Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: 5 Murder Mysteries in One Volume - Robert Wallace - Страница 17

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It was six o'clock in the morning. Killer Kline was shaken awake and hurried from his cell in the Pittsburgh jail out a back exit into an armored car that sped him toward the airport.

In the car with him was another prisoner—the Phantom.

But that second prisoner had not been booked in any Pittsburgh jail. Van had been locked in the truck before it had left the sheriff's garage, as a precaution against spying eyes in the jail. Only the driver and the two guards—three special deputies assigned by Governor Young to make the Kline delivery knew that that second passenger rode in the steel box behind them. And even they did not know who he was.

Van studied the shrewd, ruthless features of the mail robber and machine-gun killer crouching on the iron bench in the armored box as the truck whirled through the streets. Kline's greenish grey eyes darted about the interior of the car ceaselessly, in search of a way of escape.

He was close enough to the Phantom in size, to make a switch a reasonable risk. Van's gaze noted brazenly the mannerisms of the criminal, the way he moved his hands, the leering twist of his lips:

"Going all the way?" he asked Kline bluntly.

"Not if I can help it," the murderer snarled. "They jolted Joe Sholtz up there in the stone house early this morning, didn't they? I ain't seen a morning paper yet."

"Yeah," the Phantom answered, getting the tone and inflection of Kline's sharp, harsh voice. "Four minutes it took to burn him dead. That's a long time to jerk against those death chair straps."

Beads of sweat began to stand out on Killer Kline's forehead.

"I do it in four seconds with a tommy gun," Kline growled. "It don't hurt so much, either. By God, I wish I had a tommy gun in my hands right now! They ain't going to fry me—"

He broke off, glowering at Van distrustfully.

"A smart, tough guy like you," Van encouraged, "shouldn't have to take the juice.

"Yeah." Kline's voice grated boastfully. "I ain't never stayed locked up long before. Parties make passes at me to get me out so I can help 'em pull jobs they ain't smart enough to do themselves." He shut up abruptly, eyeing Van with suspicion.

"I'll bet you got propositioned that way since you've been in the Pittsburgh can," the Phantom suggested.

Kline's gaze froze up. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about!" he declared belligerently.

Van didn't press him further. The Killer's manner implied that he'd already been approached with a chance to escape. It was what the Phantom had been expecting and hoping for.

A few minutes later the armored truck stopped at an outlying precinct station. The only door in the box opened and one of the three deputies called in:

"Come on out, Killer. This is as far as you go, this trip."

"What th' hell is this?" Kline demanded, and peered out the door. "This ain't the Alleghany stir?"

That was as far as he got. The deputies yanked him out of the car, manhandled him into the precinct station's alley entrance.

Nobody except Van and the three officers knew the transfer had been made. Kline would be booked under another name and hidden in a constantly guarded cellar cell until the Phantom or Governor Young sent word to have him finish his last ride.

The armored truck door slammed shut on Van and the car rolled off again. The Phantom forgot everything else for the next ten minutes as he concentrated on the make-up task confronting him. Before the truck reached the airport where a plane was waiting to fly Killer Kline to Mountainview, Killer Kline had to be reproduced.

From beneath his coat Van took out a paper sack containing the make-up kit he'd got on such short notice through the influence of Governor Young.

He set up a small pocket mirror, went to work swiftly. The Kline character had to be done entirely with the face, for Van would be stripped and re-dressed in prison clothes at the penitentiary. For the rest, he had to rely on his own ability to portray the Killer's characteristics in voice, mannerisms and action.

Fortunately, there were no Bertillon figures or fingerprints of Killer Kline on record at Mountainview. Those records would be taken there at the stir, and a copy of them mailed to the State and Federal identification bureaus—where they would be seized and promptly destroyed. Van had insisted upon that, to protect the Phantom's identity from being discovered. Later, if he survived the Alleghany Prison affair, the records there would be burned, too.

A moment before the truck swerved into the airport gate, a crumpled paper sack and a small pocket mirror fell from a gun slot in the steel car wall. The truck drove directly to a waiting ship, its door was opened, and Killer Kline was hurriedly transferred to the airplane.

There had been no hitch, no error. And there was none when the plane landed at the small Mountainview flying field and was met by a prison van.

Within thirty minutes Killer Kline was booked into Alleghany Penitentiary, without a hint of suspicion concerning his real identity, and the commitment papers were being signed by Warden Black-Jack Bluebold in person.

The same four men who had talked to Jimmy Lance in the warden's office the night before, now confronted the Phantom in the same room.

Ex-congressman Arnold and Dr. Maurice Jessup eyed Killer Kline in austere, watchful silence. Deputy Rowan, with three prison guards, kept the two doors into the office blocked. They were taking no chances with the notorious murderer.

"Still think you're the toughest guy in the United States?" Bluebold demanded harshly.

The Phantom put across his initial act with a snarl of defiance.

"I've got part of a week to live, starting tomorrow, you big punk! If you can think up anything during that time that's too tough for me, give me a crack at it, Peanut-brain! And that goes for the rest of you bottom rate chislers."

He swung upon them all. "Hell, there ain't a one of you smart enough to make yourself a buck outside. If it wasn't that the state paid you a salary, you'd all starve to death! Come on, let's take a squint at the death house you're so damned proud of."

"You'll take more than a squint at it, Killer," Bluebold snapped.

"Take him away and give him a bath, Rowan!"

But Rowan didn't take him alone. The three uniformed guards came along, crowding Van, yet watching him with nervous respect. He'd told off Black-Jack Bluebold! Killer Kline was the toughest con they'd ever handled.

Van shed his clothes, and took a secret satisfaction in making the muscles ripple under his skin as he moved about under the shower. These screws would think twice before they tried to maul him around. And his toughness and prowess as a hard guy would get talked about, which was what he wanted.

He wasn't sure the Imperator had sent an envoy to the real Kline in Pittsburgh jail. But he intended to give that mystery commander of the Invisible Empire a reason for wanting him as a member, if brazen courage and insolent fearlessness would do it.

Deputy Rowan threw him an outfit of prison clothes, drab, worn garments of faded muddy color that blended with the bleak, hopeless surroundings. Bluebold himself supervised the Bertillon and fingerprint records. Then he was herded over to the hospital.

Van's eyes sharpened as Dr. Jessup examined him, in the presence of the warden and Rowan and Arnold. The four men seemed to take a grisly delight in observing his physical qualifications.

"If you'd turned out to be a prizefighter or a professional wrestler, Kline," Dr. Jessup advised, "you'd have got some place in the world." He glanced at the others. "A wonderful specimen of a physique, gentlemen. It's really a shame to destroy it by electrocution."

"Count up the number of innocent and helpless guys Kline has killed," Harry Arnold said gravely. "Kline, you can't be executed but the one time. How many men do you figure you've murdered?"

"Who th' hell are you?" Van demanded. "Another punk screw?"

"Mr. Arnold," Bluebold said dryly, "is the Chairman of the Board of Parole and Pardons."

"If I added you to that list of guys I've rubbed out," Van rasped, "it would be a hell of a swell idea. Go on back to the Pardon Board and tell 'em that!"

"You're not going to ask Mr. Arnold for any help, I take it," Dr. Jessup remarked dryly.

"Nuts to him!" Van exploded. "I wouldn't take a pardon from none of you dopes. When I crash out of a stir, I do it my way!"

"Let's see you beat the death house, Kline," Black-Jack Bluebold challenged grimly. "I'll be waiting to shoot you!"

"Yeah!" Killer Kline snarled contemptuously. "You, with a gun. I can imagine! Hell, punk, I'd take it away from you and blow your damned face off with it!"

"Upstairs with him," Bluebold ordered.

The Phantom was ushered out of the prison physician's office into an elevator. There were no stairs, he noticed. At the fourth floor, which was the top, he was shoved out of the car into a steel-walled corridor at the end of which was a door painted a sickly green.

Bluebold, who had come up with him, pointed to the corridor's end. "That's the last door you'll ever enter, Kline. The chair is waiting for you on the other side. It's not a long walk."

Van did not answer. He'd put on his Killer Kline act enough, he imagined, and didn't want to overdo it. The guards shoved him into a cell, slammed shut the door which was entirely of steel bars.

There were seven other death cells on the corridor, four on each side, but none of them were occupied. Since Joe Sholtz had gone last night, Killer Kline appeared to be the only occupant of the death house.

But Deputy Rowan last night had mentioned a second murderer awaiting a future execution—Sam Robbins. And convicted men who entered this short corridor weren't supposed to be removed except through that fatal green door at the end, or by order of the Board of Pardons. If there'd been a pardon for Robbins, Governor Young would have mentioned it.

Robbins wasn't in the death house now.

Warden Bluebold and Rowan left him a few minutes later, after a whispered conference with the two guards on duty. The Phantom sat on the edge of the iron bed fastened to the wall, staring moodily through the bars at the empty cell opposite him.

He was on his own now completely. Not even Frank Havens could reach him on short notice, without the consent of Black-Jack Bluebold.

And suddenly Van remembered a mistake he'd made. He'd told Jerry Lannigan to visit him here, keep him informed about the hunt for the mystery plane. But Lannigan had been seen by the Imperator, or by several of the Imperator's men; in Dr. Waldo Junes' laboratory at Niagara Falls, and again in the mine, where Gulliver Vonderkag, the hunchback scientist, worked with the subterranean gas flame.

During those two periods, Lannigan had been stripped of the adhesive tape bandages over his eyes and mouth. And Jerry wore no disguise. If he showed up here, visiting Killer Kline, and one of the Imperator's men saw him—The Phantom shrugged off the thought of the consequences. At any rate, then the Imperator would guess the ruse that had been put over on the prison officials, and would show his hand in action.

Presently the elevator door jangled open and two men came into the corridor. Van could get only a passing look at them down the hallway, but they were in civilian clothes. He heard one of them mention his name: "Tough guy Killer Kline."

The two guards stepped over to his cell, unlocked the door, let in the two strangers, and locked the door again. Van heard them both go into the electrocution room beyond the green door, evidently so they wouldn't hear the conversation.

He stared at them sullenly, with the baleful contempt of Killer Kline himself. The two men were stocky, blunt-featured, shifty-eyed. They flashed state troopers' badges at him. They looked like brothers.

"Remember us, Kline?" one of them demanded.

The Phantom's eyes narrowed. Was this a trap? "So what?" he evaded. "I'm Garbo—I wanna be alone."

"Still the wise guy, eh?" the second one growled. "Well, you got this far along the route, sap. Want to let 'em fry you?"

"It's me that's gettin' fried, ain't it?" the Phantom snarled. He was stalling for time, trying to lead them into making some remark that would let him know what they were after, who they were. "I guess I got some rights left. If I wanna let 'em cook me, that's my business, ain't it?"

"That's what you said in the Pittsburgh can," the first of the two men grumbled. "You haven't got much time to make up your mind."

"I got a week," Van declared, eyeing them slantwise from the bed.

"That's what you think, chump. Listen!" The two men bent over him, as one of them prodded the air emphatically with a stubby finger: "Bluebold's got the authority to squirt the old juice into you any time after midnight tonight. Your last week starts then."

"Bluebold ain't in no hurry," Van exclaimed mockingly. "The publicity Killer Kline is bringin' him is plenty. He's eatin' it up!"

"Balance that publicity against the hundred grand you salted away out of that last mail robbery. It still adds up to cash on the line for your liberty. We ain't saying how soon Bluebold is figuring on watching you burn. He's sore. We offered you a chance at a proposition down in the Pittsburgh can. Want to talk business now?"

"You ain't very free with the details," Van growled.

The other stocky stranger elbowed his partner aside, and said:

"Look at the facts, Kline! For that dough, you get snaked out of here without any fireworks. You join up with our outfit and get an equity in your own money, and that's a damned sight more than you'd get trying to buy your way out through a regular stir delivery."

"Keep talking," the Phantom urged, and let himself show some growing interest.

Evidently Killer Kline had more of an inside track on his proposed escape than anyone had even dreamed. But Van still didn't know who these men represented.

"And another thing," the stocky man persisted. "You get taken care of after you get out of here. That comes with joining with us. The hideout is free, and you don't have to keep yourself locked up in no cheap room for a year, or keep jumping from town to town dodging cops, either."

Van spoke with a gleam of challenge in his sharp eyes.

"For a hundred grand you guys are going to make over the whole world so everybody'll love me or something? Me—the top killer of 'em all! Yeah, sell that plot to the movies, you lugs!"

"Don't get like that Kline," the second man grumbled. "You ain't heard it all yet. Our outfit's got a croaker that does the best job of face-lifting in the country. And he's working on a way to keep fingerprints from growing back again after he grafts new skin on the fingertips. All that medical stuff goes along with the hundred grand, soon as you join up."

"You won't recognize yourself, Kline," the first stocky stranger declared, "after that medico gets through with your map. You'd pay fifty grand alone for an operation like that, outside."

"Who's the croaker who does those operations?" Van demanded bluntly. "Why ain't I never heard of him before?"

"Yeah, a lot of smart guys would like to know that," one of the men told him. "Hell, Kline, we don't even know ourselves who he is. And what's more, we don't ask."

"And all my dough goes to that doctor?" the Phantom said.

"The dough goes to the organization, the mob," the other fellow told him. "You'll find out about it when the time comes."

"Gimme a little while to think about it," Van said after a pause during which they eyed him eagerly. "I'll probably come on in with you. But I gotta think about it." He saw their eyes cloud, and added quickly, "I can't pluck that hundred grand of mine out of the air in this damned stir. I'll have to figure how you can get it."

"Okay, Kline. You got until midnight tonight." The two men glanced confidently at each other. "You'll be seen before then, if not by us, by somebody who'll be in the know. And don't forget that midnight your death week begins. Black-Jack Bluebold ain't a nice guy to be waiting on, when it's your life he can burn up."

They rattled the door to attract the guards.

"Suppose I get quizzed about your visit," the Phantom said in a low voice. "What's the angle?"

"We're a couple of state cops, like our badges show," one of the men winked at him and grinned. "We're trying to find out what you did with that dough from that mail robbery."

The guard with the cell key let them out, and the elevator at the end of the corridor made a scraping noise as it took them down.

"Guard," Van called when the two men had gone. "Gimme a cigarette." And as the guard lit one and handed it to him through the bars: "Say, I thought I was having a guy named Sam Robbins for company. Where they got him now?"

"The prison physician, Dr. Jessup, moved him downstairs into one of the wards," the guard answered indifferently. "Sam complained that something he ate didn't agree with him. Then he got pretty blamed sick all of a sudden right after breakfast."

"Ate something that poisoned him, eh?" The Phantom's veiled gaze was sharp and hard behind the drooping lids.