Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: 5 Murder Mysteries in One Volume - Robert Wallace - Страница 14

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Van was gripped by the first real hope of unmasking the power-mad genius behind the Invisible Empire. It quickened his senses, keyed him to alertness.

Not once since he had tricked his way into this maze of subterranean passageways had he been able even to guess at the position of the headquarters of the organization. It would have been impossible to track out the black, labyrinthian corridors of this vast series of connected mines and expect to stumble upon the center of the hooded society.

Nor had he heard anyone except Kag mention so much as the existence of a leader. He suspected none of the robed members or the guards had ever seen the Imperator face to face. There seemed to be some unwritten law against speaking his name.

That was the most baffling phase of this strange underground hunt—the utter and impregnable silence of the members.

The Phantom had considered Vonderkag as a suspect, but the hunchback scientist seemed too excitable, too unstable to govern such a ruthless association of men. Yet, apart from Kag, who was there, of all those masked and hooded members, that he could challenge as being the Imperator? A single such open attempt would only end in his immediate death.

The fifty masked officers who had attended that cryptic meeting in the cavern barrack were automatically eliminated as ultimate Imperator suspects, for that cold, emotionless speech had been delivered from some point outside that underground chamber.

Van had thought of trying to escape from this subterranean warren, to contact Havens and get help. He'd have to get out and warn the publisher, after this last threat. But to have these tunnels surrounded by police or soldiers would be useless. The Invisible Empire would only fade deeper into the mines and emerge at will from a hundred different exits.

He was stopped by two guards at the entrance to the tunnel leading off from the cavern that had the concrete walled water door of steel. They let him through at mention of the name Commander Rotz.

He went on alone, his flashlight outlining the earth walls of the sharply rising passage.

The tunnel curved several times, and ended at an iron door that was unlocked. He swung it open, found that it was the entrance to an elevator. The car was empty.

Van stepped into the cage, closed the iron door, and tried the operating lever. The elevator would not lower, but it went up rapidly when he reversed the control.

So far as he could determine, there were no stage landings until the car stopped of its own accord. He opened the door again, stepped out into a short corridor.

Two more guards in robes, masks and hoods, stood before the only exit, a narrow steel door set in a wall of cement at the end of the passage. There was an electric battery lamp over their heads.

The Phantom advanced, gave his name again. A key jangled in the lock, and the door swung open for him. He stepped through the opening into a lighted room of solid white concrete, heard the door close and the lock click behind him.

An odor of disinfectant and medicine permeated the place which was a combination surgical ward and operating room. Against one wall was a glass cabinet holding several trays filled with delicate, razor-sharp instruments. Beyond it was another door opposite the one he had entered, closed and evidently locked from the other side.

In the center of the room stood two operating tables, with space to work between them.

Van's eyes slid around the place, and a low moan sounded behind him. He turned, stepped behind a screen, looked down at a cot. On that stiff bed lay a man whose face was scarcely recognizable as human!

Van gazed pityingly into the agonized eyes of the helpless patient, and drew in his breath sharply. The skin on that mutilated face had been removed from more than two-thirds of its area. The cheeks, jowls, jaw and nose were raw flesh, and both ears had been amputated. The pillow upon which the head rested was bloodstained, sticky with gore.

The man's eyes clung to the Phantom's masked face wildly, then roved to the bed stand at the head of the cot. Van followed that tortured glance, and started at what he saw.

On the enameled top of the stand lay a gold badge and an identification card. He picked them up, his own eyes narrowing as he read the name:

JUD MARKS

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Van's hand shoved back the black hood he wore, and jerked off his white mask. He reached beneath his black robe and his fingers dug into a pocket in the belt he wore under his clothes.

Then he bent over the man on the bed, and held before the Secret Service operative's eyes a small, flat platinum badge studded with bright diamonds set in the shape of a mask—the Phantom's seal. Few men had ever seen that badge, but its legend was a by-word of accomplishment in police circles, an emblem of terror among criminals.

The eyes of the tortured F.B.I. man became alive with recognition and hope as he stared at the diamond mask in Van's hand. He tried to nod, and his bloody lips formed the word "Phantom!"

Dick Van Loan replaced the badge in his belt, bent again over the man on the bed.

"Can you talk?" he asked eagerly. "Who brought you here?"

The G-man's mangled face shuddered with the effort to answer. His words came slowly, painfully weak:

"An attempt had been made to rob Smithsonian Institute—I was—guarding it—Hoods—like yours"—his agonized glance roved over Van's black costume—"jumped me—stealing a—meteor from—ore case. Been trying to make—me talk about the Bureau—since I woke up here—"

Van's eyes gleamed. That meteoric fragment he'd seen and that Kag had boasted about down in the furnace cavern—it had come from the Smithsonian Institute. Kag had gloated over its theft.

"Who did this to you—here?" he urged.

"A doctor—big man—couldn't see his face—I'm dying."

The F.B.I. man's hand moved beneath the thin, stained sheet.

Van pulled back the bloody covering, saw that Jud Marks was shackled to the bed. More skin had been cut from his arms, chest and stomach. The G-Man's fingers gestured—desperately.

The Phantom gripped that bony hand, held it warmly, while his narrowed gaze clung to Marks' glazing eyes. The man was dying, and knew it.

Van swallowed back the burning, hard lump choking in his throat. This was death, ruthless, horrible, yet a blessed relief for Jud Marks from the torture of unceasing pain.

The G-man's fingers in the Phantoms' hand slowly relaxed. The Federal agent's eyes became glassy, vacant, staring sightlessly.

Van lowered the limp hand to the bed, pulled the sheet up over the dead man's ghastly face. Gravely, a bleak look of intense determination growing in his eyes, he picked up and pocketed Jud Marks' badge and identification.

If Van escaped from here alive, those two grim articles would be returned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Washington. And the name of Jud Marks, G-Man, would appear on the engraved honor roll there, another hallowed addition to that heroic record of courageous warriors who had lost against crime.

As he stood there moodily, his thoughts still on the murdered Federal investigator, the Phantom's fingers toyed nervously with a physician's thermometer on the bed stand. He shook himself out of his brief, grisly reverie, glanced about the room, preparatory to giving it a quick search. His eyes shifted back to the thermometer in his hand.

He held it closer, looking for the manufacturer's stamp. And suddenly an eager gleam leaped into his narrowed grey gaze.

Printed on that sliver of glass, the two words partially rubbed away by use, was the ownership legend:

Alleghany Penitentiary.

As he stared at that name, Van's mind leaped back to Frank Havens' office in the Clarion Tower, and the tableau of death that had been enacted there.

The picture was startlingly vivid—the murdered metallurgical expert, Lester Gimble, lifeless in the armchair beside Havens' desk; the two homicide detectives with Captain Walters; Havens himself; and the three officials from the Alleghany Prison.

Warden Jack Bluebold; Dr. Maurice Jessup, the resident physician: ex-Congressman Harry Arnold, Chairman of the Board of Pardons and Parole. Van hadn't forgotten them.

Even at that time, it had struck him as odd that they should have been sitting in the Clarion publisher's private office at the precise moment when an escaped lifer from the Alleghany stir was identified as the dead murderer of the metallurgical specialist employed by Havens.

The Phantom stepped resolutely across to the instrument tray between the two grim operating tables, took from it the metal container for the thermometer that someone had left there. He thrust the thermometer in its cover, put the case in his pocket.

That slim glass tube of mercury would be used as evidence, if the time ever came when the facial surgeon and skin grafter was caught. And he should be here now, if the Imperator still meant to disguise Commander Rotz and send him as Professor Paul Bendix on the murderous mission to Havens.

Van glanced at those fine, sharp knives and instruments in the glass cabinet against the wall! The Imperator's genius for evil went beyond any make-up table, and resorted to surgery that cut any moulded living flesh to suit its deadly purposes.

Grimly, the Phantom decided to see it through, despite his discovery of the thermometer clue and his realization that he himself would be recognized as Dr. Bendix again. It was an immediate chance to meet the surgeon, probably the Imperator himself. He pulled the ghost-white mask back up over his face, tugged the black hood down over his head.

The two revolvers he had appropriated with Jerry Lannigan down there deeper in the mine warrens felt good in his belt under the black robe.

And suddenly he heard harsh, clipped voices outside in the short corridor where the two masked guards kept watch. Judging by the different tones that came through the steel door, five or six more men had just come up in the elevator and joined them.

The Phantom crouched at the door, listening. Some of the words out there came through distinctly:

"—found Commander Rotz dead down below—"

"What're the orders? Do we wait?"

"Open up! Imperator's instruction—He won't be here now. Get in there and kill the spy—"

The voices lowered to whispered directions.

Van's nerves steadied under the desperate change in the situation. He realized clearly what had happened. The Imperator had already discovered that the dead man wearing the clothes of Professor Paul Bendix was not Bendix at all but Commander Rotz himself.

Eventually, that discovery had to be made, and the Phantom's quick change of disguises shown up. Van had hoped it would not happen so fast, but now that it had—He darted across the room, tried the opposite door, but found it was too securely barred on the other side.

Out in the corridor the voices faded to an ominous silence.

Van's glance raced to the dead, ghastly face of Jud Marks outlined rigidly beneath the stained sheet. He leaped over to the narrow bed, tossed the bloody covering aside, carried the mutilated body to the operating table nearest the corridor door.

The G-man's body was limp. He propped it up facing the entrance through which the masked guards would come, managed to get the right arm and hand in a braced position so the lifeless fingers pointed accusingly straight at the door.

Outside, the key was scraping against the lock.

Van sacrificed his flashlight, turned it on and set it on the instrument tray so that its rays centered upon the grisly figure.

With a final swift movement, he turned out the powerful oil lamp in the room, sprang to the wall and flattened himself beside the steel door as it swung open.

A horrified oath broke from the lips of the first two guards as they rushed in. Their momentum carried them past the door, but the ghastly, spotlighted spectacle held them momentarily frozen in their tracks.

And in that split second, the Phantom plunged through the doorway out into the short, dimly lighted passage, his two guns pistol-whipping the five stunned guards outside!

He knocked three of them down before they could recover from the charging shock of his attack.

Springing past them, he reached the open elevator door, whirled into the car.

Both his guns blasted back into the corridor as flaming shots slugged at him. A masked guard screamed and flopped to the floor. A bullet nicked Van's knuckles as he jerked the door shut, grabbed the control lever.

The cage started down swiftly, the grating rattle of its descent drowned in the echoing barks of gun fire above.