraced his steps silently.

  For an instant he thought the ruse was going to work. That the watcher in the dark, thinking he had gone, would come into the open. Close to the spot where he had previously stood, the Phantom waited.

  After a minute or two he heard a faint rustle in the shrubbery. But instead of coming toward him, the sounds faded in the distance. Almost at the same moment the moon came out from behind the clouds.

  In its silver shine the Phantom had a glimpse of a man’s blurred figure making its way down the side of the cliff.

  CHAPTER IV

  VISITORS

  URGENTLY, the Phantom pressed forward, following, but not with much hope of any great success. The tangle of underbrush slowed him considerably. By the time he had found the path that led down from the cliff, the figure in the moonlight had vanished.

  After a pause Van heard the rapid putt of an outboard motor. A boat had left a cove some distance north of where he stood, a boat that seemed to hug the shore, keeping well within the shadows. Then, like the rustle in the shrubbery, the echoes of its engine died out in the night.

  The Phantom followed the path down to the shore. Matthew Arden’s boathouse and dock were around a bend, a short walk from where the path ended. The Phantom, on the dock, looked up and down the lake. There were lights in a building on the opposite shore. He searched the northern stretch of Lake Candle for a sign of the boat he had heard. But nothing moved up there except the dance of the lake water in the moonlight.

  An empty, cellophane-wrapped cigarette package lay crumpled on the dock. The Phantom picked it up. The absence of dampness indicated it hadn’t been there too long. He studied the boathouse, noticing its double doors were padlocked. His gaze shifted to a line of rocks at the land end of the dock. He moved over closer to them, his eyes catching the slick of oil and gasoline floating on top of the lake water.

  A boat had been moored at the dock some time during the evening. Had it held the sheriff’s men? The Phantom shook his head. McCabe’s men had come in cars. He asked himself other questions.

  Had Arthur Arden’s killer arrived by water? Had he been on the property since the hour he had used his gun on Matt Arden’s son, hidden out in the woods, beyond the sheriff’s men and floodlights?

  It didn’t seem reasonable to the Phantom. Killers usually did their lethal work and made fast getaways. Then who was this interested party who had lurked in the underbrush?

  The question ran through the Phantom’s mind as he swung around, the drumfire of a motor-boat breaking the quiet. Across the lake Van saw a boat approaching swiftly. In the moonlight he made out the lines of an open launch with a riding light at its bow. It came directly toward the dock on which he stood, kicking up a spray as it cut the mirrorlike water.

  A few minutes ticked away before the launch, under reduced speed, nosed up to the dock. There were two men in it. One sat huddled in the stern, what looked like a shawl around his bent shoulders. The other, a bullet-headed giant of a man, had scrambled up to the bow and was looping the boat’s painter through one of the dock’s iron rings.

  He fastened it deftly, went back to the stern, and used another line to swing in the rear of the launch. Against the glare of the moon the Phantom saw the big man was bareheaded and shirtless. He wore cotton trousers and sneakers. His tremendous torso was silhouetted against the moon, blotting out the man on the stern seat.

  While the Phantom watched, the giant leaned over and with effortless ease put his arms around his shawl-wearing companion. He lifted him out of the boat and onto the dock in one smooth motion. Going forward, Van found himself face to face with the frail figure of an elderly, white-haired individual whose dark eyes and sunken cheeks gave him the look of an invalid.

  He recognized the man immediately. Familiar with those leading figures who worked in chemical research, the Phantom had little difficulty in placing him as Dr. Hugo Winterly, a one-time eminent figure in the world of science.

  “What’s going on over here?” Winterly’s question came in a thin, almost hollow voice. “I woke up and saw lights. Luke says there were men here — a number of them. What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Arthur Arden was murdered in the lodge earlier tonight.” The Phantom’s tone was cold and level.

  The aged scientist took a backward step. The giant’s arm went around him to steady him. Now, only a few feet away, the Phantom saw Winterly’s bodyguard more clearly. Tent-shaped eyes, set close together and glinting, peered out from under heavy brows. A flat nose spread across his face. His shapeless mouth was twisted into a leer.

  “That’s all right, Luke.” Winterly pushed the giant away. “Arthur Arden — murdered!” His thin voice cracked. “Who could have done such a horrible thing?”

  “You knew him?” the Phantom asked.

  Winterly coughed. “As a neighbor. I live across the lake. Arthur was only a boy when he first came here. Of course, I knew him. Everybody knew him. The scientist broke off to ask, “Who are you, sir?”

  “New York police.” The Phantom felt Luke’s belligerent stare grow more intent. “I’m helping Sheriff McCabe. The sheriff left — or is leaving.”

  Dr. Winterly leaned heavily against Luke. His fingers toyed with the fringed edge of the shawl around his narrow shoulders. After a minute he said:

  “There was a boat over here, at this dock, toward ten o’clock. I saw it plainly in the moonlight from my window. It didn’t stay long. It went away after a short time. It went that way.”

  He pointed toward the south. Luke’s gaze never left the Phantom’s face as the Phantom said, “You didn’t see what kind of a boat it was?”

  “A rowboat with an outboard motor. At ten o’clock. Tell that to Sheriff McCabe.”

  Dr. Winterly began to cough again, a deep, ravaging cough that shook his frail frame. Luke picked him up and put him back on the stern seat of the launch. Without a word the giant cast off and started the motor. As the boat moved away, Luke’s head turned.

  Once again the Phantom felt the heat of the man’s baleful stare.

  Cement steps led up to the terrace of Matthew Arden’s lodge. Mounting them, the Phantom looked back over his shoulder. Winterly and Luke were well on their way across the lake. So a boat had tied up at the dock about the same time the medical examiner had placed Arthur Arden’s fatal shooting. The Phantom’s disguised face shadowed thoughtfully as he crossed the terrace, looking for Steve.

  He found the reporter in the foyer, making a few final notes.

  “The sheriff’s gone,” Steve said. “He told me to tell you if there’s any way he can help, or any information you want, to call him at his house. I’ve got the number right here. He left a couple of men to watch the place. I believe Mr. Arden’s staying here for the rest of the night. He’s in a room upstairs.”

  “You’re going back to town?”

  “Soon as p
ossible. Mr. Havens’s car is okay. It needed a new set of points and some work on the generator. Purrs like a kitten now. I’ve been waiting to find out if I can give you a lift.”

  “If you will. I think,” the Phantom said, “I’m temporarily finished here.”

  Huston drove the Cadillac, the Phantom beside him.

  The little reporter was full of the story of the tragedy at the lodge. While he drove he talked.

  “Looks to me like this is one of the most rugged ones you’ve hit yet, Phantom. Who’d want to kill Arthur Arden? From what I’ve heard and know of him, he was a pretty swell guy. A little extravagant, but it was his own money he was tossing around. Everybody liked him.”

  “Someone didn’t like him,” the Phantom said dryly. “By the way, what do know about Dr. Hugo Winterly?”

  “Winterly?” Steve looked surprised. “Funny you should mention him. The Clarion is featuring a series called Portraits of Scientists next month, and he is mentioned in the first article.”

  “How much do you know about him?”

  “He’s probably one of the greatest of them all. His research experiments and contributions have been of great value. He’s old now, in his seventies. He made several fortunes — which he promptly gave away to charity. Funny. guy, probably cracked. Imagine being rich and not keeping enough to live on. I mean, Winterly has a life pension from the Harlow Foundation, but it’s hardly enough to keep a bird alive. That reminds me. He’s holed in somewhere down in these parts.”

  “On the other side of Lake Candle,” the Phantom said. “I was talking to him a short time ago.” He explained briefly while Steve whistled under his breath.

  “So he came over to see what had happened to Arden?”

  “With a giant companion.” The Phantom pushed out his long legs. “I have a feeling, Steve, that our learned scientist had some other motive in riding his launch across to the Arden dock tonight.”

  Steve Huston removed his gaze from the road long enough to give the Phantom a puzzled glance.

  “What kind of a motive?”

  “I don’t know — yet. But I intend to find out. And when I do,” the Phantom said, musingly, “I’m reasonably certain I’m going to find that the celebrated Dr. Hugo Winterly had something more in mind than a neighborly interest in the man you found shot to death on the floor of the billiard room at the lodge!”

  CHAPTER V

  TWISTED EAR

  ON UPPER PARK AVENUE, Richard Curtis Van Loan had his New York headquarters. There he maintained a sky-high suite of rooms in a building that gave him the use of a private elevator and an around-the-corner entrance that was used only by himself.

  He paid well for these conveniences, which were necessary to him in his rôle of the Phantom. He had found that it was vital to be able to get in and out of the building when disguised, without arousing suspicion on the part of the apartment’s employees. To them, he was the easy-tipping Mr. Van Loan, who kept pretty much to himself and, outside of Frank Havens, had few callers.

  In his rooms, the Phantom went through to his bedchamber. Behind one of its walls was an inner room reserved exclusively for the Phantom’s use. In it were his disguises, his arsenal, and the laboratory equipment essential to his detective work.

  The room was windowless, indirectly lighted. When the panel in the bedroom wall folded back at the touch of a button, Van Loan went in and sat down before a white enamel table that faced the cabinet in which he kept a stock of chemicals.

  The powder he had removed from the floor of the billiard room sifted out on a glass slab. It interested him strangely. He didn’t know why it should be, but he had an intuitive feeling it was somehow important, that it linked in with young Arden’s murder. There was no basic reason for the belief, yet from the time he had first glimpsed the powder, he had determined to get a sample of it and, if possible, learn what it was.

  Sheriff McCabe had passed it completely. If he had seen it, the sheriff hadn’t considered it as a clue. Van smiled thinly. Even Inspector Gregg’s homicide operatives would have done better than that. Still, he didn’t blame McCabe too much. The sheriff wasn’t exactly of the caliber to imagine that stuff resembling dust could possibly have a bearing on a murder mystery.

  Van gave the bronze powder the usual chemical reaction tests. He was puzzled by the results. In the substance he found traces of magnesium and silica. That was mixed with ordinary sand, pulverized to powder form. Also, a faint trace of copper barilla, powdered, came up after the last of his exhaustive tests.

  The mineral portion of the mixture resembled enstatite, which, the Phantom knew, was one of the pyroxene group of orthorhombic minerals. Bronzite, a ferriferous variety of enstatite, had a bronze-like luster, the color of the substance Van had before him on the glass slab.

  A frown shadowed his face. From his knowledge of chemicals and minerals he was unable to understand, or even hazard a guess, as to what the powder could be used for. It had no place, no use, in his opinion, in any formula. Yet, he saw, it had been blended for a purpose, put together for a specific reason.

  But for what purpose and what reason? And what had it been doing on the floor of the room in the lodge?

  The Phantom pushed the slab aside. He took the gardenia out of his pocket and looked at it thoughtfully. One thing was positive. He had to find its wearer — the girl or woman who had been with Arthur Arden at the lake, earlier that night.

  *****

  FROM Havens, the next morning, the Phantom learned that Matthew Arden was to stay at the lodge until his son’s funeral arrangements were completed. The Phantom wanted to talk to the former Attorney General. Steve Huston, Havens told him further, was leaving that same morning at ten o’clock for Lake Candle. Steve was hot on a followup story to the murder scoop he had walked in on.

  “Have Steve meet me at ten sharp,” the Phantom told the publisher, over the telephone. “In front of the Clarion Building.”

  “That means you’re going back to the lodge?”

  “Yes. I want to talk to Matthew Arden,” the Phantom replied.

  Havens promised to make the arrangements; and the Phantom, pointing up his disguise, hurried to the nearby garage where he kept his cars. There Frank Havens had left the sleek black sedan he had driven to Manhattan the previous night. As usual, the Phantom found it had been washed, polished, and its gas-tank filled.

  The garage owner. never asked questions. The Phantom paid him well for silence and service, and the garage man believed the Phantom was some kind of secret-service agent. That, to him, explained why he appeared there in varied disguises at any hour of the day or night.

  Steve was a few minutes late. Parking was not allowed on the street where the Clarion Building stood. So the Phantom had to keep moving, drifting around the corner, up the adjoining street, and back again. He did this several times, noticing a man who lounged in front of a drug store opposite the newspaper building. There was something intent in the way the man seemed to be watching the main entrance to the building across the way.

  His studied stare caught the Phantom’s attention, on his second time around. He was of medium size, quietly dressed, and gave the appearance of a solid citizen. The third time the Phantom came around, he purposely drove close to the south curb. That gave him a chance for closer inspection. His quick, analytical gaze showed him that the man had one distinguishing feature. His left ear was oddly twisted.

  The next time the Phantom came down the block, Steve Huston was waiting for him.

  “Sorry I’m late. Had a few details to clear up, and a phone call blocked me at the last minute.” Huston climbed in.

  “Drive, Steve.” The Phantom moved over and gave the reporter the wheel. “I want to match a certain party who’s been eying the entrance to your building. He registered interest when you came out. Let’s see what he does.”

  “A plant?” Steve Huston wedged himself behind the wheel.

  The Phantom’s glance moved to a special panoramic mirror along the top
of the windshield. It was designed so as to supply a complete view of the street behind him. In the glass he saw the man with the twisted ear step out from the drug store and hail a taxi.

  He got in rapidly, and the cab started before he had the door fully shut.

  “A ‘tail.’ ” The Phantom smiled faintly. “We’d better lose him in a hurry.”

  He gave Huston instructions; and, before they had gone a dozen streets, the taxi behind them, caught in the maze of traffic, no longer followed.

  “What would he be interested in me for?” Steve queried.

  “You work for Mr. Havens, and Mr. Havens presses the button that brings me into being.” The Phantom spoke quietly. “Through you — or Mr. Havens — there’s a direct lead to me.”

  He dismissed the subject, asking the little reporter if he had had any word from Sheriff McCabe. Huston nodded.

  “That was the call that held me up. I long-distanced McCabe at his home, but he had gone to his office. He called me from there. The autopsy re­port is in. Arden was shot with a thirty-eight caliber gun. Two bullets. One entered his heart. Death was instantan­eous.”

  “Any other news?”

  “That’s all. McCabe wants to know when you are going back. I think he’s going to lean on you — heavily. I told him I wasn’t sure.”

  “I’ll see McCabe later. First,” the Phantom said, “I want to have a talk with Matthew Arden. I don’t hold out any high hope he can shed light on his son’s death, but there’s always the chance he might know something that he doesn’t believe is important.”

  *****

  HE FOUND the tall, loosely built Arden busy on the telephone at the lodge when Steve dropped him there. The former Attorney General had recovered from the first shock of his son’s murder. He was obviously still grief-stricken, but the initial numbing impact had lessened somewhat. He now ac­cepted it as a reality and, the Phantom saw, was eager to do everything in his power to find the one responsible.