Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: 5 Murder Mysteries in One Volume - Robert Wallace - Страница 12

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Near the first turn in the inclined passageway, the Phantom stopped to make sure Lannigan was still coming. The big Irishman plunged past, carrying something heavy over his shoulder.

They raced on up, lunged into the larger cavern above. The place was empty.

Van slammed the door shut, slid down an iron crossbar, locking it. He jerked out his pencil flashlight that the guards had not taken away from him. In its thin shaft he saw Lannigan dumping the hooded figure of the sergeant on the floor.

"How long can we hold them off?" the Irishman demanded. "I brought this guy along so that you could use his costume."

"Not very long, Champ," the Phantom said tersely. "They'll shoot the door off its hinges." He looked quickly at the sergeant. The unmasked face was ordinary, unintelligent. "Get into those robes yourself," the Phantom directed. "One of us has got to get out of this mine and get to Havens. You're elected." He bent down over the unconscious man, began unfastening the black hood.

Shots began crashing into the barred door as Van handed up the costume to Lannigan.

"I'd rather stay here and let you go up, Phantom," Jerry growled as he shrugged into the black outfit.

"I've got to stay. Got to find out more about this organization and the metal they're fusing with that heat," Van insisted. "You get to Havens and fly back here. He'll know what to do when you tell him what's happening. Come on!"

Van's light guided them through the door through which they had first come. Behind them, the barred entrance to the passageway below was trembling on its hinges under the onslaught of the hooded leader and Kag and the hunchback's four burly helpers.

With Lannigan running ahead in the disguise of the sergeant they ran swiftly along the level tunnel toward the first guarded gate. Suddenly, Lannigan ducked into one of the side passages as a bobbing electric headlight on the cap of someone approaching gleamed in the darkness ahead.

Van slid in beside Jerry. The racket of shots and shouts back along the passageway echoed and re-echoed against the walls.

"That's the guard at the next doorway," Van warned. "You've got the black uniform, Champ. Go get him!"

Lannigan's grunt of satisfaction was eager. He took Van's pencil flashlight, stepped out in the path of the advancing guard.

"What's going on down there?" the man shouted excitedly.

The torch in Lannigan's hand gleamed, caught the guard full in the face, outlining his hood and robe and the revolver in his fist.

He jerked to a halt, stopped by the blinding glare of the flash. Jerry gave him no chance to ask anything more. The big Irishman's hammerlike knuckles hit the guard's jaw. The fellow seemed to bounce up off the floor of the tunnel, hang suspended in the air an instant before he dropped back and lay still.

The Phantom darted out, snaked the black costume off the man's body, got into it himself. He took the man's gun, ran on again, urging Lannigan ahead of him.

They were both outfitted in organization uniforms now, and both had two guns apiece. But there was a maze of black, guarded passageways and doors ahead of them, and they had still no identification or countersigns to get them through.

A powerful flashlight sent its beam into the tunnel behind them as the imprisoned men broke loose from the cavern. The Phantom and the Champ raced through the now unguarded first gate into the upgrade underground passage ahead. There was no way of locking those doorways on the entrance side, for only the guards on the inside of the tunnel openings could bar them.

"Take the first turn to the left that looks like something!" The Phantom directed. "We can't take time to lay out every door guard we come to."

A moment later, as the light grew larger behind them, they whirled off the main corridor into a side passage that led up sharply. As he ran, the Phantom tugged off the tell-tale Van Dyke of Professor Paul Bendix. That character was done now, so far as this mysterious subterranean organization was concerned. He thrust the beard up into a crevice between the wall and a wooden tunnel brace, and caught up with Lannigan again.

The passage broke unexpectedly into a large cavern along one wall of which cement sacks were stacked to the roof. In the opposite wall was a large steel door built into a heavy concrete and stone abutment. The door was locked with several large handles and two wheels that gave it the appearance of a steel vault. The construction was recent. Van recognized it as a watertight compartment lock, built to hold back one of the subterranean lakes found in all deep mines. This lower level series of shafts and channels under the operating portion of the coal mine had evidently been used and abandoned, for there was no sign of recent operation this far down and they had come upon no workmen.

There were three exits from this cave, one of them unmarked, the other two marked respectively in chalk on their frame braces: SHAFT 9 and CAGE.

"Which way, Skipper?" Jerry asked.

The Phantom stopped running, glanced back and listened. For a moment there was no sound of pursuit.

"The cage," Van answered, and led the way. "We'll probably run into someone. Don't shoot if you can use your fists."

They advanced more cautiously, and as they went forward along the slightly rising tunnel, Van manipulated some of the make-up of Dr. Bendix that remained on and inside his face.

His nose became more normal as he removed the two small aluminum pieces that had given it the broadened, heavy appearance. The injection of the specially prepared compound that he had shot into his cheeks and jowls had already been partially absorbed and dissipated. He ordinarily had to renew his make-up for any disguise every twenty-four hours. It was, he realized, only the dumbness of his captors and the demand for speed on the part of their leaders, that had made them forego the opportunity they had had to strip him while he had been unconscious.

Even so, it required the expert, trained eye of a physician to detect the fact that one of his complete characterizations was a fraud. By the time he and Jerry had gone another two hundred yards through the shaft, the face of Professor Paul Bendix had completely disappeared, although beneath the black robe Van wore, the frock coat was still a dangerous piece of evidence.

"If this tunnel don't end pretty soon," Jerry panted behind him, "we don't need any elevator. We'll have walked out of here!"

"Just so we get you free of this place, Champ," Van replied.

A half minute later a voice challenged them from somewhere ahead, and another voice, harsher than the first, repeated the warning.

"Keep going," the Phantom whispered to Lannigan, and answered the challenge with a terse, "Show your light, you fools!"

A strong torch beam caught them immediately in a blinding glare. Van stopped, tried to look beneath that light.

"Password!" the harsh voice demanded.

The Phantom's eyes glinted. "Two suspected men have escaped from Professor Kag's shaft!" he snapped, ignoring the password demand. "If they haven't got this far, send word ahead!"

"Whose orders?" the first voice asked sharply from the intense blackness behind the flashlight's unswerving beam.

"Sergeant Flannigan is with me," Van said angrily. He glanced over his shoulder. "Sergeant—"

Jerry stepped to the front, glowering, showing the gun in his hand. His rough voice bellowed: "Who th' hell is giving orders here?"

"I am!" the harder voice snapped, and a tall, hooded and masked man stepped partway into view. On his robed sleeve was the green circle with two crossed yellow zigzagged markers through it. "I'm Commander Rotz!"

The authority in his voice was unmistakable. Van tensed, and gave the peculiar salute he had observed back in Kag's cavern. Lannigan, too, saluted uncertainly.

And at the same instant, the Phantom's keen ears heard the first faint sounds of the pursuit far back along the tunnel.

They were trapped!

Commander Rotz heard that growing sound of voices footsteps also, for he suddenly whipped up his gun, covering them menacingly.

"Stand where you are!" he ordered grimly. "I've seen deserters try to get away like this before."

The Phantom's left hand jerked abruptly at Jerry Lannigan's stolen black robe, a hard, unexpected tug that yanked the beefy Irishman off balance. If Lannigan had made that quick movement himself, some slight flick of warning would have given him away. But Van's quickness had precluded that.

In the split-second that the commander with the leveled gun took to correct his aim, the Phantom's right foot kicked up, hit the masked man's hand at the wrist behind the revolver.

A sharp cry of pain broke from the fellow's hidden lips. The gun spun from his fingers. And Van's fist exploded against the man's jaw!

In the sudden violent confusion, the light fell to the floor of the shaft as Jerry leaped at the other guard. For a matter of seconds there was only gasping, strangled breathing. Then the muffled sound of quick movement and the rustle of cloth.

It was less than a full minute, all told, when Van's fingers found the powerful torch on the dirt floor and snapped it on briefly. In its bright light, Lannigan was bent over the dead figure of the guard, his big hands going through the fellow's clothing.

And the Phantom was standing erect in the black robe, hood and white mask of Commander Rotz. The lifeless, frock-coated body of a man who might have been, beneath his masked features, Professor Paul Bendix, lay at his feet.

Even Lannigan stared twice at the swift, complete transformation before he recognized the Phantom's voice ordering him to action.

"Drag that guard out of sight somewhere," Van directed tensely. "Dump him some place where he won't be found immediately. Get on ahead of me and if you get a chance to get out of here, take it!"

"Okay, Skipper! That's the fastest make-up change I've ever seen you put on." Lannigan grabbed up the dead guard as the light in Van's hand turned toward the sloping end of the shaft up which they had come. The glare of the torch completely hid Jerry's movements behind it as he carried his burden further up the tunnel.

The Phantom kept his light on, faced the pursuers who were already shouting to him above the hard, echoing pounding of their feet. Behind the white mask, his lips were a thin, determined line.

"Halt!" he shouted above the increasing clamor. "Password!"

His voice was harsh and sharp now, like the voice of Rotz. He recognized in the beam of the electric torch the foremost of the advancing crew—one of the mine guards who had been with him in Kag's cavern. The others were strange faces, men picked up in the search that had split into several parties.

"September Third!" the guard snapped back at him and saluted.

September Third! There was grim significance in that countersign.

Van pointed his light down at the figure on the tunnel floor. "You're hunting for that?" he demanded harshly.

The guard and the others with him stared. The identity of the dead Rotz would eventually be discovered, but for the moment the resemblance to Bendix was close enough to fool them. The guard nodded, glanced up.

"There was another one—a big, heavy man with red hair."

"Didn't come this way," Van stated with a ring of authority his voice. "This man was sneaking along here and refused to stop when I challenged him. I've sent the guard stationed here to report this in Shaft Nine. Take your men and come with me. I'll send you up to report on top."

He turned, started up the inclined tunnel in the direction Jerry had taken. There was a sharp curve in the shaft that ended fifty yards beyond at a rough gate that barred the entrance to an elevator car.

There was no sign of Lannigan. The Phantom breathed easier.

"This car shouldn't be left down here now, with a deserter loose. Take it up," he ordered.

"The fellow wasn't a deserter," the guard leading the others told him. "He was a spy—"

"He'll be a dead spy if we catch him," Van promised. "Now get going with that car and report topside!"

The guard saluted again, got onto the car with the three men who had come with him. The elevator trembled in its loose, rough framework as it started to move upward.

The Phantom's light was on it, watching. Where in hell was Lannigan?—The question was answered a second later. Only the protection of the white mask he wore kept back the jolt of sheer shocked surprise that twisted Van's features; He stared, almost unbelieving.

Jerry Lannigan's beefy bulk was hanging beneath the rising floor of the shaft cage, his hamlike hands gripping the cross-bracing under the car! The Champ let go with one hand, waved to Van, and pointed down under him.

The Phantom understood. Lannigan had dumped the body of the dead guard into the elevator well. There was no need even to look.

Van switched off the electric torch, stood in complete darkness.