Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: Tycoon of Crime - Robert Wallace - Страница 6

CHAPTER IV

The Corpse on the Pavement

RICHARD CURTIS VAN LOAN, debonair young society man and bon vivant, turned his sixteen-cylindered Cadillac roadster onto upper Park Avenue and headed downtown through a neighborhood — which, in this section, was shabby and unkempt.

A slender, dark-haired girl in a pert, Buddhistic hat sat beside Van Loan, her dark, liquid eyes wistfully stealing now and then to his well-cut profile, etched in the dashboard lights.

In the spacious rumble seat, another couple sat, in each other’s arms, and it could have been seen at a glance that they were newly-weds. The girl, blond and hatless, clung possessively to the young groom who had been one of the social register’s most eligible bachelors until he had looked into her blue eyes.

“Say, where are you taking us, Dick?” the man suddenly leaned forward to ask.

“To my apartment,” drawled Van Loan, without turning from the wheel, “where we will do justice, with champagne, to your marriage, then let you go off on your honeymoon in peace. Do you agree, Muriel?”

Muriel Havens smiled up at him.

“If you ask me, I have a sneaking suspicion the newly-weds are just dying to get rid of us!”

“Now Muriel!” the girl in the back protested. “We’re not leaving until tomorrow. We even hoped to get your father’s blessing before we went. Do you suppose we’ll get a chance to see him?”

Muriel sighed. “I don’t know. The paper’s been keeping him pretty busy. He’s in his office night and day.”

“Isn’t it extraordinary,” Van Loan drawled languidly, “how some men will bury themselves in work? Why doesn’t your dad let the Clarion run merrily along, Muriel, and step out for a good time?”

Muriel Havens’s small but firm chin lifted. A momentary anger swept her eyes.

“Some people wouldn’t understand it, I guess,” she said pointedly. “But Dad feels he’s doing something useful in this world.”

Van Loan made a sad, clucking sound with his tongue.

“Ouch!” he said. “That remark has a vaguely personal tinge. But really, can you imagine me getting up the energy to indulge in hard labor?” He stifled a yawn.

On Muriel’s lovely, intelligent face was disappointment. She could not have felt surprised.

Richard Curtis Van Loan was hardly a man of action. Good-natured, lazy, he fitted only into the social set, whiling away the hours with his select friends in pleasure and amusement. Because he was handsome and too wealthy for any one man, he was one whom doting mothers longed to have their daughters ensnare.

Yet, oddly, Muriel Havens had never accepted Van Loan as a mere lazy, social parasite, an idler who gayly flung to the winds the wealth his father had slaved to attain.

Again she glanced at the well-built young man beside her; at his strong hands, gripping the wheel with steady ease. And she shook her head, her lips pressed against any words of protest she might have felt like uttering.

AS THE ROADSTER CONTINUED downtown the avenue changed in aspect. The shabby district suddenly gave way to Manhattan’s most exclusive and wealthy residential section. They were riding down past the green-parked “islands” under which trains rumbled.

“Why so silent, Newlyweds?” Van drawled. “This is a celebration, not a funeral.”

“Oh, don’t mind us!” the young bridegroom laughed. “We’re just sitting here smugly enjoying the idea of being married. And let me tell you, Dick, it’s great! Why don’t you try it sometime?”

“It is a thought,” Van Loan grinned — and looked at Muriel Havens. For a moment, she saw in his eyes something that was seldom there; and so briefly now that she might have only imagined it. It was so totally out of gear with the languid, idling Van Loan.

Van saw her dark eyes glow — for that one moment. And turned back to the wheel, covering his expression with another suppressed ostentatious yawn.

Dick Van Loan knew Muriel was hurt by that gesture; wounded deeply. Yet it had been necessary. His hand had covered more than the yawn. It had covered an implacable bitterness which had tightened his lips and narrowed his eyes.

Had Muriel or the others had any inkling of the thoughts that were going through Van’s brain at that instant, they would have been more than amazed.

They were stern, fierce thoughts. Thoughts sealed by a long-kept pledge within his mind. Thoughts that cruelly drove the human feelings of Dick Van Loan to some dull recess where he could only keep them for the distant future.

In his mind, Richard Van Loan was seeing vividly remembered sights, alien to his social life. He was seeing dark byways, where shadowy, evil figures stalked; he was seeing gruesome bodies, riddled, knifed, killed in other heinous fashions. He saw, too, the terrible implements of justice. The inexorable electric chair — the noose — the lethal chamber. And cowering, convicted criminals ensnared by them.

A grim parade of diabolical murderers who had thought they could cheat justice! Sometimes they had foiled the law, made a laughingstock of the police. But, like a relentless Nemesis, a single unknown had proved their undoing. The mysterious scourge of crime known as the Phantom Detective.

The Phantom! Throughout the world, in every law-enforcing agency, in Scotland Yard, in the Sureté, to the Berlin Police that sobriquet had become a synonym of perfect crime detection. Just as, in the underworld, it had become a byword of fear and dread.

Richard Curtis Van Loan, sitting next to Muriel Havens, wished he could have turned to her now and driven the reproach and disappointment from her eyes by telling her the great secret. He wished he could have said:

“Muriel, I am the Phantom Detective! Yes, I — Richard Curtis Van Loan, whom you hold in contempt and yet love. Your own father, Frank Havens, was responsible. It was he who told me years ago, that I was wasting my life and energy; he who suggested that I anonymously try to fight crime. Since then my life is no longer my own. I have to forego all that every normal man takes for granted as a part of his life. My lazy social life is just a pose — to enable me to gather energy for the next case, which can come at any moment. My real time is spent in study — the study of criminology, disguise, delving into realms you would never dream interest me. But perhaps some day, some time, when my case book is full, I can come to you, free and unshackled.”

Aloud, however, Van Loan said with a lazy drawl as the car picked up speed, “ Well, here we come. Now to negotiate a turn, get to the other side of the block — and home sweet home.”

He did not look at Muriel Havens as he spoke, as he nodded toward the “island” beneath which sounded a dull rumble. The sidewalk opposite, dim in the street lights, was empty. On the corner toward the palatial apartment atop which was Van’s luxurious penthouse residence. Van guided the purring roadster down to the intersection, thence around, waiting for the lights to make the complete turn before heading the car uptown on the other side of the block.

STEERING TOWARDS THE CURB, he slowed the roadster. That was when, his ever keen eyes — eyes trained to alertness by night as well as day — suddenly sharpened. Without giving thought to it, he had observed that the sidewalk had been empty as the roadster passed down the block, on the downtown side.

But now, coming up on this side, he saw that the pavement was no longer empty.

In the very middle of the block, a shadowy heap lay on the sidewalk.

A huddled, bulgy heap from which came no sign of movement.

“What is it, Dick?” Muriel had noticed his sudden stiffening.

Without replying, Van braked the roadster to an instant stop, apprehension tightening his lips.

Ignoring the questions of Muriel and the others, he slid quickly from behind the wheel, alighted in the street on his long legs, and hurried around the car to the sidewalk.

Only the dim light of the nearest street-lamp illumined the bulgy heap.

But it was sufficient to bring out a gruesome sight.

The corpse of a well-built man lay at Van’s feet. It lay half on its side, legs drawn up grotesquely to the stomach, hands clutching out like frozen claws.

The clothes of the man were so disheveled, torn, and begrimed with dirt and blood and what appeared to be soot, that they were scarcely distinguishable.

The man was hatless. His light-colored hair looked like a wet, flat mat wet with crimson blood.

But it was to the face of the man, full of bruises that Van’s eyes were drawn so grimly. Or rather, to what had once been a face.

On first glimpse it looked like some horrible smear of blood and dirt and torn flesh so that the outlines of the skull showed through. Near the lower right jaw was a huge, uneven hole; obviously made by a heavy-calibered bullet. Once, in Chicago, during a gang war, Van had seen a man shot in this fashion. Shot in the face at close range, so that the bullet had completely disfigured him.

Something of this face remained however. Though not enough to offer any clear picture. Grim-eyed, Van stared at the bloody, revolting face, at the glazed, blood-stained eyes which peered out stark and sightless. In the full moment he studied that face Van decided the man had been fairly young, had probably had well-formed features.

A GASPED CRY — he recognized Muriel Havens’s voice — jerked him about. Quickly Van stepped around the corpse as he saw Muriel and the newly-weds standing, white-faced, on the pavement. With his tall, broad-shouldered figure he screened the gruesome corpse from them as best he could.

“Dick — that man! He’s dead, isn’t he?” In Muriel’s choked-cry — a statement, rather than question, was horror.

“Yes, so it seems.”

Van’s languid drawl was slightly constricted. His mind was racing. Something was prodding it, hammering at it like some stray waif of memory trying to gain admittance.

“Better not come any closer,” he said. “It’s rather a nasty sight.” He turned to the groom. “Listen. This has rather upset my night, but there’s no sense in letting it spoil your party. Take my car, take Muriel with you. Continue your celebration without me. Just take the time to summon the first policeman you see and send him here. Better not tell him what’s here or he might make you come back. I’ll remain with — this.”

Despite the fact that he still clung to his drawl, there was something so decisive and commanding in his manner that all three stared, unable to comprehend this change in the idle Van Loan. Again Muriel Havens’s dark eyes swept to him with that strange, probing look: half hope, half unbelief.

SHE CAME FORWARD, a brave look on her firm, finely chiseled features, “I’ll stay here with you, Dick. Maybe I can help.”

“Help? My dear girl, this is a matter for the police. I myself do not intend to stay any longer than I have to. Until the law takes over.

“By the way, don’t mention my name when you call the policeman. I don’t wish to be dragged into this. After the law comes, I shall discreetly retire; and because I feel a bit upset, take out a nice bottle to enjoy in solitude.”

His drawl, forced back, was cold again. Once more Muriel’s eyes went dull with disappointment and hurt.

But his words, as he had calculated, had the desired effect.